Strickland was about a hundred and eighty miles up the line. He had not
long been married to Miss Youghal, but he scented in the telegram a
chance of return to the old detective work that his soul lusted after,
and next time he came in and heard our story. He finished his pipe and
said oracularly, 'We must get at the evidence. Oorya bearer, Mussulman
_khit_ and sweeper _ayah_, I suppose, are the pillars of the charge. I
am on in this piece; but I'm afraid I'm getting rusty in my talk.'

He rose and went into Biel's bedroom, where his trunk had been put, and
shut the door. An hour later, we heard him say, 'I hadn't the heart to
part with my old make-ups when I married. Will this do?' There was a
loathly _fakir_ salaaming in the doorway.

'Now lend me fifty rupees,' said Strickland, 'and give me your Words of
Honour that you won't tell my wife.'

He got all that he asked for, and left the house while the table drank
his health. What he did only he himself knows. A _fakir_ hung about
Bronckhorst's compound for twelve days. Then a sweeper appeared, and
when Biel heard of _him_, he said that Strickland was an angel
full-fledged. Whether the sweeper made love to Janki, Mrs. Bronckhorst's
_ayah_, is a question which concerns Strickland exclusively.

He came back at the end of three weeks, and said quietly, 'You spoke the
truth, Biel. The whole business is put up from beginning to end. Jove!
It almost astonishes _me_! That Bronckhorst beast isn't fit to live.'

There was uproar and shouting, and Biel said, 'How are you going to
prove it? You can't say that you've been trespassing on Bronckhorst's