As Amber moved forward small, alert ghosts rose from the undergrowth and scurried silently thence: a circumstance which made him very unhappy. Even a brilliant chorus of sharp barks from an adjacent street failed to convince him that he had merely disturbed a pack of jackals, after all, and not the disconsolate brooding wraiths of those who had died and been buried in the imposing ruined tombs, what time Kathiapur boasted ten thousand swords and elephants by the herd.

The way was difficult and Amber tired. After a while, having seen nothing but the jackals, an owl or two, several thousand bats and a crawling thing which had lurched along in the shadow of a wall some distance away, giving an admirable imitation of a badly wounded man pulling himself over the ground, and making strange gutteral noises—Amber concluded to wait for the guide Naraini had promised him. He turned aside and seated himself upon the edge of a broken sandstone tomb. The silence was appalling and for relief he took refuge in cheap irreverence. "Home," he observed aloud, "never was like this."

A heart-rending sigh from the tomb behind him was followed by a rattle of dislodged rubbish. Amber found himself unexpectedly in the middle of the street and, without stopping to debate the method of his getting there with such unprecedented rapidity, looked back hopefully to the tomb. At the same moment a black-shrouded figure swept out of it and moved a few paces down the street, then paused and beckoned him with a gaunt arm. "I wish," said Amber earnestly, "I had that gun."

The figure was apparently that of a native swathed in black from his head to his heels and seemed the more strikingly peculiar in view of the fact that, as far as Amber could determine, he had neither eyes nor features although his head was without any sort of covering. He gulped over the proposition for an instant, then stepped forward.

"Evidently my appointed cicerone," he considered. "Unquestionably this ghost-dance is excellently stage-managed.... Though, of course, I had to pick out that particular tomb."

He followed in the wake of the figure, which sped on with a singular motion, something between a walk and a glide, conscious that his equanimity had been restored rather than shaken by the incident. "You wouldn't think," he reflected, "that a man like Salig Singh would lend himself to anything so childish. Still, I'm not through with it yet." He conceived a scheme to steal up behind his guide and strip him of his masquerade, but though he mended his pace he got no nearer, and eventually abandoned it on the consideration that it was probably most inadvisable. After all, he had to remember that he was there for a purpose, and a very serious one, and that properly to further that purpose he must comport himself with dignity, submissively, accepting, at least with a show of ease, each new development of the affair along its prearranged lines. And so he held on in pursuit of the black shadow, passing forsaken temples and lordly pleasure-houses, all marble tracery and fretwork, standing apart in what had once been noble gardens, sunken tanks all weed-grown and rank with slime, humbler dooryards and cots on whose hearthstones the fires for centuries had been cold—his destination evidently the temple of the unspeakable Eye.

As they drew nearer the leading shadow forsook the shade of the walls which he had seemed to favour, sweeping hastily across a plaza white with moonglare and without pause on into the black, gaping hole beyond the marble arch.

Here for the first time Amber hung back, stopping a score of feet from the door, his nerves a-jangle. He did not falter in his purpose; he was going to enter the inky portal, but ... would he ever leave it? And the world was still sweet to him. His quick, darting gaze registered a dozen impressions in as many seconds: of the silver splendour spilled so lavishly upon the soulless corpse of the city, of the high, bright sky, of dead black shadows sharp-edged against the radiance, of the fleet flitting spectre that was really a flying-fox....

Afar a hyena laughed with a sardonic intonation wholly uncalled-for—it was blood-curdling, besides. And down the street a melancholy air breathed gently, sighing like a soul astray.

"This won't do," he told himself; "it can't be worse inside than out here."

He took firm hold of his reason and went on across the dark threshold, took three uncertain strides into the limitless unknown, and pulled up short, hearing nothing, unable to see a yard before him. Then with a terrific crash like a thunder-clap the great doors swung to behind him. He whirled about with a stifled cry, conscious of a mad desire to find the doors again, took a step or two toward them, paused to wonder if he were moving in the right direction, moved a little to the left, half turned, and was lost. Reverberating, the echoes of the crash rolled far away and back again, diminishing in volume, dying until they were no more than as a whisper adrift in the silence, until that was gone....

Profound night enveloped him, vast, breathless, without dimensions. One can endure the blackness that abides within four well-kenned walls; but night unrelieved by the least gleam of light, night without bounds or measurements, enfolding one like a stifling blanket and instilling into the brain the fear of nameless things, quickening the respiration and oppressing the heart—that is another thing entirely, and that is what Amber found in the Temple of the Bell. Darkness swam visibly before his eyes, like a fluid. The sound of his constrained breathing seemed most loud and unnatural. He could hear his heart rumbling like a distant drum.

Digging his nails into his palms, he waited; and in the suspense of dread began to count the seconds.

One minute ... two ... three ... four....

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other....

Seven ...

He passed a hand across his face and brought it away wet with perspiration....

Nine ...

In some remote spot a bell began to toll; at first slowly—clang!... clang!... clang!—then more quickly, until the roar of its sonorous, gong-like tones seemed to fill all the world and to set it a-tremble. Then, insensibly, the tempo became more sedate, the fierce clamour of it moderated, and Amber abruptly was alive to the fact that the bell was speaking—that its voice, deep, clear, sound, metallic, was rolling forth again and again a question couched in purest Sanskrit:

"Who is there?... Who is there?... Who is there?..."

The hair lifted on his scalp and he swallowed hard in the effort to answer; but the lie stuck in his throat: he was not Rutton and ... and it is very hard to lie effectively when you stand in stark darkness with a mouth dry as dust and your hair stirring at the roots because of the intensely impersonal and aloof accents of an inhuman Bell-voice, tolling away out of Nowhere.

"Who is there?"

Again he failed to answer. Somewhere near him he heard a slight noise as of a man moving impatiently; and then a whisper: "Respond, thou fool!"

"Art thou come, O Chosen of the Gateway?" the Bell-voice rang.

"I ... I am come," Amber managed to reply. And so still and small sounded his own voice in the huge spaces of the place that he was surprised to find he had been heard.

"Hear ye!" rang the Bell. "Hear ye, O Lords and Rulers in Medhyama! O Children of my Gateway, hear ye well! He is come! He stands upon the threshold of the Gateway!"

Resonant, the echoes of those awe-inspiring tones died upon the stillness, and in response a faint sighing rose and, momentarily growing in volume, became as the roaring of a mighty wind; and suddenly it was abrupted, leaving only a ringing in the ears.

A great drum roared like the crack of Doom; and Amber's jaw dropped. For in the high roof of the temple a six-foot slab had been noiselessly withdrawn, and through it a cold shaft of moonlight fell, cutting the gloom like a gigantic rapier, and smote with its immaculate radiance the true Gateway of Swords.

Not six paces from him it leaped out of the darkness in an iridescent sheen: an arch a scant ten feet in height, and in span double the width of a big man's shoulders, woven across like a weaver's frame with ribbons of pale fire. But the ribbons were of steel—steel blades, sharp, bright, gleaming: a countless array of curved tulwars and crescent scimetars, broad jataghans, short and ugly kukurees, long kutars with straight ends, slender deadly patas, snake-like bichwas; swords with jewelled hilts and engraved and damascened blades; sabres with channels cut from point to guard wherein small pearls ran singing; khands built for service and for parade; swords of every style and period in all the history of India. With their pommels cunningly affixed so that their points touched and interlaced, yet swung free, they lined the piers of the arch from base to span and all the graceful sweep of the intrados, a curtain of shimmering, trembling steel, barring the way to the Mystery beyond. Which was—darkness.

