Chapter Twenty-Three

It is better to celebrate the occasion than to annoy the gods with pretended virtue and too many promises. —Eastern Proverb

Three amber moons in a purple sky.

The day of the great inauguration ceremony dawned inauspiciously for somebody. For one thing, the blasting powder laid ready by the sappers under the pipal trees for explosion the day following, blew up prematurely. Some idiot had left a kerosene lamp burning in the dug-out, probably, and a rat upset it; or some other of the million possibilities took place. Nobody was killed, but a dozen pipal trees were blown to smithereens, and the ghastly fact laid bare for all to see that in the irregular chasm that remained there was not a symptom of the treasure—as Samson was immediately notified.

So Samson had to attend the ceremony with that disconcerting knowledge up his sleeve. But that was not all. The night signaler, going off duty, had brought him a telegram from the high commissioner to say that all available military bands were to be lent for the day to the maharajah, and that as many British officers as possible, of all ranks, were to take part in the procession to grace it with official sanctity.

That was especially aggravating because it had reached his ears that the Princess Yasmini intended to ride veiled in the procession, and to sit beside her husband in the durbar hall unveiled. He was therefore going to be obliged to recognize her more or less officially as consort of the reigning prince. Simla did not realize that, of course; but it was too late to wire for different instructions. He had a grim foreboding that he himself would catch it later on when the facts leaked out, as they were bound to do.

(It was babu Sita Ram who "caught it" first, though. Within two days Samson discovered that Sita Ram had been sending official telegrams in code on his own account, very cleverly designed to cause the high commissioner to give those last minute instructions. It was obvious that a keener wit than the babu's had inspired him; but, though he was brow-beaten for an hour he did not implicate Yasmini. And after he had been dismissed from the service with ignominy she engaged him as a sort of secretary, at the same pay.)

But that was not all, either. The murderer of Mukhum Dass was refusing stolidly to plead guilty to another charge, and Blaine's butler had come out with the whole story of the burglary. Parliament would get to hear about it next, and then there would be the very deuce to pay. The police were offering the murderer what they called "inducements and persuasion"; but he held out for "money down," and did not seem to find too unendurable whatever it was that happened to him at intervals in the dark cell. There are limits even to what an Indian policeman can do, without making marks on a man or compelling the attention of European officers.

On top of all that, Samson had to hand Dick Blaine a check amounting to a month's pay, look pleasant while he did it, and—above all—look pleasant at the coming durbar.

On the other hand, there were people who enjoyed themselves. Sialpore, across the river, was a dinning riot of excitement—flags, triumphal arches, gala clothes and laughter everywhere. Dick Blaine, driving Tess toward Yasmini's palace in the very early dawn, had to drive slowly to avoid accident, for the streets were already crowded. His own place in the procession was to be on horseback pretty nearly anywhere he chose to insert himself behind the royal cortege, and, not being troubled on the score of precedence, he had Tom Tripe in mind as a good man to ride with. Tom could tell him things.

But he waited there for more than an hour until the royal elephants arrived, magnificent in silver howdahs and bright paint, and watched Tess emerge with Yasmini and the other women. Tess wore borrowed jewels, and a veil that you could see her face through; but Yasmini was draped from head to foot as if the eyes of masculinity had never rested on her, and never might. Things were not going quite so smoothly as they ought, although Tom Tripe was galloping everywhere red-necked with energy, and it was nearly half an hour more before the escort of maharajah's troops came in brand-new scarlet uniforms, to march in front, and behind, and on each side of the elephants. So Dick got quite a chance to "josh" Tess, and made the most of it.

But things got under way at last. Dick's sais found him with the horse he was to ride, and the procession gathered first on the great maidan (open ground) between the city and the river, with bands in full blast, drums thundering to split the ears, masters of ceremony shouting, and the elephants enjoying themselves most of all, as they always do when they have a stately part to play in company.

Utirupa led the way in a golden howdah on Akbar, the biggest elephant in captivity and the very archetype of sobriety ever since his escapade with Tom Tripe's rum. Akbar was painted all over with vermilion and blue decorations, and looked as if butter would not melt in his mouth.

