THAT that followed Alwa's breakaway was all but the tensest hour in Howrah City's history. The inevitable—the foiled rage of the priests and Jaimihr's impudent insistence that the missionaries should be handed over to him—the Maharajah's answer—all combined to set the murmurings afoot. Men said that the threatened rebellion against the rule of Britain had broken loose at last, and a dozen other quite as false and equally probable things.

Jaimihr, finding that his palace was intact, and that only the prisoner and three horses from his stable were missing, placed the whole guard under arrest—stormed futilely, while his hurrying swarm flocked to him through the dinning streets—and then, mad-angry and made reckless by his rage, rode with a hundred at his back to Howrah's palace, scattering the bee-swarm of inquisitive but so far peaceful citizens right and left.

With little ceremony, he sent in word to Howrah that he wanted Alwa and the missionaries; he stated that his private honor was at stake, and that he would stop at nothing to wreak vengeance. He wanted the man who had dared invade his palace—the man whom he had released—and the two who were the prime cause of the outrage. And with just as little ceremony word came out that the Maharajah would please himself as to what he did with prisoners.

That message was followed almost instantly by the high priest of Siva in person, angry as a turkey-gobbler and blasphemously vindictive. He it was who told Jaimihr of the unexpected departure through the palace-grounds.

“Ride, Jaimihr-sahib! Ride!” he advised him.

“How many have you? A hundred? Plenty! Ride and cut him off! There is but one road to Alwa's place; he must pass by the northern ford through Howrah River. Ride and cut him off!”

So, loose-reined, foam-flecked, breathing vengeance, Jaimihr and his hundred thundered through the dark hot night, making a bee-line for the point where Alwa's band must pass in order to take the shortest route to safety.

It was his word to the Jew that saved Alwa's neck. He and his men were riding borrowed horses, and he had promised to return them and reclaim his own. They had moved at a walk through winding, dark palace-alleys, led by a palace attendant, and debouched through a narrow door that gave barely horse-room into the road where Jaimihr had once killed a Maharati trader who molested Rosemary McClean. The missionary and his daughter were mounted on the horses seized in Jaimihr's stable; Joanna, moaning about “three gold mohurs, sahib—three, where are they?” was up behind Ali Partab, tossed like a pea on a drum-skin by the lunging movements of the wonder of a horse.

Instead of heading straight for home, in which case—although he did not know it—he would have been surely overhauled and brought to bay, he led at a stiff hand gallop to the Jew's, changed horses, crossed the ford by the burning ghats, and swooped in a wide half-circle for the sandy trail that would take him homeward. He made the home road miles beyond the point where Jaimihr waited for him—drew rein into the long-striding amble that desert-taught horses love—and led on, laughing.

“Ho!” He laughed. “Ho-ho! Here, then, is the end of Mahommed Gunga's scheming! Now, when he comes with arguments to make me fight on the British side, what a tale I have for him! Ho! What a swearing there will be! I will give him his missionary people, and say, 'There, Mahommed Gunga, cousin mine, there is my word redeemed—there is thy man into the bargain—there are three horses for thee—and I—I am at Howrah's beck and call!' Allah! What a swearing there will be!”

There was swearing, viler and more blasphemous than any of which Mahommed Gunga might be capable, where Jaimihr waited in the dark. He waited until the yellow dawn broke up the first dim streaks of violet before he realized that Alwa had given him the slip; and he cursed even the high priest of Siva when that worthy accosted him and asked what tidings.

“Another trick!” swore Jaimihr. “So, thou and thy temple rats saw fit to send me packing for the night! What devils' tricks have been hatched out in my absence?”

The high priest started to protest, but Jaimihr silenced him with coarse-mouthed threats.

“I, too, can play double when occasion calls for it!” he swore. And with that hint at coming trouble he clattered on home to his palace.

To begin with, when he reached home, he had the guard beaten all but unconscious for having dared let raiders in during the night before; then he sent them, waterless and thirsty, back to the dungeon. He felt better then, and called for ink and paper.

For hours he thought and wrote alternately, tearing up letter after letter. Then, at last, he read over a composition that satisfied him and set his seal at the foot. He placed the whole in a silver tube, poured wax into the joint, and called for the fat man who had been responsible for Ali Partab's capture.

“Dog!” he snarled. “Interfering fool! All this was thy doing! Didst thou see the guard beaten awhile ago?”

“I did. It was a lordly beating. The men are all but dead but will live for such another one.”

“Wouldst thou be so beaten?”

“How can I prevent, if your highness wishes?”

“Take this. It is intended for Peshawur but may be given to any British officer above the rank of major. It calls for a receipt. Do not dare come back, or be caught in Howrah City, without a receipt for that tube and its contents intact!”

“If Alwa and Mahommed Gunga are in league with my brother,” muttered Jaimihr to himself when the fat Hindoo had gone, “then the sooner the British quarrel with both of them the better. Howrah alone I can dispose of easily enough, and there is yet time before rebellion starts for the British to spike the guns of the other two. By the time that is done, I will be Maharajah!”

It was less than three days later when the word came mysteriously through the undiscoverable “underground” route of India for all men to be ready.

“By the next full moon,” went the message, from the priests alone knew where, “all India will be waiting. When the full moon rises then the hour is come!”

“And when that full moon rises,” thought Jaimihr to himself, “my brother's funeral rites will be past history!”

For the present, though, he made believe to regret his recent rage, and was courteous to priest and Maharajah alike—even sending to his brother to apologize.