“Easily, mem-sahib.  Consider it arranged!”

Leonie lifted her head for half a second, showing her face deathly white, the crimson line of her beautiful mouth and the shadow-encircled eyes emphasised by the dark green silk lining of her topee.

She glanced quickly at the dignified figure beside her on the pavement and looked away.

You do not, as a rule, recognise people you have met in your sleep; neither had her memory been impressed with the passing glimpses she had caught of the handsome face in the British Museum and during the chotar shikar.

No, in spite of the tugging of her memory, there was nothing to link this person in the spotless white turban and full-skirted coat of the bearer to her fastidious self.

Neither did that strange anonymous gift of glorious pearls which was round her neck even then, or an unaccounted for mark upon her shoulder, help her in any way.

She leaned back listlessly as her newly acquired bearer arranged the newly bought suit-case and the various packages.

It was an absurd way of starting out on a jungle trip, picking up a car any old how out of the streets, and a bearer from the labyrinths of the bazaar without even glancing at his chits, which, even it she had, would probably have been forgeries.

She had certainly had the sense to put on her knee-high boots and knee-length skirt, a low collared shirt waist and sports coat, also a topee; but, wishing to leave no clue as to her future movements at the hotel, she had slung everything else pell-mell into her trunks, locked and left them to be fetched and stored at her bank.

It had obviated the calling of a car and the giving of an address to the hall porter, but it had forced her to buy everything she might be likely to require for a day or two’s sojourn in the waste places of an Indian jungle.

She had thought of everything with one exception, and that, of course, the one item which should have been the most important on the list.

Of weapons of defence she had none.

But then, what was she to know of the workings of the mind of the man sitting with his back to her as the car turned and sped swiftly down the streets, which seem to stretch endlessly, until you strike the heavenly tree-lined road which leads you through Dum Dum and other well-known places to the river edge.

CHAPTER XLIII

  “Thence shall I pass, approved
  A man, for ay removed
  From the developed brute; a god,
  Though in the germ.”—­Browning.

Blazing hot simply did not describe the degree of heat which pressed down upon and around Leonie as she sat totally unconscious of it on the verandah of the Bongong dak bungalow.

For the benefit of those who have not experienced the assorted joys of travelling in India, a dak—­pronounced dork—­bungalow is a travellers’ rest, humble or spacious, presided over or not, as the case may be, by a simple and courteous native.  They are to be found dotted about everywhere—­in jungles, on roads, and outside ruined cities; and there you can stay for an hour or a night, sleeping in comfort, provided you have brought your own bedding and mosquito netting; eating according to the contents of your hamper.