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In the shadows at one end an image of Jinendra smiled complacently, and there were some ancient brass lamps banging on chains from arches cut into the rock on every side. "This is the grue," said Dick, holding his lantern high. Its light fell on a circle of skeletons, all perfect, each with its head toward a brass bowl in the center. "Ugh!" growled Tom Tripe.
Again the single note of mocking golden laughter cut him off short. "I would trust thee with the secret, Brahman, just as far as the herdsman trusts a tiger with his sheep." "But I could insure that Gungadhura should divide it into three parts, and " "When the time comes," she answered, "the priest of Jinendra shall come to me for his proportion, not I to the priest.
There were very few worshipers at that hour only a woman, who desired a child and was praying to Jinendra as a last recourse after trying all the other gods in vain, and a half-dozen men all eyes who gossiped in low tones in a corner. Yasmini gave them small chance to recognize her.
"Now there will be a carriage waiting, and I must leave my horse in your stable." The beggar held the twisted flowers up to the sun-light to admire his work. "I must go at once. I shall go to the temple of Jinendra, where the priest, who is no man's friend, imagines I am a friend of his.
"So now," she said, "there is little else to discuss. If Gungadhura should be superstitious fool enough to come to thee again for auguries and godly counsel " "He comes always. He shows proper devotion to Jinendra." "Repeat the former story that a clue to the treasure must be found in Blaine sahib's house " "In what form?
The high priest of the temple of Jinendra pretends to him that he can discover where the treasure is hidden, so Gungadhura makes daily offerings and the priest grows very fat." "Who taught you such good English?" Tess asked her; for there was hardly even a trace of foreign accent, nor the least hesitation for a word. "Father Bernard, a Jesuit.
"If you bring me definite information," he said slowly, "and on the strength of that my government should come in possession of the Sialpore treasure, I will promise you in writing five per cent. of it for the funds of the priesthood of Jinendra, the money to be held in trust and administered subject to accounting."
A hundred guard the treasure day and night, changing with the full moon! So I have always looked for flowers, and I am often happy. I have sent flowers every day to the temple of Jinendra." "Who or what can the hundred be, who guard the treasure day and night?" Tess wondered. "That is what puzzled me. At first, because I was very young, I thought they must be snakes.
"Half of that treasure belongs to the priesthood of Jinendra," said the priest at last. "Since when?" "Since the beginning." "Why?" "We were keepers of the treasure once years ago, before the English came. There came a time when the reigning rajah deceived us by a trick, including murder; and ever since the English took control the priests have had less and less authority.
"Was it Mukhum Dass or another, who went to the priest in the temple of Jinendra on a certain afternoon and requested intercession to the god in order that a title-deed might be recovered, that fell down the nullah when the snakes frightened a man's mule and he himself fell into the road? Or was it another accident that split that car of thine in two pieces?"
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