From the very midst of slumber Trent was shot into consciousness. He opened his eyes to find himself submerged in darkness, and to feel another presence in the black flood. His hand went involuntarily to the revolver that he kept always within reach, and as he lifted himself upon his elbow, one hand gripping the weapon, he saw a body silhouetted upon the grayish rectangle of a window.

"Tajen!" whispered a voice that he recognized as that of one of the muleteers. "It is Hsiao. There is a man below.... He told me to be quiet and not arouse the guard.... He brought this for you."

A folded sheet of paper was thrust into Trent's hand. The scent of sandalwood caressed his nostrils and cleared his brain of the last tangle of drowsiness. He rose and sought his electric torch, which was in his kit-bag. Snapping on the light, he read the note.... It was brief; merely instructed him to follow the bearer and was signed by Sarojini Nanjee.... A glance at his watch showed him it was after two o'clock.

"Where is he? In the quadrangle?" Trent queried.

"Yes, Tajen."

"I'll be there directly."

Trent strapped his revolver to his thigh; procured a certain object from his pack; went below.

A thin, misting rain was falling, and the wind swept down in cold legions from the snows of the North. It was a night to kindle icy flame in the marrow. Gray gloom lay like a ghoulish lacquer upon the world, and dogs were howling somewhere in the city.

Sarojini's messenger was a thin-featured Tibetan with long hair. He extended a dark bundle to Trent and muttered something in his own tongue.

"He says for you to put those on, Tajen," translated the muleteer.

Unrolling the bundle, Trent saw a long toga and a pair of heavy Tibetan boots. The latter he pulled on with some difficulty, then threw the toga about his shoulders.

The long-haired messenger touched his arm, motioning toward the garden. Hsiao, the muleteer, accompanied them to the wall, where he lent Trent his aid in reaching the top. Outside, the Englishman found himself in a narrow lane that opened upon the street.

Through ghostly highways they moved. Now and then a dog snarled viciously and slunk away as the Tibetan kicked at him. They traveled along constricted streets, some graduated into steps, and past silent, whitewashed houses that loomed spectral in the night. These ramifications led them to a stone bridge and a roadway between tall bamboo and the black blur of trees. Trent could see the city's walls now, beyond rounded clumps of bushes. From this clustered vegetation rose a large temple-like edifice whose dome shone dully through the drizzle.

A lane branched off from the main road and took them to the gates of the temple-like building. First, a courtyard, then an imposing doorway. Within, it was damp and cold. Butter-lamps made a feeble attempt to disperse rebellious shadows. Monster shapes, which Trent perceived to be idols, glowed sullenly in the semi-dark.

A hall with red-lacquered pillars led to a massive portal that was opened by a brass ring. It swung back, to release the odor of incense and rancid butter and to admit Trent and the Tibetan into a vast space that evidently was a temple. Butter-lamps hiccoughed and threw their reflections upon brazen images and old armor. In the remote end a dull mass of gold kindled in the temple-dusk, a form that took on the shape of a huge idol—and from beneath the shining god came a figure of familiar proportions.

"Greetings, man of many faces!" said Sarojini Nanjee in her sweet voice, a voice that rang like the notes of a gong in the ponderous silence of the temple.

Trent glimpsed behind her a man in claret-colored vestments. The face was strongly reminiscent of one he had recently seen, and after a few seconds recognition flashed into him. He was the one whom Na-chung had pointed out in the amphitheater as the Great Magician of Shingtse-lunpo. The woman, seeing Trent's look and misunderstanding it, announced:

"He knows only Tibetan and Hindustani; that is why I speak English." Then she added, "He is the third most powerful man in Shingtse-lunpo."

Trent casually took in Sarojini Nanjee's manner of dress—casually, because he did not wish to appear particularly interested. She wore a long maroon garment such as Tibetan women wear; only the lines were not bulky, but adapted themselves to the purpose of revealing the contours of her figure. Her skin was darkened by a stain—skin that was quite unlike that of the women of Shingtse-lunpo in that it was smooth and without a coat of dust and grease. A silver aureole rose behind her black hair, which was parted after the Tibetan fashion. A flame, as of black opals, danced and flashed in her eyes as she smiled at him.

"I have not sent for you before," she told him, "because it would have been indiscreet. Too, we could have done nothing until now. I did not know of your arrival until many hours after you reached the city. I—"

"You expected my muleteers to report my presence," he put in, smiling.

