Inside the durbar hall Gungadhura sat alone for just so long as it took the sound of the closing door to die away.  Then another door, close behind the throne chair opened, and Patali entered.  She looked at him with pity on her face, and curiosity.

“That American sold you,” she said after a minute.

“Eh?”

“I say, that American sold you!  He sold you, and the map, and the treasure to the English!”

“I know it!  I know it!”

“If I were a man—­”

She waited, but he gave no sign of manhood.

“If I were a man I know what I would do!”

“Peace, Patali!  I am a ruined man.  They will all desert me as soon as the news is out.  They are deserting now; I feel it in my bones.  I have none to send.”

“Send?  It is only maharajahs who must send.  Men do their own work!  I know what I would do to an American or any other man, who sold me!”

Chapter Twenty-One

The king sent his army and said, “Lo, I did it.  Consider my prowess and my strategy!” But the gods laughed. —­Eastern proverb

“The guns of the gods!”

Very shortly after dawn on the morning of the polo game Yasmini left the Blaines’ house on business of her own.  The news of Gungadhura’s abdication was abroad already, many times multiplied by each mouth until two batteries of guns had become an army corps.  But what caused the greatest excitement was the news, first of all whispered, then confirmed, that Gungadhura himself was missing.

That disturbing knowledge was the factor that prevented Yasmini from returning to her own rifled palace and making the best of it; for it would take time to hedge the place about properly with guards.  There was simply no knowing what Gungadhura might be up to.  She judged it probable that he had seen through her whole plot in the drear light of revelation that so often comes to stricken men, and in that case her own life was likely in danger every second he was still at liberty.  But she sent word to Utirupa, too, to be on the alert.  And she saw him herself that morning, in her favorite disguise of a rangar zemindari, which is a Rajput landowner turned Muhammadan.  The disguise precluded any Hindu interference, and Muhammadans on that country-side, who might have questioned her, were scarce.

The polo did not take place until late afternoon, because of the heat, but the grounds were crowded long before the time by a multi-colored swarm in gala mood, whom the artillerymen, pressed into service as line-keepers, had hard work to keep back of the line.  There was a rope around three sides of the field, but it broke repeatedly, and in the end the gunners had to be stationed a few feet apart all down the side opposite the grand-stand to keep the crowd from breaking through.

There were carriages in swarms, ranging from the spider-wheel gig of a British subaltern to the four-in-hand of Rajput nobility—­kept pretty carefully apart, though.  The conquerors of India don’t mix with the conquered, as a rule, except officially.  And there were half a dozen shuttered carriages that might have contained ladies, and might not; none knew.