Chapter VII: Part 7

The priest sat for several minutes recovering breath and equipoise. Then, when the pain had left his thighs and he felt comfortable, he began with a bomb.

"Mukhum Dass the money-lender has been to me to give thanks, and to make a meager offering for the recovery of his lost title-deed! He has it back!"

Gungadhura swore so savagely that Patali screamed.

"How did he find it? Where?"

Mukhum Dass had told the exact truth, as it happened, but the priest had drawn his own conclusions from the fact that it was Samson's babu who returned the document. He was less than ever sure of Gungadhura's prospects, suspecting, especially since his own night-interview with the commissioner, that some new dark plot was being hatched on the English side of the river. Having no least objection to see Gungadhura in the toils, he did not propose to tell him more than would frighten and worry him.

"He said that a hand gave him the paper in the dark. It was the work of Jinendra doubtless."

"Pah! Thy god functions without thee, then! That is a wondrous bellyful of brains of thine! Do you know that the princess has fled the palace?"

Jinendra's priest feigned surprise.

"Is it not as clear as the stupidity on thy fat face that the ten-times casteless hussy is behind this? Bag of wind and widows' tenths! Now I must buy the house on the hill from Mukhum Dass and pay the brute his price for it!"

"Borrowing the money from him first?" the priest suggested with a fat smirk. None guessed better than he how low debauch had brought the maharajah's private treasury.

"Go and pray!" growled Gungadhura. "Are thy temple offices of no more use than to bring thee here twitting me with poverty? Go and lay that belly on the flags, and beat thy stupid brains out on the altar step! Jinendra will be glad to see thy dark soul on its way to Yum (the judge of the dead) and maybe will reward me afterward! Go! Get out here! Leave me alone to think!"

The priest went through the form of blessing him, taking more than the usual time about the ceremony for sake of the annoyance that it gave. Gungadhura was too superstitious to dare interrupt him.

"Better tell that Mukhum Dass to sell me the house cheap," said the maharajah as a sort of afterthought. Patali had been whispering to him. "Tell him the gods would take it as an act of merit."

"Cheap?" said the priest over his shoulder as he reached the door. "I proposed it to him." (That was not exactly true. He had proposed that Mukhum Dass should give the title to the temple as an act of grace.) "He answered that what the gods have returned to him must be doubly precious and certainly entrusted to his keeping; therefore he would count it a deadly sin to part with the title now on any terms!"

"Go!" growled Gungadhura. "Get out of here!"

After the priest had gone he talked matters over with Patali, while she stroked his aching head. Whoever knows the mind of the Indian dancing girl could reason out the calculus of treason. They are capable of treachery and loyalty to several sides at once; of sale of their affections to the highest bidder, and of death beside the buyer in his last extremity, having sold his life to a rival whom they loathe. They are the very priestesses of subterfuge--idolators of intrigue--past--mistresses of sedition and seduction. Yet even Patali did not know the real reason why Gungadhura lusted for possession of that small house on the hill. She believed it was for a house of pleasure for herself.

"Persuade the American gold-digger to transfer the lease of it," she suggested. "He is thy servant. He dare not refuse."

But Gungadhura had already enough experience of Richard Blaine to suspect the American of limitless powers of refusal. He was superstitious enough to believe in the alleged vision of Jinendra's priest, that the clue to the treasure of Sialpore would be found in the cellar of that house, where Jengal Singh had placed it; impious enough to double-cross the priest, and to use any means whatever, foul preferred, to get possession of the clue. But he was sensible enough to know that Dick Blaine could not be put out of his house by less than legal process. Patali, watching the expression of his eyes, mercurially changed her tactics.

"Today the court is closed," she said. "Tomorrow Mukhum Dass will go to file his paper and defeat the suit of Dhulap Singh. He will ride by way of the ghat between the temple of Siva and the place where the dead Afghan kept his camels. He must ride that way, for his home is on the edge of town."

But Gungadhura shook his head. He hardly dared seize Mukhum Dass or have him robbed, because the money-lender was registered as a British subject, which gave him full right to be extortionate in any state he pleased, with protection in case of interference. He could rob Dick Blaine with better prospect of impunity. Suddenly he decided to throw caution to the winds. Patali ceased from stroking his head, for she recognized in his eyes the blaze of determination, and it put all her instincts on the defensive.

"Pen, ink and paper!" he ordered.

Patali brought them, and he addressed the envelope first, practising the spelling and the none too easily accomplished English.

"Why to him?" she asked, watching beside his shoulder. "If you send him a letter he will think himself important. Word of mouth--"

"Silence, fool! He would not come without a letter."

"Better to meet him, then, as if by accident and--"

"There is no time! That cursed daughter of my uncle is up to mischief. She has fled. Would that Yum had her! She went to Samson days ago. The English harass me. She has made a bargain with the English to get the treasure first and ruin me. I need what I need swiftly!"

"Then the house is not for me?"

"No!"

He wrote the letter, scratching it laboriously in a narrow Italian hand; then sealed and sent it by a messenger. But Patali, sure in her own mind that her second thoughts had been best and determined to have the house for her own, went out to set spies to keep a very careful eye on Mukhum Dass and to report the money-lender's movements to her hour by hour.

