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“Certainly,” I said. “We all know that is true. But why was he killed?’

Again Sir Henry regarded me with his ironical smile.

“Perhaps,” he drawled, “there is some explanation in the report in your pocket, to the Monastic Head. It’s only a theory, you know.”

He smiled, showing his white, even teeth.

We went into the superintendent’s room, and sat down by a smoldering fire of coals in the gate. I handed Marquis the roll of vellum. It was in one of the Shan dialects. He read it aloud. With the addition of certain formal expressions, it contained precisely the Oriental’s testimony before the court, and no more.

“Ah!” he said in his curiously inflected Oxford voice.

And he held the scroll out to the heat of the fire. The vellum baked slowly, and as it baked, the black Chinese characters faded out and faint blue ones began to appear.

Marquis read the secret message in his emotionless drawl:

“‘The American is destroyed, and his accursed work is destroyed with him. Send the news to Bangkok and west to Burma. The treasures of India are saved.”‘

I cried out in astonishment.

“An assassin! The creature was an assassin! He killed Rodman simply by crushing him in his arms!”

Sir Henry’s drawl lengthened.

“It’s Lal Gupta,” he said, “the cleverest Oriental in the whole of Asia. The jewel-traders sent him to watch Rodman, and to kill him if he was ever able to get his formulae worked out. They must have paid him an incredible sum.”

“And that is why the creature attached himself to Rodman!” I said.

“Surely,” replied Sir Henry. “He brought that bronze Romulus carrying off the Sabine woman and staged the supernatural to work out his plan and to save his life. I knew the bronze as soon as I got my eye on it – old Franz Josef gave it as a present to Mahadal in Bombay for matching up some rubies.”

I swore bitterly.

“And we took him for a lunatic!”

“Ah, yes!” replied Sir Henry. “What was it you said as I came in? ‘The human mind is capable of any absurdity!'”