She smiled, too, although he could see she was not pleased.

"Yes. Where are they?"

"I didn't fancy being spied upon night and day," he replied, "so I left them at Tali-fang."

"Do you realize that was disobeying me?"

"You didn't forbid changing servants." After a pause he went on, "Yet my precautions were useless, for I daresay by now you know everything that happened since I left Tali-fang."

She looked at him quizzically. (And he did not know whether the expression was genuine or not.)

"What do you mean?"

"One of my men failed to put in his appearance last night. I naturally surmised"—this rather drily—"that you detained him to find out what he knew."

He was watching her closely, and again that quizzical expression clouded her eyes. After a moment she smiled queerly.

"You accuse me of crude tactics," she said; then switched off with: "But tell me, what have you learned since your arrival?"

He answered discreetly. "I attended the festival to-day."

She nodded. "I saw you. I was in the Governor's stall. Because of his vigilance I dared not communicate with you before this. He watches me as a hawk watches its prey." (Trent wondered if the word "hawk" had any significance.) "But while the bird sleeps, the cobra goes about its business.... You have not yet told me what you learned."

After some deliberation he said:

"I know of SÂkya-mÛni; and I know that monks from Shingtse-lunpo accompanied the abbot who pilgrimaged to Gaya."

A second time she nodded. "Do you know what occurred at Gaya?"

Trent's heart was beating swiftly as he countered:

"You should know; you were there at the time."

And his heart beat swifter as she whipped back:

"Who told you that?"

Trent was thrusting boldly. He meant to beat down all guards, to win or lose. The suspense, the groping in the dark, was consuming his nerve-tissues.

"Hsien Sgam," he lied.

A typhoon of rage flashed across her beautiful face. It spent itself quickly. She opened her lips; closed them; and after a space said quite calmly:

"Why did Hsien Sgam tell you that?"

Trent shrugged. "How do I know?"

She gestured impatiently. "What question did you ask that caused him to tell that?"

Having gone so far, Trent ventured a step further.

"Captain Manlove, who shared my bungalow at Gaya, was murdered the night the monks were there. I asked him if he could explain it."

A queer, cold expression settled upon Sarojini Nanjee's face. Only her eyes were warm: they burned like melted opals. She smiled—a rather terrible smile.

"I had not heard that before, that your friend was murdered," she announced. "Why did not you tell me?"

"Why should I?"

Her eyes searched his face; encountered that barrier of impassivity.

"You say you suspected the monks?"

"Not until I reached Shingtse-lunpo."

A pause before she pursued:

"But why, even then, did you suspect them? What motive—"

"I'm at loss for a motive," he cut in quietly. "I don't know what to think, for, you see, I found this"—he drew from under his robe a glittering object—"in his, in Captain Manlove's, hand."

He opened the silver-chased pendant and extended it to her. She glanced at the name graven within; looked up at him. The lids sank over her eyes—to cover surprise, he imagined.

"But why," she queried, "did not you tell me of this before?"

"Because if you lied to me once, I thought it likely you'd lie a second time. You swore that Chavigny had nothing to do with the Order—yet—" He motioned toward the piece of coral.

Her eyes burned with a steady flame.

"I spoke the truth!" she declared. "Chavigny has nothing to do with the Order, has had nothing to do with it since several days before your Captain Manlove was murdered. Oh, I know what you think—that I am lying now! But, even as I spoke the truth then, I speak it now! Chavigny is dead—was dead before your friend was killed!"

Trent took the pendant, avoiding her eyes. It was one of his idiosyncrasies not to look at a person whom he believed lying to him.

"Chavigny was intrusted with certain work at Indore," she continued, "but he ran amuck; tried to steal the Pearl Scarf for himself and substituted an imitation. A blundering Secret Service agent, who had followed Chavigny from Calcutta, interfered. I am not aware of the exact circumstances, but this Secret Service agent came into possession of the real Pearl Scarf. The Order allowed Chavigny to go to Delhi. There the substitute was discovered—and Chavigny put out of the way. The Secret Service agent who had the real jewels was in Delhi, where he had tracked Chavigny. I was instructed to recover the Pearl Scarf, and I sent my servant, Chandra Lal, to the hotel where the Government agent was staying. He got the pearls and—"

"And you took them to Gaya, to the lamas?" Trent interposed.

"Did I say that?" she retorted. "What I did with them is no concern of yours—at present."

"But you were at Gaya?"

"I refuse to answer that."

