Produced by M.R.J.

KING--OF THE KHYBER RIFLES

A Romance of Adventure

By Talbot Mundy

Chapter I

     Suckled were we in a school unkind
     On suddenly snatched deduction
     And ever ahead of you (never behind!)
     Over the border our tracks you'll find,
     Wherever some idiot feels inclined
     To scatter the seeds of ruction.

     For eyes we be, of Empire, we!
     Skinned and Puckered and quick to see
     And nobody guesses how wise we be.
     Unwilling to advertise we be.
     But, hot on the trail of ties, we be
     The pullers of roots of ruction!

     --Son of the Indian Secret Service

The men who govern India--more power to them and her!--are few. Those
who stand in their way and pretend to help them with a flood of words
are a host. And from the host goes up an endless cry that India is the
home of thugs, and of three hundred million hungry ones.

The men who know--and Athelstan King might claim to know a
little--answer that she is the original home of chivalry and the modern
mistress of as many decent, gallant, native gentlemen as ever graced a
page of history.

The charge has seen the light in print that India--well-spring of
plague and sudden death and money-lenders--has sold her soul to twenty
succeeding conquerors in turn.

Athelstan King and a hundred like him whom India has picked from British
stock and taught, can answer truly that she has won it back again from
each by very purity of purpose.

So when the world war broke the world was destined to be surprised on
India's account. The Red Sea, full of racing transports crowded with
dark-skinned gentlemen, whose one prayer was that the war might not be
over before they should have struck a blow for Britain, was the Indian
army's answer to the press.

The rest of India paid its taxes and contributed and muzzled itself and
set to work to make supplies. For they understand in India, almost as
nowhere else, the meaning of such old-fashioned words as gratitude and
honor; and of such platitudes as, "Give and it shall be given unto you."

More than one nation was deeply shocked by India's answer to "practises"
that had extended over years. But there were men in India who learned to
love India long ago with that love that casts out fear, who knew exactly
what was going to happen and could therefore afford to wait for orders
instead of running round in rings.

Athelstan King, for instance, nothing yet but a captain unattached, sat
in meagerly furnished quarters with his heels on a table. He is not a
doctor, yet he read a book on surgery, and when he went over to the club
he carried the book under his arm and continued to read it there. He is
considered a rotten conversationalist, and he did nothing at the club to
improve his reputation.

"Man alive--get a move on!" gasped a wondering senior, accepting a
cigar. Nobody knows where he gets those long, strong, black cheroots,
and nobody ever refuses one.

"Thanks--got a book to read," said King.

"You ass! Wake up and grab the best thing in sight, as a stepping stone
to something better! Wake up and worry!"

King grinned. You have to when you don't agree with a senior officer,
for the army is like a school in many more ways than one.

"Help yourself, sir! I'll take the job that's left when the scramble's
over. Something good's sure to be overlooked."

"White feather? Laziness? Dark Horse?" the major wondered. Then he
hurried away to write telegrams, because a belief thrives in the early
days of any war that influence can make or break a man's chances. In
the other room where the telegraph blanks were littered in confusion
all about the floor, he ran into a crony whose chief sore point was
Athelstan King, loathing him as some men loathe pickles or sardines, for
no real reason whatever, except that they are what they are.

"Saw you talking to King," he said.

"Yes. Can't make him out. Rum fellow!"

"Rum? Huh! Trouble is he's seventh of his family in succession to serve
in India. She has seeped into him and pickled his heritage. He's a
believer in Kismet crossed on to Opportunity. Not sure he doesn't pray
to Allah on the sly! Hopeless case."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite!"

So they all sent telegrams and forgot King who sat and smoked and read
about surgery; and before he had nearly finished one box of cheroots
a general at Peshawur wiped a bald red skull and sent him an urgent
telegram.

"Come at once!" it said simply.

King was at Lahore, but miles don't matter when the dogs of war are
loosed. The right man goes to the right place at the exact right time
then, and the fool goes to the wall. In that one respect war is better
than some kinds of peace.

In the train on the way to Peshawur he did not talk any more volubly,
and a fellow traveler, studying him from the opposite corner of the
stifling compartment, catalogued him as "quite an ordinary man." But he
was of the Public Works Department, which is sorrowfully underpaid and
wears emotions on its sleeve for policy's sake, believing of course that
all the rest of the world should do the same.

"Don't you think we're bound in honor to go to Belgium's aid?" he asked.
"Can you see any way out of it?"

"Haven't looked for one," said King.

"But don't you think--"

"No," said King. "I hardly ever think. I'm in the army, don't you know,
and don't have to. What's the use of doing somebody else's work?"

"Rotter!" thought the P.W.D. man, almost aloud; but King was not
troubled by any further forced conversation. Consequently he reached
Peshawur comfortable, in spite of the heat. And his genial manner
of saluting the full-general who met him with a dog-cart at Peshawur
station was something scandalous.

"Is he a lunatic or a relative or royalty?" the P.W.D. man wondered.

Full-generals, particularly in the early days of war, do not drive
to the station to meet captains very often; yet King climbed into the
dog-cart unexcitedly, after keeping the general waiting while he checked
a trunk!

The general cracked his whip without any other comment than a smile.
A blood mare tore sparks out of the macadam, and a dusty military road
began to ribbon out between the wheels. Sentries in unexpected places
announced themselves with a ring of shaken steel as their rifles came to
the "present," which courtesies the general noticed with a raised whip.
Then a fox-terrier resumed his chase of squirrels between the planted
shade-trees, and Peshawur became normal, shimmering in light and heat
reflected from the "Hills."

(The P.W.D. man, who would have giggled if a general mentioned him by
name, walked because no conveyance could be hired. Judgment was in the
wind.)

On the dog-cart's high front seat, staring straight ahead of him between
the horse's ears, King listened. The general did nearly all the talking.

"The North's the danger."

King grunted with the lids half-lowered over full dark eyes. He did not
look especially handsome in that attitude. Some men swear he looks like
a Roman, and others liken him to a gargoyle, all of them choosing to
ignore the smile that can transform his whole face instantly.

"We're denuding India of troops--not keeping back more than a mere
handful to hold the tribes in check."

King nodded. There has never been peace along the northwest border. It
did not need vision to foresee trouble from that quarter. In fact it
must have been partly on the strength of some of King's reports that the
general was planning now.

"That was a very small handful of Sikhs you named as likely to give
trouble. Did you do that job thoroughly?"

King grunted.

"Well--Delhi's chock-full of spies, all listening to stories made in
Germany for them to take back to the 'Hills' with 'em. The tribes'll
know presently how many men we're sending oversea. There've been rumors
about Khinjan by the hundred lately. They're cooking something. Can you
imagine 'em keeping quiet now?"

"That depends, sir. Yes, I can imagine it."

The general laughed. "That's why I sent for you. I need a man with
imagination! There's a woman you've got to work with on this occasion
who can imagine a shade or two too much. What's worse, she's ambitious.
So I chose you to work with her."

King's lips stiffened under his mustache, and the corners of his eyes
wrinkled into crow's-feet to correspond. Eyes are never coal-black, of
course, but his looked it at that minute.

"You know we've sent men to Khinjan who are said to have entered the
Caves. Not one of 'em has ever returned."

King frowned.

"She claims she can enter the Caves and come out again at pleasure. She
has offered to do it, and I have accepted."

It would not have been polite to look incredulous, so King's expression
changed to one of intense interest a little overdone, as the general did
not fail to notice.

"If she hadn't given proof of devotion and ability, I'd have turned
her down. But she has. Only the other day she uncovered a plot in
Delhi--about a million dynamite bombs in a ruined temple in charge of a
German agent for use by mutineers supposed to be ready to rise against
us. Fact! Can you guess who she is?"

"Not Yasmini?" King hazarded, and the general nodded and flicked his
whip. The horse mistook it for a signal, and it was two minutes before
the speed was reduced to mere recklessness.

The helmet-strap mark, printed indelibly on King's jaw and cheek by the
Indian sun, tightened and grew whiter--as the general noted out of the
corner of his eye.

"Know her?"

"Know of her, of course, sir. Everybody does. Never met her to my
knowledge."

"Um-m-m! Whose fault was that? Somebody ought to have seen to that. Go
to Delhi now and meet her. I'll send her a wire to say you're coming.
She knows I've chosen you. She tried to insist on full discretion, but
I overruled her. Between us two, she'll have discretion once she gets
beyond Jamrud. The 'Hills' are full of our spies, of course, but none
of 'em dare try Khinjan Caves any more and you'll be the only check we
shall have on her."

King's tongue licked his lips, and his eyes wrinkled. The general's
voice became the least shade more authoritative.

"When you see her, get a pass from her that'll take you into Khinjan
Caves! Ask her for it! For the sake of appearances I'll gazette you
Seconded to the Khyber Rifles. For the sake of success, get a pass from
her!"

"Very well, sir."

"You've a brother in the Khyber Rifles, haven't you? Was it you or your
brother who visited Khinjan once and sent in a report?"

"I did, sir."

He spoke without pride. Even the brigade of British-Indian cavalry that
went to Khinjan on the strength of his report and leveled its defenses
with the ground, had not been able to find the famous Caves. Yet the
Caves themselves are a by-word.

"There's talk of a jihad (holy war). There's worse than that! When you
went to Khinjan, what was your chief object?"

"To find the source of the everlasting rumors about the so-called 'Heart
of the Hills,' sir."

"Yes, yes. I remember. I read your report. You didn't find anything, did
you? Well. The story is now that the 'Heart of the Hills' has come to
life. So the spies say."

King whistled softly.

"There's no guessing what it means," said the general. "Go and find
out. Go and work with Yasmini. I shall have enough men here to attack
instantly and smash any small force as soon as it begins to gather
anywhere near the border. But Khinjan is another story. We can't prove
anything, but the spies keep bringing in rumors of ten thousand men in
Khinjan Caves, and of another large lashkar not far away from Khinjan.
There must be no jihad, King! India is all but defenseless! We can
tackle sporadic raids. We can even handle an ordinary raid in force. But
this story about a 'Heart of the Hills' coming to life may presage unity
of action and a holy war such as the world has not seen. Go up there and
stop it if you can. At least, let me know the facts."

King grunted. To stop a holy war single-handed would be rather like
stopping the wind--possibly easy enough, if one knew the way. Yet
he knew no general would throw away a man like himself on a useless
venture. He began to look happy.

The general clucked to the mare and the big beast sank an inch between
the shafts. The sais behind set his feet against the drop-board and
clung with both hands to the seat. One wheel ceased to touch the gravel
as they whirled along a semicircular drive. Suddenly the mare drew up
on her haunches, under the porch of a pretentious residence. Sentries
saluted. The sais swung down. In less than sixty seconds King was
following the general through a wide entrance into a crowded hall. The
instant the general's fat figure darkened the doorway twenty men of
higher rank than King, native and English, rose from lined-up chairs and
pressed forward.

"Sorry--have to keep you all waiting--busy!" He waved them aside with a
little apologetic gesture. "Come in here, King."

King followed him through a door that slammed tight behind them on
rubber jambs.

"Sit down!"

The general unlocked a steel drawer and began to rummage among the
papers in it. In a minute he produced a package, bound in rubber bands,
with a faded photograph face-upward on the top.

"That's the woman! How d'you like the look of her?"

King took the package and for a minute stared hard at the likeness of a
woman whose fame has traveled up and down India, until her witchery
has become a proverb. She was dressed as a dancing woman, yet very few
dancing women could afford to be dressed as she was.

King's service uses whom it may, and he had met and talked with many
dancing women in the course of duty; but as he stared at Yasmini's
likeness he did not think he had ever met one who so measured up to
rumor. The nautch he knew for a delusion. Yet--!

The general watched his face with eyes that missed nothing.

"Remember--I said work with her!"

King looked up and nodded.

"They say she's three parts Russian," said the general. "To my own
knowledge she speaks Russian like a native, and about twenty other
tongues as well, including English. She speaks English as well as you or
I. She was the girl-widow of a rascally Hill-rajah. There's a story I've
heard, to the effect that Russia arranged her marriage in the day when
India was Russia's objective--and that's how long ago?--seems like
weeks, not years! I've heard she loved her rajah. And I've heard she
didn't! There's another story that she poisoned him. I know she got
away with his money--and that's proof enough of brains! Some say she's
a she-devil. I think that's an exaggeration, but bear in mind she's
dangerous!"

King grinned. A man who trusts Eastern women over readily does not rise
far in the Secret Service.

"If you've got nous enough to keep on her soft side and use her--not let
her use you--you can keep the 'Hills' quiet and the Khyber safe! If
you can contrive that--now--in this pinch--there's no limit for you!
Commander-in-chief shall be your job before you're sixty!"

King pocketed the photograph and papers. "I'm well enough content, sir,
as things are," he said quietly.

"Well, remember she's ambitious, even if you're not! I'm not preaching
ambition, mind--I'm warning you! Ambition's bad! Study those papers on
your way down to Delhi and see that I get them back."

The general paced once across the room and once back again, with hands
behind him. Then he stopped in front of King.

"No man in India has a stiffer task than you have now! It may encourage
you to know that I realize that! She's the key to the puzzle, and she
happens to be in Delhi. Go to Delhi, then. A jihad launched from the
'Hills' would mean anarchy in the plains. That would entail sending
back from France an army that can't be spared. There must be no jihad,
King!--There must--not--be--one! Keep that in your head!"

"What arrangements have been made with her, sir?"

"Practically none! She's watching the spies in Delhi, but they're likely
to break for the 'Hills' any minute. Then they'll be arrested. When that
happens the fate of India may be in your hands and hers! Get out of my
way now, until tiffin-time!"