In less than an hour Dick Blaine arrived by dog-cart in answer to the note, and Patali did her best to listen through a keyhole to the interview. But she was caught in the act by Gungadhura's much neglected queen, and sent to another part of the palace with a string of unedifying titles ringing in her ears.

There was not a great deal to hear. Dick Blaine was perfectly satisfied to let the maharajah search his cellar. He was almost suspiciously complaisant, making no objection whatever to surrendering the key and explaining at considerable length just how it would be easiest to draw the nails. He would be away from home all day, but Chamu the butler would undoubtedly admit the maharajah and his men. For the rest, he hoped they would find what they were looking for, whatever that might be; and he sincerely hoped that the maharajah had not hurt his head seriously.

Asked why he had nailed the cellar door down, he replied that he objected to unauthorized people nosing about in there.

"Who has been in the cellar?" asked Gungadhura.

"Only Tom Tripe."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite. Until that very evening I always kept the cellar padlocked. It's a Yale lock. There's nobody in this man's town could pick it."

"Well--thank you for the permission."

"Don't mention it. I hope your head don't hurt you much. Good morning."

Dick little suspected, as he drove the dog-cart across the bridge toward the club, chuckling over the quick success of Yasmini's ruse, that he himself had set the stage for tragedy.

Chapter Fifteen

He who sets a tiger-trap (Hush! and watch! and wait!) Can't afford a little nap Hidden where the twigs enwrap Lest--it has occurred--mayhap A jackal take the bait. So stay awake, my sportsman bold, And peel your anxious eye, There's more than tigers, so I'm told, To test your cunning by!

"Me for the princess!"

It is not always an entirely simple matter in India to dismiss domestic servants. To begin with it was Sunday; the ordinary means of cashing checks were therefore unavailable, and Dick Blaine had overlooked the fact that he had no money of small denominations in the house. It was hardly reasonable to expect Chamu and the cook to leave without their wages.

Then again, Sita Ram had not yet sent new servants to replace the potential poisoners; and Chamu had put up a piteous bleating, using every argument, from his being an orphan and the father of a son, down to the less appealing one that Gungadhura would be angry. In vain Dick reassured him that he and cook and maharajah might all go to hell together with his, Dick Blaine's, express permission. In vain he advised him to put the son to work, and be supported for a while in idleness. Chamu lamented noisily. Finally Dick compromised by letting both servants remain for one more day, reflecting that they could not very well tamper with boiled eggs; lunch and dinner he would get at the English club across the river; for breakfast on Monday he would content himself again with boiled eggs, and biscuits out of an imported tin, after which he would cash a check and send both the rascals packing.

So the toast that Chamu brought him he broke up and threw into the garden, where the crows devoured it without apparent ill-effect; he went without tea, and spent an hour or so after breakfast with a good cigar and a copy of a month-old Nevada newspaper. That religious rite performed, he shaved twice over, it being Sunday, and strolled out to look at the horses and potter about the garden that was beginning to shrivel up already at the commencement of the hot weather.

"If I knew who would be maharajah of this state from one week to the next," he told himself, "I'd get a contract from him to pipe water all over the place from the hills behind."

He was sitting in the shade, chewing an unlit cigar, day-dreaming about water-pressure and dams and gallons-per-hour, when Gungadhura's note came and he ordered the dog-cart at once, rather glad of something to keep him occupied. As he drove away he did not see Mukhum Dass lurking near the small gate, as it was not intended that he should. Mukhum Dass, for his part, did not see Pinga, the one-eyed beggar with his vertical smile, who watched him from behind a rock, for that was not intended either. Pinga himself was noticed closely by another man.

The minute Dick was out of sight Mukhum Dass entered the small gate in the wall, and called out for Chamu brazenly. Chamu received him at the bottom of the house-steps, but Mukhum Dass walked up them uninvited.

"The cellar," he said. "I have come to see the cellar. There is a complaint regarding the foundations. I must see."

"But, sahib, the door is locked."

"Unlock it."

"I have no key."

"Then break the lock!"

"The cellar door is nailed down!"

"Draw the nails!"

"I dare not! I don't know how! By what right should I do this thing?"

"It is my house. I order it!"

"But, sahib, only yesterday Blaine sahib dismissed me in great anger because I permitted another one as much as to look into the cellar!"

If the tale Yasmini told him on the morning of her first visit to Tess had not been enough to determine Mukhum Dass, now, with the lost title-deed recovered, the conviction that Gungadhura wanted the place for secret reasons, and Chamu's objections to confirm the whole wild story, he became as set on his course and determined to wring the last anna out of the mystery as only a money-lender can be.

"With what money did you repay to me the loan that your son obtained by false pretenses?" he demanded.

"I? What? I repaid the loan. I have the receipt. That is enough."

"On the receipt stands written the number of the bank-note. I have kept the bank-note. It was stolen from the Princess Yasmini. Do you wish to go to jail? Then open that cellar door!"

"Sahib, I never stole the note!" wept Chamu. "It was thrust into my cummerbund from behind!"

