"They took a good look for you, all right," he said. "Some of them did, anyway, while the rest kept fighting each other. They looked a lot, but they didn't find you—or me."
"But where did you go, Chandra?"
"Back in basket that brought me here," replied Chandra, widening his grin. He reached past a crate, pulled out the basket, squatted in it and suddenly squirmed from sight, as if the basket were bottomless. Biff looked in and was amazed to see nothing except a heap of old cloth.
Then, the heap stirred, and Chandra twisted into view from the basket's bulging sides where he had artfully coiled his thin, agile body.
"So that's how you vanished!" exclaimed Biff. "Why, you were still in the basket when the two men took it away!"
"How else could I get here so quick?" retorted Chandra. "They are friends of Jinnah Jad, who show up with basket at the right time. This godown is where Jinnah Jad keeps all his tricks, like the new pagoda he built to make people vanish. So I put you there."
"And I was thinking—"
Biff cut himself short, but Chandra picked him up.
"You think maybe the big ruby made you invisible," declared Chandra, "as it is supposed to do. But no, it was the pagoda trick. It hid you, the basket hid me."
Biff was cooler now, and he felt an actual shudder as he looked around at the wreckage and saw some silent human figures lying near the gate to the courtyard. Otherwise, the warehouse was deserted, except for Biff and Chandra.