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Caravans By Night: A Romance of India

by Harry Hervey · English · Gutenberg #34813 · 567,998 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Caravans By Night: A Romance of India

Author: Harry Hervey


        
Release date: January 1, 2011 [eBook #34813]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34813

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARAVANS BY NIGHT: A ROMANCE OF INDIA ***




Produced by Darleen Dove, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









                           Caravans By Night

                           A ROMANCE OF INDIA

                            BY HARRY HERVEY


    GROSSET & DUNLAP
    PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

    Made in the United States of America

    Copyright, 1922, by

    THE CENTURY CO.

    PRINTED IN U. S. A.

    "... Weave me a tale of Romance
    and Adventure--weave it on the loom of
    Asia; fine threads in the shuttle ...
    that we who only read may feel the glare
    and glamour of those spicy, sweating
    cities; may feel the sheer spell of the stars
    and the far spaces at dusk ..."

    THIS WORD-TAPESTRY IS WOVEN FOR
    MY MOTHER




CONTENTS


I THE EDGE OF THE RIPPLE

II DELHI

III A PIECE OF CORAL

IV HOUSE OF THE SWAYING COBRA

V INTERLUDE

VI HSIEN SGAM

VII THE VERMILION ROOM

VIII "BEYOND THE MOON"

IX FEVER

X CARAVAN

XI CITY OF THE FALCON

XII LHAKANG-GOMPA

XIII FALCON'S NEST

XIV GYANGTSE




CARAVANS BY NIGHT




CHAPTER I

THE EDGE OF THE RIPPLE


If you go to the Great Bazaar, which lies west of the Old Palace at
Indore, you will see him sitting upon a cushion in his alcove-like shop,
a very magnificent figure in flowing robes and gold-edged turban.

You will find him busy, whether you visit the bazaar in mid-morning or
in the afternoon; or even after sunset, when lamps embroider the
lacework of lanes and alleys.

He is an amiable fellow and he will talk for hours--of silks, of jewels
(for in those luxuries he deals), or still more eloquently of Peshawar,
where the blue peaks of the Hindu Kush let their lips caress the sky as
though it were the cheek of some siren. But mention the barbarian with
corn-colored hair, or the blue-eyed Punjabi, and he will suddenly become
as uncommunicative as the tongueless _fakir_ who sits before the Anna
Chuttra and mutely pleads for alms.

For once, at a time not long past, a mysterious hand reached out of
nowhere and touched him with two equally as mysterious fingers. The
barbarian with corn-colored hair was one finger, the blue-eyed Punjabi
the other. And as swiftly, as inexplicably, as it came, this hand
withdrew--but not without leaving its mark upon the memory of Muhafiz
Ali, merchant and loyal servant of the Raj.

For ten years before that day when he felt the first impelling wave of
intrigue his shop was a haunt for tourists and wealthy residents; for
ten years he divided his days between salaaming to customers, cooking
his meals over a cow-dung fire in the rear, and staring across the
roadway with visible contempt at his despised rival, Venekiah, the
Brahmin. For all those years Muhafiz Ali had hated Venekiah as only a
Mussulman can hate one who wears the trident of Vishnu painted on his
forehead. But of late there was another sore that festered deep in his
heart and hour by hour fed his rancor with poison. His one son had dared
the horrors of an unknown sea (oh, a thousand times larger than Back
Bay, Bombay, the only water Muhafiz Ali can offer by way of comparison)
on a troop-ship, and in a strange country, where monstrous metal things
howled destruction and death, the parts of his only-born were buried--by
Christian hands and in a Christian grave!... While Venekiah's son, who
never stirred from the bazaar when the sounds of India responding to the
Sirkar's call rumbled from Kabul down to the Gulf of Manaar, lived and
walked the streets to talk Swaraj and curse the Sirkar and everything
bred of the Sirkar!

Muhafiz Ali came from the North, from Peshawar, and the sultry,
throbbing heat of Central India dried up the life in his veins. He
longed for the sight of his brother-hillmen swaggering through the
Bokhara Bazaar, at Peshawar; for the smell of camels (perfume to a
Peshawari) clinging to the chilly dusk. He hoped some day to have enough
rupees to board one of those terrifying, though thoroughly convenient,
iron demons that he frequently saw panting in the railway station and
ride back to Peshawar, where he would dwell for the rest of his earthly
days in a house with a garden and an azure-necked peacock that strutted
and shrilled like an angry Rajput.

Meanwhile, to this end he sat daily in his shop, not shrieking at
prospective customers with "Please buy my nicklass!" like that offspring
of the sewer across the way, but waiting with the dignity befitting a
son of the Prophet for those who came to buy. And many came. For the
fame of his silks (bales from Bokhara frail as spun moonlight and the
raw sheeny stuff from Samarkand) had spread through the Residency and
haunted every Memsahib and Ladyship who once allowed herself to be
enticed into his felt-floored treasure-room.

But his fame lay not only in silks. In formidable chests in the inner
room were many necklaces and ornaments--stones precious and
semi-precious, and even paste. He was a lapidary and had once served in
the establishment of a great jeweller in Delhi. It required but a single
glance for him to find the matrix in falsely beautiful gems, or to
appraise any sort of stone from diamonds down to chalcedony. Even his
Highness the Maharajah had heard of his skill in cutting and setting
jewels, and on two occasions had given him commissions.

On this particular day when the mysterious hand was very close, and
Destiny had placed a chalk-mark upon a certain young woman and an
officer of the empire, his hatred for Venekiah swelled to such
proportions that it included every one; it quivered against the walls of
his being, hot as the Indian sun that throughout the noonday blazed
above the sweltering bazaar. Nor did his rage cool when, toward sundown,
lilac shadows lounged in the street and a hundred-hued swarm jostled by.

The cause of his anger was a Sulaimaneh ring, which he wore at all
times. Now it is an established fact in the social orbit in which
Muhafiz Ali revolved that these onyx stones will repel devils;
therefore, to lose such a talisman is to invite misfortune. And Muhafiz
Ali had lost his Sulaimaneh ring. Furthermore, he suspected that his
enemy, Venekiah, had stolen it from his finger while he slept--although
for a Brahmin to touch a Mussulman is to defile himself. Yet he felt
that that heap of offal, to speak in the vernacular of the bazaars,
would suffer contamination to see him at the mercy of devils.

So he sat and glared, and swore all manner of Moslem oaths under his
beard, and stopped hating only long enough to look toward the kindling
west beyond which Mecca lay, and prostrate himself on a rug for evening
prayer.

As he lifted his eyes they encountered a Sahib with corn-colored hair
and beard; a Sahib who stood not a yard away; who fanned himself with a
pith-helmet, and looked upon the Mussulman's religious performances with
a slightly cynical smile.

He was handsome, as these white unbelievers go, observed Muhafiz Ali.
The eyes smiled with the assurance of one who knows a lot and is aware
of his wisdom. Rather reckless eyes. His skin was tanned and the light
hair and beard (beard because the word "Van Dyke" is not in Muhafiz
Ali's vocabulary) made it more pronounced. White linens completed the
picture.

Muhafiz Ali, his rage dissolving, salaamed.

"You're Muhafiz Ali, the lapidary?"

The Mussulman detected in his speech a flaw that suggested he was not an
English Sahib; probably American, or from one of those numerous
countries behind the sunset, of which he had heard little and knew less.

"Not only a jeweller, Sahib," he returned, for he spoke English
fluently, "but a dealer in silks, rugs--"

But the man brushed past him and entered the inner room. Muhafiz Ali
rose and clattered after him in his loose Mohammedan slippers.

"Do you have jade?" asked the sahib.

For answer Muhafiz Ali lifted the lid of a brass-bound chest and drew
forth a tray of necklaces--lustrous, creamy-green jade from Mirzapore.

"Not that kind," said the sahib, with a gesture (and had Muhafiz Ali
known the meaning of the word, "Gallic" he would have applied it to that
quick wave of the hand); "the clear sort."

Whereupon the Mussulman separated a string of genuine _fei tsui_ from
several necklaces in another tray. The stones glowed deep parrot-green.

"Ah!" This from the white man. "Do you have pearls, too--imitation
pearls?"

Muhafiz Ali, somewhat disappointed, produced a necklace of his finest
false pearls, and the sahib examined it with the air of one who knew the
difference between the nacreous sea-jewel and blown spheres of _essence
d' Orient_.

"Are you alone?" was his next question.

"Alone?" echoed Muhafiz Ali. "Alas, O worthy lordship, my son, my
only--"

"No, no!"--with that quick gesture and a significant look toward the
rear door. "I mean, is there any one in the back of the shop?"

"Nay, Sahib!"

A germ of suspicion took birth in Muhafiz Ali's brain. What did this
foreigner want?

"You have done work for his Highness the Maharajah, I understand," said
the sahib, his eyes glittering like black chalcedony. "You re-set
several necklaces, and ... you made a copy of the Pearl Scarf ... for,
well, for state purposes--didn't you?"

Muhafiz Ali answered in the affirmative, still suspicious. The sahib
glanced over his shoulder into the swiftly gathering dusk.

"Could you make another copy, using stones like this?"

For some inexplicable reason Muhafiz Ali felt frightened. The eyes that
looked so incisively into his did not match the young face. He had seen
the same expression, only more intense, in the eyes of a mad _mollah_.

"Could you?" pressed the sahib, "or, rather, _would_ you? For an extra
gift of thirty rupees?"

Thirty rupees! Muhafiz Ali's commercial instincts led him into
planning.... But the Pearl Scarf. Why did he want a copy? The germ of
suspicion grew and multiplied.

"Nay, Sahib!" he answered, his better judgment outbalancing the desire
for money. "I do not remember how."

"That's a pretty lie," interposed the man, with a laugh--a laugh that
carried a cold undercurrent and made Muhafiz Ali shudder, inwardly. "You
know the exact number of pearls in the scarf and how they are arranged;
nine strands; with eighteen pearls in the neck-piece-clasp, each having
a carat diamond inset in it. Come now--I will raise the extra amount to
thirty-five rupees."

Thirty-five! The Mussulman's imagination took wings. He saw himself
coming into what was to him fabulous wealth.

"The pattern is intricate, Sahib," he said doubtfully.

"I'll risk it." Again that laugh.

Muhafiz Ali felt vaguely nervous. "I will have to think it over, Sahib,"
he announced.

What did he want with a copy of the Pearl Scarf? That query threaded
back and forth across his thoughts.

"I am in the service of the Raj," the man confided quietly, as though
answering the native's thoughts--confided a shade too darkly. "The Raj
wants a copy of it--oh, for reasons...."

Ah! Muhafiz Ali understood now. The Raj! This handsome sahib was of that
invisible army that comes and goes so mysteriously from Afghanistan to
Ceylon.

"It is, O fountain of wisdom," he declared, with a sly wink, "as though
I stepped from the dark into the light of the sun!" He motioned toward
the door, through which Venekiah, seated across the way, could be seen.
"I shall be as mute as the six-armed she-devil that yonder louse
worships!"

There was a humorous gleam in the white man's eyes.

"Excellent! Make your price and come to me at the dak bungalow at eight
o'clock to-night. Bring a few necklaces for effect. I will be on the
veranda. My name is Leroux Sahib."

He tossed several rupees upon one of the chests, and turned and went
out.

Muhafiz Ali, reflecting that Allah looked with favor upon him, gathered
up the coins. And this, after he had lost the Sulaimaneh ring! Pah!
Ill-fortune, indeed! He scoffed.

He was so pleased that, a few minutes later, when a blue-eyed Punjabi
inquired the price of a string of _ferozees_, he did not haggle over it
but sacrificed the necklace for exactly what it was worth.

"Eight o'clock," he repeated to himself. And his own price. He was a
loyal servant of the Raj, yes; but that did not in any way affect his
intention to charge the Raj well for his services.

He looked toward the shop of Venekiah.

"Brahmin dog!" he hissed in his beard. "Breeder of whelps!"

And he spat eloquently.


2

Night wove its shuttle across the sky, beading the dusk with stars. The
Southern Cross lay mirrored in the Sarasvati and the Khan, and in the
lake at Sukhnewas; it pulsed above the gardens of Lal Bagh, above
Sharifa Street and those other narrow highways that vein the Holkar's
capital; it peered down inquisitively into the gloom of the Great Bazaar
as Muhafiz Ali, having finished a meal of curry and rice, quitted his
shop and hurried toward the dak bungalow.

That this Leroux Sahib had commissioned him to copy a jewel-pattern of
the Maharajah's regalia no longer presaged evil in his mind. Nor did he
seek an explanation. True, it mystified him. But there were some things
one should not know. And, to him, the secrets of the Government were
numbered among these. The Raj had banished the old order of things, for
no more did princes sit in golden howdahs upon caparisoned state
elephants; nor did they indulge, as of old, in the venerable pastime of
pigsticking; they rode in automobiles and played a game on horseback
with an absurd ball....

Muhafiz Ali had ceased long ago to wonder at the baffling mechanism of
the Government, and satisfied himself with the assurance that Allah did
not intend he should understand.

So Raj meant Riddle.

       *       *       *       *       *

When he reached the dak bungalow he found Leroux Sahib sitting upon the
veranda. The white man led him inside.

"Well?"--this with a gleam of the black eyes.

"I will do it, O cherisher of the poor."

"The price?" The Mussulman named an outrageous figure--and held his
breath. The man inquired:

"How long will it take?"

"Seven days; perhaps less."

The sahib frowned, tugged at his yellow beard.

"I must have it in five days."

"Impossible, O Burra Sahib!" A pause. "Unless--of course--"

A smile. "Not another rupee do you get, you old brigand!" he declared
good humoredly. "And five days, I say. Settled? Thirty-five rupees extra
when it is done, half the price in advance."

He drew from his pocket a wallet and counted out a number of Government
of India notes.

"Remember, this is to be quiet," he cautioned. "I will call now and then
to see how you are coming on."

       *       *       *       *       *

As Muhafiz Ali made his way back to the bazaar, he congratulated himself
upon getting so easily the price he had set upon the work, and regretted
that he had not inflated it a little more. However, he was well pleased
with the day's business. He paused once on the homeward journey to place
a four-anna bit in the bowl of an emaciated, ash-painted _fakir_ who sat
before the alms-house, and arrived at his shop in a state of excellent
spirits.

He made a light and opened the chest in which he kept his necklaces. The
instant he saw the top tray he detected a flaw. Unlike most merchants,
he was very careful in the arrangement of his necklaces; in one tray
were agates, in another blue sapphires; thus with all his beads.

And a string of creamy-luster Mirzapore jade lay in the tray with the
clear, deep-green _fei tsui_.

A cold suspicion uncoiled in his brain. He stood motionless. This could
mean but one thing: some one had entered his shop while he was away. He
quickly counted the necklaces. None were missing. Nor did a hasty
inventory of the lower tray show that anything had been removed. The
other chests were under the protection of European padlocks.

Who had entered his shop, and why? Nothing had been stolen. The door was
locked.... But the rear! Ah! The court! Why had he not thought to
barricade that also against thieves? But had a thief disturbed the
beads? A thief would have taken them. After all, was not it possible
that he had placed the necklaces in the wrong tray? Possible, but not
probable. No, he was certain a hand other than his own had dropped the
jade from Mirzapore in with the _fei tsui_ stones.

Yet, he told himself, he had not been robbed. So why be uneasy? But he
could not rid himself of the uncanny suspicion that devil-business was
afoot. He would feel more secure had he not lost the Sulaimaneh ring.

Upon an impulse he went to the door and peered into the street. The shop
of Venekiah, the Brahmin, was dark. From a nautch-house close by came
the muffled throbbing of tom-toms--a restless pulse of the night. A man
in a Punjabi head-dress lounged under a rheumy incandescent further
along the dim street.

Muhafiz Ali turned back, gravely troubled. He locked the door.

Of a certainty devil-business was afoot.


3

A film of dust wavered over the bazaar and introduced a drowsy golden
effect into the mid-afternoon atmosphere. Few human beings ventured
forth in the glare. A half-naked _bhisti_ splashed water over the dusty
roadway; at one corner a street-juggler sat with a torpid python coiled
in his lap.

Muhafiz Ali, absorbed in utter languor, squatted upon a brocade of light
and shadow woven by the sunlight that filtered through the dust-laden
leaves of a tree outside his doorway and watched a green-bronze lizard
drowsing upon the flagstones. The slumberous atmosphere of the bazaar,
the mingled odors of fruit, fish and cologne, held no portent of the
thunderbolt that very shortly was to jar Muhafiz Ali out of his peaceful
sphere.

Five days had passed since he visited Leroux Sahib at the dak bungalow.
The copy of the Pearl Scarf was finished; it lay in a chest in the inner
room. He had despatched the son of Khurrum Lal, the fruit vender, with a
_chit_ to the sahib telling him this, and the sahib had answered that he
could call after nightfall.

Muhafiz Ali felt singularly relieved. For the past few days the
Mohammedan equivalent of the sword of Damocles had hung over his head.
The white man had called several times, and on each occasion the sight
of him reassured Muhafiz Ali, but after his departure the native
invariably relapsed into a state of nervous anticipation.

Now it was done. To-night the sahib would call and he, Muhafiz Ali,
would settle back into an untroubled existence--many rupees the better.
He felt peace upon him already. So he sat in the doorway of his shop and
contemplated the green-bronze lizard, and breathed, almost with relish,
the mingled odors of fruit and fish and cologne.

Muhafiz Ali had in him the makings of a psychic. He anticipated
happenings with amazing accuracy. Therefore, when a shadow fell upon the
roadway in front of him and he looked up to see Mohammed Khan, the money
lender, he felt a pall descend upon him. Mohammed Khan, bearded and
turbaned to exaggeration, frequently came to indulge in bazaar gossip.
With a word of greeting, he sank upon the doorstep beside his
brother-Mussulman.

He had startling news this day. Sadar Singh, who belonged to the Indian
Escort of the Agent, had come to pay the fifteen rupees he owed him, and
Sadar Singh, who never lied, had that very morning heard the Residency
Surgeon talking with the Commissioner Sahib. The substance of their
conversation was that there had been a robbery at the palace. The vaults
had been looted of the state treasures. The famous Peacock Turban was
stolen.... And _the Pearl Scarf_.

Muhafiz Ali's brain did not function normally for some time after this
announcement. He felt frightened--nauseated.

The Pearl Scarf stolen. Suppose the copy was found in his possession,
and the police, who had strange ways, connected him with the robbery?
The house in Peshawar dwindled; he saw the jail looming before him. He
was innocent, but how could he explain?

He remembered vividly the incident of the jade necklace. Could it be
that Venekiah, that mountain of corruption, had spied upon him?... O
Allah, Allah, he wailed in silence, it was written that his lot should
be misfortune from the moment he lost the Sulaimaneh ring!

Inwardly, he writhed while Mohammed Khan talked on. He was in no mood
for more gossip, but Mohammed Khan stayed--stayed until late afternoon
when little spirals of dust began to rise from the street, when clouds
materialized out of nowhere and blotted out the sun.

After Mohammed Khan took his leave, Muhafiz Ali tried to reason with
himself. The sahib had said the scarf was for the Raj, and was not that
assurance enough? No. And he strove to press behind the veil and find an
explanation for the affair; but his Kismet decreed that he should be a
pawn, and he dug at the mystery in vain.

A dark sky, threatening rain, hastened the dusk; and when, one by one,
lights appeared in the street, like yellow sentinels, Muhafiz Ali
uttered a sigh of relief and rose and entered the shop. A moment later
he heard a soft patter and inhaled the fresh, cool smell of rain upon
dusty air.

"Please buy my nicklass!" shrilled Venekiah's voice, and he looked over
his shoulder to see a Memsahib clatter by on horseback.

Behind her walked a man in a Punjabi head-dress, swinging along at a
leisurely gait despite the rain.


4

The usual heavy downpour following a break in the monsoon drenched the
bazaar. It came with a high wind, and doors strained at their locks and
windows rattled as legions of rain rode through the streets. The torrent
rumbled upon tin roofs and roofs of corrugated iron; reduced the dust in
alleys to mud; lashed the thirsty, sun-scorched trees.

Muhafiz Ali sat on a cushion in the inner room of his shop with a copy
of the Koran open in his lap, more intent upon the eerie sounds than the
book. Frequently his eyes left the pages and sought the door as gusts of
wind smote its panels, and when sudden draughts made the lamp-flame
flicker and sent the shadows shuddering over the walls, a chill dread
spread through him. Not until that accursed thing of imitations had been
taken away would he feel safe. Surely the devils were hard besetting him
for losing the Sulaimaneh ring!

The door shook--as though impatient with the lock and hinges that held
it. Outside, the storm wrung wails and groans from the bazaar. Again the
door rattled, furiously.

Muhafiz Ali set aside the book, rose and crossed the room. He unlocked
the door. A spray was blown into his face. No one was there. Rain poured
over the street-lamps in gauzy, iridescent ribbons; it wove spumy lace
upon the black roadway and trailed, fuming, into the gutters.

He shut the door and locked it. He had taken no more than two steps
before a pounding brought him to a halt. He stood there for a moment,
tense; then turned and pressed his lips to the crack of the door.

"Leroux Sahib?"

Faintly, from out the chaos of sounds, came--"Yes."

He turned the key. The door opened violently and slammed behind the
drenched figure of the yellow-bearded sahib. Water dripped from his
helmet; streams of moisture trickled down his rain-cape and gathered in
pools upon the floor.

"Allah be praised!" Muhafiz Ali murmured fervently.

Leroux Sahib flung aside his cape, and the native saw that he carried a
flat package under one arm. The white man shook the water from his
helmet and mopped his face with a khaki handkerchief.

"Mother of God! What a night!" he exclaimed, smiling grimly. Then: "Is
it ready?"

Muhafiz Ali hastily opened one of his chests and removed several trays.
The sahib joined him. His eyes shone feverishly as the Mussulman drew
forth a thing that tinkled musically. Strands of nacreous spheres
reflected a soft radiance from the lamp; luster of cream-colored satin.
The imitation diamonds that inset the clasp burned like star-splinters.

Leroux Sahib swore under his breath and chuckled; swore in a tongue
Muhafiz Ali did not understand.

