Adventure Magazine Cover — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

et yt 22 “Father Bernard, a Jesuit. My mother sent for him, and he came every day, year after year. He-had a little chapel in Sial- pore, where a few of the very low-caste peo- ple used to go and pray and make confes- sions to him. That should have given him great power; but the people of this land never confess completely, as he told me the Europeans do, preferring to tell lies about. one another rather than the truth about themselves. “T refused to be baited because I was tired of him, and after my mother died and she was burned with the Hindu ritual,-he received orders to go elsewhere. Now there is another Jesuit, but he only has a little fol- lowing among the English, and can not get to see me because I hide behind the purdah. The purdah is good—if you know how to make use of it and not be ruled by it.” They were still in the window, Yasmini kneeling on the cushions with her face in shadow and Tess with her back to the light. “Ah! Hasamurti comes!’ said Yasmini suddenly. “She is my cheti” (hand- maiden). Tess turned swiftly, but all she saw was one of the three beggars down by the little gate twisting himself a garland out of stolen flowers. “Now there will be a carriage waiting, and I must leave my horse in your stable.” The beggar held the twisted flowers up to the sunlight to admire his work. “T must go at once. I shall go to the tem- ple of Jinendra, where the priest, who is no man’s friend, imagines I am a friend of his. He will promise me anything if I will tell him what to say to Gungadhura; and I shall tell him without believing the promises. “One of these days perhaps he will plot with Gungadhura to have me poisoned, being in agreement with the commissioner sahib who said to you just now that it is not good to know too much. But neither is it good to be too late! “Lend me a covering, my sister—see, this is the very thing. I shall leave by the little gate. Send the gardener on an er- rand. | “Are the other servants at the back of the house? Of course yes; they will be spy- ing to see me leave by the way I came.” Tess sent the gardener running for a basket to put flowers in, and when she turned her head again Yasmini had stepped out through the window shrouded from head Adventure to heels in a camel-hair robe such as the Bikanir Desert men wear at night. The lower part of her face was hooded in it. Provided you wear a turban you can wear anything else you like in India with- out looking incongruous. It is the turban that turns the trick. Even the spurs on the heels of BENE OO did not look out of place. “You'll sweat,” laughed Tess. camel-hair is hot stuff.” “Does the panther sweat under his pelt? IT am stronger than a panther. Now swiftly! I must go, but I will come soon. You are my friend.” She was gone like a shadow without an- other word, with long, swift strides, not noticing the beggars and not noticed by them as far as any one could tell. Tess sat down to smoke a cigaret and think the ex- perience over. She had not done thinking when Dick Blaine returned unexpectedly for early lunch and showed her a bagful of coarsely powdered quartz. “‘There’s color there,” he said jubilantly. “Rather more thar merely color! It’s not time to talk yet, but I think I’ve found a vein that may lead somewhere. Then won’t Gungadhura gloat!” She told him at great length about Yas- mini’s visit, dwelling on every detail of it, he listening hke a man at a play, for Tess had the gift of clear description. “Go a journey with her if you feel like it, Tess,’ he advised. ‘‘You have a rotten time here alone all day, and I can’t do much to ‘liven it. Take sensible precau- tions but have a good time anyway you can.” Because Yasmini had monopolized imagi- nation she told him last of all, at lunch, about the commissioner’s call, rehearsing “That that, too, detail by detail, word for word. ‘‘Wants me to find the Treasure, does he, and call the game on Gungadhura? What does he take me for? One of his stool-pig- eons? If it’s a question of percentage, I’d prefer one from the maharaja than from “Tf the tale’s true the stuff belongs to Gungadhura.- If I ever stumble on it he shall know first go off the bat, and I’ll see the British Government in——before Vil answer questions.” “They'd never believe Gungadhura hadn’t rewarded you,” said Tess. Gomichooks (e@)