She turned and went out of the room. Left alone, Helston Varne set to while away the time by examining the old oak sideboard, and his all round mind at once convinced him that it would fetch a fabulous sum if put upon the market. Then he went round to examine it from behind, and with this intent, pushed it a little away from the wall. What was this?

Something gleamed at him from the dust beneath--something bright, staring like an eye. He bent down. It was a small, star-shaped disc--a pentacle in fact--but on one of the points a small, triangular piece had been, as it were, cut out. It was a strange object, and gazing at it, somehow, all sorts of queer ideas began to chase each other more or less confusedly through his brain. He forgot where he was, forgot about the impending immediate return of Melian. All he could do was to stare at the thing, and it--seemed to stare at him.

What was this? Again those ideas seemed to rush and rampage, and the worst of it was he could not marshal them--could not docket them. He reached down to pick the thing up, and then--something seemed to hold him back from touching it. Yes, there was no mistake about it. It was as if a voice--a very distinct voice--were whispering in his ear.

"Unless you are tired of life--leave it."

This would never do. With an effort of will he pulled himself together.

Again he reached out his hand--and again more forcibly came that chill feeling of an unmistakable warning, and again he withdrew it. And then, as though breaking the spell, the clear, sweet, fluty voice of Melian, returning along the pa.s.sage, came to his ears.

Helston Varne was conscious that a clammy perspiration had broken out upon his forehead. Brushing a hand rapidly over this, he turned to face the door. Then he was conscious that another voice was mingling with that of the girl--a male voice. Again acting under some strange instinct, he moved the heavy sideboard back to its place against the wall, and had just done so when Melian entered, followed by her uncle.

The latter, he thought, looked perturbed, nor did he fail to notice the swift, furtive, enquiring glance, which lighted upon the heavy piece of furniture.

"Ah, how are you, Varne? Been looking at musty old oak things this little girl tells me. Yes, well--I dare say they're worth a lot of money, only they ain't mine, worse luck. I'd jolly well send them to Christie's if they were, I can tell you. I don't care for dismal old stuff about me. Give me something cheerful and up-to-date and comfortable. The other thing gives you the holy blues. So does this room by the way,"--and he shivered. "So if you've seen what you want, come down and join me in a whisky and soda."

"Delighted. Yes, that certainly must be very valuable old stuff,"

answered the other. "I thought it was yours."

"No. It's old Tullibard's, but it's left here to save the trouble of moving it anywhere else. Well, and so you're off on another of your mysterious expeditions, the child tells me. Look out, Varne. The bucket that goes down the well too often--you know the old copybook chestnut."

"Yes, and like all others of its kind, there's a fallacy behind it,"

laughed Varne.

"Perhaps. Come along then. This infernal room's giving me the cold shivers. I believe I got a touch of the sun on the way back. Anyhow, I'm not feeling at all the thing."

After their guest had left, the remainder of the day, radiant, golden, cloudless as it was, seemed to take on a gloom to one of them. What a very perfect companion he was, thought Melian. She wished he were a near neighbour instead of putting in sporadic appearances, and then vanishing for ever so long. She had refrained from telling him her troubles, not wanting to spoil their splendid morning ramble; now he was gone, for a long time perhaps, she regretted her reticence. Later she had reason to regret it more.

They were seated at supper. The blinds were down and the lamp burned cheerfully. Outside, a sudden gust swirled round the corner of the house, setting the woodland trees rustling.

"Ah--ah!" said Melian. "That spells change. I thought it was too perfectly clear to last."

Another gust stronger than the first, followed upon her words.

"Why, it is coming on to blow," she went on. "And look; it has blown the old cellar door open."

She was sitting so as to face this. Mervyn with his back to it. She could not fail to notice the sudden, almost startled look as he turned quickly to follow the direction of her glance.

_The door was open_.

About one quarter open it stood, framing a black gash, whence the cold chill of a draught came pouring into the room--open, just as it had stood six months ago. And now, as then, it had been fast locked.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

THE SNIPER.

Overhead the gloomy rock walls reared up on either side for many hundred feet, seeming in places well nigh to meet, in others, leaning outward so as completely to obliterate the narrow blue thread of sky. Loose stones, round stones, every conceivable shape of stone, large and small, const.i.tuted the natural paving of the natural roadway, and slipped and rattled under the tired, stumbling hoofs of the two hors.e.m.e.n; the three rather, for the rear was brought up at a respectful distance by a mounted syce.

It was cool in the depths of the great chasm, cool but strangely stuffy.

Both Europeans were in khaki suits, quite looking like having seen service, and wore Terai hats. Each carried a business-like magazine rifle--and, incidentally, knew thoroughly well how to use it when occasion demanded. And each had been so using it, but for peaceful purpose, for they were returning from a fairly successful markhor stalk in the craggy range, of which this chasm, cleaving the heart of an otherwise unbroken ma.s.s of rock, formed a natural roadway.

