"There is more in this than accident," he said, his voice booming hollow as he bent to let the light fall on me. "Very well; pull up your buffalo, and you shall have him!"

It was no easy task for the two of them to haul me up, because the moment the Mahatma removed his foot from the lid of the trap the thing swung upward and acted like the tongue of a buckle to keep me from coming through. When he set his foot on it again, the other foot did not give him sufficient purchase. Finally King managed to pull his loin-cloth off and pa.s.s it around under my armpits, after which the two together hauled me clear, minus in the aggregate about a half square foot of skin that I left on the edge of the stone.

Off the Mahatma went alone again, swinging his lantern, and apparently at peace with himself and the whole universe.

Thereafter, King and I walked arm-in-arm, thinking in that way to lessen the risk of further pitfalls. But there was no more. The Mahatma reached at last what looked like a blind stone wall at the end of the tunnel; but there was a flagstone missing from the floor in front of it, and he disappeared down a black-dark flight of steps.

We followed him into a cellar, whose walls wept moisture, but we saw no cobras; and then up another flight of steps on the far side into a chamber that I thought I recognized. He disappeared through a door in the corner of that, and by the time we had groped our way after him he was sitting in the old black panther's cage with the brute's head in his lap, stroking and twisting its ears as if it were a kitten. The cage door was wide open, and the day was already growing hot and bra.s.sy in the east.

King and I hurried out of the cage, for the panther showed his fangs at us; the Mahatma followed us out and snapped the door shut. Instantly the panther sprang at us, trying to bend the bars together. Failing in that, he lay close and shoved his whole shoulder through, clawing at us. It was hardly any wonder that that secret, yet so simply discoverable door between Yasmini's palace and the temple-caverns was unknown.

We swung along through the great bronze gate and into the courtyard where the shrubs all stood reflected along with the marble stairway in a square pool. We plunged right in without as much as hesitating on the brink, dragging the Mahatma with us-not that he made the least objection. He laughed, and seemed to regard it as thoroughly good fun.

We splashed and fooled for a few minutes, standing neck-deep and kicking at an occasional fish as it darted by, stirring up mud with our toes until the water was so cloudy that we could see the fish no longer. Then King thought of clothes. He stood on tiptoe and shouted.

"Ismail! O-Ismail!"

Ismail came, like a yellow-fanged wolf, bowed to the Mahatma as if nakedness and royalty were one, and stood eyeing the water curiously.

"Get us garments!" King ordered testily.

"I was not staring at thee, little King sahib," he answered. "I was marveling!"

But he went off without explaining what he had been marveling at, and we went on with our ablutions, the job of getting ashes out of your hair not being quite so easy as it might appear. I daresay it was fifteen minutes before Ismail came back carrying two complete native costumes for King and me, and a long saffron robe for the Mahatma. Then we came out of the water and the Gray Mahatma smiled.

"I said there were no more traps, and it seems I spoke the truth," he said wonderingly. "Moreover, I did not set this trap, but it was you yourselves who led me into it."

"Which trap?" we demanded with one voice.

"You have stirred the mud, my friends, to a condition in which the mugger who lives in that pool is not visible. But the mugger is there, and I don't know why he did not seize one of you!"

In the center of the pool there was a rockery, for the benefit of plant-roots and breeding fish. I walked around it to look, and there, sure enough, lay a brute about twenty feet long, snoozing with his chin on a corner of the rock. I picked up a pole to prod him and he snapped and broke it, coming close to the edge to clatter his jaws at me. Prodding him a last time, I turned round to look for the Mahatma. He had vanished-gone as utterly and silently as a myth. King had not seen him go. We inquired of Ismail. He laughed.

"There is only one place to go-here," he answered.

"To the Princess?"

"There is nowhere else! Who shall disobey her? I have orders to unloose the panther if the sahibs take any other way than straight into her presence!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE RIVER OF DEATH

Dressed now in the Punjabi costume with gorgeous silk turbans, we walked side by side up the marble steps and knocked on the bra.s.s-bound, teak front door at the top. Exactly as when we arrived on the previous day, the door was immediately opened by two women.

