,
floating up the hill in terraces, its marble white in the moonlight,
was the palace where Amir Khan lay dead. It still held a sombre
quietude; the murder had not been discovered.

He had mapped this route out carefully in the day and knew just how to
avoid the patrolling guards, and he was back in the narrow _chouk_ of
the town that was a struggling stream of swaggering Pindaris, and
darker skinned Marwari bunnias and shopkeepers. Hunsa pushed his way
through this motley crowd and continued on to the gate of the palace.

To the guard who halted him he said: "If the other who went up to see
the Chief has gone, I would go now, _meer_ sahib. As I have said, it
is a message from the Gulab Begum."

"I looked for you when I returned from above," the guard answered, "but
you had gone. The Afghan has gone but a little since--stay you here."

He called within, "Yacoub!"

It was the orderly who had conducted Barlow to Amir Khan who answered,
and to him the guard said: "Go to the Chief's apartment and say that
one waits here with word from the favourite."

Hunsa sat down nonchalantly upon a marble step, and drew the guard into
a talk of raids, explaining that he had ridden once upon a time with
Chitu, on his foray into the territory of the Nizam.

CHAPTER XXII

Hunsa had come back to the palace in haste so that the murder of Amir
Khan might be discovered soon after Captain Barlow had left, and that
the crime might be fastened upon the Sahib. As he waited, chatting to
the guard, there was suddenly a frenzied deep-throated call of alarm
from the upper level of rooms that was answered by other voices here
and there crying out; there was the hurrying scuffling of feet on the
marble stairs, and Yacoub appeared, his eyes wide in fright, crying:

"The Chief has been stabbed! he's dead! he's murdered! Guard the
door--let no one out--let no one in!"

"Beat the _nakara_," the guard commanded; "raise the alarm!"

He seized his long-barrelled matchlock, blew on the fuse, and pointing
up toward the moonlit sky, fired. Just within, in a little court,
Yacoub, with heavy drum-stick, was pounding from the huge drum a
thunderous vibrant roar, and somebody at his command had seized a horn,
and from its copper throat a strident shriek of alarm split the air.

The narrow street was now one surging mass of excited Pindaris. With
their riding whips they slashed viciously at any one other than their
own soldier caste that ve