names of whichever of those men are still in Delhi.”
Rewa Gunga took pen and paper and set a mark against some thirty of the names, for King had a manner that disarmed refusal.
“Where are the others?” he asked him, after a glance at it.
“In jail, or else over the border.”
“Already?”
The Rangar nodded. “Trust Yasmini! She saw to that jolly well before she left Delhi! She would have stayed had there been anything more to do!”
King began to watch the dance again, for it did not feel safe to look too long into the Rangar's eyes. It was not wise just then to look too long at anything, or to think too long on any one subject.
“Ismail is slow about returning,” said the Rangar.
“I wrote at the foot of the tar,” said King, “that they are to detain him there until the answer comes.”
The Rangar's eyes blazed for a second and then grew cold again (as King did not fail to observe). He knew as well as the Rangar that not many men would have kept their will so unfettered in that room as to be able to give independent orders. He recognized resignation, temporary at least, in the Rangar's attitude of leaning back again to watch from under lowered eyelids. It was like being watched by a cat.
All this while the women danced on, in time to wailing flute-music, until, it seemed from nowhere, a lovelier woman than any of them appeared in their midst, sitting cross-legged with a flat basket at her knees. She sat with arms raised and swayed from the waist as if in a delirium. Her arms moved in narrowing circles, higher and higher above the basket lid, and the lid began to rise. Nobody touched it, nor was there any string, but as it rose it swayed with sickening monotony.
It was minutes before the bodies of two great king-cobras could be made out, moving against the woman's spangled dress. The basket lid was resting on their heads, and as the music and the chanting rose to a wild weird shriek the
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