But Mukhum Dass set his face like a flint, and the wretched Chamu knew nothing about the law against compounding felonies. Wishing he had had curiosity enough himself to search the cellar thoroughly before the door was nailed down, he finally yielded to the money-lender's threats and between them, with much sweating and grunting, they pushed and pulled the safe from off the trap. Then came the much more difficult task of drawing nails without an instrument designed for it. Dick Blaine kept all his tools locked up.

"There is an outside door to the cellar, behind the house," said Chamu.

"But that is of iron, idiot! and bolts on the inside with a great bar resting in the stonework. Are there no tools in the garden?"

Chamu did not know, and the money-lender went himself to see. There Pinga with the vertical smile saw him choose a small crow-bar and return into the house with it. Pinga passed the word along to another man, who told it to a third, who ran with it hot-foot to Gungadhura's palace.

Once inside the house again Mukhum Dass lost no time, arguing to himself most likely that with the secret of the treasure of Sialpore in his possession it would not much matter what damage he had done. He would be able to settle for it. He broke the hasp of the door, and levered up the trap, splintering it badly and breaking both hinges in the process, while Chamu watched him, growing green with fear.

Then he ordered a lamp and went alone into the cellar, while Chamu, deciding that a desperate situation called for desperate remedies, went up-stairs on business of his own. It took Mukhum Dass about two minutes to discover the loose stone--less than two more to raise it--and about ten seconds to see and pounce on the silver tube. He was too bent on business to notice the man with the vertical smile peering down at him through the trap. Pinga escaped from the house after seeing the money-lender hide the tube inside his clothes, and less than a minute later a lean man ran like the wind to Gungadhura's palace to confirm the first's report.

With a wry face at the splintered trap-door, and a shrug of his shoulders of the kind he used when clients begged in tears for extra time in which to pay, Mukhum Dass looked about for Chamu with a sort of half-notion of giving him a small bribe. But Chamu was not to be seen. So he left the house by the way he had come, mounted his mule where he had left it in a hollow down the road, and rode off smiling.

Ten minutes later Chamu and the cook both left by the same exit. Chamu had with him, besides his own bundle of belongings, a revolver belonging to Dick Blaine, two bracelets belonging to Tess, a fountain-pen that he had long had his heart on, plenty of note-paper on which to have a writer forge new references, a half-dozen of Dick's silk handkerchiefs and a turquoise tie-pin. The revolver alone, in that country in those days, would sell for enough to take him to Bombay, where new jobs with newly arrived sahibs are plentiful. The cook, not having enjoyed the run of the house, had only a few knives and a pound of cocoa. They quarreled all the way down-hill as to why Chamu should and should not defray the cook's traveling expenses.

A little later, in the ghat between Siva's temple and the building, where the dead Afghan used to keep his camels, Mukhum Dass, smiling as he rode, was struck down by a knife-blow from behind and pitched off his mule head-foremost. The mule ran away. The money-lender's body was left lying in a pool of blood, with the clothing torn from it; and it was considered by those who found the body several hours afterward and drove away the pariah dogs and kites, that the fact of his money having been taken deprived the murder of any unusual interest.

Late that evening Dick Blaine, returning from a desultory dinner at the club across the river, very nearly fell into the trap-door, for the hamal had run away too, thinking he would surely be accused of all the mischief, and no lamps were lit.

"Well!" he remarked, striking a match to look about him, "dad-blame me if that isn't a regular small town yegg's trick! You'd think after I gave Gungadhura the key and all, he'd have the courtesy to use it and draw the nails! His head can't ache enough to suit me! Me for the princess! If I'd any scruples, believe me, bo, they're vanished--gone--Vamoosed! That young woman's going to win against the whole darned outfit, English, Indian and all! Me for her! Chamu! Where's Chamu? Why aren't the lamps lit?"

He wandered through the house in the dark in search of servants, and finally lit a lamp himself, locked all the doors and went to bed.

Chapter Sixteen

The buildings rear immense, horizons fade And thought forgets old gages in the ecstasy of view. The standards go by which the steps were made. On which we trod from former levels to the new. No time for backward glance, no pause for breath, Since impulse like a bowstring loosed us in full flight And in delirium of speed none aim considereth Nor in the blaze of burning codes can think of night. The whirring of sped wheels and horn remind That speed, more speed is best and peace is waste! They rank unfortunate who tag behind And only they seem wise who urge, and haste and haste. New comforts multiply (for there is need!) Each ballot adds assent to law that crowds the days. None pause. None clamor but for speed--more speed! And yet--there was a sweetness in the olden ways.

"And since, my Lords, in olden days--"

Trotters, fed on chopped raw meat by advice of Tess, and brushed by Bimbu for an hour to get the stiffness out of him, was sent off in the noon heat with a double message for his master, one addressed to Samson, one to Dick Blaine, and both wrapped in the same chewed leather cover, that the dog might understand. The mongrel in him made him more immune to heat than a thoroughbred would have been. In any case, he showed nothing but eagerness to get back to Tom Tripe, and, settling the package comfortably in his jaws, was off without ceremony at a steady canter.

"If all my friends were like that one," said Yasmini, "I would be empress of the earth, not queen of a little part of Rajputana! However, one thing at a time!"

