"'Lie you must, or your belly will bust,'" quoted Mihr-un-nissa shamelessly, too interested, really, to do more than fling a reply in this war of wise sayings. "Lo! clouds--clouds--nothing but clouds again. What's this? Crossed swords and someone fighting for his life. Holy Prophet! save him! save him! Clouds again. That is my face grown old--and I am all in white," the girl's voice seemed to shrink in on itself; her eyes, startled, looked indeed as if across the chasm of the years she saw herself as she would be. "Surely I am widow--and there's the King once more." She drew back from her own hand as she might have drawn back from fate. "Then he was not killed," she muttered in a low whisper. "It must have been the--the other. Oh help! help! help!"
She started to her feet, and as if in answer to her scarce audible cry, a violent knocking shook the door.
"Open! Open! in the King's name, open!"
The command reduced even Mihr-un-nissa to the conventional quiet which on such occasions sinks on an Indian woman's house, when those are within who should not be seen.
You might have heard a pin drop.
"Âtma Devi, Châran of the King, open to his demand," came Birbal's voice, clear, unmistakeable, followed quickly by the order--"Break open the door, slaves, I must see if she be within ere seeking elsewhere."
There was no time to lose. Instinctively Fâtima, holding fast to her charge and dragging her with her, fled noiselessly to the closed door of the slip of a room where Zarîfa lay sleeping, and Mihr-un-nissa herself seeing no other way out of the impasse, allowed herself to be dragged, as stealthily, as noiselessly.
None too soon, for as the latter motioning her duenna arbitrarily to the farther corner of the darkness was limply closing the door so as to allow a crack for hearing, a crash told that one bolt of the outer one had given way, and Âtma Devi's voice rang out--
"Hold! I will open to my Lord Birbal."
His voice in return came through from without. "So thou wouldst spare thy lock, widow! See that thou spare thy life also! Slaves--get you gone--await me on the landing below, and if I call, come."