Next after Utirupa the princes rode in proper order of rank and precedence, each with two attendants up behind him waving fans of ostrich plumes. Then came a band. Then Samson, and a score of British officers in carriages whose teams were nearly frantic from the din and the smell of elephants and had to have runners to hold their heads—all of which added exquisite amusement. Then another band, and a column of the maharajah's troops. Then more elephants, loaded with the lesser notables; and after them, a column nearly a mile long of Rajput gentry on the most magnificent horses they could discover and go in debt for.

After the Rajput gentry came a third band, followed by more maharajah's troops, and then Yasmini on her elephant, followed by twenty princesses and Tess, each with a great beast to herself and at least two maids to wave the jeweled fans. Then more troops, followed by Dick and Tom Tripe together on horseback leading the rank and file. Trotters jogged along between Tom and Dick, pausing at intervals to struggle with both forefeet to remove a collar bossed with solid gold that he regarded as an outrage to his dogly dignity.

And the rank and file were well worth looking at, for whoever could find a decent suit of clothes was marching, shouting, laughing, sweating, kicking up the dust, and having a good time generally. The water-sellers were garnering a harvest; fruit- and sweetmeat-peddlers were dreaming of open-fronted shops and how to defeat the tax-collector. The police swaggered and yelled and ordered everybody this and that way; and nobody took the slightest notice; and the policemen did not dare do anything about it because the crowd was too unanimously bent on having its own way, and therefore dangerous to bully but harmless if not hit.

Half-way down the thronging stream of men on foot came another elephant— a little one, alone, carrying three gentlemen in fine white raiment—Bimbu and Pinga and Umra to wit, who, it is regrettable to chronicle, were very drunk indeed and laughed exceedingly at most unseemly jokes, exchanging jests with the crowd that would have made Tess's hair stand on end, if she could have heard and understood them. From windows, and roofs that overhung the street, people threw flowers at Bimbu, Pinga and Umra, because all Hindustan knows there is merit in treating beggars as if they were noblemen; and Bimbu wove himself a garland out of the buds to wear on his turban, which made him look more bacchanalian than ever.

In and out and around and through the ancient city the procession filed, passing now and then through streets so narrow that people could have struck Utirupa through the upper story windows; but all they threw at him was flowers, calling him "Bahadur" and king of elephants, and great prince, and dozens of other names that never hurt anybody with a sense of pageantry and humor. He acted the part for them just as they wanted him to, sitting bolt upright in the howdah like a prince in a fairy story, with jeweled aigrette in his turban and more enormous diamonds flashing on his silken clothes than a courtesan would wear at Monte Carlo. And all the other princes were likewise in degree, only that they rode rather smaller elephants, Akbar having no peer when he was sober and behaved himself.

And when Yasmini passed, and Tess and all the other princesses, there was such excitement as surely had never been before; for if you looked carefully, with a hand held to keep the sun from your eyes, you could actually see the outlines of their faces through the veils! And such loveliness! Such splendor! Such pride! Such jewels! Above all, such fathomless mystery and suggestion of intrigue! Pageantry is expensive, but—believe Sialpore—it is worth the price!

And then in front of the durbar hall in the dinning, throbbing heat, all the animals and carriages and men got mixed in a milling vortex, while the notables went into the hall to be jealous of one another's better places and left the crowd outside to sort itself. And everything was made much more interesting by the fact that Akbar was showing signs of ill-temper, throwing up his great trunk once or twice to trumpet dissatisfaction. His mahout was calling him endearing names and using the ankus alternately, promising him rum with one breath and a thrashing with the next. But Akbar wanted alcohol, not promises, and none dared give him any before evening, when he might get as drunk as he wished in a stone-walled compound all to himself.

Then Samson's horses took fright at Akbar's trumpeting, he getting out of the carriage at the durbar door only in the nick to time. The horses bolted into the crowd, and an indignant elephant smashed the carriage; but nobody was hurt beyond a bruise or two, although they passed word down the thunderous line that a hundred and six and thirty had been crushed to death and one child injured, which made it much more thrilling, and the sensation was just as actual as if the deaths had really happened.

