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The rest she pieced together from admissions by Jinendra's fat priest and the gossip of some dancing girls. Sir Roland Samson, K. C. S. I., as told already, was a very demon for swift office work, routine pouring off him into the hands of the right subordinates like water into the runnels of a roof, leaving him free to bask in the sunshine of self-complacency.
Samson sahib will consent to no bargains with that fat fool, if I am any judge of hucksters; but he will have his ears on end and his eyes sore with over- watchfulness from now forward! Oh, I hope Jinendra's priest has gone to him! I tried to stir treachery in his mind by brow-beating him about the bargain that be tried to force from me!"
We are confidants because I know too much of thy misdeeds. We are going to succeed because I laugh at thy fat fears, and am never deceived for a moment by pretense of sanctity or promises however vehement." She said all that in a low sweet voice, and with a smile that would have made a much less passionate man lose something of his self-command. Jinendra's priest began to move uneasily.
Brandy's the right oracle for me!" But there was no consolation, ghostly or otherwise, being brought to Gungadhura. Jinendra's fat high priest, short-winded from his effort on the stairs, with aching hams and knees that trembled from exertion, was ushered into a chamber some way removed from that in which Tom Tripe had had his interview.
Of furniture there was little, only a long cushioned bench down the length of the wall beneath the window, and a thing like a throne on which Jinendra's high priest sat in solitary grandeur. He did not rise at first to greet her, for Jinendra's priest was fat; there was no gainsaying it.
"By now," laughed Yasmini, smoking one of Tess's cigarettes in the shadow of the rock, "Gungadhura knows surely that my palace is empty and the bird has flown. Ten dozen different people will have carried to him as many accounts of it, and each will have offered different explanation and advice! I wonder what Jinendra's fat priest has to say about it! Gungadhura will have sent for him.
"I know she was here," he burst out. "My men followed her home." "Yes, she was here. She told." "How did you make her tell? The she-devil is more cunning than a cobra!" Jinendra's high priest smiled complacently. "A servant of the gods, such as I am, is not altogether without power. I found a way. She told." "I, too, will find a way!" muttered Gungadhura to himself.
The combination of sarcastic respect and contemptuous politeness produced an insolence that none except kings would tolerate for a moment; but Jinendra's fat high priest could guess how far he dared go, as shrewdly as a marksman's guesses windage. "She has betrayed us!
"Did you work out all this deep plot for yourself?" Tess asked. "I and the gods! The gods of India love intrigue. My father left me as a sort of ward of Jinendra, although my mother tried to make a Christian of me, and I always mistrusted Jinendra's priest. But Jinendra has been good. He shall have two new temples when I am maharanee."
A fat hypocrite like Jinendra's high priest is like a carp to be caught with a worm, or an ass to be beaten with a stick; but there are others true ascetics lusting for influence more than a bellyful, caring nothing for the outside of the power if they hold the nut nothing for the petals, if they hold the seed. Those men are not easy.
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