CHAPTER III

A PIECE OF CORAL

Sunset was spreading a fan of flamingo plumes above Meera, a native village to the northward of Gaya, when Arnold Trent (unaware that Destiny had been hovering over him since Dana Charteris found the scrap of paper, in Delhi, three days before) clattered out of the jungle and along the nearly deserted main street. At the council-tree, where the headman of the village sat and chewed betel-leaf, he drew rein, listening to a low, eerie wailing that came from one of the whitewashed houses.

"It is Chatterjee," volunteered the headman. "His Ratanamma is dead, Dakktar Sahib."

Trent swung down from his saddle. "When did it happen, Ranjeet Singh?"

"Not an hour past, Dakktar Sahib."

Trent's eyes roved up and down the street. "Where's everybody? Meera looks as if a plague had struck it."

Ranjeet Singh, who was a Jain, spat contemptuously.

"Some vermin-ridden priests from Tibet are at the Sacred Bo-tree," he explained, "and the worshippers of Gaudama have swarmed thither, like flies to a dung-feast!"

Trent smiled slightly and moved toward one of the whitewashed houses, swinging along with the leisurely, easy stride of one poised on well-controlled muscles. At the door he paused. It was dark within, and a breath of offal and man-reek greeted him. After a moment he saw, against the darkness, the pale silhouette of a white-clad figure. From this figure came the eerie wails.

"Chatterjee!" Trent called.

The silhouette ceased wailing long enough to quaver: "Dakktar Sahib!"

The Englishman, his eyes now accustomed to the gloom, strode over to a thong-strung bed and peered down at the form stretched upon it. Unable to see clearly, he struck a match. The tiny flare flickered upon bare brown skin.... Trent swore.

"Stop that damned nonsense!" he commanded. "Chatterjee, you've had some infernal _hakim_ here again--against my orders!"

"My little Ratanamma, dove of my bosom, is dead!" wailed the man.

"Did you give her the medicine I left?"

"Yes, Dakktar Sahib! It was your medicine that killed her. The _hakim_ said so."

Trent swore again. "I've a notion to report you to the Karnal Sahib and have you taken up! You old murderer! Didn't you know better than to let some filthy, stinking _hakim_ burn her stomach with a hot iron?"

The native was wailing again.

"Listen to me, Chatterjee," said Trent sternly, gripping the man's shoulder. "Who did this?"

"Your medicine, Dakktar Sahib!"

Trent shook him roughly. "Will you answer me--or...."

"Your medicine, Dakktar Sahib!" insisted the man.

Trent released him, realizing the futility of pressing the question.

"Very well. I'll report you to the Karnal Sahib and he'll have you strung up by your toes!"

He left the house abruptly--followed by feverish, glowing eyes.

Out of Meera he rode, past the temple on the river bank and along the jungle-lined road toward Gaya.

Trent was angry. But his face gave no indication of it. Twenty-three years under a tropical sun (add the ten years at school in Britain and you'll have his age) had baked his skin to a leather brown, and a third of that time spent in the army had taught him that impassivity is man's chief advantage--a citadel against the aggressive. He had, in the vernacular of the times, a "poker face"--the mask of those who share their secrets with few. In either mufti or khaki he was not particularly handsome, and this evening, after a day of work in viscid heat, he was almost ugly. Dust was ingrained into his skin, like an ocher pigment; his throat and brows were moist with perspiration. Yet there was about him something arresting and vital--a challenging strength that pronounced him a man's man. And he was. He talked with men; ate with men; lived with men; understood men. Scales that dip into earth-dust and swing again to regions of exquisite idealism--the eternal weight and counter-weight of Self. That was how he defined them. And his definitions were usually metaphors. An idiosyncrasy. Give him a chair in a dim room with one of Beethoven's sonatas swelling in throat-gripping chords, or a pipe and congenial darkness somewhere close to the stars, and he was in his prime element.

As for women.... That there had been one--one or more--at some time in his life, nobody who knew him doubted; but it was the general opinion at Gaya and thereabouts that he was as little concerned with women as with anything else that habited the planet. Envious subordinates hinted that at one time or other he had run afoul some feminine reef. When these remarks drifted to Trent (and such remarks always do) he only smiled, for he had a generous supply of humor packed away under his impassivity. It was never known that he deliberately avoided women; it appeared that he simply accepted them as a matter of form, inevitable as waves on a sea, and sometimes as disastrous.