The Mahatma was in there ahead of us, and had evidently told Yasmini sufficient of our adventures to make her laugh. She squealed with delight at sight of us.

"Come! Sit beside me in the window, both of you! My women will bring food. Afterward you shall sleep-poor things, you look as if you need it! O, what is that, Ganesha-ji? Blood on your linen? Were you hurt?"

Her swift, restless fingers drew the cloth aside and showed a few inches of where my bare skin should have been.

"It is nothing. My women shall dress it. They have oils that will cause the skin to grow again within a week. A week is nothing; you and Athelstan will be here longer than a week! And you crossed the Pool of Terrors? I have crossed that too! we three are initiates now!"

"Ye are three who will die unless discretion is the very law ye live by!" said the Gray Mahatma. He seemed annoyed about something.

"Old Dust-and-ashes!" laughed Yasmini, snapping her fingers at him. "Hah!" She laughed delightedly. "They have seen enough to make them believe what I shall tell them!"

"Woman, you woo your own destruction. None has ever set out to betray that secret and survived the first offense!" he answered.

"It was you who betrayed it to me," she said, with another golden laugh. Then, turning to King again:

"I have sought for that secret day and night! India has always known of its existence; and in every generation some have fought their way in through the outer mysteries to the knowledge within. But those who enter always become initiates, and keep the secret. I was puzzled how to begin, until I heard how, in England, a woman once overheard the secrets of Freemasonry, and was made a Freemason in consequence.

"Now behold this man they call the Gray Mahatma! He does as I tell him! You must know that these Knowers of Royal Knowledge, as they call themselves, are not the little birds in one nest that they would like to be; they quarrel among themselves, and there is a rival faction that knows only street-corner magic, but is more deadly bent on knowing Royal Knowledge than a wolf is determined to get lamb."

The Gray Mahatma saw fit to challenge some of that statement.

"It is true, that there are wolves who seek to break in," he said quietly, "but it is false that there are quarrels among ourselves."

"Hah!" That little laugh of hers was like the exclamation of a fellow who has got home with his rapier point.

"Quarrels or not," she answered, "there is a faction that was more than willing to use the ancient pa.s.sage under my palace grounds, and to hold secret meetings in a room that I made ready for them."

"Faction!" The Gray Mahatma sneered. "Faithful seniors determined to expel unfaithful upstarts are not a faction!"

"At any rate," she chuckled, "they wished to hold a meeting unbeknown to the others, and they wished to make wonderful preparations for not being overheard. And I helped them-is that not so, Mahatma-ji? You see, they were scornful of women-then."

"Peace, woman!" the Mahatma growled. "Does a bee sting while it gathers honey? You spied on our secrets, but did we harm you for it?"

"You did not dare!" she retorted. "If I had been alone, you would have destroyed me along with those unfortunates on whose account you held the meeting. It would have been easy to throw me to the mugger. But you did not know how many women had overheard your secrets! You only knew, that more than one had, and that at least ten women witnessed the fate of your victims. Is that not so?"

"Victims is the wrong word. Call them culprits!" said the Gray Mahatma.

"What would the Government call them?" she retorted.

The Gray Mahatma curled his lip, but made no answer to that. Yasmini turned to King.

"So I knew enough of their secrets to oblige them either to kill me or else teach me all. And they did not dare kill me, because they could not kill all my women too, for fear of Government. So first they took me through that ordeal that you went through last night. And ever since then I have been trying to learn; but this science of theirs is difficult, and I suspect them of increasing the difficulty for my benefit. Nevertheless, I have mastered some of it."

"You have mastered none of it!" the Gray Mahatma retorted discourteously. "The golden light is the first step. Show me some."

"They thought they were being too clever for me," she went on. "They listened to my suggestion that it might be wise to show Athelstan King the mysteries, and send him to America to prepare the way for what is coming. So we set a trap for Athelstan. And Athelstan brought Ganesha with him. So now I have two men who know the secret, in addition to myself and all my women. And I have one man who has skill enough to learn the secret, now that he knows of it. Perhaps both men can learn it, and I know full well that one can."

"And then?" King suggested.

"You shall conquer the world!" she answered.

King smiled and said nothing.