The Mystery of Cloomber

The Mystery of Cloomber is a novel by the British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was first published in 1889 in the Pall Mall Gazette.

The novel depicts a massacre during the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838–1842) and the fate of its perpetrator. An officer of the East India Company decides to slaughter the remnants of the enemy forces, and he also kills a Buddhist priest who tried to prevent the massacre. The priest's students vow to avenge his death, but they are stalking the officer for 40 years instead of immediately killing him. Four decades following the massacre, the officer is a retired general living in Wigtownshire. When the Buddhist priests follow him there, the general resigns himself to his fate and declines offers of help from his prospective son-in-law. The priests either throw their foe into a bottomless pit, or compel him to jump into the pit on his own.