The house was divided into three rooms, cutting it into three equal parts. When we reached the third room, the farthest from the entrance, we came to a standstill, for it was pitch dark, and there seemed to be no windows. The heavy wooden door that led into the place stood ajar, and the N.C.O. pushed past me and rushed into the darkness. Fearing treachery, I tried to stop him, but did not succeed in doing so. Just then there was a noise behind me like the banging of a door. I turned, but some instinct seemed to hold me where I stood. A dead silence had fallen on the place, and I must confess to a feeling that something uncanny was in the air. I could hear through the silence, as though from miles and miles away, faint shouts, and now and then a distant shot, but in the rooms around me absolute stillness prevailed. What had become of the fugitive King and my too eager N.C.O.? At last, overcoming the strange feeling of apathy that like a spell had come over me, I called to my companion, inquiring where on earth he had got to. The sound of my voice rang hollow and strange in that gloomy place, and seemed to echo faintly, but there was no reply. Feeling certain now that some kind of treachery was at work, I felt in my tunic for a match, but found that I had either dropped my only box or my orderly had relieved me of it that morning, for some reason best known to himself. The solitary window in the middle room, where I had come to a full stop, was shuttered--actually nailed up. The only light that came in filtered through the chinks. I tried to burst the shutter open, but it resisted all my efforts. Then, bethinking me of my revolver, I went to the entrance of the innermost room once more, and, aiming at the floor, fired. The flash revealed the interior to me for an instant. It seemed absolutely empty! Where were the two men who had entered? Had they gone out, by any chance, through the roof, I wondered? Yet there was no sign of daylight anywhere to indicate an exit under the palm-thatch, and there was no doorway visible in the farther walls. There was nothing in the room, with the exception of a few mats lying in the middle of the floor. With the intention of going round outside the house and trying to discover for myself what the solution of the mystery could be I turned on my heel and retraced my steps, crossed the middle room once more, and passed through the doorway into the first of the three rooms.