Only Richard Manlove, also an army doctor, who shared his bungalow, had penetrated beyond the outer-rampart of his seeming seclusiveness--"Dicky" Manlove whom Trent first saw out in dead Mesopotamia. Their friendship was a popular topic of discussion on warm afternoons when feminine Gaya gathered to perspire under one common punkah. So different, you know.... Young "Dicky"--a delicious boy ... and the major--oh, rather a decent chap, a human manual of Hindustani and all those other perfectly impossible languages, but ... well, it's so disconcerting not to know what a man is thinking, isn't it?

Thus feminine Gaya catalogued him, and thus he appeared--immobile--this late afternoon as he rode out of Meera.

His anger died as he trotted on, and by the time he came within view of his bungalow, built on the flank of one of Gaya's hills, he was watching, in a whimsical, almost detached manner, the fireflies dance and reel in the dusk. When he drew nearer, he saw a figure in a white dress leave his compound, a figure that paused at the diverging roads not far from the bungalow, and, after a slight hesitation, chose the branch in his direction. Instantly he indexed her as a stranger; no female resident would think of using the isolated Meera road after dusk.

She wore a pith helmet with a veil. The veil was lifted, but as he approached, she lowered it--curiously enough, he thought. He was certain she had come from his compound; therefore, when she was within a few yards, he drew rein.

"Your pardon...." as he lifted his helmet. "Do you wish to see me? I'm Major Trent."

She halted, resting one hand upon a tree-trunk. He caught the glint of a bracelet on her white arm, and, being a man to notice details, observed a design worked in heavy relief upon it--a design that, in the half-tone of the early night, was almost indistinguishable.

"No," came the answer from under the veil, in a voice with a soft, thrilling timbre. "No."

He was still studying the bracelet out of the corner of his eye, and he perceived that the intricate workmanship represented a king-cobra; its hood was lifted in bizarre relief.... A barbaric ornament for a white woman to wear, he thought.

"But, really," he persisted, "it isn't quite safe for you to go along this road. Beasts, you know."

A pause. He saw the dark pools of her eyes upon him.

"Thank you," she murmured. "I thought I was going to the dak bungalow."

With that she turned and moved away in the direction of the metalled main highway.

"Now, that's queer," he observed to himself, staring after her. "Anybody with even bad sight could see that this road...." Certainly she was at the compound gate. Why had she falsified?

He removed his helmet and furrowed his hair--a characteristic gesture; then, still watching the woman, he jerked the reins and trotted toward the bungalow.

2

A native servant in a white cotton _chuddah_ and turban switched on the light in the living-room as Trent entered.

"Has Manlove Sahib come in, Ganeesh?" asked the Englishman.

"No, Dakktar Sahib."

Trent placed his helmet upon the table and sank into a chair.

"I sha'n't want anything to eat, so you may as well go. If Manlove Sahib hasn't eaten, he can go to the barracks."

As the native quitted the room, Trent, at a sudden thought, called after him.

"Ganeesh," he said, as his servant reappeared, "has anyone been here this afternoon?"

"No, Dakktar Sahib."

"Didn't a lady call a few minutes ago?"

The man answered in the negative.

"Hmm. Very well. That's all."

Still puzzling over the strange woman, he removed a pipe and a sack of tobacco from his shirt pocket, and when he had filled the bowl he lighted it. For several minutes he drew upon the amber stem, looking abstractedly into the whorls of smoke; then he picked up a brown volume from the table and opened it at a leaf that was turned under.

Here was another trait that Gaya had not discovered. Frequently when he was tired he turned to poetry--sometimes to books on the art-treasures and ancient lore of India, Indo-China and China--for relaxation.

His eyes followed these lines:

Star of the South that now through orient mist, At nightfall off Tampico or Belize, Greetest the sailor, rising from those seas Where first in me, a fond romanticist, The tropic sunset's bloom on cloudy piles Cast out industrious cares with dreams of fabulous isles.

He rather fancied that passage. Fabulous isles. His brain toyed with the thought. For, although he walked down among mortals, sheathing himself in indifference and impassivity, he kept, in secret, a ladder to the stars--a concession to return at will to a guarded kingdom of his youth, the dominion of Romance and Adventure. He would have dwelt in this kingdom, secluded from earth, but for a thorn that was fastened deep within him. This thorn had pricked him since that period of adolescence when first visions and aspirations stirred in his boyish brain and set him to dreaming of the future. It had goaded him relentlessly into achievement, against the will of his adventurous spirit.

Strive as he might, he could not draw it out.

It was Ambition.

