We have seen how he came careering down-street just in time to behold Yasmini’s carriage rumble into her stone-paved palace courtyard.  After ordering the guards not to let her escape again on pain of unnamed, but no less likely because illegal punishment, he rode full pelt to the temple of Jinendra, whence they assured him Yasmini had just come, and his spurs rang presently on the temple floor like the footfalls of avenging deity.

Jinendra’s priest welcomed him with that mixture of deference and patronage that priests have always known so well how to extend to royalty, showing him respect because priestly recognition of his royalty entitled him in logic to the outward form of it—­patronage because, as the “wisest fool in Christendom” remarked, “No bishop no king!” The combination of sarcastic respect and contemptuous politeness produced an insolence that none except kings would tolerate for a moment; but Jinendra’s fat high priest could guess how far he dared go, as shrewdly as a marksman’s guesses windage.

“She has betrayed us!  That foreign she-bastard has betrayed us!” shouted Gungadhura, slamming the priest’s private door behind him and ramming home the bolt as if it fitted into the breach of a rifle.

“Peace!  Peace, Maharajah sahib!  Out of anger came no wise counsel yet!”

“She has been to the commissioner’s house!”

“I know it.”

“You know it?  Then she told you?”

The priest was about to lie, but Gungadhura saved him.

“I know she was here,” he burst out.  “My men followed her home.”

“Yes, she was here.  She told.”

“How did you make her tell?  The she-devil is more cunning than a cobra!”

Jinendra’s high priest smiled complacently.

“A servant of the gods, such as I am, is not altogether without power.  I found a way.  She told.”

“I, too, will find a way!” muttered Gungadhura to himself.  Then to the priest:  “What did she say?  Why did she go to the commissioner?”

“To ask a favor.”

“Of course!  What favor?”

“That she may go to Europe.”

“Then there is no longer any doubt whatever!  By Saraswati (the goddess of wisdom) I know that she has discovered where the treasure is!”

“My son,” said the priest, “it is not manners to call on other gods by name in this place.”

“By Jinendra, then!  Thou fat sedentary appetite, what a great god thine must be, that he can choose no cleverer servant than thee to muddle his affairs!  While you were lulling me to sleep with dreams about a clue to be found in a cellar, she has already sucked the secret out from some cobra’s hole and has sold it to the commissioner!  As soon as he has paid her a proportion of it she will escape to Europe to avoid me—­will she?”

“But the commissioner refused the desired permission,” said the priest, puffing his lips and stroking his stomach, as much as to add, “It’s no use getting impatient in Jinendra’s temple.  We have all the inside information here.”