The Three Sapphires

"GREAT AS WAS THE ELEPHANT'S STRENGTH, SHE COULD NOT BREAK THE PYTHON'S DEADLY CLASP."

For a second the serpent's head was clear—a yard above, and the 10-bore spat its lead fair into the yawning mouth. The coils slipped to looseness; the big elephant neck drew in the cooling air, and Moti, wise as a human, knew that she was saved. A grunt of relief rippled weakly from her trunk, and Finnerty, slipping up as she lay still bound in the python's folds, patted her on the forehead and let her hear his voice.

"Put the bell on her, sahib," Mahadua advised, "for now that she is tired she will be at peace."

Mahadua's call to the carriers was answered far down the trail; but reassured by his cry of, "The big snake is dead!" they came back. More torches were lighted, their flickering glare completing a realistic inferno.

Down on her bended legs like a huge, elephant-faced god, a dead man, clad in the snuff-coloured robe of a priest, laced to her neck by the python coils and surrounded by black-skinned torch-bearers, Moti might well have been taken for some jungle fetish.

The men of Mandi carried little axes in their belts, and with these the serpent cable was cut and uncoiled. He was a gigantic brute, thirty feet long and thicker than a man's thigh. The mottled skin, a marvellous pattern of silver and gold and black, looked as though nature had hung out an embellished sign of "Beware!" Or, perhaps, mothering each of its kind, had, with painstaking care, here limned a deceiving screen like the play of sunlight or moonlight through leaves on the dark limb of a tree.

As the priest's limp body flopped to earth a jade-handled knife fell from a leather girdle. Swinton picked it up, saying: "This is familiar, major."

"There are two of them," Finnerty answered, stooping to reach another that still rested in its sheath.

The strap that held the sapphire bell, wound twice around the priest's shoulders, was evidently intended for Moti's neck, and with a continuous stream of low-voiced endearments, Finnerty buckled it to place.

Touching the iron chain that still held in its stride-shortening grip Moti's legs, Finnerty said: "That's why they came along at such a slow pace, and it will help us shoo the old girl back; she'll know that she can't cut up any didos."

Mahadua, though he didn't understand the English, realising something of this, said: "Sahib, Moti will be like a woman that has had her cry of passion; she will now bear with her friends. I will go in the lead with a torch, and if the sahib will spare one of the bridle reins, holding an end and allowing Moti to take the other end in her fingers as she might the tail of an elephant, she will follow the horse."

It was soon arranged thus. At a word from Finnerty, Moti lumbered heavily to her feet, while he stood with uplifted whip, ready to cut a stinging blow to her trunk should she show signs of temper. Quite understanding this threat, Moti gently thrust her trunk toward the major's face and fumbled his chin with her thumb and finger as though she would say: "I know a friend when I find him."

As they neared the elephant encampment, Moti, catching the sound of Bahadar's ears fanning flies, rumbled a soft message of peace; but there was no expected noise of greeting from the natives, no bustle of sleepers rising to greet the sahibs. They came right into the camp before some of the men, who had slept with their heads rolled in the folds of turbans or loin cloths, sat up groggily or struggled to incapable feet. The mahout reeled up from somewhere near Bahadar and salaamed drunkenly, a foolish, deprecating leer on his lips.

The sight of Moti partly sobered him, and his mind caught up the blurred happenings of the night. "An evil spirit, sahib," he babbled, "caused us to fall heavy in sleep, and we were wakened by the breaking of the rawhide nooses that bound Moti; then she fled to the jungle."

"This fool is drunk!" Mahadua declared angrily. "If the sahib will beat him with a whip he will tell who brought the arak."

Gothya repudiated Mahadua's assertion, but a firm tap of the riding whip on his buttocks, with threats of more, gradually brought out the story of their debauch. A party of native liquor runners, men who smuggled arak across the line from Nepal, had stumbled upon the party and had driven a thriving trade.

"That accounts largely for the stealing of Moti," Finnerty declared. He had in his hand the rawhide noose, showing that it had been cut close to the elephant's leg. Evidently the priest had been able to crawl right in to the camp, the drunkards having let their fire die.

The mahout, salaaming, said: "Sahib, the jungle is possessed of evil gods to-night. Just when it was growing dark we saw passing on a white horse the one who gallops at night to destroy."

"Was that before you became drunk, or since?" Finnerty asked sarcastically.

"At that time the wine had not arrived, sahib. We all saw passing yonder in the jungle where there is no path the white horse."

"Gad! It has been the girl coming down out of the hills," Finnerty said to Swinton. "There must be something about to materialise when she waited so late. We'll camp here," he added to Mahadua. "Send a couple of these fellows to the keddha to tell Immat to bring out his tusker, with a couple of ropes."

The men were sent off, a fire built, the tent pitched, and Finnerty's servant, who had been brought in charge of the commissariat, prepared a supper for the sahibs.

Bahadar, seeing that Burra Moti had overcome her waywardness, knelt down for a restful night, but Moti, true to her African elephant habit, remained on her stalwart legs, fondling her recovered sapphire trinket.

Like the aftermath of a heavy storm, the night held nothing but the solemn forest stillness; the tired sahibs lay in its calm creatures of a transient Nirvana till brought from this void of restful bliss by the clarion of a jungle cock rousing his feathered harem.

A golden-beaked black "hill myna" tried his wondrous imitative vocal powers on the cock's call from the depths of a tree just above them, and when this palled upon his fancy he piped like a magpie or drooled like a cuckoo; then he voiced some gibberish that might have been simian or gathered from the chatter of village children.

The camp stirred; the natives, shame in their hearts and aches in their heads, crawled into action. Amir Alli, the cook, built a fire, and brewed tea and made toast.

Lord Victor was filled with curiosity over the cock crow, and when it was explained that there were wild fowl about he became possessed of a desire to shoot some.

After breakfast Finnerty loaded a gun and sent Mahadua with Lord Victor after the jungle fowl. They were gone an hour, for the beautiful black-red jungle cock had led them deep into the forest before falling to the gun.

Upon their return Finnerty fancied there was an unusual diffidence about Lord Victor; he seemed disinclined to dilate upon his sporting trip; also Mahadua had a worried look, as if he held back something he should unfold.

A little later, as Finnerty went to the spot where Moti and Raj Bahadar were feeding upon limbs the men had brought, he heard Mahadua say to Gothya: "Does a spirit leave hoofprints in the earth as big as my cap, believer in ghosts? And does it ride back to the hills in daylight?" Then Gothya caught sight of Finnerty, and the wrangle ceased.

When the major had looked at the elephants for a minute he drew Mahadua into the jungle, and there said: "Now, shikari man, tell me what has entered through those little eyes of yours this morning?"

