Something as irresistible as destiny was tearing that tangle apart--opening it, as curtains are opened down the center. There was hardly any noise. Then, in the midst of the opening, full in the lamp-light, grinned a face--a human face, inhuman as a nightmare. "God!" cried Blake. "Who is it?" He mastered himself. He had no weapon. He forced himself up from his chair, and the face vanished. Blake strode toward where it had been, and stood there staring at the broken strands of wire and of creeper that would have been difficult to cut through even with an ax. Quorn watched him--until a hand came through the veranda railing and seized Quorn's leg in a grip that checked the flow of blood. It checked speech, paralyzing like the cold-iron grip of nameless fear. Then the face of Maraj came up out of the dark--and the lips of Maraj smiled upward--and the eyes of him gleamed at Quorn. They were like an animal's and Quorn knew they were watching Blake alertly even though they stared so straight into his own eyes. Then the lips moved and a voice that was hardly a voice at all, and yet that carried as distinctly as sounds carry in dreams, said: "Get your elephant and meet me--" There was no time for him to finish. Blake was turning, starting back toward his chair. Horses were coming--clattering, cantering, scattering stones, making as much noise as Rajputs always do when they are done with ghostly silence. Quorn felt the blood flow again as the grip ceased from his leg. "Thought we had him," said Rana Raj Singh, vaulting from the saddle and throwing his reins to a man who galloped up from behind him. "One of my men saw him, another heard him, but he gave us all the slip." "He was here not a minute ago--there--at the end of the veranda," Blake said. "I distinctly saw him." "Hell, I felt him!" said Quorn. "Look at this." He held his leg toward the light and drew his trousers up to show the marks where the maniac's hand had gripped. "He ain't far off." Rana Raj Singh whistled all his men and there began a hunt amid the shrubbery that bade fair to lay Blake's garden waste. Blake ran to the other end of the veranda and slammed a window shut, then ran into the house and locked it on the inside. As he came out he slammed the door and turned the key. "Fine howdy-do if she should bolt into the house!" he remarked. "Why haven't I a dog? Goldarn it! Never again will I live without a decent dog. Why, even a terrier would--" * * * * * He vaulted the veranda rail and vanished into the darkness to help Rana Raj Singh and his companions search the shrubbery. Quorn heard the click of the Colt revolver that Blake had brought with him out of the house. "Too bad if they get him yet," he muttered. "We've a first rate chance, if we use it right, to teach them Brahmins a lesson they won't forget--not in _her_ time."