So they essayed a second flight of stairs, in single file as before,
and presently--when they had climbed some ten steps and had turned to
negotiate ten more that ascended at an angle--a curtain moved a
little, and the dim light changed to a sudden shaft that nearly
blinded them.
Then a heavy black curtain was drawn back on rings, and a hundred
lights, reflected in a dozen mirrors, twinkled and flashed before
them so that they could not tell which way to turn. Somewhere there
was a glassbead curtain, but there were so many mirrors that they
could not tell which was the curtain and which were its reflections.
The curtains all parted, and from the midst of each there stepped a
little nutbrown maid, who seemed too lovely to be Indian. Even then
they could not tell which was maid and which reflections until she
spoke.
"Will the sahibs give their names?" she asked in Hindustani; and her
voice suggested flutes.
She smiled, and her teeth were whiter than a pipe-clayed sword-belt;
there is nothing on earth whiter than her teeth were.
"Colonel Kirby and Captain Warrington" said Kirby.
"Will the sahibs state their business?"
"No!"
"Then whom do the sahibs seek to see?"
"Does a lady live here named Yasmini?"
"Surely, sahib."
"I wish to talk with her."
A dozen little maids seemed to step back through a dozen swaying
curtains, and a second later for the life of them they could neither
of them tell through which it was that the music came and the smell
of musk and sandal-smoke.
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