"But if Chavigny was put out of the way, as you say, how do you account for this?" he pressed on, extending the pendant.

"How does one account for the sun, the moon, the stars?" she returned. "No, I do not know now—but I will know! And you shall avenge the slaying of your friend! You shall have blood for blood! I, Sarojini Nanjee, promise that! I will learn the truth—even if I must go to the Falcon!"

Trent took that as his cue and asked:

"Who is the Falcon?"

She stared at him. "Then you have not seen him?"

Trent wanted to smile. Without herself realizing it, she had told him the one thing he wished to know. He had said that he had talked with Hsien Sgam—and now she asked if he had seen the Falcon....

"No," he replied, "I have not seen him."

"You will see him, then," she said quickly, "at the proper time. Minutes are too precious to spend on explanations now. To-night I shall show you one of the secrets of Shingtse-lunpo.... Come! You must meet the Great Magician."

The high priest of sorcery (whose presence they had for the while forgotten) greeted Trent cordially in Hindustani, but it was evident that he was troubled—though the fact that his lips trembled slightly may have been due to the dampness of the temple.

Sarojini Nanjee threw a robe about her shoulders and, motioning to Trent, guided him to one side of the large golden image, to a door that the Great Magician had opened. Beyond was a courtyard. It was still drizzling and low black clouds impended. A gate was pushed open by the high priest and they emerged upon a path that ended at a gate in the nearby city-walls. If there was a guard, he was discreetly out of sight.

Outside was a low embankment, then the dark waste of the morass that girded Shingtse-lunpo. To the west, in the thin veil of rain, was a shapeless blur that Trent imagined was Amber Bridge. The Great Magician shut the gate and led the way down the embankment. The ground was not soggy, as Trent expected, and, straining his eyes, he saw the reason. They were following a barely visible road through the rushes.

Toward the shapeless blur they moved. As they drew nearer it became apparent that it was not Amber Bridge, but a pile of broken stone—a remnant of the old outer-fortifications—in the middle of the swamp-belt. When they reached the mass of masonry Trent saw that it was a portion of a broken wall, rising above nearly obliterated flagstones that formed the floor of what had once been a room, or a tunnel, under a mighty rampart—a wall that was hollowed and whose roof had fallen in. The passage thus formed was not more than three feet in width and ran for several yards before it ended in a cul-de-sac.

Into the narrow space between the walls Trent and Sarojini Nanjee followed the Great Magician. It was damp and smelled of freshly-turned earth. A few feet from the entrance the Tibetan paused and grunted a word to Sarojini. Instantly a saber of light smote the darkness, a ray from a very modern electric torch in the woman's hand. The Great Magician took the light from her, flashing it into the cul-de-sac and upon a small stone stairway that plunged into grim depths.

Down into the bowels of the earth it carried them, into a rectangular crypt. Blocks of masonry had been torn away from one side of the wall and an irregular aperture gaped blackly. Trent observed that the stones had not been removed recently, for they were wedged in mud and grown with fungi.

Through the rent in the crypt they passed, entering a tunnel that bored downward at a gradual incline. The torchlight wavered upon damp, ancient walls; upon several inches of water in the bottom of the passage. Cold, earthy odors fouled the air. Before they had proceeded far, loose rocks rattled underfoot, and Trent, glancing down, saw that he was treading upon chips and small particles of stone. White dust streaked the muddy water. This prepared him for the pile of shattered rock that appeared suddenly ahead, heaped at one side of a crude doorway. All of which attested to the fact that the passage had at one time been sealed, but very recently opened—and by men who were not masons.

The tunnel continued its gradual downward course for what Trent calculated was at least a mile. If he judged aright they must be somewhere near the middle of the city. Suddenly the subterranean corridor made a series of turns, then sloped upward, running straight after that and bringing them at length into a crypt similar to the one beneath the swamp-ruins. The smell of oil hung in the air, and Trent identified it with the iron-bound door at one side. He was surprised to see that its lock was very modern. (From some shop in Gyangtse or Darjeeling—thus he conjectured irrelevantly.) The Great Magician fumbled at the formidable portal, and, following a grating noise, it swung out soundlessly on well-oiled hinges. Yellow light impinged upon the darkness of a stairway, on the bottom step of which rested a brass lamp.

