ing the bracken with his stick, but all to no purpose. No gruesome corpse, either of English nobleman or of dark-skinned Asiatic, met their straining eyes.
“We must give it up,” said the General at last. “Now that we are down here we had better go out through the wicket-gate into the village and tell the constable to send for his superiors. We have reached the limit, and poor Beaumanoir’s secrets can belong to him no longer, I fear.”
Forsyth assented that it would be no longer advisable, even if it were possible, to keep the Duke’s affairs out of the hands of the police, and the two made their way toward the private gate in the park wall through which Beaumanoir had gone to church on his first memorable Sunday at Prior’s Tarrant. They were approaching the gate, not by the path, but skirting the wall through the undergrowth, when a lissome body appeared suddenly at the top of the wall, poised there for a moment, and then dropped almost at their feet. It was Azimoolah Khan, dusty and out of breath, but very far from being a dead man.
“How is this, thou son of Sheitan?’’ exclaimed the General, affecting sternness to
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