"What a joke! What a colossal joke! And they think it is for them....
_Bon Dieu!_"

The door rattled; the lamp-flame rippled threateningly.

"I shall place it in a tin box, Sahib," Muhafiz Ali said, for the sooner
the thing was gone the sooner he would feel at ease. "See, a box no
larger than the one you carry."

He moved the lid. Pearls rattled coolly. Meanwhile, the sahib counted
out several banknotes.

"Count them," he instructed as Muhafiz Ali handed him the tin box,
wrapped and tied.

The Mussulman obeyed. The door shook again. A sudden burst of wind
almost carried the notes out of his hand. The lamp gasped. A slam
followed.

Muhafiz Ali looked up quickly to behold a strange tableau--a tableau
that for the while suspended all thoughts from his brain and drew from
his limbs the power to move.

A man had entered--a blue-eyed Punjabi. The face was vaguely familiar,
and Muhafiz Ali's memory groped.... A string of _ferozees_.... The
Punjabi stood with his shoulders pressed against the door, his feet
planted wide apart. His soaked garments clung to his body; his turban
dripped water into his eyes. But that did not quench the fire in them.
How they burned! Blue sapphires! In his hand he held a thing that
glittered like an evil eye.

Leroux Sahib had swung about. His feet, too, were planted well apart, as
though he were steadying himself for an impact. The muscles of his
throat stood out like white cords in the shadow of his beard. There was
a hard gleam in his eyes; more than ever they resembled black
chalcedony.

Afterward, Muhafiz Ali never quite remembered how it all happened. At
the time he was too stupefied to observe details. The blue-eyed Punjabi
laughed. It was a challenge. Leroux Sahib, suddenly smiling, answered
it; lunged toward the lamp. The ring of shattered glass--and darkness
wiped out the scene. Followed the thudding jar of muscle and bone
against yielding flesh; swift, staccato breathing. The door was flung
wide. Muhafiz Ali, crouching in a corner, saw a figure faintly
silhouetted in the door-frame, an amorphous shadow upon the paler
darkness of the street. It vanished. Another figure lurched out after
it, and was swallowed by the storm.

Energy flashed into the Mussulman. He ran to the door. The incandescent
lamps gleamed through a crystal curtain of rain. The street was
deserted. For a moment he stood there, shivering. Then he shut the door;
locked it; lay weakly against the panels. When he had recovered, he
groped his way to where he knew a lantern hung. He lighted it, and a
mellow radiance played upon bits of broken glass.

He rapidly counted the banknotes. Satisfied, he returned to the door and
pressed his ear to the crack. Only the slush and drench of rain. He
shivered again.

Whither had they gone, this Leroux Sahib and the blue-eyed Punjabi?
Their eyes! Black chalcedony and blue sapphires! The Punjabi had a
pistol.... Over imitation pearls! Strange were the ways of these white
barbarians, stranger still the ways of the Raj. On the morrow would the
police come and ask him all manner of confusing questions? Or had the
hurricane spent itself? Was this the last he would ever see of the
yellow-haired Sahib or the Punjabi?

He turned back, looking half abstractedly upon the gleaming particles of
glass. He shivered for the third time. Devil-business!

       *       *       *       *       *

And so the gods, having no further use for Muhafiz Ali, merchant and
loyal servant of the Raj, left him to wonder at the source of these
ripples that had touched him; left him to grope behind the drop that had
suddenly fallen upon this bewildering interlude; left him to dream of
the house in Peshawar and the azure-necked peacock that strutted and
shrilled like an angry Rajput.




CHAPTER II

DELHI


Several days after Muhafiz All delivered the imitation Pearl Scarf to
the sahib in Indore, the young woman who was marked of Destiny sat in a
first-class carriage of the East Indian Railway, her attention divided
between a green vellum volume propped against a gray-clad knee and the
sun-blistered scenery that unreeled past the window.

An elderly gentleman from Devonshire who occupied the same carriage
found himself wondering why his eyes invariably returned to the girl.
This particular gentleman was past youthful sentimentalizing and not yet
in those riper years when age casts regretful glances over its shoulder;
therefore, being no psychometric, it puzzled him that this girl should
compel his gaze. Was it the hair, in whose bronzen waves a slantwise ray
of sunlight ignited little glints of red-gold? Or the white throat, full
with young maturity? Suddenly she looked up, and he fathomed the secret
of magnetism. Brown eyes that brought to mind a deep, rich wine held to
the light--or poplar leaves just before snow. He felt something of
cathedral-largeness behind those eyes, something vital and alive yet
intensely spiritual. The warm strength of sunlight in great forests;
tapers in altar-gloom. These things were there. And the gentleman from
Devonshire thought of a daughter in Britain and smiled to himself, and
forgot hot, heart-aching India.

The lights which he had glimpsed in the girl's eyes were the very
beacons that had drawn her across leagues of water--lights that were
first kindled in some voyaging ancestor whose frigate dropped anchor off
old New Orleans, in the gilded days of Bienville; that grew dim in the
tiresome process of heredity, and flamed anew, generations later, in
this girl who sat in the railway carriage--lights that were almost
smothered by the snuffers of Aristocracy and Tradition.

For Dana Charteris came of a Louisiana family whose name was as old as
the state itself, and who lived in a great, pillared house and had black
servants and drank blacker coffee. Custom and pride and chivalry were
the goddesses of the family penetralia, and debt maintained the
vestal-fires. Her father was called "Colonel" for the same reason that
no less than one third of the gentlemen of his plane were given that
title. Her mother, who carried an air of fragrant and faded aristocracy,
read Cable and regarded him as some subaltern's wives in India regarded
Kipling. And her brother, Alan--Dana hardly knew Alan. When his name was
spoken in the house, it was in a hushed voice. They called him "black
sheep," but Dana could never associate dark fleece with the slim boy she
remembered. Alan ran away when little more than fifteen--ran away to
sail the Seven Seas and to find the end of the rainbow. Every few months
letters came from him, bearing post-marks that were, to her, stamps of
glamour.

In her eyes her brother wore the mantle of Jason. He rambled in all
manner of weird places in his quest for the golden prize. This, while
she grew in an atmosphere of sweetly-musty traditions! Before she went
off to boarding-school her days were divided between the piano, paddling
indolently in warm bayous--sometimes alone, sometimes not--and riding a
black mare. But in the quiet, breathless nights when an army of stars
thronged the sky, and from down the river came the soft crooning of a
Creole song, she dreamed of enchanted lands beyond the horizon.

But the voyaging ancestor and the argonaut-brother were only partly
responsible for her unrest. There was Tante Lucie, down in New Orleans.
(Tante Lucie, who made one think of star-jasmines and all the romantic
things that aura the Old South.) She had stories to tell, for a
lover-husband had taken her adventuring. She had seen the Shwe Dagon and
looked upon the Taj by moonlight. Her lover-husband was only a memory,
as were the temple and the Tomb; but she loved to talk of them, sitting
in her little court where the perfume of magnolias swam in the air.

Dana's father died just before her eighteenth birthday. In the years
following, her mother no longer read Cable; she sat and dreamed of her
argonaut-son and of the "Colonel." And Dana almost stifled her desire to
cross the seas. For ominous sounds disturbed the quiet of Bayou
Latouche; there were bandages to be made and books and boxes to be
shipped to camps. During that period the letters from Alan were
infrequent and from Mesopotamia.

But the interlude of khaki passed, and Bayou Latouche sank back into its
stupor. Again in the starry silences Dana listened to the crooning of
Creole songs down by the river and dreamed of a world beyond the dawns
and dusks. She was alone then; her mother went during the interlude, and
Tante Lucie no longer sat in her court and talked of foreign lands.
There were no ties; except money, as always. To keep up the house she
taught music.

Then, one day, she heard from Alan. Burma, this time. He held a post
with the Inspector of Police at Rangoon. He had a bungalow in the
cantonment, he said, and any number of servants to wait on her, if she
would sell the house at Bayou Latouche and come to him. In a short time
he would have a "leave." They could meet in Calcutta and "do" India
together.

India--together! Those words opened the dream-portals. After she read
the letter she consulted a mirror and told herself that she was
twenty-three and already in demand as a chaperone for the younger set.
She went into the library and stood before the portraits of her father
and her mother. She cried. And then, aware that the shades of the
Charteris family had stern gazes fixed upon her, she sent a cablegram to
Alan.

Once aboard the great ship, she felt no regrets; to look back upon the
great, pillared house was like lifting the lid of a rose-jar: it brought
the fragrance of things very old and very faded. When she reached
Calcutta, a young captain met her at Chandpal Ghat. He had a note from
Alan. It explained that an urgent matter had taken him to Indore; he
begged her to forgive him for not meeting her, but assured her she was
in good hands. The second day in Calcutta she received a telegram from
him.

"Meet me Delhi Friday," it ran. "Take express. Plan trip to Khyber."

To the Khyber!... She left Calcutta that same day, and now, after a long
journey through the prickly-hot United Provinces, she was speeding into
the North. India, with its contrasts of filth and grandeur, had not
tarnished under the touch of reality; the nearest she came to
disillusion was in smoky, modern Calcutta. Now Tundla Junction lay
behind in a shimmering heat-haze; ahead, beyond the roaring, sweating
engine, was Delhi--Delhi, key to perished dynasties.

The engine's whistle shrieked. It sent a charge of excitement through
her and she looked eagerly out of the window. Iron wheels rumbled across
a bridge. Another shriek of the whistle. Brakes screamed, and the train
drew up, panting, in the clamor and writhing heat of the railway
station.

The gentleman from Devonshire opened the carriage door, and Dana, a grip
in each hand, her heart fluttering against her breast, smiled at him and
stepped into a torrid swarm. Her eyes searched the crowd. What would he
look like? Suppose she did not recognize him! Vaguely nervous, yet
happy, she allowed herself to be carried with the human surge.

"Hello, there!" said a voice in her ear, and she turned quickly to look
into a clean-shaven tanned face. (And the gentleman from Devonshire, who
was passing, saw the brown eyes acquire a deeper, richer glow.)

"Alan!"

He was tall and slim, and the eyes that looked into hers were intensely
blue, the blue of sapphires.... The same boy, she told herself joyously,
only more tanned and grown-up!

"Oh, Alan!" she gasped, as he held her at arm's-length, despite the
crowd, then drew her to him and kissed her.

"Great Lord, how you've grown!" he exclaimed.

She remembered saying something about not being a little girl always;
remembered being led through the throng. Then they were in the street.
Heat and noise and colorful confusion.

"I've reserved rooms at a quiet place beyond the Kashmir Gate," he told
her as he helped her into a carriage. "From the terrace outside your
room you can look upon the battlements and the river." Then, with
another smile, "I can't believe it's you! Why, you're positively
beautiful! Lord, it seems a century, a whole century, since I was in
Bayou Latouche!"

He removed his topi as they wheeled off and she saw that his hair was
shot with gray above the temples. They seemed so absurd, those gray
hairs. And how his eyes lighted when he spoke of Bayou Latouche! She
realized suddenly, with a tightening of the cords in her throat, that
the search for the golden fleece hadn't been all pleasant. In his voice,
in his face and manner, was a thirst for home-talk. She understood how
he needed her, there in his bungalow in Rangoon.

"Bayou Latouche is just the same," she said, placing her hand upon his.
(She spoke with a faintly slurring accent that was unmistakable.)
"Except, of course, so many have gone ... the war...." Pause. "I don't
believe you've changed a bit, Alan--you're like that last picture you
had taken before you left. Mother--how she adored you! If you could have
seen the way she looked at that picture! Father, too."

He smiled soberly. She could see her father in certain of his features.
A sudden fierce joy of possession ran through her. He was hers, this
bronzed brother!

"I'm glad you've come, Dana." This solemnly. "It's been rather lonely
out here. You know the climate has a way, once it gets a hold, of
sapping up the energy and mummifying a fellow before his time."

Her hand closed tighter about his. "And there hasn't been a girl, Alan?"

He smiled. "You're the only one, Dana.... I was sorry I wasn't in
Calcutta when you landed, but this game of sleuthing has its unexpected
twists. That's why I like it. Nothing very exciting ever really happens;
it's usually humdrum thievery and dacoity. A French rogue put in his
appearance in Rangoon about a month or so ago--an international
character; only goes in for big loot. Don't know where he was before he
turned up in Rangoon, but he vanished as queerly as he'd come. The day I
reached Calcutta I was in the station and I recognized him. He'd
peroxided his beard and hair! Heard him ask for a ticket to Indore, and
I scented trouble in the wind. Of course, I should have had him arrested
there, but I wanted to see what he was up to. I left the note with
Bellingrath and took the next train."

Adventure! And he was talking of it in a matter-of-fact way!

"You caught him?" she urged.

"Has anybody ever caught Chavigny? No, he slipped through the net. And
the nerve of him! He had letters to the Maharajah and the Agent! Used
the name of Leroux. I dressed up in a Punjabi's garb--wanted to snoop
around without arousing suspicion. I tracked Chavigny to a jeweller's
shop the day I reached Indore and overheard him commission the merchant
to make an imitation copy of the Maharajah Holkar's Pearl Scarf. After
that I watched the jeweller, too. He--but I'm boring you."

"Boring me!" She laughed. "My own brother masquerading as a native and
shadowing a notorious thief! Go on!"

"Well, I waited, and the expected happened, only on a larger scale than
I anticipated. The treasury was looted--_looted_! Thousands' worth of
jewels! Why, the Pearl Scarf alone is valued at a _crore_ of rupees,
which is about three million, three hundred thousand in our money. And
the Peacock Turban, too, cost a fabulous sum! Yet, confound it, Chavigny
didn't go near the palace the night of the robbery! Nor had he taken the
copy of the Pearl Scarf from the bazaar! The night after the theft, I
followed him to the shop. Gad, how it rained that night! He got the
imitation scarf--but I lost him. We had a tussle and I snatched the
beastly imitation, which I'm keeping as a souvenir of my colossal
blunder in not taking the local police into my confidence. Departmental
jealousy; that's the death of justice. Chavigny left Indore by
automobile or carriage--don't know which--and boarded a north-bound
train at Mhow garrison. The station-babu described him and said his
ticket read to Delhi. And here I am."

"You've notified the police that--Chavigny, isn't it?--is in the city?"

He smiled. "I didn't have to. About two hours after I arrived, I heard
that Kerth--he's the Director of Central Intelligence's best man--had
got wind of Chavigny's presence and was trying to ferret him out. That
relieved me of the responsibility of reporting Chavigny."

"And you still have the copy of the Pearl Scarf?"

"Yes."

"But is it right to keep it?" This with a flickering deep in the brown
eyes.

"Oh, I'll not keep it; only for a while. If I can get Chavigny,
then--well, there's no telling what might happen. Too, I'd like to beat
that devilishly clever Kerth. You see, Dana, this is a big affair, much
bigger than I thought at first. The Secret Service is trying to keep the
lid on it, but of course it's leaked out. On the same night the robbery
occurred at Indore, similar robberies took place in several other
cities. And in every instance it was royal loot! The Gaekwar of Baroda
has one of the finest collections of diamonds in India, the famous 'Star
of the Deccan' among them--and a rug, a _rug_, Dana, ten by six, made of
pearls and rubies and diamonds! Think of it--and stolen! Scindia of
Gwalior, the Rajah of Alwar, the Nawab of Bahawalpur, and, oh, others,
too! And they all happened on the same night. Does it mean there's a
band of thieves at work, with Chavigny at the head? If so, why, great
Scott, it's the most colossal thing that's ever been staged! But I can't
understand how they intend to get away with the booty. The borders and
the coast are closed as tight as a drum, and they can't dispose of the
jewels in India."

Dana sighed. "To think of all that happening, Alan, just as I arrive!
Wouldn't it be marvelous if--"

"If what?" he encouraged, smiling.

"Well, if I were to wake up and find myself in the midst of something of
that sort; one of the players, not just an onlooker." Another sigh. "I'd
like to see a really notorious thief, Alan."

He laughed. "You may; for Chavigny's in a close quarter now. But here we
are at the hotel."

The carriage drew up and a turbaned porter took her bags. The
proprietor, an Eurasian, met them under the great front arch of the
building and conducted them to their rooms.

"Oh!" gasped the girl, drawing aside the bamboo blinds.

The casement opened upon a stone terrace flush with the city walls, and
out of the green and white chaos of Shahjehanabad, or modern Delhi, rose
the gilded bubbles of several domes. Beyond a dark green jungle area,
the Jumna shone dully.

"India!" she exclaimed. "Moguls and howdahs and mosques!"

"India! Thugs, snakes and abominable hotels!" scoffed her brother from
the adjoining room. "Here's the copy of the Pearl Scarf, if you care to
see it."

As she turned, he stepped through the communicating doorway and extended
a shallow box. When she lifted the cover a little gasp of astonishment
left her lips. The cream-luster of pearls; red and blue gleams from
paste diamonds!

"Why, they look genuine!" she cried; then shuddered. "There's a terrible
fascination about jewels, Alan. They always have a story. Murder and
pillage!"

"Grease and dirt usually, in India," he interpolated with a smile,
taking the box. "But let's forget Chavigny and the round dozen Rajahs
that are wailing over their stolen jewels. I promised Gerrish--he's an
old friend--we'd dine with him this evening. Eight o'clock."

A few minutes later Dana unpacked her grips. Dear Alan! Her brother.
After all those years. She wondered if it were not a dream, if presently
she wouldn't wake up back at Bayou Latouche, or in Tante Lucie's court,
down in New Orleans, with Tante Lucie talking of foreign lands....


2

Night settled over Delhi. From the River Jumna to the Ridge, and beyond,
tiny lights blinked at the shadows, and like a huge spirit-eye in the
dusk the moon looked down upon the domes and minarets of the old Mogul
capital. At the clubs electric punkahs fanned the air, ice clinked in
frosted glasses and home-sick young officers read news-sheets from
Britain. The network of narrow, constricted highways between Burra
Bazaar and the Delhi Gate steamed and stewed, and heat and stench
crawled beneath dirty eaves and balconies. South of the modern city, on
the dead plain of Firozabad, thornbush and acacia rustled mournfully and
ruined ramparts yielded up their nightly squadron of bats.

In his residence beyond the Civil Lines, Colonel Sir Francis Duncraigie,
Director of Central Intelligence, C. S. I., and probably one of the most
important men in the empire, sat alone in his writing-room beneath a
mildly whirring fan, and sweltered and swore.

As a house-boy appeared like a white wraith from the dusk of the hall,
he looked up.

"Well?"

"Did you call, O Presence?"

Sir Francis glared. "No!" Then, "But wait!"

A pattering noise sounded from the driveway, and he rose and strode to
the window, parting the draperies. What he saw, fantastic in the hazy
moonlight, was a palanquin with drawn curtains, borne on the shoulders
of four coolies.

"What 'n Tophet!" he exclaimed, for palanquins are rare in the
present-day Delhi of cabs and motorcars, nor is it the custom of
Mohammedan ladies, who ride in these picturesque conveyances, to call
upon officers of the empire.

"If it's anybody to see me, tell 'em I have an appointment and they'll
have to wait," he instructed briefly, turning back.

The house-boy disappeared, and Sir Francis resumed his seat. After a
moment the boy returned.

"She says you have an appointment with her, O Presence!"

The colonel stared. "What!" Pause. "By George! Perhaps you'd better show
her in!"

He watched the doorway, and presently a white figure materialized. He
rose. The woman wore a _bhourka_--the long cotton garment that
Mohammedan ladies affect in public, and which leaves only the eyes
visible.

"You wish to see me?" asked the Director of Central Intelligence.

The hood of the _bhourka_ was thrown back ... and the colonel, who while
on duty hibernated under the armor of official dignity, came out of his
shell. No man would question her beauty, many her type. The features
were long and narrow, and a warm gold, suggesting an Aryan strain,
underlay her clear skin. The eyes, rather heavy-lidded, were baffling,
and of a deep violet shade--like the peaks of the Khyber after the
sunset gun at Jamrud Fort. Black hair clouded her face.

"You are surprised to see me--like this?" she enquired, indicating the
_bhourka_.

Her voice was low and rich, and marked by a huskiness that was rare in
that it was musical. Her English was flawless.

"Well, rather!" confessed the colonel.

"Am I late?"--as he drew up a chair for her.

"On the minute," he lied.

She smiled tolerantly. "Will you close the door, please?"

With a speed that would have made his subalterns gasp, he hastened to
obey.

"Since I received your telephone call," he told her, settling himself
behind the desk, "I have been all interest. What is it this time--more
plots against the Sirkar?"

She made a grimace. "Plots spring up and die overnight! If I concerned
myself with such minor occurrences, I should be eternally occupied. I
told you I wished to see you regarding a matter of _importance_."

She paused and he said: "Well?"

"What happened on the night of June fourteenth?"

He stared at her. "You don't mean--"

"But I _do_."

He drummed upon the desk.

"You have not answered me," she reminded, after a moment. "What _did_
happen on that night? Why not read me your files?"

He unlocked a drawer of his desk and removed a file cabinet. From the
latter he took a sheaf of papers.

"The Treasure House at Alwar was robbed," he said, his eyes upon the
papers in his hand. "The diamonds alone are worth ten thousand pounds,
and--but you don't want me to go into detail, do you? Well, gems valued
at three hundred thousand pounds, sterling, were spirited away from the
Nazarbagh Palace at Baroda. Tukaji Rao of Indore lost his Pearl Scarf
and the Peacock Turban. The treasury at Jodpur was looted. Scindia of
Gwalior's pearls were stolen. Others who were robbed are: your cousin,
the Nawab of Jehelumpore, the Nawab of Bahawalpur, the Rajah of Mysore
and the Rajah of Tanjore." He halted, raising his eyes. "In other words,
on the night of June fourteenth jewels worth millions of pounds were
snatched away under the very nose of the Government, without leaving one
single thread to grasp! If anyone had even suggested such a preposterous
thing before, I'd have laughed!"

"Then the 'Delhi Post' did not tell the truth this morning," ventured
the woman, "when it said, 'the Intelligence Department has a valuable
clue'?"

"Well, so we have," he admitted.

"Chavigny?"

He gave her a swift glance. "How did you know?"