In a way that some men never learn, King proceeded to efface himself
entirely among the crowd in the hall, contriving to say nothing of any
account to anybody until the great gong boomed and the general led
them all in to his long dining table. Yet he did not look furtive
or secretive. Nobody noticed him, and he noticed everybody. There is
nothing whatever secretive about that.

The fare was plain, and the meal a perfunctory affair. The general and
his guests were there for other reason than to eat food, and only the
man who happened to seat himself next to King--a major by the name of
Hyde--spoke to him at all.

"Why aren't you with your regiment?" he asked.

"Because the general asked me to lunch, sir!"

"I suppose you've been pestering him for an appointment!"

King, with his mouth full of curr did not answer, but his eyes smiled.

"It's astonishing to me," said the major, "that a captain should leave
his company when war has begun! When I was captain I'd have been driven
out of the service if I'd asked for leave of absence at such a time!"

King made no comment, but his expression denoted belief.

"Are you bound for the front, sir?" he asked presently. But Hyde did not
answer. They finished the meal in silence.

After lunch he was closeted with the general again for twenty minutes.
Then one of the general's carriages took him to the station; and it did
not appear to trouble him at all that the other occupant of the carriage
was the self-same Major Hyde who had sat next him at lunch. In fact, he
smiled so pleasantly that Hyde grew exasperated. Neither of them spoke.
At the station Hyde lost his temper openly, and King left him abusing an
unhappy native servant.

The station was crammed to suffocation by a crowd that roared and
writhed and smelt to high heaven. At one end of the platform, in the
midst of a human eddy, a frenzied horse resisted with his teeth and all
four feet at once the efforts of six natives and a British sergeant to
force him into a loose-box. At the back of the same platform the little
dark-brown mules of a mountain battery twitched their flanks in line,
jingling chains and stamping when the flies bit home.

Flies buzzed everywhere. Fat native merchants vied with lean and timid
ones in noisy effort to secure accommodation on a train already crowded
to the limit. Twenty British officers hunted up and down for the places
supposed to have been reserved for them, and sweating servants hurried
after them with arms full of heterogeneous baggage, swearing at
the crowd that swore back ungrudgingly. But the general himself had
telephoned for King's reservation, so he took his time.

There were din and stink and dust beneath a savage sun, shaken into
reverberations by the scream of an engine's safety valve. It was India
in essence and awake!--India arising out of lethargy!--India as she is
more often nowadays--and it made King, for the time being of the Khyber
Rifles, happier than some other men can be in ballrooms.

Any one who watched him--and there was at least one man who did--must
have noticed his strange ability, almost like that of water, to reach
the point he aimed for, through, and not around, the crowd.

He neither shoved nor argued. Orders and blows would have been equally
useless, for had it tried the crowd could not have obeyed, and it was in
no mind to try. Without the least apparent effort he arrived--and
there is no other word that quite describes it--he arrived, through
the densest part of the sweating throng of humans, at the door of the
luggage office.

There, though a bunnia's sharp elbow nagged his ribs, and the bunnia's
servant dropped a heavy package on his foot, he smiled so genially that
he melted the wrath of the frantic luggage clerk. But not at once. Even
the sun needs seconds to melt ice.

"Am I God?" the babu wailed. "Can I do all the-e things in all the-e
world at once if not sooner?"

King's smile began to get its work in. The man ceased gesticulating to
wipe sweat from his stubbly jowl with the end of a Punjabi headdress. He
actually smiled back. Who was he, that he should suspect new outrage or
guess he was about to be used in a game he did not understand? He would
have stopped all work to beg for extra pay at the merest suggestion of
such a thing; but as it was he raised both fists and lapsed into his own
tongue to apostrophize the ruffian who dared jostle King. A Northerner
who did not seem to understand Punjabi almost cost King his balance as
he thrust broad shoulders between him and the bunnia.

The bunnia chattered like an outraged ape; but King, the person most
entitled to be angry, actually apologized! That being a miracle, the
babu forthwith wrought another one, and within a minute King's one trunk
was checked through to Delhi.

"Delhi is right, sahib?" he asked, to make doubly sure; for in India
where the milk of human kindness is not hawked in the market-place, men
will pay over-measure for a smile.

"Yes. Delhi is right. Thank you, babuji."

He made more room for the Hillman, beaming amusement at the man's
impatience; but the Hillman had no luggage and turned away, making an
unexpected effort to hide his face with a turban end. He who had forced
his way to the front with so much violence and haste now burst back
again toward the train like a football forward tearing through the thick
of his opponents. He scattered a swath a yard wide, for he had shoulders
like a bull. King saw him leap into third-class carriage. He saw, too,
that he was not wanted in the carriage. There was a storm of protest
from tight-packed native passengers, but the fellow had his way.

The swath through the crowd closed up like water in a ship's wake, but
it opened again for King. He smiled so humorously that the angry jostled
ones smiled too and were appeased, forgetting haste and bruises and
indignity merely because understanding looked at them through merry
eyes. All crowds are that way, but an Indian crowd more so than all.

Taking his time, and falling foul of nobody, King marked down a native
constable--hot and unhappy, leaning with his back against the train. He
touched him on the shoulder and the fellow jumped.

"Nay, sahib! I am only constabeel--I know nothing--I can do nothing! The
teerain goes when it goes, and then perhaps we will beat these people
from the platform and make room again! But there is no authority--no law
any more--they are all gone mad!"

King wrote on a pad, tore off a sheet, folded it and gave it to him.

"That is for the Superintendent of Police at the office. Carriage number
1181, eleven doors from here--the one with the shut door and a big
Hillman inside sitting three places from the door facing the engine.
Get the Hillman! No, there is only one Hillman in the carriage. No, the
others are not his friends; they will not help him. He will fight, but
he has no friends in that carriage."

The "constabeel" obeyed, not very cheerfully. King stood to watch him
with a foot on the step of a first-class coach. Another constable passed
him, elbowing a snail's progress between the train and the crowd. He
seized the man's arm.

"Go and help that man!" he ordered. "Hurry!"

Then he climbed into the carriage and leaned from the window. He grinned
as he saw both constables pounce on a third-class carriage door and,
with the yell of good huntsmen who have viewed, seize the protesting
Northerner by the leg and begin to drag him forth. There was a fight,
that lasted three minutes, in the course of which a long knife flashed.
But there were plenty to help take the knife away, and the Hillman stood
handcuffed and sullen at last, while one of his captors bound a cut
forearm. Then they dragged him away; but not before he had seen King at
the window, and had lipped a silent threat.

"I believe you, my son!" King chuckled, half aloud. "I surely believe
you! I'll watch! Ham dekta hai!"

"Why was that man arrested?" asked an acid voice behind him; and without
troubling to turn his head, he knew that Major Hyde was to be
his carriage mate again. To be vindictive, on duty or off it, is
foolishness; but to let opportunity slip by one is a crime. He looked
glad, not sorry, as he faced about--pleased, not disappointed--like a
man on a desert island who has found a tool.

"Why was that man arrested?" the major asked again.

"I ordered it," said King.

"So I imagined. I asked you why."

King stared at him and then turned to watch the prisoner being dragged
away; he was fighting again, striking at his captors' heads with
handcuffed wrists.

"Does he look innocent?" asked King.

"Is that your answer?" asked the major. Balked ambition is an ugly horse
to ride. He had tried for a command but had been shelved.

"I have sufficient authority," said King, unruffled. He spoke as if he
were thinking of something entirely different. His eyes were as if they
saw the major from a very long way off and rather approved of him on the
whole.

"Show me your authority, please!"

King dived into an inner pocket and produced a card that had about ten
words written on its face, above a general's signature. Hyde read it and
passed it back.

"So you're one of those, are you!" he said in a tone of voice that would
start a fight in some parts of the world and in some services. But
King nodded cheerfully, and that annoyed the major more than ever; he
snorted, closed his mouth with a snap and turned to rearrange the sheet
and pillow on his berth.

Then the train pulled out, amid a din of voices from the left--behind
that nearly drowned the panting of overloaded engine. There was a roar
of joy from the two coaches full of soldiers in the rear--a shriek from
a woman who had missed the train--a babel of farewells tossed back and
forth between the platform and the third-class carriages--and Peshawur
fell away behind.

King settled down on his side of the compartment, after a struggle with
the thermantidote that refused to work. There was heat enough below the
roof to have roasted meat, so that the physical atmosphere became as
turgid as the mental after a little while.

Hyde all but stripped himself and drew on striped pajamas. King was
content to lie in shirt-sleeves on the other berth, with knees raised,
so that Hyde could not overlook the general's papers. At his ease he
studied them one by one, memorizing a string of names, with details as
to their owners' antecedents and probable present whereabouts. There
were several photographs in the packet, and he studied them very
carefully indeed.

But much most carefully of all he examined Yasmini's portrait, returning
to it again and again. He reached the conclusion in the end that when it
was taken she had been cunningly disguised.

"This was intended for purpose of identification at a given time and
place," he told himself.

"Were you muttering at me?" asked Hyde.

"No, sir."

"It looked extremely like it!"

"My mistake, sir. Nothing of the sort intended."

"H-rrrrr-ummmmmph!"

Hyde turned an indignant back on him, and King studied the back as if he
found it interesting. On the whole he looked sympathetic, so it was as
well that Hyde did not look around. Balked ambition as a rule loathes
sympathy.

After many prickly-hot, interminable, jolting hours the train drew up at
Rawal-Pindi station. Instantly King was on his feet with his tunic on,
and he was out on the blazing hot platform before the train's motion had
quite ceased.

He began to walk up and down, not elbowing but percolating through the
crowd, missing nothing worth noticing in all the hot kaleidoscope and
seeming to find new amusement at every turn. It was not in the least
astonishing that a well-dressed native should address him presently, for
he looked genial enough to be asked to hold a baby. King himself did not
seem surprised at all. Far from it; he looked pleased.

"Excuse me, sir," said the man in glib babu English. "I am seeking
Captain King sahib, for whom my brother is veree anxious to be servant.
Can you kindlee tell me, sir, where I could find Captain King sahib?"

"Certainly," King answered him. He looked glad to be of help. "Are you
traveling on this train?"

The question sounded like politeness welling from the lips of
unsuspicion.

"Yes, sir. I am traveling from this place where I have spent a few days,
to Bombay, where my business is.

"How did you know King sahib is on the train?" King asked him, smiling
so genially that even the police could not have charged him with more
than curiosity.

"By telegram, sir. My brother had the misfortune to miss Captain King
sahib at Peshawur and therefore sent a telegram to me asking me to do
what I can at an interview."

"I see," said King. "I see." And judging by the sparkle in his eyes as
he looked away he could see a lot. But the native could not see his eyes
at that instant, although he tried to.

He looked back at the train, giving the man a good chance to study his
face in profile.

"Oh, thank you, sir!" said the native oilily. "You are most kind! I am
your humble servant, sir!"

King nodded good-by to him, his dark eyes in the shadow of the khaki
helmet seeming scarcely interested any longer.

"Couldn't you find another berth?" Hyde asked him angrily when he
stepped back into the compartment.

"What were you out there looking for?"

King smiled back at him blandly.

"I think there are railway thieves on the train," he announced without
any effort at relevance. He might not have heard the question.

"What makes you think so?"

"Observation, sir."

"Oh! Then if you've seen thieves, why didn't you have 'em arrested? You
were precious free with that authority of yours on Peshawur platform!"

"Perhaps You'd care to take the responsibility, sir? Let me point out
one of them."

Full of grudging curiosity Hyde came to stand by him, and King stepped
back just as the train began to move.

"That man, sir--over there--no, beyond him--there!"

Hyde thrust head and shoulders through the window, and a well-dressed
native with one foot on the running-board at the back end of the train
took a long steady stare at him before jumping in and slamming the door
of a third-class carriage.

"Which one?" demanded Hyde impatiently.

"I don't see him now, sir!"

Hyde snorted and returned to his seat in the silence of unspeakable
scorn. But presently he opened a suitcase and drew out a repeating
pistol which he cocked carefully and stowed beneath his pillow; not at
all a contemptible move, because the Indian railway thief is the most
resourceful specialist in the world. But King took no overt precautions
of any kind.

After more interminable hours night shut down on them, red-hot,
black-dark, mesmerically subdivided into seconds by the thump of
carriage wheels and lit at intervals by showers of sparks from the
gasping engine. The din of Babel rode behind the first-class carriages,
for all the natives in the packed third-class talked all together.
(In India, when one has spent a fortune on a third-class ticket, one
proceeds to enjoy the ride.) The train was a Beast out of Revelation,
wallowing in noise.

But after other, hotter hours the talking ceased. Then King, strangely
without kicking off his shoes, drew a sheet up over his shoulders. On
the opposite berth Hyde covered his head, to keep dust out of his hair,
and presently King heard him begin to snore gently. Then, very carefully
he adjusted his own position so that his profile lay outlined in the dim
light from the gas lamp in the roof. He might almost have been waiting
to be shaved.

The stuffiness increased to a degree that is sometimes preached in
Christian churches as belonging to a sulphurous sphere beyond the grave.
Yet he did not move a muscle. It was long after midnight when his vigil
was rewarded by a slight sound at the door. From that instant his eyes
were on the watch, under dark of closed lashes; but his even breathing
was that of the seventh stage of sleep that knows no dreams.

A click of the door-latch heralded the appearance of a hand. With skill,
of the sort that only special training can develop, a man in native
dress insinuated himself into the carriage without making another sound
of any kind. King's ears are part of the equipment for his exacting
business, but he could not hear the door click shut again.

