Her face was oval without a flaw, and pale as newly-minted gold, with a flush of red where the blood ran warm beneath the skin. Her hair was black as ebony and finer than the finest silk, rich and lustrous; her jet-black eyebrows formed a perfect arch. Her mouth was like a passion-flower, but small and sweet, with lips full and firm and scarlet. Her eyes were twin pools of darkness lighted with ardent inner fire. They held him speechless and motionless with the beauty of their unuttered desire, and before he could collect his wits she had made him captive—had without warning cast herself upon her knees before him and imprisoned both his hands, burying her face in their palms. He felt her lips hot upon his flesh, and then—wonder of wonders!—tears from those divine eyes streaming through his fingers.

The shock of it brought him to his senses. Pitiful, dumfounded, horrified, he glared wildly about him, seeking some avenue of escape. There was no one watching: he thanked Heaven for that, while the cold sweat started out upon his forehead. But still at his feet the woman rocked, softly sobbing, her fair shoulders gently agitated, and still she defied his gentle efforts to free his hands, holding them in a grasp he might not break without hurting her. He found his tongue eventually.

"Don't!" he pleaded desperately. "My dear, you mustn't. For pity's sake don't sob like that! What under the sun's the trouble? Don't, please!... Good Lord! what am I to do with this lovely lunatic?" Then he remembered that he had spoken in English and thoughtfully translated the gist of his remonstrances, with as little effect as if he had spoken to the empty air.

Though in time the fiercest paroxysm of her passion passed and her sobs diminished in violence, she clung heavily to him and made no resistance when he lifted her in his arms. The error was fatal; he had designed to get her on her feet and then stand away. But no sooner had he raised her and succeeded in disengaging his hands, than soft round arms were clasped tightly about his neck and her face—if possible, more ravishing in tears than when first he had seen it—pillowed on his breast. And for the first time she spoke coherently.

"Aie!" she wailed tremulously. "Aie! Now is the cup of my happiness full to brimming, now that thou hast returned to me at last, O my lord! Well-nigh had I ceased to hope for thee, O Beloved; well-nigh had this heart of mine grown cold within my bosom, that had no nourishment save hope, save hope! Day and night I have watched for thy coming for many years, praying that thou shouldst return to me ere this frail prettiness of mine, that made thee love me long ago, should wane and fade, so that thy heart should turn to other women, O my husband!"

"Husband! Great—Heavens! Look here, my dear, hadn't you better come to your senses and let me go before—"

"Let thee go, Lalji, ere what? Ere any come to disturb us? Nay, but who should come between husband and wife in the first hour of their reunion after many years of separation? Is it not known—does not all Khandawar know how I have waited for thee, almost thy widow ere thy wife, all this weary time?... Or is it that thy heart hath forgotten thy child-bride? Am I scorned, O my Lord—I, Naraini? Is there no love in thy bosom to leap in response to the love of thee that is my life?"

She released him and whirled a pace or two away, draperies swirling, jewels scintillating cold fire in hopeless emulation of the radiance of her tear-gemmed eyes.

"Naraini?" stammered Amber, recalling what he had heard of the woman. "Naraini!"

"Aye, my lord, Naraini, thy wedded wife!" The rounded little chin went up a trifle and her eyes gleamed angrily. "Am I no longer thy Naraini, then? Or wouldst thou deny that thou art Har Dyal, my king and my beloved? Hast thou indeed forgotten the child that was given thee for wife when thy father reigned in Khandawar and thou wert but a boy—a boy of ten, the Maharaj Har Dyal? Hast thou forgotten the little maid they brought thee from the north, Lalji—the maiden who had grown to womanhood ere thy return from thy travels to take up thy father's crown?... Aie! Thou canst never forget, Beloved; though years and the multitude of faces have come between us as a veil, thou dost remember—even as thou didst remember when the message of the Bell came to thee across the great black waters, and thou didst learn that the days of thy exile were numbered, that the hour approached when again thou shouldst sit in the place of thy fathers and rule the world as once they ruled it."

A denial stuck in Amber's throat. The words would not come, nor would they, he believed, have served his purpose could he have commanded them. If he had found no argument wherewith to persuade Salig Singh, he found none wherewith to refute the claim of this golden-faced woman who recognised him for her husband. He was wholly dismayed and aghast. But while he lingered in indecision, staring in the woman's face, her look of petulance was replaced by one of divine forgiveness and compassion. And she gave him no time to think or to avoid her; in a twinkling she had thrown herself upon him again, was in his arms and crushing her lips upon his.

"Nay," she murmured, "but I did wrong thee, Beloved! Perchance," she told him archly, "thou didst not think to see me so soon, or in this garden? Perchance surprise hath robbed thee of thy wits—and thy tongue as well, O wordless one? Or thou art overcome with joy, as I am overcome, and smitten dumb by it, as I am not? Aho, Lalji! was ever a woman at loss for words to voice her happiness?" And nestling to him she laughed quietly, with a note as tender and sweet as the cooing of a wood-dove to its mate.

"Nay, but there is a mistake." He recovered the power of speech tardily, and would have put her from him; but she held tight to him. "I am not thy husband, nor yet a Rajput. I come from America, the far land where thy husband died.... Nay, it doth pain me to hurt thee so, Ranee, but the mistake is not of my making, and it hath been carried too far. Thy husband died in my presence—"

"It is so, then!" she cut him short. And his arms were suddenly empty, to his huge relief. "Indeed they had warned me that thou wouldst tell this story and deny me—why, I know not, unless it be that thou art unworthy of thy lineage, a coward and a weakling!" Her small foot stamped angrily and on every limb of her round body bracelets and anklets clashed and shimmered. "And so thou hast returned only to forswear me and thy kingdom, O thou of little spirit!" The scarlet lips curled and the eyes grew cold and hard with contempt. "If that be so, tell me, why hast thou returned at all? To die? For that thou must surely come to, if it be in thy mind to defy the behests of the Voice, thou king without a kingdom!... Why, then, art thou here, rather than running to hide in some far place, thinking to escape with thy worthless life—worthless even to thee, who art too craven to make a man's use of it—from the Vengeance of the Body?... Dost think I am to be tricked and hoodwinked—I, in whose heart thine image hath been enshrined these many weary years?"

"I neither think, nor know, nor greatly care, Ranee," Amber interposed wearily. "Doubtless I deserve thine anger and thy scorn, since I am not he who thou wouldst have me be. If death must be my portion for this offence, for that I resemble Har Dyal Rutton ... then it is written that I am to die. My business here in Khandawar hath concern neither with thee, nor with the State, not yet with the Gateway of Swords—of the very name of which I am weary.... Now," and his mouth settled in lines of unmistakable resolve, "I will go; nor do I think that there be any here to stop me."

He wheeled about, prepared to fight his way out of the palace, if need be. Indeed, it was in his mind that a death there were as easy as one an hour after sunrise; for he had little doubt but that he was to die if he remained obdurate, and the hospitality of the Rajput would cease to protect him the moment he set foot upon the marble bund of his bungalow.

But the woman sprang after him and caught his arm. "Of thy pity," she begged breathlessly, "hold for a space until I have taken thought.... Thou knowest that if what thou hast told me be the truth, then am I widow before my time—widowed and doomed!"

"Doomed?"

"Aye!" And there was real terror in her eyes and voice. "Doomed to sati. For, since I am a widow—since thou dost maintain thou art not my husband—then my face hath been looked upon by a man not of mine own people, and I am dishonoured. Fire alone can cleanse me of that defilement—the pyre and the death by flame!"

"Good God! you don't mean that! Surely that custom has perished!"

"Thou shouldst know that it dieth not. What to us women in whose bodies runs the blood of royalty, is an edict of your English Government? What, the Sirkar itself to us in Khandawar?" She laughed bitterly. "I am a Rohilla, a daughter of kings: my dishonour may be purged only by flame. Arre! that I should live to meet with such fate—I, Naraini, to perish in the flower of my beauty.... For I am beautiful, am I not?" She dropped the veil which instinctively she had caught across her face, and met his gaze with childish coquetry, torn though she seemed to be by fear and disappointment.

"Thou art assuredly most beautiful, Ranee," Amber told her, with a break in his voice, very compassionate. And he spoke simple truth. "Of thy kind there is none more lovely in the world ..."

"There was tenderness then in your tone, my lord!" she caught him up quickly. "Is there no mercy in thy heart for me?... Who is this woman across the seas who hath won thy love?... Aye, even that I know—that thou dost love this fair daughter of the English. Didst thou not lose the picture of her that was taken with the magic-box of the sahibs?... Is it for her sake that thou dost deny me, O my husband? Is she more fair than I, are her lips more sweet?"

"I am not thy husband," he declared vehemently, appalled by her reversion to that delusion. "Till this hour I have never seen thee; nor is the sahiba of any concern to thee. Let me go, please."

