India -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, English
The dry sand had turned the corpse entrusted to its keeping into a
yellow-brown mummy. I told Gunga Dass to stand off while I examined it.
The body--clad in an olive-green hunting-suit much stained and worn, with
leather pads on the shoulders--was that of a man between thirty and forty,
above middle height, with light, sandy hair, long mustache, and a rough
unkempt beard. The left canine of the upper jaw was missing, and a portion
of the lobe of the right ear was gone. On the second finger of the left
hand was a ring--a shield-shaped bloodstone set in gold, with a monogram
that might have been either "B.K." or "B.L." On the third finger of the
right hand was a silver ring in the shape of a coiled cobra, much worn and
tarnished. Gunga Dass deposited a handful of trifles he had picked out of
the burrow at my feet, and, covering the face of the body with my
handkerchief, I turned to examine these. I give the full list in the hope
that it may lead to the identification of the unfortunate man:
1. Bowl of a briarwood pipe, serrated at the edge; much worn and
blackened; bound with string at the screw.
2. Two patent-lever keys; wards of both broken.
3. Tortoise-shell-handled penknife, silver or nickel, name-plate, marked
with monogram "B.K."
4. Envelope, postmark undecipherable, bearing a Victorian stamp, addressed
to "Miss Mon----" (rest illegible)--"ham"--"nt."
5. Imitation crocodile-skin notebook with pencil. First forty-five pages
blank; four and a half illegible; fifteen others filled with private
memoranda relating chiefly to three persons--a Mrs. L. Singleton,
abbreviated several times to "Lot Single," "Mrs. S. May," and "Garmison,"
referred to in places as "Jerry" or "Jack."
6. Handle of small-sized hunting-knife. Blade snapped short. Buck's horn,
diamond cut, with swivel and ring on the butt; fragment of cotton cord
attached.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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