“How did you manage it?” asked Samson.  “The princess has disappeared.  There’s a rumor she’s over the border in the next state.  Gungadhura has seized her palace and rifled it.  How did you get my letter to her, and her answer so swiftly?”

“Ah, sir,” said Tom Tripe mischievously, “we in the native service have our little compensations—­our little ways and means!”

That was better than frankincense and myrrh, to mystify a genuine commissioner!  Tom rode back to his quarters turning over the taste of brandy in his mouth—­he had made a martial raid on Samson’s tantalus—­ and all aglow with good humor.

Not so Samson.  The commissioner was irritable, and more so now that he opened the scented letter Tom had brought.  It was deuced curt, it seemed to him, and veiled a sort of suggested laughter, if there was anything insinuative in polite phrases.

“The Princess Yasmini Omanoff Singh,” it ran, “hastens to return thanks for Sir Roland Samson’s kind letter.  She is not, however, afraid of imprisonment or of undue pressure; and as for her secret, that is safe as long as the river runs through the state of Sialpore.”

Not a word more.  He frowned at the letter, and read and reread it, sniffing at the scent and holding up the paper to the light, so that Sita Ram very nearly had a chance to read it through the knot-hole in the door.  The last phrase was the puzzler.  It read at first like a boast—­like one of those picturesque expressions with which the Eastern mind enjoys to overstate its case.  But he reflected on it.  As an Orientalist of admitted distinction he had long ago concluded that hyperbole in the East is always based on some fact hidden in the user’s mind, often without the user’s knowledge.  He had written a paper on that very subject, which the Spectator printed with favorable editorial comment; and Mendelsohn K. C. had written him a very agreeable letter stating that his own experience in criminal cases amply bore out the theory.  He rang the desk bell for Sita Ram.

“Get me the map of the province.”

Sita Ram held it by two corners under the draughty punkah while Samson traced the boundaries with his finger.  It was exactly as he thought:  without that little palace and its grounds, the state of Sialpore would be bounded exactly by the river.  Take away the so-called River Palace with the broad acres surrounding it, and the river would no longer run through the state of Sialpore.  That would be the end, then, of the safety of the secret.  There was food for reflection there.

What if the famous treasure of Sialpore were buried somewhere in the grounds of the River Palace!  Somewhere, for instance, among those gigantic pipal trees.

He folded the map and returned it to Sita Ram.

“I’m expecting half a dozen officers presently.  Show them in the minute they come.  And—­ah—­you’d better lock that middle door.”