Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/26

 I have heard other people say that the whole queer event was a conspiracy. The white man in short was an outlaw, as well as the—caravaneers. That was why he lurked in the bazaar instead of going to his own countrymen in the modern city of Kashgar.

"But my own opinion, my dear Miss Rand, is this. My theory is that the white man was carried off as a punishment for some crime he had committed. A crime against the natives, you know. Robbed a temple, or—ah—something of the kind. One-Eye—the chap of the sheepskins—drugged him and then went to fetch his gang. Helpless under the influence of the drug, the white man was borne away to his fate. Eh, what?"

Edith Rand was silent. She had observed that the card player had returned to his solitaire with fresh enthusiasm; he was placing red cards upon black, quite correctly. He had even lit another cigarette.

"And now," continued Whittater, convinced of the success of his narrative, "we come to the sequel. You remember that the white man's servant, Jain Ali Beg, ran away from Kashgar and was missing—tor some time. A year later he turned up at one of the English Stations in the Kashmir hills five hundred miles away to the south in upper India. Major Fraser-Carnie, your friend, saw him.

"Jain Ali Beg," nodded the globe-trotter, "was arrested. Doubtless, you wonder why. He had in his possession the personal effects and the rifle of his master—claimed they had been given him by the white effendi before his master was carried off. But Fraser-Carnie had no doubt that Jain Ali Beg robbed the man."

As Whittaker said this Edith Rand saw that the