As for the maharajah, the rascal went the length of paying spies in British government offices.  There was never any knowing who was a spy of his and who wasn’t.  People were everlastingly crossing the river from the native state to seek employment in some government department or other, and one could not investigate them really thoroughly.  It was so easy to forge testimonials and references and what not.  One of Samson’s grooms had once been caught red-handed eavesdropping in the dark.  Samson, of course, took the law into his own hands on that occasion and thrashed the blackguard within an inch of his treacherous life; and in proof that the thrashing was richly deserved, some one reported to Samson the very next day how the groom had gone straight to the maharajah and had been solaced with silver money.

It was even said, although never proved, that the fat, short-sighted young babu Sita Ram who typed the commissioner’s official correspondence was one of Gungadhura’s spies.  There was a mystery about where he spent his evenings.  But his mother’s uncle was a first-class magistrate, so one could not very well dismiss him without clear proof.  Besides, he was uncommonly painstaking and efficient.

One way and another it is easy to see that Gungadhura had a deal of dovetailed information from which to draw conclusions as to the probable reason of Yasmini’s alleged visit to the commissioner.  One false conclusion invariably leads to another, and so Samson got the blame for the secret bargain with the Rangar stable-owner, with whose connivance Yasmini had contrived to keep a carriage available outside her palace gates.  Her palace gates having closed on the carriage now, the guards would pay attention that it stayed inside, but there was no knowing how many riding horses she might have at her beck and call in various khans and places.  Doubtless Samson had arranged for that.  Gungadhura sent men immediately to search Sialpore for horses that might be held in waiting for her, with orders to hire or buy the animals over her head, or in the alternative to lame them.

As for her motive in visiting the commissioner, that was not far to seek.  There was only one motive in Sialpore for anything—­the treasure.  No doubt Samson lusted for it as sinfully and lustily and craftily as any one.  If, thought Gungadhura, Yasmini had a clue to its whereabouts, as she might have, then whoever believed she was not trafficking with the commissioner must be a simpleton.  The commissioner was known to have written more than one very secret report to Simla on the subject of the treasure, and on the political consequences that might follow on its discovery by natives of the country.  The reports had been so secret and important that Gungadhura had thought it worth while to have the blotting paper from Samson’s desk photographed in Paris by a special process.  Adding two and two together now by the ancient elastic process, Gungadhura soon reached the stage of absolute conviction that Yasmini was in league with Samson to forestall him in getting control of the treasure of his ancestors; and Gungadhura was a dark, hot-blooded, volcanic-tempered man, who stayed not on the order of his anger but blew up at once habitually.