She let the lantern swing below her knees and leaned back to laugh
at him, until the cavern behind her echoed as if all the underworld
had seen and was amused.
"I called thee a buffalo!" she panted. "Nay, I was very wrong! I
laugh at my mistake! Come, Ranjoor Singh!"
With a swing of the lantern and a swerve of her lithe body, she
slipped out of his reach and danced down an age-old hewn-stone
passage, out of which doors seemed to lead at every six or seven
yards; only the doors were all made fast with iron bolts so huge that
it would take two men to manage them.
He hurried after her. But the faster he followed the faster she ran,
until it needed little imagination to conceive her a will-o'-the-wisp
and himself a crazy man.
"Come!" she kept calling to him. "Come!"
And then she commenced to sing, as if dark passages beneath the
Delhi streets were a fit setting for her skill and loveliness.
Ranjoor Singh had never heard the song before. It was about a tiger
who boasted and fell into a trap. It made him more cautious than he
might have been, and when the darkness began to grow less opaque he
slowed into a walk. Then he stood still, for he could not see her any
longer.
It occurred to him to turn back. But that thought had not more than
crossed his mind when a noose was pulled tight around his legs and a
big sheet, thrown out of the darkness, was wrapped and wrapped about
him until he could neither shout nor move.
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