"O ye Swords!" belled the Voice.... "O ye Swords that have known no dishonour! O ye Swords that have sung in the grasp of my greatest! Swords of Jehangar, Akbar, Alamgir! Swords of Alludin, Humayun, Shah Jehan! Swords of Timur-Leng, Arungzeb, Rao Rutton!..."

The invocation seemed interminable. Amber recognised almost every name noted in the annals and legends of Hindustan....

"Hearken, O my Swords! He, thy Chosen, prayeth for entry! What is thy welcome?"

One by one the blades began to shiver, clashing their neighbours, until the curtain of steel glimmered and glistened like phosphorescence in a summer sea, and the place was filled with the music of their contact; and through their clamour boomed the Bell:

"O my Chosen!" Amber started and held himself firmly in hand. "Look well, look well! Here is thy portal to kingship and glory!"

He frowned and took a step forward as if he would throw himself through the archway; for he had suddenly remembered with compelling vividness that Sophia Farrell was to be won only by that passage. But as he moved the swords clattered afresh and swung outwards, presenting a bristle of points. And he stopped, while the Voice, indifferent and remote as always, continued to harangue him.

"If thy heart, O my Chosen, be clean, unsullied with fear and guile; if thy faith be the faith of thy fathers and thy honour rooted in love of thy land; if thou hast faith in the strength of thy hands to hold the reins of Empire ... enter, having no fear."

"Trick-work," he told himself. He set his teeth with determination. "Hope they don't see fit to cut me to pieces on suspicion. Here goes." He moved forward with a firm step until his bosom all but touched the points.

Instantaneously, with another clash as of cymbals, the blades were deflected and returned to their first position, closing the way. He hesitated. Then, "That shan't stop me!" he said through his teeth, and pushed forward, heart in mouth. He breasted the curtain and felt it give; the blades yielded jealously, closing round his body like cold caressing arms; he felt their chill kisses on his cheeks and hands, even through his clothing he was conscious of their clinging, deadly touch. Abruptly they swung entirely away, leaving the entrance clear, and he was drawing a free breath when the moon glare showed him the swords returned to position with the speed of light. He jumped for his life and escaped being slashed to pieces by the barest inch. They swung to behind him; and again the drum roared, while afar there arose a furious, eldritch wailing of conches. Overhead the opening disappeared and the light was shut out. In darkness as of the Hall of Eblis the conches were stilled and the echoes ebbed into a silence that held sway for many minutes ere again the Bell spoke.

"Stretch forth thy hand."

Somewhat shaken, Amber held out an open palm before him. A second time the gusty sighing arose and breathed through the night, increasing until the very earth beneath him seemed to rock with the magnitude of the sound, until, at its highest, it ceased and was as if it had not been; not even an echo sang its passing. Then out of nothingness something plopped into Amber's hand and his fingers closed convulsively about it. It was a hand, very small, small as a child's, gnarled and hard as steel and cold as ice.

Amber sunk his teeth into his lower lip and subdued an almost uncontrollable impulse to scream and fling the thing away; for his sense of touch told him that the hand was dead. And yet he became sensible that it was tugging at his own, and he yielded to its persuasion, permitting himself to be led on for so long a journey that his fingers clasping the little hand grew numb with cold ere it was over. He could by no means say whither he was being conducted, but was conscious of a long, gradual descent. Many times he swept his free arm out round him, but touched nothing.

Abruptly the guiding hand was twisted away. He stopped incontinently, and possessed himself with what patience he could muster throughout another long wait tempered by strange sibilant whisperings and rustlings in the void all about him.

Without any forewarning two heavy hands gripped him, one on either shoulder, and he was forced to his knees. At the same instant, with a snapping crackle a spurt of blue flame shot down from the zenith, and where it fell with a thunderclap a dazzling glare of emerald light shot up breasthigh.

To his half-blinded eyes it seemed, for a time, to dance suspended in the air before him. A vapour swirled up from it, a thin cloud, luminous. By degrees he made out its source, a small, brazen bowl on a tripod.

A confusion of hushed voices swelled as had the sound of that mighty, rushing, impalpable wind, and died more slowly.

Conscious that his features were in strong light, he strove to exhibit an impassiveness that belied his temper; then glancing round beneath lowered eyelids he sought to determine something of the nature of his surroundings, but could see little. The hands had left his shoulders the minute his knees touched the floor; he knelt utterly alone in the middle of what seemed to be a vast hall, or cavern, of which the size was but faintly suggested. As his eyes became accustomed to the chiaroscuro he became aware of monstrous images of stone that appeared to advance from and retreat to the far walls on either hand as the green light flared and fell, and of a great silent and motionless concourse of people grouped about the massive pedestals—a crowd as contained and impassive as the gods that towered above its heads, blending into the gloom that shrouded the high roof of the place.

In front of him he could see nothing beyond the noiselessly wavering flame. But presently a hand appeared, as if by magic, above the bowl—a hand, bony, brown, and long of finger, that seemed attached to nothing—and cast something like a powder into the fire. There followed a fizz and puff of vapour, and a strong and heady gust of incense was wafted into Amber's face. Again and again the hand appeared, sprinkling powder in the brazier, until the smoke clouded the atmosphere with its fluent, eddying coils.

The gooseflesh that had pricked out on Amber's skin subsided, and his qualms went with it. "Greek fire burning in a bowl," he explained the phenomenon; "and a native with his arm wrapped to the wrist in black is feeding it. Not a bad effect, though."

It was, perhaps, as well that he had not been deceived, for there was a horror to come that required all his strength to face. He became conscious that something was moving between him and the brazier—something which he had incuriously assumed to be a piece of dirty cloth left there carelessly. But now he saw it stir, squirm, and upend, unfolding itself and lifting its head to the leaping flame: an immense cobra, sleek and white as ivory, its swelling hood as large as a man's two hands, with a binocular mark on it as yellow as topaz, and with vicious eyes glowing like twin rubies in its vile little head.

Amber's breath clicked in his throat and he shrank back, rising; but this instinctive move had been provided against and before his knees were fairly off the rocky floor he was forced down again by the hands on his shoulders. He was unable to take his eyes from the monster, and though terror such as man is heir to lay cold upon his heart, he did not again attempt to stir.

There was now no sound. Alone and undisturbed the bleached viper warmed to its dance with the pulsing flame, turning and twisting, weaving and writhing in its infernal glare....

"Hear ye, O my peoples!"

Amber jumped. The Voice had seemed to ring out from a point directly overhead.

He looked up and discovered above him, vague in the obscurity, the outlines of a gigantic bell, hanging motionless. The green glare, shining on its rim and partly illumining its empty hollow (he saw no clapper) revealed the sheen of the bronze of which it was fashioned.

Out of its immense bowl, the Voice rolled like thunder:

"Hear ye, O my peoples!"

A responsive murmur ascended from the company round the walls:

"We hear! We hear, O Medhyama!"

"Mark well this man, O Children of my Gateway! Mark well! Out of ye all have I chosen him to lead thee in the work of healing; for I thy Mother, I Medhyama, I Bharuta, I the Body from which ye are sprung, call me by whatever name ye know me—I am laid low with a great sickness.... Yea, I am stricken and laid low with a sickness."

A great and bitter wailing arose from the multitude.

"Yea, I am overcome with a faintness, and my strength is gone out from me, and my limbs are as water; I am sick with a fever and languish; in my veins runs the Evil like fire and like poison; and I burn and am stricken; I toss in my torment and murmur, and the sound of my Voice has come to thine ears. Ye have heard me and answered. The tale of my sufferings is known to ye. Say, shall I perish?"