The priest lighted the lamp, and Sarojini Nanjee, slipping her hand into Trent's, led the Englishman through the door and up the stairway. Looking back, Trent saw the Great Magician sink cross-legged upon the floor; then the picture was shut out as they climbed higher into gloom. Near the top Sarojini halted and directed the light upward. It swept a square of stone at the very head of the stairs; the lines where it fitted into place were scarcely visible.

"You will have to lift the stone," Sarojini told him, stepping aside.

He mounted the few remaining stairs and stooped in the meager space at the top, pressing hands and shoulders against the square of stone. Warm blood rushed into his stained cheeks as he slowly drew erect, lifting the stone from place and letting it fall noisily upon the floor above. The space into which the rock fitted was perhaps three yards around, widening out at the top. Trent's head and shoulders projected from the aperture into blackness that was more intense because of the light from which he had emerged.

"Pull yourself up," directed Sarojini. "Then I will give you the light."

He drew himself out of the stairway with little difficulty, clambering to his knees on the stone floor above and leaning back to receive the pocket-lamp. As he lifted the light he gained an impression of vastness and gloom and many indistinguishable objects. Placing the torch on the floor beside him, he grasped Sarojini's hands and pulled her through the small space—and she lingered uncomfortably long in his arms, whether by chance or otherwise, he could only wonder.

He recovered the torchlight, and the woman took it from him. The ray cleaved through shadows and stamped a bar of yellow upon a row of oblong wooden boxes; traveled across more boxes (the latter, Trent observed, the length of ordinary rifles) and brought into glowing prominence the slender objects that hung upon the walls. With a quickening of his heart-beat Trent guessed where they were—for the glowing things were swords and lances. Piles of armor shone with a repressed gleam on the floor, and numerous bright shapes outside the intimate radiance of the light resolved into jeweled pistols such as he had seen in the possession of soldiers of the Golden Army. But with the boxes he was mainly concerned; their blank sides intrigued him and challenged his fancy.

"We are in the Armory," said Sarojini Nanjee, "under the center of Lhakang-gompa—not beneath the ground, as you would imagine, but just below the surface of the rocky eminence where the building stands."

She let the light rove about the Armory, which was vast and stretched on four sides into black obscurity. A series of arches and pillars deepened the mystery; armor and various types of weapons kindled dully against a background of gloom. There were more wooden boxes in remote corners, innumerable piles of them.

"What do they contain?" he inquired, indicating the many boxes.

As he expected, she lied.

"How should I know? Armor, I fancy. Yonder"—with a gesture—"is the entrance from the monastery. Soldiers guard the other side of the door.... Come!"

As she led off under the arches and along an aisle between the boxes, Trent asked himself why stores of explosives and ammunition were hidden beneath a Tibetan monastery. Perhaps, after all, there was something to Hsien Sgam's revolution....

An arched doorway admitted them to a corridor lined with gleaming idols. Hideous frescoes were painted upon long panels between the images, and at the end was a massive crimson-stained door. Before one of the panels Sarojini stopped. The painting was monstrous and pictured a three-eyed god standing in the midst of skulls and human entrails—a god that Trent recognized with a start as the one whose image was wrought on the coral symbol of the Order of the Falcon. At regular intervals on the panel were four brass rings, each having a long scarlet tassel attached to it.

Sarojini thrust the torch into Trent's hand and caught one of the brass rings. She twisted it and tugged, and the panel yielded, sliding to one side and disclosing a dark cavity in the wall. The woman stepped in first, Trent following. The recess was not more than fifty feet in diameter—a square space with frescoed walls. Opposite the entrance, and upon a lacquered pedestal, was a silver image of Janesseron, the Three-eyed God of Thunder—and his trio of narrow little orbs looked down upon the several chests that were pushed against the walls of the small room.

"You remember," began Sarojini, "that you were told you would reach enlightenment by gradations?... Now you stand upon the next to the last terrace."

With that she moved to one of the chests; lifted the lid; turned to Trent.

"Come closer," she commanded.

He did. And his eyes met the glitter of gems. And he caught his breath, for he knew he stood in the midst of the jewels for which he had penetrated into the forbidden arcanum of Asia.

"Look," directed the woman, indicating a card attached to the inside of the small chest. "It is written in Hindustani. See: H. H. Tukaji Rao Holkar III, Bahadur, Maharajah of Indore!"

There was a cool, tinkling sound as she drew from the chest a scarf of pearls—tiny lustrous spheres that shone like miniature moons.

"For these," she said, "AndrÉ Chavigny died."

