The girls were tired and needed rest, and we were preparing to take them to Nalte's home when the first blow fell that was to put the lives of two of us in jeopardy and plunge us all from the heights of happiness to the depths of despair.
There was a summons at the main entrance, and presently a servant entered the room. Behind him was a file of warriors commanded by an officer.
Ero Shan looked up in surprise. He knew the officer and called him by name, asking him what brought him here with armed men.
"I am sorry, Ero Shan," the man replied, "but I have orders from the Sanjong itself to arrest three suspicious appearing people who were seen to enter your house earlier in the evening."
"But," exclaimed Ero Shan, "no one has entered my house but Carson Napier, whom you know, and these two young women. They are all my friends."
The officer was eyeing our mean apparel and evidently not without suspicion. "These must be those I was sent to arrest if no one else has entered your house this evening," he said.
There was nothing to do but accompany the warriors, and this we did. Ero Shan came with us, and a short time later we were before an investigating board of three men.
The complaining witness was the driver who had brought us from the house that hid the entrance to the tunnel to Ero Shan's. He said that he lived in the neighborhood, and having known of the abduction of Nalte he was immediately suspicious when he saw three people, garbed as we were, in the vicinity of the place.
He accused us of being spies from Kormor and insisted that we were but painted corpses like the man I had grappled with at the time of the abduction of Nalte.
The examining board listened to my story; then they examined Nalte and Duare briefly. They questioned Ero Shan concerning us, and without leaving the room they discharged Nalte and myself and ordered Duare back for a further examination by the official examining board the following day.