She dismissed the question with a shrug and said:

"You agree with me, I am sure, Sir Francis, that these robberies are
connected; that it is highly improbable to think for an instant that in
nine cities thefts of famous jewels merely occurred simultaneously. As
for this Chavigny--judging from his reputation he is clever enough to
have done it. However, reflect upon the difficulties he would encounter.
India is not like Europe. There is caste to consider. He is a white man.
Furthermore, the jewels were stolen from state treasuries; from
buildings, in some instances vaults, that are not easily accessible."

"Then you think it the work of some sort of organized band?"

"I think exactly as you do," she replied cryptically, "only I have
foundation for my belief, while you are--rather, your department,
is--well, romancing."

Silence fell. The man was the first to speak.

"I'm to infer, then, that in your opinion Chavigny had nothing whatever
to do with the robberies?"

She smiled. "Did I say that?"

"At least, you hinted that there is something rather big behind the
thefts."

She continued to smile and leaned upon the desk, facing him.

"To come to the purpose of this call, Sir Francis. If you will give me
four months--and a free rein--you have my word that I will recover every
jewel that was stolen on the night of June fourteenth."

It was with difficulty that the Director of Central Intelligence
smothered an impulse to smile and suggested soberly:

"Won't you be more explicit? This is--well, from my viewpoint, it seems
rather incredible."

"I mean, with the aid of one of your men I will do what your Department
could never accomplish. May I have him?"

"The whole of the Secret Service is at your disposal!"--magnanimously.

She gestured impatiently. "Woodenheads, all of them!"

Sir Francis almost gasped. "Even Euan Kerth?" he managed to ask calmly.

"I do not know Euan Kerth, but he is reputed to be the lion of your
Department. He would more than likely prove unmanageable. No, Euan Kerth
does not qualify."

He chewed his lip. "Really, won't you throw a little more light on the
subject?"

"No," she replied in mellifluous tones, with her most distracting smile.
"You recall what happened in the affair of Amar Singh, when your men
investigated? _I_ shall handle this after my own manner--or wash my
hands of it."

Sir Francis' forehead wrinkled in an official frown.

"This is most extraordinary! Is that a--er--threat?"

"Dare one threaten the Intelligence Department?" she purred.

He drummed upon the surface of his desk again. His thoughts at that
moment were none too pleasant.

"Well, what are your terms?" came at length from him.

She was aware that she was mistress of the situation, and she enjoyed
the position.

"I wish to choose the man with whom I am to work," she began. "I am not
to be spied upon by your agents; in fact, the first indication of any
sort of surveillance will end our contract. The man I choose will not be
permitted to communicate with you, or with anyone, until we have
finished. He must obey me implicitly. If you agree to my terms, I shall
name a meeting-place, and from the instant this man enters the house he
is mine; he disappears from your observation completely until I give him
back to the Raj. Meanwhile, you will follow up the clues you have; you
will forget me, you will forget the man who is to help me--and at the
end of four months I will keep my pledge."

Sir Francis concealed his thoughts under a smile, and well he did.

"You ask the impossible. Why, that's preposterous!"

"You question my loyalty?"

A spark showed in the violet eyes--steel under the velvet.

"Your loyalty is not involved in this discussion; it is simply that you
ask things that are unprecedented in the service."

"The happenings of June fourteenth are without precedent," she returned
swiftly. "Come, Sir Francis, what are you losing in this venture? On the
contrary, you gain much. I want no credit; when I have finished I vanish
from the affair, completely. One of the stipulations is that my name
must not be mentioned in connection with the work. Simply, your
curiosity is piqued. And your masculine vanity suffers at the thought
that a woman can do what you, with your hundreds of eyes, can not. Be
reasonable. I give my word, a word that you have reason to know is
always kept, that your man shall come to no harm. You do not question my
loyalty, you say; then what reason for refusal have you? Simply that in
the stale, musty annals of your Department such a thing has never been
done!"

The Director of Central Intelligence leaned back in his chair.

"Do you know"--and he smiled as he said it--"I could have
you--er--detained as a suspicious person, if I felt so disposed."

Her musical laughter rippled out. "But you do _not_ feel so disposed,
for what would it gain you?"

Their eyes met and there followed a quick duel.... The man's smile was a
sign of defeat.

"If you don't want a Secret Service man, whom _do_ you want?"

"A man who has brains and imagination--and, besides those, honor."

"Name him."

"Major Arnold Trent of Gaya."

Sir Francis lifted his eyebrows. "He is a doctor."

"That is the way with you military men"--with a sigh. "If one is a
physician, you think he knows nothing but what is taught in schools of
medicine! I want some one whose brain is free of tiresome Secret Service
rules."

The Colonel smiled. "You are a very resourceful woman," he declared.

"That means you accept?"

"It means I recognize your ability, and that I shall communicate with
the Viceroy to-morrow and give you my decision as soon as possible."

She smiled her approval and rose.

"Then I shall not prolong this interview. Good night, Sir Francis."

She gave him her hand and moved to the door, where she halted, turning
back.

"I nearly forgot," she said. "There is one other clause in the
agreement. Major Trent must be kept in ignorance of the party with whom
he is to work. To him you may call me--well, the Swaying Cobra." She
smiled again. "By that name I was known when I danced on the Continent."

Then she departed, melting into the dusky hallway.

After a moment Sir Francis moved to the window and parted the draperies
slightly. The palanquin was passing, swimming in yellow moonlight. He
watched it until it lost itself in shadows.

"Now what the deuce!" he muttered.

He resumed his seat and searched several drawers until he found a black
book; then he ran through the pages, halting at: "_Trent, Arnold Ralph,
Major, R. A. M. C...._" He read the lines following the name; took the
receiver from a telephone on his desk; called for a number.

"Kane?" he asked when he was connected. "Duncraigie. You might come out
this way to-night. Important matter. Sarojini Nanjee just called. What!
Surely you remember _her_! Connection of the Nawab of Jehelumpore;
danced in London and Paris for a while. Half white, fourth Rajput, and
the rest devil." He chuckled. "Thought you'd recall _her_. I'll be
waiting for you."

He placed the receiver upon the hook and sat staring reflectively at the
doorway where the woman of the _bhourka_ disappeared.

"Hell-cat!" he said aloud.

Which may or may not have been the impression she intended to give.


3

An hour after the interview with the Director of Central Intelligence,
Sarojini Nanjee lay back in a great cane chair in the living-room of her
bungalow, idly watching the smoke from her cigarette as it spiraled
upward and was rent into vaporous tatters by the electric punkah.

The room, like its occupant, was exotic. A Kyoto gong kindled a bright
spot among softer tones--rare rugs, brocade hangings, and a tall lamp
afloat on the shadows, like an amber island. The woman seemed to melt
into it, her very attitude expressing its utter luxury. Deep iris-hued
eyes dreamed under heavy lids. Her skin glowed with a golden sheen, and
the lacy folds of a negligee fell sheer from her slender ankles and
embroidered the carpet with foamy white.

She had been thus for some time, her brain immersed in a languor, her
thoughts propelled with as little mental volition as possible. She
stirred only to flick the cigarette-ashes into a brass bowl at her
elbow, or to arch one arm above her head in a gesture of complete
abandon. A passing recollection of her call at Sir Francis Duncraigie's
residence invariably caused a faint, inscrutable smile to slip into her
eyes. But for the most part she did not burden herself with either
thought or retrospection; merely sat in the dull, sweet stupor of
semi-inertia.

A night beetle rattled harshly outside. The sound came to the woman as a
sudden recall from her absorption. She placed her nearly burnt-out
cigarette in the ash-bowl; stretched, rose, and struck the Kyoto gong.
As the rich, deep-throated echo sank into a hush, the curtains on one
side of the room parted and a servant in white garments and a blue
turban entered.

"I shall retire now, Chandra Lal," she announced quietly. "You have your
instructions."

"Yes, Heavenborn!"

"You remember the place--the room?"

"How could I forget, Heavenborn?"

"You will"--she hesitated--"cause no injury unless necessary."

"Nay, Heavenborn!"

"Stop calling me that!"--irritably.

Scarlet betel-stained teeth were revealed in a smile.

"Very well, Memsahib."

"You may go now."

"To hear is to obey, Memsahib!"

The blue-turbaned Chandra Lal slipped noiselessly between the curtains.

Sarojini Nanjee moved to a door in the other end of the room, paused
tentatively and stepped over the threshold. The door closed behind her.

And as she left the room, Chandra Lal reappeared.

He stood motionless in the division of the curtains, listening; then
crept softly to a desk in a dusky corner. He produced a key from his
breeches; fitted it into a lock; opened a drawer. For several seconds
his hands moved swiftly, silently through the papers within. After that
he wrote a line on a small scrap of paper. This he folded and slipped
under the edge of his blue turban.

Noiselessly he locked the drawer and recrossed the room. At the doorway
he looked back.... The curtains fell together behind him.


4

Dana Charteris sat before a mirror in her room at the hotel and released
her hair from all restraining pins. It tumbled over her shoulders in
ripples of gold; little bronze-tipped waves, rather reddish, glowed with
soft fire under the searching rays of the electric lamp. The face that
looked back at her from the mirror, a face framed in the shimmering
copperish masses, had a lustrous pallor. She returned the stare of her
own image solemnly and realized, not for the first time, that while the
features in the mirror were those of a girl, there were hints of
maturity. The fullness of the throat, of the lips, and the sympathetic,
almost poignant expression in the brown eyes.

She sighed, then hummed a little tune as she ran a comb through the
thick strands. The odor of tobacco floated to her from the adjoining
room where Alan was making out a report. She liked the smell; it was
clean and masculine.

When she had plaited her hair into two long braids, she slipped into a
dressing-gown and pattered into her brother's room in bedroom sandals.

"Alan," she said, slipping her arms about his neck, "it's so wonderful
to be with you! Why, just think, two months ago I was teaching music in
Bayou Latouche!"

He put his pipe aside.

"To-morrow we'll ramble about the city, through the Fort and the
bazaars," he told her. "And the next day--to Lahore."

"I always think of Lahore with a picture of _Kim_ sitting on
'_Zam-zammah_'."

He smiled. "Then to Peshawar and the Khyber. I've an old friend at Ali
Masjid Fort and he's promised to take us through the Pass."

Then he rose, picked her up bodily and carried her into her room,
placing her upon the bed.

"Good night; sleep tight!"

He kissed her, turned out the light and returned to his room.

Dana slipped out of her dressing-gown; flung it across the foot of the
bed; dropped her slippers upon the floor. Then she lay back upon the
pillows, watching the moonlight that streamed in through the open
casement.

The wide-flung windows yielded a view of the sky and the white Indian
stars. In her fancy she likened them to a string of jewels. Jewels. That
word brought to her mind a picture of the looted treasures of which Alan
had told her. Gems. What fascinating things! Jewels of rajahs and
maharajahs, the pomp and rust of pagan rulers! Diamonds stripped from
idols' eyes, and rubies and sapphires pillaged from the vaults of
ancient temples! She had heard stories of the pearl fisheries of Ceylon
where stones were stolen and hidden in cobras, even in human bodies....
India, mother of intrigue. She shivered.

She could not forget the copy of the Pearl Scarf of Indore. It haunted
her.... Pearls.... Chavigny, a thief of international notoriety....
Alan's pen was scratching steadily on in the next room. The odor of
tobacco was comforting. It made her forget the jewels of Ind; conjured
in her mind a picture of the great, pillared house at Bayou Latouche.
And she was still thinking of Bayou Latouche, and hearing faintly the
_scratch-scratch_ of the pen, when she fell asleep.


5

Dana awakened with a start. Involuntarily she sat up in bed, staring
drowsily about the room. It was buried in dusk. The moonlight, floating
through the casement, crusted the floor with a band of pearl. As full
consciousness wiped the threads of sleep from her brain, she wondered
what had caused her sudden awakening. No noise, for silence shut down
like a lid, made more intense by the sighing of trees beyond the stone
terrace. The sounds of a clock on the dressing-table seemed to stitch
the hush.

For a moment she sat there, vaguely uneasy; then swung her feet over the
side and slipped them into bedroom sandals. Moving quietly to the
dressing-table, she looked at the clock. After one.... Her sandals
lisped on the floor as she crept to the window.

Delhi lay asleep in the breathless night. Temple, tower, dome and
minaret swam in the moonlight, and in the jungle stretch by the river
jackals were laughing hysterically. With a little shiver she returned to
the bed.

Strange to awaken like this, she thought. The new surroundings probably.
She sighed and settled deeper in the bed.

... She was almost asleep when a shadow flitted across her vision. At
first it seemed a part of the slumber that had nearly overcome her, and
she lay there contemplating the window-casement where it had passed
until it was borne to her, suddenly, and not without a shock, that she
was fully awake and the shadow was not a shadow, but a very substantial
human form that had stolen by on the stone terrace. The realization drew
her muscles rigid, and she lay motionless, listening to the hammering of
her heart.

A faint scraping noise came from Alan's room. What was it, a footfall?
An oblong reservoir of darkness outlined the doorway. She could see
nothing.... She must move, must call her brother. But her body was
locked in a temporary paralysis, her tongue dry.

Again the sound. Unmistakable. Some one was walking stealthily. The
crackle of paper.

Her fright increased, swelled, became so acute that she could no longer
endure it.

"Alan!"

It was not a scream; a whisper. She found that she could move, and she
sat up.

From the next room came a series of thuds; bare feet on the floor.

"Damn you--"

She leaped out of bed.

A ripping sound. A groan. Another thud, heavier this time.

Dana reached the communicating door in a few steps. A quick intake of
breath. Her hands closed upon the door-frame, tightened convulsively.
Dimness swam visibly before her. Through the dark mist she saw a figure
dart out upon the stone terrace and disappear.

Beside the bed, stretched full length upon the floor, was a white form.

She screamed. The dimness dissolved and she rushed to the body.

"Alan! Alan!"

She grasped his shoulders, dizzy, cold with horror. Involuntarily she
drew one hand away and saw a dark stain upon her fingers. It seemed to
glare out and strike her eyes. She fought against a gathering weakness;
forced herself to feel his heart. Beating. But that white face! And how
could she lift him to the bed, how--

Footsteps rang from the hall. Came a knock at the door; a voice
penetrated the panels.

Dana rose, found the light-switch and turned it. The flood of yellow
gave warmth and strength to her--showed her a blue coil in the middle of
the room. Dimly she realized it was a turban cloth--probably torn from
the intruder's head. She did not touch it, but unlocked the door.

The Eurasian proprietor stood outside, in a dressing-gown. Behind him
was a dark-skinned porter. A door opened further along the hall.

"My brother!" she gasped, motioning toward the white form.

The Eurasian spoke to the porter. They entered and placed the
unconscious man upon the bed. Oblivious of the fact that she was clad
only in a nightdress, Dana stood by, trying to collect her scattered
faculties.

"If you will call a doctor," she said, "I'll attend to him now."

"Yes, madam. I'll have the boy fetch some water and smelling-salts from
my wife's room. How did this happen?"

"I--I can't think--now," she returned dazedly. "Later...."

The Eurasian said something, but she did not remember what it was;
remembered only that he and the porter went out. A moment after the door
closed she heard voices in the hall.

"O Alan!" she pleaded, bending over her brother. "Can't you hear me?"

Several minutes passed before he showed any symptoms of reviving; then
he mumbled a few unintelligible words, and the lids drew back from his
eyes.

"Dana!"--weakly. "He--took it--"

"What, Alan, dear?"

"The scarf--confounded imitation." He closed his eyes; opened them an
instant later. "I'll be all right,"--with a smile. "Nothing serious.
Don't mention the scarf, or anything about it. Just say--thief...." The
lids sank over his eyes. "Imitation," he muttered. And fainted again.

... The Eurasian returned shortly, with the porter at his heels. The
latter carried a basin of water and several bottles.

"If you'll allow me to attend to him," offered the proprietor, "it will
spare you much unpleasantness."

Dana nodded and sank into a chair, shivering.

Nearly an hour passed before the doctor arrived. Alan had regained
consciousness, but fainted during the examination. Dana, standing beside
the bed in her negligee, waited nervously to hear the decision.

"I don't think you have any cause to be uneasy," said the doctor, after
what seemed an interminable time. "The wound isn't serious--only the
muscles and tissues punctured--nothing internal. But I'm going to
suggest, rather, insist, that he go to a hospital."

"By all means," agreed Dana, very close to tears. "I want everything
possible done for him."

The doctor smiled sympathetically. "Be sure we'll do all we can," he
assured her. "Now, if you'll have some one fetch a basin of water,
boiled, I'll get at this dressing."

Close to dawn, after the doctor had departed and Alan was conscious,
Dana went to her room to dress. At the doorway she paused--for the blue
turban-cloth lay coiled upon the threshold where she had tossed it.
Incidents of greater importance had crowded the remembrance of it from
her brain. Now she stooped and picked it up, rather gingerly. Queer. For
imitation pearls!

She lowered her eyes, suddenly, involuntarily--as though in obedience to
a subconscious command.

On the spot where the turban-cloth had lain was a small scrap of paper.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus, having jested with a puppet at Indore and given a thread into the
hands of Dana Charteris, Destiny, capricious as the winds, turned toward
the officer of the empire upon whom a chalk-mark had previously been
placed.




CHAPTER III

A PIECE OF CORAL


Sunset was spreading a fan of flamingo plumes above Meera, a native
village to the northward of Gaya, when Arnold Trent (unaware that
Destiny had been hovering over him since Dana Charteris found the scrap
of paper, in Delhi, three days before) clattered out of the jungle and
along the nearly deserted main street. At the council-tree, where the
headman of the village sat and chewed betel-leaf, he drew rein,
listening to a low, eerie wailing that came from one of the whitewashed
houses.

"It is Chatterjee," volunteered the headman. "His Ratanamma is dead,
Dakktar Sahib."

Trent swung down from his saddle. "When did it happen, Ranjeet Singh?"

"Not an hour past, Dakktar Sahib."

Trent's eyes roved up and down the street. "Where's everybody? Meera
looks as if a plague had struck it."

Ranjeet Singh, who was a Jain, spat contemptuously.

"Some vermin-ridden priests from Tibet are at the Sacred Bo-tree," he
explained, "and the worshippers of Gaudama have swarmed thither, like
flies to a dung-feast!"

Trent smiled slightly and moved toward one of the whitewashed houses,
swinging along with the leisurely, easy stride of one poised on
well-controlled muscles. At the door he paused. It was dark within, and
a breath of offal and man-reek greeted him. After a moment he saw,
against the darkness, the pale silhouette of a white-clad figure. From
this figure came the eerie wails.

"Chatterjee!" Trent called.

The silhouette ceased wailing long enough to quaver: "Dakktar Sahib!"

The Englishman, his eyes now accustomed to the gloom, strode over to a
thong-strung bed and peered down at the form stretched upon it. Unable
to see clearly, he struck a match. The tiny flare flickered upon bare
brown skin.... Trent swore.

"Stop that damned nonsense!" he commanded. "Chatterjee, you've had some
infernal _hakim_ here again--against my orders!"

"My little Ratanamma, dove of my bosom, is dead!" wailed the man.

"Did you give her the medicine I left?"

"Yes, Dakktar Sahib! It was your medicine that killed her. The _hakim_
said so."

Trent swore again. "I've a notion to report you to the Karnal Sahib and
have you taken up! You old murderer! Didn't you know better than to let
some filthy, stinking _hakim_ burn her stomach with a hot iron?"

The native was wailing again.

"Listen to me, Chatterjee," said Trent sternly, gripping the man's
shoulder. "Who did this?"

"Your medicine, Dakktar Sahib!"

Trent shook him roughly. "Will you answer me--or...."

"Your medicine, Dakktar Sahib!" insisted the man.

Trent released him, realizing the futility of pressing the question.

"Very well. I'll report you to the Karnal Sahib and he'll have you
strung up by your toes!"

He left the house abruptly--followed by feverish, glowing eyes.

Out of Meera he rode, past the temple on the river bank and along the
jungle-lined road toward Gaya.

Trent was angry. But his face gave no indication of it. Twenty-three
years under a tropical sun (add the ten years at school in Britain and
you'll have his age) had baked his skin to a leather brown, and a third
of that time spent in the army had taught him that impassivity is man's
chief advantage--a citadel against the aggressive. He had, in the
vernacular of the times, a "poker face"--the mask of those who share
their secrets with few. In either mufti or khaki he was not particularly
handsome, and this evening, after a day of work in viscid heat, he was
almost ugly. Dust was ingrained into his skin, like an ocher pigment;
his throat and brows were moist with perspiration. Yet there was about
him something arresting and vital--a challenging strength that
pronounced him a man's man. And he was. He talked with men; ate with
men; lived with men; understood men. Scales that dip into earth-dust and
swing again to regions of exquisite idealism--the eternal weight and
counter-weight of Self. That was how he defined them. And his
definitions were usually metaphors. An idiosyncrasy. Give him a chair in
a dim room with one of Beethoven's sonatas swelling in throat-gripping
chords, or a pipe and congenial darkness somewhere close to the stars,
and he was in his prime element.

As for women.... That there had been one--one or more--at some time in
his life, nobody who knew him doubted; but it was the general opinion at
Gaya and thereabouts that he was as little concerned with women as with
anything else that habited the planet. Envious subordinates hinted that
at one time or other he had run afoul some feminine reef. When these
remarks drifted to Trent (and such remarks always do) he only smiled,
for he had a generous supply of humor packed away under his impassivity.
It was never known that he deliberately avoided women; it appeared that
he simply accepted them as a matter of form, inevitable as waves on a
sea, and sometimes as disastrous.

Only Richard Manlove, also an army doctor, who shared his
bungalow, had penetrated beyond the outer-rampart of his seeming
seclusiveness--"Dicky" Manlove whom Trent first saw out in dead
Mesopotamia. Their friendship was a popular topic of discussion on warm
afternoons when feminine Gaya gathered to perspire under one common
punkah. So different, you know.... Young "Dicky"--a delicious boy ...
and the major--oh, rather a decent chap, a human manual of Hindustani
and all those other perfectly impossible languages, but ... well, it's
so disconcerting not to know what a man is thinking, isn't it?

