King of the Khyber Rifles | Page 4

lined-up chairs and pressed forward.
"Sorry--have to keep you all waiting--busy!" He waved them aside with a little apologetic gesture. "Come in here, King."
King followed him through a door that slammed tight behind them on rubber jambs.
"Sit down!"
The general unlocked a steel drawer and began to rummage among the papers in it. In a minute he produced a package, bound in rubber bands, with a faded photograph face-upward on the top.
"That's the woman! How d'you like the look of her?"
King took the package and for a minute stared hard at the likeness of a woman whose fame has traveled up and down India, until her witchery has become a proverb. She was dressed as a dancing woman, yet very few dancing women could afford to be dressed as she was.
King's service uses whom it may, and he had met and talked with many dancing women in the course of duty; but as he stared at Yasmini's likeness he did not think he had ever met one who so measured up to rumor. The nautch he knew for a delusion. Yet--!
The general watched his face with eyes that missed nothing.
"Remember--I said work with her!"
King looked up and nodded.
"They say she's three parts Russian," said the general. "To my own knowledge she speaks Russian like a native, and about twenty other tongues as well, including English. She speaks English as well as you or I. She was the girl-widow of a rascally Hill-rajah. There's a story I've heard, to the effect that Russia arranged her marriage in the day when India was Russia's objective--and that's how long ago?--seems like weeks, not years! I've heard she loved her rajah. And I've heard she didn't! There's another story that she poisoned him. I know she got away with his money--and that's proof enough of brains! Some say she's a she-devil. I think that's an exaggeration, but bear in mind she's dangerous!"
King grinned. A man who trusts Eastern women over readily does not rise far in the Secret Service.
"If you've got nous enough to keep on her soft side and use her-- not let her use you--you can keep the 'Hills' quiet and the Khyber safe! If you can contrive that--now--in this pinch--there's no limit for you! Commander-in-chief shall be your job before you're sixty!"
King pocketed the photograph and papers. "I'm well enough content, sir, as things are," he said quietly.
"Well, remember she's ambitious, even if you're not! I'm not preaching ambition, mind--I'm warning you! Ambition's bad! Study those papers on your way down to Delhi and see that I get them back."
The general paced once across the room and once back again, with hands behind him. Then he stopped in front of King.
"No man in India has a stiffer task than you have now! It may encourage you to know that I realize that! She's the key to the puzzle, and she happens to be in Delhi. Go to Delhi, then. A jihad launched from the 'Hills' would mean anarchy in the plains. That would entail sending back from France an army that can't be spared. There must be no jihad, King!--There must--not--be--one! Keep that in your head!"
"What arrangements have been made with her, sir?"
"Practically none! She's watching the spies in Delhi, but they're likely to break for the 'Hills' any minute. Then they'll be arrested. When that happens the fate of India may be in your hands and hers! Get out of my way now, until tiffin-time!"
In a way that some men never learn, King proceeded to efface himself entirely among the crowd in the hall, contriving to say nothing of any account to anybody until the great gong boomed and the general led them all in to his long dining table. Yet he did not look furtive or secretive. Nobody noticed him, and he noticed everybody. There is nothing whatever secretive about that.
The fare was plain, and the meal a perfunctory affair. The general and his guests were there for other reason than to eat food, and only the man who happened to seat himself next to King--a major by the name of Hyde--spoke to him at all.
"Why aren't you with your regiment?" he asked.
"Because the general asked me to lunch, sir!"
"I suppose you've been pestering him for an appointment!"
King, with his mouth full of curr did not answer, but his eyes smiled.
"It's astonishing to me," said the major, "that a captain should leave his company when war has begun! When I was captain I'd have been driven out of the service if I'd asked for leave of absence at such a time!"
King made no comment, but his expression denoted belief.
"Are you bound for the front, sir?" he asked presently. But Hyde did not answer. They finished the meal in silence.
After lunch he was closeted with the general again for twenty minutes. Then