For about five minutes, while the train swayed head-long into Indian
darkness, the man stood listening and watching King's face. He stood
so near that King recognized him for the one who had accosted him on
Rawal-Pindi platform. And he could see the outline of the knife-hilt
that the man's fingers clutched underneath his shirt.

"He'll either strike first, so as to kill us both and do the looting
afterward--and in that case I think it will be easier to break his neck
than his arm--yes, decidedly his neck; it's long and thin;--or--"

His eyes feigned sleep so successfully that the native turned away at
last.

"Thought so!" He dared open his eyes a mite wider. "He's pukka--true to
type! Rob first and then kill! Rule number one with his sort, run when
you've stabbed! Not a bad rule either, from their point of view!"

As he watched, the thief drew the sheet back from Hyde's face, with
trained fingers that could have taken spectacles from the victims' nose
without his knowledge. Then as fish glide in and out among the reeds
without touching them, swift and soft and unseen, his fingers searched
Hyde's body. They found nothing. So they dived under the pillow and
brought out the pistol and a gold watch.

After that he began to search the clothes that hung on a hook beside
Hyde's berth. He brought forth papers and a pocketbook--then money.
Money went into one bag--papers and pocketbook into another. And that
was evidence enough as well as risk enough. The knife would be due in a
minute.

King moved in his sleep, rather noisily, and the movement knocked a book
to the floor from the foot of his berth. The noise of that awoke Hyde,
and King pretended to begin to wake, yawning and rolling on his back
(that being much the safest position an unarmed man can take and much
the most awkward for his enemy).

"Thieves!" Hyde yelled at the top of his lungs, groping wildly for his
pistol and not finding it.

King sat up and rubbed his eyes. The native drew the knife,
and--believing himself in command of the situation--hesitated for one
priceless second. He saw his error and darted for the door too late.
With a movement unbelievably swift King was there ahead of him; and with
another movement not so swift, but much more disconcerting, he threw his
sheet as the retiarius used to throw a net in ancient Rome. It wrapped
round the native's head and arms, and the two went together to the floor
in a twisted stranglehold.

In another half-minute the native was groaning, for King had his
knife-wrist in two hands and was bending it backward while he pressed
the man's stomach with his knees.

"Get his loot!" he panted between efforts.

The knife fell to the floor, and the thief made a gallant effort
to recover it, but King was too strong for him. He seized the knife
himself, slipped it in his own bosom and resumed his hold before the
native guessed what he was after. Then he kept a tight grip while
Hyde knelt to grope for his missing property. The major found both the
thief's bags, and held them up.

"I expect that's all," said King, loosening his grip very gradually.
The native noticed--as Hyde did not--that King had begun to seem almost
absent-minded; the thief lay quite still, looking up, trying to divine
his next intention. Suddenly the brakes went on, but King's grip did not
tighten. The train began to scream itself to a standstill at a wayside
station, and King (the absent-minded)--very nearly grinned.

"If I weren't in such an infernal hurry to reach Bombay--" Hyde
grumbled; and King nearly laughed aloud then, for the thief knew
English, and was listening with all his ears, "--may I be damned if I
wouldn't get off at this station and wait to see that scoundrel brought
to justice!"

The train jerked itself to a standstill, and a man with a lantern began
to chant the station's name.

"Damn it!--I'm going to Bombay to act censor. I can't wait--they want me
there."

The instant the train's motion altogether ceased the heat shut in on
them as if the lid of Tophet had been slammed. The prickly beat burst
out all over Hyde's skin and King's too.

"Almighty God!" gasped Hyde, beginning to fan himself.

There was plenty of excuse for relaxing hold still further, and King
made full use of it. A second later he gave a very good pretense of pain
in his finger-ends as the thief burst free. The native made a dive
at his bosom for the knife, but he frustrated that. Then he made a
prodigious effort, just too late, to clutch the man again, and he did
succeed in tearing loose a piece of shirt; but the fleeing robber must
have wondered, as he bolted into the blacker shadows of the station
building, why such an iron-fingered, wide-awake sahib should have made
such a truly feeble showing at the end.

"Damn it!--couldn't you hold him? Were you afraid of him, or what?"
demanded Hyde, beginning to dress himself. Instead of answering, King
leaned out into the lamp-lit gloom, and in a minute he caught sight of a
sergeant of native infantry passing down the train. He made a sign that
brought the man to him on the run.

"Did you see that runaway?" he asked.

"Ha, sahib. I saw one running. Shall I follow?"

"No. This piece of his shirt will identify him. Take it. Hide it! When
a man with a torn shirt, into which that piece fits, makes for the
telegraph office after this train has gone on, see that he is allowed to
send any telegrams he wants to! Only, have copies of every one of them
wired to Captain King, care of the station-master, Delhi. Have you
understood?"

"Ha, sahib."

"Grab him, and lock him up tight afterward--but not until he has sent
his telegrams!'

"Atcha, sahib."

"Make yourself scarce, then!"

Major Hyde was dressed, having performed that military evolution in
something less than record time.

"Who was that you were talking to?" he demanded. But King continued to
look out the door.

Hyde came and tapped on his shoulder impatiently, but King did not seem
to understand until the native sergeant had quite vanished into the
shadows.

"Let me pass, will you!" Hyde demanded. "I'll have that thief caught if
the train has to wait a week while they do it!"

He pushed past, but he was scarcely on the step when the station-master
blew his whistle, and his colored minion waved a lantern back and forth.
The engine shrieked forthwith of death and torment; carriage doors
slammed shut in staccato series; the heat relaxed as the engine
moved--loosened--let go--lifted at last, and a trainload of hot
passengers sighed thanks to an unresponsive sky as the train gained
speed and wind crept in through the thermantidotes.

Only through the broken thermantidote in King's compartment no wet
air came. Hyde knelt on King's berth and wrestled with it like a caged
animal, but with no result except that the sweat poured out all over him
and he was more uncomfortable than before.

"What are you looking at?" he demanded at last, sitting on King's berth.
His head swam. He had to wait a few seconds before he could step across
to his own side.

"Only a knife," said King. He was standing under the dim gas lamp that
helped make the darkness more unbearable.

"Not that robber's knife? Did he drop it?"

"It's my knife," said King.

"Strange time to stand staring at it, if it's yours! Didn't you ever see
it before?"

King stowed the knife away in his bosom, and the major crossed to his
own side.

"I'm thinking I'll know it again, at all events!" King answered, sitting
down. "Good night, sir."

"Good night."

Within ten minutes Hyde was asleep, snoring prodigiously. Then King
pulled out the knife again and studied it for half an hour. The blade
was of bronze, with an edge hammered to the keenness of a razor. The
hilt was of nearly pure gold, in the form of a woman dancing.

The whole thing was so exquisitely wrought that age had only softened
the lines, without in the least impairing them. It looked like one of
those Grecian toys with which Roman women of Nero's day stabbed their
lovers. But that was not why he began to whistle very softly to himself.

Presently he drew out the general's package of papers, with the
photograph on the top. He stood up, to hold both knife and papers close
to the light in the roof.

It needed no great stretch of imagination to suggest a likeness between
the woman of the photograph and the other, of the golden knife-hilt.
And nobody, looking at him then, would have dared suggest he lacked
imagination.

If the knife had not been so ancient they might have been portraits of
the same woman, in the same disguise, taken at the same time.

"She knew I had been chosen to work with her. The general sent her word
that I am coming," he muttered to himself. "Man number one had a try for
me, but I had him pinched too soon. There must have been a spy watching
at Peshawur, who wired to Rawal-Pindi for this man to jump the train and
go on with the job. She must have had him planted at Rawal-Pindi in case
of accidents. She seems thorough! Why should she give the man a knife
with her own portrait on it? Is she queen of a secret society? Well--we
shall see!"

He sat down on his berth again and sighed, not discontentedly. Then
he lit one of his great black cigars and blew rings for five or six
minutes. Then he lay back with his head on the pillow, and before five
minutes more had gone he was asleep, with the cold cigar still clutched
between his fingers.

He looked as interesting in his sleep as when awake. His mobile face in
repose looked Roman, for the sun had tanned his skin and his nose was
aquiline. In museums, where sculptured heads of Roman generals and
emperors stand around the wall on pedestals, it would not be difficult
to pick several that bore more than a faint resemblance to him. He had
breadth and depth of forehead and a jowl that lent itself to smiles as
well as sternness, and a throat that expressed manly determination in
every molded line.

He slept like a boy until dawn; and he and Hyde had scarcely exchanged
another dozen words when the train screamed next day into Delhi station.
Then he saluted stiffly and was gone.

"Young jackanapes!" Hyde muttered after him. "Lazy young devil! He ought
to be with his regiment, marching and setting a good example to his men!
We'll have our work cut out to win this war, if there are many of his
stamp! And I'm afraid there are--I'm afraid so--far too many of 'em!
Pity! Such a pity! If the right men were at the top the youngsters
at the foot of the ladder would mind their P's and Q's. As it is, I'm
afraid we shall get beaten in this show. Dear, oh, dear!"

Being what he was, and consistent before all things, Major Hyde drew
out his writing materials there and then and wrote a report against
Athelstan King, which he signed, addressed to headquarters and mailed at
the first opportunity. There some future historian may find it and draw
from it unkind deductions on the morale of the British army.

Chapter II

     The only things which can not be explained are facts.  So,
     use 'em. A riddle is proof there is a key to it.  Nor is it
     a riddle when you've got the key. Life is as simple as all
     that.--Cocker

Delhi boasts a round half-dozen railway stations, all of them designed
with regard to war, so that to King there was nothing unexpected in the
fact that the train had brought him to an unexpected station. He
plunged into its crowd much as a man in the mood might plunge into a
whirlpool,--laughing as he plunged, for it was the most intoxicating
splurge of color, din and smell that even India, the many-peopled--even
Delhi, mother of dynasties--ever had, evolved.

The station echoed--reverberated--hummed. A roar went up of human
voices, babbling in twenty tongues, and above that rose in differing
degrees the ear-splitting shriek of locomotives, the blare of bugles,
the neigh of led horses, the bray of mules, the jingle of gun-chains and
the thundering cadence of drilled feet.

At one minute the whole building shook to the thunder of a grinning
regiment; an instant later it clattered to the wrought-steel hammer of a
thousand hoofs, as led troop-horses danced into formation to invade the
waiting trucks. Loaded trucks banged into one another and thunderclapped
their way into the sidings. And soldiers of nearly every Indian military
caste stood about everywhere, in what was picturesque confusion to the
uninitiated, yet like the letters of an index to a man who knew. And
King knew. Down the back of each platform Tommy Atkins stood in long
straight lines, talking or munching great sandwiches or smoking.

The heat smelt and felt of another world. The din was from the same
sphere. Yet everywhere was hope and geniality and by-your-leave as if
weddings were in the wind and not the overture to death.

Threading his way in and out among the motley swarm with a
great black cheroot between his teeth and sweat running into
his eyes from his helmet-band, Athelstan King strode at ease--at
home--intent--amused--awake--and almost awfully happy. He was not in the
least less happy because perfectly aware that a native was following him
at a distance, although he did wonder how the native had contrived to
pass within the lines.

The general at Peshawur had compressed about a ton of miscellaneous
information into fifteen hurried minutes, but mostly he had given him
leave and orders to inform himself; so the fun was under way of winning
exact knowledge in spite of officers, not one of whom would not have
grown instantly suspicions at the first asked question. At the end of
fifteen minutes there was not a glib staff-officer there who could have
deceived him as to the numbers and destination of the force entraining.

"Kerachi!" he told himself, chewing the butt of his cigar and keeping
well ahead of the shadowing native. Always keep a "shadow" moving until
you're ready to deal with him is one of Cocker's very soundest rules.

"Turkey hasn't taken a hand yet--the general said so. No holy war yet.
These'll be held in readiness to cross to Basra in case the Turks
begin. While they wait for that at Kerachi the tribes won't dare begin
anything. One or two spies are sure to break North and tell them what
this force is for--but the tribes won't believe. They'll wait until the
force has moved to Basra before they take chances. Good! That means no
especial hurry for me!"

He did not have to return salutes, because he did not look for them.
Very few people noticed him at all, although he was recognized once
or twice by former messmates, and one officer stopped him with an
out-stretched hand.

"Shake hands, you old tramp! Where are you bound for next? Tibet by any
chance--or is it Samarkand this time?"

"Oh, hullo, Carmichel!" he answered, beaming instant good-fellowship.
"Where are you bound for?" And the other did not notice that his own
question had not been answered.

"Bombay! Bombay--Marseilles--Brussels--Berlin!"

"Wish you luck!" laughed King, passing on. Every living man there, with
the exception of a few staff-officers, believed himself en route for
Europe; their faces said as much. Yet King took another look at the
piles of stores and at the kits the men carried.

"Who'd take all that stuff to Europe, where they make it?" he reflected.
"And what 'u'd they use camel harness for in France?"

At his leisure--in his own way, that was devious and like a string of
miracles--he filtered toward the telegraph office. The native who had
followed him all this time drew closer, but he did not let himself be
troubled by that.

He whispered proof of his identity to the telegraph clerk, who was a
Royal Engineer, new to that job that morning, and a sealed telegram was
handed to him at once. The "shadow" came very close indeed, presumably
to try and read over his shoulder from behind, but he side-stepped into
a corner and read the telegram with his back to the wall.

It was in English, no doubt to escape suspicion; and because it was
war-time, and the censorship had closed on India like a throttling
string, it was not in code. So the wording, all things considered, had
to be ingenious, for the Mirza Ali, of the Fort, Bombay, to whom it
was addressed, could scarcely be expected to read more than between the
lines. The lines had to be there to read between.