But she had him fast and he could not have shaken her off but with violence. He had been a strong man indeed who had not been melted to tenderness by her beauty and her distress. She lifted her glorious face to him, pleading, insistent, and played upon him with her voice of gold. "Yet a moment gone thou didst tell me I was greatly gifted with beauty. Have I changed in thine eyes, O my king? Canst thou look upon this poor beauty and hear me tell thee of my love—and indeed I am altogether thine, Lalji!—and harden thy heart against me?... What though it be as thou hast said? What though thou art of a truth not of the house of Rutton, nor yet a Rajput? Let us say that this is so, however hard it be to credit: even so, am I not reward enough for thy renunciation?"

"I know not thy meaning, Ranee, I—"

"Come, then, and I will show thee, my king. Come thou with me.... Nay, why shouldst thou falter? There is naught for thee to fear—save me." She tugged at his hand and laughed low, in a voice that sang like smitten glasses. "Come, Beloved!"

Unwillingly, he humoured her. This could not last long.... The woman half led, half dragged him to the northern boundary of the garden, where they entered a little turret builded out from the walls over an abyss fully three-hundred feet in depth. And here, standing upon the verge of the parapet, with naught but a foot high coping between her and the frightful fall, utterly fearless and unutterably lovely, Naraini flung out a bare, jewelled arm in an eloquent gesture.

"See, my king!" she cried, her voice vibrant, her eyes kindling as they met his. "Look down upon thy kingdom. North, south, east, west—look!" she commanded. "Wherever thine eyes may turn, and farther than they can see upon the clearest day, this land is all thine ... for the taking. Look and tell me thou hast strength to renounce it ... and me, Beloved!"

A little giddy with the consciousness of their perilous height, his breath coming harshly, he looked—first down to the lake that shone like a silver dollar set in velvet, then up the misty distances of the widening valley through which ran the stream that fed the lake, and out to the hills that closed it in, miles away, and then farther yet over the silvered summits of the great, rough hills that rolled away endlessly, like a sea frozen in its fury.

"There lies thy kingdom, O my king!" The bewitching voice cooed seduction at his shoulder. "There and ... here." She sought his hand and placed it firmly upon her bosom, holding it there with gentle pressure until he felt the thumping of her heart and the warm flesh that heaved beneath a shred of half-transparent lace.

Reddening and a little shaken, he snatched his hand away. And she laughed chidingly.

"From the railway in the north to the railway in the south, all the land is Khandawar, Beloved: thine inheritance—thine for the taking ... even as I am thine, if thou wilt take me.... Look upon it, thy father's kingdom, then upon me, thy queen.... Yea!" she cried, throwing back her head and meeting his gaze with eye languorous beneath their heavy silken lashes. "Yea, I am altogether thine, my king! Wilt thou cast me aside, then, who am faint with love for thee?... Never hast thou dreamed of love such as the love that I bear for thee. How could it be otherwise, when thou hast passed thy days in the chill exile of the North? O my husband, turn not from me—"

He pulled himself together and stood away. "Madam," he said with an absurdly formal bow, "I am not your husband."

She opened her arms with infinite allure. "It is so little that is asked of thee—only to ascend thy father's throne and be honoured of all Bharuta, only to wield the sceptre that is thine by right, only to reign an undisputed king in two kingdoms—Khandawar and thy Naraini's heart!"

"I am very sorry," he returned with the same preciseness. "It is quite impossible. Besides, it seems that you leave the Sirkar altogether out of your calculations. It may not have occurred to you that the Supreme Government of India may have something to say about the contemplated change."

He saw her bite her lips with chagrin, and the look she flashed to his face was anything but kind and tender. "Arre!" she laughed derisively. "And of what account is this frail, tottering Sirkar's will besides the Will of the Body? Of what avail its dicta against the rulings of the Bell? Thou knowest—"

"Pardon, I know nothing. I have told thee, Ranee, that I am not Har Dyal Rutton."

She was mistress of a thousand artifices. Brought to a standstill on the one line of attack, she diverged to another without the quiver of an eyelash to betray her discomfiture.

"Yea, thou hast told me," she purred. "But I, Naraini, I know what I know. Thou dost deny thyself even as thou dost deny me, but ... art thou willing to be put to the proof, my king?"

"If you've any means of proving my identity, I would thank you for making use of it, Ranee."

"There is the test of the Token, Lalji."

"I am not aware of it."

"The test of the Token—the ring that was brought to thee, the signet of thy House. Surely thou hast it with thee?"

Since that night in Calcutta Amber had resumed his habit of carrying the Token in the chamois bag. Now, on the reflection that it had been given him for a special purpose, which had been frustrated by the death of Dhola Baksh, so that he had no further use for it, he decided against the counsels of prudence. "What's the odds," he asked himself, "if I do lose it? I don't want the damn' thing—it's brought me nothing but trouble, thus far." And he thrust a hand within his shirt and brought forth the emerald. "Here it is," he told the woman cheerfully. "Now this test?" "Place it upon thy finger—so, even upon thy little finger, as was thy father's wont with it. Now lift up thine arm, so, and turn the stone to the west, toward Kathiapur."

Without comprehension he yielded to this whim, folding up his right arm and turning the emerald to the quarter indicated by Naraini.

The hour had drawn close upon dawn. A cold air breathed down the valley and was chill to them in that lofty eyrie. The moon, dipping towards the rim of the world, was poised, a globe of dull silver, upon the ridge of a far, dark hill. As they watched it dropped out of sight and everything was suddenly very bleak and black.

And a curious thing happened.

Naraini cried out sharply—"Aho!"—as if unable to contain her excitement.

Somewhere in the palace behind them a great gong boomed like thunder.

A pause ensued, disturbed only by the fluttering of the woman's breath: for the space of thirty pulse-beats nothing happened. Then Naraini's fingers closed like bands of steel about Amber's left wrist.

"See!" she cried in a voice of awe, while the bracelets shivered and clashed upon her outstretched arm, "The Eye, my king, the Eye!"

Amber shut his teeth upon an exclamation of amaze. For just above the far, dark mountain ridge, uncannily brilliant in the void of the pale, moonlit firmament, a light had blazed out; a vivid emerald light, winking and stabbing the darkness with shafts of seemingly supernatural radiance.

"And thy ring, lord—look! The Token!"

The great emerald seemed to have caught and to be answering the light Naraini called the Eye; in the stone's depths an infernal fire leaped and died and leaped again, now luridly blazing, now fitfully a-quiver as though about to vanish, again strong and steady: even as the light of the strange emerald star above the mountains ebbed and flowed through the night.

Naraini shuddered and cried out guardedly for very fear. "By Indur, it is even as the Voice foretold! Nay, Heaven-born"—she caught his sleeve and forcibly pulled down his hand—"tempt not the Unseen further. And put away this Token, lest a more terrible thing befall us. There be mysteries that even we of the initiate may not comprehend, my lord. It is not well to meddle with the unknown."

The ring was off his finger now and the woman was cramming it into his coat-pocket with tremulous hands. And where the Eye had shone, the sky was blank. They stood in darkness, Amber mute with perplexity, Naraini clinging to his arm and shaking like a reed in the wind.

"Now am I frightened, lord of my heart! Lead me back to the garden, for I am but a woman and afraid. Who am I, Naraini, to see the Eye? What am I, a weak woman, to trespass upon the Mysteries? I am very much afraid. Do thou take me hence and comfort me, my king!" She drew his arm about her waist, firm, round, and slender, and held it so, her body yielding subtly to his, her head drooping wearily upon his shoulder.

They moved slowly from the turret and back along the lighted walks of the garden, the woman apparently content, Amber preoccupied—to tell the truth, more troubled than he would have been willing to confess. As for the intimacy of their attitude, he was temporarily careless of it; it meant less to him than the woman guessed. It seems likely that she inferred a conquest from his indifference, for when they had come back to the tank of the gold-fish beneath the banian she slipped from his embrace and confronted him with a face afire with elation.

"See now how thou art altogether controverted, Lalji!" she cried joyfully. "No longer canst thou persist that thou art other than thy true self, the lord of Naraini's heart, the king returned to his kingdom.... For who would dare give the lie to the Eye?... Indeed," she continued with a low, sighing laugh, "I myself had begun to doubt, my faith borne down and overcome by thy repeated denials; but now I know thee. Did not the Bell foretell that the Eye should be seen of men only when Har Dyal Rutton had returned to his kingdom, and then only when he wore the Token? Even as it was said, so has it been.... And now art thou prepared to go?"

"Whither?"

"To Kathiawar—even to the threshold of the Gateway?... There is yet time, before the dawn, and it were wise to go quickly, my king; but for one night more is the Gateway open to receive thee. Thou didst see the saddled stallions in the courtyard? They wait there for thee, to bear thee to Kathiawar.... Nay, it were better that thou shouldst wait, mayhap, for the hours be few before the rising of the sun. Go then to thy rest, heart of my heart, since thou must leave me; and this night we shall ride, thou and I, together to the Gateway."