Because of it he had buried a dream that at odd moments returned and haunted him, like the poignantly sweet odor of lavender rising from packed-away treasures. Reckless, this dream, dangerous. To forsake the dull earth; drink freedom from the winds. A passion for the open spaces--to explore the fabulous isles. But the lure of uncharted seas and archipelagoes beyond the sunset, sheer and calling as they were, could not entice him to trample tradition. Ambition had won. And he beheld himself now, at thirty-three, a romantic soul armored in realism; at heart a boy who had never broken away from the age when flapping canvas and groaning timbers cause a queer clutching in the throat. His reckless impulses and desires were bitted and diverted into accomplishment. He was a success. But there were times, often in the dead of the night, with the jungle solitude challenging speech, when he realized that, in his own eyes, he was a failure.

He sighed unconsciously, almost inaudibly, and his sea-green eyes softened to gray as he fashioned, extravagantly, a blue dragon in the tobacco smoke that coiled sinuously toward the ceiling; sighed, as he often did in the quiet of his own quarters where only the walls might hear.

His thoughts switched involuntarily to the present (and his eyes lost some of their grayness, for their color seemed to change with his moods) and focused upon the communication he had received that morning. Under the precise military wording he sensed another element. Mystery. After all these prosaic years was he to be drawn out of his cocoon of medicines and gauze bandages and have his adventure? In all probability the affair would prove drab enough. Adventure? Well, hardly. Things of the sort set forth in the dispatch were usually rather unpleasant. Yet it intrigued him. Blindfolded. And was not that it?

"... temporarily attached to ... Euan Kerth ... a woman called the Swaying Cobra...."

Fragments of the communication filtered through his brain. Strange. From pills and antiseptics to that! It _was_ leaving a cocoon! What a joke to tell Manlove. Dear old Manlove--this with warmth.

The sounds of walking in the compound announced the object of his thoughts. The footsteps drew nearer, crossed the veranda, and Manlove, uniformed and helmeted, entered.

"Rum day," he said. "Hot as Tophet; everything wrong."

Trent made no comment; only nodded.

"There's a big shindy up at the Sacred Bo-tree," the other added. "Some Tibetan lamas are there. I stopped by with Herrick."

He took off his helmet, the removal revealing to the light a tanned, boyish face and a healthy thatch of hair; mopped his forehead and flung his headgear carelessly across the room. That was his way, to appear careless. But at heart he was not; he liked small boundaries (while Trent craved larger ranges), homely things. He looked forward to the time when he would come into possession of "Gray Towers," ancestral abiding-place of the Manloves. Of course, he didn't want his grandfather, more familiarly known as the Old Fellow, to die or anything like that; he was simply prepared for the inevitable: The Right Honorable Richard Auckland Manlove, sitting in the House of Lords and presenting Colonial improvement measures, for India in particular; no longer "Dicky" Manlove, irresponsible adventurer, but carrying the ponderous dignity of the name.... It was all very impressive....

"Mrs. Dalhousie is giving a lawn party to-night," he announced, taking a chair. "Impromptu. She told me to drag you along, if you'd come."

"Sorry," returned Trent. "I'm leaving for Benares early in the morning. I'll be occupied to-night. Orders from Delhi."

Manlove withdrew a cigarette case from under his tunic, opened it, took out a smoke and placed it between his lips before he spoke.

"Deuce you say! Not transferred?"

"Temporarily detached; special service. You and Conningsby will have to take charge while I'm away." He smiled. "Been reading the papers lately?"

Manlove lighted his cigarette, glancing furtively at Trent. The latter was staring into the blue haze of smoke, half humorously, as though he found something amusing in the vaporous clouds.

"Certainly"--thus Manlove.

"Anything new about the jewels?"

Manlove smiled to himself. He hadn't lived in the same house with Arnold Trent for fourteen months without learning _something_ about him. The old sphinx, he thought good-humoredly.

"Nothing important"--briefly. "However, I understand, from Granville, that the Department believes an international thief--Chavigny's his name--mixed up in it."

"Wonder where Granville got that?"

"Oh, rumors are plentiful, especially at stations like this where everybody's chief occupation is talk."

"That all?"

Manlove nodded and said nothing, for he knew Trent.

"Have you approximated the value of the stolen gems?" queried the latter, then went on: "Millions of pounds! And have you wondered how the devil they're going to hide the loot, or get it out of India? Such well known jewels can't be sold--"

"Unless they're re-cut," put in Manlove. He smiled wisely. "By Kali and all the other deities, you don't mean that you, expert in cholera and dysentery, are about to--" He chuckled. "Well, I'm damned!"