In the brazier the flame leaped high and subsided, and with it the cobra leaped and sank low upon its coils. From the people a mighty shout of negation went up, so that the walls rang with it, and the echoes were bandied back and forth, insensibly decreasing through many minutes. When all was still the Voice began to chant again, and the flames blazed higher and brighter, while the cobra resumed its mystic dance.

Amber knelt on in a semi-stupor, staring glassily at the light and the serpent.

"I, thine old Mother, have called ye together to help in my healing. From my feet to my head I am eaten with pestilence; yea, I am devoured and possessed by the Evil. Even of old was it thus with thy Mother; long since she complained of the Plague that is Scarlet—moaned and cried out and turned in her misery.... But ye failed me. Then my peoples were weaklings and their hearts all were craven; the Scarlet Evil dismayed them; they fled from its power and left it to batten on me in my sickness."

A deep groan welled in uncounted throats and resounded through the cavern.

"Will ye fail me again, O my Children?"

"Nay, nay, O our Mother!"

"Too long have I suffered and been patient in silence. Now must I be cleansed and made whole as of old time; yea, I must be purged altogether and the Evil cast out from me. It is time.... Ye have heard, ye have answered; make ready, for the day of the cleansing approacheth. Whet thy swords for the days of the healing, for my cleansing can be but by steel. Yea, thy swords shall do away with the Evil, and the land shall run red with the blood of Bharuta, the blood of thy Mother; it shall run to the sea as a river, bearing with it the Red Evil. So and no otherwise shall I, thine old Mother, be healed and made whole again."

"Aye, aye, O our Mother!"

The flames, dying, rose once more, and the Voice continued, but with a change of temper. It was now a clarion call, stirring the blood like martial music.

"Ye shall show me your swords for a token.... Swords of the North, are ye ready?"

"We are ready, old Mother!"

With a singing shiver of steel, all around the walls, in knots and clusters, naked blades leaped up, flashing.

"Swords of the East, are ye loyal?"

"Aye, old Mother!"

And the tally of swords was doubled.

"Swords of the South, are ye thirsty?"

A third time the crashing response shattered the echoes.

"Swords of the West, do ye love me?"

With the fourth ringing shout and showing of steel, a silence fell. The walls were veritably hedged with quivering blades, all a-gleam in the ghastly glare of green. Over the sculptured faces of the great idols flickering shadows played, so that they seemed to move and grimace, as if with approbation.

Amber was watching the serpent—dazed and weary as if with a great need of sleep. Even the salvos of shouts came to him as from a great distance. To the clangour of the Bell alone he had become abnormally sensitive; every fibre of his being shuddered, responsive to its weird nuances.

It returned to its solemn and stately intoning.

"Out of ye all have I chosen and fixed upon one who shall lead ye. Through him shall my strength be made manifest, my Will be made known to my peoples. Him must ye serve and obey; to him must ye bow down and be humble. Say, are ye pleased? Will ye have him, my Children?"

Without an instant's delay a cry of ratification rang to the roof. "Yea, O our Mother! Him we will serve and obey, to him bow down and be humble."

The Voice addressed itself directly to the kneeling man. He stiffened and roused.

"Thou hast heard of the honour we confer upon thee—I Medhyama, thy Mother, and these my children, thy brothers. Ye shall lead and shall rule in Bharuta. Are ye ready?"

Half hypnotised, Amber opened his mouth, but no words came. His chin dropped to his breast.

"Thy strength must be known to my peoples; they must see thee put to the proof of thy courage, that they may know thee to be the man for their leader.... Ye are ready?"

He was unable to move a finger.

"Stretch out thine arms!"

He shuddered and tried to obey. The Voice rang imperative.

"Stretch forth thine arms for the testing!"

Somehow, mechanically, he succeeded in raising his arms and holding them rigid before him. Alarmed by the movement, the cobra turned with a hiss, waving his poisonous head. But the Virginian made no offer to withdraw his hands. His eyes were wide and staring and his face livid.

A subdued murmur came from the men clustered round the idols, in semi-darkness.

The Bell boomed forth like an organ.

"O hooded Death.... O Death, who art trained to my service! Thou before whom all men stand affrighted! Thou who canst look into their hearts and read them as a scroll that is unrolled ... Look deep into the heart of my Chosen! Judge if he be worthy or wanting, judge if he be false or true ... Judge him, O Death!"

Before Amber the great serpent was oscillating like a pendulum, its little tongue playing like forked red lightning, its loathsome red eyes holding his own. Terror gripped his heart, and his soul curdled. He would have cried out, but that his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. He could not have moved had he willed to.

"Look well, O Death, and judge him!"

The dance of the Hooded Death changed in character, grew more frenzied; the white writhing coils melted into one another in dizzying confusion; figure merged into figure like smoke.... The suspense grew intolerable.

"Hast thou judged him, O Death?"

Instantly the white cobra reared up to its utmost and remained poised over Amber, barely moving save for the almost imperceptible throbbing of the hood and the incessant darting of the forked tongue.

"If he be loyal, then spare him ..."

The hood did not move. Amber's flesh crawled with unspeakable dread.

"If he be faithless, then ... strike!"

For another moment the cobra maintained the tensity. Then slowly, cruel head waving, hood shrinking, eyes losing their deathly lustre, coil by coil it sank.

A thick murmur ran the round of the walls, swelling into an inarticulate cry, which beat upon Amber's ears like the raving of a far-off surf. From his lips a strangled sob broke, and, every muscle relaxing, he lurched forward.

Alarmed, in a trice the cobra was up again, hood distended to the bursting point, head swinging so swiftly that the eye could not follow it. In another breath would come the final thrust....

A firearm exploded behind Amber, singeing his cheek with its flame. He fell over sideways, barely escaping the head of the cobra, which, with its hood blown to tatters, writhed in convulsions, its malignant tongue straining forth as if in one last attempt to reach his hand.

A second shot followed the first and then a brisk, confused fusillade. Amber heard a man scream out in mortal agony, and the dull sound of a heavy body falling near him; but, coincident with the second report, the brazier had been overturned and its light extinguished as if sucked up into the air.



CHAPTER XIX

RUTTON'S DAUGHTER

In darkness the blacker for the sudden disappearance of the light, somebody stumbled over Amber—stumbled and swore in good English. The Virginian sat up, crying out as weakly as a child: "Labertouche!" A voice said: "Thank God!" He felt strong hands lift him to his feet. He clung to him who had helped him, swaying like a drunkard, wits a-swirl in the brain thus roughly awakened from semi-hypnosis.

"Here," said Labertouche's voice, "take my hand and follow. We're in for it now!"

He caught Amber's hand and dragged him, yielding and unquestioning, rapidly through a chaotic rush of unseen bodies.

The firing had electrified the tense-strung audience. With a pandemonium of shrieks, oaths, shouts, orders unheard and commands unheeded, a concerted rush was made from every quarter to the spot where the doomed man had been kneeling. Men running blundered into running men and cannoned off at direct angles to their original courses, without realising it. Disorder reigned rampant, and the cavern rang with a thousand echoes, while the Bell awoke and roared a raging tocsin, redoubling the din. No man could have said where he stood or whither he ran—save one, perhaps. That one was at Amber's side and had laid his course beforehand and knew that both their lives depended upon his sticking to it without deviation. To him a rush of a hundred feet in a direct line meant salvation, the least deviation from it, death. He plunged through the scurrying masses without regard for any hurt that might come either to him or to his charge.

