He was grovelling now, and Chris bade him stand up and speak Urdu, almost as Jack Raymond had bidden Govind. But as _he_ listened to the _baboo's_ words, each one, each phrase did not translate itself into a definite aspect of the one central fact that had to be reckoned with; and so, when the tale ended in fresh blubbers, he was not ready to act--he had to think! The very keenness of his intellectual apprehension--claimed clear perception of all points, and he hesitated as he recapitulated them. Trouble expected in the city--ah! about the amulets, no doubt--why had he not spoken? Troops sent for to Fareedabad, and coming sooner than the authorities expected. How could that be? Coming in a few moments, and the fact of their having been sent for leaking out through the second telegram, the Commissioner's telegram! Why had there been two telegrams? 'Ob, Lord God!' moaned the _baboo_, reverting to English at this question, 'because this poor devil of a _baboo_ one fool! Yet doing duty, sir--getting line clear, go ahead, all serene till _Kuzai_ fellows come bribing signalman for midnight train, so discovering special, beat this poor body to bruises--Oh, sir! issue orders! issue orders!' Chris, in a whirl, stood aghast. Issue orders? What orders? 'Yes, sir! Ah! come and see, sir, and issue orders!' moaned the _baboo_ again. Come and see? Well! he could at least do that! He dashed out at the door, and, followed breathlessly by the _baboo_, cut across the line. As he did so a figure, crouching by the telegraph-office, ran towards the bridge end of the station. In the moonlight he saw the man's face, and recognised him as one of his butcher's gang. He pulled up short, the consciousness that _this_ was something in which he could be no mere onlooker, but one in which his part must be played as that man's superior officer, coming to him. And as he paused, looking down the narrowing ribbon of steel, he gave a quick gasp of comprehension. All lay silent, peaceful, but against the dark shadow of the pier-tower a darker shadow was rising, and below it that narrowing ribbon of steel ended sharp, square, as if cut off with a knife. The drawbridge was being raised! Yet above it the green light of safety, the signal '_Line clear, go ahead_' shone bright, and was echoed from the faint moonshine and the deepening dark over the river. And troops, in a special train, were almost due. At the very moment, indeed, a sudden ringing of an electric bell from the telegraph-office could be heard distinctly in the silence. The sound seemed to finish the _baboo_; he squatted down on the rails, murmuring, 'Oh, flag-station now! Oh, coming _instanter_! Oh, please, master, issue orders!' No! not orders; something beyond orders surely! Who was it--was it he himself in a different life?--who had been through this before, with some one who had said, '_But we don't let 'em. No, sir! Two men, if they was men, 'ud keep that pier a Christian country for a tidy time_.'