Thus feminine Gaya catalogued him, and thus he appeared--immobile--this
late afternoon as he rode out of Meera.

His anger died as he trotted on, and by the time he came within view of
his bungalow, built on the flank of one of Gaya's hills, he was
watching, in a whimsical, almost detached manner, the fireflies dance
and reel in the dusk. When he drew nearer, he saw a figure in a white
dress leave his compound, a figure that paused at the diverging roads
not far from the bungalow, and, after a slight hesitation, chose the
branch in his direction. Instantly he indexed her as a stranger; no
female resident would think of using the isolated Meera road after dusk.

She wore a pith helmet with a veil. The veil was lifted, but as he
approached, she lowered it--curiously enough, he thought. He was certain
she had come from his compound; therefore, when she was within a few
yards, he drew rein.

"Your pardon...." as he lifted his helmet. "Do you wish to see me? I'm
Major Trent."

She halted, resting one hand upon a tree-trunk. He caught the glint of a
bracelet on her white arm, and, being a man to notice details, observed
a design worked in heavy relief upon it--a design that, in the half-tone
of the early night, was almost indistinguishable.

"No," came the answer from under the veil, in a voice with a soft,
thrilling timbre. "No."

He was still studying the bracelet out of the corner of his eye, and he
perceived that the intricate workmanship represented a king-cobra; its
hood was lifted in bizarre relief.... A barbaric ornament for a white
woman to wear, he thought.

"But, really," he persisted, "it isn't quite safe for you to go along
this road. Beasts, you know."

A pause. He saw the dark pools of her eyes upon him.

"Thank you," she murmured. "I thought I was going to the dak bungalow."

With that she turned and moved away in the direction of the metalled
main highway.

"Now, that's queer," he observed to himself, staring after her. "Anybody
with even bad sight could see that this road...." Certainly she was at
the compound gate. Why had she falsified?

He removed his helmet and furrowed his hair--a characteristic gesture;
then, still watching the woman, he jerked the reins and trotted toward
the bungalow.


2

A native servant in a white cotton _chuddah_ and turban switched on the
light in the living-room as Trent entered.

"Has Manlove Sahib come in, Ganeesh?" asked the Englishman.

"No, Dakktar Sahib."

Trent placed his helmet upon the table and sank into a chair.

"I sha'n't want anything to eat, so you may as well go. If Manlove Sahib
hasn't eaten, he can go to the barracks."

As the native quitted the room, Trent, at a sudden thought, called after
him.

"Ganeesh," he said, as his servant reappeared, "has anyone been here
this afternoon?"

"No, Dakktar Sahib."

"Didn't a lady call a few minutes ago?"

The man answered in the negative.

"Hmm. Very well. That's all."

Still puzzling over the strange woman, he removed a pipe and a sack of
tobacco from his shirt pocket, and when he had filled the bowl he
lighted it. For several minutes he drew upon the amber stem, looking
abstractedly into the whorls of smoke; then he picked up a brown volume
from the table and opened it at a leaf that was turned under.

Here was another trait that Gaya had not discovered. Frequently when he
was tired he turned to poetry--sometimes to books on the art-treasures
and ancient lore of India, Indo-China and China--for relaxation.

His eyes followed these lines:

    Star of the South that now through orient mist,
    At nightfall off Tampico or Belize,
    Greetest the sailor, rising from those seas
    Where first in me, a fond romanticist,
    The tropic sunset's bloom on cloudy piles
    Cast out industrious cares with dreams of fabulous isles.

He rather fancied that passage. Fabulous isles. His brain toyed with the
thought. For, although he walked down among mortals, sheathing himself
in indifference and impassivity, he kept, in secret, a ladder to the
stars--a concession to return at will to a guarded kingdom of his youth,
the dominion of Romance and Adventure. He would have dwelt in this
kingdom, secluded from earth, but for a thorn that was fastened deep
within him. This thorn had pricked him since that period of adolescence
when first visions and aspirations stirred in his boyish brain and set
him to dreaming of the future. It had goaded him relentlessly into
achievement, against the will of his adventurous spirit.

Strive as he might, he could not draw it out.

It was Ambition.

Because of it he had buried a dream that at odd moments returned and
haunted him, like the poignantly sweet odor of lavender rising from
packed-away treasures. Reckless, this dream, dangerous. To forsake the
dull earth; drink freedom from the winds. A passion for the open
spaces--to explore the fabulous isles. But the lure of uncharted seas
and archipelagoes beyond the sunset, sheer and calling as they were,
could not entice him to trample tradition. Ambition had won. And he
beheld himself now, at thirty-three, a romantic soul armored in realism;
at heart a boy who had never broken away from the age when flapping
canvas and groaning timbers cause a queer clutching in the throat. His
reckless impulses and desires were bitted and diverted into
accomplishment. He was a success. But there were times, often in the
dead of the night, with the jungle solitude challenging speech, when he
realized that, in his own eyes, he was a failure.

He sighed unconsciously, almost inaudibly, and his sea-green eyes
softened to gray as he fashioned, extravagantly, a blue dragon in the
tobacco smoke that coiled sinuously toward the ceiling; sighed, as he
often did in the quiet of his own quarters where only the walls might
hear.

His thoughts switched involuntarily to the present (and his eyes lost
some of their grayness, for their color seemed to change with his moods)
and focused upon the communication he had received that morning. Under
the precise military wording he sensed another element. Mystery. After
all these prosaic years was he to be drawn out of his cocoon of
medicines and gauze bandages and have his adventure? In all probability
the affair would prove drab enough. Adventure? Well, hardly. Things of
the sort set forth in the dispatch were usually rather unpleasant. Yet
it intrigued him. Blindfolded. And was not that it?

"... temporarily attached to ... Euan Kerth ... a woman called the
Swaying Cobra...."

Fragments of the communication filtered through his brain. Strange. From
pills and antiseptics to that! It _was_ leaving a cocoon! What a joke to
tell Manlove. Dear old Manlove--this with warmth.

The sounds of walking in the compound announced the object of his
thoughts. The footsteps drew nearer, crossed the veranda, and Manlove,
uniformed and helmeted, entered.

"Rum day," he said. "Hot as Tophet; everything wrong."

Trent made no comment; only nodded.

"There's a big shindy up at the Sacred Bo-tree," the other added. "Some
Tibetan lamas are there. I stopped by with Herrick."

He took off his helmet, the removal revealing to the light a tanned,
boyish face and a healthy thatch of hair; mopped his forehead and flung
his headgear carelessly across the room. That was his way, to appear
careless. But at heart he was not; he liked small boundaries (while
Trent craved larger ranges), homely things. He looked forward to the
time when he would come into possession of "Gray Towers," ancestral
abiding-place of the Manloves. Of course, he didn't want his
grandfather, more familiarly known as the Old Fellow, to die or anything
like that; he was simply prepared for the inevitable: The Right
Honorable Richard Auckland Manlove, sitting in the House of Lords and
presenting Colonial improvement measures, for India in particular; no
longer "Dicky" Manlove, irresponsible adventurer, but carrying the
ponderous dignity of the name.... It was all very impressive....

"Mrs. Dalhousie is giving a lawn party to-night," he announced, taking a
chair. "Impromptu. She told me to drag you along, if you'd come."

"Sorry," returned Trent. "I'm leaving for Benares early in the morning.
I'll be occupied to-night. Orders from Delhi."

Manlove withdrew a cigarette case from under his tunic, opened it, took
out a smoke and placed it between his lips before he spoke.

"Deuce you say! Not transferred?"

"Temporarily detached; special service. You and Conningsby will have to
take charge while I'm away." He smiled. "Been reading the papers
lately?"

Manlove lighted his cigarette, glancing furtively at Trent. The latter
was staring into the blue haze of smoke, half humorously, as though he
found something amusing in the vaporous clouds.

"Certainly"--thus Manlove.

"Anything new about the jewels?"

Manlove smiled to himself. He hadn't lived in the same house with Arnold
Trent for fourteen months without learning _something_ about him. The
old sphinx, he thought good-humoredly.

"Nothing important"--briefly. "However, I understand, from Granville,
that the Department believes an international thief--Chavigny's his
name--mixed up in it."

"Wonder where Granville got that?"

"Oh, rumors are plentiful, especially at stations like this where
everybody's chief occupation is talk."

"That all?"

Manlove nodded and said nothing, for he knew Trent.

"Have you approximated the value of the stolen gems?" queried the
latter, then went on: "Millions of pounds! And have you wondered how the
devil they're going to hide the loot, or get it out of India? Such well
known jewels can't be sold--"

"Unless they're re-cut," put in Manlove. He smiled wisely. "By Kali and
all the other deities, you don't mean that you, expert in cholera and
dysentery, are about to--" He chuckled. "Well, I'm damned!"

Trent moved to a desk in a corner of the room, unlocked it and took out
a long, official-looking document. This he handed to Manlove, then
resumed his seat. The latter unfolded it and let his eyes travel down
the sheet.

"Has the heat gone to their heads at Delhi?" he demanded when he had
finished. "Almighty God, why detach a perfectly good doctor, when they
have a whole list of Secret Service men?"

Trent only smiled. The younger man waved his hand toward the paper.

"Surely this isn't all?"

"You know as much as I do. I leave in the morning for Benares. At the
hotel I'm to meet a fellow called Kerth--"

"Euan Kerth," Manlove interrupted, his eyes upon the document. "You've
heard of him, haven't you? He's the best of his sort in India. He's been
in Tibet; was one of Younghusband's interpreters in nineteen-four.
Speaks Hindustani, Burmese, mandarin Chinese, Tibetan, and God knows
what else! You and he ought to hit it off fairly well together. But go
on."

"I'm to meet him at the hotel," Trent resumed. "Just what part he plays,
I don't know yet. There I'm also to find a message from this Swaying
Cobra woman, and meet her at a place named in the message. And--well,
that's all." He smiled. "Enlightening, isn't it?"

As he finished, Manlove strode to the door and tossed away his
cigarette. There he paused, peering out.

"Where's Ganeesh?" he asked, looking over his shoulder.

"I let him go for the evening. Why?"

"Just saw some one leave the compound; must have been he." Manlove
returned to his chair. "Trent, I envy you--even if they are balmy at
Delhi. This doctoring heathens isn't all it's colored up to be. It's
getting on my nerves. I even dream about fever and stinking _fakirs_."

Trent consulted his wrist-watch. "I have to ride up to Colonel Urqhart's
and make a report. Remember the chap at Meera, Chatterjee? Some _hakim_
burned his child's stomach with an iron. Of course she died. I'm going
to make an example of him." He rose. "I have to wash up a bit. I suppose
you're going to the lawn party?"

"Think not," decided Manlove. "I'll be here when you return."

"Care to ride up with me?"

"No. I'm rather tired."

Trent went to his bedroom and Manlove lighted another cigarette. He'd
miss the old sphinx, he told himself. Good old Trent! Why hadn't he
married? Frequently he asked himself that question; never Trent. There
must be a reason, he mused, flicking the ashes from his cigarette. Maybe
there had been a woman--a typhoon. The typhoon sort could raise the
deuce with a chap like Trent. Perhaps.... He stifled a yawn. Damn India;
damn its climate. He hadn't taken his leave this season; it was about
due now. A jolly trip home; see the Old Fellow; see "Gray Towers."

He heard Trent moving about in the rear. He couldn't picture him
sleuthing it. Queer world anyhow. And Benares. What was afoot?

Another yawn. He flung his half-smoked cigarette through the doorway,
and it fell upon the veranda in a mild shower of sparks, and lay there,
its red tip glowing like a malevolent little eye.


3

It was after nine o'clock when Trent rode out of Sahib's Gaya and around
the shoulder of a hill toward his bungalow. A golden moon floated in
nebulous haze--an electric disc that transfused its heat into the night.
The earth steamed and sweltered, and the perfumes of tropical blossoms
stole out of the jungle and exhaled a heavy languor.

Trent, pipe clamped between his teeth, sweat running into his eyes from
his helmet-band, jogged along, thinking leisurely (as men do in warmer
climates) of the woman of the cobra-bracelet, and thinking more of the
bracelet than the woman. It was one of his peculiarities to collect rare
ornaments; among his curios he had a bangle of a Nepalese princess, a
Burmese bell from a pagoda in the Pyinmana district, and a
silver-chased, turquoise-inset teapot from Tibet. The bracelet the woman
wore was finely wrought, and its design not of the ordinary; this he
recognized, even though he had but a glimpse of it. A king-cobra with a
lifted hood. And the wearer.... Why had she lowered her veil--why had
she denied that she came from his compound? Mystery.... But, he
reflected, mysteries were not rare; mysteries, to such as he, in the
jungle; in the ruins and tumbled grandeur of ancient temples; in the
dim, dark bazaars, spice-reeking, where filth mocks British law, and
Love and Death are one....

A white figure, ahead in the scented gloom, broke into his thoughts, a
figure that at first was distinguishable only as a stain of pallor on
the roadway. Trent experienced a quickening of interest. She of the
cobra-bracelet? No. He could see now. Not a woman; a native. The man was
moving at a swift gait, almost running; but as he drew nearer, he
halted, looking about irresolutely, nervously. And at that moment (he
was not more than ten yards away) Trent recognized him and reined in his
mare.

"Chatterjee!" he called. "D'ye want to see me?"

The native did not answer, only fixed upon him a mute, terrified stare,
and crashed through the high, dense undergrowth at the side of the road.
The sounds of his flight grew fainter as he plunged deeper into the
jungle.

Trent stared at the spot where he disappeared. His first impulse was to
follow--an impulse that he cast aside. Now that was odd, he thought.
What in flaming hades was the matter with him? For a moment he sat in
mystified silence, then he kicked his mount lightly in the flanks.

A day of incidents. First, the dispatch from Delhi, then the veiled
woman, now this encounter. From where had the native come? The bungalow?
Perhaps he was merely on his way from Meera, for the road passed his
quarters. But he knew natives never walked when it was possible to ride.
Anyhow, that didn't explain his actions. Confound it, he'd have trouble
with that fellow yet! This as he branched off from the main highway and
clattered along the driveway to his compound.

Not until he reached the gate did he observe that the house was dark,
squatting in gloomy secrecy among the surrounding trees. At first it
puzzled him; then he decided that Manlove had probably gone to bed.

When his mare was stabled, he made his way into the living-room. In the
dark he struck his knee on a sharp projection and swore. He fumbled for
the light-switch; blinked in the sudden glare. A yawn and an indolent
stretch. He'd get a good sleep and--

"Hello!" he exclaimed, as his eyes trailed across the room to an
over-turned chair. "What the devil!"

A piece of bronze, some Hindu god, lay on the floor, gleaming
sinisterly, and a picture--its regular place was on the desk--had fallen
to the floor. An insidious thought took root in his brain. With quick
strides he reached Manlove's room. It was empty, the bed unused. Its
desertion hurt him--a queer sensation, that. He whirled about, returned
to the living-room and halted, irresolute.

"Manlove!"

Silly to call, he thought. Perhaps Manlove had gone to the lawn party.
But the over-turned chair and the idol did not look well. Thieves?
Or.... Suddenly the meeting with Chatterjee shaped into significance. He
knew the workings of the native brain, and a frightful possibility
suggested itself.

An electric torch lay on the table. He reached for it; stood with his
hands poised in the air, thought temporarily suspended from action. For
his eyes, lowered involuntarily, fastened upon a small, dark spot on the
matting.

Regaining the power to move, he stooped. A sudden sickness seized him.
Unmistakable. But why did blood affect him? Blood. The discovery added a
spark to his suspicions. His imagination painted a swift, vivid picture.
The look of terror on Chatterjee's face.... Manlove, the innocent....
But no! It couldn't be!

In possession of the torchlight, he strode out upon the veranda. There
he discovered a trail of spots identical with that on the matting, a
trail that led down the steps. He made a quick search of the compound. A
sense of helplessness smote him. Manlove, perhaps somewhere within
calling distance, yet unable to summon him....

He halted at the gate. On the left was jungle, dark and hushed; on the
right, a few lights in the nearest bungalow. Across the road was the
mouth of a narrow path which he knew led to the ruins of an old temple
hidden behind the rank foliage. At thought of the ruins an impulse made
him forsake the compound and follow the path.

Less than two hundred yards from the road the growths thinned. Looming
before him, spectral in the yellow mystery of the moonlight, was the
temple. The outer court was throttled with weeds. Luxurious vines
trailed from ruined pillar to ruined wall and wove a sanctuary for
vipers. At the end of an avenue of crumbled columns gaped the black
entrance of the inner court. An impalpable vapor steamed up from the
moist plants and bathed the ruins in a dream-like haze, as the blurred
waters of the ocean engulf and make fantastic the myriad rock-palaces of
the sea-bottoms.

The dark inner court challenged Trent, and he snapped off the light and
moved between the stone sentinels. A power, terrifying in its vagueness,
pressed upon him, locking his muscles in a tension. A bat, startled out
of hiding by the ring of his footsteps, flapped up from the parapet and
wheeled across the moon's face. But for that, and an occasional rasp of
an insect, the temple was swathed in a hush.

In the doorway of the inner court he paused. He groped for the shattered
frame; clutched something tangible; fought against a terrible paralysis.

Yellow moonshine poured through a rent in the ceiling, drenched the
walls and formed a honey-hued pool on the flagging.

In the wan light lay a human form.

A deadly inertia coiled about Trent's brain and body. For a moment he
was unable to think, to do other than struggle against the constricting
coils of horror. But at length he broke the rigor. A few steps brought
him to the pool of moonlight. He knelt; switched on the torch; saw the
face. Dull agony spread from his throat to his limbs. In that instant he
seemed to slip back through a millennium and endure the concentrated
pains of a hundred bodies--a flame of cosmic anguish burning down
through the dim jungles of time.

Automatically his hand went to the heart, but before his trained fingers
touched the breast he knew that to feel was useless. Dark moisture
stained the tunic-front. He unbuttoned the garments. Knife wound!
Manlove had been dead at least a half hour.

The infinitesimal fraction of a minute that he knelt there might have
been an hour for the multitude of irrelevances that sped through his
brain. Orders. Benares.... And he had cursed when he struck his knee!
Had Manlove ridden with him to Colonel Urqhart's this would not have
happened. Urqhart; what an absurd name.... Murder. In a vague manner he
wondered who had done it; in a vague manner he felt angry. Dead.
Impossible. This must be a dream, a horrid nightmare. Damn these
nightmares! It was the heat ... heat.... His comrade.... Kasvin....
Kut-el-Amara. And this was the end! The futility of things swept him, a
chill and shuddersome tide that served to wash some of the tangles from
his thoughts.

He rose. He felt giddy, and the inner court, with its shadows, its pool
of moonshine, swam in a throat-gripping vertigo. But it passed swiftly.
Out of the mental chaos emerged a coherency: perhaps the one who had
done this was still in or about the temple. The remembrance of
Chatterjee immediately appeared to deny it. A solution of the affair
unreeled quickly. Chatterjee, the avenger ... a fatal mistake. That
explained the native's look of terror when he met Trent on the road,
explained his flight.

Nevertheless, Trent made a search of the ruins and returned to the body.
The face, outlined boyishly in the pallid moonlight, commanded his gaze
with hypnotic insistence. Now that the first acute horror had dwindled,
he was conscious of an abysmal loneliness, an ache that habited every
nerve and fiber of his being.

He must notify Colonel Urqhart. But the body, what of that? He couldn't
leave it lying in this den of vipers. The very suggestion horrified him,
although he knew the body was but a husk of flesh. He had some
authority; he'd act on his own responsibility.

An involuntary dread ran through him as he slipped his hands under the
inert form and lifted it. His sight blurred, but he moved with a steady
stride across the courtyard and through the gate. Upon reaching the
bungalow, he laid the body upon the bed in Manlove's room. When he
switched on the light, the boyish features again compelled his gaze.
Manlove had told him of the dream of "Gray Towers," of the House of
Lords; and the memory of it, returning through the stupefaction that
still surrounded him, sent a poignant charge into his throat. To have
his dream perish like this! Whatever a man's philosophy of immortality,
death remains a shock.

He was about to leave the room when his attention was arrested by the
gleam of a bright object in the lifeless hand. He was forced to pry open
the fingers. The gleaming thing proved to be a piece of reddish stone.
Coral. It was oval-shaped and some six inches in circumference. An
intricate design was overlaid in silver upon the smooth salmon-hued
surface--a human figure. The oval was edged with silver, and at the top
was a tiny clasp. The clasp was broken. He studied the silver design. It
was evidently some sort of deity, but different from any he had ever
seen--an ugly little god with three eyes.

What was it? he wondered--part of a necklace, an ornament? The broken
clasp testified that it had been wrenched from its fastening. Perhaps in
a struggle--_the_ struggle....

Temporarily dismissing it from his thoughts, he left it lying upon the
table and went to the telephone.


4

Meanwhile, at the dak bungalow, which looks out upon the main street of
Sahib's Gaya, the _khansammah_, a ghostly figure in his white garments,
sat on the covered portico and watched a gharry approach in a whirl of
dust.

The carriage was jerked to a halt at the compound, and from its dim
interior appeared a form.

It was the strange Memsahib, the _khansammah_ observed to himself.

Strange, indeed, he reflected; Memsahibs rarely wore veils, and those
they affected were gossamer, cobweb-like affairs that hid not a feature.
But this Memsahib wore an almost opaque veil, a veil which she lifted
only to eat and when in her room. She had a beautiful face, and well
that she covered it from befouling eyes. For the _khansammah_ was a
Mohammedan.

She was very generous, this Memsahib, oh, very generous, indeed! True,
she asked many questions--about Major Trent Sahib and his friend, the
other Dakktar Sahib--but she paid for the information. She had been at
the dak bungalow only since morning, and he hoped she would remain
longer. Business was none too good.

Thus ran his thoughts as the woman alighted from the gharry and crossed
the compound.

When she reached the steps he rose and rendered a salaam. As usual, her
veil was lowered. He sensed a repressed excitement in the manner that
her white hand closed upon the post of the veranda; a bracelet shone
softly on her arm.