"Cattle intended for slaughter," it ran, "despatched Bombay on Fourteen
down. Meet train. Will be inspected en route, but should be dealt with
carefully, on arrival. Cattle inclined to stampede owing to bad scare
received to North of Delhi. Take all precautions and notify Abdul." It
was signed "Suliman."

"Good!" he chuckled. "Let's hope we get Abdul too. I wonder who he is!"

Still uninterested in the man who shadowed him, he walked back to the
office window and wrote two telegrams; one to Bombay, ordering the
arrest of Ali Mirza of the Fort, with an urgent admonition to discover
who his man Abdul might be, and to seize him as soon as found; the other
to the station in the north, insisting on dose confinement for Suliman.

"Don't let him out on any terms at all!" he wired.

That being all the urgent business, he turned leisurely to face his
shadow, and the native met his eyes with the engaging frankness of an
old friend, coming forward with outstretched hand. They did not shake
hands, for King knew better than to fall into the first trap offered
him. But the man made a signal with his fingers that is known to not
more than a dozen men in all the world, and that changed the situation
altogether.

"Walk with me," said King, and the man fell into stride beside him.

He was a Rangar,--which is to say a Rajput who, or whose ancestors had
turned Muhammadan. Like many Rajputs he was not a big man, but he looked
fit and wiry; his head scarcely came above the level of King's chin,
although his turban distracted attention from the fact. The turban was
of silk and unusually large.

The whitest of well-kept teeth, gleaming regularly under a little black
waxed mustache betrayed no trace of betel-nut or other nastiness, and
neither his fine features nor his eyes suggested vice of the sort that
often undermines the character of Rajput youth.

On second thoughts, and at the next opportunity to see them, King was
not so sure that the eyes were brown, and he changed his opinion about
their color a dozen times within the hour. Once he would even have sworn
they were green.

The man was well-to-do, for his turban was of costly silk, and he was
clad in expensive jodpur riding breeches and spurred black riding boots,
all perfectly immaculate. The breeches, baggy above and tight, below,
suggested the clean lines of cat-like agility and strength.

The upper part of his costume was semi-European. He was a regular Rangar
dandy, of the type that can be seen playing polo almost any day at
Mount Abu--that gets into mischief with a grace due to practise and
heredity--but that does not manage its estates too well, as a rule, nor
pay its debts in a hurry.

"My name is Rewa Gunga," he said in a low voice, looking up sidewise at
King a shade too guilelessly. Between Cape Comorin and the Northern Ice
guile is normal, and its absence makes the wise suspicious.

"I am Captain King."

"I have a message for you."

"From whom?"

"From her!" said the Rangar, and without exactly knowing why, or being
pleased with himself, King felt excited.

They were walking toward the station exit. King had a trunk check in
his hand, but returned it to pocket, not proposing just yet to let this
Rangar over--hear instructions regarding the trunk's destination; he was
too good-looking and too overbrimming with personal charm to be trusted
thus early in the game. Besides, there was that captured knife, that
hinted at lies and treachery. Secret signs as well as loot have been
stolen before now.

"I'd like to walk through the streets and see the crowd."

He smiled as he said that, knowing well that the average young Rajput of
good birth would rather fight a tiger with cold steel than walk a mile
or two. He drew fire at once.

"Why walk, King sahib? Are we animals? There is a carriage waiting--her
carriage--and a coachman whose ears were born dead. We might be
overheard in the street. Are you and I children, tossing stones into a
pool to watch the rings widen!"

"Lead on, then," answered King.

Outside the station was a luxuriously modern victoria, with C springs
and rubber tires, with horses that would have done credit to a viceroy.
The Rangar motioned King to get in first, and the moment they were both
seated the Rajput coachman set the horses to going like the wind. Rewa
Gunga opened a jeweled cigarette case.

"Will you have one?" he asked with the air of royalty entertaining a
blood-equal.

King accepted a cigarette for politeness' sake and took occasion to
admire the man's slender wrist, that was doubtless hard and strong as
woven steel, but was not much more than half the thickness of his own.

The Rajputs as a race are proud of their wrists and hands. Their swords
are made with a hilt so small that none save a Rajput of the blood could
possibly use one; yet there is no race in all warring India, nor any
in the world, that bears a finer record for hard fighting and sheer
derring-do. One of the questions that occurred to King that minute was
why this well-bred youngster whose age he guessed at twenty-two or so
had not turned his attention to the army.

"My height!"

The man had read his thoughts!

"Not quite tall enough. Besides--you are a soldier, are you not? And do
you fight?"

He nodded toward a dozen water-buffaloes, that slouched along the street
with wet goatskin mussuks slung on their blue flanks.

"They can fight," he said smiling. "So can any other fool!" Then, after
a minute of rather strained silence: "My message is from her."

"From Yasmini?"

"Who else?"

King accepted the rebuke with a little inclination of the head. He spoke
as little as possible, because he was puzzled. He had become conscious
of a puzzled look in the Rangar's eyes--of a subtle wonderment that
might be intentional flattery (for Art and the East are one). Whenever
the East is doubtful, and recognizes doubt, it is as dangerous as a
hillside in the rains, and it only added to his problem if the Rangar
found in him something inexplicable. The West can only get the better of
the East when the East is too cock-sure.

"She has jolly well gone North!" said the Rangar suddenly, and King
shut his teeth with a snap. He sat bolt upright, and the Rangar allowed
himself to look amused.

"When? Why?"

"She was too jolly well excited to wait, sahib! She is of the North,
you know. She loves the North, and the men of the 'Hills'; and she knows
them because she loves them. There came a tar (telegram) from Peshawur,
from a general, to say King sahib comes to Delhi; but already she had
completed all arrangements here. She was in a great stew, I can assure
you. Finally she said, 'Why should I wait?' Nobody could answer her."

He spoke English well enough. Few educated foreign gentlemen could have
spoken it better, although there was the tendency to use slang that
well-bred natives insist on picking up from British officers; and as he
went on, here and there the native idiom crept through, translated. King
said nothing, but listened and watched, puzzled more than he would
have cared to admit by the look in the Rangar's eyes. It was not
suspicion--nor respect. Yet there was a suggestion of both.

"At last she said, 'It is well; I will not wait! I know of this sahib.
He is a man whose feet stand under him and he will not tread my growing
flowers into garbage! He will be clever enough to pick up the end of
the thread that I shall leave behind and follow it and me! He is a true
bound, with a nose that reads the wind, or the general sahib never would
have sent him!' So she left me behind, sahib, to--to present to you the
end of the thread of which she spoke."

King tossed away the stump of the cigarette and rolled his tongue round
the butt of a fresh cheroot. The word "hound" is not necessarily a
compliment in any of a thousand Eastern tongues and gains little by
translation. It might have been a slip, but the East takes advantage of
its own slips as well as of other peoples' unless watched.

The carriage swayed at high speed round three sharp corners in
succession before the Rangar spoke again.

"She has often heard of you," he said then. That was not unlikely, but
not necessarily true either. If it were true, it did not help to account
for the puzzled look in the Rangar's eyes, that increased rather than
diminished.

"I've heard of her," said King.

"Of course! Who has not? She has desired to meet you, sahib, ever since
she was told you are the best man in your service."

King grunted, thinking of the knife beneath his shirt.

"She is very glad that you and she are on the same errand." He leaned
forward for the sake of emphasis and laid a finger on King's hand. It
was a delicate, dainty finger with an almond nail. "She is very glad.
She is far more glad than you imagine, or than you would believe. King
sahib, she is all bucked up about it! Listen--her web is wide! Her
agents are here--there--everywhere, and she is obeyed as few kings have
ever been! Those agents shall all be held answerable for your life,
sahib,--for she has said so! They are one and all your bodyguard, from
now forward!"

King inclined his head politely, but the weight of the knife inside
his shirt did not encourage credulity. True, it might not be Yasmini's
knife, and the Rangar's emphatic assurance might not be an unintentional
admission that the man who had tried to use it was Yasmini's man. But
when a man has formed the habit of deduction, he deduces as he goes
along, and is prone to believe what his instinct tells him.

Again, it was as if the Rangar read a part of his thoughts, if not all
of them. It is not difficult to counter that trick, but to do it a man
must be on his guard, or the East will know what he has thought and what
he is going to think, as many have discovered when it was too late.

"Her men are able to protect anybody's life from any God's number of
assassins, whatever may lead you to think the contrary. From now forward
your life is in her men's keeping!"

"Very good of her; I'm sure," King murmured. He was thinking of the
general's express order to apply for a "passport" that would take him
into Khinjan Caves--mentally cursing the necessity for asking any kind
of favor,--and wondering whether to ask this man for it or wait until he
should meet Yasmini. He had about made up his mind that to wait would
be quite within a strict interpretation of his orders, as well as
infinitely more agreeable to himself, when the Rangar answered his
thoughts again as if he had spoken them aloud.

"She left this with me, saying I am to give it to you! I am to say that
wherever you wear it, between here and Afghanistan, your life shall be
safe and you may come and go!"

King stared. The Rangar drew a bracelet from an inner pocket and held it
out. It was a wonderful, barbaric thing of pure gold, big enough for a
grown man's wrist, and old enough to have been hammered out in the very
womb of time. It looked almost like ancient Greek, and it fastened with
a hinge and clasp that looked as if they did not belong to it, and might
have been made by a not very skillful modern jeweler.

"Won't you wear it?" asked Rewa Gunga, watching him. "It will prove a
true talisman! What was the name of the Johnny who had a lamp to rub?
Aladdin? It will be better than what he had! He could only command a lot
of bogies. This will give you authority over flesh and blood! Take it,
sahib!"

So King put it on, letting it slip up his sleeve, out of sight,--with
a sensation as the snap closed of putting handcuffs on himself. But the
Rangar looked relieved.

"That is your passport, sahib! Show it to a Hill-man whenever you
suppose yourself in danger. The Raj might go to pieces, but while
Yasmini lives--"

"Her friends will boast about her, I suppose!"

King finished the sentence for him because it is considered good
form for natives to hint at possible dissolution of the Anglo-Indian
Government. Everybody knows that the British will not govern India
forever, but the British--who know it best of all, and work to that end
most fervently--are the only ones encouraged to talk about it.

For a few minutes after that Rewa Gunga held his peace, while the
carriage swayed at breakneck speed through the swarming streets. They
had to drive slower in the Chandni Chowk, for the ancient Street of the
Silversmiths that is now the mart of Delhi was ablaze with crude colors,
and was thronged with more people than ever since '57. There were a
thousand signs worth studying by a man who could read them.

King, watching and saying nothing, reached the conclusion that Delhi was
in hand--excited undoubtedly, more than a bit bewildered, watchful,
but in hand. Without exactly knowing how he did it, he grew aware of a
certain confidence that underlay the surface fuss. After that the sea
of changing patterns and raised voices ceased to have any particular
interest for him and he lay back against the cushions to pay stricter
attention to his own immediate affairs.

He did not believe for a second the lame explanation Yasmini had left
behind. She must have some good reason for wishing to be first up the
Khyber, and he was very sorry indeed she had slipped away. It might be
only jealousy, yet why should she be jealous? It might be fear--yet why
should she be afraid?

It was the next remark of the Rangar's that set him entirely on his
guard, and thenceforward whoever could have read his thoughts would have
been more than human. Perhaps it is the most dominant characteristic of
the British race that it will not defend itself until it must. He had
known of that thought-reading trick ever since his ayah (native
nurse) taught him to lisp Hindustanee; just as surely he knew that its
impudent, repeated use was intended to sap his belief in himself. There
is not much to choose between the native impudence that dares intrude on
a man's thoughts, and the insolence that understands it, and is rather
too proud to care.

"I'll bet you a hundred dibs," said the Rangar, "that she jolly well
didn't fancy your being on the scene ahead of her! I'll bet you she
decided to be there first and get control of the situation! Take me?
You'd lose if you did! She's slippery, and quick, and like all Women,
she's jealous!"

The Rangar's eyes were on his, but King was not to be caught again.
It is quite easy to think behind a fence, so to speak, if one gives
attention to it.

"She will be busy presently fooling those Afridis," he continued, waving
his cigarette. "She has fooled them always, to the limit of their bally
bent. They all believe she is their best friend in the world--oh, dear
Yes, you bet they do! And so she is--so she is--but not in the way they
think! They believe she plots with them against the Raj! Poor silly
devils! Yet Yasmini loves them! They want war--blood--loot! It is all
they think about! They are seldom satisfied unless their wrists and
elbows are bally well red with other peoples' gore! And while they
are picturing the loot, and the slaughter of unbelievers--(as if they
believed anything but foolishness themselves!)--Yasmini plays her own
game, for amusement and power--a good game--a deep game! You have seen
already how India has to ask her aid in the 'Hills'! She loves power,
power, power--not for its name, for names are nothing, but to use
it. She loves the feel of it! Fighting is not power! Blood-letting
is foolishness. If there is any blood spilt it is none of her
doing--unless--"

"Unless what?" asked King.

"Oh--sometimes there were fools who interfered. You can not blame her
for that."

"You seem to be a champion of hers! How long have you known her?"'

The Rangar eyed him sharply.

"A long time. She and I played together when we were children. I know
her whole history--and that is something nobody else in the world knows
but she herself. You see, I am favored. It is because she knows me very
well that she chose me to travel North with you, when you start to find
her in the 'Hills'!"

King cleared his throat, and the Rangar nodded, looking into his eyes
with the engaging confidence of a child who never has been refused
anything, in or out of reason. King made no effort to look pleased, so
the Rangar drew on his resources.

"I have a letter from her," he stated blandly.

