se he got away. We could trust him, I don't
doubt. But what is known to more than two, will in time be known to a
hundred. For myself, I don't trouble. Among Rajputs the penalty would be
slight. But this thing must be kept between you and me--because of
Aruna."

Roy held out his hand. Dyan's fingers closed on it like taut strips of
steel. Unmistakably the real Dyan Singh had shed the husks of
scholarship and politics and come into his own again.

"I wouldn't care to have those at my throat!" remarked Roy, pensively
considering the streaks on his own hand.

"Some Germans didn't care for it--in France," said Dyan coolly. "But
now----" He scowled at his offending left arm. "I hope--very soon ...
never mind. No more talking ... poison gas!" And with a flash of white
teeth--he was gone.

Roy, left staring into the fire, followed him in imagination, speeding
through the silent city out into the region of skulls and eye-sockets--a
flying shadow in the moonlight with murder in its heart....

* * * * *

Within an hour, that flying shadow was outside the gateway of Amber,
startling the doorkeepers from sleep; murder, not only in its heart, but
tucked securely in its belt. No 'law-courts talk' for one of his breed;
no nice adjustment of penalty to offence; no concern as to possible
consequences. The Rajput, with his blood up, is daring to the point of
recklessness; deaf to puerile promptings of prudence or mercy; a sword,
seeking its victim; insatiate till the thrust has gone home.

And, in justice to Dyan Singh, it should be added that there was more
than Aruna in his mind. There was India--increasingly at the mercy of
Chandranath and his kind. The very blindness of his earlier obsession
had intensified the effect of his awakening. Roy's devoted daring, his
grandfather's mellow wisdom, had worked in his fiery soul more
profoundly than they knew: and his act of revenge was also, in his eyes,
an act of expiation. At the bidding of Chandranath, or another, he would
unhesitatingly have flung a bomb at the Commissioner of Delhi--the sane,
strong man whose words and bearing had so impressed him on the few
occasions they had met at the Residency. By what law of God or man,
then, should he hesitate to grind the head of this snake under his heel?

One-handed though he was, he would not strike from behind. The son of a
jackal should know who struck him. He should taste fear, before he
tasted death. A