"_Khansammah_," she began, in a low, vibrant voice that made him think
of the golden tongue of a certain singing-nautch he had once heard,
"When does the next train leave for Mughal Sarai? Do you know?"

"Hah, Memsahib!"--with regret. "Must you leave? Has not my
hospitalit_ee_ been all the Memsahib could--"

"Of course," she broke in, impatiently. "But the train?"

"At midnight, Memsahib. But it is unlike_lee_ the Memsahib can get
accommodations, for there is ver_ee_ much travel at this time of the
year--oh, ver_ee_ much!"

"At midnight," she repeated, as though she had heard only that.

Then she entered--and the _khansammah_ thought he saw her pause, falter,
as with a sudden stroke of weakness.


5

And again meanwhile--

The moon paled, sank. Its senescent glamour lingered upon the towering
plinth and fluted pillars of the temple of the Sacred Bo-tree, seven
miles south of Gaya-town. A warm wind fretted the tapering leaves of the
holy tree; the sunken courtyard was a cistern of gloom where tiny yellow
lights swam like foam-flecks on a dark sea. These flecks of light,
forming a semi-circle about the Sacred Bo-tree, were many little
butter-lamps. Their glow revealed a man seated on the Diamond Throne
(just as Gaudama sat on the same spot in a buried century and
contemplated his Dewa Laka); revealed his yellow features, his tonsured
skull and magenta robes; revealed the stone image of Buddha that looked
down from the shrine with an expression of serene omniscience; revealed
the row of crimson-togaed monks that knelt within the semi-circle of
butter-lamps and murmured prayers.

The man on the Diamond Throne sat motionless. Only his lips moved, and
his eyes. A hint of guile showed in his face. He repeated a _mantra_
automatically, for his thoughts were elsewhere.

This was no other than his Holiness the Grand Lama of Tsagan-dhuka, who
had pilgrimaged from his Tibetan abby to the Sacred Bo-tree--the first
journey of the sort to be made by a lama of high rank since the visit of
that venerable pontiff, the Tashi Lama.... Behold him, then, in the
magenta robes of his office, squatting upon the Diamond Throne, reciting
a Buddhist prayer.

The patter of bare feet on stone caused him to shift his gaze to the
gloom beyond the courtyard. His black eyes squinted, and he traced the
outline of a palanquin. The primitive conveyance came to a halt. A
figure in loose robes took shape between the parted curtains; the light
of the butter-lamps fell upon a man in scarlet, a man who descended into
the sunken courtyard and approached the Diamond Throne. No mere priest,
this newcomer, for he wore a mitre-shaped hat; a very obese, very
pompous personage as he waddled up to his Holiness of Tsagan-dhuka.

The crimson cardinal spoke; and had anyone who understood Tibetan been
standing close by, he would have heard:

"His Excellency the Governor of Shingtse-lunpo has arrived."

The Grand Lama ceased his _mantra_.

"Tell him I shall be with him when I have finished my reflections."

The cardinal bowed and took his leave. The curtains of the palanquin
blotted out his corpulent person. Again the patter of naked feet sounded
above the surreptitious whispering of the Bo-tree.

A cryptic smile slid across the Grand Lama's eyes; the lids dropped to
hide it. He resumed the prayer.

"_Om mani Padme hum...._"

Thus he sat--just as Gaudama sat on the same spot in a buried century.
However, the Abbot of Tsagan-dhuka was not contemplating his Dewa Laka.

Above him the plinth of the temple strove skyward, secure in the
knowledge of the riddle of Life and Death.


6

A half hour after Trent took the receiver from the telephone, Colonel
Urqhart and Merriton, Head of the Police, rattled into his compound in a
dog-cart. Accompanying them were several officers to whom Trent spoke by
name.

"... And you found him in the ruined temple!" exclaimed the colonel, in
the living-room, when the customary formalities had been observed. "Good
God, major, what a pity! The poor, poor boy! His father and I were
friends, y' know."

"I'm positive Chatterjee did it," declared Trent. "You see...." And he
told of the encounter on the road and the subsequent events.

"What were you saying, major?" asked the Head of the Police, coming out
of the bedroom just as he finished. "But first--what's this?"

He held out the oval of silver-overlaid coral, and Trent explained how
he had found it.

"Some sort of native charm, I dare say," observed Merriton. "Tell me
about this Chatterjee."

When Trent had retold his story, the Head of the Police enquired:

"Where's the telephone? Ah! I see it!"

       *       *       *       *       *

It was nearly midnight when Colonel Urqhart and Merriton prepared to
leave.

"Major," said Trent's commanding officer, "you'd better get some sleep.
Eckard and Gerrish will remain to--"

"Sleep?" echoed Trent.

"You'll need it if you're going in the morning--and you _are_ going?
Orders, y' know. There's nothing you can do here. I'll personally attend
to everything."

"Of course I'll go." This from Trent as he passed his hand wearily over
his forehead. "However, I shall sit up to-night. Eckard and Gerrish can
remain--but I'd rather be alone."

The colonel cast a glance toward Manlove's room.

"Poor chap!" he sighed. He extended his hand. "Well, good luck, major. I
probably won't see you again before you leave."

They shook hands, and the colonel and Merriton departed. Not until the
sounds of the dog-cart had dwindled did Trent discover that the Head of
Police had left the piece of coral on the table. His first impulse was
to call after him, but he decided to give it to him later, and dropped
it into his pocket.

Through the seemingly endless night Trent kept vigil beside the
curtained bed where Manlove lay. He sat huddled in a chair, his face
expressionless; frequently he rose to pace the floor; on several
occasions one of the men in the next room heard him murmuring to
himself. Shortly after midnight (about the time the veiled Memsahib's
train roared out of Gaya toward Mughal Sarai) it began to rain. That was
the prelude to a storm that crashed and tore in a fury about the
bungalow. In the dead silence following, when the damp heat shut in and
stars sparkled in the rain-swept sky, jackals chattered mournfully in
the jungle.

The last stars passed and the earth awoke in a bath of gold. Ganeesh,
with a frightened, awed expression, crept in hesitatingly with tea, and
behind him came one of the officers.

"I'll have to get ready to leave now, Eckard," Trent said laconically to
the officer, when he had gulped down the hot liquid.

Twenty minutes later, washed and shaved, he came out of his bedroom and
found Colonel Urqhart waiting for him.

"Just came by to tell you Merriton hasn't found Chatterjee yet,"
announced the colonel. "Cleared out, it seems. But they'll get him."

"Uncommonly nice of you, Colonel," returned Trent. His face was drawn,
his eyes veined with red, and a pallor underlay his tanned skin.

The colonel waved his hand toward the door. "My cart's outside. I'll
drive you to the station. 'Bout time, isn't it?"

Trent nodded. He strode to the door of Manlove's room and halted on the
threshold, looking with dry eyes into the hushed apartment. A
diamond-winged dragonfly lay dreaming on the window-sill ... the white
face shone through the mosquito-curtain.... Thus Trent stood for a
moment, then he turned and joined the colonel.

He talked very little during the ride to the station, and Colonel
Urqhart did not press conversation. In the midst of chattering native
passengers and a few whites, with an engine puffing heat into the
already suffocating air, he parted with the colonel,--a handshake and a
few perfunctory words--and settled down in his carriage.

Not until the train jerked out of the station did the strain snap. He
relaxed wearily upon the leather-lined seat, a steady hammer of pain at
the back of his neck. He felt suddenly alone, intensely alone--a
sensation that carried him back to his boyhood, to a night when he awoke
in a strange, black-dark room. He shuddered involuntarily. His eyelids
burned. Sleep--sleep. The engine seemed to purr that one word, and the
swaying and rocking of the carriage lulled him into drowsiness.

He fell asleep, suddenly, with a picture of the hushed room--the
diamond-winged dragonfly--painted upon his vision.


7

Trent was brought out of slumber by the sound of his name. He opened his
eyes and perceived that the train was at a standstill. Heat pressed
close about him, stifling him. Thrusting his head out of the window, he
read the name of the station. He was but a short distance from Gaya. A
telegraph messenger was walking along the platform shrilling:

"Major-rr Tr-rent Sahib!"

Trent called him, and as the train pulled out he tore open the envelope.

"Chatterjee found in river this morning," the message ran. "Stabbed. Let
you hear particulars at Benares. Urqhart."

For some time after Trent read it he stared out of the carriage-window.
Chatterjee--stabbed. He let the words filter and re-filter through his
brain, let them settle and sink in. They gave a new significance to the
encounter with the native on the previous night. Chatterjee--stabbed.
Murdered? Or had he taken his own life--in remorse? But the river....
No. Murdered. That word stood out like wet type. Chatterjee--stabbed.
Why? Obvious enough. The native's look of fright explained that. Perhaps
he knew who slew Manlove. Chatterjee, whose lips were sealed. Blind
alley. He faced a wall behind which was hidden the identity of Manlove's
slayer. Manlove, who, to his knowledge, hadn't an enemy--

He stiffened at a sudden recollection; brought his fist down upon his
thigh. Idiot! Colossal idiot! Why had not this occurred to him before?
It was fantastic, yet....

He procured from his pocket a pencil and an envelope, and scribbled on
the back of the latter--scribbled a description of the woman he had met
on the Meera road; of the cobra-bracelet, of the encounter and his
suspicions. This he would send to Colonel Urqhart at the next station.

When he had finished, he read it, struck out a few words; folded the
envelope; returned it to his pocket, and settled back in the seat to
reflect upon the tragic immutability of circumstance.




CHAPTER IV

HOUSE OF THE SWAYING COBRA


Trent, rested only by short naps on the way, stepped from the railway
carriage in the Cantonment Station, in Benares, and, after a ride past
dusty red brick barracks, reached the hotel--a series of small houses,
with one main building. To his disappointment he found no message from
Colonel Urqhart. Nor was Euan Kerth there. Mr. Kerth had arrived, he was
told, but was not in at present. Trent left word to be notified directly
Kerth returned, and went to his room, in one of the out-buildings.

Several hours later, refreshed by a sleep, washed and shaved, he seated
himself on the portico to wait for Euan Kerth. On one end, peddlers were
besieging a group of tourists; on the other, a girl with bronze-colored
hair sat reading, a native in a flowered chintz coat drowsing at her
feet. There was something slumberous and torpid in the scene. India,
like the world, relapsed into a lethargy after the tumult of war.

When he slipped his hand into his tunic pocket for his cheroots, he
found, instead of smokes, a hard, cold object. Withdrawing it, he
recognized, not without some surprise, the oval of coral he had found in
Manlove's hand. He remembered that Merriton had left it on the table in
his bungalow, and he had put it in his pocket with the intention of
returning it to the Head of Police before leaving Gaya. He would have to
send it back, now that a new complication had arisen--namely, the death
of Chatterjee; it might prove a valuable clue.

He studied it. Time had mellowed the design and smoothed the once-sharp
edges of the silver that rimmed the oval. Coral, he knew, was rarely
used for purposes of ornamentation in India. Too, the three-eyed deity,
a hideous figure, puzzled him, though he was by no means unversed in the
symbolism of the many religions of the land. Coral and silver. The
combination haunted him, was linked with an illusive fragment in his
memory. It came to him suddenly. Tibet. Coral and silver from Tibet.
While he was stationed at Darjeeling he frequently saw men from Phari
and Gyangste with coral and silver ornaments.

He continued to stare at the oval. The ugly face of the three-eyed
little god seemed to mock him; challenged him to fathom the power that
impelled these waves of mystery that lapped up and touched him, and
receded with their secrets. It brought a vision, too, of the hushed room
at Gaya.

That was a hurt which only the ointment of time could heal. The tissues
of human relationship mend slowly. His friendship for Manlove had taken
seed deeply, in a measure unconsciously, nurtured by months of intimate
companionship; and now his sensitive nature tingled and throbbed at the
violence with which it had been wrenched from its roots.

With the murder looming in his thoughts, his mission shrank. Adventure!
Fabulous isles!... Queer how last night's stars lose their fever and
passion when they become a memory. But perhaps the work would distract
him. At least it was different, and in his present mental condition the
very thought of medicines and human ills was intolerable.

Shadows lengthened between the buildings; the peddlers and tourists
disappeared; the bronze-haired girl had closed her book and lay back in
the chair, staring into space. Upon her he unconsciously focussed his
attention, and as he contemplated her, impersonally and as he would an
inanimate object, she shifted her eyes to him, stared coolly, turned
away, rose and entered her room.

And Trent forgot her.

A few minutes later, as he was at the point of making another inquiry
about Euan Kerth, he saw a man leave the central building and move
toward the portico where he sat--a man who approached and spoke his
name.

"Major Trent?"

They shook hands. Kerth was an immaculately dressed fellow, with smooth,
olive-tinted features. A rather Mephistophelian face. A small black
mustache, carefully waxed, helped the suggestion. His hair was
shiny-black, as were his eyes, and his dark complexion was only
emphasized by white twills and a white felt hat. His fingers were long
and slim, almost too well-shaped to be masculine. Something very fine
and sleek, Gallic rather than Anglo-Saxon--that was Euan Kerth.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting," he apologized in a
too-long-in-the-tropics drawl. "I've been with the Commissioner. You
arrived this afternoon?"

Trent nodded. He saw behind the assumed languorous air a keen, searching
glance; Kerth was measuring him as he was measuring Kerth. He came to
the tentative decision that he wasn't quite sure he liked him.

"Sit down, won't you?"--perfunctorily.

Kerth dropped with lazy grace into a chair and sat with his legs
sprawled wide apart. He proffered some of the blackest cheroots Trent
had ever seen.

"My Tamils," he explained, with an indolent smile. When the smokes were
lighted, he asked: "Just how much do you know of this little party we're
about to start, major?"

"As little as possible, I think."

Kerth puffed on his cheroot. "Ever heard of this woman who styles
herself the Swaying Cobra?"

"Never."

"Neither have I." A pause. "Of course you've heard of Chavigny?"

Trent's answer was a smile.

"We almost got him the other day, in Delhi. We traced him to a native
serai--Queen's Serai; but he eluded us. Left only a few blood-stains on
the floor of his room. Blood-stains sometimes tell a lot, but they
didn't in this instance. But Chavigny's bottled up in Delhi. Yet"--Kerth
smiled--"yet I wouldn't be at all surprised if he pulled the wool over
the Department's eyes. Of course you think he's involved in this
affair?"

Trent's eyes followed the spiral of smoke from his cheroot.

"He might be," was the slow reply, "and, again, he might not. What does
Sir Francis think?"

A wry smile. "He rarely confides in the Department. At any rate, I don't
fancy we'll encounter this Chavigny. You know he's been running at large
under the name of Leroux--Gilbert Leroux. Remember that; might be useful
some time. If you want my opinion--But I'm sure you don't. Now, as for
this Swaying Cobra--"

But he was interrupted as a porter appeared and salaamed.

"Major Trent Sahib?" he enquired.

Trent nodded and received an envelope with his name written upon it.

"Pardon me"--this to Kerth as he tore off the end.

The missive was written in English, in feminine handwriting, and carried
a faint, illusive odor--that of sandalwood.

     GREETINGS!

     I, the Swaying Cobra, welcome you to the Sacred City and beg
     the honor of a visit from you to-night. If you will be at the
     shop of Abdul Kerim, in the Sadar Bazaar, at eight-thirty
     o'clock, my trusted servant, Chandra Lal, will meet you and
     conduct you to my humble dwelling.

     Your faithful servant,

     THE SWAYING COBRA

When he had read it, he handed it to Kerth, who let his eyes run down
the page and smiled.

"Suppose we move to the dining-hall?" the latter suggested. "I'll finish
what I have to say there."

Trent assented, and they rose and left the veranda.

As the purple-tongued shadows lapped them up, the last of the row of
doors opened, and the girl with the bronze hair came out and moved after
them toward the dining-hall.


2

"In other words," said Kerth, as a soft-shod "boy" arrayed the meal
before them, "you are to deliver yourself blindfolded into the hands of
this Swaying Cobra, and if she says go to the moon, then, according to
the Old Man, you're to go there, without questioning."

Trent listened, apparently abstractedly, for he was studying the
amazingly clear profile of the girl at the next table. Punkahs, worked
by electricity, disturbed straying tendrils of reddish-gold hair.

"The woman mystifies me as much as the affair itself," Kerth went on.
"Who is she? It's evident the Old Man trusts her--to a degree. From her
name, 'Swaying Cobra,' I'd judge she's a nautch, yet, on the other hand,
I'm inclined to think she's above that. Fact is, the Old Man was too
infernally secretive about her; seemed afraid he'd tell me something.
However, he isn't absolutely sure of her. If he was, I wouldn't be
here."

A tourist, was Trent's conclusion. (For he was still studying the girl.)
She choked over the greasy, peppery curry concoction. A moment later her
soft voice floated to him as she spoke to her "boy."

"Confound him! Is he listening to me?" Kerth wondered. Then aloud, "My
part is this: I'm to rig myself up as a native--a Rajput--and accompany
you as your servant. My name will be Rawul Din."

Trent's eyes turned sharply from the girl to Kerth. He noticed,
incidentally, that the latter's hair would need no lamp-black to make it
like a native's.

"Suppose she objects?"

Kerth smiled--an expression that was almost sinister because of his
dark, satanic features.

"That's the point: she _must not_ object!" After a pause he resumed:
"The Old Man wanted that firmly impressed. In some way or other she must
be forced to agree to that condition. You're the diplomat of this
expedition; that means it's up to you. So said the Old Man. I'm to be
the connecting link between you and the Department."

"Is that keeping faith with her?"

"According to the letter of the contract, yes; morally, no. As I
understand it, she demanded your word of honor you wouldn't
'communicate' any information. Therefore, you must not; what I don't
hear and learn for myself is the Department's loss. Neat way of beating
the devil around the bush, isn't it?"

It was not visible upon Trent's face whether or not he agreed with
Kerth. However, his next question hinted negatively.

"If she discovers you're not Rawul Din, the Rajput, what then?"

Kerth shrugged. "_Adrushtam!_" he said, which means, "It is Fate!" Then
he lighted a cheroot and leaned upon his elbows, a queer smile lurking
in the corners of his mouth. "It means this, major," he continued. "If
she's loyal, as the Old Man believes, she will either be very angry and
throw over the whole business, or overlook it and simply demand that
espionage be discontinued. But"--his face, veiled by smoke, looked more
satanic than ever--"if she isn't loyal, then--well, we'll both
probably...." He finished with a lift of his eyebrows.

Trent watched the bronze-haired girl as she left the dining-hall--as did
others, for she was a type to draw eyes.

"To-night's the test," Kerth observed aloud. "If you succeed in forcing
your point, good. Otherwise, I return to Delhi." He looked at his watch.
"It's close to seven now, and my metamorphosis will require some time.
Shall we adjourn?"

They did.


3

Before Trent left his room he placed the oval of coral in his handbag;
then he went out on the portico to smoke and watch the stars gather
about the cleaving silhouette of a church steeple across from the hotel
grounds.

At one end of the veranda two shadowy forms were conversing; a woman's
voice drifted to him, a soft voice that slurred and caressed the words
it spoke. It was vaguely familiar, and in a detached manner he
identified it with the girl of the dining-hall.

The phosphorescent hands of his wrist-watch crept to five minutes to
eight before Euan Kerth put in his appearance. A heavy footstep
announced a turbaned man. He halted in the light cast from a window;
executed a salaam. He wore white breeches, an alpaca coat and a white
shawl. A huge turban shadowed a brown face and a carefully waxed
mustache. Had it not been for that and the slim hands, Trent would not
have recognized him.

"_Salaam, Huzoor!_" was his greeting. "Is the _Huzoor_ ready?"--this in
the manner of a native trying to affect an Oxford accent.

Trent nodded and rose, and Kerth fell in behind.

"There's no need to take a gharry," said Kerth. "The Sadar Bazaar isn't
far."

Their walk led them past the dusty red brick barracks that Trent had
seen that afternoon, and within a short while they reached the Sadar
Bazaar, where, after many inquiries, they were directed to the shop of
Abdul Kerim--a dingy little hole in a narrow lane. A native was lounging
in the doorway, but at their approach he straightened up and salaamed.

"Major Trent Sahib?" he queried respectfully, with a grin that displayed
betel-stained teeth. "I am Chandra Lal." Then he looked inquisitively at
Kerth. "Who is this, Sahib?"

"My servant."

Chandra Lal shook his head. "I was instructed to bring only Major Trent
Sahib."

"But it is my wish that my bearer accompany me."

The native shifted uncomfortably. "The sahib's wish is law; yet if I do
other than I have been bidden I will be a disobedient servant." Another
glimpse of scarlet teeth; a rather nervous smile. "So what shall I do,
Sahib?"

"My man shall go--_maloom hai_!"--sternly. "I will be responsible to
your mistress."

Chandra Lal saluted. "_Achcha_, Sahib! I have a carriage in the street!"

At the mouth of the lane a landau was waiting, and when Trent and Kerth
were seated on cushioned springs, Chandra Lal flicked his whip.

Out of the Cantonment they were whirled, and eastward into the old city,
where constricted streets refused passage to any vehicle. They drew up
by an oval-shaped, tree-grown expanse, and the landau was left in charge
of a man who was waiting for that particular purpose. Then began a
journey on foot that was memorable to the two Englishmen because of the
muddle of dim, narrow highways into which it took them. Chandra Lal
leading, they percolated through streets and passages that stank of
every unpleasantness known to Indian cities; mere clefts where the stars
swam at distances immeasurable; stairs, tunneled lanes and alleys, and
amidst ramshackle, tumbled buildings and temples and shrines.

Trent's sense of direction was completely baffled when they came at
length to a quarter where the houses were more pretentious--a long
street of several-storied dwellings, of projecting eaves, of white walls
and of latticed windows that hinted at the lurking mystery of zenana and
harem.

Into one of these houses the native guided them, up a short flight of
stairs and into a dark room. The air was fresh and cool, fanned by
invisible punkahs. A snap brought on electric lights, and Trent blinked
about him; blinked and suppressed a smile, for he realized the entrance
into the room while it was yet unlighted was done for purely dramatic
effect.