Trent moved to a desk in a corner of the room, unlocked it and took out a long, official-looking document. This he handed to Manlove, then resumed his seat. The latter unfolded it and let his eyes travel down the sheet.

"Has the heat gone to their heads at Delhi?" he demanded when he had finished. "Almighty God, why detach a perfectly good doctor, when they have a whole list of Secret Service men?"

Trent only smiled. The younger man waved his hand toward the paper.

"Surely this isn't all?"

"You know as much as I do. I leave in the morning for Benares. At the hotel I'm to meet a fellow called Kerth--"

"Euan Kerth," Manlove interrupted, his eyes upon the document. "You've heard of him, haven't you? He's the best of his sort in India. He's been in Tibet; was one of Younghusband's interpreters in nineteen-four. Speaks Hindustani, Burmese, mandarin Chinese, Tibetan, and God knows what else! You and he ought to hit it off fairly well together. But go on."

"I'm to meet him at the hotel," Trent resumed. "Just what part he plays, I don't know yet. There I'm also to find a message from this Swaying Cobra woman, and meet her at a place named in the message. And--well, that's all." He smiled. "Enlightening, isn't it?"

As he finished, Manlove strode to the door and tossed away his cigarette. There he paused, peering out.

"Where's Ganeesh?" he asked, looking over his shoulder.

"I let him go for the evening. Why?"

"Just saw some one leave the compound; must have been he." Manlove returned to his chair. "Trent, I envy you--even if they are balmy at Delhi. This doctoring heathens isn't all it's colored up to be. It's getting on my nerves. I even dream about fever and stinking _fakirs_."

Trent consulted his wrist-watch. "I have to ride up to Colonel Urqhart's and make a report. Remember the chap at Meera, Chatterjee? Some _hakim_ burned his child's stomach with an iron. Of course she died. I'm going to make an example of him." He rose. "I have to wash up a bit. I suppose you're going to the lawn party?"

"Think not," decided Manlove. "I'll be here when you return."

"Care to ride up with me?"

"No. I'm rather tired."

Trent went to his bedroom and Manlove lighted another cigarette. He'd miss the old sphinx, he told himself. Good old Trent! Why hadn't he married? Frequently he asked himself that question; never Trent. There must be a reason, he mused, flicking the ashes from his cigarette. Maybe there had been a woman--a typhoon. The typhoon sort could raise the deuce with a chap like Trent. Perhaps.... He stifled a yawn. Damn India; damn its climate. He hadn't taken his leave this season; it was about due now. A jolly trip home; see the Old Fellow; see "Gray Towers."

He heard Trent moving about in the rear. He couldn't picture him sleuthing it. Queer world anyhow. And Benares. What was afoot?

Another yawn. He flung his half-smoked cigarette through the doorway, and it fell upon the veranda in a mild shower of sparks, and lay there, its red tip glowing like a malevolent little eye.

3

It was after nine o'clock when Trent rode out of Sahib's Gaya and around the shoulder of a hill toward his bungalow. A golden moon floated in nebulous haze--an electric disc that transfused its heat into the night. The earth steamed and sweltered, and the perfumes of tropical blossoms stole out of the jungle and exhaled a heavy languor.

Trent, pipe clamped between his teeth, sweat running into his eyes from his helmet-band, jogged along, thinking leisurely (as men do in warmer climates) of the woman of the cobra-bracelet, and thinking more of the bracelet than the woman. It was one of his peculiarities to collect rare ornaments; among his curios he had a bangle of a Nepalese princess, a Burmese bell from a pagoda in the Pyinmana district, and a silver-chased, turquoise-inset teapot from Tibet. The bracelet the woman wore was finely wrought, and its design not of the ordinary; this he recognized, even though he had but a glimpse of it. A king-cobra with a lifted hood. And the wearer.... Why had she lowered her veil--why had she denied that she came from his compound? Mystery.... But, he reflected, mysteries were not rare; mysteries, to such as he, in the jungle; in the ruins and tumbled grandeur of ancient temples; in the dim, dark bazaars, spice-reeking, where filth mocks British law, and Love and Death are one....

A white figure, ahead in the scented gloom, broke into his thoughts, a figure that at first was distinguishable only as a stain of pallor on the roadway. Trent experienced a quickening of interest. She of the cobra-bracelet? No. He could see now. Not a woman; a native. The man was moving at a swift gait, almost running; but as he drew nearer, he halted, looking about irresolutely, nervously. And at that moment (he was not more than ten yards away) Trent recognized him and reined in his mare.

"Chatterjee!" he called. "D'ye want to see me?"