"So be it," he assented, with a grave inclination of his head. Convinced of the thanklessness of any further attempt to convince the woman against her will, he gave it up, and was grateful for the respite promised him. In twelve or eighteen hours he might accomplish much—with the aid of Labertouche. At worst he would find some means to communicate with the Farrells and then seek safety for himself in flight or hiding until what he had come to term "that damned Gateway-thing" should be closed and he be free to resume his strange wooing. Some way, somehow, he could contrive to extricate himself and his beloved.

Therefore he told the woman: "Be it so, O Queen! Now, I go."

"And leave me," she pouted prettily, "with no word but that, my king? Am I not worth a caress—not even when I beg for it?"

He smiled down at her, tolerant and amused, and impulsively caught her to him. "The point's well taken," he said. "Decidedly you're worth it, Naraini. And if you were not, the show was!"

And he kissed and left her, all in a breath.



CHAPTER XVI

SUNRISE FOR TWO

I

Amber found his way out of the garden without difficulty; at the doorway an eunuch waited. The Maharana himself, perhaps in deference to the dictates of discretion, did not reappear, and Amber had no desire to see him again. He was eager only to get away, to find a place and time to think, and to get into communication with Labertouche.

The eunuch bowed submissively to his demand to be shown out, and silently led him down through the echoing marble corridors and galleries of the many-tiered palace. They took a different way from that by which Amber had ascended; had his life depended on it, he could not have found his way back to the garden of Naraini, but by accident.

As they passed through the lower court of stables he remarked the fact that the stallions were being led away to their stalls. The circumstances confirmed Naraini's statement; the hour of their usefulness was ended for the day—or, rather, for the night.

The Virginian wondered dully if ever he would find himself astride one of the superb animals. After what he had witnessed and been a part of there was for him no longer any circumscribing horizon to the world of possibility. For him the improbable no longer existed. He had met the incredible face to face and found it real.

In the cavern-like chamber at the water-level Dulla Dad had the boat in readiness. Amber embarked, not without a sigh of relief, and the Mohammedan with his double-bladed paddle drove the boat out of the secret entrance, in an impassive silence. In the stern Amber watched the indefinite grey light of dawn wavering over the face of the waters and wondered ...

The boat swung in gently to the marble steps of the bund. Amber rose and stepped ashore, very tired and very much inclined to believe he would presently wake up to a sane and normal world.

"Hazoor," the voice of Dulla Dad hailed him. He turned. "Hazoor, I was to say that at the third hour after sunset to-night this boat will be in waiting here. You are to call me by name, and I will put in for you, hazoor."

"What's that? I don't understand.... Oh, very well."

"And I was to say further, my lord, these words: 'You shall find but one way to Kathiapur.'"

Amber shook his head, smiling. "If you don't mind getting yourself disliked on my account, Dulla Dad, you may take back to the author of that epigram this answer: 'You shall find but one way to Jehannum, and that right speedily.' Good-morning, Dulla Dad."

"The peace of God abide always with the Heaven-born!"

With a single, strong stroke the creature of the palace sent the boat skimming far out from the bund, and, turning, headed for the palace.

Amber entered the bungalow, to find the khansamah already awake and moving about. At the Virginian's request he shuffled off to prepare coffee—much coffee, very strong and black and hot, Amber stipulated. He needed the stimulant badly. He was sleepy and his head was in a whirl.

He sat lost in thought until the khansamah brought the decoction, then roused and drank it as it came from the pot, without sugar, gulping down huge bitter mouthfuls of the scalding black fluid. But the effect that he expected and desired was strangely long in making itself felt. He marvelled at his drowsiness, nodding and blinking over his empty cup. Out of doors the skies were hot and blue—white with forerunners of the sun, and the world of men was stirring and making preparation against the business of the day; but Amber, who had a work so serious and so instant to his hand, sat on in dreamy lethargy, musing....

The faces of two women stood out vividly against the misty formless void before his eyes: the face of Naraini and that of Sophia Farrell. He looked from one to the other, stupidly contrasting them, trying to determine which was the lovelier, until their features blurred and ran together and the two became as one and ...

The khansamah tiptoed cautiously into the room and found the Virginian sleeping like a log, his head upon the table. His face was deeply coloured with crimson, as if a fever burned him, and his breathing was loud and stertorous.

Pausing, the native beckoned to one who skulked without, and the latter entering, the two laid hold of the unconscious man and bore him to the charpoy. The second native slipped silver money into the khansamah's palm.

"He will sleep till evening," he said. "If any come asking for him, say that he has gone abroad, leaving no word. More than this you do not know. The sepoys have an order to prevent all from entrance."

The khansamah touched his forehead respectfully. "It is an order. Shabash!" he muttered.

A shaft of sunlight struck in through the window and lay stark upon the sleeper's face. He did not move. The khansamah drew close the shades, and with the other left the room in semi-dusk.

II

Beneath the spreading banian, by the cistern of the goldfish, Naraini with smouldering eyes watched Amber disappear in the wilderness of shrubbery. He walked as a man with a set purpose, never glancing back. She laughed uneasily but waited motionless where he had left her, until the echo of his boot-heels on the marble slabs had ceased to ring in the neighbouring corridor. Then, lifting a flower-like hand to her mouth, she touched her lips gently and with an air of curiosity. The resentment in her eyes gave place to an emotion less superficial. "By Indur and by Har!" she swore softly. "In one thing at least he is like a Rajput: he kisses as a man kisses."

She moved indolently along the walk to the rug beneath the canopy where he had found her, her lithe, languid, round body in its gorgeous draperies no whit less insolent than the flaming bougainvillea whose glowing magenta blossoms she touched with idle fingers as she passed.

The east was grey with dusk of dawn—a light that grew apace, making garish the illumination of the flickering, smoking, many-coloured lamps in the garden. Naraini clapped her hands. Soft footsteps sounded in the gallery and one of her handmaidens threaded the shrubbery to her side.

"The lamps, Unda," said the queen; "their light, I think, little becomes me. Put them out." And when this was done, she composedly ordered her pipe and threw herself lazily at length upon a pile of kincob cushions, her posture the more careless since she knew herself secure from observation; the garden being private to her use.

When the tire-woman had departed, leaving at Naraini's side a small silver huqa loaded with fine-cut Lucknow weed, a live ember of charcoal in the middle of the bowl, she sat up and began to smoke, her face of surpassing loveliness quaintly thoughtful as she sucked at the little mouthpiece of chased silver and exhaled faint clouds of aromatic vapour. From time to time she smiled pensively and put aside the tube while she played with the rings upon her slender, petal-like fingers; five rings there were to each hand, from the heavy thumb circlet that might possibly fit a man's little finger to the tiny band that was on her own, all linked together by light strands of gold radiating from the big, gem-encrusted boss of ruddy gold midway between her slim round waist and dimpled knuckles....

The tread of boots with jingling spurs sounded in the gallery, warning her. She sighed, smiled dangerously to herself, and carelessly adjusted her veil, leaving rather more than half her face bare. Salig Singh entered the garden and found his way to her, towering over her beneath the canopy, brave in his green and tinsel uniform. She looked up with a listless hauteur that expressed her attitude toward the man.

"Achcha!" she said sharply. "Thou art tardy, Heaven-born. Yet have I waited for thee this half-hour gone, heavy with sleep though I be—waited to know the pleasure of my lord."

There was a mockery but faintly disguised in her tone. The Maharana seemed to find it not unpleasant, for he smiled grimly beneath his moustache.

"There was work to be done," he said briefly—"for the Cause. And thou—how hast thou wrought, O Breaker of Hearts?"

The woman cast the silver mouthpiece from her and clasped her hands behind her head. "Am I not Naraini?"

"The man is ours?"

"Mine," she corrected amiably. His face darkened with a scowl of jealousy and she laughed in open derision. "Were I Naraini could I not divine the heart of a man?"

"By what means?"

"What is that to thee, O Heaven-born?" She snuggled her body complacently into the luxurious pile of cushions. "If I have accomplished the task thou didst set for me, what concern hast thou with the means I did employ? Thou art only Salig Singh, Maharana of Khandawar, but I am Naraini, a free woman."

"Thou—!" Rage choked the Rajput. "Thou," he sputtered—"thou art—"

"Softly, Heaven-born, softly—lest I loose a thunderbolt for thy destruction. Is it wise to forget that Naraini holds thy fate in the hollow of her hands?" She sat forward, speaking swiftly and with malice. "Thou art pledged to produce Har Dyal Rutton in the Hall of the Bell before another sunrise, and none but Naraini knows to what a perilous resort thou art driven to redeem thy word."

"I was lied to," he argued sullenly. "A false tale was brought me—by one who hath repented of his error! If I was told that Har Dyal Rutton would be in India upon such-and-such a day, am I to blame that I did promise to bring him to the Gateway?"