The face of Mahadua wrinkled in misery. "Sahib," he begged, "what am I to do? I eat master's salt, and yet——" He was fumbling in the pocket of his jacket; now he drew forth a rupee and tendered it to Finnerty, adding: "Take this, master, and give it back to the young lord sahib that I may now speak, not having eaten his salt to remain silent."

Finnerty threw the silver piece into the jungle, saying: "Bribery is for monkeys. And now that you serve but one master what have you of service for him?"

The man's eyes, which had been following with regret the rupee's spinning flight, now reverted to his master's face. "Going I saw in soft earth the print of hoofs, the front ones having been shod with iron; they were not small ones such as Bhutan ponies have, nor a little larger like the Arab horses, but wide and full, such as grow on the Turki breed."

By the "Turki breed" Mahadua meant the Turcoman or Persian horse, Finnerty knew, and the grey stallion Marie rode was one such. He asked: "Was it the track of the white horse Gothya thought carried an evil spirit?"

"Yes, sahib; for as we went beyond after the jungle hens the mem-sahib who rides the grey stallion passed, going up into the hills, and a road bears its burden both coming and going."

Finnerty jumped mentally. Why had Lord Victor given Mahadua a rupee to say nothing of this incident? "But she did not see you nor the sahib?" he queried.

"She did not see your servant, but the young man spoke with her."

"And he gave you a rupee?"

"He put a finger on his lips and closed his eyes when he passed the rupee, and thinking the going abroad to eat the air by the mem-sahib of no importance to master I said nothing."

Neither did Finnerty say anything of this to either Lord Victor or Swinton. But he made up his mind that he would also go up into the hills that day. It was his duty.

Persistently his mind revolted at the thought of denouncing the girl. In some moments of self-analysis his heart warmed in confessional, but this feeling, traitorous to his duty, he put in the storehouse of locked-away impulses. He had never even whispered into words these troublous thoughts. It took some mastering, did the transient glint of pleasing womanhood into his barren jungle life, for the big man was an Irish dreamer, a Celt whose emotions responded to the subtle tonic of beauty and charm. Ever since he had taken Marie in his arms to put her in the howdah he had felt her head against his shoulder; had seen the heavy sweep of black hair that was curiously shot with silver.

Finnerty could see an uneasy look in Lord Victor's eyes as that young man watched him coming back out of the jungle with Mahadua. Why had the youngster talked with the girl on the grey stallion—why had he not let her pass? Why had he given the shikari a rupee to say nothing of the meeting? There was some mystery behind the whole thing. She had come back late the previous evening, and now she was going up into the hills at this early hour.

The elephant Finnerty had sent for had not arrived; perhaps the half-drunken messengers had lain down in the jungle to sleep off the arak. But at last the tusker appeared. It was during this wait that Finnerty proposed to Swinton that they should go up into the hills. He saw Lord Victor start and look up, apprehension in his eyes, when he broached the matter, but though the latter advanced many reasons why they should not make the journey he did not accept the major's polite release of his company; he stuck. Indeed, Finnerty was hoping Gilfain would decide to return to Darpore, for the young man's presence would hamper their work of investigation.

He knew that the grey stallion's hoofprints would be picked up on the path that led to the hills when they came to the spot where the girl, having finished her detour, would swing her mount back to the beaten way, so he rode with his eyes on the ground. He first discerned them faintly cupping some hard, stony ground, but he said nothing, riding in silence till, where the trail lay across a stretch of mellow, black soil, imprints of the wide hoofs were indented as though inverted saucers had cut a quaint design. Here he halted and cried in assumed surprise: "By Jove! Somebody rides abroad early this morning!"

But his assumption of surprise was not more consummate than Gilfain's, for the latter's face held a baby expression of inquiring wonderment as he said: "Floaty sort of idea, I'd call it, for any one to jog up into these primeval glades for pleasure."

Swinton, who knew the stallion's hoofprints from a former study of them, raised his eyes to Finnerty's, there reading that the major also knew who the rider was.

Now by this adventitious lead their task was simplified, and Finnerty clung tenaciously to the telltale tracks. This fact gradually dawned upon Lord Victor, and he became uneasy, dreading to come upon the girl while with his two companions.

They had ridden for an hour, always upward, the timber growing lighter, the ground rockier, and open spots of jungle more frequent, when, on a lean, gravelled ridge, Finnerty stopped, and, dismounting, searched the ground for traces of a horse that had passed.

"Have you dropped something, major?" Lord Victor asked querulously.

"Yes," Finnerty answered, remounting; "I think it's back on the trail."

Swinton followed, and Lord Victor, muttering, "What the devil are you fellows up to?" trailed the other two.

A quarter of a mile back, where a small path branched, Finnerty picked up their lead and they again went upward, now more toward the east. The presence of Lord Victor held unworded the dominating interest in Swinton's and Finnerty's minds, so they rode almost silently.

It was noon when they, now high up among hills that stretched away to the foot of Safed Jan, whose white-clothed forehead rested in the clouds, came out upon a long, stony plateau. Finnerty, pointing with his whip, said: "There lies the Safed Jan Pass, and beyond is the road to Tibet, and also the road that runs south through Nepal and Naga land to Chittagong. I've never been up this far before."

"If this trip is in my honour, you're too devilish hospitable," Lord Victor growled; "mountain climbing as a pastime is bally well a discredited sport."

Here and there on the plateau the damp-darkened side of a newly upturned stone told that the grey stallion had passed on the path they rode; but at the farther extremity of the plateau they came, with startling suddenness, upon a deep cleft—a gorge hundreds of feet deep, and yet so smooth to the surface that at fifty yards it was unobservable. There the path ended, and on the farther side, twenty feet away, perched like a bird's nest in a niche of the cliff, was a temple, partly hollowed from the solid rock and partly built of brick. To one side, carved from the rock, was an image of Chamba.

With a rueful grin, Finnerty cast his eye up and down the gorge whose one end was lost between mountain cliffs, and whose other dipped down to cut the feet of two meeting hills. He dismounted and prowled up and down the chasm's brink. There were no hoofprints, no disturbing of sand or gravel; absolutely nothing but the quiescent weathered surface that had lain thus for centuries.

When Finnerty returned, Swinton, amused at the intense expression of discomfiture on his face, said: "Our early-morning friend must sit a horse called Pegasus."

Finnerty, raising his voice, called across the chasm. He was answered by an echo of his own rich Irish tone that leaped from gorge to gorge to die away up the mountainside. He seized a stone and threw it with angry force against the brick wall of the temple; the stone bounded back, and from the chasm's depths floated up the tinkle of its fall. But that was all; there was no response.

Somewhat to Finnerty's surprise, Swinton said: "Well, we've given our curiosity a good run for it; suppose we jog back? When we get in the cool of the jungle we'll eat our bit of lunch."