It was hardly more than a village that Tess could see through the jalousies of her bedroom windows. The room was at a corner, so that she had a wide view in two directions from either deep window-seat. There were all the signs of Indian village life about her--low, thatched houses in compounds fenced with thorn and prickly pear,--temples in between them,--trades and handicrafts plied in the shade of ancient trees,--squalor and beauty, leisure, wealth, poverty and lordliness all hand in hand. She could see the backs of elephants standing in a compound under trees, and there were peacocks swaggering everywhere, eating the same offal, though, as the unpretentious chickens in the streets. Over in the distance, beyond the elephants, was the tiled roof of a great house glinting in strong sunlight between the green of enormous pipal trees; and there were other houses, strong to look at but not so great, jumbled together in one quarter where a stream passed through the village.

Yasmini came and sat beside her in the window-seat, as simply dressed in white as on the night before, with her gold hair braided up loosely and an air of reveling in the luxury of peace and rest.

"That great house," she said, peering through the jalousies, "is where the ceremony is to be tonight. My father's father built it. This is not our state, but he owned the land."

"Doesn't it belong to Gungadhura now?" Tess asked.

"No. It was part of my legacy. This house, too, that we are in. Look, some of them have come on elephants to do me honor. Many of the nobles of the land are poor in these days; one, they tell me, came on foot, walking by night lest the ill-bred laugh at him. He has a horse now. He shall have ten when I am maharanee!"

"Won't the English get to hear of this?" Tess asked.

Yasmini laughed.

"Their spies are everywhere. But there has been great talk of a polo tournament to be held on the English side of the river at Sialpore. The English encourage games, thinking they keep us Rajputs out of mischief-- as indeed is true. This, then, is a conference to decide which of our young bloods shall take part in the tournament, and who shall contribute ponies. The English lend one another ponies; why not we? The spies will report great interest in the polo tournament, and the English will smile complacently."

"But suppose a spy gets in to see the ceremony?" Tess suggested.

Yasmini's blue eyes looked into hers and there was a Viking glare behind them, suggestive of the wintry fjords whence one of her royal ancestresses came.

"Let him!" she said. "It would be the last of him!"

Tess considered a while in silence.

"When is the tournament to be?" she asked presently. "Won't the English think it strange that the conference about men and ponies should be put off until so late?"

"They might have," Yasmini answered. "They are suspicious of all gatherings. But a month ago we worked up a dispute entirely for their benefit. This is supposed to be a last-hour effort to bring cohesion out of jealousy. The English like to see Rajputs quarrel among themselves, because of their ancient saw that says 'Divide and govern!' I do not understand the English altogether--yet; but in some ways they are like an open book. They will let us quarrel over polo to our heart's content."

There is something very close to luxury in following the thread of an intrigue, sitting on soft cushions with the sunlight sending layers of golden shafts through jalousies into a cool room; so little of the strain and danger of it; so much of its engagement. Tess was enjoying herself to the top of her bent.

"But when the ceremony is over," she said, "and you yourself have proclaimed Prince Utirupa king of Sialpore, there will still remain the problem of how to make the English recognize him. There is Gungadhura, for instance, to get out of the way; and Gungadhura's sons--how many has he?"

"Five, all whole and well. But the dogs must suffer for their breeding. Who takes a reverter's colt to school into a charger? The English will turn their eyes away from Gungadhura's stock."

"But Gungadhura himself?"

"Is in the toils already! Say this for the English: they are slow to reach conclusions--slower still to change their policy; but when their mind is made up they are swift! Gungadhura has been sending messages to the Northwest tribes. How do I know? You saw Ismail, my gateman? His very brother took the letters back and forth!"

"But why should Gungadhura risk his throne by anything so foolish?"

"He thinks to save it. He thinks to prove that the tribes began the dickering, and then to offer his army to the English--Tom Tripe and all! Patali put him up to it. Perhaps she wants a necklace made of Hill-men's teeth-- who knows? Gungadhura went deeply into debt with Mukhum Dass, to send money to the Mahsudis, who think more of gold than promises. The fool imagines that the English will let him levy, extra taxes afterward to recoup himself. Besides, there would be the daily expenses of his army, from which he could extract a lakh or two. Patali yearns for diamonds in the fillings of her teeth!"

"Did you work out all this deep plot for yourself?" Tess asked.

"I and the gods! The gods of India love intrigue. My father left me as a sort of ward of Jinendra, although my mother tried to make a Christian of me, and I always mistrusted Jinendra's priest. But Jinendra has been good. He shall have two new temples when I am maharanee."

"And you have been looking for the treasure ever since your father died?"

"Ever since. My father prophesied on his death-bed that I should have it in the end, but all he told to help me find it was a sort of conundrum. 'Whoever looks for flowers,' be said, 'finds happiness. Who looks for gold finds all the harness and the teeth of war! A hundred guard the treasure day and night, changing with the full moon!' So I have always looked for flowers, and I am often happy. I have sent flowers every day to the temple of Jinendra."

"Who or what can the hundred be, who guard the treasure day and night?" Tess wondered.

