At a sign from the fat Hindoo the eight horsemen spurred, and swooped up-street with the speed and certainty of sparrow-hawks and the noise of devastation.  They rode down Ali Partab—­unhorsed him—­bound him —­threw him on his horse again—­and galloped off before any but the Hindoo had time to realize that he was their objective.  He was gone—­ snatched like a chicken from the coop.  Noise and dust were all the trace or explanation that he left.  The mazy streets swallowed him; the Hindoo waddled over to the arch and disappeared without a smile on his face to show even interest.  The interrupted trading and bartering went on again, and no one commented or made a move to follow but Joanna.

She watched the fat Hindoo, and made sure that she would recognize him anywhere again.  Then, by a trail that no one would have guessed at and few could have followed, she made her way to Jaimihr’s palace—­three miles away from Howrah’s—­where a dozen sulky-looking sepoys lolled, dismounted, by the wooden gate.  There was neither sight nor sound of mounted men, and the gate was shut; but in the middle of the roadway there was smoking dung, and there was a suspicion of overacting about the indifference of the guardians of the entrance.

There was no overacting, though, in what Joanna did.  Nobody would have dreamed that she was playing any kind of part, or interested in anything at all except the coppers that she begged for.  She squatted in the roadway, ink-black and clear-cut in the now blazing sunlight, alternately flattering them and pretending to a knowledge of unguessed-at witchcraft.

She was there still at midday when they changed the guard.  She was there when night fell, still squatting in the roadway, still exchanging repartee and hints at the supernatural with armed men who shuddered now and then between their bursts of mockery.  The sore, suffering dogs that sniff through the night for worse eyesores than themselves whimpered and watched her.  The guard changed and the moon paled, but she stayed on; and whatever her purpose, or whatever information she obtained in fragments amid the raillery, she did not return to the mission house.

It was not until Rosemary McClean returned and dismounted by the door that she realized Joanna had not kept pace.  Even then she thought little of it; the old woman often lingered on the homeward way when the chance of her being needed was remote.  Two or three hours passed before the suspicion rose that anything might have happened to Joanna, and even then she might not have been remembered had not Duncan McClean asked for her.

“I have changed my mind,” he said, calling Rosemary into the long, low living-room.  It was darkened to exclude the hot wind and the glare, and he looked like a ghost as he rose to meet her.  “I have decided that my duty is to get away from this place for your sake and for the sake of the cause I have at heart.  We are doing no good here.  I can do most by going to the Resident, or even to somebody higher up than he, and laying my case before him personally.  Send for Joanna, and tell her to go and bring Mahommed Gunga’s man.”