Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/378

 As soon as he had passed them the committee of three stepped noiselessly out of the shadow, poised their spears aloft, and plunged them into Leli's naked brown back. As they struck they rent the silence of the night with their sorak, a war-cry into which they compressed all the pent-up hatred of their victim which had been devouring their hearts for months. Leh, giving vent to a thick, choking cough, fell upon his face, and a few more vigorous spear thrusts at his prostrate body completed the work which the committee of three had been up- pointed to perform.

They left the body of Leh, the strolling player, lying where it had fallen, face downward in the dust of the footpath; and though the king did all that lay in his power to secure the detection of the murderers, and though his efforts were seconded by half the women in the town, the men who had planned the deed kept their secret well, so no punishment could be inflicted upon those who had actually effected the assassination of the warden of the king's dancing girls.

In the eyes of Malayan justice, however, if you are unable to punish the guilty, it is better to come down heavily upon the innocent than to let everybody get off scot free. The house near which the body of Leh had been found happened to be tenanted by an okl crone, her widowed daughter, and three children of tender age. That they were not concerned in the murder was obvious; but none the less their abode was taken as the centre of a circle of one hundred