From a pocket in the carriage cushions he brought out a silver tube,
richly carved in the Kashmiri style and closed at either end with a
tightly fitting silver cap. King accepted it and drew the cap from one
end. A roll of scented paper fell on his lap, and a puff of hot wind
combined with a lurch of the carriage springs came near to lose it
for him; he snatched it just in time and unrolled it to find a letter
written to himself in Urdu, in a beautiful flowing hand.

Urdu is perhaps the politest of written tongues and lends itself most
readily to indirectness; but since he did not expect to read a catalogue
of exact facts, he was not disappointed.

Translated, the letter ran:

        "To Athelstan King sahib, by the hand of Rewa Gunga.
        Greeting.  The bearer is my well-trusted servant, whom
        I have chosen to be the sahib's guide until Heaven
        shall be propitious and we meet.  He is instructed
        in all that he need know concerning what is now in hand,
        and he will tell by word of mouth such things as ought
        not to be written.  By all means let Rewa Gunga travel
        with you, for he is of royal blood, of the House of
        Ketchwaha and will not fail you.  His honor and mine
        are one.  Praying that the many gods of India may heap
        honors on your honor's head, providing each his proper
        attribute toward entire ability to succeed in all things,
        but especially in the present undertaking,

        "I am Your Excellency's humble servant,
        --Yasmini."

He had barely finished reading it when the coachman took a last corner
at a gallop and drew the horses up on their haunches at a door in a high
white wall. Rewa Gunga sprang out of the carriage before the horses were
quite at a standstill.

"Here we are!" he said, and King, gathering up the letter and the silver
tube, noticed that the street curved here so that no other door and no
window overlooked this one.

He followed the Rangar, and he was no sooner into the shadow of the door
than the coachman lashed the horses and the carriage swung out of view.

"This way," said the Rangar over his shoulder. "Come!"

Chapter III

     Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin.
     Steal from a thief, for that is easy.
     Set a trap for a trickster, and catch him at the first attempt.
     But beware of the man who has no axe to grind.
     --Eastern Proverb

It was a musty smelling entrance, so dark that to see was scarcely
possible after the hot glare outside. Dimly King made out Rewa Gunga
mounting stairs to the left and followed him. The stairs wound backward
and forward on themselves four times, growing scarcely any lighter as
they ascended, until, when he guessed himself two stories at least above
road level, there was a sudden blaze of reflected light and he blinked
at more mirrors than he could count. They had been swung on hinges
suddenly to throw the light full in his face.

There were curtains reflected in each mirror, and little glowing lamps,
so cunningly arranged that it was not possible to guess which were
real and which were not. Rewa Gunga offered no explanation, but stood
watching with quiet amusement. He seemed to expect King to take a chance
and go forward, but if he did he reckoned without his guest. King stood
still.

Then suddenly, as if she had done it a thousand times before and
surprised a thousand people, a little nut-brown maid parted the middle
pair of curtains and said "Salaam!" smiling with teeth that were as
white as porcelain. All the other curtains parted too, so that the
whereabouts of the door might still have been in doubt had she not
spoken and so distinguished herself from her reflections. King looked
scarcely interested and not at all disturbed.

Balked of his amusement, Rewa Gunga hurried past him, thrusting the
little maid aside, and led the way. King followed him into a long room,
whose walls were hung with richer silks than any he remembered to have
seen. In a great wide window to one side some twenty, women began at
once to make flute music.

Silken punkahs swung from chains, wafting back and forth a cloud of
sandalwood smoke that veiled the whole scene in mysterious, scented
mist. Through the open window came the splash of a fountain and the
chattering of birds, and the branch of a feathery tree drooped near by.
It seemed that the long white wall below was that of Yasmini's garden.

"Be welcome!" laughed Rewa Gunga; "I am to do the honors, since she is
not here. Be seated, sahib."

King chose a divan at the room's farthest end, near tall curtains that
led into rooms beyond. He turned his back toward the reason for his
choice. On a little ivory-inlaid ebony table about ten feet away lay a
knife, that was almost the exact duplicate of the one inside his shirt.
Bronze knives of ancient date, with golden handles carved to represent a
woman dancing, are rare. The ability to seem not to notice incriminating
evidence is rarer still--rarest of all when under the eyes of a native
of India, for cats and hawks are dullards by comparison to them. But
King saw the knife, yet did not seem to see it.

There was nothing there calculated to set an Englishman at ease. In
spite of the Rangar's casual manner, Yasmini's reception room felt
like the antechamber to another world, where mystery is atmosphere and
ordinary air to breathe is not at all. He could sense hushed expectancy
on every side--could feel the eyes of many women fixed on him--and began
to draw on his guard as a fighting man draws on armor. There and then he
deliberately set himself to resist mesmerism, which is the East's chief
weapon.

Rewa Gunga, perfectly at home, sprawled leisurely, along a cushioned
couch with a grace that the West has not learned yet; but King did not
make the mistake of trusting him any better for his easy manners, and
his eyes sought swiftly for some unrhythmic, unplanned thing on which to
rest, that he might save himself by a sort of mental leverage.

Glancing along the wall that faced the big window, he noticed for the
first time a huge Afridi, who sat on a stool and leaned back against the
silken hangings with arms folded.

"Who is that man?" he asked.

"He? Oh, he is a savage--just a big savage," said Rewa Gunga, looking
vaguely annoyed.

"Why is he here?"

He did not dare let go of this chance side-issue. He knew that Rewa
Gunga wished him to talk of Yasmini and to ask questions about her, and
that if he succumbed to that temptation all his self-control would be
cunningly sapped away from him until his secrets, and his very senses,
belonged to some one else.

"What is he doing here?" he insisted.

"He? Oh, he does nothing. He waits," purred the Rangar. "He is to be
your body-servant on your journey to the North. He is nothing--nobody at
all!--except that he is to be trusted utterly because he loves Yasmini.
He is Obedience! A big obedient fool! Let him be!"

"No," said King. "If he's to be my man I'll speak to him!"

He felt himself winning. Already the spell of the room was lifting, and
he no longer felt the cloud of sandalwood smoke like a veil across his
brain.

"Won't you tell him to come here to me?"

Rewa Gunga laughed, resting his silk turban against the wall hangings
and clasping both hands about his knee. It was as a man might laugh who
has been touched in a bout with foils.

"Oh!--Ismail!" he called, with a voice like a bell, that made King
stare.

The Afridi seemed to come out of a deep sleep and looked bewildered,
rubbing his eyes and feeling whether his turban was on straight. He
combed his beard with nervous fingers as he gazed about him and caught
Rewa Gunga's eye. Then he sprang to his feet.

"Come!" ordered Rewa Gunga.

The man obeyed.

"Did you see?" Rewa Gunga chuckled. "He rose from his place like a
buffalo, rump first and then shoulder after shoulder! Such men are safe!
Such men have no guile beyond what will help them to obey! Such men
think too slowly to invent deceit for its own sake!"

The Afridi came and towered above them, standing with gnarled hands
knotted into clubs.

"What is thy name?" King asked him.

"Ismail!" he boomed.

"Thou art to be my servant?"

"Aye! So said she. I am her man. I obey!"

"When did she say so?" King asked him blandly, asking unexpected
questions being half the art of Secret Service, although the other half
is harder to achieve.

The Hillman stroked his great beard and stood considering the question.
One could almost imagine the click of slow machinery revolving in his
mind, although King entertained a shrewd suspicion that he was not so
stupid as he chose to seem. His eyes were too hawk-bright to be a stupid
man's.

"Before she went away," he answered at last.

"When did she go away?"

He thought again, then "Yesterday," he said.

"Why did you wait before you answered?"

The Afridi's eyes furtively sought Rewa Gunga's and found no aid there.
Watching the Rangar less furtively, but even less obviously, King was
aware that his eyes were nearly closed, as if they were not interested.
The fingers that clasped his knee drummed on it indifferently, seeing
which King allowed himself to smile.

"Never mind," he told Ismail. "It is no matter. It is ever well to think
twice before speaking once, for thus mistakes die stillborn. Only the
monkey-folk thrive on quick answers--is it not so? Thou art a man of
many inches--of thew and sinew--Hey, but thou art a man! If the heart
within those great ribs of thine is true as thine arms are strong I
shall be fortunate to have thee for a servant!"

"Aye!" said the Afridi. "But what are words? She has said I am thy
servant, and to hear her is to obey!"

"Then from now thou art my servant?"

"Nay, but from yesterday when she gave the order!"

"Good!" said King.

"Aye, good for thee! May Allah do more to me if I fail!"

"Then, take me a telegram!" said King.

He began to write at once on a half-sheet of paper that he tore from a
letter he had in his pocket, setting down a row of figures at the top
and transposing into cypher as he went along.

"Yasmini has gone North. Is there any reason at your end why I should
not follow her at once?"

He addressed it in plain English to his friend the general at Peshawur,
taking great care lest the Rangar read it through those sleepy,
half-closed eyes of his. Then he tore the cypher from the top, struck
a match and burned the strip of paper and handed the code telegram to
Ismail, directing him carefully to a government office where the cypher
signature would be recognized and the telegram given precedence.

Ismail stalked off with it, striding like Moses down from
Sinai--hook-nose--hawk-eye--flowing beard--dignity and all, and King
settled down to guard himself against the next attempt on his sovereign
self-command.

Now he chose to notice the knife on the ebony table as if he had not
seen it before. He got up and reached for it and brought it back,
turning it over and over in his hand.

"A strange knife," he said.

"Yes,--from Khinjan," said Rewa Gunga, and King eyed him as one wolf
eyes another.

"What makes you say it is from Khinjan?"

"She brought it from Khinjan Caves herself! There is another knife that
matches it, but that is not here. That bracelet you now wear, sahib, is
from Khinjan Caves too! She has the secret of the Caves!"

"I have heard that the 'Heart of the Hills' is there," King answered.
"Is the 'Heart of the Hills' a treasure house?"

Rewa Gunga laughed.

"Ask her, sahib! Perhaps she will tell you! Perhaps she will let you
see! Who knows? She is a woman of resource and unexpectedness--Let her
women dance for you a while."

King nodded. Then he got up and laid the knife back on the little table.
A minute or so later he noticed that at a sign from Rewa Gunga a woman
left the great window place and spirited the knife away.

"May I have a sheet of paper?" he asked, for he knew that another fight
for his self-command was due.

Rewa Gunga gave an order, and a maid brought him scented paper on a
silver tray. He drew out his own fountain pen then and made ready.

In spite of the great silken punkah that swung rhythmically across the
full breadth of the room the beat was so great that the pen slipped
round and round between his fingers. Yet he contrived to write, and
since his one object was to give his brain employment, he wrote down
a list of the names he had memorized in the train on the journey from
Peshawur, not thinking of a use for the list until he had finished.
Then, though, a real use occurred to him.

While he began to write more than a dozen dancing women swept into the
room from behind the silk hangings in a concerted movement that was all
lithe slumberous grace. Wood-wind music called to them from the great
deep window as snakes are summoned from their holes, and as cobras
answer the charmer's call the women glided to the center and stood
poised beneath the punkah.

There they began to chant, still dreamily, and with the chant the dance
began, in and out, round and round, lazily, ever so lazily, wreathed in
buoyant gossamer that was scarcely more solid than the sandalwood smoke
they wafted into rings.

King watched them and listened to their chant until he began to
recognize the strain on the eye-muscles that precedes the mesmeric
spell. Then he wrote and read what he had written and wrote again. And
after that, for the sake of mental exercise, he switched his thoughts
into another channel altogether. He reverted to Delhi railway station.

"The Turks can spy as well as anybody.--They know those men are going to
Kerachi to be ready for them.--Therefore, having cut his eye-teeth B.C.
several hundred, the Unspeakable Turk will take care not to misbehave
UNTIL he's ready. And I suppose our government, being ours and we being
us, will let him do it! All of which will take time.--And that again
means no trouble in the Hills--probably--until the Turks really do feel
ready to begin. They'll preach a holy war just ahead of the date. The
tribes will keep quiet because an army at Kerachi might be meant for
their benefit. Oh, yes, I'm quite sure they were entraining for Kerachi
in readiness to move on Basra.

"Trucks ready for camels--and camel drivers--and food for camels--and
Eresby, who's just come from taking a special camel course. Not a doubt
of it!--And then, Corrigan--Elwright--Doby--Gould--all on the platform
in a bunch, and all down on the Army List as Turkish interpreters! Not a
doubt left!"

"What have you written?" asked a quiet voice at his ear; and he turned
to look straight in the eyes of Rewa Gunga, who had leaned forward to
read over his shoulder. Just for one second he hovered on the brink of
quick defeat. Having escaped the Scylla of the dancing women, Charybdis
waited for him in the shape of eyes that were pools of hot mystery. It
was the sound of his own voice that brought him back to the world again
and saved his will for him unbound.

"Read it, won't you?" he laughed. "If you know, take this pen and mark
the names of whichever of those men are still in Delhi."

Rewa Gunga took pen and paper and set a mark against some thirty of the
names, for King had a manner that disarmed refusal.

"Where are the others?" he asked him, after a glance at it.

"In jail, or else over the border."

"Already?"

The Rangar nodded. "Trust Yasmini! She saw to that jolly well before she
left Delhi! She would have stayed had there been anything more to do!"

King began to watch the dance again, for it did not feel safe to look
too long into the Rangar's eyes. It was not wise just then to look too
long at anything, or to think too long on any one subject.

"Ismail is slow about returning," said the Rangar.

"I wrote at the foot of the tar," said King, "that they are to detain
him there until the answer comes."

The Rangar's eyes blazed for a second and then grew cold again (as King
did not fail to observe). He knew as well as the Rangar that not many
men would have kept their will so unfettered in that room as to be able
to give independent orders. He recognized resignation, temporary at
least, in the Rangar's attitude of leaning back again to watch from
under lowered eyelids. It was like being watched by a cat.

