is mind to the completion of his task.

His suspicions had been aroused by the finding of that orange and
silver scrap of _sari_ near the temple, when the ayah had presumably
been left miles behind on the launch; and fully realising the futility
of employing the methods of the West against the subtlety of the East
he decided to pit native craft against native cunning.

The only result of the investigation, however, was that Leonie's
present ayah had been traced back via the Ranee's house to the days
when she had been in the service of the Colonel-Sahib Hetth, V.C., but
beyond that was a blank wall.

She had suddenly left the Ranee's service to become body-woman to
Leonie; without a single reference to the time when she had been nurse
to Leonie as a baby.

Who was keeping her silent, and why? And what was she doing, and who
was she with in the deserted temple in the jungle?

Whose tool was she?

Certainly not the Ranee's. She was wrapped up in her duties toward the
fast ageing Rajah, and her only son, who seemed much the same as other
sons of princes.

Having finally decided that the answer to the problem lay in the
temple, to the temple he decided to go, more with the intention of
having a look round than with any definite plan.

The decision was made with the fixed though unspoken determination that
if the solving of the problem should involve a sojourn of ten years in
India, for ten years he would remain.

He hired a guide and a coolie, both of whom looked exactly like any
other guide and coolie, and having much to think out, and sure thinking
being anything but a rapid process with him, also because he did not
wish to draw too much attention to his movements, he chose as a means
of conveyance the ugly flat-bottomed public paddle-boat which floats
unconcernedly down the Hoogli from Calcutta, through the bigger creeks
of the Sunderbunds, and up the Pusaka River to Kulna.

If you want a few days' rest, or time in which to unravel a knot, pray
take that means of locomotion; you can be dropped anywhere into a
_nukur_ or native boat which will deposit you for a few annas on any
island you choose, but don't do it if you are in a hurry, or are filled
with a desire to see the lesser creeks, and the quite small ones, where
tigers are supposed to sit in rows upon the water's edge, monkeys to
swing across the water by means of the creepers interlacing the dark
and dismal trees, and crocodiles to lie in tumbled mass