Out of his pocket the general produced a letter that smelt strongly of a scent King recognized. He spread it out on a table, and King read. It was Yasmini's letter that she had sent down the Khyber to make India too hot to hold him.

"Your Captain King has been too much trouble. He has 

taken money from the Germans. He adopted native dress. 

He called himself Kurram Khan. He slew his own brother 

at night in the Khyber Pass. These men will say that 

he carried the head to Khinjan, and their word is true. 

I, Yasmini, saw. He used the head for a passport to 

obtain admittance. He proclaims a jihad! He urges 

invasion of India! He held up his brother's head before 

five thousand men and boasted of the murder. The next 

you shall hear of your Captain King of the Khyber Rifles 

he will be leading a jihad into India. You would have 

better trusted me. Yasmini." 

"Too bad about your brother," said the general.

"The body is buried. How much is true about the head?"

King told him.

"Where's she?" asked the general.

King did not answer. The general waited.

"I don't know, sir."

"Ask the Rangar," Courtenay suggested.

"Where is he?" asked King.

"Caught him coming down the Khyber on his black mare and arrested him. He's in the next room! I hope he's to be hanged. So that I can buy the mare," he added cheerfully.

King whistled softly to himself, and the general looked at him through half-closed eyes.

"Go in and talk to him, King. Let me know the result."

He had picked King to go up the Khyber on that errand not for nothing. He knew King and he knew the symptoms. Without answering him King obeyed. He went out of the room into a dark corridor and rapped on the door of the next room to the right. There was a muffled answer from within. Courtenay shouted something to the sentry outside the door and he called another man who fitted a key in the lock. King walked into a room in which one lamp was burning and the door slammed shut behind him.

He was in there an hour, and it never did transpire just what passed, for he can hold his tongue on any subject like a clam, and the general, if anything, can go him one better. Courtenay was placed under orders not to talk, so those who say they know exactly what happened in the room between the time when the door was shut on King and the time when he knocked to have it opened and called for the general, are not telling the truth.