Finnerty did not voice the objection that was in his mind. Certainly the girl had passed that way—was still up above them; why should they give up pursuit because the trail was momentarily broken?

Back across the plateau Swinton had assumed the lead, and fifty yards in the jungle he stopped, saying: "I'm peckish; we'll have a good, leisurely lunch, here."

When they had eaten, Lord Victor, saying he was going to have a look at the bald pate of Safed Jan, strolled back toward the plateau. When he had gone Swinton spoke: "If we stay here long enough, major, the girl, who of course rode that horse whose tracks we followed, will come around that sharp turn in the path, and, figuratively, plunk into our arms. We are at the neck of the bottle—the gateway. There's a mighty cleverly constructed drawbridge in the face of that temple; that brickwork hides it pretty well."

Finnerty whistled. "And the girl, you think, vanished over the let-down bridge?"

"Yes, and probably sat there eyeing us all the time."

"By Jove, they saw us coming on the plateau and drew up the bridge!"

"Yes."

"And what do we do now?"

"Wait here. We'll see her face to face, I'm certain; that will be something. Whether she will have with her what she searches for I don't know."

"Some companion she expects to meet here?"

"It must be, and I'm going to search him."

"Unless it's too big a party."

"When do we start?" Lord Victor queried, returning; but he received only an evasive answer. He grew petulant as an hour went by.

And now Swinton had disappeared up the trail toward the plateau. After a time he came back, and with a motion of his eyebrows told Finnerty that some one was coming. They could hear an occasional clink of iron striking stone as a horse, moving at a slow walk, came across the plateau, and then a gentle, muffled, rhythmic series of thuds told that he was on the jungle path.

Finnerty had laid his heavy hand with a strong grip on Lord Victor's forearm, the pressure, almost painful, conveying to that young man's mind an inarticulate threat that if he voiced a warning something would happen him; he read its confirmation in a pair of blue Irish eyes that stared at him from below contracted brows.

A grey horse suddenly rounding the sharp turn came to a halt, for Swinton was sprawled fair across the path.

A heavy veil, fastened around the girl's helmet, failed to release at her trembling, spasmodic grasp, and her face went white as Swinton, leisurely rising, stood just to one side of the stallion's head, his implacable, unreadable eyes turned toward her. She knew, perhaps from the man's attitude within reach of her bridle rein, perhaps from the set of that face, perhaps from blind intuition, that the captain had recognised her.

Finnerty came forward, lifting his helmet in an interference of blessed relief, for he, too, sensed that there was something wrong—something even beyond the previous suspicion.

Lord Victor, who had sprung to his feet with a gasping cry at the girl's appearance, stood limp with apprehension, his mind so much of a boy's mind, casting about futilely for some plan to help her, for there was dread in her face, and, like a boy's mind, his found the solution of the difficulty in a trick, just such a trick as a schoolboy would pitch upon. The whole process of its evolution had taken but two seconds, so it really was an inspiration. He darted toward the horse, crying banteringly: "I say! Introduce me, old top." Then his foot caught in a visionary root, and he plunged, his small, bare head all but burying itself in Swinton's stomach.

The grey stallion leaped from the rake of a spur, his thundering gallop all but drowning the blasphemous reproach that issued from Swinton's lips, as, in a fury of sudden passion, he took a deliberate swing at the young nobleman's nose.

"THE GRAY STALLION'S THUNDERING GALLOP ALL BUT DROWNING THE BLASPHEMOUS REPROACH THAT ISSUED FROM SWINTON'S LIPS."

Finnerty unostentatiously crowded his bulk between the two, saying, with an inward laugh: "You're a dangerous man; you've winded the captain, and you've frightened that horse into a runaway. He may break the girl's neck."

They were a curious trio, each one holding a motive that the other two had not attained to, each one now dubious of the others' full intent, and yet no one wishing to clear the air by questions or recriminations—not just yet, anyway.

"What the devil did the girl bolt for?" Swinton asked angrily.

"The horse bolted," Finnerty answered, lying in an Irishman's good cause—a woman.

"You clumsy young ass!" Swinton hurled at Gilfain. "I wanted to——" Then the hot flush of temper, so rare with him, was checked by his mastering passion—secretiveness.

Lord Victor laughed. "My dear and austere mentor, I apologise. In my hurry to forestall you with the young lady whom you have ridden forth so many mornings to meet I bally well stumped your wicket, I'm afraid—and my own, too, for we're both bowled."

Finnerty philosophically drew his leather cheroot case and proffered it to Swinton, saying: "Take a weed!"

The captain complied, lighting it in an abstraction of remastery. He had made the astounding discovery that Marie was the young lady from whose evil influence Lord Victor presumably had been removed by sending him to Darpore, and, as an enlargement of this disturbing knowledge, was the now hammering conviction that she had brought the stolen papers to be delivered to traitorous Prince Ananda.

At that instant of his mental sequence the captain all but burned his nose, paralysed by a flashing thought. "Good Lord!" he groaned. "It is these papers that she seeks up this way; the somebody who is coming overland is bringing them for fear the authorities might have caught her on the steamer routes." Then in relief to this came the remembrance that so far she had not met the some one, for she travelled alone. But now that she—as he read in her eyes—had recognised him—her very wild plunge to escape proved it—his chance of discovering anything would be practically nil; he would possibly receive the same hushing treatment that had been meted out to Perreira, the half-caste.

"Shall we go back now?" Lord Victor was asking. "It's rather tame to-day; I'm not half fed up on tiger fights and elephant combats."

"Presently," Swinton answered, sitting down to still more methodically correlate the points of this newer vision. He could not confide any part of his discovery to Finnerty with Lord Victor present; he would decide later on whether he should, indeed, mention it at all. At first flush he had thought of galloping after the girl, but even if he had succeeded in overtaking her what could he do? If he searched her and found nothing, he would have ruined everything; probably Finnerty would have ranged up with the girl against this proceeding.

Further vibration of this human triangle, the three men of divers intent, was switched to startled expectancy by the clang of something upon the plateau—an iron-shod staff striking a stone or the impact of a horse's hoof. This was followed by silence. Finnerty stepped gently across to his horse, unslung from the saddle his 10-bore, and slipped two cartridges into it as he returned to stand leisurely against a tree trunk, an uplifted finger commanding silence. They could now hear the shuffling, muffled noises which emanate from people who travel a jungle trail no matter how cautiously they move, and something in the multiplicity of sounds intimated that several units composed the approaching caravan.