"And seeing that the man is dead, art thou to blame for bringing in his place a substitute, even so poor a changeling as this man Amber? Nay, be not angry; do I blame thee? Have I done aught but serve thee to the end thou dost desire?... Thou shouldst be grateful to me, rather than menace me with thine anger.... And," she added sweetly, "it were well for thee that thou shouldst bear always in mind my intimacy with thy secret. If thou art king, then am I more than queen, in Khandawar."

"I am not angry, Naraini," he told her humbly, "but mad with love for thee—"

"And lust, my lord, for—power," she interpolated.

"But if what thou hast said be true—"

"'Who lies to the King, is already a dead man.' Why should I trouble to deceive thee, Heaven-born? I tell thee, the man is won. The day shall declare it: this night will he ride with me to Kathiapur. Why didst thou not tarry to eavesdrop? Indeed thou hast lost an opportunity that may never a second time be thine—to learn of the wiles of woman."

"There was work to be done," he repeated. "I went to take measures against thy failure."

"O thou of little faith!"

"Nay, why should I neglect proper precautions? Whether thy confidence be justified or no, this night will Har Dyal Rutton—or one like him—endure the Ordeal of the Gateway."

"So I have told thee," she assented equably. "He will come, because Naraini bids him."

"It may be so. If not, another lure shall draw him."

She started with annoyance. "The Englishwoman of the picture?"

"Have I named her?" He lifted his heavy brows in affected surprise.

"Nay, but—"

"Secret for secret," he offered: "mine for thine. Is it a bargain, O Pearl of Khandawar?"

"Keep thy silly secret, then, as I will keep mine own counsel," she said, with assumed disdain. It was no part of wisdom, in her understanding, to tell him of her interview with Amber. A man's jealousy is a potent weapon in a woman's hands, but must be wielded with discretion.

He was persistent: "I will back my plan against thine, Ranee."

"So be it," she said shortly. "Whichever wins, the stake is won for both. What doth it matter?"

She rose and moved impatiently down the walk and back again, bangles tinkling, jewels radiant on wrist and brow, ankle and bosom. The man watched her with sulky eyes until she turned, then bent his head and stood glowering at the earth and twisting his moustache. She paused before him, hands on hips, and raised her eyes in silent inquiry. He pretended not to notice her. She sighed with a pretence of humility thinly disguised. "Thy trouble, my lord?" she rallied him.

"I have wondered," he said heavily: "will he pass?"

"If not, it were well for thee to die this night, O Heaven-born."

"That was my thought."

"Thou hast little need to worry, lord." Woman-like she shifted to suit his humour. "He is a man: I answer for that, though ... he is no fool. Still, when the hour strikes, what he must, that will he endure for the sake of that which Naraini hath promised him."

"Or for another," Salig Singh growled into his beard.

"I did not hear."

"I said naught. I am distraught."

"Be of good heart," she comforted him still further. "If he doth fail to survive the Ordeal—Har Dyal Rutton hath died. If he doth survive—"

"Har Dyal Rutton shall die within the hour," Salig Singh concluded grimly. "But ... I am troubled. I cannot but ask myself continually: Were it not wiser to confess failure and abide the outcome?"

"How long wouldst thou abide the outcome, my king, after thou hadst informed the Council of this deception to which thou hast been too willing and ready a party?... He who misled you died a dog's death. But thou—art thou in love with death?"

"Unless thy other name be Death, Naraini ..."

"Or if the Council should spare thee—as is unlikely? The patience of the Body is as the patience of Kings—scant; and its mercy is like unto its patience.... But say thou art spared: what then? How long art thou prepared to wait until the Members of the Body shall again be in such complete accord as now? When again shall all Hindustan be ripe for revolt?... Aho! Thou wouldst have sweet patience in the waiting, Salig Singh!... Let matters rest as they be, my lord"—this a trace imperiously. "Leave the man to me: I stand sponsor for him until the Gateway shall have received him and—and perhaps for a little afterwards."

"Thou art right as ever." He lifted his gaze to meet hers and his eyes flamed. "I leave my life on your knees, Naraini. I love thee and ... by all the gods, thou art altogether a woman!"

"And thou ... a man, your Highness?" she countered provokingly. "Nay!" she continued, evading him with a supple squirm, "be content until this affair be consummated. Wait until the time when an empress shall reign over all Bharuta and thou, my lord, shall be her Minister of State."

The man's voice shook. "That hour is not far off, my queen. Thou wilt not keep me waiting longer?"

She gave him the quick promise of her eyes. "Thou shouldst know—thou of all men, my lord.... But see!" It was necessary to distract him and she seized hastily upon the first pretext. "The last day of the old order dawns ... and the dawn is crimson, my lord, as with blood!" Her soft scarlet lips curled thirstily and showed her teeth, small, sharp and white as pearls. "I think," she added with somber conviction, "this omen is propitious!"

She swept away from him, toward the parapet. He took a single step in pursuit and halted, following her with a glance that was at once a caress and a threat.

She paused only when she could go no further, and stood in silent waiting.

Deep down in the valley the city was stirring from its sleep; the dull and peaceful humming of its hived hordes rose to her, pulsating in the still air. Above the eastern ridge the sky was hot and angry, banded with magenta, scarlet, and cadmium, and shot with expanding shafts of fierce radiance, like ribs of a fan of fire. In a long and breathless instant of suspense the hilltops blushed with the glare and threw down the light to the night mists swimming in the valley, rendering them opalescent, as with a heart of flame.

With eyes half-veiled by long languorous lashes the woman threw back her head until her swelling throat was tense. She raised her arms and stretched them wide. The sun, soaring suddenly, a crimson disk above the ridge, seemed to strike fire from her strange, savage beauty as from a jewel. Bathed in its ruddy glare she seemed to embody in her frail, slight form all that was singular to that cruel, passionate land of fire and steel. Her face became suffused, her blood leaping in response to the ardour of the sun.

Her parted lips moved, but the man, who had drawn near enough to hear, caught two words only.

"Naraini!... Empress!"



CHAPTER XVII

THE WAY TO KATHIAPUR

Gall and wormwood in his mouth, more bitter than remorse, Amber became conscious. Or perhaps it were more true to say that he struggled out of unconsciousness, dragging his ego back by main will-power from the deep oblivion of drugged slumber. One by one his faculties fought their way past the barrier, until he was fully sentient, save that his memory drowsed. His head was hot and heavy, his eyes burned in their sockets like balls of live charcoal, a dulled buzzing sounded in his ears, his very heart felt sore and numb; he was as one who wakes from evil dreams to the blackness of foreknown despair.

He lay for a time without moving. Because it was dark and his memory not working properly, time had ceased to be for him, and to-day was as yesterday and to-morrow. The ceiling-cloth above him was blood-red with light from the sepoys' fire in the compound, and all was as it had been when he had first lain down the night before. And yet....

Suddenly he raised himself upon the charpoy and called huskily for the khansamah. Promptly the squat white figure that he remembered appeared in the doorway. "Bring lights," Amber ordered, peremptory.

"Bring lights quickly—and water." And when the man had returned with a lamp, which he put on the table, Amber seized the red earthenware water-jug and drained it greedily. Returning it, empty, to the brown hands, he motioned to the man to wait, while he consulted his watch. It had run down. He thrust it back into his pocket and enquired: "What's o'clock?"

"Eight of the evening, sahib."

Amber gasped and stared. "Eight of the ... Let me think. Go and bring me food and a brandy-peg—or, hold on! Bring a bottle of soda-water and a glass only."

The khansamah withdrew. Amber fell back with his shoulders to the wall and stared unwinking at the lamp. He distinctly remembered undressing before going to bed; he now found himself fully clothed. He felt of his pocket, and found the emerald ring there, instead of in its chamois case. Then it had not been a nightmare!

He had a bottle of brandy which had never been uncorked, in his travelling-kit. Rising, he found it and inspected the cork narrowly to make sure it had not been tampered with; then he drew it.

The khansamah returned with the glass and an unopened bottle of Schweppe's, and prepared the drink under eyes that watched him narrowly. While Amber drank he laid a place for him at the table. When he left the room a second time the Virginian produced his automatic pistol and satisfied himself that it remained loaded and in good working order.

In the course of a few minutes the native reappeared with a tray of food and pot of coffee. These arranged, he stood by the chair, ready to serve the guest. Then he found himself looking into the muzzle of Amber's weapon, and became apparently rigid with terror.

"Sahib—!"

"Make no outcry, dog, and tell me no lies, if you value your contemptible life. Why did you drug me—at whose instance?"

"Sahib!..."

"Answer me quickly, son of vipers!"

"By Dhola Baksh, hazoor, I am innocent! Another has done these things—he who served you last night, belike, and whose place I have taken."

