That detail, next to the dragging of the body out of the tent, seemed to him the grimmest part of the whole tragedy.
He shut up his book.
"I am afraid it is all very unsatisfactory," he said.

"I think we must go back to Bombay." "It is as your Excellency wills," said Stella in Hindustani, and the Inspector was startled by the bad taste of the joke.

He had not the knowledge of her life with Ballantyne, which alone would have given him the key to understand her.

But he was not a fool, and a second glance at her showed to him that she was not speaking in joke at all.

He had an impression that she was so tired that she did not at the moment care what happened to her at all.