“Tell me before we fly,” he urged, in a voice thick with some inward turmoil, “do any of your daughters contemplate going on the stage?”
“I have no daughters—fly for your life—the Phansigars are upon us!” cried the General.
The two men dashed out of the front door of the house.
The hour was late. As their feet struck the side-walk strange men of dark and forbidding appearance seemed to rise up out of the earth and encompass them. One with Asiatic features pressed close to the General and droned in a terrible voice:
“Buy cast clo’!”
Another, dark-whiskered and sinister, sped lithely to his side and began in a whining voice:
“Say, mister, have yer got a dime fer a poor feller what—”
They hurried on, but only into the arms of a black-eyed, dusky-browed being, who held out his hat under their noses, while a confederate of Oriental hue turned the handle of a street organ near by.
Twenty steps farther on General Ludlow and the reporter found themselves in the midst of half a dozen villainous-looking men with high-turned coat collars and faces bristling with unshaven beards.
“Run for it!” hissed the General. “They have discovered the possessor of the diamond of the goddess Kali.”