Now the oaths of India are many and various, so that a new specimen need not be held wonderful. But Amber sat bolt upright, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping. "Dhola—!" he said, and brought his teeth together with an audible click, staring at the khansamah as if he were a recrudescence of a prehistoric mammal. He caught a motion of the head and a wave of the hand toward the window, warning him that there might be an eavesdropper lurking without, and rose admirably to the emergency.

"That is a lie, misbegotten son of an one-eyed woman of shame! By the Gateway at Kathiapur, that is a lie! Speak, brother of jackals and father of swine, lest my temper overcome me and I make carrion of you!"

"My lord, hear me!" protested the man in an extremity of fright. "These be the words of truth. If otherwise, let my head be forfeit.... Early in the morning you returned from the lake, heavy with sleep, and so soundly have you slept since that hour that no effort of mine could rouse you, though many came to the door, making inquiry. I am Ram Lal, a true man, and no trafficker in drugs and potions."

"Even so!" said Amber, ironic. "But if, on taking thought, I find you've lied to me ... Go now and hold yourself fortunate in this, that I am not a man of hasty judgment."

"Hazoor!" Like a shadow harried by a wind of night, the khansamah scurried from the room. But on the threshold he paused long enough to lay a significant finger upon his lips and nod toward the table.

Amber put away his pistol, sighed from the bottom of his soul, and, seating himself, without the least misgiving, broke his long fast with ravenous appetite, clearing every dish and emptying the coffee pot of all save dregs. Then, with a long yawn of satisfaction, repletion, and relief, he lighted a cigarette and stretched himself, happily conscious of returning strength and sanity.

From the khansamah's quarters came an occasional clash of crockery and pattering of naked feet. Outside, in the compound, the sepoys were chattering volubly; their words were indistinguishable, but from their constantly increasing animation Amber inferred that they were keenly relishing the topic of discussion. He became sure of this when, at length, his curiosity roused, he went to the window and peered out between the wooden slats of the blind. The little company was squatting in a circle round the fire, and a bottle was passing from hand to hand.

He turned back, puzzled, to find the khansamah calmly seated at the table and enjoying one of Amber's choicest cigarettes.

"Thank God," he said, with profound emotion, "for a civilised smoke!"

"Labertouche!" cried Amber.

The pseudo-khansamah rose, bowed formally, and shook hands with considerable cordiality. "It's good to see you whole and sound," he said. "I had to wait until Ram Nath's work began to show results. He's out there, you know, keeping the bottle moving. I don't believe those damned sepoys will bother us much, now, but we've got no time at all to spare. Now tell me what you have to tell, omitting nothing of the slightest consequence."

Amber dropped into a chair, and the Englishman sat near to him. "I say, thank God for you, Labertouche! You don't know how I've needed you."

"I can fancy. I've had a ripping time of it myself. Sorry I couldn't communicate with you safely before you left Calcutta. But we've not a minute to waste. Get into your yarn, please; explanations later, if we can afford 'em."

Inhaling with deep enjoyment, he narrowed his dark eyes, listening intently to Amber's concise narrative of his experiences since their parting before the stall of Dhola Baksh in the Machua Bazaar. Not once was he interrupted by word or sign from Labertouche; and even when the tale was told the latter said nothing, but dropped his gaze abstractedly to the smouldering stump of his cigarette.

"And you?" demanded the Virginian. "Have pity, Labertouche! Can't you see I'm being eaten alive by curiosity?"

Labertouche eyed him blankly for an instant. "Oh!" he said, with an effort freeing his mind from an intense concentration of thought. "I? What's there to tell? I've been at work. That's all.... I was jostled off to one side when the row started in the bazaar, and so lost you. There was then nothing to do but strike back to the hotel and wait for a clue. You can figure my relief when you dropped out of that ticca-ghari! I gave you the word to go on to Darjeeling, intending to join you en route. But you know why that jaunt never came off. I found out my mistake before morning, wired you, and left Calcutta before you, by the same train that conveyed his Majesty the Maharana of Khandawar. Fortunately enough we had Ram Nath already on the ground, working up another case—I'll tell you about it some time. He's one of our best men—a native, but loyal to the core, and wrapped up in his work. He'd contrived to get a billet as tonga-wallah to the Kuttarpur bunia who has the dak-service contract. I myself had arranged to have the telegraph-babu here transferred, and myself appointed in his place. So I was able to attach myself to the 'tail' of the Maharana without exciting comment. Miss Farrell came by the same train, but Salig Singh was in too great a hurry to get home to pay any attention to her, and I, knowing you'd be along, arranged that tonga accident with Ram Nath. He bribed his brother tonga-wallah to bring it about."

"Thank you," said Amber from his heart.

Labertouche impatiently waved the interruption aside. "I looked for you at the telegraph office this morning, but of course when you didn't appear I knew something was up. So I concocted a message to you for an excuse, came down, engaged the khansamah in conversation (I think he had some idea I was an agent of the other side) and ... he is an old man, not very strong. Once indoors, I had little trouble with him. He's now enjoying perfect peace, with a gag to insure it, beneath his own charpoy. Ram Nath happened along opportunely and created a diversion with his gin-bottle. That seems to be all, and I'm afraid we mayn't talk much longer. I must be going—and so must you."

He glanced anxiously at his watch—a cheap and showy thing, such as natives delight in. Both men rose.

"You return to the telegraph station, I presume?" said Amber.

"Not at all. It wouldn't be worth my while."

"How's that?"

"The wires haven't been working since ten this morning," said Labertouche quietly. Amber steadied himself with the back of his chair. "You mean they've been cut?"

"Something of the sort."

"And that means—"

"That this infernal conspiracy is scheduled to come to a head to-night—as you must have inferred, my dear fellow: this is the last night of your probation. The cutting off of Khandawar from all British India is a bold move and shows Salig Singh's confidence. It means simply: 'Governmental interference not desired. Hands off.' He knows well that we've spies here, that enough has leaked out, unavoidably, to bring an army corps down on his back within twenty-four hours, if he permitted even the most innocent-seeming message to get out of the city."

Amber whistled with dismay. "And you—"

"I'm going to find out for myself what's towards in Kathiapur."

"You're going there—alone?"

"Not exactly; I shall have company. A gentleman of the Mohammedan persuasion is going to change places with me for the night. No; he doesn't know it yet, but I have reason to believe that he got an R.S.V.P. for the festive occasion and intends to put in a midnight appearance. So I purpose saving him the trouble. It's only a two-hour ride."

"But the risk!"

Labertouche chuckled grimly. "It's the day's work, my boy. I'm not sure I shan't enjoy it. Besides, I mayn't hang back where my subordinates have not feared to go. We've had a man in Kathiapur since day before yesterday."

"And I? What am I to do?"

"Your place is at Miss Farrell's side. No; you'd be only a hindrance to me. Get that out of your thoughts. Three years ago I found time to make a pretty thorough exploration of Kathiapur, and, being blessed with an excellent memory, I shall be quite at home."

Amber made a gesture of surrender. "Of course you're right," he said. "You're always right, confound you!"

"Exactly," agreed Labertouche, smiling. "I'm only here to help you escape to the Residency. Raikes and Colonel Farrell have already been advised to make preparations for a siege or for instant flight, if I give the word. They need you far more than I shall. It would be simple madness for you to venture to Kathiapur to-night. The case is clear enough for you to see the folly of doing anything of the sort."

"It may be clear to you...."

"See here," said Labertouche, with pardonable impatience; "I'm presuming that you know enough of Indian history to be aware that the Rutton dynasty in Khandawar is the proudest and noblest in India; it has descended in right line from the Sun. There's not a living Hindu but will acknowledge its supremacy, be he however ambitious. That makes it plain, or ought to, why Har Dyal Rutton, the last male of his line, was—and is—considered the natural, the inevitable, leader of the Second Mutiny. It devolved upon Salig Singh to produce him; Salig Singh promised and—is on the point of failure. I can't say precisely what penalty he'll be called upon to pay, but it's safe to assume that it'll be something everlastingly unpleasant. So he's desperate. I can't believe he has deceived himself into taking you for Rutton, but whether or no he intends by hook or crook to get you through this Gateway affair to-night. He's got to. Now you are—or Rutton is—known to be disloyal to the scheme. Inevitably, then, the man who passes through that Gateway in his name is to be quietly eliminated before he can betray anything—in other words, as soon as he has been put through the 'Ordeal,' as they call it, for the sake of appearances and the moral effect upon the Hindu race at large. Now I think you understand."

"I think I do, thanks," Amber returned drily. "You're quite right, as I said before. So I'm off to the Residency. But how to get through that guard out there?"

He received no response. In as little time as it took him to step backwards from Amber, Labertouche had resumed his temporarily discarded masquerade. Instantaneously it was the khansamah who confronted the Virginian—the native with head and shoulders submissively bended, as one who awaits an order.

