Ferrers had recourse to bribery. Presents judiciously distributed, by means of his Jewish agents, among the Khan’s chief officers, brought him the honour of an audience of each of the gentlemen so favoured, and various interesting confidences. Whybrow Sahib had never entered the city; he had died in it from natural causes; he had left it and started safely on his return journey to India,--it seemed a pity that the worshipful hypocrites had not taken counsel together beforehand to tell one story and stick to it. Ferrers gathered only one more grain of fact after all his expenditure, namely, that Whybrow had actually been in Gamara. If he had not, there would not have been such anxiety to assert that he had left it in safety. But nothing of this sort was officially acknowledged. At each successive audience the Khan inquired blandly whether Firoz Sahib had yet been able to learn anything as to his friend’s fate, and even condescended to remark further that it was most extraordinary a stranger should be able to disappear so completely just outside Gamara, and leave no trace. Thus time went on, and Ferrers began to feel that he might remain in Gamara for the rest of his days and get no further. Meanwhile, the failure of his efforts and the restricted life he led were telling upon his nerves and temper, and he began to say to himself that if there was much more prevarication he would beard the Khan in his very palace, and give him the lie to his face. When he had reached this point, an excuse for the outburst was not long in offering itself. One of his agents came to him one day with even more than the usual secrecy, and produced from the inmost recesses of his garments something small and heavy, wrapped up many times in a piece of cotton cloth. It was a miniature Colt’s revolver--then a comparatively new invention--beautifully finished and mounted in silver, and bearing on a small silver plate the letters L. W., the initials of Leonard Whybrow. Questioned fiercely as to where he had found it, the man confessed by degrees that he had stolen it from the palace--“borrowed it” was his way of expressing the fact. It had been in the charge of the keeper of the Khan’s armoury, with whom he had some acquaintance, and recognising from its make that it was a Bilati (European) pistol of a new kind, he had secured it when the keeper’s back was turned, intending to return it to its place at the earliest opportunity after Ferrers had seen it. He further put in a claim for the repayment of a sum of money which had been needed to induce the keeper to turn his back at the right moment, and urged that the pistol should be given back to him at once, or both the keeper and he would lose their heads, since the Khan often amused himself by firing away the ammunition which had come into his possession at the same time as the weapon. To this, however, Ferrers refused to accede, paying the money with an alacrity which made the agent wish he had asked double the sum, but