A red glare of torches was breaking out over the heads of the mob before they gained their destination. Amber saw that they were making for a corner formed by the junction of one of the pedestals with a rocky wall. He was now recovering rapidly and able to appreciate that they stood a good chance of winning away; for the natives were all converging toward the centre of the cavern, and apparently none heeded them. Nevertheless Labertouche, releasing him, put a revolver in his hand.

"Don't hesitate to shoot if any one comes this way!" he said. "I've got to get this door open and..."

He broke off with an ejaculation of gratitude; for while he had been speaking, his fingers busily groping in the convolutions of the sculptured pedestal had encountered what he sought, and now he pulled out an iron bar two feet or so in length and as thick as a woman's wrist. Inserting this in a socket, as one familiar with the trick, he put his weight upon it; a carved sandstone slab slid back silently, disclosing a black cavernous opening.

"In with you," panted Labertouche, removing the lever. "Don't delay...."

Amber did not. He took with him a hazy impression of a vast, vaulted hall filled with a ruddy glare of torchlight, a raving rabble of gorgeously attired natives in its centre. Then the opening received him and he found himself in a black hole of an underground gallery—a place that reeked with the dank odours of the tomb.

Labertouche followed and with the aid of a small electric pocket-lamp discovered another socket for the lever. A moment later the slab moved back into place, and the Englishman dropped the metal bar. "If there were only some way of locking that opening," he gasped, "we'd be fairly safe. As it is, we'll have to look nippy. That was a near call—as near a one as ever you'll know, my boy; and we're not out yet. What are you doing?" he added, as Amber stopped to pick up the lever.

"It isn't a bad weapon," said the Virginian, "at a pinch. You'll want your gun, and that she-devil, Naraini, got mine."

"Keep the one I gave you and don't be afraid to use it. I've another and a couple of knives for good measure. That Mohammedan prince whom I persuaded to change places with me was a walking arsenal." Labertouche chuckled. "Come along," he said, and drew ahead at a dog-trot.

They sped down a passage which delved at a sharp grade through solid rock. Now and again it turned and struck away in another direction. Once they descended—or rather fell down—a short, steep flight of steps. At the bottom Amber stopped.

"Hold on!" he cried.

Labertouche pulled up impatiently. "What's the matter?"

"Sophia—!"

"Trust me, dear boy, and come along."

Persuaded, Amber gave in, blundering on after Labertouche, who loped along easily, with the confidence of one who threads known ways, the spot-light from his lamp dancing along the floor several feet before him. Otherwise they moved between walls of Stygian darkness.

It was some time later that Labertouche extinguished his lamp and threw a low word of warning over his shoulder. Synchronously Amber discerned, far ahead, a faint glow of yellow light. As they bore down upon it with unmoderated speed, he could see that it emanated from a rough-hewn doorway, opening off the passage. Before it a man stood guard with a naked sword.

"Johar!" he greeted them in the Mahar form: "O, warrior!"

"Johar!" returned Labertouche, panting heavily. He closed upon the native confidently, but was brought up short by a peremptory sweep of the sword, coupled with an equally imperative demand for an explanation of their haste. The Englishman replied with apparent difficulty, as if half-winded. "It is an order, Johar. The woman is to be brought to the Hall of the Bell."

"You have the word?" The Mahar lowered his sword. "It hath been said to me that—"

Labertouche stumbled over his feet, and caught the speaker for support. The native gurgled in a sodden fashion, dropped his sword, stared stupidly at Labertouche, and put an uncertain hand to his throat. Then he lurched heavily and collapsed upon himself.

The secret-agent stepped back, dropping the knife he had used. "Poor devil!" he said in a compassionate undertone. "That was cold-blooded murder, Mr. Amber."

"Necessary?" gasped Amber, regarding with horror the bloodstained heap of rags and flesh at his feet.

"Judge for yourself," said Labertouche coolly, stepping over the body. "Here," he added, pausing by the doorway, "you go first; she knows you."

He pushed Amber on ahead. Stooping, the Virginian entered a small, rude chamber hollowed out of the rock of Kathiapur. A crude lamp in a bracket furnished all its illumination, filling it with a reek of hot oil. Amber was vaguely aware of the figures of two women—one standing in a corner, the other seated dejectedly upon a charpoy, her head against the wall. As he lifted his head after passing under the low lintel, the woman in the corner fired at him point-blank.

The Virginian saw the jet of flame spurt from her hand and felt the bullet's impact upon the wall behind his head. He flung himself upon her instantly. There was a moment of furious struggle, while the cell echoed with the reverberations of the shot and the screaming of the woman on the charpoy. The pistol exploded again as he grappled with the would-be murderess; the bullet, passing up his sleeve, creased his left arm as with a white-hot iron, and tore out through the cloth on his shoulder. He twisted brutally the wrist that held the weapon, and the woman dropped it with a cry of pain.

"You would!" he cried, and threw her from him, putting a foot upon the pistol.

She reeled back against the wall and crouched there, trembling, her cheeks on fire, her eyes aflame with rage. "You dog!" she shrilled in Hindi—and spat at him like a maddened cat. Then he recognised her.

"Naraini!" He stepped back in his surprise, his right hand seeking instinctively the wrist of his left, which was numb with pain.

His change of position left the pistol unguarded, and the woman swooped down upon it like a bird of prey; but before she could get her fingers on its grip, Labertouche stepped between them, fended her off, and quietly possessed himself of the weapon.

"Your pardon, madam," he said gravely.

Naraini retreated, shaking with fury, and Amber employed the respite to recognise Sophia Farrell in the woman on the charpoy. She was still seated, prevented from rising by bonds about her wrists and ankles, and though unnaturally pale, her anguish of fear and despair had set its marks upon her face without one whit detracting from the appeal of her beauty. He went to her immediately, and as their eyes met, hers flamed with joy, relief and—he dared believe—a stronger emotion.

"You—you're not hurt, Mr. Amber?"

"Not at all. The bullet went out through my sleeve. And you?" He dropped on his knees, with his pocket-knife severing the ends of rope that bound her.

"I'm all right." She took his hands, helping herself to rise. "Thank you," she said, her eyes shining, a flush of colour suffusing her face with glory.

"Did you cut those ropes, Amber?" Labertouche interposed curtly.

"Yes. Why?"

The Englishman explained without turning from his sombre and morose regard of Naraini. "Too bad—we'll have to tie this woman up, somehow. She's a complication I hadn't foreseen.... Here; you'd better leave me to attend to her—you and Miss Farrell. Go on down the gallery—to the left, I'll catch up with you."

The pistol which he still held lent to his demand a sinister significance of which he was, perhaps, thoughtless. But Sophia Farrell heard, saw, and surmised.

"No!" she cried, going swiftly to the secret-agent. "No!" She put a hand upon his arm, but he shook it off.

"Did you hear me, Amber?" said Labertouche, still watching the queen.

"What do you mean to do?" insisted Sophia. "You can't—you mustn't—"

"This is no time for half-measures, Miss Farrell," Labertouche told her brusquely. "Our lives hang in the balance—Mr. Amber's, yours, mine. Please go."

"You promise not to harm her?"

"Amber!" cried the Englishman impatiently. "Will you—"

"Please, Miss Farrell!" begged Amber, trying to take the girl's hand and draw her away.

"I won't!" she declared. "I'll not move a step until he promises. You don't understand. No matter what the danger she's—"

"She's a fiend incarnate," Labertouche broke in. "Amber, get that girl—"

"She's my sister!" cried Sophia. "Now will you understand?"

"What!" The two men exclaimed as one.

