That was the last the doctor saw of him. He slid into a shadow and followed it beside the ponderous wall of Siva's temple. There he was challenged. Two men in yellow robes ran out and blocked his way. They scurrilously mocked his glib confession of sinfulness and a desire to meditate on the omnipresence of death in life and life in death. They called him a casteless miscreant, who might go and mock his lady mother on a dung hill. So Bamjee was obliged to change his method. "Business," he whispered, "with the high priest! You are undoubtedly 'twice born,' both of you, to make you twice as stupid as you look, but you had better tell the high priest Bamjee is here. Yes, Bamjee! Yes, Bamjee--the man who caused your temple to be defiled with Johnson's Jubilee Germ Exterminator! Bamjee with a message for the high priest--sounds important, doesn't it?" There was whispered consultation. One man took the message and the other stayed. There followed prickly silence for a space of fifteen minutes, broken into irregular intervals by the impatient honking of the Sikh doctor's horn, until the messenger returned. Bamjee was to be admitted--not into the temple, but into the cell across the courtyard in which virtually unclean visitors were sometimes as an act of mercy, blessed through a hole in a wall of the temple basement. So he was soused with water that had been treated by incantation, hustled across the courtyard along a row of flagstones that were also immunized against the tread of ritually unclean feet, and thrust into a bare stone chamber. Bamjee shuddered as the door slammed shut behind him and he heard the bolt slide home. "Oh, my God!" he said. "What a man won't risk to save his neck!" On three or four walls little lamps were burning, leaving the door in shadow. In the wall that faced the door there was a round hole, showing that the masonry was ten feet thick; the hole was trumpet-shaped, its small end inward; Bamjee did not dare to examine that very closely until he had blown out two of the three lamps and adjusted the wick of the third. "But they will hardly dare to kill me," he reflected. "Nobody knows I was not seen to enter here. Phuh--death is an unpleasant topic--let me think of something else." * * * * * He examined the stone chamber. There was no window. He could hear nothing except his own blood surging in his veins. He crept close to the wall and peered very cautiously into the trumpet-shaped hole, but could see nothing; it appeared to be closed at the far end. However, presently he heard a shutter slide in iron grooves at the end of the hole in the wall. A voice spoke angrily, complaining that the lamps were not properly lit in the chamber. Another voice offered to send an attendant to light them. "No, but discover whose fault it is. Impose a heavy penance. Go now. Close the door."