"What's that? What's that?" Cleek's voice flicked in like the crack of a whip. "Good God! Dancing round in circles? His mouth open? His tongue hanging out? His fingers thrust into his nostrils? Was that what you said?"
"Yes. Why? Do you see anything promising in that fact, Cleek? It seems to excite you."
"Never mind about that. Stick to the subject. Was that report found to be correct, then?"
"In a measure, yes. Only, of course, one had to take the tramp's assertion that the man had been calling out 'Sapphires' upon faith, for when discovered and conveyed to the hospital, he was in a comatose condition and beyond making any sound at all. He died, without recovering consciousness, about twenty minutes after Petrie's arrival; and, although the doctors performed a post-mortem immediately after the breath had left his body, there was not a trace of anything to be found that differed in the slightest from the other cases. Heart, brain, liver, lungs--all were in a healthy condition, and beyond the reddened throat and the signs of recent enteric there was nothing abnormal."
"But his lips--his lips, Mr. Narkom? Was there a smear of earth upon them? Was he lying on his face when found? Were his fingers clenched in the grass? Did it look as if he had been biting the soil?"
"Yes," replied Narkom. "As a matter of fact there was both earth and grass in the mouth. The doctors removed it carefully, examined it under the microscope, even subjected it to chemical test in the hope of discovering some foreign substance mixed with the mass, but failed utterly to discover a single trace."
"Of course, of course! It would be gone like a breath, gone like a passing cloud if it were that."
"If it were what? Cleek, my dear fellow! Good Lord! you don't mean to tell me you've got a clue?"
"Perhaps--perhaps--don't worry me!" he made answer testily; then rose and walked over to the window and stood there alone, pinching his chin between his thumb and forefinger and staring fixedly at things beyond. After a time, however:
"Yes, it could be that--assuredly it could be that," he said in a low-sunk voice, as if answering a query. "But in England--in this far land. In Malay, yes; in Ceylon, certainly. And sapphires, too--sapphires! Hum-m-m! They mine them there. One man had travelled in foreign parts and been tattooed by natives. So that the selfsame country----Just so! Of course! Of course! But who? But how? And in England?"