"She's my sister," the girl repeated, holding up her head defiantly, her cheeks burning—"my sister by adoption. We were brought up together. She was the daughter of an old friend of my father's—an Indian prince. A few years ago she ran away—"

"Thank God!" said Amber from the bottom of his soul; and, "Ah, you would!" cried Labertouche tensely, as Naraini seized the opportunity, when his attention was momentarily diverted, to break for freedom.

Amber saw the flash of a steel blade in the woman's hand as she struck at the secret-agent, and the latter, stepping back, deflected the blow with a guarding forearm. Then, with the quickness of a snake, Naraini stooped, glided beneath his arms, and slipped from the cell.

With a smothered oath Labertouche leaped to the doorway, lifting his pistol; but he was no quicker than Sophia, who caught his arm and held him back. "No," she panted; "not even for our lives—not at that price!"

He yielded unexpectedly. "Of course you are perfectly right, Miss Farrell," said he, with a little bow. "I'm sorry that circumstances ... But come! She'll have this hornet's nest about our ears in a brace of seconds. Hark to that!"

A long, shrill shriek echoed down the gallery. Labertouche shrugged and turned to the left. "Come along," he said. "Amber, take Miss Farrel's hand and keep close to me." He led the way from the cell at a brisk pace—one, indeed, that taxed Sophia's powers of endurance to maintain. Amber aided her as much as he might, but that was little; the walls of the passageway were too close together to permit him to be by her side much of the time. For the most part he had to lead the way, himself guided by the swiftly moving patch of light cast by Labertouche's bull's-eye. But through it all he was buoyed up and exhilarated out of all reason by the consciousness of the hand that lay trustfully in his own; a hand soft and small and warm and (though he could not see it) white, all white! More, it was the hand of his wife to be; he felt this now with an unquestioning assurance. He wondered if she shared the subject of his thoughts ...

The gallery sloped at varying grades, more or less steep—mostly more—and minute by minute the air became more dank and cold. At an unseen turning, where another passage branched away, a biting wind swept out of the black nowhere, chilling them to the marrow. Deeper and still deeper, into the very bowels of the earth, it seemed, the secret-agent led them, finding his way with an unfaltering confidence that exalted Amber's admiration of him to the pitch of hero-worship.

At length the gallery dipped and ran level, and now, while still cold, the wind that blew in their faces was cleaner, burdened with less of the clammy effluvium of death and decay; and then, abruptly, the walls narrowed suddenly, so that Amber was forced to surrender possession of the girl's hand and to fall behind her. She went forward without question, following the dancing spotlight.

Amber paused to listen for sounds of pursuit, but hearing nothing save the subdued sigh of the draught between the straitened walls of rock, followed until the walls fell away and his hands, outstretched, failed to touch them, and he was aware that the stone beneath his feet had given way to gravel. He halted, calling guardedly to Labertouche.

The secret-agent's voice came from some distance. "It's all right, my boy. Miss Farrell is with me. Come along."

There was an elan in his tone that bespoke a spirit of gratulation and relief and led Amber to suspect that they were very close upon the end of their flight, near to escape from the subterranean ways of Kathiapur the dead. He proceeded at discretion in the direction of Labertouche's voice—the light being invisible—and brought up flat against a dead wall. Coincidently he heard Sophia exclaim with surprise and delight, somewhere off on his left, and, turning, he saw her head and shoulders move across a patch of starlit sky. In half a dozen strides he overtook her.

They stood on a low, pebbly ledge, just outside the black maw of the passage—an entrance hidden in a curtain-like fold in the face of the cliff that towered above them, casting an ink-black shadow. But beyond it the emblazoned firmament glowed irradiant, and at their feet the encircling waters ran, a broad ribbon of black silk purling between the cliff and the opposing shores, where a thicket of tamarisks rose, a black and ragged wall.

Labertouche strode off into the water. "Straight ahead," he announced; "don't worry—'tisn't more than knee-deep at the worst. I've horses waiting on the other side—"

"Horses!" Amber interrupted. "Great heavens, man, you're—you're omniscient!"

"No—lucky," Labertouche retorted briskly. "Where'd I've been without Ram Nath? He's taking care of the animals.... Come along. What're you waiting for? Don't you know—" He turned to see the girl hesitant, though with lifted skirts. "Oh," he said in an accent of understanding, and came back. "If you'll help me, Amber, I daresay we can get Miss Farrell across without a wetting."

He offered to clasp hands with the Virginian and so make a seat; but Amber had a happier thought.

"I think I can manage by myself, thank you—if Miss Farrell will trust me."

His eyes met the girl's, and in hers he read trust and faith unending: he was conscious of a curious fluttering in his bosom.

"Trust you!" she said, with a little, broken laugh, and gave herself freely to his arms.

Labertouche grunted and turned his back, wading out into the stream with a great splashing.

Amber straightened up, holding her very close to him, and that with ease. Had she been thrice as heavy he could have borne her with as little care as he did his own immeasurably lightened heart in that hour of fulfilment. And she lay snug and confident, her arms round his neck, the shadowed loveliness of her face very near to him. The faint and elusive fragrance of her hair was sweet and heady in the air he breathed; he could read her eyes, and their allure and surrender was like a draught of wine to him. He felt the strength of ten men invigorate him, and his soul was sober with a great happiness. But a little while and she would be in safety; already her salvation seemed assured.... The further bank neared all too quickly. He would willingly have lingered to prolong the stolen sweetness of that moment, forgetful altogether of the danger that lay behind them.

Ahead, he saw Labertouche step out upon a shelving shore and, shaking his legs with an effect irresistibly suggestive of a dog leaving the water, peer inland through the tamarisks. His low, whistled signal sounded as Amber joined him and put down the girl—reluctantly. Her whispered thanks were interrupted by an exclamation from Labertouche.

"Hang it all! he can't've mistaken the spot. I told him to wait right here, and now ... We daren't delay." He cast an apprehensive glance across the stream. "Look lively, please."

He shouldered away through the thicket, and for several moments they struggled on through the hindering undergrowth, their passage betrayed by much noisy rustling. Then, as they won through to open ground, Labertouche paused and whistled a second time, staring eagerly from right to left.

"I'm blessed!" he declared, with a vehemence that argued his desire for stronger language. "This is bad—bad—bad! He never failed me before! I—"

A mocking chuckle seemed to break from the ground at their feet, and in the flicker of an eyelash a shadow lifted up out of the scrub-encumbered level. Sophia cried aloud with alarm; Labertouche swore outright, heedless; and Amber put himself before her, drawing his revolver, heartsick with the conviction that they were trapped, that their labour had gone all for naught, that all futilely had they schemed and dared....

But while his finger was yet seeking the trigger the first shadow was joined by a score of fellows—shades that materialised with like swiftness and silence from the surface of the earth—and before he could level the weapon Labertouche seized his wrist. For an instant he resisted, raging with disappointment; but the Englishman was cool, strong, determined; inevitably in the outcome the weapon was pointed to the sky.

"Steady, you ass!" breathed the secret-agent in his ear. "Can't you see—"

And Amber gave over, in amazement unbounded, seeing the starlight glinting down a dozen levelled rifle-barrels, glowing pale on the spiked, rounded crowns of pith helmets, and striking soft fire from burnished accoutrements; while a voice, thick with a brogue that was never bred out of hearing of Bow Bells, was hectoring them to surrender.

"'Ands up, ye bloomin' black beggars! 'Ands up, I s'y!"

"Tommies!" cried Amber; and incontinently he dropped the revolver as though it had turned hot in his hand.

