"Did not his Excellency Li Kwai Kung speak of certain terraces, each a step toward enlightenment?"
He nodded. "Is the City of the Falcon the next?"
"Ultimately," she modified.
"When do I start—or do we?"
She shook her head. "You start to-morrow." Then, following a pause: "Previous to this you have been under my direct observation and protection." That made him smile to himself. "I can no longer do that. Certain threads will be placed in your hands and you will be left to untangle them. And it will not be easy. That is why I chose you."
The boatman had ceased paddling, and they drifted with the current in silence that was like a presence. Now and then a gibbon called from the bank; frequently fish leaped above the water, breaking the moon's path into silver fragments.
"Oh, it is far from easy!" she continued. "You will pass through a stretch of country where no Englishman has been. There will be discomforts—yes, dangers. The jungle knows how to torment white men. Death in a hundred guises waits for the unwary; death in the poison swamps, in the bush; death everywhere!" She straightened up, and her hand closed over his. "There will be times when you will curse me for having sent you! Yet in the end there is reward! Glory! Honor! Your name will sweep from one end of the empire to the other!" Then she drew a sharp breath, for she divined what was in his mind. "You believe I lie? But I speak the truth, before all the gods! Yonder"—with a wave of her hand—"beyond the moon, it lies, this city where the Falcon nests with the treasures of Ind!"
"You mean the jewels passed through Myitkyina?" he questioned, trying to speak casually, as though it were a spontaneous query rather than a studied interrogation.
"Ah! Did I say so?" she fenced. "Nay! I will not answer that! Perhaps they did; perhaps they did not." (Trent was more inclined to believe the latter.) "However, they are there, beyond the moon, and every one shall be returned, down to the smallest pearl!"
It sounded rather preposterous to him. How could this thing be accomplished by two people? Was she playing with him? She'd hardly dare. She might risk it, were he alone, but with the Government of India behind him a false move on her part would be her own defeat. Yet he could not disassociate her from some hidden, not altogether pleasant, purpose.