Amber, surprised, stared, started to speak, received a sign, and was silent, the excuse for Labertouche's sudden change of attitude being sufficiently apparent in an uproar which had been raised without the least warning in the compound. The advent of a running horse seemed to have been responsible for it, for the clatter of hoofs as the animal was checked abruptly in mid-stride was followed by a clamour of drunken cries, shrieks of alarm, and protests on the part of the sepoys disturbed in the midst of their carouse. Over all this there rang the voice of an Englishman swearing good, round, honest British oaths.

"Stand aside, you hounds!"

Amber turned pale. "That's Farrell's voice!" he cried, guessing at the truth.

Labertouche made no answer, but edged toward the khansamah's quarters.

The din subsided as Farrell gained the veranda. His feet rang heavily on the boards, and a second later he thrust the door violently open and slammed breathlessly into the room, booted, spurred, his keen old face livid, a riding-whip dangling from one wrist, a revolver in the other hand.

He wheeled on the threshold and lifted his weapon, then, with a gasp of amazement, dropped it. "By Heaven, sir!" he cried, "that's odd! Those damned sepoys tried to prevent my seeing you and now they've cleared out, every mother's son of them!"

Amber stepped to his side; to his own bewilderment, the compound was deserted; there was not a sepoy in sight.

"So much the better," he said quickly, the first to recover. "What's wrong, sir?"

"Wrong!" Farrell stumbled over to the table and into a chair, panting. "Everything's wrong! What's gone wrong with you, that we haven't been able to find you all day?"

"I've been lying there," Amber told him, nodding to the charpoy, "drugged. What's happened? Is Miss Farrell—?"

"Sophia!" The Political lifted his hand to his eyes and let it fall, with an effect of confusion. "In the name of charity tell me you know where she is!"

"You don't mean—"

"She's gone, Amber—gone! She's disappeared, vanished, been spirited away! Don't you understand me? She's been kidnapped!"

In dumb torment, Amber heard a swift, sharp hiss of breath as pregnant with meaning as a spoken word, and turned to meet Labertouche's eyes, and to see that the same thought was in both their minds. Salig Singh had found the way to lure Amber to Kathiapur.

No spoken word was needed; their understanding was implicit on the instant. Indeed the secret-agent dared not speak, lest he be overheard by an eavesdropper and so be the cause of his own betrayal. With a flutter of white garments he slipped noiselessly from the room, and Amber knew instinctively that if they were to meet again that night it would be upon the farther side of the Gateway of Swords. For himself, his path of duty lay clear to the Virginian's vision; like Labertouche's, it was the road to Kathiapur. He had no more doubt that Sophia had been conveyed thither than he had of Farrell's presence before him. And in his heart he cursed, not Naraini, not Salig Singh, but himself for his inept folly in bringing to India the photograph which had been stolen from him and so had discovered to the conspirators his interest in the girl.

He thought swiftly of Dulla Dad's parting admonition: "You shall find but one way to Kathiapur."

"Well, sir? Well?" Exasperated by his silence the Political sprang to his feet and brought the riding-crop against his leg with a smack like a gun-shot. "Have you nothing to say? Don't you realise what it means when a white woman disappears in this land of devils? Good God! you stand there, doing nothing, saying nothing, like a man with a heart of stone!"

"Speak French," Amber interposed quietly. He continued in that tongue, his tone so steady and imperative that it brought the half-frantic Englishman to his senses. "Speak French. You must know that we're spied upon every instant; every word we speak is overheard, probably. Tell me what happened—how it happened—and keep cool!"

"You're right; I beg your pardon." Farrell collected himself. "There's little enough to go on.... You disappointed us this morning. During the day we got word from a secret but trustworthy source to look out for trouble from the native side. Nevertheless, Raikes and I were obliged, by reason of our position, representing Government, to attend the banquet in honor of the coronation to-morrow. We called in young Clarkson—the missionary, you know—to stay in the house during our absence. When we returned the Residency was deserted—only we found Clarkson bound, gagged, and nearly dead of suffocation in a closet. He could tell us nothing—had been set upon from behind. Not a servant remained.... But, by the way, your man Doggott came in by the evening dak-tonga."

"Where's Raikes?"

"Gone to the palace to threaten Salig Singh with an army corps."

"You know the telegraph wires are cut?"

"Yes, but how—"

"Never mind how I know—the story's too long. The thing to do is to get troops here without a day's delay."

"But how?"

"Take Raikes, Clarkson, and Doggott and ride like hell to Badshah Junction. Telegraph from there. The four of you ought to be able to fight your way through."

"But, man, my daughter!"

"I know where to find her—or think I do. No matter which, I'll find her and bring her back to you safely, or die trying. You spoke just now of a secret but trustworthy source of information: I work with it this night. I can't mention names—you know why; but that source was in this room ten minutes ago. He's gone after your daughter now. I follow. No—I go alone. It's the only way. I know how you feel about it, but believe me, the thing for you to do is to find some way to summon British troops. Now the quicker you go, the quicker I'm off. I can't—daren't move while you're here."

Farrell eyed him strangely. "I'll go," he said after a pause. "But ... why can't I—"

"There are just two white men living, Colonel Farrell, who can go where I am going to look for your daughter to-night. I'm one of them. The other is—you know who."

"One of us is mad," said Farrell with conviction. "I think you are."

"Or else I know what I'm talking about. In either event you only hinder me now. Please go."

His manner impressed the man; for a moment Farrell lingered, doubting, then impetuously offered his hand. "I'm hanged if I understand why," he said, "but somehow I believe you know what you're about. Good-night and—and God be with you, Amber."

The Virginian followed him to the doorway. Farrell's horse, a docile, well-trained animal, had come to the edge of the veranda to wait for his master. Otherwise the compound was as empty as the night was quiet. Mounting, the Political waved a silent farewell and spurred off toward the city. Amber passed back through the bungalow to the bund.

It was a wonderful blue night of clear moonlight, quickened by a rowdy wind that rioted down the valley from the north. The roughened surface of the lake was dark save where the moon had blazed its trail of shimmering golden scales. There was no boat visible, and for the first time Amber's heart misgave him and he doubted whether it were not best to seek a mount from the stables of the Residency and try to reach Kathiapur on his own initiative. But his ignorance of the neighbouring topography was too great a handicap to be overcome; and now that Labertouche had gone, he was without a friendly, guiding hand. He could but deliver himself into the hands of the enemy and do what he might thereafter.

He lifted his voice and called: "Ohe, Dulla Dad!"

There came a soft shuffle of feet on the stones behind him, and the stunted, white-clad figure of Dulla Dad stood at his side, making respectful obeisance. "Hazoor!"

"You damned spying scoundrel!" Amber cried, enraged. "You've been waiting there by the window, listening!"

"Hazoor," the native quavered in fright, "it was cold upon the water and you kept me waiting over-long. I landed, seeking shelter from the wind. If your talk was not for mine ears, remember that you used a tongue I did not know."

"So you were listening!" Amber calmed himself. "Never mind. Where's your boat?"

"I thought to hide it in the rushes. If the hazoor will be patient for a little moment ..." The native dropped down from the bund and disappeared into the reedy tangle of the lake shore. A minute or so later Amber saw the boat shoot out from the shore and swing in a long, graceful curve to the steps of the bund.

"Make haste," he ordered, as he jumped in and took his place. "If I have kept you waiting, as you say, then I am late."

"Nay, there is time to spare." Dulla Dad spun the boat round and away. "I did but think to anticipate your impatience, knowing that you would assuredly come."

"Ah, you knew that, Dulla Dad? How did you know?"

The man giggled softly, plying a busy paddle. "Am I not of the palace, hazoor? What are secrets in the house of kings? Gossip of herders and bazaar-women!"

"And how much more do you know, Dulla Dad?" Amber's tone was ominous.

"I, hazoor? Who am I to know aught?... Nay, this have I heard"—he paused cunningly: "'You shall find but one way to Kathiapur.'"

Amber, realising that he had invited this insolence, was fair enough not to resent it, and held his peace until he could no longer be blind to the fact that the native was shaping a course almost exactly away from the Raj Mahal. "What treachery is this, dog?" he demanded. "This is not the way—"

"Be not mistrustful of your slave, hazoor," whined the native. "I do the bidding of those before whose will I am as a leaf in the wind. It is an order that I land you on the bund of the royal summer pavilion, by the northern shore of the lake. There will you find one waiting for you, my lord."

Amber contented himself with a fresh examination of his pistol; it was all one to him, whatever the route by which he was to reach Kathiapur, so long as the change involved no delay. But this way across the water was so much longer than that which he had anticipated that he had time to work himself into a state of fuming impatience before the boat finally ranged alongside a pretentious marble bund backed by ragged plantations of palms and bananas. To the left the white-columned facade of the Maharana's stately pleasure-house glimmered spectral in the moonlight. It showed no lights, and Amber very naturally concluded that it was unoccupied.