Two Naga spearmen first appeared around the turn, their eager, searching eyes showing they were on the alert for something. The threatening maw of the 10-bore caused them to stand stock-still, their jungle cunning teaching them the value of implicit obedience. They made no outcry. In four seconds the shaggy head of a pony came into view, and then his body, bearing in the saddle a sahib, and behind could be seen native carriers. The man on horseback reined up; then he laughed—a cynical, unmusical sneer it was. He touched the spur to his pony's flank, brushed by the Naga spearmen, and, eyeing the 10-bore quizzically, asked: "Well, my dear boy, what's the idea?"

Finnerty lowered the gun, answering: "Nothing; preparedness, that's all. Thought it might be a war party of Naga head-hunters when I saw those two spearmen."

The horseman slipped from his saddle and stood holding the rein; a lithe, sinewy, lean-faced man of forty-five years, his sharp grey eyes, a little too close set, holding a vulpine wariness.

Swinton had noticed his easy pose in the saddle, suggesting polo command, and now the two or three quick, precise steps forward spoke, "Service."

To Finnerty the cynical, drawling voice rang familiar; it had a curious, metallic, high-pitched crispness that the drawl failed to smother, but the man's face, caked with the drifting hill dust that sweat had matrixed, was like a mask. Finnerty proffered a cheroot, which the stranger accepted eagerly, saying: "Fancy my beggars bagged mine. I've had only some native mixture to puff from a crude clay pipe I made and baked in a fire."

"Come from Tibet way?" the major queried.

"No; been up country buying cotton for Chittagong people, and got raided by dacoits; had to work out this way."

This story, even fantastic and sudden-built as it sounded, might have passed ordinarily as just the rightful duplicity of a man not called upon to confide the reasons of his exploration trip to any one, had not the one word "Chittagong" burned like acid.

Swinton felt that the stranger's eyes were searching him, though his words were for Finnerty. Both knew the speaker was lying. His whole get-up was not the easy, indifferent, restful apparel of a man who had been some long time in the jungle. He wore brown leather riding boots instead of perhaps canvas shoes; his limbs were incased in cord breeches that spoke of a late Bond Street origin; a stock that had once been white held a horseshoe pin studded with moonstones, its lower ends passing beneath a gaudily checked vest. This very get-up dinned familiarity into the major's mind; he struggled with memory, mentally asking, "Where have I seen this chap?" The tawny moustache, bristling in pointed smoothness, had a rakish familiarity, and yet the echoes came from far back on the path of life, as elusively haunting as a dream recalled in the morning.

Abstractedly, as they talked, the stranger shifted his riding whip to his teeth, and, reaching down with the liberated hand, gave a slight tug at his boot strap, and that instant Finnerty knew his man. It was almost a gasping cry of recognition: "Captain Foley—by all the powers!"

The stranger's face blanched, and Swinton sprang to his feet, galvanised by a tremendous revelation.

An amused cackle came from beneath the tawny moustache, followed by an even-worded drawl: "You Johnnies are certainly out for a fine draw this morning; my name happens to be Blake-Hume—Charles Blake-Hume."

Finnerty grinned. "The same old delightfully humorous Pat Foley that I knew in the Tenth Hussars at Umballa, when I was a griffin fresh out; even in the choice of a new name you're aristocratic—'Blake-Hume!' My dear boy, you could no more shed yourself than you could that desire for a fancy vest and the moonstone pin that you wore in a deviltry of revolt against the idea that moonstones were unlucky."

Swinton was now convinced that Finnerty had made no mistake; he could see it in a sudden narrowing of the foxy eyes, and, taking a step closer to their visitor, he said: "Captain Foley, your daughter Marie has just passed down the trail."

This simple assertion had the comparative effect of a hand grenade dropped midway between Finnerty and the stranger; possibly the major was the more astounded one of the two.

"What, in the name of Heaven, are you saying, man?" he cried, though he still kept his steadfast blue eyes held on Captain Foley, for something in the latter's attitude suggested danger.

"Simply this," Swinton answered; "Captain Foley is the father of the girl known here as Marie Boelke, and it was she who stole a state paper from the possession of Earl Craig."

"Candour seems to be a jewel above price in the jungles this morning, so my compliments to you, my dear Captain Herbert, government policeman," Foley snarled.

Stung by the gratuitous sneer, Finnerty said with feeling: "Perhaps 'Mad' Foley"—he dropped the captain, knowing that Foley had been cast from the service—"you also recognise me, but for certain pieces of silver you would deny it. Do you remember the time I saved you a jolly good hiding that was fair coming to you for one of your crazy tricks?"

"Perfectly, my dear Finnerty; you were known to the mess as the 'Ulster Babe'; it was just a humour of mine now to play you a little, and as for the 'bobby' here, one could never mistake those bits of blue china that have been dubbed the 'farthing eyes.' Indeed I know you both quite well."

Swinton, less edged than Finnerty, now tendered some cynical coin in payment: "Perhaps you know this young gentleman also; I think he has cause for remembering you."

"Good morning, Lord Victor! You are in pleasant company," and Captain Foley let his irritating cackle escape. He gathered the bridle rein in his left hand, grasping the mane at his pony's wither, and turned the stirrup outward to receive his foot as preparation for a leisurely lift to the saddle.

In answer to a hand signal, Finnerty lifted his 10-bore to cover Captain Foley as Swinton said: "Just a moment, Mister Foley; there are certain formalities imposed upon suspected persons crossing the Nepal border, which include perhaps a search. We want the papers your daughter stole from Earl Craig under your influence, and for which you were paid German gold."

"The bobby is devilish considerate, Lord Gilly, in not naming you as the careless one, isn't he? Charmingly diffident sort of chap, to put the onus on the venerable early. The old gent would be tremendously shocked to know he was accused of flirting with a young girl, don't you think?"

"I do think something, which is that you're no end of a bounder to bring your daughter's name into your flooey talk," Lord Victor retorted angrily.

"Tell your coolies to open up everything," and Swinton's opaque eyes held Foley's shifty ones menacingly. "As to yourself, strip!"

"The coolies are at his majesty's service, Mister Bobby; as for myself I'll see you damned first. I am in independent territory; Maharajah Darpore is, like myself, not a vassal of Johnnie Bull. If you put a hand on me I'll blink those farthing eyes of yours, Mister Bloody Bobby."

Next instant the speaker sprawled on his back, both shoulders to the earthen mat, as Finnerty threw a quick wrestler's hold across his neck. The big Irishman's blood had been heated by the very words that had roused Lord Victor's anger. Besides, this was the easier way; they had no time for international equity. Swinton quickly searched the prostrate man. His boots were pulled off, the insoles ripped out—even a knife blade inserted between the two laps of the outer soles, practically wrecking them. A Webley revolver that hung from a belt Foley wore was emptied of its shells; even its barrel was prodded for a hidden roll of thin paper. The search of the packs was most thorough, and fully devoid of results.

Foley laughed cynically when the two searchers stood empty-handed, discomfiture patent in their faces.