"That is what puzzled me. At first, because I was very young, I thought they must be snakes. So I made friends with the snakes, learning how to handle even cobras without fear of them. Then, when I had learned that snakes could tell me nothing, but are only Widyadharas--beautiful lost fairies dreadfully afraid of men, and very, very wishful to be comforted, I began to think the hundred must be priests. So I made friends with the priests, and let them teach me all their knowledge. But they know nothing! They are parasites! They teach only what will keep men in their power, and women in subjection, themselves not understanding what they teach! I soon learned that if the priests were treasure-guards their charge would have been dissipated long ago! Then I looked for a hundred trees, and found them! A hundred pipal trees all in a place together! But that was only like the first goal in the very first chukker of the game--as you shall learn soon!"

"Then surely I know!" said Tess excitedly. "In the grounds of the palace across the river, that you escaped from the night before you came to see me, there is quite a little forest of pipals."

"Nine and sixty and the roots of four," Yasmini answered, her eyes glowing as if there were fire behind them. "The difficulty is, though, that they don't change with the full moon! Pipal trees grow on forever, never changing, except to grow bigger and bigger. They outlive centuries of men. Nevertheless, they gave me the clue, not only to the treasure but to the winning of it!"

The afternoon wore on in drowsy quiet, both of the girls sleeping at intervals--waited on at intervals by Hasamurti with fruit and cooling drinks-- Yasmini silent oftener than not as the sun went lower, as if the details of what she had to do that night were rehearsing themselves in her mind. No amount of questioning by Tess could make her speak of them again, or tell any more about the secret of the treasure. At that age already she knew too well the virtue and fun of unexpectedness.

They ate together very early, reclining at a low table heaped with more varieties of food than Tess had dreamed that India could produce; but ate sparingly because the weight of what was coming impressed them both. Hasamurti sang during the meal, ballad after ballad of the warring history of Rajasthan and its royal heroines, accompanying herself on a stringed instrument, and the ballads seemed to strike the right chord in Yasmini's heart, for when the meal finished she was queenly and alert, her blue eyes blazing.

Then came the business of dressing, and two maids took Tess into her room to bathe and comb and scent and polish her, until she wondered how the rest of the world got on without handmaidens, and laughed to think that one short week ago she had never had a personal attendant since her nurse. Swiftly the luxurious habit grows; she rather hoped her husband might become rich enough to provide her a maid always!

And after all that thought and trouble and attention she stood arrayed at last as no more than a maid herself--true, a maid of royalty; but very simply dressed, without a jewel, with plain light sandals on her stockinged feet, and with a plain veil hanging to below her knees--all creamy white. She admitted to herself that she looked beautiful in the long glass, and wished that Dick could see her so, not guessing how soon Dick would see her far more gorgeously arrayed.

Yasmini, when she came into the room, was a picture to take the breath away,--a rhapsody in cream and amber, glittering with gems. There were diamonds sparkling on her girdle, bosom, ears, arms; a ruby like a prince's ransom nestled at her throat; there were emeralds and sapphires stitched to the soft texture of her dress to glow and glitter as she moved; and her hair was afire with points of diamond light. Coil on coil of huge pearls hung from her shoulders to her waist, and pearls were on her sandals.

"Child, where in heaven's name did you get them all?" Tess burst out.

"These? These jewels? Some are the gifts of Rajput noblemen. Some are heirlooms lent for the occasion. This--and this" she touched the ruby at her throat and a diamond that glittered at her breast like frozen dew-- "he gave me. He sent them by his brother, with an escort of eight gentlemen. But you should wear jewels, too."

"I have none--none with me--"

"I thought of that. I borrowed these for you."

With her own hands she put opals around Tess's neck that glowed as if they were alive, and then bracelets on her right arm of heavy, graven gold; then kissed her.

"You look lovely! I shall need you tonight! No other human guesses how I need you! You and Hasamurti are to stand close to me until the end. The other maids will take their place behind us. Now we are ready. Come."

Outside in the dark there were torches flaring, and low gruff voices announced the presence of about fifty men. Once or twice a stallion neighed; and there was another footfall, padded and heavy, in among the stamping of held horses.

The night was hot, and full of that musty mesmeric quality that changes everything into a waking dream. The maids threw dark veils over them to save their clothing from the dust kicked up by a crowd, and perhaps, too, as a concession to the none-so-ancient, but compelling custom that bids women be covered in the streets.

Yasmini took Tess by the hand and walked out with her, followed closely by Hasamurti and the other women, between the pomegranates to the gate in the garden wall. From that moment, though, she stood alone and never touched hand, or sought as much as the supporting glances of her women until they came back at midnight.

A watchman opened the gate and, Yasmini leading, they passed through a double line of Rajput noblemen, who drew their sabers at some one's hoarse command and made a steel arch overhead that flashed and shimmered in the torchlight. Beyond that one order to draw sabers none spoke a word. Tess looked straight in front of her, afraid to meet the warrior eyes on either hand, lest some one should object to a foreigner in their midst on such a night of nights.

In the road were three great elephants standing in line with ladders leaning against them. The one in front was a tusker with golden caps and chains on his glistening ivory, and a howdah on his back like a miniature pagoda--a great gray monster, old in the service of three Rajput generations, and more conscious of his dignity than years. Yasmini mounted him, followed by Tess and Hasamurti, who took their place behind her in the howdah, one on either side, Hasamurti pushing Tess into her proper place, after which her duty was to keep a royal fan of ostrich plumes gently moving in the air above Yasmini's head.

