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began to cry. I should have thought she’d be as pleased as Punch. She told me that Bronson didn’t like children and he’d be awfully bored at the idea, and she made me promise to say nothing about it till she had had a chance of breaking it to him gradually.’
    “I reflected for a moment.
    “‘He was the kind of breezy, hearty cove whom you’d expect to be as keen as mustard on having kids.’
    “‘You never can tell. Some people are very selfish and just don’t want the bother.’
    “‘Well, how did he take it when she did tell him? Wasn’t he rather bucked?’
    “‘I don’t know that she ever told him. Though she couldn’t have waited much longer; unless I’m very much mistaken she ought to be confined in about five months.’
    “‘Poor devil,’ I said. ‘You know, I’ve got a notion that he’d have been most awfully pleased to know.’
    “We drove in silence for the rest of the way and at last came to the point at which the short cut to Kabulong branched off from the road. Here we stopped and in a minute or two my trap, in which were the police-sergeant and the two Malays, came up. We took the head-lamps to light us on our way. I left the doctor’s seis to look after the ponies and told him that when the policemen came they were to follow the path till they found us. The two coolies, carrying the lamps, walked ahead, and we followed them. It was a fairly broad track, wide enough for a small cart to pass, and before the road was built it had been the highway between Kabulong and Alor Lipis. It was firm to the foot and good walking. The surface here and there was sandy and in places you could see quite plainly the mark of a bicycle wheel. It was the track Bronson had left on his way to Kabulong.
    “We walked twenty minutes, I should think, in single file, and on a sudden the coolies, with a cry, stopped sharply. The sight had come upon them so abruptly that notwithstanding they were expecting it they were startled. There, in the middle of the pathway lit dimly by the lamps the coolies carried, lay Bronson; he’d fallen over his bicycle and lay across it in an ungainly heap. I was too shocked to speak, and I think the doctor was, too. But in our silence the din of the jungle was deafening; those damned cicadas and the bull-frogs were making enough row to wake the dead. Even under ordinary circumstances the noise of the jungle at night is uncanny; because you feel that at that hour there should be utter silence it has an odd effect on you, that ceaseless and invisible uproar that beats upon your nerves. It surrounds you and hems you in. But just then, believe me, it was terrifying. That poor fellow lay dead and all round him the restless life of the jungle pursued its indifferent and ferocious course.
    “He was lying face downwards. The sergeant and the coolies looked at me as though awaiting an order. I was a young fellow then and I’m afraid I felt a little frightened. Though I couldn’t see the face I had no doubt that it was Bronson, but I felt that I ought to turn the body over to make sure. I suppose we all have our little squeamishnesses; you know, I’ve always had a horrible distaste for touching dead bodies. I’ve had to do it fairly often now, but it still makes me feel slightly sick.
    “‘It’s Bronson, all right,’ I said.
    “The doctor-by George, it was lucky for me he was there-the doctor bent down and turned the head. The sergeant directed the lamp on the dead face.
    “‘My God, half his head’s been shot away,’ I cried.
    “‘Yes.’
    “The doctor stood up straight and wiped his hands on the leaves of a tree that grew beside the path.
    “‘Is he quite dead?’ I asked.
    “‘Oh, yes. Death must have been instantaneous. Whoever shot him must have fired at pretty close range.’
    “‘How long has he been dead, d’you think?’
    “‘Oh, I don’t know, several hours.’ “‘He would have passed here about five o’clock, I suppose, if he was expecting to get