The native did not answer, only fixed upon him a mute, terrified stare, and crashed through the high, dense undergrowth at the side of the road. The sounds of his flight grew fainter as he plunged deeper into the jungle.

Trent stared at the spot where he disappeared. His first impulse was to follow--an impulse that he cast aside. Now that was odd, he thought. What in flaming hades was the matter with him? For a moment he sat in mystified silence, then he kicked his mount lightly in the flanks.

A day of incidents. First, the dispatch from Delhi, then the veiled woman, now this encounter. From where had the native come? The bungalow? Perhaps he was merely on his way from Meera, for the road passed his quarters. But he knew natives never walked when it was possible to ride. Anyhow, that didn't explain his actions. Confound it, he'd have trouble with that fellow yet! This as he branched off from the main highway and clattered along the driveway to his compound.

Not until he reached the gate did he observe that the house was dark, squatting in gloomy secrecy among the surrounding trees. At first it puzzled him; then he decided that Manlove had probably gone to bed.

When his mare was stabled, he made his way into the living-room. In the dark he struck his knee on a sharp projection and swore. He fumbled for the light-switch; blinked in the sudden glare. A yawn and an indolent stretch. He'd get a good sleep and--

"Hello!" he exclaimed, as his eyes trailed across the room to an over-turned chair. "What the devil!"

A piece of bronze, some Hindu god, lay on the floor, gleaming sinisterly, and a picture--its regular place was on the desk--had fallen to the floor. An insidious thought took root in his brain. With quick strides he reached Manlove's room. It was empty, the bed unused. Its desertion hurt him--a queer sensation, that. He whirled about, returned to the living-room and halted, irresolute.

"Manlove!"

Silly to call, he thought. Perhaps Manlove had gone to the lawn party. But the over-turned chair and the idol did not look well. Thieves? Or.... Suddenly the meeting with Chatterjee shaped into significance. He knew the workings of the native brain, and a frightful possibility suggested itself.

An electric torch lay on the table. He reached for it; stood with his hands poised in the air, thought temporarily suspended from action. For his eyes, lowered involuntarily, fastened upon a small, dark spot on the matting.

Regaining the power to move, he stooped. A sudden sickness seized him. Unmistakable. But why did blood affect him? Blood. The discovery added a spark to his suspicions. His imagination painted a swift, vivid picture. The look of terror on Chatterjee's face.... Manlove, the innocent.... But no! It couldn't be!

In possession of the torchlight, he strode out upon the veranda. There he discovered a trail of spots identical with that on the matting, a trail that led down the steps. He made a quick search of the compound. A sense of helplessness smote him. Manlove, perhaps somewhere within calling distance, yet unable to summon him....

He halted at the gate. On the left was jungle, dark and hushed; on the right, a few lights in the nearest bungalow. Across the road was the mouth of a narrow path which he knew led to the ruins of an old temple hidden behind the rank foliage. At thought of the ruins an impulse made him forsake the compound and follow the path.

Less than two hundred yards from the road the growths thinned. Looming before him, spectral in the yellow mystery of the moonlight, was the temple. The outer court was throttled with weeds. Luxurious vines trailed from ruined pillar to ruined wall and wove a sanctuary for vipers. At the end of an avenue of crumbled columns gaped the black entrance of the inner court. An impalpable vapor steamed up from the moist plants and bathed the ruins in a dream-like haze, as the blurred waters of the ocean engulf and make fantastic the myriad rock-palaces of the sea-bottoms.

The dark inner court challenged Trent, and he snapped off the light and moved between the stone sentinels. A power, terrifying in its vagueness, pressed upon him, locking his muscles in a tension. A bat, startled out of hiding by the ring of his footsteps, flapped up from the parapet and wheeled across the moon's face. But for that, and an occasional rasp of an insect, the temple was swathed in a hush.

In the doorway of the inner court he paused. He groped for the shattered frame; clutched something tangible; fought against a terrible paralysis.

Yellow moonshine poured through a rent in the ceiling, drenched the walls and formed a honey-hued pool on the flagging.

In the wan light lay a human form.

A deadly inertia coiled about Trent's brain and body. For a moment he was unable to think, to do other than struggle against the constricting coils of horror. But at length he broke the rigor. A few steps brought him to the pool of moonlight. He knelt; switched on the torch; saw the face. Dull agony spread from his throat to his limbs. In that instant he seemed to slip back through a millennium and endure the concentrated pains of a hundred bodies--a flame of cosmic anguish burning down through the dim jungles of time.

