uffians was lined up, relieved of its weapons, and duly
marched to the guard-room.

Here, one of the gang (later identified as the man who had been known
as John Robin Ross-Ellison, and who insisted that he was a Baluchi)
declared that he had just murdered Mrs. Dearman in her drawing-room and
made a full statement--a statement found to be only too true, its
details corroborated by a trembling _hamal_ who had peeped and listened,
as all Indian servants peep and listen.

* * * * *

Duly tried, all members of the gang received terms of imprisonment
(largely a prophylactic measure), save the extraordinary
English-speaking Baluchi, who had long imposed, it was said, upon
Gungapur Society in the days before that Society had disappeared in the
cataclysm.

A few days before the date fixed for the execution of this very
remarkable desperado, Captain Michael Malet-Marsac, Adjutant of the
Gungapur Volunteer Corps, received two letters dated from Gungapur Jail,
one covering the other. The covering letter ran:--

"MY DEAR MALET-MARSAC,

"I forward the enclosed. Should you desire to attend the execution you
could accompany the new City Magistrate, Wellson, who will doubtless be
agreeable.

"Yours sincerely,

"A. RANALD, Major I.M.S."

The accompaniment was from John Robin Ross-Ellison Mir Ilderim Dost
Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan.

"MY DEAR OLD FRIEND,

"For the credit of the British I am pretending to be a Baluchi. I am not
a Baluchi and I hope to die like a Briton--at any rate like a man. I
have been held responsible for what I did when I was not responsible,
and shall be killed in cold blood by sane people, for what I did in hot
blood when quite as mad as any madman who ever lived. I don't
complain--I _ex_plain. I want you to understand, if you can, that it was
not your friend John Ross-Ellison who did that awful deed. It was a
Pathan named Ilderim Dost Mahommed. And yet it was I." ["Poor chap is
mad!" murmured the bewildered and horrified reader who had lived in a
kind of nightmare since the woman he loved had been murdered by the man
he loved. "The strain of the war has been too much for him. He must have
had sunstroke too." He read on, with misty sight.]

"And it is I who will pay the penalty of Ilderim Dost Mahommed's deed.
As I say, I do not complain, and if the Law did not kill me I would
certainly kill myself--to get rid of Ilderim Dost Mahommed.

"I have thought of doing so