He landed on the steps of the bund and waited for Dulla Dad to join him; but when, hearing a splash of the paddle, he looked round, it was to find that the native had already put a considerable distance between himself and the shore. Amber called after him angrily, and Dulla Dad rested upon his paddle.

"Nay, Heaven-born!" he replied. "Here doth my responsibility end. Another will presently appear to be your guide. Go you up to the jungly path leading from the bund."

The Virginian lifted his shoulders indifferently, and ascended to discover a wide footpath running inland between dark walls of shrubbery, but quite deserted. He stopped with a whistle of vexation, peering to right and left. "What the deuce!" he said aloud. "Is this another of their confounded tricks?"

A low and marvellously sweet laugh sounded at his elbow, and he turned with a start and a flutter of his pulses. "Naraini!" he cried.

It had been impossible to mistake the gracious lines of that slight, round figure, cloaked though it was in many thicknesses of white veiling. She had stolen upon him without a sound, and seemed pleased with the completeness of his surprise, for she laughed again before he spoke.

"Tell me not thou art disappointed, O my king!" she said, placing a soft hand firmly upon his arm. "Didst thou hope to meet another here?"

"Nay, how should I expect thee?" His voice was gentle though he steeled his heart against her fascinations; for now he had a use for her. "Had Dulla Dad conveyed me to the palace, then I should have remembered thy promise to ride with me to Kathiapur. But, being brought to this place..."

"Then thou didst wish to ride with me?" She nodded approval and satisfaction. "That is altogether as I would have it be, Lord of my Heart. By this have I proven thee, for thou hast consented to approach the Gateway, not altogether because the Voice hath summoned thee, but likewise, I think, because thine own heart urged thee. Nay, but tell me, King of my Soul, did it not leap a little at the thought of meeting me?"

With a quick gesture she threw her veil aside and lifted her incomparably fair face to his, and he was conscious that he trembled a little, and that his voice shook as he answered evasively: "Thou shouldst know, Ranee."

"Ahi! Then am I a happy woman, to think that, though thou wert in open mutiny against the Voice, when I called, thou didst yield.... And thou art ready?"

"Am I not here?"

"Now of a verity do I know that thou art a man, my king!—a Rajput, a son of kings, and ... my husband!" Pitched to a minor, thrilling key, her accents were as musical as the singing of a 'cello. "For thou dost know what thou must dare this night of nights, and he is a brave man who can dare so much, unfaltering. Tell me thou art not afraid, my king?"

"Why should I be?"

"Thou wilt not draw back in the end?" Her arms clipped him softly about the neck and drew his head down so that her breath was fragrant in his face, her lips a sweet peril beneath his own. "Thou wilt brave whatever may be prepared for thy testing, for the sake of Naraini, who awaits thee beyond the Gateway; O my Beloved?"

"I shall not be found wanting."

Lithe as a snake, she slipped from his arms. "Nay, I trust thee not!" she laughed, a quiver of tenderness in her merriment. "Let my lips be mine alone until thou hast proven thyself worthy of them." She raised her voice, calling: "Ohe, Runjit Singh!"

The cry rang bell-clear in the stillness, and its silver echo had not died before it was answered by one who stepped out from the black shadow of a spreading banian, some distance away, and came toward them, leading three horses. As the moonlight fell upon him, Amber recognised the uniform the man wore as that of the Imperial Household Guard of Khandawar, while the horses seemed to be the stallions he had seen in the palace yard, with another but little their inferior in mettle or beauty.

"Now," announced the woman in tones of deep contentment, "we will ride!"

She turned to Amber, who took her up in his arms and set her in the saddle of one of the stallions; who, his bridle being released by the trooper, promptly leaped away and danced a spirited saraband with his shadow, until Naraini, with a strength that seemed incredible when one recalled the slightness of her wrists, curbed him in and taught him sobriety.

"By Har!" she panted, "but I think he must know that he carries to-night the destinies of empire! Mount, mount, my lord, and bear me company if this son of Eblis tries to run away with me!"

The sowar surrendered to Amber the reins of the other stallion, and stepped hastily aside. The Virginian took the saddle with a flying leap, and a thought later was digging his knees into the brute's sleek flanks and sawing on the bits, while the path flowed beneath him, dappled with moonlight and shadow, like a ribbon of grey-green silk, and trees and shrubbery streaked back on either hand in a rush of melting blacks and greys.

Swerving acutely, the path ran into the dusty high-road. Amber heard a rush of hoofs behind him, and then slowly the gauze-wrapped figure of the queen drew alongside.

"Maro! Let him run, my king! The way is not far for such as he. Have no fear lest he tire!"

But Amber set his teeth and wrought with the reins until his mount comprehended the fact that he had met a master, and, moderating his first furious burst of speed, settled down into a league-devouring stride, crest low, limbs gathering and stretching with the elegant precision of clockwork. His rider, regaining his poise, found time to look about him and began to enjoy, for all his cares, this wild race through the blue-white night.

Behind them, carbine on saddle-bow, the sowar thundered in pursuit, at an interval of about a hundred yards—often greater, when the stallions would have it so and spent their temper in brief, brisk contests for the leadership. On Amber's left the woman rode as one to the saddle born, her face turned eagerly to the open road, smiling a little with excitement beneath the tissue of thin veiling which the speed-bred breeze moulded cunningly to the contour of her flawless features. The fire in her blood shone lambent in the eyes that now and again met Amber's. More than once he heard her laugh low, with a lilt of happiness.

For himself he was drunk with the spirit of adventure. Bred of the moonlit sky and the far shy stars, of the flooding moonlight breaking crisply against impenetrable shadows like surf against black rocks, of the tune of hoofs, of the singing wind and sighing waters, a wild and reckless humor possessed him, ran molten in his veins, swam in his brain like fumes of wine.

As the tale of miles increased, the valley opened out, and presently they swung to the west from the northerly track, branching off into a rougher way through a wilder countryside. Rugged hilltops marched beside them, looming stark black against the silvered purple of the sky. They met no one, their road winding through a land whose grandeur was enhanced by its positive desolation—a land tenanted only by a million devils of loneliness with naught to do save to fling back mocking echoes of the road-song of the flying hoofs....

Toward the close of the second hour the valleys began to widen, the hills to be less lofty and precipitous. The horses swung up gentler ascents, down slopes less sharp. The road ran for a time along the bank of a broad and placid river, then crossed it by a massive arch of masonry as old as history. They circled finally a great, round, grassless hillside, and pulled rein in the notch of a gigantic V formed by two long, prow-like spurs running out upon a plain whose sole, vague boundary was the vast arc of the horizon.

Before them loomed dead Kathiapur, an island of stone girdled by the shallow silver river. Like the rugged pedestal of some mammoth column, its cliffs rose sheer threescore feet from the water's edge to the foot of the outermost of its triple walls. From the notch in the hills a great stone causeway climbed with a long and easy grade to the level of the first great gate, spanning the chasm over the river by means of a crazy wooden bridge.

Above the broken rim of the three-fold walls the moon's unearthly splendor made visible a vast confusion of crumbling cornices, blank walls, turrets, domes, and towers, the gnarled limbs of dead trees, the luxuriant dark foliage of banian and pepal, palm and acacia. But nothing moved and there was not a light to be seen. These things with the silence told the tale of death. With the cessation of the ringing hoofbeats the stillness had closed down upon the riders like a spell to break the which were to invite the wrath of the undying gods themselves. Other than the silken breathing of the horses, an occasional muffled thud or the jingle of a bridle-chain as one pawed the earth or tossed his head, they heard no sound. The unending hum of a living city was not there. Sister of Babylon, Nineveh and Tyre, kin to Chitor and that proud city of the plains that Jai Singh abandoned when he built him his City of Victory, Kathiapur is as Tadmor—dead. The shell remains; the soul has flown.

A gasp from the woman and an oath from the sowar startled Amber out of somber apprehensions into which he had been plunged by contemplation of this impregnable fortress of desolation. Gone was his lust for peril, gone his high, heedless joy of adventure, gone the intoxication which had been his who had drunk deep of the cup of Romance; there remained only the knowledge that he, alone and single-handed, was to pit his wits against the invisible and mighty forces that lurked in hiding within those walls, to seem to submit to their designs and so find his way to the woman of his love, tear her from the grasp of the unseen, and with her escape...

Naraini had, indeed, no need to cry aloud or clutch his hand in order to apprise him that the Eye was vigilant. He himself had seen it break forth, a lurid star of emerald light suspended high above the dark heart of the city—high in the air where the moment gone there had been nothing; so powerful that it shaded with sickly pallor the face of the woman, who clung shuddering to Amber; so unpresaged its appearance and so malign its augury that it shook even the skepticism of him whose reason had been nourished by the materialism of the Occident.

Slowly, while they watched, the star descended, foot by foot dropping until the topmost pinnacle of a hidden temple seemed to support it; and there it rested, throbbing with light, now bright, now dull.