All this while the women danced on, in time to wailing flute-music,
until, it seemed from nowhere, a lovelier woman than any of them
appeared in their midst, sitting cross-legged with a flat basket at her
knees. She sat with arms raised and swayed from the waist as if in a
delirium. Her arms moved in narrowing circles, higher and higher above
the basket lid, and the lid began to rise. Nobody touched it, nor was
there any string, but as it rose it swayed with sickening monotony.

It was minutes before the bodies of two great king-cobras could be
made out, moving against the woman's spangled dress. The basket lid was
resting on their heads, and as the music and the chanting rose to a wild
weird shriek the lid rose too, until suddenly the woman snatched the
lid away and the snakes were revealed, with hoods raised, hissing the
cobra's hate-song that is prelude to the poison-death.

They struck at the woman, one after the other, and she leaped out of
their range, swift and as supple as they. Instantly then she joined
in the dance, with the snakes striking right and left at her. Left
and right she swayed to avoid them, far more gracefully than a matador
avoids the bull and courting a deadlier peril than he--poisonous, two to
his one. As she danced she whirled both arms above her head and cried as
the were-wolves are said to do on stormy nights.

Some unseen hand drew a blind over the great window and an eerie
green-and-golden light began to play from one end of the room, throwing
the dancers into half-relief and deepening the mystery.

Sweet strange scents were wafted in from under the silken hangings.
The room grew cooler by unguessed means. Every sense was treacherously
wooed. And ever, in the middle of the moving light among the languorous
dancers, the snakes pursued the woman!

"Do you do this often?" wondered King, in a calm aside to Rewa Gunga,
turning half toward him and taking his eyes off the dance without any,
very, great effort.

Rewa Gunga clapped his hands and the dance ceased. The woman spirited
her snakes away. The blind was drawn upward and in a moment all was
normal again with the punkah swinging slowly overhead, except that the
seductive smell remained, that was like the early-morning breath of all
the different flowers of India.

"If she were here," said the Rangar, a little grimly--with a trace of
disappointment in his tone--"you would not snatch your eyes away
like that! You would have been jolly well transfixed, my friend!
These--she--that woman--they are but clumsy amateurs! If she were here,
to dance with her snakes for you, you would have been jolly well dancing
with her, if she had wished it! Perhaps you shall see her dance some
day! Ah,--here is Ismail," he added in an altered tone of voice. He
seemed relieved at sight of the Afridi.

Bursting through the glass-bead curtains at the door, the great savage
strode down the room, holding out a telegram. Rewa Gunga looked as if
he would have snatched it, but King's hand was held out first and Ismail
gave it to him. With a murmur of conventional apology King tore the
envelope and in a second his eyes were ablaze with something more than
wonder. A mystery, added to a mystery, stirred all the zeal in him. But
in a second he had sweated his excitement down.

"Read that, will you?" he said, passing it to Rewa Gunga. It was not in
cypher, but in plain everyday English.

"She has not gone North," it ran. "She is still in Delhi. Suit your own
movements to your plans."

"Can you explain?" asked King in a level voice. He was watching the
Rangar narrowly, yet he could not detect the slightest symptom of
emotion.

"Explain?" said the Rangar. "Who can explain foolishness? It means that
another fat general has made another fat mistake!"

"What makes you so certain she went North?" King asked.

Instead of answering, Rewa Gunga beckoned Ismail, who had stepped back
out of hearing. The giant came and loomed over them like the Spirit of
the Lamp of the Arabian Nights.

"Whither went she?" asked the Rangar.

"To the North!" he boomed.

"How knowest thou?"

"I saw her go!"

"When went she?"

"Yesterday, when a telegram came."

The word "came" was the only clue to his meaning, for in the language he
used "yesterday" and "to-morrow" are the same word; such is the East's
estimate of time.

"By what route did she go?" asked Rewa Gunga.

"By the terrain from the station."

"How knowest thou that?"

"I was there, bearing her box of jewels."

"Didst thou see her buy the tikkut?"

"Nay, I bought it, for she ordered me."

"For what destination was the tikkut?"

"Peshawur!" said Ismail, filling his mouth with the word as if he loved
it.

"Yet"--it was King who spoke now, pointing an accusing finger at him--"a
burra sahib sends a tar to me--this is it!--to say she is in Delhi
still! Who told thee to answer those questions with those words?"

"She!" the big man answered.

"Yasmini?"

"Aye! May Allah cover her with blessings!"

"Ah!" said King. "You have my leave to depart out of earshot."

Then he turned on Rewa Gunga.

"Whatever the truth of all this," he said quietly, "I suppose it means
she has done what there was to do in Delhi?"

"Sahib,--trust her! Does a tigress hunt where no watercourses are, and
where no game goes to drink? She follows the sambur!"

"You are positive she has started for the North?"

"Sahib, when she speaks it is best to believe! She told me she will go.
Therefore I am ready to lead King sahib up the Khyber to her!"

"Are you certain you can find her?"

"Aye, sahib,--in the dark!"

"There's a train leaves for the North to-night," said King.

The Rangar nodded.

"You'll want a pass up the line. How many servants? Three--four--how
many?"

"One," said the Rangar, and King was instantly suspicious of the modesty
of that allowance; however he wrote out a pass for Rewa Gunga and one
servant and gave it to him.

"Be there on time and see about your own reservation," he said. "I'll
attend to Ismail's pass myself."

He folded the list of names that the Rangar had marked and wrote
something on the back. Then he begged an envelope, and Rewa Gunga had
one brought to him. He sealed the list in the envelope, addressed it and
beckoned Ismail again.

"Take this to Saunders sahib!" he ordered. "Go first to the telegraph
office, where you were before, and the babu there will tell you where
Saunders sahib may be found. Having found him, deliver the letter to
him. Then come and find me at the Star of India Hotel and help me to
bathe and change my clothes."

"To hear is to obey!" boomed Ismail, bowing; but his last glance was
for Rewa Gunga, and he did not turn to go until he had met the Rangar's
eyes.

When Ismail had gone striding down the room, with no glance to spare
for the whispering women in the window, and with dignity like an aura
exuding from him, King looked into the Rangar's eyes with that engaging
frankness of his that disarms so many people.

"Then you'll be on the train to-night?" he asked.

"To hear is to obey! With pleasure, sahib!"

"Then good-by until this evening."

King bowed very civilly and walked out, rather unsteadily because his
head ached. Probably nobody else, except the Rangar, could have guessed
what an ordeal he had passed through or how near he had been to losing
self-command.

But as he felt his way down the stairs, that were dimly lighted now, he
knew he had all his senses with him, for he "spotted" and admired the
lurking places that had been designed for undoing of the unwary, or even
the overwary. Yasmini's Delhi nest was like a hundred traps in one.

"Almost like a pool table," he reflected. "Pocket 'em at both ends and
the middle!"

In the street he found a gharry after a while and drove to his hotel.
And before Ismail came he took a stroll through a bazaar, where he made
a few strange purchases. In the hotel lobby he invested in a leather bag
with a good lock, in which to put them. Later on Ismail came and proved
himself an efficient body-servant.

That evening Ismail carried the leather bag and found his place on the
train, and that was not so difficult, because the trains running North
were nearly empty, although the platforms were all crowded. As he stood
at the carriage door with Ismail near him, a man named Saunders slipped
through the crowd and sought him out.

"Arrested 'em all!" he grinned.

"Good."

"Seen anything of her? I recognized Yasmini's scent on your envelope.
It's peculiar to her--one of her monopolies!"

"No. I'm told she went North yesterday."

"Not by train, she didn't! It's my business to know that!"

King did not answer; nor did he look surprised. He was watching Rewa
Gunga, followed by a servant, hurrying to a reserved compartment at the
front end of the train. The Rangar waved to him and he waved back.

"I'd know her in a million!" vowed Saunders. "I can take oath she hasn't
gone anywhere by train! Unless she has walked, or taken a carriage,
she's in Delhi!"

The engine gave a preliminary shriek and the giant Ismail nudged King's
elbow in impatient warning. There was no more sign of Rewa Gunga, who
had evidently settled down in his compartment for the night.

"Get my bag out again!" King ordered, and Ismail stared.

"Get out my bag, I said!"

"To hear is to obey!" Ismail grumbled, reaching with his long arm
through the window.

The engine shrieked again, somebody whistled, and the train began to
move.

"You've missed it!" said Saunders, amused at Ismail's frantic
disappointment. The giant was tugging at his beard. "How about your
trunk? Better wire ahead and have it spotted for you."

        "No," said King;  "it's still in the baggage room a the
other station. I didn't intend to go by this train. Came down here
to see another fellow off, that's all! Have a cigar and then let's go
together and look those prisoners over!"

Chapter IV

   Men boast in the Hills, when they ought to pray;
   For the wind blows lusty, and the blood runs red,
   And Law lies belly upwards for a man to wreak his fancy on it.
   Down in the plains, in the dust of the plains
   Where law is master and a good man ought to boast,
   They all lie belly downwards praying for their Hills again!

The rear lights of the train he had not taken swayed out of Delhi
station and King grinned as he wiped the sweat from his face with
a dripping handkerchief. Behind him towered the hook-nosed Ismail,
resentful of the unexpected. In front of him Saunders eyed the proffered
black cheroots suspiciously, accepted one with an air of curiosity and
passed the case back. Around them the clatter of the station crowd began
to die, and Parsimony in a shabby uniform went round to lower lights.

"Are you sure--"

King's merry eyes looked into Saunders' as if there were no world war
really and they two were puppets in a comedy.

"--are you absolutely certain Yasmini is in Delhi?"

"No," said Saunders. "What I swear to is that she has not left by train.
It's my business to know who leaves by train."

"What can you suggest?" asked King, twisting at his scrubby little
mustache. But if he wished to convey the impression of a man at his
wits' end, he failed signally.

"I? Nothing! She's the most elusive individual in Asia! One person
in the world knows where she is, unless she has an accomplice. My
information's negative. I know she has not gone by--"

King struck a match and held it out, so the sentence was unfinished;
the first few puffs of the astonishing cigar wiped out all memory of the
missing word. And then King changed the subject.

"Those men I asked you to arrest--?"

"Nabbed"--puff--"every one of 'em!"--puff--puff--"all
under"--puff--puff--"lock and key,--best smoke I ever tasted--where
d'you get 'em?"

"Had they been in communication with her?"

Puff--puff--"You bet they had! Where d'you get these things?"

"Not her special men by any chance?"

Puff--"Gad, what smoke!--couldn't say, of course,
but"--puff--puff--"shouldn't think so."

"Well--I'll go along with you if you like, and look them over."

Both tone and manner gave Saunders credit for the suggestion, and
Saunders seemed to like it. There is nothing like following up, in
football, war or courtship.

"I see you're a judge of a cigar," said King, and Saunders purred,
all men being fools to some extent, and the only trouble being to
demonstrate the fact.

They had started for the station entrance when a nasal voice began
intoning, "Cap-teen King sahib--Cap-teen King sahib!" and a telegraph
messenger passed them with his book under his arm. King whistled him. A
moment later he was tearing open an official urgent telegram and writing
a string of figures in pencil across the top. Then he decoded swiftly,

        "Advices are Yasmini was in Delhi as recently as six
        this evening.  Fail to understand your inability to
        get in touch.  Have you tried at her house?  Matters
        in Khyber district much less satisfactory.  Word from
        O-C Khyber Rifles to effect that lashkar is collecting.
        Better sweep up in Delhi and proceed northward as quickly
        as compatible with caution.   L. M. L."

The three letters at the end were the general's coded signature. The
wording of the telegram was such that as he read King saw a mental
picture of the general's bald red skull and could almost hear him say
the "fail to understand." The three words "much less satisfactory" were
a bookful of information. So, as he folded up the telegram, tore the
penciled strip of figures from the top and burned it with a match, he
was at pains to look pleased.

"Good news?" asked Saunders, blowing smoke through his nose.

"Excellent. Where's my man? Here--you--Ismail!"

The giant came and towered above him.

"You swore she went North!"

"Ha, sahib! To Peshawur she went!"

"Did she start from this station?"

"From where else, sahib?"

But this was too much for Saunders, who stepped forward and thrust in
an oar. King on the other band stepped back a pace so as to watch both
faces.

"Then, when did she go?"

"I saw her go!" said Ismail, affronted.

"When? When, confound you! When?"

"Yesterday."

"I expect he means to-morrow," said King. With the advantage of
looker-on and a very deep experience of Northerners, he had noted that
Ismail was lying and that Saunders was growing doubtful, although both
men concealed the truth with what was very close to being art.

"I have a telegram here," he said, "that says she is in Delhi!"

He patted his coat, where the inner pocket bulged.

"Nay, then the tar lies, for I saw her go with these two eyes of mine!"

"It is not wise to lie to me, my friend," King assured him, so
pleasantly that none could doubt he was telling truth.

"If I lie may I eat dirt!" Ismail answered him.

Inches lent the Afridi dignity, but dignity has often been used as a
stalking horse for untruth. King nodded, and it was not possible to
judge by his expression whether he believed or not.

"Let's make a move," he said, turning to Saunders. "She seems at
any rate to wish it believed she has gone North. I can't stay here
indefinitely. If she's here she's on the watch here, and there's no need
of me. If she has gone North, then that is where the kites are wheeling!
I'll take the early morning train. Where are the prisoners?"

"In the old Mir Khan Palace. We were short of jail room and had to
improvise. The horse-stalls there have come in handy more than once
before. Shall we take this gharry?"