The other women climbed on to the elephant behind, and the third one was mounted by one man, who looked like a prince, to judge by the jewels glittering in his turban.

"His brother!" Hasamurti whispered.

Then again a hoarse command broke on the stillness. Horses wheeled out from the shadow of the wall, led by saises, and the Rajput gentry mounted. Ten of them in line abreast led the procession, while some formed a single line on either hand, and ten brought up the rear. Men with torches walked outside the lines. But no one shouted. No one spoke.

Straight down the quiet road under the majestic trees, with the monkeys, frightened by the torchlight, chattering nervously among the branches,-- to the right near the lane Yasmini used the night before, and on toward the shadowy bulk of the great house in the distance the elephant trod loftily, the swing and sway of his back suggesting ages of past history, and ever-lasting ages more to come. The horses kicked and squealed, for the Rajput loves a mettled mount; but nothing disturbed the elephant's slow, measured stride, or moved the equanimity of his mahout.

Villagers came to the walls, and stood under the roadside trees to smile and stare. Every man and child salaamed low as the procession passed, and some followed in the dust to feast their curiosity until the end of it; but not a voice was raised much above a whisper, except where once or twice a child cried shrilly.

"Why the silence?" Tess asked in a whisper, and without turning her head Yasmini answered:

"Would you have the English know that I was hailed as maharanee through the streets? Give them but leave and they would beat the tomtoms, and dance under the trees. These are all friends here."

The great house was surrounded by a high wall, but a gate was flung wide open to receive them and the procession never paused until the leading elephant came to a halt under a portico lit by dozens of oil lamps. Standing on the porch were four women, veiled, but showing the glint of jewels and the sheen of splendid dresses underneath; they were the first that night to give tongue in acclamation, raising a hub-bub of greeting with a waving of slim hands and arms. They clustered round Yasmini as she climbed down from the elephant, and led her into the hall with arms in hers and a thousand phrases of congratulation and glad welcome.

"Four queens!" Hasamurti whispered.

Tess and Hasamurti followed, side by side, not down the main hall, but to the left, into a suite of rooms reserved for women, where they all removed their veils and the talking and laughter began anew. There were dozens of other women in there--about half as many ladies as attendants, and they made more noise than a swarm of Vassar freshmen at the close of term.

The largest of the suite of rooms was higher than the rest by half a dozen steps. At its farther end was a gilded door, on either side of which, as far as the walls at each end, was a panel of very deeply carved wood, through the interstices of which every whisper in the durbar hall was audible when the women all were still, and every man and movement could be seen. Yasmini took her stand close to the gilded door, and Tess and Hasamurti watched the opportunity to come beside her--no very easy matter in a room where fifty women jockeyed for recognition and a private word.

But there came a great noise of men's voices in the durbar hall, and of a roll-call answered one by one, each name being written in a vellum book, that none might say afterward he was present, who was not, and none might escape responsibility. The women grew silent as a forest that rustles and shivers in the night wind, and somebody turned down the lights, so that it was easier to see through the carved panel, and not so easy to be seen. Immediately beyond the panel was a dais, or wide platform, bare of everything except a carpet that covered it from end to end. A short flight of steps from the center of it led to the durbar floor below.

The durbar floor was of polished teak, and all the columns that supported the high roof were of the same wood, carved with fantastic patterns. From the center hung a huge glass chandelier, its quivering pendants multiplying the light of a thousand candles; and in every corner of the hall were other chandeliers, and mirrors to reflect the light in all directions.

Grouped in the center of the hall were about two hundred men, all armed with sabers,--men of every age, and height and swarthiness, from stout, blue-bearded veterans to youths yet in their teens,--dressed in every hue imaginable from the scarlet frock-coat, white breeches and high black boots of a risaldar-major to the jeweled silken gala costume of the dandiest of Rajput's youth. There was not a man present who did not rank himself the equal of all reigning kings, whatever outward deference the exigency of alien overrule compelled. This was a race that, like the Poles, knew itself to have been conquered because of subdivision and dissension in its ranks; no lack of courage or of martial skill had brought on their subjection. Not nearly all their best were there that night-- not even any of the highest-placed, because of jealousy and the dread of betrayal; but there was not a priest among them, so that the chance was high that their trust would be well kept.

These were the pick of Rajputana's patriots--the men who loved the old ways, yet admitted there was virtue in an adaptation of the new. And Yasmini, with a gift for reading men's hearts that has been her secret and her source of power first and last, was reviving an ancient royal custom for them, to the end that she might lead them in altogether new ways of her own devising.

The roll-call ended, a veteran with a jeweled aigrette in his turban stood apart from the rest with his back toward the dais steps and made a speech that was received in silence, though the women peering through the panel, fluttered with excitement, and the deep breathing in the durbar hall sounded like the very far-off murmur of a tide. For he rang the changes on the ancient chivalry of Rajasthan, and on the sanctity of ancient custom, and the right they had to follow what their hearts accounted good.

"And as in ancient days," he said, "our royal women chose their husbands at a durbar summoned by the king; and because in ancient times, when Rajasthan was a land of kings indeed and its royal women, as the endless pages of our history tell, stood proved and acclaimed as fit to govern, and defend, and die untarnished in the absence of their lords; therefore we now see fit to attend this durbar, and to witness and give sanction. Once again, my Lords, a royal daughter of a throne of Rajasthan shall choose her husband in the sight of all of us let come of it what may!"

