“Sit you here at my right,” he said to Hunsa, for he conceived him to be captain of the Raja’s guard.

Sookdee and the others, without apparent motive, contrived it so that a Bagree or two sat between each of the merchant’s men, engaging them in pleasant speech, tendering tobacco.  And, as if in modesty, some of the Bagrees sat behind the retainers.

“This is indeed a courtesy,” the merchant assured Hunsa; “a poor trader feels honoured by a visit from so brave a soldier as the captain of the Raja’s guard.”

He noticed, too, with inward satisfaction, that the jamadars had left their weapons behind, which they had done in a way of not arousing their victim’s fears.

“Would not it be deemed a courtesy,” the merchant asked, “if one like myself, who is a poor trader, should go to pay his respects to the Raja ere he retires, for of course it would be beneath his dignity to come to his servant?”

“No, indeed,” declared Hunsa quickly, thinking of the graves that were even then being dug; “he is a man of a haughty temper, and when he is in the society of the beautiful dancing girl who is with him, he cares not to be disturbed.  Even now he is about to escort her in the cart down the road to where there is a shrine that women of that caste make offering to.”

It had been arranged that Ajeet would escort Bootea, with two Bagrees as attendants, to the grove of trees half a mile down the road.  He had insisted on this in the way of a negative support to the murder.  As there would be no fighting this did not reflect on his courage as a leader.  And as to complicity, Hunsa knew that as the leader of the party, Ajeet would be held the chief culprit.  It was always the leader of a gang of decoits who was beheaded when captured, the others perhaps escaping with years of jail.  And Hunsa himself, even Sookdee, would be safe, for they were in league with the Dewan.

There was an hour of social talk; many times Hunsa fingered the roomal that was about his waist; the yellow-and-white strangling cloth with which Bhowanee had commanded her disciples, the thugs, to kill their victims.  In one corner of it was tied a silver rupee for luck.  The natural ferocity of his mind threw him into an eager anticipation:  he took pride in his proficiency as a strangler; his coarse heavy hands, like those of a Punjabi wrestler, were suited to the task.  Grasping the cloth at the base of a victim’s skull, tight to the throat, a side-twist inward and the trick was done, the spine snapped like a pipe-stem.  And he had been somewhat out of practice—­he had regretted that; he was fearful of losing the art, the knack.

About the fat paunch of the merchant was a silver-studded belt.  Hunsa eyed this speculatively.  Beyond doubt in its neighbourhood would be the key to the iron box; and when its owner lay on his back, his bulbous eyes glaring upward to where the moon trickled through the thick foliage of the mango tree beneath which they sat, he would seize the keys and be first to dabble his grimy fingers in the glittering gems.