The three priests were turning slowly on their feet, supporting the bronze bowl above their heads. They moved in a kind of dance, and as they revolved, came nearer to the shrine—then retreated. Delabar watched intently.
"They will keep up the dance for twenty-four hours," he said, "without stopping. Meanwhile the other priests will watch, without taking food or drink. It induces a kind of hypnotism. They believe that at the end of the twenty-four hours, the god will enter the bowl."
Gray nodded. Wu Fang Chien had sat back and was eyeing the dance complacently.
"When this happens," Delabar went on, "the priests will leave the temple, holding the bowl in front of them. They will be followed by the townspeople who do not doubt that the god will conduct them to the criminals."
"I guess we're nominated for the guilty parties."
Gray surveyed the scene curiously, the revolving trio of brown bodies, the silent mandarin and the watching priests. He followed idly the smoke fumes that eddied up from the shrine of the bronze god. Wu Fang Chien, he mused, had decided that it was time to strike. And the mandarin was going about it with the patience of the Mongol, sure of his victim, and his own power.
Wu Fang Chien had warned them. They had not heeded the warning. The attack in Honanfu had been a prelude—possibly to get Gray's weapons away from him. It had failed, but Wu Fang Chien had formed another plan. Why else had he come to Liangchowfu?
Watching the whirling priests, Gray guessed at the plan. In twenty-four hours the sorcery of the bowl would come to a head. The three priests would bear it to the inn—in a state of semi-hypnotism themselves, and followed by a fanatical crowd. They would confront Gray and Delabar. They would search the belongings of the white men, and find the maps of Sungan—the maps that had been seen by the intruder at the Honanfu inn. After that——
Delabar gripped his companion's arm. "Some one is coming," he whispered.
Gray listened, and heard a faint sound of footsteps. It came from the stairs—the soft pad-fad of slippered feet ascending the steps. Gray shot a quick glance into the temple below. The scene had not changed, except that the priest in the tattered robe was no longer at Wu Fang Chien's side.