He started off toward the cell where he had imprisoned the fakir.
He went by himself, and no one volunteered to go with him.
He had gone five yards when the second explanation met his eyes.
This time there was no need to stoop down, nor to turn any body over.
The sentry whom he had left to guard both cell and guardroom stood
bolt upright, with his mouth and his eyes wide open; skewered to
the wall of the guardhouse by an iron spike, which pierced his chest.
"A lamp and four men here!" ordered Brown, without waiting to let
the horror of the sight sink in. "Take that poor chap down, and lay
him in the guardroom beside the others. How? How should I know?
Pull it out, or break it off--I don't care which; don't leave him
there, that's all."
He walked on toward the cell-door, while they labored, and fingered
gingerly around the spike, which must have been driven through the
sentry's chest with a hammer.
"I thought as much!" he muttered. And, though be had not thought
as much, he might have done so. "I knew that a man who could maim
his own body in that way was capable of any crime in the calendar!"
The door of the cell stood open, and there was no sign of any fakir,
or of any one who might have helped him go--nothing but an empty
cell, with the haunting smell of the fakir still abiding in it.
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