I 'll tell the villagers as we pass to flay the
tiger. I must borrow your brother's pony and ride as fast as I can to
Salchini to get Payne's motor to take me to the railway."
"The railway?" exclaimed the girl. "Why, what is the matter? Where are you
going?"
"To Simla. I've found the lost messenger. Aye, and perhaps information that
may save India and proofs that will hang our friends in the Palace of
Lalpuri. _Mul_, Badshah!"
CHAPTER XIX
TEMPEST
The storm had burst on India. In the Khyber Pass there was fiercer fighting
than even that blood-stained defile had ever seen. The flames kindled by
fanaticism and lust of plunder blazed up along the North-west Frontier and
burned fiercest around Peshawar, where the Pathan tribes gathered thickest.
No news came from the interior of Bhutan.
So far, however, the interior of the land was comparatively tranquil.
Sporadic outbreaks in the Bombay Presidency and the Punjaub had been
crushed promptly. The great plan of a wide-spread concerted rising
throughout the peninsula had come to naught, thanks to the papers that
Dermot had found in the man-eater's den. He had carried them straight to
Simla himself, for closer examination had confirmed his first impression
and shown him that they were far too important to be confided to any one
else.
The information in them proved to be of the utmost value, for they
disclosed the complete plans of the conspirators and told the very dates
arranged for the advance of the Afghan army and the attacks of the Pathans,
which were to take place simultaneously with the general rising in India.
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