"You have stirred the mud, my friends, to a condition in which the mugger who lives in that pool is not visible. But the mugger is there, and I don't know why he did not seize one of you!"
In the center of the pool there was a rockery, for the benefit of plant-roots and breeding fish. I walked around it to look, and there, sure enough, lay a brute about twenty feet long, snoozing with his chin on a corner of the rock. I picked up a pole to prod him and he snapped and broke it, coming close to the edge to clatter his jaws at me. Prodding him a last time, I turned round to look for the Mahatma. He had vanished—gone as utterly and silently as a myth. King had not seen him go. We inquired of Ismail. He laughed.
"There is only one place to go—here," he answered.
"To the Princess?"
"There is nowhere else! Who shall disobey her? I have orders to unloose the panther if the sahibs take any other way than straight into her presence!"
CHAPTER VIII
THE RIVER OF DEATH
Dressed now in the Punjabi costume with gorgeous silk turbans, we walked side by side up the marble steps and knocked on the brass-bound, teak front door at the top. Exactly as when we arrived on the previous day, the door was immediately opened by two women.