And inside the durbar hall there was surely never such a splendid scene in history—such a sea of turbans—such glittering of jewels—such a peacocking and swaggering and proud bearing of ancient names! Utirtipa sat on the throne in front of a peacock-feather decoration; and-marvel of marvels!—Yasmini sat on another throne beside him, unveiled!—with a genuine unveiled and very beautiful princess beside her, whom nobody except Samson suspected might be Tess. She wore almost as many jewels as the queen herself, and looked almost as ravishing.

But the Princess Yasmini's eyes—they were the glory of that occasion! Her spun-gold hair was marveled at, but her eyes—surely they were lent by a god for the event! They were bluer than the water of Himalayan lakes; bluer than turquoise, sapphire, the sky, or any other blue thing you can think of—laughing blue,—loving, understanding, likable, amusing blue—two jewels that outshone all the other jewels in the durbar hall that day.

And as each prince filed past Utirupa in proper order of precedence, to make a polite set speech, and bow, and be bowed to in return, he had to pass Yasmini first, and bow to her first, although he made his speech to Utirupa, who acknowledged it. So, when Samson's turn came, he, too, had to bow first to Yasmini, because as a gentleman he could hardly do less; and her wonderful eyes laughed into his angry ones as she bowed to him in return, with such good humor and elation that he could not help but smile back; he could forgive a lovely woman almost anything, could Samson. He could almost forgive her that no less than nineteen British officers of various ranks, as well as one-hundred-and-three-and-twenty native noblemen had seen him with their own eyes to make an official bow to the consort of a reigning maharajah. He had recognized her officially! Well; he supposed he could eat his aftermath as well as any man; and he drove home with a smile and a high chin, to unbosom himself to Colonel Willoughby de Wing over a whisky and soda at the club, as Ferdinand de Sousa Braganza reported in some detail at the Goanese Club afterward.

Late that night, when the fireworks were all over and the lights were beginning to be extinguished on the roofs and windows, it was a question which was most drunk—Akbar, the three beggars, or Tom Tripe. Akbar's outrageous trumpeting could be heard all over the city, as he raced around his dark compound after shadows, and rats, and mice and anything else that he imagined or could see. What Tom Tripe saw kept him to his quarters, where Trotters watched him in dire misery. The three beggars, Bimbu, Pinga and Umra, saw three amber moons in a purple sky, for they said so. They also said that all the world was lovely, and Yasmini was a queen of queens, out of whose jeweled hand the very gods ate. And when people scolded them for blasphemy, they made such outrageously funny and improper jokes that everybody laughed again.

Drunk or sober (and more than ninety-nine per cent. of Sialpore was absolutely sober then as always) every one had something to amuse and entertain, except Samson, whose mental vision was of a great empty hole in the ground in which he might just as well bury all his hopes of ever being high commissioner; and poor Tom Tripe, who had worked harder than anybody, and was now enjoying the aftermath perhaps least.

Sialpore put itself to bed in great good temper, sure that princes and elephants and ceremony were the cream of life, and that whoever did not think so did not deserve to have any pageantry and pomp, and that was all about it.

Next morning early, Dick Blaine drove down to look for Tom Tripe, found him—bound him in a blanket—shoved him, feet first, on to the floor of the dog-cart, and drove him, followed by Trotters in doubt whether to show approval or fight, to his own house on the hill, where Tess and he nursed the old soldier back to soberness and old remorse.

By that time Bimbu and Pinga and Umra were back again at the garden gate, sitting in the dust in ancient rags and whining, "Bhig mangi, saheebi!" "Alms! heavenborn, alms!"

Chapter Twenty-Four

"You are a fool," said the crow. "Am I?" the hen answered. "Certainly you are a fool. You sit in a dark corner hatching eggs, when there are live chickens for the asking over yonder." So the hen left her nest in search of ready-made chickens, and the crow, made a square meat. —Eastern Proverb

A hundred guarded it.

It began to be rumored presently that Utirupa had declined to recognize Blaine's contract with his predecessor. Samson's guarded hints, and the fact that the mouth of the mine remained blocked with concrete masonry were more or less corroborative. But the Blaines did not go, although Dick put in no appearance at the club.

Then Patali, who was sedulously cultivating Yasmini's patronage, with ulterior designs on Utirupa that were not misunderstood, told Norwood's wife's ayah's sister's husband that the American had secured another contract; and the news, of course, reached Samson's ears at once.

