"
(Oh, jungli, stop laughing and listen!)
"This isn't a trap, as I'll show you, my friend."
But the tiger fell into it. That is the end.
(Oh, jungli, be loving and listen!)
YASMINI'S SONG.
CHAPTER X
Ranjoor Singh; on the trail of a murderer, shoved with his whole
strength against a little door of the House-of-the-Eight-Half-
brothers. It yielded suddenly. He shot in headlong, and the door
slammed behind him. As he fell forward into pitch blackness he was
conscious of shooting bolts behind and of the squeaking of a beam
swung into place.
But, having served the Raj for more years than he wanted to
remember, through three campaigns in the Himalayas, once against the
Masudis, and once in China, he was in full possession of trained
soldier senses. Darkness, he calculated instantly, was a shield to
him who can use it, and a danger only to the unwary; and there are
grades of wariness, just as there are grades of sloth.
Two men who thought themselves so wide awake as to be beyond the
reach of government, each threw a noosed rope, and caught each other.
Ranjoor Singh could not see the ropes, but he could hear the stifled
swearing and the ensuing struggle; and an ear is as good as an eye in
the dark.
Something--he never knew what--warned him to duck and step forward.
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