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Updated: June 5, 2025
"Miska!" he whispered "Miska!" She exhibited intense but repressed excitement and fear. Creeping to the second door that by which Fo-Hi had gone out she pressed her ear to the lacquered panel and listened intently. Then, coming swiftly to the table, she took up a bunch of keys, approached Stuart and, kneeling, unlocked the gyves. The scent of jasmine stole to his nostrils.
"Miska!" cried Stuart, and sprang towards her, sweeping her hungrily into his arms forgetful of, indifferent to, the presence of Max and Dunbar. "Ah!" sighed the Frenchman "yes, she is beautiful!" Trembling wildly, Miska clung to Stuart and began to speak, her English more broken than ever, because of her emotion. "Listen quick!" she panted. "Oh! do not hold me so tight.
"Yes, yes. He also leaves England to-morrow." "And you?" "I go with him," she whispered. Chunda Lal glanced apprehensively toward the door. Then: "Do not go with him!" he said, and sought to draw Miska into his arms. "O, light of my eyes, do not go with him!" Miska repulsed him, but not harshly. "No, no, it is no good, Chunda Lal. I cannot hear you."
They had reached the open door beyond which showed the dimly lighted passage. Miska hesitated. "Oh! I am afraid!" she whispered. She thrust the keys into the hand of Inspector Kelly, pointing to one of them, and: "That is the key!" she said. "Have your pistol ready. Do not touch anything in the room and do not go in if I tell you not to. Come!"
He saluted the figure of the veiled Chinaman but never once glanced in the direction of the diwan from which Miska wildly was watching him. Without turning his head, Fo-Hi, who seemed to detect the presence of the silent Hindu by means of some fifth sense, pointed to a bundle of long rods stacked in a corner of the room.
"All this means nothing," she said. "How can the secret of Abdul Rozan help me to live! And you you will be dead before I die! yes! One little hour after he finds out that I go!" "Listen again," hissed Chunda Lal intensely. "Promise me, and I will open for you a gate of life. For you, Miska, I will do it, and we shall be free. He will never find out. He shall not be living to find out!"
"Because," came the metallic voice, softly "you are beautiful with a beauty given but rarely to the daughters of men. The Sublime Order has acquired many pretty women for they are potent weapons but none so fair as you. Miska, I would make life sweet for you." "Ah! you do not mean that!" she whispered fearfully. "Have I not clothed you in the raiment of a princess!" continued Fo-Hi.
Miska glanced apprehensively around her, bending further forward over the table. "Let me tell you from the beginning," she said in a low voice, "and then you will understand. It must not take me long. You see me as I am to-day because of a dreadful misfortune that befell me when I was fifteen years old."
At least I can set these poor frail human doubts at rest." He crossed and struck a gong which hung midway between the two doors. Her beautiful face a mask of anguish, Miska cowered upon the diwan, watching the closed doors. Fo-Hi stood in the centre of the great room with his back to the entrance. Silently one of the lacquered panels slid open and Chunda Lal entered.
Number one was Miska Horhi, the owner of an estate of five thousand acres or so at the other end of the kingdom, who would skip over to his crony in March and stay till August, simply to ask him who he thought would be the next vice-lord-lieutenant of the county, leaving word at home that the crops were to be left untouched, and nothing was to be done till he returned.
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