So Samson called on Utirupa and requested explanations. He was told that the mining contract had not received a moment's consideration and, with equal truth, that the American, being an expert in such matters and on the spot, had been asked to undertake examination of the fort's foundations. The new maharanee, it seemed, had a fancy to build a palace where the fort stood, and the matter was receiving shrewd investigation and estimate in advance.

Samson could not object to that. Those foundations had not been examined carefully for eight hundred years. A perfectly good palace had been wrested away by diplomatic means, on Samson's own initiative, and there was no logical reason why the maharajah should not build another one to replace it. The fort had no modern military value.

"I hope you're not going to try to pay for your new palace out of taxes?"
Samson asked bluntly.

But Utirupa smiled. He hoped nothing of that kind would be necessary. Samson could not go and investigate what Blaine was doing, because he was given plainly to understand that the new palace was the maharanee's business; and one does not intrude uninvited into the affairs of ladies in the East. The efforts of quite a number of spies, too, were unavailing. So Dick had his days pretty much to himself, except when Tess brought his lunch to him, or Yasmini herself in boots and turban rode up for a few minutes to look on. The guards on the bastions, and in the great keep in the center, knew nothing whatever of what was happening, because all Dick's activity was underground and Tom Tripe, with that ferocious dog of his, kept guard over the ancient door that led to the lower passages. Dick used to return home every evening tired out, but Tom Tripe, keeping strictly sober, slept in the fort and said nothing of importance to any one. He looked drawn and nervous, as if something had terrified him, but public opinion ascribed that to the "snakes" on the night of the coronation.

Then about sundown one evening Tom Tripe galloped in a great hurry to Utirupa's palace. That was nothing to excite comment, because in his official capacity he was always supposed to be galloping all over the place on some errand or another. But after dark Utirupa and Yasmini rode out of the palace unattended, which did cause comment, Yasmini in man's clothes, as usual when she went on some adventure. It was not seen which road they took, which was fortunate in the circumstances.

Tess was up at the fort before them, waiting with Dick outside the locked door leading to the ancient passages below. They said nothing beyond the most perfunctory greetings, but, each taking a kerosene lantern, passed through the door in single file, Tom leading, and locked the door after them. That was all that the fort guards ever knew about what happened.

"I've not been in," said Dick's voice from behind them. "All I've done is force an entrance."

From in front Tom Tripe took up the burden.

"And I wouldn't have liked your job, sir! It was bad enough to sit and guard the door. After you'd gone o' nights I'd sit for hours with my hair on end, listening; and the dog 'ud growl beside me as if he saw ghosts!"

"Maybe it was snakes," Yasmini answered. "They will flee from the lantern-light—"

"No, Your Ladyship. I'm not afraid of snakes—except them Scotch plaid ones that come o' brandy on top o' royal durbars! This was the sound o' some one digging—digging all night long down in the bowels of the earth! Look out!"

They all jumped, but it proved to be only Tom's own shadow that had frightened him. His nerves were all to pieces, and Dick Blaine took the lead. The dog was growling intermittently and keeping close to Tom's heels.

They passed down a long spiral flight of stone steps into a sort of cavern that had been used for ammunition room. The departing British troops had left a dozen ancient cannon balls, not all of which were in one place. The smooth flags of the floor were broken, and at the far end one very heavy stone was lifted and laid back, disclosing a dark hole.

"I used the cannon balls," said Dick, "to drop on the stones and listen for a hollow noise. Once I found that, the game was simple."

Leading down into the dark hole were twelve more steps, descending straight, but turning sharply at the bottom. Dick led the way.

"The next sight's gruesome!" he announced, his voice booming hollow among the shadows.

The passage turned into a lofty chamber in the rock, whose walls once had all been lined with dressed stone, but some of the lining had fallen. In the shadows at one end an image of Jinendra smiled complacently, and there were some ancient brass lamps banging on chains from arches cut into the rock on every side.

"This is the grue," said Dick, holding his lantern high.

Its light fell on a circle of skeletons, all perfect, each with its head toward a brass bowl in the center.

