Ibrahim Beg was, of course, apprehended, and locked up, vainly protesting his innocence. His own story was that he had been stupefied, he knew not how, by some narcotic, and after his violent quarrel with his wife, which he did not deny, he had fallen asleep until a late hour the following morning. His jealousy and ill-treatment of his wife were notorious, and told greatly against him; the seclusion in which he had always kept her also militated against him now. So few people had seen her that there was no more evidence of identity than that already adduced. All that could be said in his favour was that without the head, absolute recognition was impossible. Ibrahim Beg himself stoutly denied that the corpse was Chumbelee's. The trial proceeded, and ended in his conviction; the case was referred to a superior court, which deemed the evidence conclusive; the sentence of death passed was about to be executed, and Khan Beg was on the point of obtaining his ends and acquiring considerable wealth.
But now came the slip. An anonymous letter was received by a young English civilian who had charge of the district, informing him that Chumbelee was still alive, actually residing within twenty miles of the scene of her supposed murder. The magistrate, knowing it to be a case of life and death, straightway rode to the place indicated, a certain tomb occupied by a gang of fakirs, men of evil repute, whom it was necessary to approach with caution. The magistrate, summoning the village police to his aid, cautiously surrounded the tomb, then broke in, and searched the whole place. He came upon Chumbelee at last in an underground apartment.
She was, of course, forthwith taken out and brought back to her husband's house. The whole plot was now laid bare by the manservant, anxious to save his own skin. He had long been in the power of Khan Beg, and agreed to assist him the moment a body could be found to be palmed off as Chumbelee's. A widower at last consented to sell the corpse of his recently deceased wife, which they took and decapitated. It was the manservant who had administered the drug to Ibrahim; he made the slave-girl prisoner, and then carried off Chumbelee in a blanket to the fakirs' tomb. Ibrahim Beg, when he recovered next morning from the effects of the drug, gave the police no information of his wife's disappearance, for he believed that she had eloped and left him of her own accord. The whole of this pernicious plot was admirably planned, but it failed, as such plots often do, through the avarice of the principal personage. Khan Beg had refused to pay a sum promised to one of his subordinate helpers, and the latter had written the anonymous letter.