"You turned the paper over to your daughter," Swinton accused in an unusually verbal mood.

"According to your own statement, my dear government spy, you had the young lady in your hands here; did you find this apocryphal document?"

Swinton's eyes met Finnerty's, which were saying quite plainly: "The girl has beaten us out!" There also lingered in the Irishman's eyes, Swinton fancied, a pathetic look of regret that now there could be no doubt about her mission; he even heard a deep-drawn breath, such as a game better takes when he has lost heavily.

"A devilish nice mess you have made of your life and your daughter's, Captain Foley," Lord Victor suddenly ejaculated. "You were a 'king's bad bargain' in the army, and you're a man's bad bargain out of it."

Foley stared; then he sneered: "The young cock must be cutting his spurs. Rather tallish order from a waster, Lord Gilly." He turned to Captain Swinton. "Now that you have performed your police duties I have a bottle of Scotch, which no doubt you observed among my traps, and if you gentlemen have no objection to joining me we'll drink a toast, 'Happy to meet, sorry to part, and happy to meet again.'"

"I don't drink with the king's enemies!" Swinton clipped the words with a sound as if coins dropped.

"Nor I—with thieves," added Lord Victor.

"I'm sorry for you, my boy," the major said solemnly. "I'm ashamed to refuse to drink with an Irishman, but I'm fed up on traitors."

Swinton drew the major to one side. When they had finished a discussion as to whether there was any benefit in detaining Foley or not, which was settled in the negative, Foley asked, a sneer curling the tawny moustache: "Well, you pair of bobbies, do I pass?"

"You may go—to hell!" Finnerty added the warm destination in bitterness of soul over his shattered dream.

The coolies had repacked their burdens; the two Naga spearmen at a command trotted down the path; Foley swung into the saddle, and with a mocking, "Au revoir, Lord Gilly, Mister Bobby, and my dear Ulster Babe," was gone.

"Dished!" Finnerty exclaimed bitterly.

"The girl—we are outwitted by a woman!" Swinton admitted despondently.

"You two Johnnies have thrown up your tails," Lord Victor objected. "If the girl has the document you're so cocksure of, it's something to know that it's in Darpore. That's what I call a deuced good clue."

"My dear boy," Finnerty said, under evident control, "you're as innocent as a babe. You don't happen to know that there's a mutiny near ripe in Darpore, and it just needed a torch, such as this document, to set the whole state in a blaze."

Swinton, galvanised out of his habitual control, added fiercely: "And, you young ass! You knew who the girl was; we saw you at Jadoo Pool—we saved your life. If I'd known that it was Marie Foley I'd have dogged every footstep she took——"

"But you knew when you had her here," Lord Victor objected, momentarily forgetting his part in that episode.

"Yes, by Heaven, I did, and I can thank your sprawling interference for her escape! Why didn't you tell us that it was the girl who had stolen these state papers?"

"I've got a floaty idea that this lack of mutual confidence originated with your honourable self, Captain—Captain Herbert, as I now learn your name is. Do you think the earl would have countenanced my accepting the hospitality of a prince accompanied by a government spy?"

"You've answered your own question, Lord Victor," Swinton said quietly. "Earl Craig belongs to the old school, the Exeter Hall crowd who believe the Oriental is an Occidental—India for the Indians is their motto—and that the Hun is a civilised gentleman, not as some of us know him, a rapacious brute who seeks to dominate the world. It is that cabal, the Haldane tribe, in psychic affinity with the soulless Hun, that makes it possible for this cuckoo creature, Boelke, to plant his eggs of sedition in the Darpore nest. Earl Craig would not have been a party to my way of unmasking or clearing the Darpores, father and son; he'd call it un-English. But I may say I did not come out here to watch you; there was no suspicion that you would come in contact with the stolen paper. My mission was concerned with some arms that are headed for India. I hope you see why it was thought advisable to keep you in ignorance of my status."

Lord Victor did not assimilate this rapidly worded statement as quickly as it was offered. He pondered a little, and then said: "I did not know that Marie Foley was here, and she got no end of a surprise when I turned up. It was all a bally fluke her arranging to meet me; she funked it when that gold cigarette case was handed her by Prince Ananda with the information that I had found it. She thought I had recognised it, which I hadn't; at least it dangled in my memory, but I hadn't connected it with her. She rode down the hill, and when she saw me coming along dropped a note so that I saw it fall—devilish clever, I call it—making an appointment at Jadoo Pool, and there she made me promise not to denounce her."

"Somewhat easy, I fancy," Swinton said sarcastically; "threw the glamour of love over you."

"You dear old bachelor! You have very visionary ideas of that matter. She doesn't care two straws for me; it was purely a matter of 'on honour' business, because she gave me her solemn word that she hadn't stolen the document, and that she hadn't brought it out to Darpore. As to the 'grand passion,' I have a floaty idea that the handsome major, with his trick of life-saving, has taken Marie's fancy."

Finnerty blushed, but Swinton said gloomily: "You see the result of believing her. She was just too fiendishly cunning; she hadn't the paper, but knew that her traitor father was bringing it and that she, comparatively immune from search, could safely carry it to the last lap of its journey. She knew that we were liable to intercept the father and very probably search him."

"Looks like it," Finnerty commented. "I didn't know that Foley had a daughter; I heard he'd been cashiered."

"He raced himself out of the army—gambled too heavily," Swinton explained; "then, it being the only thing he cared for, went at it professionally till he raced himself out of England. After that he drifted to Austria and married a Viennese, reported to be of noble family. Whether it was a chance to plant a spy in England or that the woman really fell in love with him I don't know. Marie, of course, is the daughter, and between them the Foleys stole that document through a chance that came because of Lord Victor's fancy for the girl."

Swinton had spoken without any feeling in his voice—automatically, like a witness giving evidence. Gilfain seemed to understand this, for he made no comment. But Finnerty said lugubriously: "Devilish nasty mess, and we've been dished." He picked up the 10-bore, and, going over to his horse, strapped it under his saddle flap, saying: "We'd better jog back."

Two legs of the mental triangle somewhat folded together as it dribbled down the forest path, Finnerty and Swinton riding in the lead and Lord Victor, with the depressing conviction that he had muddled things, behind.

"It's pretty well cleared up," Swinton remarked in a tone that just reached Finnerty.

"And looks rather bad for us being able to handle the situation without telegraphing headquarters," the major answered despondently.

"Small chance for that," and Swinton laughed in bitterness. "Our new Nana Sahib, Ananda, will have the wires cut or the operator under control; we'll get no word out of here until the thing has happened."

Finnerty also realised how completely they had been blanked. "By heavens, we've got to spike the guns ourselves! We'd better be killed in the attempt than be censured by government," he declared.

