"Oh, well, no use talking to you. Let me go," said Bamjee, covering his agony of fear under a very well-acted cloak of indifference. Cold sweat was bursting out of every pore in his body and he felt sick at the stomach, but he looked belligerently insolent. The Brahmin rose, rolled up his mat and made a signal on the teak door, rapping with his heavy finger-ring. The door opened and the Brahmin stood back to let Bamjee precede him. "To your doom!" he remarked in a strange, startling voice. "Never enter this temple again!" "Sanctity first!" said Bamjee with a mocking bow of abject reverence. He waited. The Brahmin waited. At last the Brahmin shrugged his shoulders, began murmuring a _mantram_ nasally, like an angry swarm of hornets, and led the way out. His signal, it appeared, was misinterpreted. A long stick, swung with strong hands by a man who hid beside the wall on tiptoe, came down like a pole-ax on his shaved crown. It broke the stick. It cracked his skull. A second stick, from the opposite side of the door, descended on him before the blood had time to burst through the broken skin or his knees had time to give beneath him. Then he fell like a steer and his blood went pouring on the paving-stones. The apparition--the white, whirling specter that seized half the broken stick, leaped over the body and dived into the darkest courtyard shadow--was Bamjee. One of the men beside the door gave chase--until a shadow leaped to life and the point of Bamjee's broken stick so nearly disemboweled him that he rolled in silent agony, his knees on his chest. Somebody shouted to the men on guard to close the outer gate. There was a clash of chains, the hinges squealed and the gate shut with a clang in Bamjee's face. But it was pitch-dark by the gate. None saw him. "Seize him!" a voice shouted. "Too late--too late!" came the answer. "He escaped us." CHAPTER V. LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT. One reason why Brazenose Blake had been picked for the post of British Resident in Nerada was his genius for official inertia and strictly unofficial action. He could be incredibly indiscreet and get away with it. A more meticulous observer of precedent and the proprieties would have sent for the police. Blake searched the dead Brahmin's clothing, asked Quorn all the questions he could think of, left the Brahmin's body lying in the hut and took Quorn to the Residency, where, the moment he arrived, he sent a galloper in search of Rana Raj Singh. Then he gave Quorn a carefully measured dose of whisky, personally rendered first aid to the tortured wrists and ankles, bit the end from an expensive cigar, sat down and waited, with his feet on the veranda rail. "No use getting excited," he said. "You've twenty minutes, Quorn, to lie still and remember all that happened. When Rana Raj Singh comes, you can tell the whole story to both of us at the same time. Save breath and exertion."