His eyes, roving around the chamber, missed not a detail; a chamber
wholly amazing and incredible to the Westerner, who rarely, if ever,
sees into the houses of the wealthy, high caste Hindus. Trent, however,
(to whom India was an open book, as much as it ever will be to any white
man) was only mildly surprised. The chandeliers were crystal, tinted
amber by the yellow lights. Brassware and gold brocade (the latter hung
to hide all doors except the one by which they had entered) introduced
an effect of rich browns and richer golds; and a spire of incense
uncoiled from a brazen bowl to be dispelled by punkahs and leave the
heavy fragrance of musk swimming in the air.

"My mistress will join you presently," announced Chandra Lal. "Be
seated, Sahib, and you will be served with refreshments!"

Trent flung himself upon a divan pushed against the wall; silken
cushions yielded to his weight and clung to him caressingly. Kerth
dropped cross-legged at his feet.

Before Chandra Lal made his exit he drew the gold-hued draperies
opposite where Trent reclined, drew bamboo blinds and disclosed a white
arch that framed a portion of a garden. Stone steps sank into a
courtyard where rustling shrubs wove shadows about a fountain; falling
water played flute-notes on a tiled basin; stars scraped a white wall.

"She's no novice, this cobra," thought Trent. "Wonder if she's anything
like her lair?"

"... wine," thought Kerth. "And we must drink it ... unless--yes, guile
for guile."

Suddenly, from behind gold curtains, came the faint whispering of music.
Trent smothered an insurgent desire to laugh. Incongruity, the essence
of India! The music was made by a gramophone! Presently he recognized
the tune--Tschaikowsky's "Serenade Melancholique"!

He glanced furtively at Kerth. The latter's face was expressionless, his
slim hands toying with the tassel of a cushion. Trent sensed in his
attitude the same wild desire to laugh that possessed him.

"Steady!" he mentally encouraged himself, fixing his gaze upon a piece
of brassware close by--a _lota_ overlaid with copper and chased with
mythological figures. "Hmm.... Half as old as India, I'll wager," ran
his musings. "Siva--who the deuce is the other chap?"

Gold brocades parted and a turbaned servant glided out silently with a
tray, which he placed on a pearl-inlaid table. Claret-hued wine glowed
in twin beaten-brass goblets, rich as melted rubies. One he passed to
Trent, the other to Kerth. Then he made a soundless departure.

Inwardly, Trent smiled. And drained his goblet. The gramophone ceased;
only the music of the fountain stole to him, with a breath of fragrant
shrubs that made the incense seem sensuous and heavy.

Again the brass _lota_ claimed his gaze; held it until he heard a sigh
from Kerth and looked down to see the latter's eyelids droop, to see his
eyes close and his chin sink into his white shawl.

"Damn!" he swore, almost inaudibly, and his hand sprang to Kerth's
shoulder and gripped it none too gently. "Rawul Din!"

As he pronounced the name, Kerth fell against the cushions of the divan,
drugged in sleep. Some one laughed--a laugh that rippled low in the
throat. Trent did not look toward the sound immediately, although that
was his first impulse. He let his eyes turn naturally and rest, at first
incredulously, upon the woman who had entered and who stood regarding
him with a mocking smile. The blood flooded his temples; after a second
it receded, leaving him cold, numb, with a tingling sense of unreality.
He did not rise; merely stared; and presently forced a smile.

"Sarojini Nanjee," he said, trying to put down the emotions that
declared insurrection against his will. And he repeated, "Sarojini
Nanjee, the Swaying Cobra?" He smiled. "I confess, I never once
suspected."

Outlined against the gold draperies she stood, dressed as nautches
dress, only with more richness and without the customary head-scarf. Her
garments were full and as shimmery as cobwebs in the sun, and confined
at the waist with a goldcloth girdle that matched the tint of her
marvelously smooth skin. Her eyes burned under heavy lids, burned and
mocked him; and by their feverish brightness he understood that this
meeting wrought in her an excitement equal to his, although she was
prepared for it.

"I did not intend that you should suspect," she told him as she moved to
the divan where he reclined. "I knew you would not come if you did."

Not until then did he rise. He smiled, and the smile lingered as she
bent over Kerth and drew back the lids from his eyes.

"Why did you disobey me by bringing this man?" she demanded, and,
assured that Kerth was drugged, dropped gracefully upon the cushions.

"Why did you drug him?" he countered.

The blood still throbbed at his temples. The irony of it, that they
should meet again! And on this mission! She was as beautiful as ever.
But the lure of her eyes--eyes as purple as moist violets--of her smooth
golden skin and lithe body, no longer affected him. All that was in the
sepulcher of the past. A memory that was like the taste of stale wine
upon the tongue.

"I put a sleeping powder in his wine because what I am going to say is
for only _your_ ears," she replied.

"And you're called the Swaying Cobra," he mused, more to himself than to
the woman, "or did another write that note?"

"I am the Swaying Cobra." A pause. She studied him from under
half-lowered lids. "I dance for those I love. I have only venom for
those I hate."

The Swaying Cobra! He almost laughed. That was a good symptom, that he
could be amused. A pretty viper! Resolving to let her open the subject
of his visit, he allowed his eyes to wander about the room.

"Here I cease trying to be an Englishwoman," she said, perceiving his
inquisitive look. He did not fail to register the ring of bitterness
beneath that assertion. "In Jehelumpore and in Delhi it is different,
but here--here I am a Rajputni." Another pause. She laughed, and it was
not without a sting. "I know what you are thinking: that you will refuse
to work with me because--because of a foolish Anglo-Saxon
sentimentalism!"

She waited for him to respond; he did not.

"But why not forget that we ever knew each other--and did we ever really
know each other? Why not regard this as an impersonal affair?
Individuals do not count where an empire is concerned."

Trent smiled discreetly and held his tongue.

"I bear you no rancor," she went on. "On the contrary, I recognize and
respect the qualities that prompted me to select you for this
mission--imagination, wits, honor! Yes, for these things I chose
you--forgetting that when we last saw each other it was not under the
most pleasant circumstances. What is dead is dead."

She fell silent, and he spoke for the first time.

"You've anticipated," he said. "I was sent here to work with you and I
intend to. I've already forgot that we ever met before to-night. What is
dead is dead."

The woman smiled--but had she known what was in his mind at that moment
she might not have been so pleased. However, she did not. And she lay
back among the brocaded cushions, quite at ease, her hands clasped
behind her head, chin tilted, eyes looking upon him as a cat's eyes look
upon the mouse it is about to play with.

All of which did not pass unobserved by Trent, who pictured, instead of
a woman lying upon the gold silks with her head lifted, a lithe,
beautiful cobra with its black hood raised above the cushions; pictured
her thus, and returned her gaze with frankness and a smile that disarmed
her.

She clapped her hands and a servant brought wine. "Were you well
informed as to the terms of the agreement?" she questioned, handing him
a cup of claret-hued liquor.

"I believe so."

"That when you leave this house you are no longer Major Arnold Trent,
but another--a well of secrets from which no man can draw, and as mute
as the Buddha at Sarnath?"

He demonstrated that he could do so by remaining silent. She resumed:

"And you will do as I direct?"

"To a reasonable extent," he modified.

"To a reasonable extent," she repeated, and nodded. "And if you do not
understand a thing, you will trust to my judgment that it is better you
do not understand it."

"Then I'm to deliver myself blindfolded?" he put in, remembering Kerth's
words of the early evening and glancing involuntarily toward the drugged
figure.

"You will be told all that it is consistent to tell." She took a sip of
wine and surveyed him. "What is your first question?"

He thrust back the query that came to his tongue and reverted to his
conservative tactics. He sat as mute and expressionless as the Buddha at
Sarnath. When a moment had passed, she announced:

"You would like to know how I know what I know about the jewels; is it
not so?"

"I would like to know _what_ you know first," he corrected.

She laughed--that laugh that rippled low in her throat.

"What I know is locked away safely until the time is ripe to bring it
forth. Meanwhile, I will say this much: the jewels have not left India."

"Then they _will_?"

He flashed out the question with the air of a fencer thrusting at a weak
point in his opponent's guard. But foil met foil. She replied:

"Did I say so, O wise one? Again your thoughts are as clear as a crystal
pool. You say to yourself, 'Such a hoard of jewels cannot be smuggled
out of India; she is trying to confuse me.' But nay! The gods of India
are many and I swear by all of them that every gem that was stolen, down
to the last pearl, can be spirited out of India at any moment it is so
desired--and under the very eyes, nay, the protection, of your Secret
Service!"

If this statement surprised him, his face did not betray it; he
disconcerted her by looking interestedly at the brass _lota_. His
indifference drew fire.

"I said it could be done!" she declared. "Whether it will be is for you
to learn. Oh, you do not deceive me! I know you are consumed with
curiosity, under that shell of yours! Your Raj, well fed and growing fat
with wisdom, thinks it has a clue. Chavigny! The Raj thinks Chavigny is
involved!"

She leaned closer; peered intently into his eyes. The illusive fragrance
of sandalwood from her hair was not calculated to make him feel any more
at ease. But he did not stir nor wink an eyelid under the close
scrutiny.

"Chavigny!" she mocked. "Chavigny, the famous thief! Chavigny, whom some
silly Secret Service man tracked to Indore--and lost! Chavigny, driven
into hiding in Delhi! Pah! Let the Raj search for Chavigny, let it turn
Delhi inside out--while we look on and laugh! You--you have imagination!
I can guess what is in your mind, for I, too, have imagination! You have
pictured a gigantic criminal organization--a gem syndicate, let us
say--a flock of jewel vultures who have swooped down and plucked clean
the bones of the empire! And perhaps you even think Chavigny the leader,
yes?"

She smiled, quite pleased with herself. Then once more she leaned close
to him.

"What would you think if I told you there is such a band--an order, we
will call it--of jewel vultures who have flown away with riches worth a
dozen rajah's ransoms? What would you think? Only"--she paused
dramatically--"we will omit Chavigny, for if there be such an order he
is not its head nor in it!"

He drew out his smokes; passed them to her. She refused, and he lighted
a cigarette and flicked the match through the archway. Then he
suggested:

"Aren't all cards to go on the table?"

She smiled wisely. "No, I can play them more effectively one by one,"
was her retort.

His brain was working swiftly yet carefully. When he had selected his
words he uttered them.

"Presuming there is such an order, as you call it, we'll go further and
say that you, by some unguessable means, have become a member; and are
working with them for the Raj."

She looked her approval. "Presumably"--with a nod. That word was a key
to further knowledge.

"Then it would seem logical, if I'm to work with you, for me to be
initiated into the mysteries of this order--become a member, in other
words."

"Go on," she encouraged.

"So the purpose of this visit, I take it, is for me to learn the 'Open
Sesame' of the order."

And having said that much, he realized it was sufficient and relapsed
into quiet to let her do the rest of the talking.

"You have already proved that I chose well," she announced. "But before
I go on you must give me your word of honor that all I have said and
will say, all that occurs until I release you from the promise, will
never be repeated--by word or writing."

"I give it," he returned quietly.

She leaned over and deftly drew back the lids from Kerth's eyes; Trent
caught a fleeting glimpse of the whites.

"To-morrow you leave Benares," she directed, again assured. "You will
take a train in the morning for Bombay and go to an address which I
shall give you; and do as I instruct." Her hand slipped under her waist
and brought out a long blank envelope. "In this envelope are your
instructions. I must have your promise not to read them until you are on
the train to Bombay; then destroy them immediately."

He inclined his head and placed the envelope in his pocket.

"You said that when I leave this house I am no longer Major Trent," he
reminded.

"You are Robert Tavernake, a jeweller, from London. All that is
contained in the instructions."

"Including the name of the order?"--his curiosity escaping him.

For answer she clapped her hands and curtains parted to admit a servant
with a black lacquer tray. From the tray she lifted a small box; opened
it as the servant padded out.

"This is the symbol of the order"--removing a string of beads.

Had Trent felt any hesitancy about plunging into this blind mission it
would have vanished at sight of the beads--reddish coral beads, with an
oval-shaped pendant overlaid with the silver image of a three-eyed god!
The only emotion he displayed was to moisten his lips; but it required
all the force he could marshal to check the questions that flooded to
his tongue, to mask his surprise and reach with a steady hand for the
beads. Despite his control, it seemed for a moment that he would betray
his nervousness.

"... the Order of the Falcon," he heard her say. "See--" She inserted
her fingernail under the silver band that finished the coral; the
pendant opened, like a locket. The interior was silver and a name was
engraved upon the back--"Robert Tavernake."

She snapped the oval shut and he took the beads; twisted them carelessly
around his fingers, until the deep reddish coral seemed like huge drops
of blood welling from his hand. As he caught the significance of the
illusion, he looked up quickly and spoke.

"Am I to carry these?"

She nodded.

His thoughts swung back to the oval that lay in his handbag at the
hotel.

"Is it customary to have the name engraved--like this?"--with a gesture.

After the words left his mouth he realized he had made an indiscreet
move. She looked at him suspiciously, then answered:

"Customary, yes--among those who possess such beads."

He did not fail to grasp the insinuation that her speech bore. He
glanced down at the beads in his hand, casually enough; toyed with them;
slipped them into his pocket. His heart had not resumed its normal beat,
but the tension had eased. He fastened his eyes upon the relaxed figure
of Kerth and--

"It will be permissible, I presume," he began, as though the sight of
the turbaned head suggested the question, "to take my bearer along?"

Did a smile flicker across her eyes, he wondered, or was it only his
fancy? The answer came decisively.

"It is scarcely practicable."

"Why?"--a shade too artlessly.

"Servants have eyes to see and ears to hear."

Something in her tone caused him to wonder if she had penetrated under
Kerth's masquerade. All the while he was subconsciously thinking of the
mate to the oval in his pocket.

"What harm in taking him to Bombay?" he pursued, conscious that he was
losing ground.

Again he could have taken oath that he saw the shadow of a smile in her
eyes.

"To Bombay?" she repeated thoughtfully. "No"--slowly--"no, I see no
objection. I concede that." But he did not like the manner in which she
said it.

"Conditionally, however," she added. "He must leave to-night. When he
reaches Bombay let him reserve a room for you at the Taj Mahal--and
wait."

Trent was discreet enough to accept her terms without question. His eyes
returned to Kerth. He saw him stir slightly, heard a sigh leave his
lips. The woman, too, saw and heard.

"He is awakening," she observed. "I shall summon Chandra Lal to guide
you back to your hotel."

Again she clapped her hands; again the servant appeared. She spoke to
him swiftly, not in English nor Hindustani, but in a tongue Trent did
not understand, and the man vanished with a salaam.

Sarojini rose; Trent, too, got up.

"_Salaam, Burra Dakktar_," she said, lapsing into Hindustani and
bringing the visit to an end. "I, the Swaying Cobra--who dance for those
I love, but have only venom for those I hate--bid thee farewell until
the gods bring us together again. And may that be soon!"

She smiled and contemplated him, once more as a cat contemplating prey;
smiled with eyes that spoke mockery as she suffered him to salute her
fingers; and the last picture he had of her was as she crossed the
golden room and parted the golden curtains, vanishing like a cobra into
its lair.

He turned then to Kerth and shook him. The latter was slow to awaken.
Lids lifted to reveal rheumy eyes, but as he recognized Trent sleep was
wiped away, like a cobweb. His gaze swept the room; he rose unsteadily.

"I am ready, Sahib!" announced Chandra Lal, appearing in the doorway.

Kerth opened his mouth, as if to speak; shut it; shot Trent a cryptic
glance.

"Come." This from Trent, laconically.

Thus they left the house of the Swaying Cobra, left it with its vain,
old-world atmosphere and its golden room; re-traversed the labyrinth of
streets; got into the landau; whirled toward the Cantonment.


4

Not until they reached the hotel, until Chandra Lal flicked his whip and
rolled away into the gloom, did either of the Englishmen speak.

"So you've known her before!" observed Kerth as they approached Trent's
room.

Trent said, without surprise: "You heard?"

"Everything.... I'll drop over and find out about the Bombay trains;
join you in a moment."

As Kerth moved toward the central building, Trent unlocked the door.
After he switched on the light, his first act was to open his bag and
insert his hand into the pocket where he had left the piece of coral.
His fingers trembled, for he felt that he was questioning for the
identity of Manlove's slayer; trembled--and groped in an empty pocket.

For several seconds he stood motionless, trying to adjust himself to the
situation. When he came into full sentience, he looked carefully through
the bag. He even searched his pockets. But the oval was not to be
found.... Some one had entered his room; stolen it. The realization
burned like acid into his brain. But if--

His mental inquest was cut short as a knock announced Kerth.

"Message for you," said the latter, extending a telegram.

Trent hastily tore it open; read:

"Party fitting description bought ticket for Mughal Sarai last night.
_Khansammah_ at dak bungalow says she asked questions about you and
Manlove. Following up clue. Nothing new. Urqhart."

A sense of disappointment smote him. First Chatterjee; then the oval;
now this! A series of blind alleys.

He applied a match to the telegram and watched it burn.

"Train leaves in an hour and a half," Kerth volunteered, taking a seat
and staring inquisitively at the ashes as they fluttered to the floor.

"How'd you suspect the wine?" Trent enquired, unbuttoning his tunic.

"It's my business to suspect. I emptied the cup under the divan and,
afterwards, expected any minute to see it seeping out. As it is, I'm
not sure she didn't smell a mouse. Gad! The way she pulled back my
eyelids!"

Trent hung his tunic on a chair. "Don't object if I get comfortable, do
you?" he asked. "Rather done up; awake all last night, you know."

Kerth waved his slim hand. "Go ahead; I'll have to pack up shortly."
Then, as Trent undressed: "This Sarojini, she's a shrewd one, major, and
I don't envy you the task of matching blades with her. However, you
gained a point on her to-night. I was rather surprised that she gave in
so easily; not so sure, either, that there isn't a trick in it." He
laughed easily. "Oh, I'll wager she has a bag of tricks! And do you
think she was telling the truth when she said Chavigny has nothing to do
with this Order of the Falcon?"

Trent, stripped but for one garment, propped himself against two
pillows, pencil and pad in hand.

"I'm sure I don't know," he returned, making a notation. "Pardon me for
taking a few notes; 'fraid I'll forget 'em. No, don't go.... About
Chavigny: why should she say he isn't, if he is?"

"To confuse you." Kerth drew out a silver cigarette case. "Have a smoke?
And what d'you suppose she meant by saying the jewels could be spirited
out of India under the protection of the S. S.?" Kerth searched from
pocket to pocket for a match. "Have you a light, major?"

Trent's hand moved involuntarily to his side; then he motioned toward
his tunic.

"In the pocket."

And he continued to write as Kerth reached into the pocket of his coat.
He read the notes he had made:

     Who the deuce would want the pendant? Answer: if a name is
     engraved inside, it would be very valuable to the owner. Yet
     the fact that the coral was found in M.'s hand doesn't prove
     conclusively that its owner is the murderer.

He looked up as Kerth extended a lighted match, took it and held it to
his cheroot.

"Thanks"--briefly.

"Do you think," interrogated Kerth, "you could find her lair without a
guide?"

Trent smiled. "Hardly."

"I'd take oath that her man, Chandra Lal, led us along the same street
twice! Oh, she's a wily one! And the way she had us taken into the room
while it was dark!"

He puffed on his cheroot and Trent continued to jot down notes.

"Furthermore," Kerth drawled, "why doesn't she want you to read those
instructions until to-morrow? Some catch in it."

Conversation languished, and presently Kerth drew out his watch and
observed: "Nearly midnight. I'll have to be moving on."

He rose and extended his hand.

"I'll take a room at a native serai in Bombay--for atmosphere--and meet
you at the station. Until then, good luck!"

In the doorway he paused. He looked particularly satanic at that moment,
and again Trent was not quite sure that he liked him.

"Bombay, major!" were his parting words. And the door closed behind him.

Trent stared at the blank panels for a moment; then, while he ran his
fingers through his hair, he glanced over his notes:

     Something queer about this Chavigny. May not belong to Order,
     but he's not to be overlooked. Last alias was Gilbert Leroux,
     Kerth said. Kerth is a downy bird. Gilbert Leroux. Names mean
     nothing. Sarojini took particular pains to empress it upon me
     that Chavigny is _non compos mentis_. Therefore, he isn't. He's
     something. What? And--Sarojini is a connection of the Nawab of
     Jehelumpore--the jewels of the Nawab were among those stolen.
     Find out if she was in Jehelumpore at time of theft.

Then he tore off the slip of paper, crumpled it and held a corner to his
cheroot. When the blaze lapped up to his fingers he let the paper fall
to the floor, then swung his feet over the edge of the bed and reached
for his tunic. From the inside pocket he removed the long envelope
Sarojini Nanjee had given him. It was sealed and its white surface
invited inspection. He made a movement to open it; hesitated. Why not?
As Kerth suggested, there might be a trick--and he knew only too well
that she was not above chicanery. But he did not open it; slipped it
under his pillow.

A glance at his wrist-watch. He procured his revolver; snapped open the
breech; inspected the cartridges; clicked it shut; placed it beneath the
pillow with the envelope. Then he switched off the light and lay with
his cheroot's end glowing in the darkness.

The discovery of the symbol of the Order revealed another side to the
mystery surrounding Manlove's death, and during the ride back to the
hotel he had constructed a new theory--a theory that he reviewed now.
The analogy between the Swaying Cobra and the woman of the
cobra-bracelet did not escape him. One suggested the other. Surely it
was plausible to surmise that Sarojini was the veiled woman, although he
was at a loss to find a convincing motive for her presence at Gaya.
However, Colonel Urqhart's telegram stated that the woman had made
inquiries about him--and what other woman was interested? Further proof
was offered by the fact that the mysterious woman left Gaya on the night
of the tragedy for Mughal Sarai, the junction for Benares. Finally,
there was the coral pendant-stone. Sarojini had called it the "symbol"
of the Order; therefore, only a member of that mysterious band was
likely to possess it, and had not she admitted she was a member? And the
pendant-stone was stolen--evidently for the reason that engraved inside
was the name of its owner. Sarojini was in Benares; it was logical to
assume, then, that some one in her employ had entered his room and
removed the condemning evidence.