"I think so. They've left it to us so far, and the blame is really on our shoulders, old man."

"We'll never get the paper," Finnerty said with conviction.

"I agree with you in that, but we've got to get the machine guns and their ammunition; without them they'd be an unarmed rabble, and no great harm could be done before a regiment from Dumdum or Lucknow could be thrown in here. It's a crazy scheme of Ananda's, anyway, but the Mad Mullah in the Sudan cost many a British life because he was held too lightly at first and got guns."

Finnerty had been restlessly eyeing the trail they travelled. Now he worded the reason, which he had carried unplaced in words before: "Going and coming I've been looking for tracks left by that party of gun runners the Banjara told about, but I've seen none. This path that the girl followed is not the main trail leading up through Safed Jan Pass, and those accursed Huns, with their usual German thoroughness, built that drawbridge at the old temple so that Foley could slip in without a chance of being met. The whole thing is as clear as mud; he was to wait there till the girl came for the document. When we get lower down we'll cut across the jungle to the regular trail—it's an old elephant highway—and check up."

"We've got to get into that underground fort," Swinton said with solemn determination in his voice. "Jadoo Cave has got something to do with the entrance."

A disconcerting thought struck Finnerty. "The minute we show up we'll be surrounded by spies. They're in my bungalow all the time; we'll not get a chance."

There was a warning cough from behind, and then Lord Victor, urging his horse closer, said: "Don't bar me, you fellows, from anything that's on; I don't want to be 'sent to Coventry.' If it's a question of fight, for God's sake give me a gun. I'd rather have you damn me like a bargee than be left out. I can't bally well plan anything—I'm not up to it—but I'm an Englishman."

"My dear boy," Finnerty answered, "we know that. If we'd taken you in at the start we'd have given you a better chance, but we all make blunders."

It was about four o'clock when Finnerty, halting, said: "I know where I'm at now; the other trail lies due west, and if we keep our faces full on Old Sol we'll make it."

Through the jungle without a path their progress was slow. At times they were turned into big detours by interlaced walls of running elephant creeper and vast hedges of the sahbar kirao, the "have-patience plant" that, with its hooked spikes, was like a fence of barbed wire. Their minds, tortured by the impending calamity, were oblivious to the clamour of the jungle. A bear that had climbed a dead tree inhabited by bees scuttled down to the ground, an animated beehive, his face glued with honey, his paws dripping with it, and his thick fur palpitating with the beat of a million tiny wings. He humped away in a shuffling lope, unmolested; not even a laugh followed his grotesque form.

It was five o'clock when they struck the Safed Jan Trail and swung southward, Finnerty's eyes taking up the reading of its page. "Ah!" he cried suddenly, and, pulling his horse to a standstill, he dropped to the ground.

In the new partnership he turned rather to Lord Victor, saying: "We've been told that machine guns and ammunition have been run into Darpore over the same Chittagong route we think Mad Foley used, only they've come along this trail from the pass." He dipped his thumb into one of the numerous deep heel prints, adding: "See! The carriers were heavy loaded and there were many."

From the varied weathering of the tracks it was apparent that carriers had passed at different intervals of time.

The major remounted, and they had ridden half an hour when his horse pricked his ears and the muscles of his neck quivered in an action of discovery. Finnerty slipped his 10-bore from its holding straps, passed his bridle rein to Swinton, and, dropping to the ground, went stealthily around a bend in the path. He saw nothing—no entrapping armed natives—but a voice came to him from its unseen owner, saying softly: "Salaam! I am the herdsman, and am here for speech with the sahib."

"All right. Come forth!" the major answered.

From a thick screen of brush the Banjara stepped out, saying: "My brother is beyond on the trail, and from his perch in a tree he has given the call of a bird that I might know it was the keddah sahib that passed; he will soon be here."

Finnerty called, and Swinton and Lord Victor came forward. Presently the fellow arrived, and, at a word from the herdsman, said: "Nawab Darna Singh sends salaams to the keddah sahib."

Finnerty stared in amazement. "Why should he have sent you, knowing that a Banjara does not kiss the hand that has beaten him like a dog?"

"Because of that, huzoor. Darna Singh is also treated like a dog, for he is put in a cage, and those who are beaten join together against the whip."

"Why is Darna Singh caged?"

The man cast an uneasy glance toward Lord Victor and hesitated. Sensing the reason for this, Finnerty said: "Speak the truth and fear not."

"We of this country know that the sahibs are quick to anger if the mem-sahibs are spoken of, but it is because of the young mem-sahib that Darna Singh suffers. There is to be war, and Darna Singh came to know—though it may be a lie—that the mem-sahib would be made maharani—perhaps not a gudi maharani—and his sister would be taken with a fever and die. And it may be that in a passion over this he sought to end the matter with a thrust of a knife, but I have heard that Rajah Ananda received but a slight cut."

"I'm damned sorry for that, for the nawab has a strong arm."

"Darna Singh was indeed unlucky, sahib, for Rajah Ananda had been taught in Belati to strike with the hand and that saved him."

"Where is the Nawab caged?"

"Below; where the guns are."

Finnerty caught a quick flash of the eye from Swinton.

"And if that is the truth, that you come from him must be a lie, for a jailer does not give entrance to friends of the prisoner."

"True, sahib; but the rani is not caged, and she fears for the life of her brother, and knowing I had been beaten by the rajah and knowing that a Banjara does not forgive, for our tribe is many in her father's state, she sent by a handmaid, who is also of our tribe, a ring of keys that were Darna Singh's, and the woman was taught to say, 'Give these to the keddah sahib and tell him that war comes to the sircar; that these keys open the way where are many guns and where now is Darna Singh.'"

The man took from the folds of his turban a ring upon which were three keys. Finnerty received them in astonishment; then he asked: "Where are the doors?"

"The black leopard came out from his cage through Jadoo Cave, and it may be that Darna Singh opened a door of the cave with one of these keys."

"Damn it!" Swinton ejaculated. "That's the whole thing." But Finnerty objected: "We searched that cave, and there was no door."

"True, there is no door, but there is a passage high up in the gloom, and beyond that is a cave that was made by the foreigners, and in that is the door. And also it opens to the trail that we are now on." The native messenger was explicit.

"By Jove!" Finnerty exclaimed. "That's how the leopard slipped away."

The herdsman said: "I did not know of this, and perhaps wrongly accused that monkey-faced shikari of sleeping over his task."

The messenger now said deprecatingly: "A watchman knows the many manners of acquiring to the inside of a bungalow without being seen, and one way is to wait for darkness. Also they will watch the sahib's bungalow for his return."

"Very well," Finnerty said; "if I am able to see to it, my faithful fellow, when this is over the sircar will give to you and your brother a village that you may collect the tithes from and have a home."

