The Adventures of Kathlyn | Page 5

at the clink clink of the elephant irons or at the
"whuff" as the uneasy pachyderm poured dust on his head.
Bah! It was madness. A parchment in Hindustani, given jestingly or
ironically by a humorous old chap in orders and white linen and
rhinoceros sandals. . . . A throne! Pshaw! It was bally nonsense. As if a
white man could rule over a brown one by the choice of the latter! And
yet, that man Umballa's face, when he had shown the king the portraits
of his two lovely daughters! He would send Ahmed. Ahmed knew the
business as well as he did. He would send his abdication to the council,
giving them the right to choose his successor. He himself would remain
home with the girls. Then he gazed up at the moon and smiled grimly.
"Hukum hai!" he murmured in Hindustani. "It is the orders. I've simply
got to go. When I recall those rubies and emeralds and pearls. . . . Well,
it's not cupidity for myself. It's for the girls. Besides; there's the call, the
adventure. I've simply got to go. I can't escape it. I must be always on
the go . . . since she died."
A few days later he stood again before the desk in the living-room. He
was dressed for travel. He sat down and penned a note. From the box

which contained the order he extracted a large envelope heavily sealed.
This he balanced in his hand for a moment, frowned, laughed, and
swore softly. He would abdicate, but at a snug profit. Why not? . . . He
was an old fool. Into a still larger envelope he put the sealed envelope
and his own note, then wrote upon it. He was blotting it as his
daughters entered.
"Come here, my pretty cubs." He held out the envelope. "I want you,
Kit, to open this on December thirty-first, at midnight. Girls like
mysteries, and if you opened it any time but midnight it wouldn't be
mysterious. Indeed, I shall probably have you both on the arms of my
chair when you open it."
"Is it about the medal?" demanded Winnie.
"By George, Kit, the child is beginning to reason out things," he jested.
Winnie laughed, and so did Kathlyn, but she did so because occultly
she felt that her father expected her to laugh. She was positively
uncanny sometimes in her perspicacity.
"On December thirty-first, at midnight," she repeated. "All right, father.
You must write to us at least once every fortnight."
"I'll cable from Singapore, from Ceylon, and write a long letter from
Allaha. Come on. We must be off. Ahmed is waiting."
Some hours later the two girls saw the Pacific Mail steamer move with
cold and insolent majesty out toward the Golden Gate. Kathlyn proved
rather uncommunicative on the way home. December thirty-first kept
running through her mind. It held a portent of evil. She knew
something of the Orient, though she had never visited India. Had her
father made an implacable enemy? Was he going into some unknown,
unseen danger? December thirty-first, at midnight. Could she hold her
curiosity in check that long?
Many of the days that followed dragged, many flew--the first for
Kathlyn, the last for Winnie, who now had a beau, a young newspaper

man from San Francisco. He came out regularly every Saturday and
returned at night. Winnie became, if anything, more flighty than ever.
Her father never had young men about. The men he generally gathered
round his board were old hunters or sailors. Kathlyn watched this
budding romance amusedly. The young man was very nice. But her
thoughts were always and eternally with her father.
During the last week in December there arrived at the Palace Hotel in
San Francisco an East Indian, tall, well formed, rather handsome.
Except for his brown turban he would have passed unnoticed. For
Hindus and Japanese and Chinamen and what-nots from the southern
seas were every-day affairs. The brown turban, however, and an
enormous emerald on one of his fingers, produced an effect quite
gratifying to him. Vanity in the Oriental is never conspicuous for its
absence. The reporters gave him scant attention, though, for this was at
a time when the Gaikwar of Baroda was unknown.
The stranger, after two or three days of idling, casually asked the way
to the wild animal farm of his old friend, Colonel Hare. It was easy
enough to find. At the village inn he was treated with tolerant contempt.
These brown fellows were forever coming and going, to and fro, from
the colonel's.
At five o'clock in the afternoon of the thirty-first day of December, this
East Indian peered cautiously into the French window of the Hare
bungalow. The picture he saw there sent a