The Englishman stepped into the conveyance, showing no surprise when the juggler got in and sank upon the seat beside him. Nor did he look in the least amazed, as he should have done, when the native's drooping eyelid lifted and winked at him in an outrageously familiar manner. He only smiled—a smile that grew as he commented:
"You're a downy bird, Kerth."
Which was not indiscreet, for one may safely assume, in Rangoon, that his gharry-wallah cannot understand him when he speaks English.
2
"I've instructed the wallah to drive to your hotel by a longer route," Euan Kerth drawled, and Trent wondered how he was ever baffled by such a simple make-up; it was the drooping eyelid, he decided, and the absence of the waxed mustache.
"I want time to talk," Kerth explained. "Also, I'll take this opportunity to return a piece of your property."
One slender hand emerged from under his clothing and extended an object that gleamed softly in the semi-dark, an object that caused the blood to leap into Trent's temples and throb there for a moment of sheer excitement.
For it was the silver-chased piece of coral that had twice been stolen from him.
"Too, I want to tell you," Kerth went on, "that your pretty cobra friend lied to you."
"Sarojini?"