Jules Victor, vigorous and alert, after several cups of cafe noir, well dashed with cognac, disposed his two Lefacheux revolvers in readiness, and then betook himself to a nap. His bright-eyed wife was in the compartment with her beautiful mistress, and ready to sound a shrill Gallic alarm at any moment. She gravely eyed the two escorting officials of the bank. Marie said in her heart that “all men were liars,” and she believed most of them to be voleurs, in addition. Jules, when the little train was whirling along a-metals a score of miles away from Delhi, relaxed his Zouave vigilance, and bade a long adieu to Delhi, in a vigorous grunt. “Va bene! Sacree Canaille!” There was silence at the railway station when the head agent wearily said, “I suppose the Bank is moving a lot of notes back to Calcutta! They are a rum slick lot, these money changers!” When all was left in darkness, save where a blinking red and white line signal still showed, Ram Lal Singh crept away from the line of the rails. The rich jewel vender clutched in his bosom the handle of Mirzah Shah’s poisoned dagger, the deadly dagger of a merciless prince. He had long pondered over the sudden demand made upon him by the Lady of the Silver Bungalow. And he greatly desired to re-adjust his relations with Hugh Johnstone and Major Alan Hawke. The daily usefulness of “Lying as a Fine Art” was never before so apparent to Ram Lal. He slunk away on foot to his own bit of a zenana. “I must try to deceive them both! Fool that I was not to see it before! These two Generals are her friends, of old! The secret protector of the wonderful moon-eyed beauty here is General Willoughby, and the other General will secretly help her down at Calcutta. She came up here, secretly, to see her old lover Willoughby, and that is why she would be able to have a guard arrest me. For she said just what they said about the prison. Willoughby goes down often to Calcutta! Ah! Yes! They are all the same, these English! Fools! Not to lock their women up, when they have once bought them, with a secret price! And now, Hawke must never know of this paper I gave her. She would find out, and then have the General punish me. Now I know why she went not to the great English Mem-Sahibs here! And these two great General Sahibs have had her spy upon this old man, Hugh Fraser--the man who would steal away with the Queen’s jewels. They would have them. By Bowanee! I will have them first! For I can hide them where they never will find them! I will trade them off to the Princes, who know the old jewels of Oude. They will give me double weight, treble value.” Ram Lal crept into his hidden love nest, his skinny hand clutching the golden shaft of Mirzah Shah’s dagger. “I might surrender them later and get an enormous reward from the Crown,” he mused.