paration. There was a heavy baulk of timber lying near the
door, with rope-handles knotted into holes bored through it at
intervals. The Sikhs picked that up and followed us into
the street.

The mechanism of the Administration's net was a thing to wonder
at. As we emerged through the door the "peasants" who were
loafing with their backs against the wall got up and formed a
cordon across the street. Simultaneously, although I neither saw
nor heard any signal, a dozen Sikhs under a British officer came
down the street from the other direction at the double and formed
up in line on our lefthand. A moment later, our men were
battering the door down with their baulk of timber, working all
together as if they had practised the stunt thoroughly.

It was a stout door, three inches thick, of ancient olivewood and
reinforced with forged iron bands. The hinges, too, had been
made by hand in the days when, if a man's house was not his
fortress, he might just as well own nothing; they were cemented
deep into the wall, and fastened to the door itself with half-
inch iron rivets. The door had to be smashed to pieces, and the
noise we made would have warned the devils in the middle of
the world.

"We shouldn't have let them get in with any TNT at all," said
Goodenough. "They'll touch it off before we can prevent them."

"Uh-uh! They're not that kind," Grim answered. "They'll fight
for their skins. Have your gun ready, sir. They've laid their
plans for a time-fuse and a quick getaway. They'll figure the
going may be good still if they can once get past us. Look out
for a rush!"

But when the door went down at last in a mess of splinters
there was no rush--nothing but silence--a dark, square, stone
room containing two cots and a table, and fruit scattered all
over the floor amid gray dust and fragments of cement. Grim
laughed curtly.

"Look, sir!"

The fruit-baskets were on the floor by one of the cots, and the
TNT containers were still in them. They had tipped out the
fruit, and then run at the sound of the battering ram.

Goodenough stepped into the room, and we followed him. Beyond
the table, half-hidden by a great stone slab, was a dark hole in
the floor. Evidently the last man through had tried to cover up
the hole, but had found the stone too heavy. The Sikhs dragged
it clear and disclosed the mouth of a tunnel, rather less than a
man's height, sloping sharply downward.

"What we need now is must