But, on the other hand, there were elements to upset this theory. Clues
indicated that Manlove was stabbed at the bungalow and carried to the
temple-ruins. Could a woman do that? Under the stress of circumstances,
yes. But why move the body--unless to hide it? Or had Manlove been
mortally wounded at the house and gone of his own volition to the ruins
before his death? Possible--but he could conjecture no cause for such
action.

And there was Chatterjee. Since the receipt of the telegram telling of
his death, Trent was of the opinion that the native knew something about
the crime and for that reason was killed. Had Chatterjee gone to the
bungalow that night, grief-crazed and believing Trent responsible for
his child's death, to administer primitive justice? Had he witnessed the
crime and fled? Of course, there was the possibility that Chatterjee's
death might have been a coincidence--the termination of a quarrel
between him and another native. Yet Trent was not inclined to lay great
importance upon this, as he considered, meager explanation and his
thoughts returned to the woman.

He could fix the guilt upon neither Sarojini Nanjee nor Chatterjee. Of
the two, he least suspected the native. He knew the woman to be
unscrupulous--whether to the point of murder he was uncertain. True, it
may not have been deliberate murder. She might have gone to the bungalow
for (again) a mysterious reason; might have been discovered by
Manlove.... But the glove did not exactly fit. Nor had he any concrete
reason to believe her the woman of the cobra-bracelet--or to believe the
woman of the cobra-bracelet involved. That the latter had worn a heavy
veil, surrounded her, in his eyes, with an aura of mystery. This he
realized, and gave her the benefit of the doubt.

Nevertheless, the coral pendant linked Sarojini with the crime;
suggested that even though she did not actually commit the deed, she was
undoubtedly implicated.

All of which did not clear the mystery; instead, bewildered him the more
and kept suspicion, like the needle of a compass, wavering between
Chatterjee, Sarojini Nanjee, the woman of the cobra-bracelet (if she
were not Sarojini) and a person unknown.

His cheroot had burned low, and he got up and flung it away, and made
sure the door was secure before he returned to the bed; then he relaxed
and lay staring up into the darkness--darkness that was hotter because
of the thick mosquito-curtain--until he fell asleep.


5

Trent returned to consciousness gradually, as a diver rising from the
bottom of the sea. He was aware of another presence in the room before
he was completely awake, and he strained at the threads of sleep that
still entangled him.

The first proof of a presence in the hot, dark void that enclosed him
was the sound of repressed breathing. He felt, now at the helm of his
faculties, a movement under his pillow--realized it was a _hand_, a hand
that withdrew stealthily, that belonged to a dark figure crouched
outside the mosquito-curtain. A turban and shoulders were silhouetted
upon the gray rectangle of a window. He sensed eyes upon him, cat-like
eyes that saw despite the darkness.

With a stealth that proved that the intruder was no novice, but of the
school of thieves that graduate well-nigh perfect adepts in the art of
silent movement, the silhouette receded from the bed. Trent realized
that in all probability his revolver had been placed beyond reach;
attack by surprise was impossible because of the mosquito-curtain. So he
lay there, undecided, scarcely breathing; and, after a moment, he let
his hand slide slowly, cautiously, toward his pillow.

The silhouette halted; was motionless.

Trent's hand touched the seam of the pillow and pressed underneath. It
encountered steel.

The silhouetted turban was moving again--toward the door.

Trent gripped the revolver. He turned on his side noisily and sighed, as
though in sleep. At the sounds, the dark figure stepped swiftly to one
side of the window, thus vacating the gray rectangle.

Trent waited no longer. He raised the mosquito-curtain and jumped. And
the thing he apprehended happened. His head and shoulders became
enmeshed in the netting. Cursing his awkwardness, he rent the fabric
with a downward sweep of his hand. As he leaped through the opening, he
saw the door flung wide, saw the man plunge out.

He pressed the trigger--and it snapped harmlessly.

"Damn!" he spat out, knowing the weapon had been tampered with.

Again he pressed the trigger; again that absurd click.

Meanwhile the door slammed. The crash awakened him to the fact that the
thief was escaping, and he dashed across the room and threw open the
door. As he emerged, a figure disappeared behind the far corner.

He rushed in pursuit, his bare feet padding upon the stone flags. At the
end of the portico he halted sharply, almost colliding with something in
white--a something that appeared, as if by magic, from behind a suddenly
opened door; that came to a standstill as abruptly as he, and gasped.

"Oh!"

Words died in Trent's throat. The girl, whom he recognized as she of the
bronze hair, wore a long white garment, and her hair fell in heavy
braids over her shoulders; her hands were at her throat.

For a moment they stood and stared, both speechless. Then:

"Oh!" she repeated, with a hysterical little laugh. "You frightened me!
I woke up and--" She swallowed with difficulty. Her eyes dropped to her
nightdress, she threw a significant look toward him and darted into her
room.

Not until he heard the key turn in the lock did he remember the very
substantial reason for his presence on the portico--and then that reason
was nowhere in sight, but was, he surmised, at a safe distance,
laughing at the awkwardness of all sahibs in general and one sahib in
particular.

His face burning, and not altogether from the heat, he returned to his
room. The glowing hands of his wrist-watch pointed to nearly two
o'clock.

When he switched on the light it shone on six cartridges lying upon the
table--cartridges that deft fingers had removed from his revolver and
left to mock him. It was no mystery how the thief had managed to get in,
for he knew that entrance could be effected with the aid of a master
key, but it did puzzle him that neither his money nor the contents of
his bag were touched. He suspected, however, now that he had time to
review the affair, that the intruder had not come bent on loot, but
after one particular thing--and when he assured himself that that thing
was safe under his pillow, he guessed that his awakening had prevented
the man from making away with it.

As he held up the envelope, he was once more seized by an impulse to
open it. But, as before, he placed the tempting object under the pillow.
Then he returned the cartridges to the breech, and, after propping a
chair against the door, turned off the light and stretched himself upon
the bed.

Again a wave of mystery had lapped up and touched him, and receded
without leaving a hint of the power that energized it. He could not
suspect Sarojini Nanjee, for he saw no reason why she should have the
envelope stolen. Other hands were at work.

But thoughts and questions did not harry him long. He felt certain that
he need not fear another intrusion that night, and when drowsiness
returned he yielded to it.


6

The next morning at _burra hazri_, or "big breakfast," he found himself
searching the dining-hall for the bronze-haired girl; but she was not
there, nor did she appear during the meal.

When he returned to his room he discovered a letter under the door, and
tore it open with quickened interest as he recognized the handwriting
and inhaled the delicate fragrance of sandalwood.

     GREETINGS!

     You will no doubt be surprised when I inform you that instead
     of going to Bombay, you will go to Calcutta. The address of the
     place to which you are to report is set forth in the packet I
     gave you, and which you, being a man of honor, have not read
     ere you receive this. I told you Bombay last night because one
     can never be sure there are no ears listening, even in one's
     own house.

     Your bearer, Rawul Din (who, I assure you, is worthy of the
     confidence you impose in him) will by this time be on his way
     to Bombay, which inconvenience to you I regret exceedingly.
     However, you shall have a servant. One Tambusami, an excellent
     bearer, will meet you in Calcutta. Regarding your own man,
     Rawul Din: he is, I am sure, a most obedient servant and will
     carry out your instructions by waiting in Bombay.

     Meanwhile, I trust you will have a most pleasant journey and
     will grow in both wisdom and prosperity.

     Your humble servant,

     SAROJINI NANJEE

When Trent finished reading the letter he smiled. He felt no anger, nor
even chagrin; he was amused; he could picture with what satisfaction she
penned that missive. She was as full of tricks as a street-juggler, this
Swaying Cobra. Whether she discovered Kerth's true identity or only
suspected he might act as a listening-post for the Intelligence
Department, he did not know; he knew only that Sarojini Nanjee had
outwitted the Government in the first move of the game.

The remainder of the morning he spent in making arrangements for his
departure. While he was having his luggage removed from his room he saw
the bronze-haired girl--a glimpse of white and gold as she crossed the
portico. She did not even glance at him.

Two-thirty, with a sun glaring down implacably upon the dusty
Cantonment, found him pacing the platform of the railway station.
Suddenly he caught a glimmer of bronze, a familiar face among many
unfamiliar ones. It may have been the advent of the train, roaring up in
a cloud of heat, that made her turn quickly--and it may not. She hurried
into a carriage, followed by a porter in a flowered chintz coat.

As the train puffed out, Trent drew from his pocket the envelope
Sarojini Nanjee had given him and tore off the end; read the closely
written pages; reread them; made a few notes; memorized certain
passages, and consigned the packet to ashes. One sentence stood out in
his brain, in raised lettering:

     ... Thursday night to the house of his Excellency the Mandarin
     Li Kwai Kung, in the Street of the River of the Moon, which is
     in the Chinese colony at Calcutta.

It was Wednesday now.




CHAPTER V

INTERLUDE


Calcutta was luxuriating in the amber and blue of a clear day when Trent
detrained in the Howrah Station the following morning; detrained as Mr.
Robert Tavernake of London, in light gray tweeds, instead of Major
Arnold Trent of Gaya, whose military trappings, with his identity, were
secreted in a trunk.

As he neared the front arches of the building, with a porter in tow, he
was hailed by a drill-clad officer.

"Hello, Trent!" exclaimed the uniformed one, whom he recognized as a
former messmate. "_Quo vadis_, you old mummy?"

Trent, not blind to the fact that he was being eyed by a native in
horn-rimmed spectacles and a pink turban, returned the greeting with a
polite smile.

"Sorry," he said; "You must be mistaken"--and walked on.

"Crazy?" wondered the surprised officer, "or am I?"

He stared at Trent's gray back and sunburnt neck--and he was not the
only one, for at least two others did.

As the porter put Trent's luggage into an automobile, the expected
happened: the spectacled, pink-turbaned native approached, beamed upon
him and spoke in suave tones, in English.

"You are Tavernake Sahib?"

Trent nodded. "Tambusami?"

The pink turban inclined forward as he salaamed. "I have a communication
for the Presence!" he announced, extending an envelope that distilled an
unmistakable perfume.

Trent did not open it, but thrust it into his pocket and instructed:

"Get in."

The motor car rolled across the Hoogly and deposited Trent and his
involuntarily acquired servant at a hotel off the Maidan. There he
dismissed his bearer.

"I sha'n't want you this morning," he told the pink-turbaned Tambusami,
resolving to experiment with him.

And the native departed with a most profound salaam.

A half hour later, over breakfast, Trent read the note from Sarojini
Nanjee. It wished him welcome to Calcutta and urged him to listen well
when he visited his Excellency the Mandarin Li Kwai Kung--"who lives in
that very poetic Street of the River of the Moon," as she put it. "I
regret that it will be impossible for me to see you in Calcutta," she
concluded. "Meanwhile, I trust you will find Tambusami an excellent
bearer."

"Hmm," he thought, "if she won't be able to see me in Calcutta, where
the deuce will she see me?"

Then he turned his attention to the "Daily Indian News," perused the
closely-set columns while he finished his meal, and, after breakfast,
set out for a stroll. He moved north along Chowringhee, past
green-grown gardens, and into a quarter where the streets swam in
intense white sunlight and men and women of every caste and color
pressed close to the flanks of harnessed beasts. It did not disturb him
in the least when a backward glance showed him a pink turban following
at a discreet distance; he smiled. When he had filled his pipe, he
turned toward the riverfront. He felt rather in the mood for a tramp, so
he increased his pace--strode on. He reached the Hoogly Bridge; followed
Harrison Road. After an hour of steady walking he of the pink turban
showed signs of weakening. Trent, perspiring freely yet not
uncomfortable, suddenly plunged into a side street, made a series of
turns and came out, eventually, near the Secretariat--without the pink
turban. There he encountered the officer he had met in the Howrah
Station earlier that morning.

"Hello, Ayrton," was Trent's genial greeting. "Sorry I couldn't speak to
you this morning--but too many ears were listening."

"So!" commented the officer, wisely. "You're doing _that_ now!" He shook
his head with assumed gravity. "Government's gone mad--madder 'n a March
hare!" A laugh. "I suppose you're shadowing Ghandi!"

Trent grinned and made an inconsequential remark.

"Here permanently?" he queried.

"End of my life, I daresay," was the gloomy reply.

"You can do me a favor, then"--thus Trent. "I've a uniform I want to rid
myself of temporarily; don't object if I send it around for you to
keep?... Thanks."

They chatted for a few minutes; then the officer entered one of the
buildings facing the square, and Trent returned to his hotel.

He arrived hot and perspiring, and sat down upon the veranda to wait.
And before long the pink turban appeared in the street below. Their
glances met and Trent motioned to him.

"Why did you follow me?" he demanded, as Tambusami, sweat flowing from
every pore of his brown face, salaamed.

"My orders, O Presence!"

"Whose orders?"

"The Presence knows!"

Trent thought a moment. Then: "I object to it."

Tambusami smiled broadly. "But, O Presence, it is for your good that I
follow--to protect you!"

And knowing it was useless to tell him he lied, the Englishman dismissed
him curtly.

Trent spent an idle afternoon. He did not leave the hotel, for he feared
that he would encounter other acquaintances, as he had met Ayrton, and
with Tambusami tracking him it might make more insecure his position. To
be sure, Sarojini Nanjee knew he was Arnold Trent--but did Tambusami?

As he lay sprawled across his bed, enjoying the inactivity and listening
abstractedly to the sounds from the street, a recollection of the
bronze-haired girl insinuated itself into his thoughts. Subconsciously,
he wondered why the remembrance of her came to him. He hadn't seen her
since she entered the carriage at Benares Cantonment; didn't know
whether she left the train along the route or in Calcutta. Queer that
this girl should have crossed the border of mere observation. Yet, had
he analyzed it, he would have known the reason. The world, that is, the
great firmament of existence around his immediate sphere, was to him a
scroll of faces. Now and then some countenance was lifted from the
multitude--a swift glimpse of eyes in the dusk, eyes he would never see
again, and for many nights afterward, when he sat alone with his pipe
and the stars, he would spin webs of glamour. A quixotic person, this
Trent.... The girl, then, was one of the lifted faces. Skin of old ivory
hue, he mused, and hair--now, just what color was it? His imagination
supplied a simile. Golden, with little flickerings of auburn--like
firelight on bronze. The figure rather pleased him. Firelight on bronze.
A contrast to Sarojini Nanjee. One the jungle orchid, blossom of purple
shadows; the other ... well, the type one liked to picture at a piano in
a dusk-deepened room, with hands gleaming pale as moonlight....

Sentimentalism, he concluded. And dropped off to sleep.


2

Dusk had fallen when he awakened. He dressed quickly and went below.
Tambusami was nowhere in sight; however, he suspected his shadow was not
far away. Doubtless the native knew of his appointment in the Chinese
quarter, but he determined if possible not to have him at his heels. To
this end he took an automobile part of the way, by a roundabout route;
then, certain he had eluded his tracker, set out on foot to finish the
journey.

An intense vitality lived in every line of his body as he swung along
crowded streets, a tall, trim figure in white linens, smoking a cheroot
with the air of a globe-trotter trickling through the evening swarm for
no other purpose than to absorb atmosphere, instead of a man approaching
an uncertain venture.

Native Calcutta was airing itself after a hot day, and a film of color
and life unreeled in the early night. He passed two sailors from a
British man-o'-war, younger by ten years than himself, clean-clipped
chaps. The sight of them brought back the old dream--freedom and the
quest for fabulous isles. He rather envied that pair, irresponsibly
young. Always there, this dream, lurking in the subconscious, eager for
some incident to draw it into the conscious.

From the thronged bazaars he turned into a quarter that was no less
crowded, but with people of a different sort. It was as though he had
descended into another world, a planet of dirt and filth and sin--sin in
its nakedness, as only Asiatic cities know how to strip it of its
glamour. A foul artery fed with the virus of the East--beings whose
faces were mottles of yellow and brown and chocolate black upon the
mephitic gloom. A woman in satin trousers ran out of a balconied house
and clutched his arm, whispering an entreaty; she cursed him in bastard
English when he thrust her away. Something of psychic consciousness came
to him from the street, as though fanned into momentary being were the
sparks of old evil.... Babylon and Rome, and the perished cities of the
Nile....

Once clear of this humanity-clogged artery with its aura of ancient sin,
he found himself in the quieter, though scarcely cleaner, Chinese
quarter. Jews, Parsees and Chinamen; black and gilt signs; open doors
that, like dragon-mouths, expelled the mingled odors of _samshu_ and
soy, of cassia and joss-sticks and opium; an atmosphere that transported
Trent to the picturesquely wicked towns of the Straits Settlements.

The Street of the River of the Moon belied its name; it was no more than
an alley and it slunk in the shadows of unpretentious houses. Its lights
were dim, many-colored globes afloat on warm darkness; it was as
mysterious as the numerous slant-eyed yellow men who came and went so
soundlessly in its shifting dusks. After several inquiries Trent located
the residence of his Excellency the Mandarin Li Kwai Kung--a dark,
colonnaded pile. He jerked the leather strap that hung from a panel of
the door; heard a muffled tinkle, the padding of feet. The door opened
wide enough to permit a yellow face to peer out.

"Tell his Excellency that Mr. Tavernake is here," Trent instructed.

The door closed quickly; again the padding of feet. After a moment the
yellow face reappeared. This time the door opened sufficiently for
Trent to see a house-boy in a slop-shop suit and a black skull-cap.

"His Excellency sends greetings and bids you enter his dwelling,"
announced the house-boy.

The door closed behind Trent. He was in a hall where a _dong_, swinging
from brass chains, kindled an orange flame against the semi-darkness,
where a stale-sweet scent clung to the air and gloom varnished
everything.

The house-boy took his shoes and gave him straw sandals, afterward
leading him through a series of doors to a corridor where the rich,
stupefying odor of opium saturated the atmosphere. A sliding door was
pushed back--a black door inlaid with characters in glistening
nacre--and Trent stepped into a dimly illuminated area.

A lamp with a yellow shade hung by invisible means from an invisible
ceiling, casting a pyramid of ochre light upon a figure that squatted on
silken cushions beneath it--a figure arrayed in a loose yellow garment
and the embroidered boots of a mandarin's undress. He was grossly obese,
with drooping gray mustaches and oblique, beady eyes--a grotesque effigy
made more unreal by the incense that floated up from a brazier at his
side and wreathed bluish spirals on the dead air around him. Trent
received an impression of sheeny hangings beyond the radius of the lamp;
vases and gold-embroidered screens--a web of shadows, with, in its
center, this gorged yellow spider.

His Excellency rose with visible effort, smiled blandly and shook his
own hands within his brocaded sleeves.

"You will do me the honor to be seated?" he enquired, gesturing toward a
pile of cushions opposite him. "My house is flattered that one of such
fame should lighten it with his presence."

Trent waited for his host to be seated, knowing this to be a custom,
then dropped cross-legged on the cushions. Followed the usual exchange
of lilied words, of felicitations and compliments. Afterward, Li Kwai
Kung struck a gong and a little rice-powdered, red-lipped girl appeared
from behind the dusky screens, like a figure out of one of Pan Chih Yu's
poems, and set a brass basin filled with scented water before Trent.
When he had washed his hands the basin was removed. More lilied words,
more felicitations and compliments. Then, a few minutes later, the first
course of the meal was served.

"_Ch'ing chih fan_," said the mandarin graciously--by which he invited
Trent to eat.

Bamboo shoots, rice-cakes and honey; roast duck flavored with soy, seeds
of lotus in syrup; prawns, sweetmeats, nuts and tea made fragrant with
petals of jasmine. A very celestial meal. They talked as they ate, and
if his Excellency clung to the custom of balancing food on his chop
sticks and thrusting it unexpectedly into his guest's mouth, as an act
of courtesy, he refrained from doing so on this occasion. Trent grew
anxious to have the formalities over with. He knew he was undergoing a
test; upon the success of this interview, he imagined, depended his
future safety.

When the meal was finished, Li Kwai Kung asked:

"Will you join me with a pipe?... No?"

A ring of the gong brought the serving-maid with cigars. His Excellency
declined to smoke tobacco; instead he spoke to the girl in his own
tongue and she vanished, to reappear presently with the requisites of an
opium smoker--a lighted lamp on a tray, a blue jar containing
poppy-treacle, and a metal pipe. The jar, Trent observed, was a piece of
blue porcelain of the Sung period.

Then, after the manner of the East, which is to say, obliquely, his
Excellency approached the subject of Trent's visit.

"There are certain necessary precautions," he began, while the girl
twisted a black gummy substance about a needle and held it over the
lamp, "before we enter into any discussion."

Trent opened his shirt and revealed a coral pendant chased with silver,
lying against his skin. Li Kwai Kung nodded.

"And if I say, 'It is a wise man who holds his tongue in the presence of
knaves,'" pursued the mandarin, "what would be your comment?"

"I would reply with the ancient wisdom of Lao Tzu--'By many words wit is
exhausted; it is better to preserve a mien.'"

Li Kwai Kung nodded again. "_Hao_," he grunted--and his guest did not
know that was a signal for the house-boy, armed with a revolver, to
retire from behind one of the many screens.

"It is needless, I am sure," the Oriental resumed, "for me to caution
you, who are about to start on a journey to the dwelling-place of
_He-whose-wisdom-is-as-a-lamp-filled-with-much-oil_, that the discreet
man questions himself, a fool others. You will tread the path of
discretion, I know, for I perceive that the light of intelligence burns
with much brightness in your brain."

A pause. Trent studied the blue porcelain jar. Li Kwai Kung took the
metal pipe from the girl and inhaled; bluish vapor welled from his
nostrils, half-obscuring his countenance.

"The arm of the Order is long and powerful, like Mother Yangtze, and its
eyes are as many as the stars." Their glances met; no expression was
mirrored in either face. "Yours is a great work to do," continued his
Excellency, sinking deeper among the cushions and expelling smoke. "The
Order will reward the faithful; they shall flourish as the
willow-branch. The first step of your journey to the City of the Falcon
will be taken shortly--and what sage was it that said, 'A journey of a
thousand miles begins with one step'?"

The obese effigy smiled, pleased with his knowledge, and Trent felt that
each word had its own hidden significance. Curiosity pricked him, like a
needle flashing back and forth across the loom of thought. But he smoked
his cigar and stared at the blue jar as if he had nothing weightier than
the Sung porcelain upon his mind.