"I tell you what it is, Helston," the older of the two men was saying.

"This is no sort of place to go through during the rainy season. The water rushes down it as through a spout. I've had a narrow squeak or two in just such a tube as this before."

"Yes. You can see that. There's high watermark."

The other followed his upward glance. Just a few scarcely perceptible bits of stick and dry gra.s.s quite twenty feet overhead.

"By Jove, Helston, but what an eye you've got. And you're new to this end of the country too."

"Yes. I've got an eye--for trifles--as you say, Coates," returned Helston Varne. "But I only wish some of the things I've got to--I've had to--clear up, were as easy to deduce as that--only I don't, because it would eliminate the sporting element altogether. By the way, there's some one coming from the opposite direction. We shall meet directly, but I hope it isn't a lot of beastly loaded camels, or Heaven only knows how we are going to pa.s.s each other."

"What? Why you've got an ear as well as an eye. Blest if _I_ can hear anything."

"Not, eh?" Then, after a moment of listening--"By Jingo, yes--it is camels."

Now the sound grew audible to all, that of deep toned voices and the roll and rattle of loose stones, and soon, round a bend of the rock wall appeared a characteristic and extremely picturesque group.

There might have been ten or a dozen men. The one who led was mounted on a fine camel, but the rest were afoot. Another camel brought up the rear, loaded with baggage. They were tall, hook-nosed, copper coloured men, with jetty beards and an equally jetty tress flowing down in front over each shoulder. They were clad in loose white garments, and their heads surmounted by the ample turban wound round the conical _kulla_-- and all were armed with the inevitable and razor-edged tulwar, three or four indeed carrying rifles besides. At sight of the Europeans they halted, and their looks were not friendly. In point of fact these expressed distinct suspiciousness, partly dashed with a restrained combination of fanatical and racial hatred. But the whole group was splendidly in keeping with the stern wildness of its background.

"Now how the devil are we going to pa.s.s each other, and who's going to give way?" mused Varne Coates in an undertone. Helston said nothing.

His mind was absorbed entirely with taking in and thoroughly appreciating the effect of the picture.

"Salaam, brothers," began Coates, speaking Hindustani: "This _tangi_ is over narrow for two parties to pa.s.s each other. Is it not wider a little back, the way you have come?"

The look of hostility on the dark faces seemed to deepen ever so slightly. To Helston's acute observation it deepened more than slightly.

"Or the way _you_ have come," came the answer from more than one voice.

But the man on the camel said nothing, perhaps because he did not understand--or as a freeborn mountaineer, did not choose to understand-- the language of servants--of slaves. But he did not look friendly.

Things were at a decided deadlock.

There was just barely room to pa.s.s, but only then by floundering up the most rugged part of the dry watercourse. But Varne Coates, Commissioner of Baghnagar, and temporarily quartered on leave at the frontier station of Mazaran for the purposes chiefly of markhor stalking, was temperamentally a peppery man, and traditionally entirely opposed to the idea of giving way to natives whoever they might be. And it looked uncommonly as though he would have to do so now.

"Here, Gholam Ali," he called back over his shoulder to the syce. "You talk to these people. They don't seem to understand _me_."

The man came forward, and Helston was not slow to notice that his tones, as he talked, were respectful, not to say deferential. The face of the camel rider the while was that of a mask. He uttered a few laconic words in a deep toned voice, and in Pushtu.

"_Hazur_, it is a sirdar of the Gularzai," translated the syce, "His name Allah-din Khan. He does not know the _Hazur_, and this is his country. _Hazur_, he says, does not belong to the _Sirkar_ here [the Government, or administration], but is a stranger. Further down the _tangi_ is a wide s.p.a.ce where all can pa.s.s one another. 'Let those who come _up_ then make way for those who come _down_.' Those are the words of the sirdar."

Here was an _impa.s.se_. Helston Varne noticed on his kinsman's face a sort of apoplectic tendency to grow purple. He realised that the situation was critical--very. He noticed likewise that the expression on the faces of the opposite party was one of scowling determination, but he further noticed that there was nothing insolent or provocative in it. This seemed to save the situation. His keen brain saw a way out.

It was rather a funny one, but it might answer.

"See now, Gholam Ali," he said, in Hindustani, of which he had a thorough knowledge. "When we sportsmen have a difference we throw up a coin, and decide according to choice whether the King's head is uppermost or not. The Gularzai are sportsmen like ourselves. So we can toss up for who shall give way."

He produced a rupee, and watched the face of the chief while this was put to him. The latter gave a slight nod, and said a word or two to his followers. They crowded forward.

"What does the sirdar say?" went on Helston. "The King's head or the other side?"