ut
how cruel I was to shoot a poor harmless house-breaker, and how I have
the devil in me against poor harmless natives. But I was a good-natured
man once--as good-natured as Putnam."

After a pause he said: "Look here, I've never seen you before; but you
shall judge of the whole story. Old Putnam and I were friends in the
same mess; but, owing to some accidents on the Afghan border, I got my
command much sooner than most men; only we were both invalided home
for a bit. I was engaged to Audrey out there; and we all travelled back
together. But on the journey back things happened. Curious things. The
result of them was that Putnam wants it broken off, and even Audrey
keeps it hanging on--and I know what they mean. I know what they think I
am. So do you.

"Well, these are the facts. The last day we were in an Indian city I
asked Putnam if I could get some Trichinopoli cigars, he directed me to
a little place opposite his lodgings. I have since found he was quite
right; but 'opposite' is a dangerous word when one decent house stands
opposite five or six squalid ones; and I must have mistaken the door. It
opened with difficulty, and then only on darkness; but as I turned back,
the door behind me sank back and settled into its place with a noise as
of innumerable bolts. There was nothing to do but to walk forward; which
I did through passage after passage, pitch-dark. Then I came to a flight
of steps, and then to a blind door, secured by a latch of elaborate
Eastern ironwork, which I could only trace by touch, but which I
loosened at last. I came out again upon gloom, which was half turned
into a greenish twilight by a multitude of small but steady lamps
below. They showed merely the feet or fringes of some huge and empty
architecture. Just in front of me was something that looked like a
mountain. I confess I nearly fell on the great stone platform on which
I had emerged, to realize that it was an idol. And worst of all, an idol
with its back to me.

"It was hardly half human, I guessed; to judge by the small squat head,
and still more by a thing like a tail or extra limb turned up behind and
pointing, like a loathsome large finger, at some symbol graven in the
centre of the vast stone back. I had begun, in the dim light, to guess
at the hieroglyphic, not without horror, when a more horrible thing
happened. A door opened silently in the temple wall behind me and a man
came out, with a brown face and a black coat. He had a