With Ismail up beside the driver nursing King's bag and looking like
a great grim vulture about to eat the horse, they drove back through
swarming streets in the direction of the river. King seemed to have lost
all interest in crowds. He scarcely even troubled to watch when they
were held up at a cross-roads by a marching regiment that tramped as if
it were herald of the Last Trump, with bayonets glistening in the street
lights. He sat staring ahead in silence, although Saunders made more
than one effort to engage him in conversation.

"No!" he said at last suddenly--so that Saunders jumped.

"No what?"

"No need to stay here. I've got what I came for!"

"What was that?" asked Saunders, but King was silent again. Conscious of
the unaccustomed weight on his left wrist, he moved his arm so that the
sleeve drew and he could see the edge of the great gold bracelet Rewa
Gunga had given him in Yasmini's name.

"Know anything of Rewa Gunga?" he asked suddenly again.

"The Rangar?"

"Yes, the Rangar. Yasmini's man."

"Not much. I've seen him. I've spoken with him, and I've had to stand
impudence from him--twice. I've been tipped off more than once to let
him alone because he's her man. He does ticklish errands for her, or so
they say. He's what you might call 'known to the police' all right."

They began to approach an age-old palace near the river, and Saunders
whispered a pass-word when an armed guard halted them. They were halted
again at a gloomy gateway where an officer came out to look them over;
by his leave they left the gharry and followed him under the arch
until their heels rang on stone paving in a big ill-lighted courtyard
surrounded by high walls.

There, after a little talk, they left Ismail squatting beside King's
bag, and Saunders led the way through a modern iron door, into what had
once been a royal prince's stables.

In gloom that was only thrown into contrast by a wide-spaced row of
electric lights, a long line of barred and locked converted horse-stalls
ran down one side of a lean-to building. The upper half of each locked
door was a grating of steel rods, so that there was some ventilation for
the prisoners; but very little light filtered between the bars, and all
that King could see of the men within was the whites of their eyes. And
they did not look friendly.

He had to pass between them and the light, and they could see more of
him than he could of them. At the first cell he raised his left hand and
made the gold bracelet on his wrist clink against the steel bars.

A moment later be cursed himself, and felt the bracelet with his
fingernail. He had made a deep nick in the soft gold. A second later yet
he smiled.

"May God be with thee!" boomed a prisoner's voice in Pashtu.

"Didn't know that fellow was handcuffed," said Saunders. "Did you hear
the ring? They should have been taken off. Leaving his irons on has made
him polite, though."

He passed oil, and King followed him, saying nothing. But at the next
cell he repeated what he had done at the first, taking better care of
the gold but letting his wrist stay longer in the light.

"May God be with thee!" said a voice within.

"Gettin' a shade less arrogant, what?" said Saunders.

"May God be with thee!" said a man in the third stall as King passed.

"They seem to be anxious for your morals!" laughed Saunders, keeping a
pace or two ahead to do the honors of the place.

"May God be with thee!" said a fourth man, and King desisted for the
present, because Saunders looked as if he were growing inquisitive.

"Where did you arrest them?" he asked when Saunders came to a stand
under a light.

"All in one place. At Ali's."

"Who and what is Ali?"

"Pimp--crimp--procurer--Prussian spy and any other evil thing that takes
his fancy! Runs a combination gambling hell and boarding house. Lets
'em run into debt and blackmails 'em. Ali's in the kaiser's pay--that's
known! 'Musing thing about it is he keeps a photo of Wilhelm in his
pocket and tries to make himself believe the kaiser knows him by name.
Suffers from swelled head, which is part of their plan, of course.
We'll get him when we want him, but at present he's useful 'as is' for
a decoy. Ali was very much upset at the arrest--asked in the name of
Heaven--seems to be familiar with God, too, and all the angels!--how he
shall collect all the money these men owe him!"

"You wouldn't call these men prosperous, then?"

"Not exactly! Ali is the only spy out of the North who prospers much at
present, and even he gets most of his money out of his private business.
Why, man, the real Germans we have pounced on are all as poor as church
mice. That's another part of the plan, of course, which is sweet in all
its workings. They're paid less than driven by threats of exposure to
us--comes cheaper, and serves to ginger up the spies! The Germans pay
Ali a little, and he traps the Hillmen when they come South--lets
'em gamble--gets 'em into debt--plays on their fear of jail and their
ignorance of the Indian Penal Code, which altereth every afternoon--and
spends a lot of time telling 'em stories to take back with 'em to the
Hills when they can get away. They can get away when they've paid him
what they owe. He makes that clear, and of course that's the fly in the
amber. Yasmini sends and pays their board and gambling debts, and she's
our man, so to speak. When they get back to the 'Hills'--"

"Thanks," said King, "I know what happens in the 'Hills. Tell me about
the Delhi end of it."

"Well, when the wander-fever grabs 'em again they come down once more
from their 'Hills' to drink and gamble,--and first they go to Yasmini's.
But she won't let 'em drink at her place. Have to give her credit for
that, y'know; her place has never been a stews. Sooner or later they
grow tired of virtue, 'specially with so much intrigue goin' on under
their noses, and back they all drift to Ali's and tell him tales to
tell the Germans--and the round begins again. Yasmini coaxes all their
stories out of 'em and primes 'em with a few extra good ones into the
bargain. Everybody's fooled--'specially the Germans--and exceptin', of
course, Yasmini and the Raj. Nobody ever fooled that woman, nor ever
will if my belief goes for anything!"

"Sounds simple!" said King.

"Simple and sordid!" agreed Saunders.

King looked up and down the line of locked doors and then straight into
Saunders' eyes in a friendly, yet rather disconcerting way. One could
not judge whether he were laughing or just thinking.

"D'you suppose it's as simple as all that?"

"How d'you mean?"

"D'you suppose the Germans aren't in director touch with the tribes?"

"Why should they be? The simpler the better, I expect, from their point
of view; and the cheaper the better, too!"

"Um-m-m!" King rubbed his chin. "On what charge did you get these men?"

"Defense of the Realm--suspicious characters--charge to be entered
later."

"Good! That's simple at all events! Know anything of my man Ismail?"

"Sure! He's one of Yasmini's pets. She bailed him out of Ali's three
years ago and he worships her. It was he who broke the leg and ribs of
a pup-rajah a month or two ago for putting on too much dog in her
reception room! He's Ursus out of Quo Vadis! He's dog, desperado,
stalking horse and Keeper of the Queen's secrets!"

"Then why d'you suppose she passed him along to me?" asked King.

"Dunno! This is your little mystery, not mine!"

"Glad you appreciate that! Do me a favor, will you?"

"Anything in reason."

"Get the keys to all these cells--send 'em in here to me by Ismail--and
leave me in here alone!"

Saunders whistled and wiped sweat from his glistening face, for in spite
of windows open to the courtyard it was hotter than a furnace room.

"Mayn't I have you thrown into a den of tigers?" he asked. "Or a nest
of cobras? Or get the fiery furnace ready? You'll find 'em sore--and
dangerous! That man at the end with handcuffs on has probably been
violent! That 'God be with thee' stuff is habit--they say it with
unction before they knife a man!"

"I'll be careful, then," King chuckled; and it is a fact that few men
can argue with him when he laughs quietly in that way. "Send me in the
keys, like a good chap."

So Saunders went, glad enough to get into the outer air. He slammed
the great iron door behind him as if he were glad, too, to disassociate
himself from King and all foolishness. Like many another first-class
man, King sheds friends as a cat sheds fur going under a gate. They grow
again and quit again and don't seem to make much difference.

The instant the door slammed King continued down the line with his left
wrist held high so that the occupant of each cell in turn could see the
bracelet.

"May God be with thee!" came the instant greeting from each cell until
down toward the farther end. The occupants of the last six cells were
silent.

Numbers had been chalked roughly on the doors. With wetted fingers he
rubbed out the chalk marks on the last six doors, and he had scarcely
finished doing that when Ismail strode in, slamming the great iron door
behind him, jangling a bunch of keys and looking more than ever like
somebody out of the Old Testament.

"Open every door except those whose numbers I have rubbed out!" King
ordered him.

Ismail proceeded to obey as if that were the least improbable order
in all the world. It took him two minutes to select the pass-key and
determine how it worked, then the doors flew open one after another in
quick succession.

"Come out!" he growled. "Come out!--Come out!" although King had not
ordered that.

King went and stood under the center light with his left arm bared. The
prisoners, emerging like dead men out of tombs, blinked at the bright
light--saw him--then the bracelet--and saluted.

"May God be with thee!" growled each of them.

They stood still then, awaiting fresh developments. It did not seem
to occur to any one of them as strange that a British officer in khaki
uniform should be sporting Yasmini's talisman; the thing was apparently
sufficient explanation in itself.

"Ye all know this?" he asked, holding up his wrist. "Whose is this?"

"Hers!"

The answer was monosyllabic and instant from all thirty throats. "May
Allah guard her, sleeping and awake!" added one or two of them.

King lit a cheroot and made mental note of the wisdom of referring to
her by pronoun, not by name.

"And I? Who am I?" he asked, since it saves worlds of trouble to have
the other side state the case. The Secret Service was not designed for
giving information, but discovering it.

"Her messenger! Who else? Thou art he who shall take us to the 'Hills'!
She promised!"

"How did she know ye were in this jail?" he asked them, and one of the
Hillmen laughed like a jackal, showing yellow eye-teeth. The others
cackled in chorus after him.

"Answer that riddle thyself--or else ask her! Who are we? Bats, that can
see in the night? Spirits, who can hear through walls? Nay, we be plain
men of the mountains!"

"But where were ye when she promised?"

"At Ali's. All of us at Ali's--held for debt. We sent and begged of her.
She sent word back by a woman that one of the sirkar's men shall free us
and send us home. So we waited, eating shame and little else, at Ali's.
At last came a sahib in a great rage, who ordered irons put on our
wrists and us marched hither. Only when each was pushed into a separate
cell were the irons taken off again. Yet we were patient, for we knew
this is part of her cunning, to get us away from Ali without paying him.
'May Ali die of want,' said we, with one voice all together in these
cells! And now we be ready! They fed us before we had been in here an
hour. Our bellies be full, but we be hungry for the 'Hills'!"

King thought of the gold-hilted knife, that still rested under his
shirt. He was tempted to show it to them and find out surely whose
it was and what it meant. But wisdom and curiosity seldom mingle. He
thought of Ismail--"Ursus, of Quo Vadis--dog, desperado, stalking-horse
and Keeper of the Queen's secrets." It was not time yet to run risks
with Ismail. The knife stayed where it was.

"I shall start for the Hills at dawn," he said slowly, and he watched
their eyes gleam at the news. No caged tiger is as wretched as a
prisoned Hillman. No freed bird wings more wildly for the open. No moth
comes more foolishly back to the flame again. It was easy to take pity
on them--probably not one of whom knew pity's meaning.

"Is there any among you who would care to come--?"

"Ah-h-h-h!"

"--at the price of strict obedience?"

"Eh-h-h-h-h!"

It seemed there was no word in Pashtu that could express their
willingness.

"We be very, very weary for our Hills!" explained the nearest man.

"Aye!" King answered. "And ye all owe Ali!"

"Uh-h-h-h-h!"

But he knew better than to browbeat them on that account just then, for
the men of the North are easier led than driven--up to a certain point.
Yet it is no bad plan to remind them of the fundamentals to begin with.

"Will ye obey me, and him?" he asked, laying his hand on Ismail's
shoulder, as much to let them see the bracelet again as for any other
reason.

"Aye! If we fail, Allah do more to us!"

King laughed. "Ye shall leave this place as my prisoners. Here ye have
no friends. Here ye must obey. But what when ye come to your 'Hills' at
last? Can one man hold thirty men prisoners then? In the 'Hills' will ye
still obey me?"

They answered him in chorus. Every man of the thirty, and Ismail into
the bargain, threw his right hand in the air.

"Allah witness that we will obey!"

"Ah-h-h!" said King. "I have heard Hillmen swear by Allah many a time!
Many a time!"

The answer to that was unexpected. Ismail knelt--seized his hand--and
pressed the gold bracelet to his lips!

In turn, every one of them filed by, knelt reverently and kissed the
bracelet!

"Saw ye ever a Hillman do that before?" asked Ismail. "They will obey
thee! Have no fear!"

"Kutch dar nahin hai!" King answered. "There is no such thing as fear!"
and Ismail grinned at him, not knowing that King was feeling as Aladdin
must have done.

"I have heard you swear," said King; "be ye true men!"

"Ah-h-h!"

"Have they belongings that ought to be collected first?" he asked, and
Ismail laughed.

"No more than the dead have! A shroud apiece! Ali gave them bitterness
to eat and picked their teeth afterward for gleanings! They stand in
what they own!"

"Then, come!" ordered King, turning his back confidently on thirty
savages whom Saunders, for instance, would have preferred to drive in
front of him, after first seeing them handcuffed. But when he is not
pressed for time neither pistols, nor yet handcuffs, are included in
King's method.

"Each lock has a key, but some keys fit all locks," says the Eastern
proverb. King has been chosen for many ticklish errands in his time, and
Saunders is still in Delhi.

Through the great iron door into dim outer darkness King led them and
presently made them squat in a close-huddled semicircle on the paving
stones, like night-birds waiting for a meal.

"I want blankets for them--two good ones apiece--and food for a week's
journey!" he told the astonished Saunders; and he spoke so decidedly
that the other man's questions and argument died stillborn. "While you
attend to that for me, I'll be seeing his dibs and making explanations.
You look full of news. What do you know?"

"I've telephoned all the other stations, and my men swear Yasmini has
not left Delhi by train!"

King smiled at him.

"If I leave by train d'you suppose she'll hear of it?"

