There came then a soft rap on the door. It opened about six inches, and a maid whispered.

"Wait!" ordered Yasmini. "Come through! Wait here!" She pulled the maid through the door to the little back stair-head landing. "Did you hear?" she hissed excitedly. "She says Kirby sahib has come, and another with him!"

She was twitching with excitement. Her fingers clutched the general's sleeve, and he found himself thinking of his youth. He released her fingers gently and she spared a giggle for him.

"Bad business!" said the general again. "Kirby will ask questions and go away; but the troopers of Ranjoor Singh's squadron will come later, and they will not go away in such a hurry. You can fool Colonel Kirby sahib, but you can not fool a hundred troopers!"

"No?" she purred. She had done thinking and was herself again, impudent and artful. "I can fool anybody, and any thousand men! I have sent Sita Ram already with a message to the troopers of Ranjoor Singh's squadron. The message was supposed to be from him, and it was worded just as he would have worded it. Presently Sita Ram will come back, when he has helped himself to payment. Then I can send him with yet another message.

"Go and put thoughts into the buffalo's head, General sahib, and be quick! There must be a message—a written message from Ranjoor Singh to Kirby sahib—and a token—forget not the token, in proof that the writing is not forged! Forget not the token. There must surely be a token!"

She pushed the general forward down a passage, through a series of doors, and down another passage—halted him while she fitted a strange native key into a lock—opened another door, and pushed him through. Then she ran back to her maid.

"Send somebody to find Sita Ram! Bid him hurry! When he comes, put him in the small room next the cobras, and let him be shown the cobras until fear of too much talking has grown greater in him than the love of being heard! Then let me see him in a mirror, so that I may know when it is time. Have cobras in a hair-noose ready, close behind where the sahibs sit, and watch through the hangings for my signal! Both sahibs will kneel to me. Then watch for another signal, and let all lights be blown out instantly! Or, if the sahibs do not kneel (though they shall!), then watch yet more closely for a signal which I will give to extinguish lights.

"So—now, go! Am I beautiful? Are my eyes bright? Twist me that jasmine in my hair—so. Now run—I will surprise them through the hangings!"

So Yasmini surprised Kirby and his adjutant, as has been told, and it need not be repeated how she humbled the pride of India's army on their knees. She would have to forego the delight of being Yasmini before she could handle any situation or plan any coup along ordinary lines, and Kirby and his adjutant were not the first Englishmen, nor likely to be the last, to feed her merriment.

The general, for his part, had—even although pushed without ceremony through a door—behaved with perfect confidence, for he knew that, whatever her whim or her sense of humor, or her impudence, Yasmini would not fail him in the pinch. Even she, whose jest it is to see men writhe under her hand, has to own somebody her master, and though she would giggle at the notion of fearing any one man, or any dozen, she does fear the representative of what she and perhaps a hundred others call "The Game." For the night, and for the place, the general was that representative, and however much he might disapprove, he had no doubt of her.

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