But, even as the soldiers
of the old Pathan fort had marched out into the shadowless night
of death to join Ghori and Baber and Nadir Shah, so the spirit of
the lonely old miser nabob had sought the echoless shore.
When Simpson had unavailingly endeavored to awaken his master, the
locked doors were burst in at last by the anxious servants, and
they found only the tenantless shell of the mighty millionaire, as
cold and rigid as the iron pillar which veils to-day its mystery of
a forgotten past, when the jackals howl in the ruins of old Delhi.
Then rose up a wild outcry, and the sound of hurrying feet. The
alert old veteran servitor, with instinctive military obedience,
dispatched two messengers, on the run, to notify General Willoughby
and Major Alan Hawke. And then, with quick wit, he forbade the
gaping crowd to touch even a single article.
Not even the stiffened body, as it lay prone upon its face, was
disturbed. Simpson stood there, pistol in hand, on guard until
properly relieved, and as silent as a crouching rifleman on picket.
The whole room bore the evidence of a thorough ransacking, and the
disordered clothing of the nabob proved, too, that the body had
been rifled. The mysterious nocturnal visits returned to Simpson's
mind. "Could it have been some once-wronged woman?" he mused while
waiting for his "military superiors." For the simple old soldier
scorned all civilian control.
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