"You bet! Bet your boots! Man alive--if she's interested in you by so
much,"--he measured off a fraction of his little finger end--"she knows
your next two moves ahead, to say nothing of your past half-dozen!
I crossed her bows once and thought I had her at a disadvantage. She
laughed at me. On my honor, my spine tingles yet at the mere thought of
it! You've never met her? Never heard her laugh? Never seen her eyes?
You've a treat in store for you--and a mauvais quat' d'heure! What'll
you bet me she doesn't laugh you out of countenance the very first time
you meet? Come now--what'll you bet?"

"Not in the habit," King answered, glancing at his watch. "Will you see
about their rations, please, and the blankets? Thanks!"

They went then in opposite directions and the prisoners were left
squatting under the eyes and bayonets of a very suspicious prison guard,
who made no secret of being ready for all conceivable emergencies. One
enthusiast drew the cartridge out of his breech-chamber and licked it at
intervals of a minute or two, to the very great interest of the Hillmen,
who memorized every detail that by any stretch of imagination might be
expected to improve their own shooting when they should get home again.

King found his way on foot through a maze of streets to a palace where
he was admitted through one door after another by sentries who saluted
when he had whispered to them. He ended by sitting on the end of the bed
of a gray-headed man who owns three titles and whose word is law between
the borders of a province. To him he talked as one schoolboy to a bigger
one, because the gray-haired man had understanding, and hence sympathy.

"I don't envy you!" said he under the sheet. "There was an American
here not long ago--most amusing man I ever talked to. He had the right
expression. 'I do not desiderate that pie!' was his way of putting it.
Good, don't you think?"

All the while he talked the older man was writing on a pad that he held
propped by his knees beneath the bedclothes, holding the paper tight to
keep it from fluttering in the breeze of a big electric fan.

"There's the release for your prisoners. Take it--and take them!
Whatever possessed you to want such a gift?"

"Orders, sir."

"Whose?"

"His. He sent for me to Peshawur and gave me strict orders to work with,
not against her. This was obvious."

"How obvious? It seems bewildering!"

"Well, sir,--first place, she doesn't want to seem to be connected with
me. Otherwise she'd have been more in evidence. Second place, she has
left Delhi--his telegram and Saunders' men on oath notwithstanding--and
she did not mean to leave those men. I imagine her best way to manage
Hillmen is to keep promises, and they say she promised them. Third
place, if those thirty men had been anything but her particular pet
gang they'd either have been over the border or else in jail before
now,--just like all the others. For some reason that I don't pretend to
understand, she promised 'em more than she has been able to perform. So
I provide performance. She gets the credit for it. I get a pretty good
personal following at least as far as up the Khyber! Q.E.D.,sir!"

The man in bed nodded. "Not bad," he said.

"Didn't she make some effort to get those men away from Ali's?" King
asked him. "I mean, didn't she try to get them dry-nursed by the sirkar
in some way?"

"Yes. She did. But it was difficult. In the first place, there didn't
seem to be any particular hurry. They were eating Ali's substance. The
scoundrel had to feed them as long as he kept them there, and we wanted
that. We forbade her to pay their debts to Ali, because he has too
urgent need of money just now. He is being pressed on account of debts
of his own, and the pressure is making him take risks. He has been
begging for money from the German agents. We know who they are, and we
expect to make a big haul within a few hours now."

"Hope I didn't spoil things by butting in, sir."

"No. This is different. She wanted them arrested and locked up at a
moment when the jails were all crowded. And then she wanted us to put
'em into trucks and railroad 'em up North out of harm's way as she put
it, and we happened to be too busy. The railway staff was overworked.
Now things are getting straightened out. I felt it keenly not being able
to oblige her, but she asked too much at the wrong moment! I would have
done it if I could out of gratitude; it was she who tipped off for us
most of the really dangerous men, and it was not her fault a few of them
escaped. But we've all been working both tides under, King. Take me;
this is my first night in bed in three, and here I am awake! No--nothing
personal--glad to see you, but please understand. And I'm a leisured
dilettante compared to most of the others. She must have known our fix.
She shouldn't have asked."

King smiled. "Perfectly good opportunity for me, sir!" he said
cheerfully.

"So you seem to think. But look out for that woman, King--she's
dangerous. She's got the brains of Asia coupled with Western energy! I
think she's on our side, and I know he believes it; but watch her!"

"Ham dekta hai!" King grinned. But the older man continued to look as if
he pitied him.

"If you get through alive, come and tell me about it afterward. Now,
mind you do! I'm awfully interested, but as for envying you--"

"Envy!" King almost squealed. He made the bed-springs rattle as he
jumped. "I wouldn't swap jobs with General French, sir!"

"Nor with me, I suppose!"

"Nor with you, sir.

"Good-by, then. Good-by, King, my boy. Good-by, Athelstan. Your
brother's up the Khyber, isn't he? Give him my regards. Good-by!"

Long before dawn the thirty prisoners and Ismail squatted in a little
herd on the up-platform of a railway station, shepherded by King, who
smoked a cheroot some twenty paces away, sitting on an unmarked chest of
medicines. He seemed absorbed in a book on surgery that he had borrowed
from a chance-met acquaintance in the go-down where he drew the medical
supplies. Ismail sat on the one trunk that had been fetched from
the other station and nursed the new hand-bag on his knees, picking
everlastingly at the lock and wondering audibly what the bag contained
to an accompaniment of low-growled sympathy.

"I am his servant--for she said so--and he said so. As the custom is he
gave me the key of the great bag--on which I sit--as he said himself,
for safe-keeping. Then why--why in Allah's name--am I not to have the
key of this bag too? Of this little bag that holds so little and is so
light?"

"It might be money in it?" hazarded one of the herd.

"Nay, for that it is too light."

"Paper money!" suggested another man. "Hundies, with printing on the
face that sahibs accept instead of gold."

"Nay, I know where his money is," said Ismail. "He has but little with
him."

"A razor would slit the leather easily," suggested another man. "Then
with a hand inserted carefully through the slit, so as not to widen it
more than needful, a man could soon discover the contents. And later,
the bag might be dropped or pushed violently against some sharp thing,
to explain the cut."

Ismail shook his head.

"Why? What could he do to thee?"

"It is because I know not what he would do to me that I will do
nothing!" answered Ismail. "He is not at all like other sahibs I have
had dealings with. This man does unexpected things. This man is not mad,
he has a devil. I have it in my heart to love this man. But such talk is
foolishness. We are all her men!"

"Aye! We are her men!" came the chorus, so that King looked up and
watched them over the open book.

At dawn, when the train pulled out, the thirty prisoners sat safely
locked in third-class compartments. King lay lazily on the cushions of a
first-class carriage in the rear, utterly absorbed in the principles of
antiseptic dressing, as if that had anything to do with Prussians and
the Khyber Pass; and Ismail attended to the careful packing of soda
water bottles in the ice-box on the floor.

"Shall I open the little bag, sahib?" he asked.

King shook his head.

Ismail shook the bag.

"The sound is as of things of much importance all disordered," he said
sagely. "It might be well to rearrange."

"Put it over there!" King ordered. "Set it down!"

Ismail obeyed and King laid his book down to light another of his black
cheroots. The theme of antiseptics ceased to exercise its charm over
him. He peeled off his tunic, changed his shirt and lay back in sweet
contentment. Headed for the "Hills," who would not be contented, who had
been born in their very shadow?--in their shadow, of a line of Britons
who have all been buried there!

"The day after to-morrow I'll see snow!" he promised himself. And
Ismail, grinning with yellow teeth through a gap in his wayward beard,
understood and sympathized.

Forward in the third-class carriages the prisoners hugged themselves and
crooned as they met old landmarks and recognized the changing scenery.
There was a new cleaner tang in the hot wind that spoke of the "Hills"
and home!

Delhi had drawn them as Monte Carlo attracts the gamblers of all Europe.
But Delhi had spewed them out again, and oh! how exquisite the promise
of the "Hills" was, and the thunder of the train that hurried--the
bumping wheels that sang Himahlayas--Himahlyas!--the air that blew in on
them unscented--the reawakened memory--the heart's desire for the cold
and the snow and the cruelty--the dark nights and the shrieking storms
and the savagery of the Land of the Knife ahead!

The journey to Peshawur, that ought to have been wearisome because
they were everlastingly shunted into sidings to make way for roaring
south-bound troop trains and kept waiting at every wayside station
because the trains ahead of them were blocked three deep, was no less
than a jubilee progress!

Not a packed-in regiment went by that was not howled at by King's
prisoners as if they were blood-brothers of every man in it. Many an
officer whom King knew waved to him from a passing train.

"Meet you in Berlin!" was a favorite greeting. And after that they would
shout to him for news and be gone before King could answer.

Many a man, at stations where the sidings were all full and nothing
less than miracles seemed able to release the wedged-in trains, came
and paced up and down a platform side by side with King. From them he
received opinions, but no sympathy to speak of.

"Got to stay in India? Hard lines!" Then the conversation would be
bluntly changed, for in the height of one's enthusiasm it is not decent
to hurt another fellow's feelings. Simple, simple as a little child is
the clean-clipped British officer. "Look at that babu, now. Don't you
think he's a marvel? Don't you think the Indian babu's a marvel? Sixty
a month is more than the beggar gets, and there he goes, doing two
jobs and straightening out tangled trains into the bargain! Isn't he a
wonder, King?"

"India's a wonderful country," King would answer, that being one of his
stock remarks. And to his credit be it written that he never laughed at
one of them. He let them think they were more fortunate than he, with
manlier, bloodier work to do.

Peshawur, when they reached it at last, looked dusty and bleak in the
comfortless light of Northern dawn. But the prisoners crowed and crooned
it a greeting, and there was not much grumbling when King refused to
unlock their compartment doors. Having waited thus long, they could
endure a few more hours in patience, now that they could see and smell
their "Hills" at last.

And there was the general again, not in a dog-cart this time, but
furiously driven in a motor-car, roaring and clattering into the station
less than two minutes after the train arrived. He was out of the car,
for all his age and weight, before it had come to a stand. He took one
steady look at King and then at the prisoners before he returned King's
salute.

"Good!" he said. And then, as if that were not enough: "Excellent! Don't
let 'em out, though, to chew the rag with people on the platform. Keep
'em in!"

"They're locked in, sir."

"Excellent! Come and walk up and down with me."

Chapter V

     Death roosts in the Khyber while he preens his wings!
     --Native Proverb

"Seen her?" asked the general, with his hands behind him.

"No," said King, looking sharply sidewise at him and walking stride for
stride. His hands were behind him, too, and one of them covered the gold
bracelet on his other wrist.

The general looked equally sharply sidewise.

"Nor've I," he said. "She called me up over the phone yesterday to ask
for facilities for her man Rewa Gunga, and he was in here later. He's
waiting for you at the foot of the Pass--camped near the fort at Jamrud
with your bandobast all ready. She's on ahead--wouldn't wait."

King listened in silence, and his prisoners, watching him through the
barred compartment windows, formed new and golden opinions of him, for
it is common knowledge in the "Hills" that when a burra sahib speaks
to a chota sahib, the chota sahib ought to say, "Yes, sir, oh, yes!" at
very short intervals. Therefore King could not be a chota sahib after
all. So much the better. The "Hills" ever loved to deal with men in
authority, just as they ever despised underlings.

"What made you go back for the prisoners?" the general asked. "Who gave
you that cue?"

"It's a safe rule never to do what the other man expects, sir, and Rewa
Gunga expected me to travel by his train."

"Was that your only reason?"

"No, sir. I had general reasons. None of 'em specific. Where natives
have a finger in the pie there's always something left undone at the
last minute."

"But what made you investigate those prisoners?"

"Couldn't imagine why thirty men should be singled out for special
treatment. Rewa Gunga told me they were still at large in Delhi.
Couldn't guess why. Had 'em arrested so's to be able to question 'em.
That's all, sir."

"Not nearly all!" said the general. "You realize by now, I suppose, that
they're her special men--special personal following?"

"Guessed something of that sort."

"Well--she's clever. It occurred to her that the safest way to get
'em up North was to have 'em arrested and deported. That would avoid
interference and delay and would give her a chance to act deliverer at
this end, and so make 'em grateful to her--you see? Rewa Gunga told me
all this, you understand. He seems to think she's semi-divine. He was
full of her cleverness in having thought of letting 'em all get into
debt at a house of ill repute, so as to have 'em at hand when she wanted
'em."

"She must have learned that trick from our merchant marine," said King.

"Maybe. She's clever. She asked me over the phone whether her thirty men
had started North. I sent a telegram in cypher to find out. The answer
was that you had found 'em and rounded 'em up and were bringing 'em with
you. When she called me up on the phone the second time I told her so,
and I heard her chuckle with delight. So I emphasized the point of your
having discovered 'em and saved 'em every wit whole and all that kind of
thing. I asked her to come and see me, but she wouldn't,--said she was
'disguised and particularly did not want to be recognized, which
was reasonable enough. She sent Rewa Gunga instead. Now, this seems
important:

"Before I sent you down to Delhi--before I sent for you at all--I told
her what I meant to do, and I never in my life knew a woman raise such
terrific objections to working with a man. As it happened her objections
only confirmed my determination to send for you, and before she went
down to Delhi to clean up I told her flatly she would either have to
work with you or else stay in India for the duration of the war."

The general did not notice that King was licking his lips. Nor, if
he had noticed King's hand that now was in front of him pressing on
something under his shirt, could he have guessed that the something
was a gold-hilted knife with a bronze blade. King grunted in token of
attention, and the general continued.

"She gave in finally, but I felt nervous about it. Now, without your
getting sight of her--you say you haven't seen her?--her whole attitude