Shaking with rage, Amber stood for a long moment with pistol poised and eyes wary; then, bewildered, he slowly lowered the weapon. "Well," he observed reflectively, "I'm damned." For the glittering thing he had mistaken for a revolver lay at his feet; and it was nothing more nor less than a shoehorn. While as for the babu, he had dropped back into the chair and given way to a rude but reassuring paroxysm of gusty, silent laughter.

"I'm a fool," said Amber; "and if I'm not mistaken you're Labertouche."

With a struggle the babu overcame his emotion. "I am, my dear fellow, I am," he gasped. "And I owe you an apology. Upon my word, I'd forgotten; one grows so accustomed to living the parts in these masquerades, after a time, that one forgets. Forgive me." He offered a hand which Amber grasped warmly in his unutterable relief. "I'm really delighted to meet you," continued Labertouche seriously. "Any man who knows India can't help being glad to meet the author of 'The Peoples of the Hindu Kush.'"

"You did frighten me," Amber confessed, smiling. "I didn't know what to expect—or suspect. Certainly,"—with a glance round the incongruously furnished room—"I never looked forward to anything like this—or you, in that get-up."

"You wouldn't, you know," Labertouche admitted gravely. "I might have warned you in my note; but that was a risky thing, at best. I feared to go into detail—it might have fallen into the wrong hands."

"Whose?" demanded Amber.

"That, my dear man, is what we're here to find out—if we can. But sit down; we shall have to have quite a bit of talk." He scraped a heap of gaily-coloured native garments off one end of the charpoy and motioned Amber to the chair. At the same time he fished a cigar-case out of some recess in his clothing. "These are good," he remarked, opening the case and offering it to Amber; "I daren't smoke anything half so good when at work. The native tobacco is abominable, you know—quite three-fourths filth."

"At work?" questioned Amber, clipping the end of his cigar and lighting it. "You don't mean to say you travel round in those clothes?"

"But I do. It's business with me—though few people know it. Quain didn't; only I had a chance, one day, to tell him some rather startling facts about native life. This sort of thing, done properly, gives a man insight into a lot of unusual things."

Labertouche puffed his cigar into a glow and leaned back, clasping one knee with two brown hands and squinting up at the low, discoloured ceiling. And Amber, looking him over, was amazed by the absolute fidelity of his make-up; the brownish stain on face and hands, the high-cut patent-leather boots, the open-work socks through which his tinted calves showed grossly, his shapeless, baggy, soiled garments—all were hopelessly babu-ish.

"And if it isn't done properly?"

"Oh, then——!" Labertouche laughed, lifting his shoulders expressively. "No Englishman incapable of living up to a disguise has ever tried it more than once in India; few, very few, have lived to tell of the experiment."

"You're connected with the police?" Amber's brows contracted as he remembered Rutton's emphatic prohibition.

But Quain had not failed to mention that. "Officially, no," said Labertouche readily. "Now and again, of course, I run across a bit of valuable information; and then, somehow, indirectly, the police get wind of it. But this going fantee in an amateur way is simply my hobby; I've been at it for years—and very successfully, too. Of course, it'll have its end. One's bound to slip up eventually. You can train yourself to live the life of the native, but you can't train your mind to think as he thinks. That's how the missteps happen. Some day…." He sighed, not in the least unhappily…. "Some day I'll dodge into this hole, or another that I know of, put on somebody else's rags—say, these I'm wearing—and inconspicuously become a mysterious disappearance. That's how it is with all of us who go in for this sort of thing. But it's like opium, you know; you try it the first time for the lark of it; the end is tragedy."

Amber drew a long breath, his eyes glistening with wonder and admiration of the man. "You don't mean to tell me you run such risks for the pure love of it?"

"Well … perhaps not altogether. But we needn't go into details, need we?" Labertouche's smile robbed the rebuke of its sting. "The opium simile is a very good one, though I say it who shouldn't. One acquires a taste for the forbidden, and one hires a little room like this from an unprincipled blackguard like Honest George, and insensibly one goes deeper and deeper until one gets beyond one's depth. That is all. It explains me sufficiently. And," he chuckled, "you'd never have known it if your case hadn't been exceptional."

"It is, I think." Amber's expression became anxious. "I want to know what you think of it—now Quain's told you. And, I say, what did you mean by 'news of the Fs.'?"

"News of the Farrells—father and daughter, of course." Labertouche's eyes twinkled.

"But how in the name of all that's strange—!"

"Did I connect the affair Rutton with the Farrells? At first by simple inference. You were charged with a secret errand, demanding the utmost haste, by Rutton; your first thought was to travel by the longer route—which, as it happens, Miss Farrell had started upon a little while before. You had recently met her, and I've heard she's rather a striking young woman. You see?"

