The rats by this time had grown very daring, and he had been bitten
again twice; he found time to wonder what lies Yasmini would tell to
account for her share in things. He did not doubt she would lie
herself out of it, but he wondered just how, along what unexpected
line. It began to seem to him that the colonel and his squadron were
a very long time coming.
"But they will come!" he assured himself.
* * * * *
He was nearer to the mark when he expected unexpectedness from
Yasmini, for she did not disappoint him. A door opened at one end of
the black dark cellar, and again the rats scampered for cover as
Yasmini herself stood framed in it, with a lantern above her head.
She was alone, and he could not see that she had any weapon.
"This way, sahib!" she called sweetly to him.
Never--North, South, East or West, in olden days or modern--did a
siren call half so seductively. Every move she ever made was poetry
expressed, but framed in a golden aura shed by the lamp, and swaying
in the velvet blackness of the pit's mouth, she was, it seemed to
Ranjoor Singh, as no man had ever yet seen woman.
"Come, sahib!" she called again; and he moved toward her.
"Food and water wait! Thy trooper has drunk his fill. Come, sahib!"
She made no move at all to protect herself from him.
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