Best of all, of course, would be Yasmini’s unconditional surrender, because then he would be able to make use of her wits and her information, instead of having to explain away her “accident” and cope alone with any one whom she might already have entrusted with her secret.  There should be a strenuous effort first to bring her to her senses.  Physical pain, he had noticed, had more effect on people’s senses than any amount of argument.  There had been a very amusing instance recently.  One of his dancing girls named Malati had refused recently to sing and dance her best before a man to whom Gungadhura had designed to make a present of her; but the mere preliminaries of removing a toe-nail behind the scenes had changed her mind within three minutes.

Then there were other little humorous contrivances.  There is a way of tying an intended convert to your views in such ingenious fashion that the lightest touch of a finger on taut catgut stretched from limb to limb, causes exquisite agony.  And a cigarette end, of course, applied in such circumstances to the tenderer parts has great power to persuade.

As to accomplices, those must be few and carefully chosen.  Alone against Yasmini he knew he would have no chance whatever, for she was physically stronger than a panther, and as swift and graceful.  But there are creatures, not nearly yet extinct from Eastern courts, known as eunuchs, whose strongest quality is seldom said to be mercy, and whose chief business in life is to be amenable to orders and to guard with their lives their master’s secrets.  Three were really too many to be let into such a secret; but it had needed two to hold Malati properly while the third experimented on the toe-nail, and Yasmini was much stronger than Malati; so he must chance it and take three.

The only remaining problem did not trouble him much.  The palace guards were his own men, and were therefore not likely to question his right to ignore the first law of purdah that forbids the crossing of a woman’s threshold, especially after dark, unless she is your property.  Besides, they all knew already what sort of prowl-by-night their master was, and laws, especially such laws, were, made for other people, not for maharajahs.

Chapter Seven

A bloody enlisted man—­that’s me,
A peg in the officer’s plan—­maybe. 
Drunk on occasion, Disgrace to a nation
And proper societee. 
Yet I’ve a notion the sky—­pure blue
Ain’t more essential than I—­clear through. 
I’m a man.  I can think. 
In the chain of eternal
Affairs I’m a link,
And the chain ain’t no stronger than me—­or you.

“That will be the end of Gungadhura!”