"As a man climbs a mountain by terraces, so will you travel to the city
where dwells the Falcon, he who guides the workings of the Order," Li
Kwai Kung went on. "There, having attained the summit, you will--er--see
light. The next terrace of your journey is Burma."

He withdrew an object from under the cushions and Trent looked upon a
packet wrapped in white silk. The mandarin, placing his pipe in a bowl
at his side, rested a contemplative gaze upon the silken wrapping.

"Passage for Rangoon has been booked for you on the _Manchester_, which
leaves day after to-morrow. Here"--indicating the packet--"are all
necessary papers. When you reach Rangoon you will take a train, as soon
as convenient, for Myitkyina, where you will go to the shop of Da-yak,
the Tibetan, and identify yourself by showing the symbol of the Order.
He will furnish you with a _hu-chao_, or, as you would say, a passport,
to a--er--higher terrace."

He handed the packet to the Englishman, who placed it in his pocket.
Trent's thoughts were revolving about what he had just heard--revolving
and reaching no end. Myitkyina. Upper Burma. Were the jewels in Burma?
But why Burma? How were they taken there? "Under the protection of your
Secret Service," Sarojini Nanjee had said. Were they hidden somewhere in
the hills? Myitkyina. He tried to visualize a map; failed.... This City
of the Falcon: in Burma? And the Falcon? Who was he? White or
Oriental?... Groping--groping in the dark--a purposeless circle. At
least, this Order was no small one.

"I believe there are no further instructions to deliver," he heard Li
Kwai Kung say. "Regarding the trivial matter of your--er--incidentals, I
presume you have been told to keep an account and submit it at the
proper time?... No?... Then do so, as it is the wish of the Order that
you suffer no personal expenses.... Stay,"--as Trent made a move to
leave--"it would be ungracious for me to allow so honorable a guest to
depart without further hospitality!"

The little Chinese maid brought liquor--a sort of _arak_ that, despite
his Excellency's comment that it was a draught of the gods, tasted like
sweetened vinegar to Trent. As the Englishman sipped the wine he
continued to mull over what Li Kwai Kung had told him. The
formidableness of the Order amazed him, troubled him not a little. This
Falcon had a nest in Calcutta and Myitkyina. Where else? What of his
brood? Why not, he mused, report what he knew to the Intelligence
Department; let them swoop down upon these two nests; thus avoid any
treachery that Sarojini might contemplate? An idea that he instantly
dismissed, for to act prematurely was to invite defeat. He was under
orders--and he had given his word of honor. Seek the root of the vine,
the seed from which the Order flowered; then exterminate it.

Trent saw by his wrist-watch that it was nearly ten o'clock when he
finally rose to take his leave. Li Kwai Kung lifted his corpulent person
with an effort and repeated the ceremony of vigorously shaking his own
hands.

"A sage once said, 'A man's actions are the mirrors of his heart,'" was
his parting remark. "And, verily, I have looked into your heart!"
(Which, Trent reflected later, was a rather cryptic compliment.) "May
you flourish in wisdom and wealth, as the blossoms of the almond tree
flourish after the snows have melted and run down from the Yunnan-fu!"

Trent inclined his head gravely. "And may the Green Gods grant you the
Twelve Desires!" he returned.

The house-boy appeared; his Excellency sank among his cushions, like a
spider retiring to its gossamer web; and Trent was led back through the
series of doors to the outer portal, where he exchanged the straw
sandals for his shoes, and left the colonnaded residence--left a world
of mystery for a world of noise and heat, of odorous reality and pale
lanterns that reflected upon yellow faces and sloe-dark eyes.

He was a short distance beyond the mouth of the alleyway when a gharry
rolled by. He started to call after it--an impulse born dead. It was not
late; he would walk. Motion accelerated his thoughts. And he wanted to
think.

As he strode along the street, fragments of the obese mandarin's
conversation slid into his brain and receded, like waves gently
insinuating themselves upon a beach. Casually (he had turned into a
narrow highway of balconies, of swinging signs and Chinese scrolls) he
noticed a white woman on the opposite side of the street--only noticed
her, for he knew the type that haunted this quarter. He would have
expelled her instantly from his mind had not she moved from the shadow
into a band of light that extended beyond a doorway; had not he seen
her pause and draw away, as from a plague, as a Chinaman slunk past. The
glow fell upon a face of old ivory hue, upon hair as bronze as the
lettering upon the black scroll above her wide-brimmed hat.

He drew a quick breath.

The girl evidently recognized him as he recognized her, for she darted
out of the band of light and to his side. Dark eyes looked into his from
under the brim of her hat. She smiled, half with fright, half ashamed.

"I--I've been very foolish," she said, much after the manner of a truant
child. "Please take me out of this dreadful place!"

Trent did not speak immediately; grasped her arm; looked about; hailed a
dilapidated carriage that was rattling by. As it came to a halt he said
"Get in!" much after the manner of a stern parent.

She smiled again, that same half-frightened, half-ashamed smile, and
obeyed.

Thus she of the bronze hair stepped from Trent's world-scroll into a
sphere of more intimate association.


3

The girl was the first to speak.

"Really, I don't know what to say. I hope you don't think--"

"I think as you do," he interposed, "that you've been very foolish."

She laughed tremulously. A voice as soft as a gentle monsoon rain--a
voice that slurred over its words. Wisps of hair were burnished by
passing lights; her throat shone palely. Only the eyes were in the
shadow--dark eyes, deep with mystery and a promise of revelations....
Old ivory and bronze. A picture of soft tones and colors.

"My brother would--well, I hardly know what he _would_ do if he knew
about this!"

"Your brother's in the city?"--conscious of a lingering strain.

She shook her head. "I'm alone, or I wouldn't have done what I did
to-night--or what I'm doing now. It was brazen of me to come up to you
as I did, but I was frightened--terribly!" Then, with that nervous
little laugh, she added, "But it wasn't as though I were approaching a
totally strange person, for--for I believe you were at the hotel in
Benares."

Trent remembered his uniform and that now he was Tavernake--remembered
divers things. He decided quickly.

"You must be mistaken about having seen me at Benares; but I've a
brother there--in the Army. Perhaps you saw him. He passed through the
city to-day."

"Oh! Perhaps so!"--this rather frigidly. "What a striking likeness!" He
felt her eyes upon him--those dark eyes. A moment passed before she
said: "I must explain why I'm here, at this hour. Of course it will seem
foolish to you, but I'm a tourist, and I wanted to see Calcutta's
Chinese colony at night--oh, it had to be night, because I knew
everything would be tawdry and ugly in daylight!"

It didn't seem at all foolish to him, only indiscreet.

"I hired a registered guide. He was to show me the temple of--of
Kwan-te, I believe. Anyhow, he assured me it would be perfectly
safe--and, knowing that it wasn't, but rather enjoying the idea, I went.
But I didn't see the temple. There was a street fight between some
Chinese and Brahmins--Chinese and Brahmins _do_ fight, don't they? In
the confusion my guide disappeared. Perhaps he joined in or ran--I
suspect the latter. I was so frightened when I found myself alone--and
I--well, I walked a short distance--and then--then I saw you."

He realized he ought to say something to fill in the gap that followed,
but he was not a man given to much conversation and for the time nothing
suggested itself. Finally:

"I hope you've learned a lesson"--grimly.

She laughed, and the nervous note had gone from her voice. Again he
thought of cool monsoon showers.

"I'm afraid I'm incorrigible! Now that I'm safe, I think I really
enjoyed it. Being a man, you'll disapprove."

"Thoroughly," he responded.

Conversation lagged for a brief spell. The girl took it up.

"You see, Mr.--"

She stopped and he supplied:

"Tavernake--Robert Tavernake."

"I forgot we hadn't been introduced. My name is Dana Charteris. I was
going to say that this is like a fairy tale to me--some 'Arabian
Nights' story. Since I was a child I've wanted to travel--to see
Aladdin's palace and Sinbad's islands--and now I'm doing it. I lived in
a town called Bayou Latouche, in Louisiana, U. S. A., and, you know,
Bayou Latouche scarcely prepares one for this!"--with a gesture. "It
reminds me of carnival in New Orleans."

"You've not been disillusioned?"

"In India? No."

"Of course you have visited Agra."

"No, I haven't seen the Taj. It's a frightful confession to make, isn't
it?"

He reflected upon the question and decided:

"It's rather jolly to find some one who's traveled in India without
seeing the Taj. Sort of different. But I forgot to ask where you wanted
to go. For some reason I took it for granted that you're staying at the
Grand."

"That's almost clairvoyant; I am stopping there."

When he had instructed the _gharry-wallah_, she asked:

"You don't live in Calcutta?"

Making conversation, he thought.

"My home is the world." Then, specifically, "I live in London. I
represent a diamond firm."

Before she spoke he knew quite well what she was going to say.

"Jewels always fascinate me. Isn't it frightful about the gems that were
stolen?"

"Rather," was the close-mouthed reply.

"Just fancy losing all those jewels!" she went on. "My brother said
they are worth millions or _lakhs_ and _lakhs_ of rupees, to be proper.
I suppose it's the work of this Chavigny who's reported to be at large.
You've heard of him, haven't you?"

He answered in the affirmative and, inwardly, expressed relief that they
were nearing the end of the ride.

"I can't ever thank you enough," she told him as they left the gharry
and entered the hotel.

In the better light he saw her eyes for the first time and explored a
new dimension of strength and dignity. He felt as though he looked into
the rich glow of autumn forests, spaces of warmth and color and
spirit--an initiation into the sense of discovery and lofty exhilaration
that Balboa must have known when he gazed upon the shining expanse of an
unknown sea. It was a glimpse into some high arcanum--to him new, but to
the world as ancient as the tale of Cana of Galilee.

"I hope I'll see you before I leave," she said in a way that would have
made it impossible for him to misunderstand, had he been inclined to do
so. "Good night."

He watched her go.... And when he reached his room and examined the
silk-wrapped papers Li Kwai Kung had given him, she persisted in
cleaving through his thoughts, in appearing from the pages before him
and distracting him; and after a few minutes he re-wrapped the packet
and placed it in his trunk.

Long after he plunged the room into darkness he lay thinking--thinking
of Kerth in Bombay, of his Excellency Li Kwai Kung sitting in his
shadowy room, like a yellow-bellied spider, and of the Order of the
Falcon. The _Manchester_ was to sail Saturday; it was Thursday now. Two
days, an interlude; then the Bay, Rangoon and--

But would he see _her_ before he left?


4

Morning and a hint of coolness caressing the air. Sampans and other
craft rocked and crooned in the murky Hoogly. Gauzy streamers of smoke
floated over the jute-mills of Howrah. Sunshine drenched the modern
buildings of Dalhousie Square and Government Row; submerged the myriad
bazaars and shops in yellow liquor; crept into the room where Trent was
sleeping and aroused him with an impelling finger.

He dressed and went to breakfast. When he left the dining-hall his
attention was arrested by a black straw hat with a sheaf of cornflowers
and ripe yellow wheat about the crown. A tendril of hair glowed against
the somber brim. She was talking with a native, an itinerant merchant; a
string of beads hung from her white fingers. Trent approached from
behind and spoke.

"He's asking entirely too much for those stones, Miss Charteris."

She turned, smiling. He felt the same warmth in her brown eyes as on the
previous night.

"You always appear at the psychological moment--or rather," she
interpolated, "this time at the financial moment."

She returned the beads to the merchant, who took no pains to hide his
displeasure at Trent's interposition.

"I'm really glad you appeared--for a purely selfish reason. I want to
buy some things to send home, and I know if I go alone I'll be cheated
outrageously. I wonder if you'd care to go with me? However, I suppose
that, man-like, you detest shopping with a woman."

"I don't object at all," he said.

"And you really haven't any business engagements?"

"I'm free until to-morrow."

"Oh, you're leaving Calcutta then?"

"Yes."

"So am I"--with a smile.

She raised a silk parasol of pongee-color as they left the hotel, and
the sun reflected a rich glow through the fine texture.

"You see," she explained, "I taught music at Bayou Latouche and I
promised my pupils I'd send them each a remembrance from India."

He might have known she was a musician. There was a depth of conception
in her that was lyrical, a somber yet thrillingly-alive tone, of which
her eyes were the pinnacle-expression. _Andante appassionato._ Queerly,
that term came to him. His mental portrait of the day before blended in
with actuality: White hands brushing the keys in a dusk-varnished room;
nothing heavy, some old song, redolent of recollections....

"Is this your first trip to India?" he heard her asking. The clamor of
Chowringhee was in his ears, but her voice rang clearly through the
sounds, an unbroken thread in the tangle of city streets.

"No. Mother India called me when I was a boy. I used to hunt with my
father." That was true; for some reason he detested lying to her.

"Hunting! Tiger?"

He nodded.

"Is it true," she queried, "that there are mystics who walk in the
jungles with animals--who belong to a sort of brotherhood of the wild
and understand tiger and python and cobra?"

"The jungle has her own secrets," was his reply; "things that white men
will never know."

"I heard a man," she resumed, "a converted Brahmin priest, lecture in
New Orleans. He told of his boyhood; of the magic lore of the
'Mahabarata' and the 'Ramayana'; and of a time when an old priest--he
called him a _Saddhu_--took him into the jungle at night, and he heard
the many animal-sounds--the voices of the jungle. He said that once
green eyes peered at them, so close that he could hear the quick
breathing of the beast, and the old priest only looked into the
eyes--oh, he described that look as so potent and unafraid!--and soon
the eyes disappeared. I've always remembered that. Since then I've
wanted to _feel_ the jungle--and the power of will that can soothe a
great animal. Yet I suppose Mother India, as you call her, is suspicious
of us foreigners who try to pry into her secrets. And yet"--the brown
eyes were filled with reflections--"perhaps she has a right to be
resentful, for men have maligned and misrepresented her so, credited her
with false mysticism, with _Mahatmas_ and cults of which she isn't
guilty." Then she laughed--a little ripple that broke the smooth spell.
"I--an outsider--talk as if I were intimate with India! Although
sometimes I do feel that I must have known India before; a haunting
familiarity. That's why I came--to see if my visions were aright." Again
the rippling laugh. "But I'm sure you'll think me an Annie Besant,
incognito, if I talk on like this!"

"Not at all"--smiling. "I'm interested."

"But you should tell me of India; for you've hunted in her forests and
wild places. Oh, it must be wonderful to know the world!"

"Well, I'd scarcely say I know the world," he corrected; "only a few
Indian and Persian cities--and some of the more southern watering-places
of Asia. I was stationed for a while at Singapore."

"Stationed? You mean in the interest of your firm--or were you in the
Army then, like your brother?"

"In the Army," he answered, again experiencing that insurrection against
falsehood.

"I see," she commented. A wistful sigh. "I think I should have been a
man. Penang, Shanghai and Zanzibar, those cities with such thrillingly
wicked names, fascinate me; Tibet and inner China, all the far places,
call. There's something pagan and magnificent about it--a sort of broken
thread in me that matches the tapestry of it all. Oh, I'm sure I should
have been a man! I know if I were, I'd be an explorer and hunt among the
ruins of the Phoenicians and the Incas, and those other remnants of
ancient civilizations."

Her words brought a tightening of the cords in his throat. Another who
dreamed of the fabulous isles! But, for a reason he did not analyze, he
could not place her in the picture she painted. Always, to him, the
music-room--white hands in the dusk.

"But I'll have my fling," she continued; "only in a mild degree. My
brother's home is in Burma. I'm going to live with him, and we plan to
slip off every now and then. A trip to Malaya or Borneo or Java--I've
heard so much of the beauty of Batavia--or up the other way to Siam.
Siam! Isn't the very name magic? Bejewelled dancers and emerald Buddhas
and theaters where they pantomime ancient tales!... I'm not a reformist
in the least, but there's one sort of 'uplift work' I'd love to do--a
'purpose in life,' as some call it. I'd like to visit the far places and
return home and lecture to those whose boundaries are their own yards,
and try to make them understand that on the other side of the world
there are civilizations so much mellower than their own, and doctrines
of existence that have nothing to do with mints and stock exchanges!"

Her voice was an expression of the high arcanum that he had glimpsed in
her eyes. Here was a woman who possessed the rare triumvirate of flesh
and mind and soul; whose gifts to men were other than brief summer
passions and earthly donations. He felt that it was irreverent when he
asked if he might smoke. As he touched a match to his cheroot, she went
on:

"Oh, the West knows so little about the East, and the East so little
about the West, that it isn't strange that one misunderstands the
other.... But I'm boring you with this talk," she broke off
irrelevantly.

"Won't you go on?"--earnestly.

She smiled. "It's impertinence for me to tamper with mysteries that I
haven't explored. No,"--still smiling--"I'm going back to my ken--to
Siamese dancers and pantomime shows. And that reminds me, is it safe to
go to a native theater? I'd feel as if I'd missed part of Calcutta if I
didn't see a Bengali performance."

"I wouldn't advise you to go alone." This soberly. "Too, if you don't
understand the language, it would prove rather dry entertainment."

Another smile. "Why must a woman have such narrow man-made boundaries?
If you hint that it's dangerous, then you'll intrigue me the more."

A recollection of the Chinese quarter flashed through him.

"If you insist on going," he said, and he, too, was smiling, "I daresay
nothing can stop you--and the best possible thing for me to do is to
offer my guardianship."

"It really wouldn't be stealing your time? Oh, it would be splendid!...
But you're leading me by all these shops. Shall we go in here?"

It was an epochal morning for Trent. After the tension of the past few
days, he craved relaxation. This recess had a warmth and exhilarating
intimacy that was a stimulus to him, and he luxuriated in it, listening
attentively as the girl talked--talk that revealed little brilliant
flashes of her nature--and drinking in the study of rich tints that her
face and hair presented in the straw-colored light beneath her sunshade.
He had the feeling of a seaman in port, a boyish thrill at the freedom
from restraint; a few hours shore leave, then the sea again. He entirely
forgot his substantial shadow until they returned to the hotel. The
sight of the pink turban whipped him back into tension.

"At five-thirty," she said as they parted. "And I'm sure it will be a
wonderful adventure."

As she left him, Tambusami approached, smiling his ingratiating smile.

"I have news to report, Presence," he announced. "It is indeed well that
I am here to protect your interests, for while you were away some one
entered your room, and had not I appeared at the opportune moment he
might--"

"You had him arrested?" Trent cut in.

"I went to your room, and hearing strange sounds within, I looked
through the keyhole and saw a man--a brown man. Knowing he was a thief,
I took the liberty of entering. He had opened your trunk--oh, they are
clever, these thieves!--but he did not have a chance to steal
anything."

"You caught him?"

The smile left Tambusami's face. "He was too strong for me, Presence; he
had muscles like the unicorn!"

Trent considered a moment. Then: "Whose servant are you--mine or hers?"

Tambusami beamed. "_She_ pays me to be _your_ bearer!"

"Then say to her that I'm capable of taking care of myself and that
you're to be my servant from now on and _not_ my shadow. We'll only be
here until to-morrow, which no doubt she's already told you, but until
then you'll watch my room instead of me."

Trent found the silk-wrapped packet safe in his trunk. Nothing was
disturbed or missing. However, he surmised that the "thief" gained what
he came after--knowledge of his, Trent's, destination. Was this the hand
of that mysterious power he had felt in Benares when he awakened to
discover an intruder in his room? But what power could it be? Not
Sarojini Nanjee. Who?... Plot and counter-plot. Each day fixed in him
more immovably the belief that behind the activities in which he was
involved was a sinister purpose, more stupendous, when revealed, than he
imagined. Every new incident, like a hand in the night, lured him,
beckoning, but never fulfilling the promise of disclosure. Adventure!
And only one thorn to prick the joy from it.... Manlove....

It came to him suddenly that perhaps, unaware of it, he was exploring
the fabulous isles of his fancy.


5

They had tea at a restaurant in Government Place. She wore the black
straw hat with cornflowers and wheat woven about the crown. White voile
caressed slender limbs and fell away in a deep hem to give a glimpse of
silk-stockinged ankles and suede shoes.

They rode along Beadon Street in a glamorous after-sunset glow (the car
was threading through swarms whose sheet-like garments blended softly
with the gray pastel of houses and the lingering rose-light) and Trent,
eyes upon the girl, felt the sheer call of youth and romance at dusk.
The very atmosphere was an electrode, drawing its current from the first
white stars. Nor was Dana Charteris unreceptive. She was aware of a
shielding warmth, and not of the physical, in his presence. The play of
muscles of sunburnt cheek and jaw was vital and challenging, but behind
that, more convincing because it was not visible to the eye, but to a
sense of inner perception, was a compelling cleanliness; strength that
had not to do with thews or tendons.

The theater was in a neighborhood of white houses and green palms, close
to Beadon Square; their seats in an orchestra-stall. Over the pit hung
oil lamps, round yellow moons suspended in cavernous gloom; dim electric
lights in the ceiling; about them, a loose-robed, turbaned audience, the
majority chewing pellets of crushed areca-nut and lime.

Musicians in white raiment filed in and played an overture, and the
performance began.... A tale of chivalrous deeds and chivalrous days
(thus translated Trent in a whisper, as the actors, flashes against the
rich gloom of a back-drop, recited their lines); of Kurnavati, the Rani
of Chitor, and Humayun, the Great Mogul. Bahadur Shah, so went the
story, was hurling his armies against Chitor. The Rani had sent out the
pride of the Rajputs, but they could not check the onrush of Bahadur
Shah. Chitor was lost. Then the Rani, recalling a custom, took from her
arm a bracelet and gave it to a servant, bidding him carry it, with a
plea for succor, to Humayun, the Great Mogul. The servant departed....
And the first act ended.

"And you said it would be dull!" This from Dana Charteris when Trent had
explained all that happened. "Somehow it makes me think of the Brahmin
priest who lectured--a sort of thrilling mysticism; color and tragedy."

Just before the second act Trent glanced around the betel-chewing
audience and saw--a pink turban. It disappeared as he looked, and he
smiled at the thought of Tambusami crouching between the seats of the
back row of stalls.

The second act was at the court of Humayun. The mess

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