He ceased, and the crowd burst into cheers. Yasmini translated his speech afterward to Tess. He said not a word of Gungadhura, or of the throne of Sialpore, leaving that act of utter daring to the woman who was, after all, the leader of them all that night.

Now all eyes were on the dais and the door behind it. In the inner room the women stirred and whispered, while a dozen of them, putting on their veils again, gathered around Yasmini, waiting in silence for her to give the cue. She waited long enough to whet the edge of expectation, and then nodded. Hasamurti opened the door wide and Yasmini stepped forth, aglitter with her jewels.

"Ah-h-h!" was her greeting--the unbidden, irrepressible, astonished gasp of mixed emotion of a crowd that sees more wonder than it bargained for.

The twelve princesses took their place beside her on the dais, six on either side. Immediately behind her Tess and Hasamurti stood. Yasmini's other maids arranged themselves with their backs to the gilded door. She, Tess and Hasamurti were the only women there unveiled.

She stood two minutes long in silence, smiling down at them while Tess's heart-beats drummed until she lost count, Tess suspecting nervousness because of her own nerves, and not so wildly wrong.

"You're not alone," she whispered. "You've a friend behind you--two friends!"

Then Yasmini spoke.

"My Lords." The word "Bahadur" rolled from her golden throat like chords of Beethoven's overture to Leonori. "You do our olden customs honor. True chivalry had nearly died since superstition and the ebb and flow of mutual mistrust began to smother it in modern practises. But neither priest nor alien could make it shame for maidenhood to choose which way its utmost honor lies. Ye know your hearts' delight. Goodness, love and soundless fealty are the attributes your manhood hungers for. Of those three elements is womanhood. And so, as Shri--goddess of all good fortune--comes ever to her loved one of her own accord and dowers him with richer blessing than he dreamed, true womanhood should choose her mate and, having chosen, honor him. My Lords, I choose, in confidence of your nobility and chivalry!"

Pausing for a minute then, to let the murmur of assent die down, and waiting while they stamped and shuffled into three long lines, she descended the steps alone, moving with a step so dignified, yet modest, that no memory of past events could persuade Tess it was artistry. She felt--Tess was sure of it, and swore to it afterward--in her heart of hearts the full spiritual and profound significance of what she did.

Beginning at the left end of the first line, she passed slowly and alone before them, looking each man in the eyes, smiling at each one as she passed him. Not a man but had his full meed of attention and the honor due to him who brings the spirit of observance and the will to help another man succeed.

Back along the second line she went, with the same supreme dignity and modesty, omitting not even the oldest veteran, nor letting creep into her smile the veriest suggestion of another sentiment than admiration for the manliness by whose leave she was doing what she did. Each man received his smile of recognition and the deference due his pride.

Then down the third line, yet more slowly, until Tess had cold chills, thinking Utirupa was not there! One by one she viewed them all, until the last man's turn came, and she took him by the hand and led him forth.

At that the whole assembly milled into a mob and reformed in double line up and down the room. The same voice that had thundered in the darkness roared again and two hundred swords leapt from their scabbards. Under an arch of blazing steel, in silence, Yasmini and her chosen husband came to the dais and stood facing the assembly hand in hand, while the swords went back to their owners' sides and once more the crowd clustered in the center of the hall.

There was a movement in among them then. Some servants brought in baskets, and distributed them at about equal intervals amid the forest of booted legs. When the servants had left the hall, Yasmini spoke.

"My Lords, in the presence of you all I vow love, honor, fealty and a wife's devotion to the prince of my choosing--to my husband who shall be-- who now is by Gandharva ceremony; for I went to him of my own free will by night! My Lords, I present to you--"

There was a pause, while every man present caught his breath, and the women rustled like a dove-cot behind the panel.

"--Gunga Khatiawara Dhuleep Rhakapushi Utirupa Singh--Maharajah of Sialpore!"

Two hundred swords sprang clear again. The chandeliers rattled and the beams shook to the thunder of two hundred throats.

"Rung Ho!" they roared.

"Rung Ho!"

"Rung Ho!" bringing down their right feet with a stamp all together that shook the building.

Then the baskets were cut open by the swords' points and they flung flowers at the dais, swamping it in jasmine and sweet-smelling buds, until the carpet was not visible. The same black-bearded veteran who had spoken first mounted the dais and hung garlands on Yasmini and her prince, and again the hall shook to the roar of acclamation and the sharp ringing of keen steel.

But Yasmini had not finished all she had to say. When the shouting died and the blades returned to scabbards, her voice again stirred their emotions, strangely quiet and yet reaching all ears with equal resonance, like the note of a hidden bell.

"And since, my Lords, in olden days it happened often that a Rajput woman held and buttressed up her husband's throne, honoring him and Rajputana with her courage and her wit, and daring even in the arts of war, so now: this prince shall have his throne by woman's wit. Before another full moon rises he shall sit throned in the palace of his ancestors; and ye who love royal Rajasthan shall answer whether I chose wisely, in the days to come!"