Automatically his hand went to the heart, but before his trained fingers touched the breast he knew that to feel was useless. Dark moisture stained the tunic-front. He unbuttoned the garments. Knife wound! Manlove had been dead at least a half hour.

The infinitesimal fraction of a minute that he knelt there might have been an hour for the multitude of irrelevances that sped through his brain. Orders. Benares.... And he had cursed when he struck his knee! Had Manlove ridden with him to Colonel Urqhart's this would not have happened. Urqhart; what an absurd name.... Murder. In a vague manner he wondered who had done it; in a vague manner he felt angry. Dead. Impossible. This must be a dream, a horrid nightmare. Damn these nightmares! It was the heat ... heat.... His comrade.... Kasvin.... Kut-el-Amara. And this was the end! The futility of things swept him, a chill and shuddersome tide that served to wash some of the tangles from his thoughts.

He rose. He felt giddy, and the inner court, with its shadows, its pool of moonshine, swam in a throat-gripping vertigo. But it passed swiftly. Out of the mental chaos emerged a coherency: perhaps the one who had done this was still in or about the temple. The remembrance of Chatterjee immediately appeared to deny it. A solution of the affair unreeled quickly. Chatterjee, the avenger ... a fatal mistake. That explained the native's look of terror when he met Trent on the road, explained his flight.

Nevertheless, Trent made a search of the ruins and returned to the body. The face, outlined boyishly in the pallid moonlight, commanded his gaze with hypnotic insistence. Now that the first acute horror had dwindled, he was conscious of an abysmal loneliness, an ache that habited every nerve and fiber of his being.

He must notify Colonel Urqhart. But the body, what of that? He couldn't leave it lying in this den of vipers. The very suggestion horrified him, although he knew the body was but a husk of flesh. He had some authority; he'd act on his own responsibility.

An involuntary dread ran through him as he slipped his hands under the inert form and lifted it. His sight blurred, but he moved with a steady stride across the courtyard and through the gate. Upon reaching the bungalow, he laid the body upon the bed in Manlove's room. When he switched on the light, the boyish features again compelled his gaze. Manlove had told him of the dream of "Gray Towers," of the House of Lords; and the memory of it, returning through the stupefaction that still surrounded him, sent a poignant charge into his throat. To have his dream perish like this! Whatever a man's philosophy of immortality, death remains a shock.

He was about to leave the room when his attention was arrested by the gleam of a bright object in the lifeless hand. He was forced to pry open the fingers. The gleaming thing proved to be a piece of reddish stone. Coral. It was oval-shaped and some six inches in circumference. An intricate design was overlaid in silver upon the smooth salmon-hued surface--a human figure. The oval was edged with silver, and at the top was a tiny clasp. The clasp was broken. He studied the silver design. It was evidently some sort of deity, but different from any he had ever seen--an ugly little god with three eyes.

What was it? he wondered--part of a necklace, an ornament? The broken clasp testified that it had been wrenched from its fastening. Perhaps in a struggle--_the_ struggle....

Temporarily dismissing it from his thoughts, he left it lying upon the table and went to the telephone.

4

Meanwhile, at the dak bungalow, which looks out upon the main street of Sahib's Gaya, the _khansammah_, a ghostly figure in his white garments, sat on the covered portico and watched a gharry approach in a whirl of dust.

The carriage was jerked to a halt at the compound, and from its dim interior appeared a form.

It was the strange Memsahib, the _khansammah_ observed to himself.

Strange, indeed, he reflected; Memsahibs rarely wore veils, and those they affected were gossamer, cobweb-like affairs that hid not a feature. But this Memsahib wore an almost opaque veil, a veil which she lifted only to eat and when in her room. She had a beautiful face, and well that she covered it from befouling eyes. For the _khansammah_ was a Mohammedan.

She was very generous, this Memsahib, oh, very generous, indeed! True, she asked many questions--about Major Trent Sahib and his friend, the other Dakktar Sahib--but she paid for the information. She had been at the dak bungalow only since morning, and he hoped she would remain longer. Business was none too good.

Thus ran his thoughts as the woman alighted from the gharry and crossed the compound.

When she reached the steps he rose and rendered a salaam. As usual, her veil was lowered. He sensed a repressed excitement in the manner that her white hand closed upon the post of the veranda; a bracelet shone softly on her arm.

"_Khansammah_," she began, in a low, vibrant voice that made him think of the golden tongue of a certain singing-nautch he had once heard, "When does the next train leave for Mughal Sarai? Do you know?"

"Hah, Memsahib!"--with regret. "Must you leave? Has not my hospitalit_ee_ been all the Memsahib could--"

"Of course," she broke in, impatiently. "But the train?"