"Steady, my man!" Labertouche interrupted what threatened to develop into a string of intolerable abuse. "Hold your tongue! Can't you see we've a lady with us?"

"Ul-lo!" The soldier lowered his rifle and stepped closer, his voice vibrating with astonishment. "Blimme, 'ere's a go!... beggar of a nigger givin' me wot-for 's if 'e was a gent! 'Oo in 'ell d'ye think y'are, yer 'ighness?'

"That'll do. Put down those guns, and call your commanding officer. I'll explain to him. Where is he? What troops are you? When did you arrive?"

Such queries and commands discharged quickly in crisp English from the mouth of one who wore the color and costume of a Mohammedan of high degree, temporarily dazed his captors. In a body they pressed round the three, peering curiously into their faces—the two white and the one dark; and their murmurings rose and swelled discordant. "Blimme if 'e ain't a gent!" "T'other un is!" "An this un a leddy!"...But to his interrogations Labertouche got no direct reply. While as for Amber, he could have laughed aloud from a heart that brimmed with thanksgiving for the honest sound of their rich rough voices; besides which, Sophia stood very close to him, and her fingers were tight about his....

"What's this?" A sharp voice cut the comments of the Tommies, and they were smitten silent by it. An officer, with jingling spurs and sword in hand, elbowed through the heart of the press. "Stop that row instantly. What's this? Who are you, sir?"

"I sent the message from Kathiapur, and I'm uncommonly happy to meet you, whoever you may be, sir. Tell your men to fall back, please, and I'll introduce myself properly."

Two words secured the secret-agent the privacy he desired; the officer offered him an ungloved hand as the troopers withdrew out of hearing.

"Happy, indeed!" he said cheerfully. "I'm Rowan, Captain, Fourteenth Pioneers."

"I'm Labertouche, I.S.S. This is Miss Farrell, daughter of Colonel Farrell, and this Mr. Amber, of New York. We're just escaped from that rock over there and—if you'll pardon—I'd suggest you set a strong guard over the ford behind those tamarisks."

"One moment, please." The officer strode off to issue instructions in accordance with Labertouche's advice. "We got here only a quarter of an hour ago," he apologised, swinging back as the men deployed into the thicket, "and haven't had time to nose out the lay of the land thoroughly."

"I infer you got my man with the horses—native calling himself Ram Nath?"

"He's with the Colonel-commanding now, Mr. Labertouche. As I was saying, we've hardly had time to do more than throw a line of pickets round the rock. It's been quick work for us—marching orders at midnight yesterday, down by train to Sar, and forced march across the desert ever since daybreak."

"I'd hardly hoped the thing could be done so quickly. If I had been able to get the information an instant earlier, my mind would've been easier, captain, but—Hello!"

From the ford an abrupt clamour of voices interrupted. The officer hooked up his scabbard. "Sounds as if my men had gathered in somebody else," he said hastily. "If you'll excuse me, I'll have a look." He trotted off into the shade of the tamarisks.

As he disappeared the disturbance abated somewhat. "False alarm," Amber guessed.

"I fancy not," said Labertouche. "If I'm not mistaken our friend Naraini left for the special purpose of raising the hue and cry. This should be the vanguard of the pursuit."

Amber looked upward. Overhead the soulless city slumbered in a stillness apparently unbroken, yet he who saw its profile rugged against the stars, could fancy what consternation was then, or presently would be, running riot through its haunted ways.

"How many of 'em are there, do you reckon?" he asked.

"Three or four hundred," replied the secret-agent absently; "the pick and flower of Indian unrest. My word, but this will kick up a row! Think of it, man! three hundred and fifty-odd lords and princes bagged all at once in the act of plotting the Second Mutiny! What a change it will work on the political face of the land! ... And the best of it is, they simply can't get away."

"Is this the only exit, then—the way we escaped?"

"Not by three—all on the other side of the rocky where they rode up and left their horses. And that's where the most of 'em will come out, by twos and threes, like the animals out of the Ark, you know. What a catch!"

"And we've you to thank!"

"I? Oh, dear boy, thank the Tommies!"

"But what would we have done, or the Tommies either, without you?"

"What indeed!" Sophia echoed warmly. "I've had no chance, as yet—"

"Not another word, my dear Miss Farrell!" Labertouche protested, acutely uncomfortable. "To've been able to help you out of the scrape is enough."

"But I must—" she began, and stopped with a little cry as a shot rang out from the heart of the thicket, to be followed by another and then by a shriek of agony and a great confusion of sounds—shouts and oaths and noisy crashings in the tamarisks as of many men blundering hither and yon.

Silenced, with a slight shudder of apprehension, the girl drew to Amber's side, as if instinctively. He took her hand and drew it through his arm.

"Run to earth at last!" cried Labertouche. "I wonder—"

"If my hope's good for anything," Amber laughed, less because he felt like laughing than for the purpose of reassuring Sophia, "this will be the gentleman who trained the Hooded Death to dance, or else he who—"

He was thinking with vindictive relish of what fate he would mete out to the manipulator of the Bell, were it left to him to pass sentence. But he broke off as a body of soldiery burst from the tamarisks, and, headed by young Rowan, hurried toward the three, bringing with them a silent and unresisting prisoner.

"I say," the officer called excitedly in advance, "here's something uncommon' rum. It's a woman, you know."

"Aha!" said Labertouche, and "Ah!" said Amber, "with a click of his teeth, while the woman on his arm clung to him the closer.

"I thought we'd better bring her to you, for she said ..." Rowan paused, embarrassed, and took a fresh start. "My men got to the ford just as she was coming ashore with three other men, and the whole pack took to cover on this side. Two of the men are still missing, but we routed out the other just now with this—ah—lady. He showed fight and got bayonetted. But the woman—excuse me, Mr. Amber—she protests—by George, it's too ridiculous!—"

"I have claimed naught that is not true!" an unforgettably sweet voice interrupted from the centre of the group. It opened out, disclosing Naraini between two guards, in that moment of passion and fear perhaps more incomparably beautiful than any woman they had ever looked upon, save her who held to Amber's arm, a-quiver with womanly sympathy and compassion.

During her flight and her resistance Naraini's veil had been rent away; in the clear starlight her countenance, framed in hair of lustrous jet and working with uncontrollable rage and despair, shone like that of some strange tempestuous Aphrodite fashioned of palest gold. Beneath its folds of tightly drawn, bespangled gauze her bosom swelled and fell convulsively, and on her perfect arms, more softly beautiful than any Phidias ever dreamed to chisel, the golden bracelets and bangles clashed and tinkled as she writhed and fought to free herself of the defiling hands. Half-mad with disappointment, she raged amid the scattered shreds of her dream of power like a woman hopelessly deranged.

"Aye, I have claimed!" she stormed. "I have claimed justice and the rights of wifehood, the protection of him whose wife I am; or, if he deny me, I claim that he must suffer with me—he who hath played the traitor's part to-night, betraying his Cause and his wife alike to their downfall!... I claim," she insisted, lifting, in spite of the soldiers' restraining hands, one small quivering arm to single Amber out and point him to scorn, "that this is the man who, wedded to me by solemn right and the custom of the land, hath deserted and abandoned me, hath denied me even as he denies his birthright, when it doth please him, and forswears the faith of his fathers! I claim to be Naraini, Queen, wife to Har Dyal Rutton, rightful ruler of Khandawar—coward, traitor, renegade—who stands there!"