"Sahib, I have received my pay in advance from the rajah; I am but serving in the manner of the pay."

"Sit you then," Finnerty commanded, "while we talk in plans."

"We've a chance, major, now that we can get in," Swinton declared. "I have my cordite rifle, you have your 10-bore, and if we can but get command of their ammunition we'll blow the damn thing up, even if we go with it."

Finnerty felt that there was no question about the captain's sincerity; the flat blue eyes transmitted nothing but fixed purpose.

"Oh, I say, am I in the discard?" Lord Victor asked plaintively, for the messenger's information had been translated in a condensed form, Finnerty rather emphasising the important part Marie played as the future maharani.

"I thought of that," Swinton answered; "you will be a 'reserve battalion.' I don't mind being pipped in the way of duty—rather expect it some day—but I should rather like my family to know that I pegged out playing the game, and I shouldn't wonder if we're bagged in that cubby-hole, that it would never be known just how we had disappeared."

"Besides, youngster," Finnerty added, "if you can work yourself into communication with the government we want you to let them know what is trump." The major spoke to the Banjara; then he returned to Lord Victor: "This chap will smuggle you out, he says, and I think he can do it. His brother will bring you word if we get out, and even if he knows we've been captured he will come to tell you; at any rate, if we're not reported safe before morning you had better take the horses and get away—the Banjara can stick on one, he says."

"Don't worry over us, Gilfain," Swinton added; "just get word out as soon as you can."

Then the watchman said: "The sahib sent back out of the jungle the elephant with the bell, and it is a sacred elephant for such as worship the god that sits in sleep."

"It is a sacred elephant to those who worship Buddha," Finnerty answered.

"The woman who came from the maharani said that Rajah Ananda has taken the sacred elephant in his hand, for to-night is a night of omen at the Lake of the Golden Coin."

"By gad!" Finnerty cried. "That swine has got the three sapphires together now. Nothing will stop him; he'll be fanatically insane."

A sibilant whistle from Swinton was his only comment. The thought was paralysing.

"Well"—Finnerty sighed the words—"we'll just sit here till it's dark, and then play our last card." He pulled his belt, in which was a hunting knife, a hole tighter, as if girding his loins for the fray.

The Banjara now said: "Rajah Ananda will send out men to look for you on the trail, sahib, but if you will go east through the jungle to where there is a small path—one the sahib no doubt knows—my brother and I will lead the horses back up over this broad trail to a nala with a stony bed, and then through the jungle and back to where you wait, so that those who come forth will say: 'The keddah sahib and his friends came down and then went back again to the hills, perhaps to follow a bison.'"

"Splendid!" Finnerty commented, and added in commendation: "'To a strong man a wrong done is more power.'"

Then Finnerty and his companion cut across through the jungle. It was a good ruse, for the rajah's men, thinking the sahibs were up in the jungle, would not guard every approach.

The sun was now sinking on the horizon, and with its usual bird clamour of eventide the day was passing. Once, as they waited, Lord Victor said: "I don't believe that girl would join herself to a native."

"That's because you're in the full moon of faith, my young friend. At your age I believed in fairies, too," Finnerty said.

"Just the sort of faith," Swinton contributed, "that gives such women their power for mischief; a Prussian spy must do as she is told, and if she were allotted to Ananda, to Ananda she goes."

A shrill note that might have been from a boatswain's silver whistle or a red-breasted teal came floating up from where they had left the Safed Jan Trail. It was answered from on toward the palace hill.

"Ananda's men have found where the horses have turned to go back up into the hills," Finnerty chuckled.

"Deucedly clever work of that Banjara," Lord Victor declared; "sorry I shot the old infidel's dog."

A little later the whistling note, repeated three times, came from higher up, where the Safed Jan Trail lay.

The forest was dark from the drop of night's curtain when the Banjara and his brother came so softly along the scarce discernible trail that they were almost upon the sahibs before they were heard.

"The moon will appear in two hours, sahib, and its light would betray you," the herdsman advised, "so it is well that we take the horses down this path which no one travels at night, and when we have come close to Jadoo Nala I will remain with the horses and you will go with my brother into the cave."

When they had come to a proper place to leave their horses in the jungle, Lord Victor said: "The strategy of you two Johnnies isn't what I'd call first chop. I'll be a dub at this sortie game, for I don't know the language."

"The Banjara does," Finnerty said shortly.

"There's another thing," the youth resumed; "either of you chaps are sort of serviceable to the king, probably cost him a thousand pounds up to date for your training, and I'm—as our delightful friend Foley phrased it—a waster. Sabe, my dear major?"

"My dear boy, you're in training for the future earlship. A thoroughbred colt isn't much benefit to the realm, but he generally develops into something worth while—sabe?"

"Thanks, old top! Rather think I'll stow that away as a good tip. But to return: I'd feel rather thankful to take a chance inside to—well, come back."

"You mean about the girl? We just forgot all that, and are now trying to do the best we can for what's to come, and your place is just where you've been stationed; that is, unless you're in command."

Lord Victor sprang to his feet, clicked his heels together, very erect and soldierly, for he had been at Sandhurst, and saluted. With a laugh Finnerty said: "Fall out!" The discussion ceased.

From where they were they could hear, at times, curious, muffled noises disturbing the evening quiet, coming from the palace hill. Finnerty now gave some final advice:

"It is now eight o'clock. If we do not come back for the horses or get you word before morning, make for the outside. Have you any money?"

"Not much," Lord Victor answered.

Finnerty and Swinton gave him the money they had, the former saying: "If we get caught in that cave we won't need these rupees to pay board for long, I fancy." He held out his hand, and the youth took it, saying: "I'll remember about the thoroughbred colt."

Swinton shook hands with him, saying: "Duty is the best tutor, Lord Victor; it's a steadier, eh?"

"Sorry about—well, the—that silly break of mine about secret service, you know."

The Banjara, noting this completion of detail, said: "And the matter of a village, huzoor—does the young Lord Sahib understand that he is to tell the sircar that me and my brother have been true to their salt?"

"I will tell him to not forget, my friend, for you will well deserve it," the major answered.

When he had impressed this matter upon Gilfain, Finnerty held out his hand to the Banjara: "Brother, you are a man."

"We Banjaras are taught by our mothers that we are to become men," the herdsman answered with simple dignity.

Like the sealing of a solemn compact between the members of a brotherhood was this exchange of handclasps, Swinton also taking the Banjara's hand in a grasp of admiration.

As Finnerty and Swinton melted down the gloomed path with the Banjara's brother, the herdsman stood watching their going, repeating a tribal saying: "In the kingdom of men there are no boundaries."