"At midnight, Memsahib. But it is unlike_lee_ the Memsahib can get accommodations, for there is ver_ee_ much travel at this time of the year--oh, ver_ee_ much!"

"At midnight," she repeated, as though she had heard only that.

Then she entered--and the _khansammah_ thought he saw her pause, falter, as with a sudden stroke of weakness.

5

And again meanwhile--

The moon paled, sank. Its senescent glamour lingered upon the towering plinth and fluted pillars of the temple of the Sacred Bo-tree, seven miles south of Gaya-town. A warm wind fretted the tapering leaves of the holy tree; the sunken courtyard was a cistern of gloom where tiny yellow lights swam like foam-flecks on a dark sea. These flecks of light, forming a semi-circle about the Sacred Bo-tree, were many little butter-lamps. Their glow revealed a man seated on the Diamond Throne (just as Gaudama sat on the same spot in a buried century and contemplated his Dewa Laka); revealed his yellow features, his tonsured skull and magenta robes; revealed the stone image of Buddha that looked down from the shrine with an expression of serene omniscience; revealed the row of crimson-togaed monks that knelt within the semi-circle of butter-lamps and murmured prayers.

The man on the Diamond Throne sat motionless. Only his lips moved, and his eyes. A hint of guile showed in his face. He repeated a _mantra_ automatically, for his thoughts were elsewhere.

This was no other than his Holiness the Grand Lama of Tsagan-dhuka, who had pilgrimaged from his Tibetan abby to the Sacred Bo-tree--the first journey of the sort to be made by a lama of high rank since the visit of that venerable pontiff, the Tashi Lama.... Behold him, then, in the magenta robes of his office, squatting upon the Diamond Throne, reciting a Buddhist prayer.

The patter of bare feet on stone caused him to shift his gaze to the gloom beyond the courtyard. His black eyes squinted, and he traced the outline of a palanquin. The primitive conveyance came to a halt. A figure in loose robes took shape between the parted curtains; the light of the butter-lamps fell upon a man in scarlet, a man who descended into the sunken courtyard and approached the Diamond Throne. No mere priest, this newcomer, for he wore a mitre-shaped hat; a very obese, very pompous personage as he waddled up to his Holiness of Tsagan-dhuka.

The crimson cardinal spoke; and had anyone who understood Tibetan been standing close by, he would have heard:

"His Excellency the Governor of Shingtse-lunpo has arrived."

The Grand Lama ceased his _mantra_.

"Tell him I shall be with him when I have finished my reflections."

The cardinal bowed and took his leave. The curtains of the palanquin blotted out his corpulent person. Again the patter of naked feet sounded above the surreptitious whispering of the Bo-tree.

A cryptic smile slid across the Grand Lama's eyes; the lids dropped to hide it. He resumed the prayer.

"_Om mani Padme hum...._"

Thus he sat--just as Gaudama sat on the same spot in a buried century. However, the Abbot of Tsagan-dhuka was not contemplating his Dewa Laka.

Above him the plinth of the temple strove skyward, secure in the knowledge of the riddle of Life and Death.

6

A half hour after Trent took the receiver from the telephone, Colonel Urqhart and Merriton, Head of the Police, rattled into his compound in a dog-cart. Accompanying them were several officers to whom Trent spoke by name.

"... And you found him in the ruined temple!" exclaimed the colonel, in the living-room, when the customary formalities had been observed. "Good God, major, what a pity! The poor, poor boy! His father and I were friends, y' know."

"I'm positive Chatterjee did it," declared Trent. "You see...." And he told of the encounter on the road and the subsequent events.

"What were you saying, major?" asked the Head of the Police, coming out of the bedroom just as he finished. "But first--what's this?"

He held out the oval of silver-overlaid coral, and Trent explained how he had found it.

"Some sort of native charm, I dare say," observed Merriton. "Tell me about this Chatterjee."

When Trent had retold his story, the Head of the Police enquired:

"Where's the telephone? Ah! I see it!"

* * * * *

It was nearly midnight when Colonel Urqhart and Merriton prepared to leave.

"Major," said Trent's commanding officer, "you'd better get some sleep. Eckard and Gerrish will remain to--"

"Sleep?" echoed Trent.

"You'll need it if you're going in the morning--and you _are_ going? Orders, y' know. There's nothing you can do here. I'll personally attend to everything."

"Of course I'll go." This from Trent as he passed his hand wearily over his forehead. "However, I shall sit up to-night. Eckard and Gerrish can remain--but I'd rather be alone."