"Yes," admitted Amber sheepishly. "But—"

"And then I remembered something," interrupted Labertouche. "I recalled Rutton. I knew him years ago, when he was a young man…. You know the yarn about him?"

"A little—mighty little. I know now that he was a Rajput—though he never told me that; I know that he married a Russian noblewoman"—Amber hesitated imperceptibly—"that she died soon after, that he chose to live out of India and to die rather than return to it."

"He was," said Labertouche, "a singular man, an exotic result of the unnatural conditions we English have brought about in India. The word renegade describes him aptly, I think: he was born and bred a Brahmin, a Rajput, of the hottest and bluest blood in Rajputana; he died to all intents and purposes a European—with an English heart. He is—was—by rights Maharana of Khandawar. As the young Maharaj he was sent to England to be educated. I'm told his record at Oxford was a brilliant one. He became a convert to Christianity—that was predestined—was admitted to the Church of England, a communicant. When his father died and he was summoned to take his place, Rutton at first refused. Pressure was brought to bear upon him by the English Government and he returned, was enthroned, and for a little time ruled Khandawar. It was then that I knew him. He was continually dissatisfied, however, and after a year or two disappeared. It was rumoured that he'd struck a bargain with his prime-minister, one Salig Singh. At all events Salig Singh contrived to usurp the throne, Government offering no objection. Rutton turned up eventually in Russia and married a woman there who died in childbirth—twenty years ago, perhaps. The child did not survive its mother…." Labertouche paused deliberately, his glance searching Amber's face. "So the report ran, at least," he concluded quietly.

"How do you know all this?" Amber countered evasively.

"Government watches its wards very tenderly," said Labertouche with a grin. "Besides, India's a great place for gossip…. And then," he pursued tenaciously, "I remembered something else. I recalled that Rutton had one very close friend, an Englishman named Farrell—"

"Oh, what's the use?" Amber cut in nervously. "You understand the situation too well. It's no good my trying to keep anything from you."

"Such as the fact that Colonel Farrell adopted Rutton's daughter, who, as it happens, did survive her mother? Yes; I knew that—or, rather, part I knew and part I guessed. But don't worry, Mr. Amber; I'll keep the secret."

"For the girl's sake," said Amber, twisting his hands together.

"For her sake. I pledge you my word."

"Thank you."

"And now … for what purpose did Rutton ask you to come to India?
Wasn't it to get Miss Farrell out of the country?"

"I think you're the devil himself," said Amber.

"I'm not," confessed Labertouche; "but I am a member of the Indian Secret Service—not officially connected with the police, observe!—and I know a deal that you don't. I think, in short, I can place my finger on the reason why Rutton was so concerned to get his daughter out of the country."

Amber looked his question.

"You read the papers, don't you, in America?"

"Rather." Amber smiled.

"You've surely not been so blind as to miss the occasional reports that leak out about native unrest in India?"

"Surely you don't mean——"

"I assuredly do mean that the Second Mutiny impends," declared Labertouche solemnly. "Such, at least, is my belief, and such is the belief of every thinking man in India who is at all informed. The entire country is undermined with conspiracy and sedition; day after day a vast, silent, underground movement goes on, fomenting rebellion against the English rule. The worst of it is, there's no stopping it, no way of scotching the serpent; its heads are myriad, seemingly. And yet—I don't know—since yesterday I have hoped that through you we might eventually strike to the heart of the movement."

"Through me!" cried Amber, startled.

Labertouche nodded. "Just so. The information you have already brought us is invaluable. Have you thought of the significance of Chatterji's 'Message of the Bell'?"

"'Even now,'" Amber quoted mechanically, "'The Gateway of Swords yawns wide, that he who is without fear may pass within; to the end that the Body be purged of the Scarlet Evil.'" He shook his head mystified. "No; I don't understand."

"It's so simple," urged Labertouche; "all but the Gateway of Swords. I don't place that—yet…. But the 'Body'—plainly that is India; the 'Scarlet Evil'—could anything more fittingly describe English rule from the native point of view?"

Amber felt of his head solicitously. "And yet," he averred plaintively, "it doesn't feel like wood."

Labertouche laughed gently. "Now to-night you will learn something from this Dhola Baksh—something important, undoubtedly. May I see this ring—this Token?"

Unbuttoning his shirt, Amber produced the Eye from the chamois bag. Labertouche studied it for a long time in silence, returning it with an air of deep perturbation.

"The thing is strange to me," he said. "For the present we may dismiss it as simply what it pretends to be—a token, a sign by which one man shall know another…. Wear it but turn the stone in; and keep your hands in your pockets when we're outside."

Amber obeyed. "We'll be going, now?"

"Yes." Labertouche rose, throwing away his cigar and stamping out its fire.

"But the Farrells?"

"Forgive me; I had forgotten. The Farrells are at Darjeeling, where the
Colonel is stationed just now—happily for him."

