A few minutes later Dana unpacked her grips. Dear Alan! Her brother. After all those years. She wondered if it were not a dream, if presently she wouldn't wake up back at Bayou Latouche, or in Tante Lucie's court, down in New Orleans, with Tante Lucie talking of foreign lands....
2
Night settled over Delhi. From the River Jumna to the Ridge, and beyond, tiny lights blinked at the shadows, and like a huge spirit-eye in the dusk the moon looked down upon the domes and minarets of the old Mogul capital. At the clubs electric punkahs fanned the air, ice clinked in frosted glasses and home-sick young officers read news-sheets from Britain. The network of narrow, constricted highways between Burra Bazaar and the Delhi Gate steamed and stewed, and heat and stench crawled beneath dirty eaves and balconies. South of the modern city, on the dead plain of Firozabad, thornbush and acacia rustled mournfully and ruined ramparts yielded up their nightly squadron of bats.
In his residence beyond the Civil Lines, Colonel Sir Francis Duncraigie, Director of Central Intelligence, C. S. I., and probably one of the most important men in the empire, sat alone in his writing-room beneath a mildly whirring fan, and sweltered and swore.
As a house-boy appeared like a white wraith from the dusk of the hall, he looked up.
"Well?"
"Did you call, O Presence?"
Sir Francis glared. "No!" Then, "But wait!"
A pattering noise sounded from the driveway, and he rose and strode to the window, parting the draperies. What he saw, fantastic in the hazy moonlight, was a palanquin with drawn curtains, borne on the shoulders of four coolies.
"What 'n Tophet!" he exclaimed, for palanquins are rare in the present-day Delhi of cabs and motorcars, nor is it the custom of Mohammedan ladies, who ride in these picturesque conveyances, to call upon officers of the empire.