The trooper saluted again.
"Who made thee prisoner in the first place?"
"Hillmen, sahib, at the orders of the Afridi who is now dead. They made ready to torture me, showing me the knives they would use. But she came, and they obeyed her, binding the Afridi fast to me. After that I heard the sahib's voice, and then this happened. That is all, sahib."
"Well!" said Ranjoor Singh. And for the third time his trooper saw fit to salute him.
Who shall be trusted to carry my trust?
(Hither, and answer me, stranger!)
Slow to give ground be he—swifter to thrust—
Instant,—yet wary o' danger!
Hand without craftiness, eye without lust,
Lip without flattery! Such an one must
Prove yet his worthiness—yet earn my trust!
(Closer, and answer me, stranger!)
First let me lead him alone, and apart;
There let me feel of his pulse and his heart!
(Hither, and play with me, stranger!)
CHAPTER XI
Men say Yasmini does not sleep. Of course, that is absurd. None the less, it is certain she must do much of her plotting in the daytime, for by night, until after midnight, she is always the Yasmini whom the Northern gentry know, at home to all comers in her wonderful apartment.
It is ever a mystery to them how she knows all that is going on in Delhi, and in India, and in the greater outer world, although they themselves bring her information that no government could ever suck out of the silent hills. They know where she keeps her cobras—where the strong-box is, in which her jewels lie crowded—who run her errands—and some of her past history, for not even a mongoose is more inquisitive than a man born in the hills, and Yasmini has many maids. But none—not even her favorite, most confidential maids—know what is in the little room that she reaches down a private flight of stairs that have a steel door at the top.
She keeps the key to that steel door, and it has, besides, a combination lock that only she understands.
Once a very clever hillman, who had been south for an education and had learned skepticism in addition to the rule of three, undertook to discover wires leading over roof-tops to that room; but he searched for a week and did not find them. When his search was over, and all had done laughing at him, he was found one night with a knife-wound between his shoulder-blades, and, later still, Yasmini sang a song about him. None searched for wires after that, and the consensus of opinion still is that she makes magic in the room below-stairs.