"For the love of Heaven, Rowan, shut her up!" cried Labertouche. "It's all a pack of lies; the woman's raving. Rutton's dead, in the first place; in the second, he's her father. She can't be his wife very well, whether he's alive or dead. It's simply a dodge of hers to gain time. Shut her up and take her away—she's as dangerous as a wildcat!"

"Nay, I will not be gagged nor taken hence till I have said my say!" With a sudden furious wrench Naraini wrested her arms from the grasp of the guards and sprang away, eluding with lithe and snake-like movements their attempts to recapture her. "Not," she cried, "until I have wrought my will upon the two of them. Thou hast stood in my light too long, O my sister!"

A hand blazing with jewels tore at the covering of her bosom and suddenly came away clutching a dagger, thin, long, and keen; and snarling she sprang toward the girl, to whose influence, however unwitting, she rightly ascribed the downfall of her scheme of empire. Rowan and Labertouche leaped forward and fell short, so lightning swift she moved; only Amber stood between her and her vengeance. Choking with horror, he put the girl behind him with a resistless hand, and took Naraini to his arms.

"Ah, hast thou changed thy mind, Beloved?" The woman caught him fiercely to her with an arm about his waist, and her voice rose shrill with mocking triumph, "Are my lips become so sweet to thee again? Then see how I kiss, thou fool!"

She thrust with wicked cunning, twice and again, before the men tore her away and disarmed her. For an instant wrestling like a demon with them, still animated by her murderous frenzy, still wishful to fill her cup of vengeance to the brim with the blood of the girl, she of a sudden ceased to resist and fell passive in their hands, a dying flicker of satisfaction in the eyes that watched the culmination of her crime....

To Amber it was as if his body had been penetrated thrice by a needle of fire. The anguish of it was exquisite, stupefying. He was aware of a darkening, reeling world, wherein men's faces swam like moons, pallid, staring, and of a mighty and invincible lethargy that pounced upon him, body, brain and soul, like a black panther springing from the ambush of the night. Yet there were still words that must be spoken, lest they live in his subconsciousness to torment him through all the long, black night that was to receive him. He tried to steady himself, and lifted an arm that vibrated like the sprung limb of a sapling, signing to the secret-agent.

"Labertouche," he said thickly ... "Sophia ... out of India ... at once ... life ..."

The girl's arms received him as he fell.



CHAPTER XX

A LATER DAY

A man awoke from a long dream of night and fear, of passion, pain, and death, and opened eyes whose vision seemed curiously clear, to realise a new world, very unlike that in which the incoherent action of his dream had moved—a world of light and lively air, as sweet and wholesome as glistening white paint, sunshine, and an abundance of pure, cool air could render it.

Because he had known these things in a former existence, he understood that he lay in the lower berth of a first-cabin stateroom, aboard an ocean steamship; a spacious, bright box of a room, through whose open ports swayed brilliant shafts of temperate sunlight, together with great gusts of the salt sweet breath of the open sea. Through them, too, he could see patches of unclouded blue, athwart which now and again gulls would sweep on flashing, motionless pinions.

The man lay still and at peace, watching, wondering idly, soothed by the sense of being swung through space, only vaguely conscious of the plunging pulsations of the ship's engines, hammering away indomitably far in the hold beneath him. His thoughts busied themselves lightly with a number of important questions, to whose answers the man realised that he was singularly indifferent. Who was he? What had happened to bring him back to life (for he was sure that he had died, a long time ago)? How had he come to that stateroom? What could the name of the vessel be? Where ... Deep thoughts were these and long; the man drowsed over them, but presently was aroused by the sensation of being no longer alone, of being watched.

His eyeballs seemed to move reluctantly in their sockets, and his head felt very light and empty, although so heavy that he could not lift it from the pillow. But he managed to shift his gaze from the window until it rested upon a man's face—a gaunt, impassive brown face illuminated by steady and thoughtful eyes, filled with that mystic, unshakable spirit of fatalism that is the real Genius of the eastern peoples. The head itself stood out with almost startling distinctness against the background of pure white. It was swathed with an immaculate white turban. The thin, stringy brown neck ran into a loose surtout of snowy white.

The sick man felt that he recognised this countenance—had known it, rather, in some vague, half-remembered life before his latest death. The name...? He felt his lips move and that they were thin and glazed. Moistening them with his tongue he made another attempt to articulate. A thin whisper passed them in two breaths: "Ram ... Nath ..."

Hearing this, the dark man started out of his abstraction, cast a swift, pitiful glance at the sick man's face, and came to hold a tumbler to his lips. The liquid, colourless, acrid, and pungent, slipped into his mouth, and he had to swallow whether he would or no. When the final drop disappeared, Ram Nath put down the glass, smiled, laid a finger on his lips, and went on tiptoe from the stateroom.

After awhile the man without an identity fell asleep, calmly, restfully, in absolute peace. When again he awakened it was with the knowledge that he was David Amber, and that a woman sat beside him.

Her face was turned from him, and her brown eyes, clouded with dreams, were staring steadfastly out through the open port; the flowing banners of sunshine now and again touched her hair with quick fire—her wonderfully spun hair, itself scarcely less radiant than the light that illumined it. Against the blue-white background her gracious profile showed womanly and sweet. There was rich colour in cheeks fresh from the caress of the sea wind. She smiled in her musing, scarlet lips apart.

"Sophia..."

His voice sounded in his own hearing very thin and brittle. The girl turned her gaze upon him swiftly, the soft smile deepening, the dream-light in her eyes burning brighter and more steady. She bent forward, placing over his wasted hand a hand firm and warm, strong yet gentle, its whiteness enhanced by the suggested tracery of blue veins beneath the silken skin, and by the rosy tips of her slender, subtle fingers.

"David!" she said.

He sighed and remembered. His brows knitted, then smoothed themselves out; for with memory came the realisation that, since he was there and she by his side, God was surely in his Heaven, all well with the world!

"How long...Sophia?"

"Five days, David."

"Where...?"

"At sea, David, on a Messageries boat for Marseilles. Dear ..."

He closed his eyes in beatific content: "David ... Dear ...!"

"Can you listen?"

"Yes ... sweetheart."

Her voice faltered; she flushed adorably. "You mustn't talk. But I'll tell you.... They refused to let us go back to Kuttarpur; an escort took us across the desert to Nok, you in a litter, I on horseback. There we took train to Haidarabad and Karachi. Ram Nath came with us, as bearer, it being necessary that he too should leave India. My father and your man Doggott joined us at Karachi, where this steamer touched the second day."

"You understand, now—?"

"Everything, dearest."

"Labertouche—?"

"He told me nothing. I haven't seen him since that morning, when, just after you were wounded, we started for Nok. He posted off to Kuttarpur to find my father.... No; it was you who told me—everything—in your delirium."

"And ... you forgive—?"

"Forgive!"

He smiled faintly. "That photograph?"

"I had it ready to return to you that morning, David."

"Knowing what it meant to me?"

"Knowing what it meant to me—what it meant to both of us, David."

"So you weren't offended, that night?"

"I loved you even then, David. I think I must have loved you from that first day at Nokomis. Do you remember...?"

His eyes widened, perplexed, staring into her grave, dear eyes. "Then why did you pretend—?"

With the low, caressing laugh of a happy child, the girl knelt by the side of his berth, and laid her cheek against his own. "Oh, David, my David! When do you expect to understand the heart of a woman, dear heart of mine?"



