Barlow was troubling over the problem of the gorilla-faced man, and
thinking how close he had been to death--all but gone out except for
that figure in his arms that was so like a lotus; and the death would
have meant not just the forfeit of his life, but that his duty, the
mission he was upon for his own people, the British government, had
been jeopardised by his participation in some native affair of strife,
something he had nothing to do with. He had ridden along that road
hoping to overtake the two riders that now lay dead in the pit with the
other victims of the thugs--of which he knew nothing. They were
bearing to him a secret message from his government, and he had ridden
to Manabad to there take it from them lest in approaching the city of
the Peshwa, full of seditious spies and cutthroats, the paper might be
stolen. But at Manabad he had learned that the two had passed, had
ridden on; and then, perhaps because of converging different roads, he
had missed them.
But most extraordinarily, just one of the curious, tangented ways of
Fate, the written order lay against his chest sewn between the double
sole of a sandal.
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