nce awoke
his curiosity. Had he detected a slight movement as he first pressed it?
He pushed hard at it--upwards, downwards, sideways, but without result.
Surely he had been mistaken. He would try again. This time he pushed
gently, and thrilled all through when he felt an indubitable movement,
though very slight. Now, instead of pushing, he pulled outward. The
stone yielded. He pulled harder; it moved reluctantly, but it did move,
and by and by he was able to get his fingers round the edge of the slab.
Another pull, and it came a few inches from the wall, then stopped.

He was puzzled. He pushed at the stonework immediately around the slab.
There was no result. He tried a few feet to the right--in vain; then to
the left. Something seemed to give slightly. A harder push, and the slab
moved inward, slowly revolving on a vertical axis until it stood
perpendicular to the surface of the wall.

With beating heart he crawled through the opening, and found himself in
a stone passage, so low that he had to stoop, so narrow that there was
not an inch to spare on either side. In a dozen paces he reached the
end--a dead stone wall. There must be an outlet, but where? He felt over
the wall and discovered a protuberance similar to that in the room he
had left. He pushed and pulled in the same way; the slab moved; a light
shone through the crack between it and the wall. He peeped through.
There was Craddock Sahib reading at his little table by the light of a
lamp.

The doctor was amazed, delighted, perplexed, at once. Ahmed rapidly
explained the discovery he had made, then hurried back through the
passage, closed the slab opening into his cell, and returned. He learnt
from the doctor of the recent attack on the house by Asadullah, and that
the khansaman, in spite of his wishes to the contrary, had gone off that
morning to find the old chief, and inform him of his son's plight. Ahmed
seized on the attack as affording an explanation of his escape. Minghal
would believe readily enough that the prisoner had been rescued by his
father, even though the fact that the door was still locked should
savour of mystery. Thus the khansaman would be in no danger of
dismissal.

The question was: how was Ahmed to escape from the house and the city?
There was no longer any safety in his disguise, even if the khansaman
could procure a beard to replace that of which Minghal had stripped him.
It was the khansaman himself who, when he returned, suggest