"Ugh!" growled Tom Tripe. "Those are the ghosts that dig o' nights!
Go smell 'em, Trotters! Are they the enemy?"

The dog sniffed the bones, but slunk away again uninterested.

"Nothing doing!" laughed Dick. "You haven't laid the ghost yet, Tom!"

"Have you got your pistols with you?" Tom retorted, patting his own jacket to show the bulge of one beneath it.

"Those," said Yasmini, standing between the skeletons and holding up her own light, "are the bones of priests, who died when the secret of the place was taken from them! My father told me they were left to starve to death. This was Jinendra's temple."

"D'you suppose they pulled that cut stone from the walls, trying to force a way out?" Dick hazarded. "The lid of the hole we came down through is a foot thick, and was set solid in cement; they couldn't have lifted that if they tried for a week. Everything's solid in this place. I sounded every inch of the floor with a cannon ball, but it's all hard underneath."

"I would have gone straight to the image of Jinendra," said Yasmini. "Jinendra smiles and keeps his secrets so well that I should have suspected him at once!"

"I went to that last," Dick answered. "It looks so like a piece of high relief carved out of the rock wall. As a matter of fact, though, it's about six tons of quartz with a vein of gold in it—see the gold running straight up the line of the nose and over the middle of the head?—I pried it away from the wall at last with steel wedges, and there's just room to squeeze in behind it. Beyond that is another wall that I had to cut through with a chisel. Who goes in first?"

"Who looks for gold finds gold!" Yasmini quoted. "The vein of gold you have been mining was the clue to the secret all along."

She would have led the way, but Utirupa stopped her.

"If there is danger," he said, "it is my place to lead."

But nobody would permit that, Yasmini least of all.

"Shall Samson choose a new maharajah so soon as all that?" she laughed.

"Let the dog go first!" Tom proposed. Trotters was sniffing at the dark gap behind Jinendra's image, with eyes glaring and a low rumbling growl issuing from between bared teeth. But Trotters would not go.

Finally, in the teeth of remonstrances from Tess, Dick cocked a pistol and, with his lantern in the other hand, strode in boldly. Trotters followed him, and Tom Tripe next. Then Utirupa. Then the women.

Nothing happened. The passage was about ten feet long and a yard wide. They squeezed one at a time through the narrow break Dick had made in the end of it, into a high, pitch-dark cave that smelt unexplainably of wood-smoke, Dick standing just inside the gap to bold the lantern for them and help them through—continuing to stand there after Tess had entered last.

"Jee-rusalem!" he exclaimed. "This is where I lose out!"

The first glance was enough to show that they stood in the secret treasure-vault of Sialpore. There were ancient gold coins in heaps on the floor where they had burst by their own weight out of long-demolished bags— countless coins; and drums and bags and boxes more of them behind. But what made Dick exclaim were the bars of silver stacked at the rear and along one side in rows as high as a man.

"My contract reads gold!" he said. "A percentage of all gold. There's not a word in it of silver. Who'd ever have thought of finding silver, anyhow, in this old mountain?"

"Your percentage of the gold will make you rich," said Utirupa. "But you shall take silver too. Without you we might have found nothing for years to come."

"A contract's a contract," Dick answered. "I drew it myself, and it stands."

"Look out!" yelled Tom Tripe suddenly. But the warning came too late.

Out of the shadow behind a stack of silver bars rushed a man with a long dagger, stabbing frantically at Dick. Tom's great barking army revolver missed, filling the chamber with noise and smoke, for he used black powder.

Down went Dick under his assailant, and the dagger rose and fell in spasmodic jerks. Dick had hold of the man's wrist, but the dagger-point dripped blood and the fury of the attack increased as Dick appeared to weaken. Utirupa ran in to drag the assailant off, but Trotters got there first—chose his neck-hold like a wolf in battle—and in another second Dick was free with Tess kneeling beside him while a life-and-death fight between animal and man raged between the bars of silver.

"Gungadhura!" Yasmini shouted, waving her lantern for a sight of the struggling man's face. He was lashing out savagely with the long knife, but the dog had him by the neck from behind, and he only inflicted surface wounds.

"Hell's bells! He'll kill my dog!" roared Tom. "Hi, Trotters. Here, you—Trotters!"

