"No!" growled the Sikh.
"My secret information is that several regiments are ordered
oversea. Some of them will consent to go, my friend. We will do well
to wait until as many regiments as possible are on the water, and
then strike hard with the aid of such as have refused to go."
The carriage drew up at Yasmini's front door, and a man jumped off
the box seat to open the carriage.
"Say the rest inside!" she ordered. "Go into the house! Quickly!"
So the German stepped out first, moving toward the door much too
spryly for the type of street merchant he was supposed to be.
"Do you mean that?" whispered Yasmini, as she pushed past Ranjoor
Singh. "Do you mean to ride away with him and stage a mutiny? How can
you?"
"She-buffalo!" he answered, with the first low laugh she had heard
from him since the game began.
She ran into the house and all the way up the two steep flights of
stairs, laughing like a dozen peals of fairy bells.
At the head of the stairs she began to sing, for she looked back and
saw babu Sita Ram waddling wheezily up-stairs after Ranjoor Singh and
the German.
"The gods surely love Yasmini!" she told her maids. "Catch me that
babu and bottle him! Drive him into a room where I can speak with him
alone!"
"Oh, my God, my God!" wailed the babu at the stair-head from amid a
maze of women who hustled and shoved him all one way, and that the
way he did not want to go.
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