“In what form?  He will ask me again in what form the clue will be, that he may recognize it?”

“Tell him there is a map.  And be sure to tell him that Tom Tripe is welcome at the house.  Have you understood?  Then one other matter:  when it is known that I am back in my palace Gungadhura will set extra spies on me, and will double the guard at all the doors to keep me from getting out again.  He will not trust Tom Tripe this time, but will give the charge to one of the Rajput officers.  But he will have been told that I was at the commissioner sahib’s house this morning, and therefore he will not dare to have me strangled, because the commissioner sahib might make inquiries.  I have also made other precautions—­and a friend.  But tell Gungadhura, lest he make altogether too much trouble for me, that I applied to the commissioner sahib for assistance to go to Europe, saying I am weary of India.  And add that the commissioner sahib counseled me not to go, but promised to send English memsahibs to see me.” (She very nearly used the word American, but thought better of it on the instant.)

“He will ask me how I know this,” said the Brahman, turning it all over slowly in his mind and trying to make head or tail of it.

“Tell him I came here like himself for priestly counsel and made a clean breast of everything to thee!  He will suspect thee of lying to him; but what is one lie more or less?”

With that final shaft she gathered up her skirts, covered her face, nudged the giggling maid and left him, turning the key in the lock herself and flitting out through gloom into the sunlight as fast as she had come.  The carriage was still waiting at the edge of the outer court, and once again the driver started off without instructions, but tooling his team this time at a faster pace, with a great deal of whip-cracking and shouts to pedestrians to clear the way.  And this time the carriage had an escort of indubitable maharajah’s men, who closed in on it from all sides, their numbers increasing, mounted and unmounted, until by the time Yasmini’s own palace gate was reached there was as good as a state procession, made up for the most part of men who tried to look as if they had made a capture by sheer derring-do and skill.

And down the street, helter-skelter on a sweating thoroughbred, came Maharajah Gungadhura Singh just in time to see the back of the carriage as it rumbled in through the gateway and the iron doors clanged behind it.  Scowling—­altogether too round-shouldered for the martial stock he sprang from—­puffy-eyed, and not so regal as overbearing in appearance, he sat for a few minutes stroking his scented beard upward and muttering to himself.

Then some one ventured to tell him where the carriage had been seen waiting, and with what abundant skill it had been watched and tracked from Jinendra’s temple to that gate.  At that he gave an order about the posting of the guard, and, beckoning only one mounted attendant to follow him, clattered away down-street, taking a turn or two to throw the curious off the scent, and then headed straight for the temple on his own account.