CHAPTER XXI

THE FINAL INCARNATION

About five o'clock of an evening in April the Cunarder Caronia, four hours out from Queenstown and buckling down to a night's hard work against the northwesterly gale, shipped a sea. It was not much of a sea—merely a playful slap of a wave that broke against the staunch black side and glanced upward in a shower of spray, spattering liberally a solitary passenger who had been showing enough interest in the weather to remain on deck until that particular moment. Apparently undisconcerted by the misadventure, he shook himself and laughed a sober, contented laugh, found a handkerchief and mopped his face with it, then, with a final approving survey of the lowering and belligerent canopy of wind-cloud that overhung the tortured ocean, permitted himself to be blown aft to the door of the first-cabin smoking-room. Opening this by main strength, he entered. The gale saved him the bother of closing it.

Removing his rain-coat and cap and depositing them on a convenient chair, he glanced round the room and discovered that he shared it with a single passenger, who was placidly exhausting the virtues of an excellent cigarette. Upon this gentleman the newcomer bent a regard steadfast and questioning, but after returning it casually the smoker paid him no further attention. Dissatisfied, the other moved toward him, and the deck slanted suddenly and obligingly the better to accelerate his progress, so that he brought up with a lurch in the seat next the smoker. The latter raised the eyebrows of surprise and hoped that the gentleman had not hurt himself.

"I didn't, thank you, Mr. David Amber."

Mr. David Amber looked the gentleman over with heightened interest. He saw a man of medium height, with a sturdy figure that bore without apparent fatigue the years that go with slightly greyish hair. He was quietly dressed and had intelligent eyes, but was altogether unimpressive of manner, save for a certain vague air of reserve that assorted quaintly with his present attitude.

"You've the advantage of me, sir," Amber summed up the result of his scrutiny.

"It's not the first time," asserted the other, with an argumentative shake of his head. "No-o?" Light leaped in Amber's eyes. "Labertouche!"

"Surprised you, eh?" The Englishman grinned with pleasure, pumping Amber's arm cordially. "I don't mind owning that I meant to."

"Well, considering that this is positively your first appearance as yourself on the stage of my life, you don't deserve any credit for being able to deceive me. When one gets accustomed to remembering you only as a native—generally as a babu in dirty pink satin—...Do you know, I made all sorts of enquiries after you, but they told me, in response to my wires to Calcutta, that you'd dropped out of the world entirely. I had begun to fear that those damned natives must have got you, after all, and that I'd never see you again."

"I'd almost given up hope of ever seeing myself again," said Labertouche drily.

"But why didn't you—?"

"Business, dear boy, business.... I was needed for several days in the neighbourhood of Kathiapur."

"It seems as though I'd waited several years for news of Kathiapur. The papers—"

"There are a good many things that happen in India that fail to get into the newspapers, Amber. It wasn't thought necessary to advise the world, including Russia, that half the native potentates in Hindustan had been caught in the act of letting the Second Mutiny loose upon India." A network of fine wrinkles appeared about his eyes as he smiled enjoyment of what he seemed to consider a memorable joke.

"Go on," pleaded Amber.

"Kathiapur was a sort of mousetrap; the brutes came out by twos and three, just as I said they would, for the better part of three days. It was either surrender or starve with them, and after five-sixths of them had elected not to starve we turned a couple of companies of Tommies into the place, and I don't believe they left unturned a stone big enough to hide a rabbit. One by one they routed 'em out and booted 'em down to us. Meanwhile we had rushed enough troops to Kuttarpur to keep their tails quiet."

"And Salig Singh—and Naraini?"

"Salig Singh, it turned out, was the chap that got bayoneted in the tamarisks. Naraini managed somehow to steal away the next night, under the noses of any number of sentries; beauty such as hers would bribe her way out of hell, I think. What became of her I don't know, but I can prophesy that she won't live long. She was rather too advanced in her views, for India—some centuries ahead of her race. She and Salig Singh had it all planned, you know; his was the master-mind, hers the motive-power. They were to crown you, instead of Salig's son, the next day—in the name of Har Dyal Rutton; and then you were to die suddenly by virtue of hemp poison or some other contagious disease, and Salig was to step into your shoes as Emperor of Hindustan, with Naraini as his Empress.... She should have stayed home and been a suffragette."

"Better for her," said Amber. "Of course I've found out about her, from Farrell. It seems that she was brought up in England, with Sophia, and always given to believe she was his own daughter, but she was a wild thing and hard to handle. One day she found out about her parentage—how, it's not known, but Farrell suspects that the men who were hounding Rutton got into communication with her. At all events, she brooded over the thing, and when, five years or so ago, Mrs. Farrell died and the Colonel sent for Sophia to join him in India, Naraini—well, she rebelled. He refused to let her leave England, and she finally took the bit in her teeth and ran away—vanished and was never heard of again until Sophia recognised her in Kathiapur."

"I myself can fill in the gap," Labertouche volunteered. "She joined some of Salig's underlings in Paris and went thence direct to Khandawar, assuming the name of one of the old queens who had elected opportunely to die.... Queer case—singular instance of reversion to type."

"A mighty distressing one to the old colonel; you know Rutton kept religiously to his promise not to see the child after he'd given her into Farrell's care. Farrell lost all track of him and was unable to communicate with him, of course, when Naraini chose to strike out for herself.... One thing has always puzzled me; the girl called me by her father's name, pretending to recognise me as her husband; you can't reconcile such conduct."

"You can, easily enough—beg pardon, my dear fellow. Neither she nor Salig Singh was for an instant deceived. But Salig had to deliver up a Har Dyal Rutton to the Council, so Naraini was set to seduce you. Their plans only required that you should be madly infatuated with her for a couple of days; after that ..." Labertouche turned down his thumb significantly. "I fancy there must have been a family secret or tradition, handed down from father to son in the Rutton line, that some day one of the family would be called upon to raise the standard of the Second Mutiny. That will explain why Har Dyal Rutton, a gentleman of parts and cultivation, dared not live in India, and why—because he was sworn to keep the secret—he laid stress on the condition that you were not to mention his name."

"Still, he gave me permission to talk to Dhola Baksh."

"True; but it seems that Dhola Baksh had been his confidential body-servant in Kuttarpur, during his too-brief reign. Rutton thought he would be able to help you, and knew that he would be loyal to his master's memory."

"Finally, what about that photograph?"

"You've Salig Singh to thank for its return, I fancy. I had nothing to do with it. But they were bent on luring you to Naraini's bower, and they figured that after receiving it you'd go anywhere to meet the man who returned it. By the way, where's Ram Nath?"

"He's staying in England as body-servant to Colonel Farrell."

"He's well off, so; his sphere of usefulness in India was at an end. So, in fact, was mine. That's why I'm here—on indefinite leave of absence. One or two things grew out of the affair of the Gateway to make me a person of interest to the natives, and when that happens in India it's just as well for the interesting person to pack up and get thence with all possible expedition. It's too bad; I was really doing some good work there. Well...! When the East gets into a fellow's blood, he's a hopeless, incurable case; I shall go back, I presume, some day. If the big trouble comes in my lifetime—and I think it will; come it will unquestionably, soon or late—I shan't be able to keep away, you know." He glanced at his watch and rose. "Time to dress for dinner," said he; and as they were moving to the door, he added: "What ever became of that emerald ring, Amber?"

"The Eye?" Amber laughed. "Well—it was silly enough; but women are superstitious, you know—Sophia dropped it overboard one day as we were coming through the Mediterranean. She said she was afraid of it ... and I don't know but I sympathise with her."

"I'm certain I do. And yet, in your case, it was the means of introducing you, wasn't it?... But there! It's been on the tip of my tongue a dozen times to ask, but other things got in the way.... How is Mrs. Amber?"

"You shall see for yourself," said Amber, "when we meet for dinner."

THE END