Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 114: what you’re looking at

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

visit the chief on behalf of the British. le might turn up any day. When he spoke o Bootea about her part in the mission, the enticing of Amir Khan to her tent so that he might be killed, she answered: _ “Hunsa, you will wait until I give you -acommand to kill the chief. If you do not, it is very likely that you will be the sacri- _ fice, for he is not one to be driven.”” She vowed that if he broke this injunction she would denounce him to Amir Khan. She would have done so at first but for the idea that treachery to her people could not be justified but by dire necessity. Every day the Gulab, as she walked through the crowded street, scanned the faces of men afoot and on horseback, look- ing for one clothed as a Patan, but in his eyes the something she would know, the something that would say he was the deified one. And she had told Amir Khan that there was a Patan coming with a message for him, and that when such an one asked for audience that he should say nothing, but see that he was admitted. Then one day—it was about two weeks of waiting—Captain Barlow came. He was rather surprised at the readiness with which he was admitted for an audience with the chief. It was in the audience hall that he was received, and the chief was surrounded, as he sat on the rajah’s dais, by officers. Barlow had come as Ayub Alli, an Af- ghan, and as it was a private interview he desired, he made the visit a formal one, the paying of respects, with the usual pre- senting of the hilt of his sword for the chief to touch with the tips of his fingers in the way of accepting his respects. _ The chief, knowing this was the one -Bootea had spoken of, wrote on a slip of w paper something in Persian and ten- dered it to Barlow, saying, “ This will be passport when you would speak with | is in your heart something to rs : ° arlow saw that he had written ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. Hunsa, too, had wat of Barlow. The same hanes a come to Bootea’s ears that he would a as a Patan had been told him by the ne wan. Knowing that when Barlow arri _ he would endeavor to see the chief int 8 quarters, Hunsa daily hovered fear th palace and chatted with the guard at the gates, the heavy double teakWood gates a one side of which was painted, on a white stone wall, a war elephant, and the on side a Rajput horseman, his spear held at the charge. This was the allegorical repre. sentation, so general all over Mewar. of Rana Pertab charging a Mogul prince mounted on an elephant. ; Thus Hunsa had seen the tall Patan and heard him make the request for an audience with Amir Khan. It was the walk, the slight military precision, that caused the decoit to mutter, ‘“ No hill Afghan that.” And when Barlow had come forth the Bagree trailed him up through the chowk: and just as the man he followed came to the end of the narrow crowded way, Hunsa saw Bootea, coming from the opposite di- rection, suddenly stop, and her eyes_ go wide as they were fixed on the face of the tall Patan. “It is the accursed sahib,”” Hunsa snarled between his grinding teeth. He brooded over the advent of the messenger, and racked his animal brain for some scheme to accomplish his mission of mur- der, and counteract the other's influence. And presently a bit of rare deviltry crept into his mind, joint partner with the mur- der thought. If he could but kill the chief and have the blame of it cast upon the sahib, who, no doubt, would have his in- terviews with Amir Khan alone. During the time Hunsa had been there, several times in the palace, somewhat of a privileged character, known to be connected with the Gulab, he had familiarized him- self with the plan of the marble building— the stairways that ran down to the central court, the many tortuous passages, the marble fretwork, screen niches and myste- rious chambers. Either Hunsa or Sookdee was now al- ways trailing Barlow—his every move was And then, as if some evil jinn " comicbooks.com