But the dog took that for a call to do his thinking, and let go for a better hold. His long fangs closed again on the victim's jugular, and tore it out. The long knife clattered on the stone floor, and then Tom got his dog by the jaws and hauled him off.

"You can't blame the dog," he grumbled. "He knew the smell of him.
He'd been told to kill him if he got the chance."

"Gungadhura!" said Yasmini again, holding her lantern over the dying man. "So Gungadhura was Tom Tripe's ghost! What a pity that the dog should kill him, when all he wanted was a battle to the death with me! I would have given him his fight!"

Dick was in no bad way. He had three flesh wounds on his right side, and none of them serious. Tess staunched them with torn linen, and she and Tom Tripe propped him against some bags of bullion, while Utirupa threw his cloak over Gungadhura's dead body.

"How did Gungadhura get in here?" wondered Tess.

"Through the hole at the end of the mine-shaft, I suppose," said Dick. "I built up the lower one—he came one day and saw me doing it—but left a space at the top that looked too small for a man to crawl through. Then I blocked the mouth of the tunnel afterward, and shut him in, I suppose. He's had the men's rice and water-bottles, and they left a lot of faggots in the tunnel, too, I remember. That accounts for the smell of smoke."

"But what was the digging I've heard o' nights?" demanded Tom. "I'm not the only one. The British garrison was scared out of its wits."

Utirupa was hunting about with a lantern in his hand, watching the dog go sniffing in the shadows.

"Come and see what he has done!" he called suddenly, and Yasmini ran to his side.

In a corner of the vault one of the great facing stones had been removed, disclosing a deep fissure in the rock. One of Dick Blaine's crow-bars that he had left in the tunnel lay beside it.

"He must have found that by tapping," said Tom Tripe.

"Yes, but look why he wanted it!" Yasmini answered. "Tom, could you be as malicious as that?"

"As what, Your Ladyship?"

"See, he has poured gold into the fissure, hoping to close it up again so that nobody could find it!"

"But why didn't he work his way out with the crow-bar?" Dick objected from his perch between the bags of bullion.

"What was his life worth to him outside?" Yasmini asked. "Samson knew who murdered Mukhum Dass. He would have been a prisoner for the rest of his life to all intents and purposes. No! He preferred to hide the treasure again, and then wait here for me, suspecting that I knew where it is and would come for it! Only we came too soon, before he had it hidden!"

But it was Patali afterward, between boasting and confession, who explained that Dick was Gungadhura's real objective after all. He preferred vengeance on the American even to a settled account with Yasmini. He must have found the treasure by accident after crawling into the unsealed crack in the wall to wait there against Dick's coming.

"The money must stay here, and be removed little by little," said Utirupa.

"First of all Blaine sahib's share of it!" Yasmini added. "Who shall count it? Who!"

"Never mind the money now," Tess answered. "Dick's alive! When did you first know you'd found the treasure, Dick?"

"Not until the day that Gungadhura found me closing up the fault, and asked me to dig at the other place. The princess told me I was on the trail of it that night that you went with her by camel; but I didn't know I'd found it till the day that Gungadhura came."

"How did you know where it was?" Tess asked, and Yasmini laughed.

"A hundred guarded it. I looked for a hundred pipal trees, and found them—near the River Palace. But they were not changed once a month. I looked from there, and saw another hundred pipal trees—here, below this fort—exactly a hundred. But neither were they changed once a month. Then I counted the garrison of the fort—exactly a hundred, all told. Then I knew. Then I remembered that 'who looks for gold finds gold,' and saw your husband digging for it. It seemed to me that the vein of gold he was following should lead to the treasure, so I pulled strings until Samson blundered, trying to trick us. And now we have the treasure, and the English do not know. And I am maharanee, as they do know, and shall know still better before I have finished! But what are we to do with Gungadhura's body? It shall not lie here to rot; it must have a decent burial."

Very late that night, Tom Tripe moved the guards about on the bastions, contriving that the road below should not be overlooked by any one. The moon had gone down, so that it was difficult to see ten paces. He produced an ekka from somewhere—one of those two-wheeled carts drawn by one insignificant pony that do most of the unpretentious work of India; and he and Ismail, the Afridi gateman, drove off into the darkness with a covered load.

