"The Bow!" rasped Ramey. "Rudra's weapon! It was here last night. Now I can't find it anywhere. And—" His eyes suddenly widened—"Ravana left Chitrakuta! Damnation! If he—Come on!"
With the now equally alarmed Red at his heels, Ramey dashed from the chamber. He hadn't far to go. He found the others—Dr. Aiken, both O'Briens, Sheng-ti, Sugriva—in the central court on which his room abutted. They were gathered in a tight knot; as one man they turned at his cry.
"Sugriva!" he called, "Order out the troops! There's trouble afoot. Red says Ravana left last night—and the Bow of Rudra is gone with him! Well, don't just stand there like that, staring at me! Do something!"
But it was Dr. Aiken who answered. There were white lines about the old man's lips that Ramey had never seen there before. His eyes were hard and worried. "The Bow!" he cried. "The Bow, too, Ramey? You hear that, Sugriva—?"
Despair seemed to settle like a black cloud over the Gaanelian's eyes; his shoulders sagged, and his voice was ominous. "I hear, indeed! And now is our plight truly perilous. For if they have the Bow, too—"
"What's this all about?" roared Ramey. "What do you mean, 'the Bow, too'? What else is missing?"
Syd O'Brien stared at him morbidly.
"We don't know how they did it, Ramey," he said, "or why. But when Ravana and his gang pulled out of here before dawn, they not only took with them the Bow of Rudra. They also—kidnapped Sheila!"