"Then," said Amber, with decision, "I leave for Darjeeling to-morrow morning."

"I know no reason why you shouldn't," agreed Labertouche. "If anything turns up I'll contrive to let you know." He looked Amber up and down with a glance that took in every detail. "I'm sorry," he observed, "you couldn't have managed to look a trace shabbier. Still, with a touch here and there, you'll do excellently well as a sailor on a spree."

"As bad as that?"

"Oah, my dear fallow!"—it was now the babu speaking, while he hopped around Amber with his head critically to one side, like an inquisitive jackdaw, now and again darting forward to peck at him with hands that nervously but deftly arranged details of his attire to please a taste fastidious and exacting in such matters—"Oah, my dear fallow, surely you appreciate danger of venturing into nateeve quarters in European dress? As regular-out-and-out sahib, I am meaning, of course. It is permeesible for riff-raff, sailors and Tommies from the Fort, and soa on, to indulge in debauchery among nateeves, but first-class sahib—Oah, noah! You would be mobbed in no-time-at-all, where we are going."

"All right; I guess I can play the part, babu. At least, I've plenty of atmosphere," Amber laughed, mentioning the incident of the peg he had not consumed over Honest George's bar.

"I had noticed that; a happy accident, indeed. I think"—Labertouche stepped back to look Amber over again—"I think you will almost do. One moment."

He seized Amber's hat and, dashing it violently to the floor, deliberately stamped it out of shape; when restored to its owner it had aged five years in less than half as many minutes. Amber laughed, putting it on. "Surely you couldn't ask me to look more disreputable," he said with a dubious survey of himself in the mirror.

His collar had been confiscated with his tie; his coat collar was partially turned up in the back; what was visible of his shirt was indecently dirty. His polished shoes had been deprived of their pristine lustre by means of a damp rag, vigorously applied, and then rubbed with dust. An artistic stain had been added to one of his sleeves by the simple device of smudging it with the blacking from his shoes. As for his hat, with the brim pulled down in front, it was nothing more nor less than shocking.

"You'll do," chuckled Labertouche approvingly. "Just ram your hands into your trouser pockets without unbuttoning your coat, and shuffle along as if nocturnal rambles in the slums of Calcutta were an everyday thing to you. If you're spoken to, don't betray too much familiarity with the vernacular. You know about the limit of the average Tommy's vocabulary; don't go beyond it." He unbolted and locked the door by which Amber had entered, putting the key in his pocket, and turned to a second door across the room. "We'll leave this way; I chose this place because it's a regular rabbit warren, with half a dozen entrances and exits. I'll leave you in a passage leading to the bazaar. Wait in the doorway until you see me stroll past; give me thirty yards lead and follow. Keep in the middle of the way, avoid a crowd as the plague, and don't lose sight of me. I'll stop in front of Dohla Baksh's shop long enough to light a cheroot and go on without looking back. When you come out I'll be waiting for you. If we lose one another, get back to your hotel as quickly as possible. I may send you word. If I don't, I shall understand you've taken the first morning train to Darjeeling. I think that's all."

As Amber left the room Labertouche extinguished the lamp, shut and locked the door, and followed, catching Amber by the arm and guiding him through pitch darkness to the head of the stairs. "Don't talk," he whispered; "trust me." They descended an interminable flight of steps, passed down a long, echoing corridor, and again descended. From the foot of the second flight Labertouche shunted Amber round through what seemed a veritable maze of passages—in which, however, he was evidently quite at home. At length, "Now go ahead!" was breathed at Amber's ear and at the same time his arm was released.

He obeyed blindly, stumbling down a reeking corridor, and in a minute more, to his unutterable relief, was in the open air of the bazaar.

Blinking with the abrupt transition from absolute night to garish light, he skulked in the shadow of the doorway, waiting. Beneath his gaze Calcutta paraded its congress of peoples—a comprehensive collection of specimens of every tribe in Hindustan and of nearly every other race in the world besides: red-bearded Delhi Pathans, towering Sikhs, lean sinewy Rajputs with bound jaws, swart agile Bhils, Tommies in their scarlet tunics, Japanese and Chinese in their distinctive dress, short and sturdy Gurkhas, yellow Saddhus, Jats stalking proudly, brawling knots of sailormen from the Port, sleek Mahrattas, polluted Sansis, Punjabis, Bengalis, priests, beggars, dancing girls; a blaze of colour ever shifting, a Babel of tongues never stilled, a seething scum on a witch's brew of humanity….

Like a fat, tawdry moth in his garments of soiled pink, a babu loitered past, with never a sidelong glance for the loaferish figure in the shadowed doorway; and the latter seemed himself absorbed in the family of Eurasians who were shrilly squabbling with the keeper of a vegetable-stall adjacent. But presently he wearied of their noise, yawned, thrust both hands deep in his pockets, and stumbled away. The bazaar accepted him as a brother, unquestioning, and he picked his way through it with an ease that argued nothing but absolute familiarity with his surroundings. But always you may be sure, he had the gleam of pink satin in the corner of his eye.