The colonel cast a glance toward Manlove's room.

"Poor chap!" he sighed. He extended his hand. "Well, good luck, major. I probably won't see you again before you leave."

They shook hands, and the colonel and Merriton departed. Not until the sounds of the dog-cart had dwindled did Trent discover that the Head of Police had left the piece of coral on the table. His first impulse was to call after him, but he decided to give it to him later, and dropped it into his pocket.

Through the seemingly endless night Trent kept vigil beside the curtained bed where Manlove lay. He sat huddled in a chair, his face expressionless; frequently he rose to pace the floor; on several occasions one of the men in the next room heard him murmuring to himself. Shortly after midnight (about the time the veiled Memsahib's train roared out of Gaya toward Mughal Sarai) it began to rain. That was the prelude to a storm that crashed and tore in a fury about the bungalow. In the dead silence following, when the damp heat shut in and stars sparkled in the rain-swept sky, jackals chattered mournfully in the jungle.

The last stars passed and the earth awoke in a bath of gold. Ganeesh, with a frightened, awed expression, crept in hesitatingly with tea, and behind him came one of the officers.

"I'll have to get ready to leave now, Eckard," Trent said laconically to the officer, when he had gulped down the hot liquid.

Twenty minutes later, washed and shaved, he came out of his bedroom and found Colonel Urqhart waiting for him.

"Just came by to tell you Merriton hasn't found Chatterjee yet," announced the colonel. "Cleared out, it seems. But they'll get him."

"Uncommonly nice of you, Colonel," returned Trent. His face was drawn, his eyes veined with red, and a pallor underlay his tanned skin.

The colonel waved his hand toward the door. "My cart's outside. I'll drive you to the station. 'Bout time, isn't it?"

Trent nodded. He strode to the door of Manlove's room and halted on the threshold, looking with dry eyes into the hushed apartment. A diamond-winged dragonfly lay dreaming on the window-sill ... the white face shone through the mosquito-curtain.... Thus Trent stood for a moment, then he turned and joined the colonel.

He talked very little during the ride to the station, and Colonel Urqhart did not press conversation. In the midst of chattering native passengers and a few whites, with an engine puffing heat into the already suffocating air, he parted with the colonel,--a handshake and a few perfunctory words--and settled down in his carriage.

Not until the train jerked out of the station did the strain snap. He relaxed wearily upon the leather-lined seat, a steady hammer of pain at the back of his neck. He felt suddenly alone, intensely alone--a sensation that carried him back to his boyhood, to a night when he awoke in a strange, black-dark room. He shuddered involuntarily. His eyelids burned. Sleep--sleep. The engine seemed to purr that one word, and the swaying and rocking of the carriage lulled him into drowsiness.

He fell asleep, suddenly, with a picture of the hushed room--the diamond-winged dragonfly--painted upon his vision.

7

Trent was brought out of slumber by the sound of his name. He opened his eyes and perceived that the train was at a standstill. Heat pressed close about him, stifling him. Thrusting his head out of the window, he read the name of the station. He was but a short distance from Gaya. A telegraph messenger was walking along the platform shrilling:

"Major-rr Tr-rent Sahib!"

Trent called him, and as the train pulled out he tore open the envelope.

"Chatterjee found in river this morning," the message ran. "Stabbed. Let you hear particulars at Benares. Urqhart."

For some time after Trent read it he stared out of the carriage-window. Chatterjee--stabbed. He let the words filter and re-filter through his brain, let them settle and sink in. They gave a new significance to the encounter with the native on the previous night. Chatterjee--stabbed. Murdered? Or had he taken his own life--in remorse? But the river.... No. Murdered. That word stood out like wet type. Chatterjee--stabbed. Why? Obvious enough. The native's look of fright explained that. Perhaps he knew who slew Manlove. Chatterjee, whose lips were sealed. Blind alley. He faced a wall behind which was hidden the identity of Manlove's slayer. Manlove, who, to his knowledge, hadn't an enemy--

He stiffened at a sudden recollection; brought his fist down upon his thigh. Idiot! Colossal idiot! Why had not this occurred to him before? It was fantastic, yet....

He procured from his pocket a pencil and an envelope, and scribbled on the back of the latter--scribbled a description of the woman he had met on the Meera road; of the cobra-bracelet, of the encounter and his suspicions. This he would send to Colonel Urqhart at the next station.

When he had finished, he read it, struck out a few words; folded the envelope; returned it to his pocket, and settled back in the seat to reflect upon the tragic immutability of circumstance.