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He rose and determined to postpone further examination till he would get someone who understood the Hindoo tongue. But in the meantime Hokar might run away, and Hurd rather regretted that he had been so precipitate. However, he nodded to the man and went off, pretty sure he would not fly at once.
He also produced something else with which he had provided himself on the way back from the post-office. In another minute Hokar was staring at a small parcel of coarse brown sugar. With all his Oriental phlegm the man could not keep his countenance. His eyes rolled until they threatened to drop out of his head, and he looked at Hurd with a certain amount of fear.
Aaron was about to inquire what he meant by this insult, when the Indian walked to the counter and placed something thereon, after which he moved away, and his voice was heard dying away down the street. "Hokar is poor Hokar need money. Hokar, Christian." "What's this?" demanded Norman, again assisting Bart roughly to his feet.
Hokar made a strange sign on his forehead at the mention of the sacred name, and muttered something perhaps a prayer in his native tongue. Then he looked up. "I know nozzing." "Don't repeat that rubbish," said Hurd, calmly; "you sold boot laces in the shop in Gwynne Street on the day when its master was killed. And he was the husband of the lady who helped you Mrs. Krill."
"Yes, he was," she exclaimed excitedly. "Hokar, he said he was, and Hokar was a Thug. Remember the handful of coarse brown sugar he left on the counter? Didn't Bart tell you of that?" Paul started. "Yes, by Jove! he did," was his reply. "Well, then," said Sylvia, triumphantly, "that sugar was goor, and the Thugs eat it before strangling anyone, and father was strangled."
"Goor," said that gentleman, pointing to the sugar with the stem of his pipe, "goor!" Hokar turned green under his dark skin, and half-rose to go away, but his legs failed him, and he sat still trying to recover himself. "So you worship Bhowanee?" went on his tormentor. The Indian's face expressed lively curiosity. "The great goddess." "Yes. Kalee, you know.
Did you make Tupounee after you used your roomal on Aaron Norman?" Hokar gave a guttural cry and gasped. Tupounee is the sacrifice made by the Thugs after a successful crime, and roomal the handkerchief with which they strangled their victims. All this was information culled from Colonel Meadow Taylor's book by the accomplished detective.
Failing Hokar, with his deadly handkerchief, here was the man who might have killed Aaron Norman. "Drink up," shouted Hurd in his turn, "we'll have some more. "On no condition, is extradition, Allowed in Callao." "Gum," said Captain Jessop, "you know the chanty." Hurd winked. "I've bin round about in my time." Jessop stretched out a huge hand.
"You do look chippy," said his sister, candidly, "but from what you say, there are no Thugs living." "No, the author says so. Still, it's queer, this strangling, and then the cruel way in which the man was murdered. Just what a Hindoo would do. The sugar too " "Oh, nonsense! Hokar left the sugar by mistake. If he had intended to murder Norman he wouldn't have given himself away."
Beecot could not but be impressed. "It is certainly very strange," he said, looking at the book. "And it was queer your father should have been strangled on the very night when this Indian Hokar left the sugar on the counter. A coincidence, Sylvia darling." "No. Why should Hokar leave the sugar at all?"
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