"There always must be three," declared Chandra. "Two to use the rumal while the third holds the person they strangle. Always, they pick some quiet place. Often they work in many secret bands, so they have a special call, which Jinnah Jad has heard and warned me against. It goes like this—"
Stopping short, Chandra tilted his head back and gave a long, weird howl, "Hyyyyaaaaahhhh!" that sent shivers up Biff's spine, despite the increasing warmth of the morning. Biff pulled off his big turban and mopped his forehead.
Kamuka, too, was impressed. Never in the jungle of his own native Amazon had the Brazilian boy heard a cry as strange as that. It was a curious cross between a human shriek for help and an animal's anguished wail. In jungle or village, it would strike a familiar, yet fearful note.
But as Biff and Kamuka stared in silence, Chandra's own face turned suddenly tense. From beyond the bend in the narrow road behind them came a distant, echoing answer:
"Hyyyyaaaaahhhh!"
It was Biff who broke the grim hush.
"Try it again, Chandra. Let's see how close they are."
Chandra repeated the call in a louder wail that must have carried farther, for now the answer came, not from behind them, but from the jungle reaches up ahead. To the startled boys, their plight was all too grimly plain.
On a forgotten road, walled on both sides by solid jungle, they were trapped between two murderous bands of approaching thugs!
VII
The Temple of Kali