Sweet strange scents were wafted in from under the silken hangings. The room grew cooler by unguessed means. Every sense was treacherously wooed. And ever, in the middle of the moving light among the languorous dancers, the snakes pursued the woman!
"Do you do this often?" wondered King, in a calm aside to Rewa Gunga, turning half toward him and taking his eyes off the dance without any, very, great effort.
Rewa Gunga clapped his hands and the dance ceased. The woman spirited her snakes away. The blind was drawn upward and in a moment all was normal again with the punkah swinging slowly overhead, except that the seductive smell remained, that was like the early-morning breath of all the different flowers of India.
"If she were here," said the Rangar, a little grimly—with a trace of disappointment in his tone—"you would not snatch your eyes away like that! You would have been jolly well transfixed, my friend! These—she—that woman—they are but clumsy amateurs! If she were here, to dance with her snakes for you, you would have been jolly well dancing with her, if she had wished it! Perhaps you shall see her dance some day! Ah,—here is Ismail," he added in an altered tone of voice. He seemed relieved at sight of the Afridi.
Bursting through the glass-bead curtains at the door, the great savage strode down the room, holding out a telegram. Rewa Gunga looked as if he would have snatched it, but King's hand was held out first and Ismail gave it to him. With a murmur of conventional apology King tore the envelope and in a second his eyes were ablaze with something more than wonder. A mystery, added to a mystery, stirred all the zeal in him. But in a second he had sweated his excitement down.
Read that, will you?" he said, passing it to Rewa Gunga. It was not in cypher, but in plain everyday English.
"She has not gone North," it ran. "She is still in Delhi. Suit your own movements to your plans."
"Can you explain?" asked King in a level voice. He was watching the Rangar narrowly, yet he could not detect the slightest symptom of emotion.
"Explain?" said the Rangar. "Who can explain foolishness? It means that another fat general has made another fat mistake!"
"What makes you so certain she went North?" King asked.
Instead of answering, Rewa Gunga beckoned Ismail, who had stepped back out of hearing. The giant came and loomed over them like the Spirit of the Lamp of the Arabian Nights.
"Whither went she?" asked the Rangar.
"To the North!" he boomed.
"How knowest thou?"
"I saw her go!"
"When went she?"
"Yesterday, when a telegram came."
The word "came" was the only clue to his meaning, for in the language he used "yesterday" and "to-morrow" are the same word; such is the East's estimate of time.
"By what route did she go?" asked Rewa Gunga.
"By the terrain from the station."
"How knowest thou that?"
"I was there, bearing her box of jewels."
"Didst thou see her buy the tikkut?"
"Nay, I bought it, for she ordered me."
"For what destination was the tikkut?"
"Peshawur!" said Ismail, filling his mouth with the word as if he loved it.
"Yet"—it was King who spoke now, pointing an accusing finger at him—"a burra sahib sends a tar to me—this is it!—to say she is in Delhi still! Who told thee to answer those questions with those words?"
"She!" the big man answered.
"Yasmini?"
"Aye! May Allah cover her with blessings!"
"Ah!" said King. "You have my leave to depart out of earshot."
Then he turned on Rewa Gunga.
"Whatever the truth of all this," he said quietly, "I suppose it means she has done what there was to do in Delhi?"
"Sahib,—trust her! Does a tigress hunt where no watercourses are, and where no game goes to drink? She follows the sambur!"
"You are positive she has started for the North?"
"Sahib, when she speaks it is best to believe! She told me she will go. Therefore I am ready to lead King sahib up the Khyber to her!"
"Are you certain you can find her?"
"Aye, sahib,—in the dark!"
"There's a train leaves for the North to-night," said King.
The Rangar nodded.
"You'll want a pass up the line. How many servants? Three—four—how many?"
"One," said the Rangar, and King was instantly suspicious of the modesty of that allowance; however he wrote out a pass for Rewa Gunga and one servant and gave it to him.
