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Tom Tripe was there with his dog. Trotters had the self-imposed and wholly agreeable task of chasing all unattached dogs off the premises. But Tom Tripe himself was keeping rather in the background, because technically, as a servant of Gungadhura, he was in a delicate position.
"How did Gungadhura get in here?" wondered Tess. "Through the hole at the end of the mine-shaft, I suppose," said Dick. "I built up the lower one he came one day and saw me doing it but left a space at the top that looked too small for a man to crawl through. Then I blocked the mouth of the tunnel afterward, and shut him in, I suppose.
Gungadhura glanced about him like a frenzied man, and then lay back in a state of near-collapse. Samson and De Wing both bowed, and left the room. "Poor devil!" said De Wing, "I'm sorry for him." "Would you be a good fellow," said Samson, "and send off this wire for me? There I've added the exact time of the abdication.
You saw Ismail, my gateman? His very brother took the letters back and forth!" "But why should Gungadhura risk his throne by anything so foolish?" "He thinks to save it. He thinks to prove that the tribes began the dickering, and then to offer his army to the English Tom Tripe and all! Patali put him up to it. Perhaps she wants a necklace made of Hill-men's teeth who knows?
Where will you sleep?" Tess asked. "At your house on the hill!" "But that is in Gungadhura's territory. Aren't you afraid of him?" "Of Gungadhura? I? I never was! But now whoever fears him would run from a broken snake. I have word that the fool has murdered Mukhum Dass the money-lender. You may trust the English to draw his teeth nicely for him after that!
"There is proof conclusive," he began, " I've telegrams here that you may see in confidence, that Gungadhura has been trafficking with Northwest tribes. He has sent them money, and made them promises. There isn't a shade of doubt of it. The evidence is black. The question is, what's to be done?" They passed the telegrams from hand to hand, Norwood looking rather supercilious.
The new maharajah, Gungadhura Singh, was prevailed on to assign an ancient palace for the Russian widow's use; and there, almost within sight of the royal seraglio from which she had been ousted, Yasmini had her bringing up, regaled by her mother with tales of Western outrage and ambition, and well schooled in all that pertained to her Eastern heritage by the thousand-and-one intriguers whose delight and livelihood it is to fish the troubled waters of the courts of minor kings.
Once again, my Lords, a royal daughter of a throne of Rajasthan shall choose her husband in the sight of all of us let come of it what may!" He ceased, and the crowd burst into cheers. Yasmini translated his speech afterward to Tess. He said not a word of Gungadhura, or of the throne of Sialpore, leaving that act of utter daring to the woman who was, after all, the leader of them all that night.
"But what is all this leading to?" demanded Dick. "What does it mean?" "It means," she said slowly, "that the toils are closing in on Gungadhura!" "The way I figure it," he answered, "some one else had a pretty narrow shave tonight!" Yasmini knew better than to threaten Dick, or even to argue with him vehemently, much less give him orders. But each man has a line of least resistance.
She went close to the square hole, but was careful to keep her face in shadow at the left-hand side of it. "What can His Highness, Gungadhura Singh, want with his relative at this strange hour?" she asked. "Open the gate!" came the answer. He was very close to it ready to push with his shoulder the instant the bolt was drawn, for black passion had him in hand.
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