They caught the low drone of a distant airplane.
“This,” he said, “is one gateway to Burma. The pass is over yonder among the clouds. More than one of your brave fighters has fallen among those jagged crags, and not a few have been rescued by our monks or by the natives who gladly aid them.”
“Oh!” Gale breathed softly. Hope had flamed in her heart. “Has—has one been rescued lately?”
“Not within a month,” was the quiet reply. Hope fled.
“But if one has fallen,” came after a brief silence. The monk did not finish.
“Yes, yes! One has been lost,” Gale exclaimed softly, throwing caution to the wind. “A very good friend of mine is down at the place they call Hell’s Half Hour. We have come to find him.”
“You—you two came alone to find him?” Fresh surprise, not unmixed with admiration, was written on the man’s face. “Then I beg of you, allow me to assist you.”
In the end, when the two girls again took up the trail, four monks, one of them a Chinese doctor of some ability, went with them.
As they came to the crest of a ridge overlooking the temple, Gale was surprised to see the extent of the grounds. Besides the main building, there were many others, some small and some quite large. She recalled the words of the head monk: “You could live here for a month and no one would know.” Then she thought of the Woman in Purple, and shuddered.
They had tramped for two hours up the jungle trail when one of their guides gave a grunt, then motioned for silence.