Early next morning Gungadhura's body was found in the great hole that Samson's men had blasted in the River Palace grounds, and it was supposed that a jackal had mangled his body after death.

(That was what gave rise to the story that the English got the treasure after all, and that Gungadhura, enraged and mortified at finding it gone, had committed suicide in the great hole it was taken from. They call the great dead pipal tree that is the only one left now of the hundred, Gungadhura's gibbet; and there is quite a number, even of English people, who believe that the Indian Government got the money. But I say no, because Yasmini told me otherwise. And if it were true that t he English really got the money, what did they do with it and why was Samson removed shortly afterward to a much less desirable post? Any one could see how Utirupa prospered, and he never raised the taxes half a mill.

Samson had his very shrewd suspicions, one of which was that that damned American with his smart little wife had scored off him in some way. But he went to his new post, at about the same time that the Blaines left for other parts, with some of the sting removed from his hurt feelings. For he took Blaine's rifle with him—a good one; and the horse and dog-cart, and a riding pony—more than a liberal return for payment of a three- thousand rupee bet. Pretty decent of Blaine on the whole, he thought. No fuss. No argument. Simply a short note of farewell, and a request that he would "find the horses a home and a use for the other things." Not bad. Not a bad fellow after all.

Chapter Twenty-Five

L'envoi

Down rings the curtain on a tale of love and mystery,
Clash of guile and anger and the consequence it bore;
The adventurers and kings
Disappear into the wings.
The puppet play is over and the pieces go in store.

Back, get ye back again to shop and ship and factory,
Mine and mill and foundry where the iron yokes are made;
Ye have trod a distant track
With a queen on camel-back,
Now hie and hew a broadway for your emperors of trade!

Go, get ye gone again to streets of strife reechoing -
Clangor of the crossings where the tides of trouble meet;
For a while on fancy's wing
Ye have heard the nautch-girls sing,
But a Great White Way awaits you where the Klax-on-horns repeat.

Back, bend the back again to commonplace and drudgery,
Beat the shares of vision into swords of dull routine,
Take the trolley and the train
To suburban hives again,
For ye wake in little runnels where the floods of thought have been.

Speed, noise, efficiency! Have flights of fancy rested you?
A while we set time's finger back, and was the labor vain?
If so we whiled your leisure
And the puppets gave you pleasure,
Then say the word, good people, and we'll set the stage again.

And that is the whole story

Smoking a cigarette lazily on Utirupa's palace roof, Yasmini reached for Tess's hand.

"Come nearer. See—take this. It is the value, and more, of the percentage of the silver that your husband would not take."

She clasped a diamond necklace around Tess's neck, and watched it gleam and sparkle in the refracted sunlight.

"Don't you love it? Aren't they perfect? And now—you've a great big draft of money, so I suppose you're both off to America, and good-by to me forever?"

"For a long time."

"But why such a long time? You must come again soon. Come next year. You and I love each other. You teach me things I did not know, and you never irritate me. I love you. You must come back next year!"

Tess shook her head.

"But why?"

"They say the climate isn't good for them until they're eighteen at least— some say twenty."

"Oh! Oh, I envy you! What will you call him? It will be a boy—it is sure to be a boy!"

"Richard will be one name, after my husband."

"And the other? You must name him after me in some way. You can not call a boy Yasmini. Would Utirupa sound too strange in America?"

"Rupert would sound better."

"Good! He shall be Rupert, and I will send a gift to him!"

(That accounts for the initials R. R. B. on a certain young man's trunk at Yale, and for the imported pedigree horse he rides during vacation— the third one, by the way, of a succession he has received from India.)

And that is the whole story, as Yasmini told it to me in the wonderful old palace at Buhl, years afterward, when Utirupa was dead, and the English Government had sent her into forced seclusion for a while—to repent of her manifold political sins, as they thought—and to start new enterprises as it happened. She had not seen Theresa Blaine again, she told me, although they always corresponded; and she assured me over and over again, calling the painted figures of the old gods on the walls to witness, that but for Theresa Blaine's companionship and affection at the right moment, she would never have had the courage to do what she did, even though the guns of the gods were there to help her.

The End