In the dimness, above the ray of the pocket-lamp, their eyes met, his expressionless, hers again like black opals. He heard her quick breathing—felt, as did she, the contagion of the jewels.... In her hands she held a fortune. Vaguely, irrelevantly, he tried to recall the sum at which the pearls of Indore were appraised; instead, wondered why she wished him to believe Chavigny out of the game.

"Hsien Sgam was the first to show me where the jewels were hidden," she resumed. "But he did not take me through the tunnel." Again the cool, musical tinkle as she dropped the pearls into the chest. "We came from the corridors above the Armory. The possibility of ever making away with the jewels seemed very meager—until I found out that there was a tunnel leading from a point somewhere outside the city up into the vaults of Lhakang-gompa. I learned it from a young layman who was loose of tongue and eager for tengas—learned also that there had been trouble between SÂkya-mÛni and the Great Magician and that the Living Buddha was threatening to depose his chief sorcerer. So I went to the Great Magician...." She shrugged. "The lock is easy to him who knows the combination; thus with men.... The tunnel had been sealed; but after the sorcerer's men had worked for five nights that obstacle was removed. The passage was completely opened yesterday. The fool—the magician—thinks he will fly with us when we leave and receive a portion of the jewels! But he will never pass the walls of Shingtse-lunpo after to-night, nor will he interfere with my plans!"

Before Trent could ask the question that came to the end of his tongue Sarojini Nanjee threw back the lid of the largest of the chests, and the shimmer and flare of gems disconnected thought from speech.

"The Gaekwar of Baroda," announced the woman, pointing to the card on the inside of the lid. "This is the Star of the Deccan."

She clasped a necklace of diamonds about her throat, and the stones trembled against her skin like spiders of fire.

"Do not they look well about my neck?" she asked in a repressed voice, a voice that shook. Then she laughed, but he did not like the symptoms that underlay it. He gripped himself. The muscles of his throat stood out, and there was about him the air of a man preparing to do battle.

Sarojini Nanjee returned the diamonds to the chest. Gems rattled. She lifted what seemed a fabric of the spun brilliance of the universe—and a flame swept into Trent's brain. This amazing dazzle, as of cascading stars, was born of a rug made entirely of pearls, with central and corner figures of diamonds; a rug that coruscated and blazed as though its weaver had threaded the shuttle with flame and woven a carpet for the gods; a rug whose gems were multi-hued little serpents that coiled about Trent's brain and sank their fangs into his reason.

The carpet slipped from Sarojini Nanjee's hands and lay in a quivering heap on the edge of the chest. The fire in her eyes matched that of the rug.

"Millions!" she murmured in a husky voice. "Millions!"

... As one in a dream, Trent saw her hands stretch out to him; felt them on his arms. The touch sent a shock of warning through his frame. Involuntarily he stiffened and took a step backward—but the perfume of her hair, the scent of bruised sandalwood, was in his nostrils and on his lips and face, like the fragrant breath of the sirocco ... and the hot mystery of her eyes challenged him to take the caress that her lips offered. (Of the earth always, this Sarojini Nanjee, with earth's gifts for men.) A deadly languor locked about him. He was in some fever-breeding jungle, and she was there, this golden woman, very close to him....

A small incident saved him from Attila's fate.

There came a sound, a gentle rattle and patter, like cool rain upon his thirsty thoughts. Something seemed to snap in his brain, and he moved back a pace—and out of the danger zone. He perceived, then, that the jewel-carpet had slipped from the chest to the floor, thus rescuing him from the very web that it had contrived.

Sarojini, too, drew back. Chagrin smothered the fire from her eyes. Concupiscence in him—her chief weapon—was broken. She saw by the set of his features that control had returned, and knew that having once been so close to defeat, he would be thrice as wary as before. She had lost in this first campaign. She smiled cynically.

"You were always a fool, Arnold," she told him. "Another moment and I might have said that to the north, across Mongolia, lies Russia ... and there, the portals of the world ... you and I...." She smiled again, and there was a trace of bitterness in it. "Oh, yes, I can forget Jehelumpore—can forgive. Said I not that I am the Swaying Cobra, that I dance for those I love, but have only venom for those I hate? Now, Arnold, you are your old Anglo-Saxon self again—oh, you English, with your 'sense of honor'—and to-night you will start for India and your humdrum life. Yes, we will leave Shingtse-lunpo to-night, with these"—she made a gesture—"and for a while you will be a hero—and then—" She broke off, still smiling; shrugged. "Then, in the years that follow, you will often remember that night in Tibet when the Swaying Cobra might have offered you the wealth of an empire ... and perhaps you will regret your Anglo-Saxon sentimentalism."