Before long Pink Satin diverged into the Chitpur Road, with Amber a discreet shadow. So far the latter had been treading known ground, but a little later, when Pink Satin dived abruptly into a darksome alleyway to the right, drawing Amber after him as a child drags a toy on a string, the Virginian lost his bearings utterly and was thereafter helplessly dependent upon the flutter of Pink Satin, and unworried only so long as he could see him, in a fidget of anxiety whenever the labyrinth shut Labertouche from his sight for a moment or two.

It was quiet enough away from the main thoroughfare, but with a sinister quiet. Tall dwellings marched shoulder to shoulder along the ways, shuttered, dark, grim, with an effect of conspirators, their heads together in lawless conference. The streets were intolerably narrow, the paving a farce; pools of stagnant water stood in the depressions, piles of refuse banked the walls. The fetid air hung motionless but sibilant with stealthy footsteps and whisperings…. Preferable to this seemed even the infinitely more dangerous and odorous Coolootollah purlieus into which they presently passed—nesting place though it were for the city's most evil and desperate classes.

In time broad Machua Bazaar Street received them—Pink Satin and the sailorman out for a night of it. And now Pink Satin began to stroll more sedately, manifesting a livelier interest in the sights of the wayside. Amber's impatience—for he guessed that they neared the goldsmith's stall—increased prodigiously; the shops, the stalls, the thatched dance-halls in which arose the hideous music of the nautch, had no lure for him, though they illustrated all that was most evil and most depraved in the second city of the Empire. He was only eager to have done with this unsavoury adventure, to know again the clean walls of his room in the Great Eastern, to taste again the purer air of the Maidan.

Without warning Pink Satin pulled up, extracted from the recesses of his costume a long, black and vindictive-looking native cigar, and lighted it, thoughtfully exhaling the smoke through his nose while he stared covetously at the display of a slipper-merchant whose stand was over across from the stall of a goldsmith.

With true Oriental deliberation Pink Satin finally made up his mind to move on; and Amber lurched heavily into the premises occupied by one Dhola Baksh, a goldsmith.

A customer, a slim, handsome Malayan youth, for the moment held the attention of the proprietor. The two were haggling with characteristic enjoyment over a transaction which seemed to involve less than twenty rupees. Amber waited, knowing that patience must be his portion until the bargain should be struck. Dhola Baksh himself, a lean, sharp-featured Mahratta grey with age, appraised with a single look the new customer, and returned his interest to the Malay. But Amber garnered from that glance a sensation of recognition. He wondered dimly, why; could the goldsmith have been warned of his coming?

Two or three more putative customers idled into the shop. Beyond its threshold the stream of native life rolled on, ceaselessly fluent; a pageant of the Middle Ages had been no more fantastic and unreal to Western eyes. Now and again a wayfarer paused, his interest attracted by the goldsmith's rush of business.

Unexpectedly the proprietor made a substantial concession. Money passed upon the instant, sealing the bargain. The Malay rose to go. Dhola Baksh lifted a stony stare to Amber.

"Your, pleasure, sahib?" he enquired with a thinly-veiled sneer. What need to show deference to a down-at-the-heel sailor from the Port?

"I want money—I want to borrow," said Amber promptly.

"On your word, sahib?"

"On security."

"What manner of security can you offer?"

"A ring—an emerald ring."

Dhola Baksh shrugged. His eyes shifted from Amber to the encircling faces of the bystanders. "I am a poor man," he whined. "How should I have money to lend? Come to me on the morrow; then mayhap I may have a few rupees. To-night I have neither cash nor time."

The hint was lost upon Amber. "A stone of price——" he persisted.

With a disturbed and apprehensive look, the money-lender rose. "Come, then," he grumbled, "if you must——"

A voice cried out behind Amber—"Heh!"——more a squeal than a cry. Intuitively, as at a signal of danger, he leaped aside. Simultaneously something like a beam of light sped past his head. The goldsmith uttered one dreadful, choking scream, and went to his knees. For as many as three seconds he swayed back and forth, his features terribly contorted, his thin old hands plucking feebly at the handle of a broadbladed dagger which had transfixed his throat. Then he tumbled forward on his face, kicking.

There followed a single instant of suspense and horror, then a mad rush of feet as the street stampeded into the shop. Voices clamoured to the skies. Somehow the lights went out.

Amber started to fight his way out. As he struggled on, making little headway through the press, a hand grasped his arm and drew him another way.

"Make haste, hazoor!" cried the owner of the hand, in Hindustani. "Make haste, lest they seek to fasten this crime upon your head."