He had not long
been married to Miss Youghal, but he scented in the telegram a chance of return
to the old detective work that his soul lusted after, and next night he came in
and heard our story. He finished his pipe and said oracularly:--"We must get at
the evidence. Oorya bearer, Mussalman khit and methraniayah, I suppose, are the
pillars of the charge. I am on in this piece; but I'm afraid I'm getting rusty
in my talk."
He rose and went into Biel's bedroom where his trunk had been put, and shut the
door. An hour later, we heard him say:--"I hadn't the heart to part with my old
makeups when I married. Will this do?" There was a lothely faquir salaaming in
the doorway.
"Now lend me fifty rupees," said Strickland, "and give me your Words of Honor
that you won't tell my Wife."
He got all that he asked for, and left the house while the table drank his
health. What he did only he himself knows. A faquir hung about Bronckhorst's
compound for twelve days. Then a mehter appeared, and when Biel heard of HIM,
he said that Strickland was an angel full-fledged. Whether the mehter made love
to Janki, Mrs. Bronckhorst's ayah, is a question which concerns Strickland
exclusively.
He came back at the end of three weeks, and said quietly:--"You spoke the
truth, Biel.
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