When the two sahibs came out to where the Safed Jan Trail wound along the bed of a nala approaching the palace plateau, their guide said: "Just beyond is the new cave. I will go forward to see that no one keeps the door, for they will not think it strange that I should be about. If the sahibs hear the small cry of a tree cricket they may come forward."

In five minutes the hissing pipe of a cicada came back to their ears, and, slipping from the jungle to the nala trail, they noiselessly crept to the dark portal that yawned to the right of their way. From the contour of the hill, outlined against an afterglow sky, Finnerty knew that they were on the reverse side of the jutting point that held Jadoo Cave. As they entered a gloom so intense they saw nothing, a whisper reassured them, and the native's hand grasped Finnerty's fingers. The major, understanding, reached back the stock of his 10-bore to Swinton, and they went forward into the blackness. Soon the watchman stopped and whispered: "Put out your hand, sahib, and feel the spot that is here."

By a grasp on his wrist Finnerty's hand was placed upon a stone wall, and his fingers, moving up and down and across, detected a thin crack so truly perpendicular that it suggested mechanics.

The native whispered: "One of the keys on the ring will unlock this that is a door." Then he fumbled the wall with his fingers, and presently found a square block of stone, saying: "The keyhole is within."

A long-stemmed key on the ring fitted the keyhole, but before Finnerty could shoot the bolt the native whispered: "Not yet, sahib." He produced two candles and a box of matches. "Remember, sahib, that no man owns the light of a fire; here is an eye that makes no betraying light." And he placed in Finnerty's fingers a slim male-bamboo rod.

At a twist from Finnerty's hand a heavy bolt in the lock glided back with noiseless ease; a pull caused the stone-faced door to swing forward in the same frictionless quiet, and beyond was a gloom as deep as that of the cave.

"I will watch, sahib," the guide whispered, "and if it is known that evil has fallen upon you I will warn the Lord Sahib; if it please the gods that you come forth I will also carry to him that good tale."

Closing the door behind them, the two adventurers stood in a void so opaque, so devoid of sound, that it produced a feeling of floating in blackened space with the earth obliterated. Finnerty's big hand groped till it found the captain's shoulder, where it rested for a second in heavy assurance; then he gave Swinton a candle, saying: "If we get separated——"

They moved forward, Finnerty feeling the path with the bamboo rod. He hugged the wall on his right, knowing that the passage, skirting the hill edge, must lead to beneath the palace. Suddenly, shoulder high, the gloom was broken by a square opening, and through it Finnerty saw the handle of the Dipper in its sweep toward the horizon. Beneath this port was a ledge to support a machine gun, as the major surmised. Every twenty feet were openings of different shapes; some narrow, vertical slits for rifle fire. Once Finnerty's rod touched a pillar in the centre of the passage. His fingers read grotesque figures carved upon its sides, and he knew they were in one of the old Hindu rajah's semisacred excavated chambers. Twice, on his right, his hand slipped into space as he felt his way—open doorways from which dipped stone steps to lower exits.

Suddenly his bamboo rod came dead against an obstructing wall in front. Set in this was a flat steel door, with a keyhole which admitted one of the other keys. Finnerty closed the door, not locking it, but when he had taken two steps he caught a clicking sound behind. Turning in apprehension, he pushed upon the door, but it refused to give. He inserted the key; the bolt was where he had left it, shot back, but the door was immovable. A shiver twitched his scalp. Had he himself touched something that automatically locked the door, or had its swing carried a warning to some one who had electrically shot the bolts? The door itself was massive enough to hold any sort of mechanism; it was like the bulkhead of a battleship.

Twice Finnerty found a closed door in the wall on his right; no doubt within the chamber beyond were cannon that commanded some road of approach to the hill. Next his hand swept across a four-foot space, and against the farther wall of this stood open a heavy teakwood door; from the passage beyond drifted a nauseating, carrion smell, such as hovers over a tiger's cage.

Twenty yards beyond, Swinton touched the major's shoulders and whispered: "I heard something behind; I feel that we are being followed."

The major shivered; not through personal fear, but if they were trapped, if they failed, what bloodshed and foolish revolt would follow. To turn back and search was useless; they must keep on. They must be close to the many chambers beneath the palace where the ammunition and guns, no doubt, were kept. It was ominous, this utter absence of everything but darkness.

With a gasping breath, Finnerty stood still. A slipping noise in front had caught his ear, but now, in their own silence, they both heard the slip of velvet feet on the stone floor behind, and in their nostrils struck full the carrion smell.

"Tiger!" Finnerty whispered, and the pulled-back hammers of his gun clicked alarmingly loud on the death air.

In ten paces Finnerty's gun barrel clicked against iron; it was a door. They were trapped. Behind, the thing crept closer.

"Light a candle and hold it above my head; I must settle that brute," he said, in his mind also a thought that perhaps the light would frighten away the animal that trailed them.

As Swinton struck a match it broke, its flickering fall glinting green two devilish eyes in the head of a tiger that was setting himself for a spring, ten feet away. The roar of Finnerty's 10-bore, the two shocks almost in one, nearly burst their eardrums, and Swinton stood keyed to rigidity by the call for steady nerve. There was no rushing charge. A smothered cough from the tiger told that blood choked his lungs.

A man's voice came from the darkness almost at their elbow, saying: "Sahib, I am Darna Singh—a friend!"

"Come here!" Finnerty answered. "But no treachery!" For he feared it might be an imposter.

Darna Singh drew close, whispering: "The tiger is dead, so do not make a light. How did the sahib get here—has he keys for the door?"

Finnerty told how the princess had sent him Darna's ring of keys.

Darna Singh explained: "I was cast in here by Ananda to be killed by the tiger who has been let down from his cage. Perhaps they do not know that you are here."

"Have they heard the gun?" the major asked.

"The doors are very heavy, and through the rock they would not have heard. If they have, the key will not open the door if they wish."

Then Darna Singh told what lay beyond the door. The magazine was all prepared for blowing up should Ananda's plan fail and there be danger of discovery of his imported guns. Wires ran from the magazine to a room in the palace, where a switch could bury everything in a second. The passages were lighted by electricity, and the dynamo might have gone wrong, causing the darkness, or it might be an entrapping scheme. There would not be more than one or two German guards at the magazine, where the guns were, and if the sahibs could fall upon these in the dark, Darna Singh could win over the native guards, for they did not love Ananda.

The door opened to a key, showing beyond no glint of light. They passed through; this time Finnerty, finding a fragment of rock, fixed it so that the door could not be closed behind them. Hope suggested that the shot had not been heard, for no storm of attack broke upon them.

After a time Darna Singh checked, and, putting his lips close to Finnerty's ear, whispered: "We are close to the gun and ammunition room. I will go a little in advance and speak in Hindustani to the sentry; he will think it one of their natives, and as we talk you must overpower him."