Then she turned and placed in the chest the carpet whose only gift to men, down through the years, was a dream of crime. Trent drew one hand across his moist forehead, as though to wipe away the obfuscations of a nightmare. The recollection of his weakness came as a hot accusation. His lips had touched the cup of delirium, and of that shuddering moment there remained but the memory—gray anti-climax.

"We dare not remain here longer," announced Sarojini. "The Great Magician is a coward, and if we are too long we shall find him chattering like the ape that he is. I will give you your instructions now. Listen well. To-night—it must be near dawn now—I shall have a pack-train ready, and in barley sacks, upon the animals, will be the jewels. You will send your caravan out of the city beforehand, with instructions to wait on the road a mile beyond Amber Bridge. Meanwhile, at eleven o'clock—remember, eleven—a man will be at your house and will guide you to the gate by which we left the city this morning, the Great Magician's Gate. There I will meet you.

"The gems will not be missed until the following day—and I have taken precautions to cover our trail. Yesterday a man left with a caravan of yaks, and several miles beyond the tchorten outpost he is waiting. There we will change pack-animals. He will go north, along the road to Mongolia, with the ponies and mules; while we will travel south, with the yaks. The soldiers at the outpost will describe us as having been on mules, and our pursuers will follow the tracks of the horses and mules. When they discover their mistake we will be near the border of India—for we shall travel along the Himalayas to Gyangtse. There the District Agent will protect us."

"Can my muleteers leave Shingtse-lunpo without passports?" Trent questioned.

She nodded. "A passport is necessary only when one wishes to enter; it is not required at all of Tibetans.... Come, we must go."

They left the recess in the wall, closed the panel and returned to the vast, dim Armory. Again the blank sides of the boxes intrigued Trent. Sarojini, carrying the flashlight, preceded him through the aperture in the floor and stood on the stair, directing the ray up while he fitted the stone into place. Then they descended into the crypt.

The Great Magician was waiting as they had left him—sitting cross-legged on the floor. Extinguishing the lamp, he placed it upon the bottom step and locked the door.

Back through the tunnel, with its cold, earthy odors, they went; reached the crypt in the swamp; ascended into the ruins. It was still dark. The rain had stopped, but a lingering moisture saturated the cold air. Under the gray barren sky they crossed the marsh and entered the city. The Tibetan who guided Trent to the Great Magician's temple was waiting just within the gate, and there the Englishman parted with Sarojini Nanjee.

"This man will come for you to-night," she whispered in English. "Be ready. To-night we win or lose, Arnold—and if we lose, Hsien Sgam will have us put to death as he did those mute fools who were executed in the amphitheater yesterday!"

She smiled—a smile that might have been a promise or a threat—and hurried away with the Great Magician.

Trent moved off behind his guide. Once more they traveled the silent, ghostly streets where only snarling curs were astir. The Tibetan uttered never a word—not even when he left. At Trent's house he helped the Englishman over the wall, then slunk toward the mouth of the lane.

The muleteers were asleep in the quadrangle, but Trent's footsteps aroused them. He instructed Hsiao to make a fire. Kee Meng, who lay upon a yak-hair robe by the main entrance, told him he had been sleeping well, that there was little pain and he could stand without ill effects.

As Trent dried his clothing by the fire, scenes of the past few hours conjured themselves in the darkness beyond the flames. Three things he had learned; three things he had yet to learn. He knew where the jewels were hidden; knew that Sarojini Nanjee and Hsien Sgam were not allied (although her connection with the Mongol puzzled him); knew the woman could tell him something about the murder of Manlove (for she was in Gaya the night he was killed). But the mystery of Chavigny was yet unsolved, as was the mystery of Manlove's death and the mystery of Dana Charteris' disappearance. He did not altogether trust Sarojini; the incident of the rug (flame to the memory) was a hint of some purpose of her own. Furthermore, her plan was too simple to be convincing.... And how much there was to be accomplished before eleven o'clock! He had one remaining card to play. And he would not wait for Hsien Sgam to send for him; he would seek him out, force his hand.

With this purpose established in his mind, he instructed the muleteers to call him three hours after sunrise and went to his room. He was weary—body and soul.

When he fell asleep, dawn was beginning to bleed the veins of the East.