"Nay, there is time to spare." Dulla Dad spun the boat round and away. "I did but think to anticipate your impatience, knowing that you would assuredly come."
"Ah, you knew that, Dulla Dad? How did you know?"
The man giggled softly, plying a busy paddle. "Am I not of the palace, hazoor? What are secrets in the house of kings? Gossip of herders and bazaar-women!"
"And how much more do you know, Dulla Dad?" Amber's tone was ominous.
"I, hazoor? Who am I to know aught?… Nay, this have I heard"—he paused cunningly: "'You shall find but one way to Kathiapur.'"
Amber, realising that he had invited this insolence, was fair enough not to resent it, and held his peace until he could no longer be blind to the fact that the native was shaping a course almost exactly away from the Raj Mahal. "What treachery is this, dog?" he demanded. "This is not the way—"
"Be not mistrustful of your slave, hazoor," whined the native. "I do the bidding of those before whose will I am as a leaf in the wind. It is an order that I land you on the bund of the royal summer pavilion, by the northern shore of the lake. There will you find one waiting for you, my lord."
Amber contented himself with a fresh examination of his pistol; it was all one to him, whatever the route by which he was to reach Kathiapur, so long as the change involved no delay. But this way across the water was so much longer than that which he had anticipated that he had time to work himself into a state of fuming impatience before the boat finally ranged alongside a pretentious marble bund backed by ragged plantations of palms and bananas. To the left the white-columned facade of the Maharana's stately pleasure-house glimmered spectral in the moonlight. It showed no lights, and Amber very naturally concluded that it was unoccupied.
He landed on the steps of the bund and waited for Dulla Dad to join him; but when, hearing a splash of the paddle, he looked round, it was to find that the native had already put a considerable distance between himself and the shore. Amber called after him angrily, and Dulla Dad rested upon his paddle.
"Nay, Heaven-born!" he replied. "Here doth my responsibility end. Another will presently appear to be your guide. Go you up to the jungly path leading from the bund."