They answered then and there to the utmost of their lungs. And while the hall resounded to the crash and clangor of applause she let go Utirupa's hand, bowed low to him, and vanished through the gilded door in the midst of her attendant women.

For two hours after that she was the center of a vortex of congratulation-- questions--whisperings--laughter and advice, while the women flocked about her and she introduced Tess to them one by one. Tess, hardly understanding a word of what was said to her, was never made so much of in her life, sharing honors with Yasmini, almost as much a novelty as she--a Western woman, spirited behind the purdah by the same new alchemy that made a girl of partly foreign birth, and so without caste in the Hindu sense of it, revive a royal custom with its antecedents rooted in the very rocks of time. It was a night of breathless novelty.

There were the inevitable sweetmeats--the inevitable sugared drinks. Then the elephants again, and torches under the mysterious trees, with a sabered escort plunging to the right and left. The same torch-lit faces peering from the village doors and walls; and at last the gate again in the garden wall, and a bolt shot home, and silence. Then:

"Did I do well?" Yasmini asked, leaning at last on Tess. "Oh, my sister! Without you there to lend me courage I had failed!"

Chapter Seventeen

How about the door! Did somebody lock it? "I," said the Chairman, "had the key in my pocket." Who shut the windows? "I," said the vice. "I shut the window, it seemed to me wise." "I," said the clerk, "looked under the table And out on the balcony under the gable." Then who let the secret out? Who overheard? Maybe a mouse, or the flies, or a bird!

"Suppose I lock the door?"

Tom Tripe felt like a new man, and his whiskers crackled with self- satisfaction. For one thing, his dog Trotters was back again--sore-footed, it was true, and unable at present to follow him on his rounds; and rather badly scratched where a leopard must have missed his spring on the moonlit desert; but asleep in the stable litter, on the highroad to recovery.

Tom had ridden that morning, first to Dick Blaine up at the gold mine, because he was a friend and needed good news of his wife; then across the bridge to Samson, straightening out the crumpled letter from Yasmini as he rode, and chuckling to himself at the thought of mystifying the commissioner. And it all worked out the way he hoped, even to the offer of a drink--good brandy--Hennesey's Three Star.

"How did you manage it?" asked Samson. "The princess has disappeared. There's a rumor she's over the border in the next state. Gungadhura has seized her palace and rifled it. How did you get my letter to her, and her answer so swiftly?"

"Ah, sir," said Tom Tripe mischievously, "we in the native service have our little compensations--our little ways and means!"

That was better than frankincense and myrrh, to mystify a genuine commissioner! Tom rode back to his quarters turning over the taste of brandy in his mouth--he had made a martial raid on Samson's tantalus-- and all aglow with good humor.

Not so Samson. The commissioner was irritable, and more so now that he opened the scented letter Tom had brought. It was deuced curt, it seemed to him, and veiled a sort of suggested laughter, if there was anything insinuative in polite phrases.

"The Princess Yasmini Omanoff Singh," it ran, "hastens to return thanks for Sir Roland Samson's kind letter. She is not, however, afraid of imprisonment or of undue pressure; and as for her secret, that is safe as long as the river runs through the state of Sialpore."

Not a word more. He frowned at the letter, and read and reread it, sniffing at the scent and holding up the paper to the light, so that Sita Ram very nearly had a chance to read it through the knot-hole in the door. The last phrase was the puzzler. It read at first like a boast--like one of those picturesque expressions with which the Eastern mind enjoys to overstate its case. But he reflected on it. As an Orientalist of admitted distinction he had long ago concluded that hyperbole in the East is always based on some fact hidden in the user's mind, often without the user's knowledge. He had written a paper on that very subject, which the Spectator printed with favorable editorial comment; and Mendelsohn K. C. had written him a very agreeable letter stating that his own experience in criminal cases amply bore out the theory. He rang the desk bell for Sita Ram.

"Get me the map of the province."

Sita Ram held it by two corners under the draughty punkah while Samson traced the boundaries with his finger. It was exactly as he thought: without that little palace and its grounds, the state of Sialpore would be bounded exactly by the river. Take away the so-called River Palace with the broad acres surrounding it, and the river would no longer run through the state of Sialpore. That would be the end, then, of the safety of the secret. There was food for reflection there.

What if the famous treasure of Sialpore were buried somewhere in the grounds of the River Palace! Somewhere, for instance, among those gigantic pipal trees.

He folded the map and returned it to Sita Ram.

"I'm expecting half a dozen officers presently. Show them in the minute they come. And--ah--you'd better lock that middle door."

Sita Ram dutifully locked the door on Samson's side, and drew the curtain over it. There was a small hole in the curtain, of peculiar shape-- moths had been the verdict when Samson first noticed it, and Sita Ram had advised him to indent for some preventive of the pests; which Samson did, and the hole did not grow any greater afterward.

Samson had had to call a conference, much though he disliked doing it. The rules for procedure in the case of native states included the provision of an official known as resident, whose duty was to live near the native ruler-- and keep a sharp eye on him. But Samson, prince of indiscretion, had seen fit three months before to let that official go home to England on long leave, and to volunteer the double duty in his absence. The proposal having economic value, and there being no known trouble in Sialpore just then, the State Department had consented.