Q. Were she alive, you certainly would aid her in bringing to justice one who has done her the most cruel of wrongs and, at the same time, fulfilling the dying request of the man who to her was more than life.

A. I should do her bidding, Sahib.

Q. How much more need, then, now that the poor woman is dead, that you should act for her as she would, were she here.

A. You have not told me all; speak your mind freely, Sahib.  You may depend upon my doing whatever I believe Lona would do were she here.

Q. I ask nothing more, and am now prepared to fully confide in you.  As you doubtless know, Rama Ragobah left Bombay for New York about eleven weeks ago.  He went, I have been told, on an errand of revenge.  Six weeks ago John Darrow was murdered.  He left behind him a written statement describing his wooing of Lona Scindia and his experiences with Rama Ragobah.  He asserted, furthermore, his belief that he would die by Ragobah’s hand,—­the hand which twice before had attempted his life.  Even as he loved your cousin, so he hated her husband, and, confident that he would ultimately be killed by him, he was haunted by the fear that he would escape the just penalty for his crime.  He bound his heir by the most solemn of promises to use, in the event of his murder, every possible means to bring the assassin to justice.  There can, of course, be little doubt that the assassin and Rama Ragobah are one and the same person.  The last request John Darrow ever made—­it was after he had been attacked by the assassin—­had for its object the punishment of his murderer.  Were your cousin living, do you think she would be deaf to that entreaty?

A. No.  She would make its fulfilment the one object of her life, and, acting in her stead, I shall do all in my power to see justice done.  If I can render you any aid in that direction you may command me, Sahib.

Q. You can assist me by telling me all you know of your cousin’s married life, and, more especially, the message she confided to you.

A. In doing this I shall break the letter of my oath, but, were I not to do it, I should break the spirit thereof, therefore listen: 

You have, I suppose, already learned from the statement of Darrow Sahib what occurred at his last meeting with my cousin on Malabar Hill.  Her act, in throwing a venomous serpent in his face, was one which doubtless led him to believe she wished to kill him, although it must have puzzled him to assign any reason for such a desire.  Not long after this incident my cousin married Ragobah, a man for whom she had always cherished an ill-concealed hatred.  I saw but little of her at this time, yet, for all that, I could not but observe that she was greatly changed.  But one solution suggested itself to me, and that was that she had discovered her lover false to her and had, out of spite as it is called, hastily married Ragobah.  I confess that when this conclusion