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Alwa laughed ironically.

“And the tiger asked the wolf pack where good hunting was!” he mocked. “I and my men strike which way suits us when the hour comes.”

“My palace has many chambers in it!” hinted Howrah. “There have been men who wondered what the light of day was like, having long ago forgotten!”

“Make me prisoner!” laughed Alwa. “Count then the hours until three thousand blades join Jaimihr and help him grease the dungeon hinges with thy fat!”

“Having looted Jaimihr's palace, you speak thus?”

“Having whipped a dog, I wait for the dog to lick my hand.”

“What is your purpose with these missionaries?”

“To redeem my given word.”

“And then?”

“I would be free to pledge it again.”

“To me?”

“To whom I choose.”

“I will give thee the missionaries, against thy word to fight on my side when the hour comes.”

“Against whom?”

“The British.”

“I have no quarrel with the British, yet.”

“I will give thee the missionaries, against thy word to support me on this throne.”

“Against whom?”

“Against all comers.”

“If I refuse, what then?”

“Jaimihr—who by this time must surely be thy very warmest friend!—shall attack thee unmolested. Pledge thy word—take thy missionary people—and Jaimihr must oppose thee and me combined.”

“Should Jaimihr ride after me, what then?”

“If he takes many with him, he must leave his camp unguarded, or only weakly guarded. Then I would act. If he goes with few, how can he take thy castle?”

“Then I have your protection against Jaimihr, and the missionaries, against my promise to support you on the throne?”

“My word on it.”

“And mine.”

Howrah rose, stepped forward to the dais edge, and held his hand out.

“Nay!” swore Alwa, recoiling. “My word is given. I take no Hindoo's hand!”

Howrah glared for a moment, but thought better of the hot retort that rose to his lips. Instead he struck a silver gong, and when the doors swung open ordered the prisoners to be produced.

“Escape through the palace-grounds,” he advised Alwa. “A man of mine will show the way.”

“Remember!” said Alwa across his shoulder with more than royal insolence, “I swore to help thee against Jaimihr and to support thee on thy throne—but in nothing did I swear to be thy tool—remember!”





CHAPTER XXI Howrah City bows the knee (More or less) to masters three, King, and Prince, and Siva. Howrah City comes and goes— Buys and sells—and never knows Which is friend, and which are foes— King, or Prince, or Siva.

THAT that followed Alwa's breakaway was all but the tensest hour in Howrah City's history. The inevitable—the foiled rage of the priests and Jaimihr's impudent insistence that the missionaries should be handed over to him—the Maharajah's answer—all combined to set the murmurings afoot. Men said that the threatened rebellion against the rule of Britain had broken loose at last, and a dozen other quite as false and equally probable things.

Jaimihr, finding that his palace was intact, and that only the prisoner and three horses from his stable were missing, placed the whole guard under arrest—stormed futilely, while his hurrying swarm flocked to him through the dinning streets—and then, mad-angry and made reckless by his rage, rode with a hundred at his back to Howrah's palace, scattering the bee-swarm of inquisitive but so far peaceful citizens right and left.

With little ceremony, he sent in word to Howrah that he wanted Alwa and the missionaries; he stated that his private honor was at stake, and that he would stop at nothing to wreak vengeance. He wanted the man who had dared invade his palace—the man whom he had released—and the two who were the prime cause of the outrage. And with just as little ceremony word came out that the Maharajah would please himself as to what he did with prisoners.

That message was followed almost instantly by the high priest of Siva in person, angry as a turkey-gobbler and blasphemously vindictive. He it was who told Jaimihr of the unexpected departure through the palace-grounds.

“Ride, Jaimihr-sahib! Ride!” he advised him.

“How many have you? A hundred? Plenty! Ride and cut him off! There is but one road to Alwa's place; he must pass by the northern ford through Howrah River. Ride and cut him off!”

So, loose-reined, foam-flecked, breathing vengeance, Jaimihr and his hundred thundered through the dark hot night, making a bee-line for the point where Alwa's band must pass in order to take the shortest route to safety.

It was his word to the Jew that saved Alwa's neck. He and his men were riding borrowed horses, and he had promised to return them and reclaim his own. They had moved at a walk through winding, dark palace-alleys, led by a palace attendant, and debouched through a narrow door that gave barely horse-room into the road where Jaimihr had once killed a Maharati trader who molested Rosemary McClean. The missionary and his daughter were mounted on the horses seized in Jaimihr's stable; Joanna, moaning about “three gold mohurs, sahib—three, where are they?” was up behind Ali Partab, tossed like a pea on a drum-skin by the lunging movements of the wonder of a horse.

Instead of heading straight for home, in which case—although he did not know it—he would have been surely overhauled and brought to bay, he led at a stiff hand gallop to the Jew's, changed horses, crossed the ford by the burning ghats, and swooped in a wide half-circle for the sandy trail that would take him homeward. He made the home road miles beyond the point where Jaimihr waited for him—drew rein into the long-striding amble that desert-taught horses love—and led on, laughing.

“Ho!” He laughed. “Ho-ho! Here, then, is the end of Mahommed Gunga's scheming! Now, when he comes with arguments to make me fight on the British side, what a tale I have for him! Ho! What a swearing there will be! I will give him his missionary people, and say, 'There, Mahommed Gunga, cousin mine, there is my word redeemed—there is thy man into the bargain—there are three horses for thee—and I—I am at Howrah's beck and call!' Allah! What a swearing there will be!”

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