Amber shook himself impatiently. "Silly charlatanry!" he muttered, irritated by his own susceptibility to its sinister suggestion.... "I'd like to know how they manage it, though; the light itself's comprehensible enough, but their control of it.... If there were enough wind, I'd suspect a kite...."

"Thou art not dismayed, my king?"

He laughed, not quite as successfully as he could have wished, and, "Not I, Naraini," he returned in English: a tongue which seemed somehow better suited for service in combating the esoteric influences at work upon his mind. "What's the next turn on the programme?"

"I like not that tone, nor yet that tongue." The woman shivered. "Even as the Eye seeth, my lord, so doth the Ear hear. Is it meet and wise to speak with levity of that in whose power thou shalt shortly be?"

"Perhaps not," he admitted, thoughtful. "'In whose power I shall shortly be.' ... Well, of course!"

"And thou wilt go on? Thou art not minded to withdraw thy hand?"

"Not so that you'd notice it, Naraini."

"For the sake of the reward Naraini offers thee?" she persisted dangerously.

"I don't mind telling you that you'd turn 'most any man's head, my dear," he said cheerfully, and let her interpret the words as she pleased.

She was not pleased, for her acquaintance with English was more intimate than she had chosen to admit; but if she felt any chagrin she dissimulated with her never-failing art. "Then bid me farewell, O my soul, and go!"

"Up there?" he enquired, lifting his brows.

"Aye, up the causeway and over the bridge, into the city of death."

"Alone?"

"Aye, alone and afoot, my king."

"Pleasant prospect, thanks." Amber whistled, a trifle dashed. "And then, when I get up there—?"

"One will meet thee. Go with him, fearing naught."

"And what will you do, meanwhile?"

"When thou shalt have passed the Gateway, my lord, Naraini will be waiting for thee."

"Very well." Amber threw a leg over the crupper, handed the stallion's reins to the sowar, who had dismounted and drawn near, and dropped upon his feet.

Naraini nodded to the sowar, who led the animal away. When he was out of earshot the woman leaned from the saddle, her glorious eyes to Amber's. "My king!" she breathed intensely.

But the thought of Sophia Farrell and what she might be suffering at that very moment was uppermost—obtruded itself like a wall between himself and the woman. He had no further inclination for make-believe, and he saw Naraini with eyes that nothing illuded. Quite as casually as though she had been no more to him than a chance acquaintance, he reached up, took her hand, and gave it a perfunctory shake.

"Good-night, my dear," he said amiably; and, turning, made off toward the foot of the causeway.

When he had gained it, he looked back to see her riding off at a wide angle from the causeway, heading out into the plain. When he looked again, some two or three minutes later, Naraini, the sowar, and the horses had vanished as completely as if the earth had opened to receive them. He rubbed his eyes, stared, and gave it up.

So he was alone!... With a shrug, he plodded on.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE HOODED DEATH

The causeway down which the horsemen of forgotten kings of Khandawar had clattered forth to war, in its age-old desuetude had come to decay. Between its great paving blocks grass sprouted, and here and there creepers and even trees had taken root and in the slow immutable process of their growth had displaced considerable masses of stone; so that there were pitfalls to be avoided. Otherwise a litter of rubble made the walking anything but good. Amber picked his way with caution, grumbling.

The grade was rather more steep than it had seemed to be from the plain. Now and then he stopped to regain his breath and scrub a handkerchief over his forehead, on which sweat had started despite the cold. At such times his gaze would seek inevitably and involuntarily, the lotus-pointed pinnacle whereon the Eye was poised, blazing. Its baleful emerald glare coloured his mood unpleasantly. He had a fancy that the thing was actually watching him. The sensation was creepy.

For that matter, nothing that met his eye was calculated to instil cheer into his heart. Desolation worked with silence sensibly upon his thoughts, so that he presently made the alarming discovery that the bottom had dropped completely out of his stock of scepticism, leaving him seriously in danger of becoming afraid of the dark. Scowling over this, he stumbled on, telling himself that he was a fool: a conclusion so patent that neither then nor thereafter at any time did he find reason to dispute it.

After some three-quarters of an hour of hard climbing he came to the wooden bridge, and halted, surveying it with mistrust. Doubtless in the olden time a substantial but movable structure, strong enough to sustain a troop of warriors but light enough to be easily drawn up, had extended across the chasm, rendering the city impregnable from capture by assault. If so, it had long since been replaced by an airy and well-ventilated latticework of boards and timbers, none of which seemed to the wary eye any too sound. Amber selected the most solid-looking of the lot and gingerly advanced a pace or two along it. With a soft crackling a portion of the timber crumbled to dust beneath his feet. He retreated hastily to the causeway, and swore, and noticed that the Eye was watching him with malevolent interest, and swore some more. Entirely on impulse he heaved a bit of rock, possibly twenty pounds in weight, to the middle of the structure. There followed a splintering crash and the contraption dissolved like a magic-lantern effect, leaving a solitary beam about a foot in width and six or eight inches thick, spanning a flight of twenty and a drop of sixty feet. The river received the rubbish with several successive splashes, distinctly disconcerting, and Amber sat down on a boulder to think it over.

"Clever invention," he mused; "one'd think that, after taking all this trouble to get me here, they'd changed their minds about wanting me. I've a notion to change mine." He looked up at the cusped and battlemented gateway opposite him, shifted his regard to the Eye, and shook his fist vindictively at the latter. "If ever I get hold of the chap that invented you...!" An ingenious imagination failing to suggest any form of torture commensurate with the crime, he relapsed into gloomy meditation.

There seemed to be no possibility of turning back at that stage, however. Kuttarpur was rather far away, and, moreover, he doubted if he would be permitted to return. Having come thus far, he must go on. Moreover, Sophia Farrell was on the other side of that Swordwide Bridge, and such being the case, cross it he would though he were to find the next world at its end. Finally he considered that he was presently to undergo an Ordeal of some unknown nature, probably extremely unpleasant, and that this matter of the vanishing bridge must have been arranged in order to put him in a properly subdued and tractable frame of mind.

He got up and tested the remaining girder with circumspection and incredulity; but it seemed firm enough, solidly embedded in the stonework of the causeway and immovable at the city end. So he straddled it and, averting his eyes from the scenery beneath him, hitched ingloriously across, collecting splinters and a very distinct impression that, as a vocation, knight-errantry was not without its drawbacks.

When again he stood on his feet he was in the shadow of the outer gateway, the curtain of the second wall confronting him. The stillness remained unbroken but the moonlight illuminated with startling distinctness the frescoes, half obliterated by time, and they were monstrous, revolting and obscene, from a Western point of view. A bastion of the third wall hid the Eye, however; he was grateful for that.

Casting about, he discovered the second gateway at some distance to the left, and started toward it, forcing a way through a tangle of scrubby undergrowth, weeds, and thorny acacia, but had taken few steps ere a heavy splash in the river below brought him up standing, with a thumping heart. After an irresolute moment he turned back to see for himself, and found his apprehension only too well grounded; the Swordwide Bridge was gone, displaced by an agency which had been prompt to seek cover—though he confessed himself unable to suggest where that cover had been found. There was no one visible on the causeway, and nobody skulked in the shadows of the bastions of the main gate. Furthermore it seemed hardly possible that in so scant a space of time human hands could have worked that heavy beam out of its sockets. And if the hands had been human (of course any other hypothesis were ridiculous) what had become of their owners?

He gave it up, considering that it were futile to badger his wits for the how and the wherefore. The important fact remained that he was a prisoner in dead Kathiapur, his retreat cut off, and—Here he made a second discovery, infinitely more shocking: his pistol was gone.

Amber remembered distinctly examining the weapon in Dulla Dad's boat, since when he had found no occasion to think of it. Now either it had jolted out of his pocket in that wild ride from Kuttarpur, or else Naraini had managed deftly to abstract it while in his arms by the summer palace, or when, later, she had shrunk against him in real or affected terror of the Eye. Of the two explanations his reason favoured the second. But he made no audible comment, though his thoughts were as black as his brow and as grimly fashioned as the set of his jaw.

Turning back at length he made his way to the second gateway and from it to the third, under the lewdly sculptured arch of which he stopped and gasped, forgetting himself as for the first time Kathiapur the Fallen was revealed to him in all the awful beauty of its naked desolation.

A wide and stately avenue stretched away from the portals, between rows of dwellings, palaces of marble and stone, tombs and mausoleums, with meaner houses of sun-dried brick and rubble, roofless all and disintegrating in the slow, terrible process of the years. Here a wall had caved in, there an arch had fallen out. The thoroughfare was strewn with fallen lintels, broken marble screens, blocks of red sandstone, bricks, and in between them the fig and pipal nourished with the bebel-thorn, the ak, the mimosa, the insidious convolvulus twining everywhere. At the far end of the street a yawning black arch rose in the white, beautiful facade of a marble temple on whose uppermost pinnacle the Eye hovered, staring horridly.