This became more and more bewildering, but at the same time, Jack saw that this matter was very simply settled. He looked away to the right, and saw the monk plainly enough, a Buddhist monk in yellow robe, his begging dish of bronze held out before him. The man stood upright and motionless, not thirty yards away. Jack turned on his heel and strode straight across towards the monk, resolved to see at any rate what was in the dish. The dancing girl followed him with graceful, swaying step. At the instant that Jack moved towards the monk a fresh band of revellers came out of a path leading from the acacia bushes and crossed towards the steps of the pagoda. From among them a tall, thin man dressed in white robes stepped out and moved with long, soft strides after the young Englishman. His companions lingered and stared idly about them. As Jack approached the monk, he saw the latter raise his head and glance at him meaningly. Then, with a slight movement of the hand, the monk pointed to the bottom of his bowl. Jack had taken a rupee from his pocket and stretched out his hand to drop it into the bowl. As he did so he glanced eagerly into the bronze vessel. A folded piece of white paper lay in the bottom of it. Jack dropped his coin and stretched out his hand to seize the paper. But he never touched it. With horrible swiftness and suddenness, someone clutched him from behind. Once more he felt his throat in the frightful strangling grip which had seized him on Rushmere Heath, in far-away England. He tried to shout, but his half-choked voice was drowned in the sudden burst of song which rose from the band of gaily dressed figures which now swarmed around him. He tried to struggle, to throw off the fearful grip which held him, but now the dancing girl sprang to him and pressed against his face a cloth she had drawn from beneath her yellow robe. Almost at once the powerful drug with which the cloth was saturated took effect. Jack's head dropped forward, and the dancing girl nodded to the strangler to loose his frightful clutch. At that moment Buck looked round and missed his young companion. "Where's Jack got to?" he asked. "I don't know," said Jim. "He was looking at a picture just along there, the last time I saw him." [Illustration: THE DANCING GIRL] "I don't see him anywhere about," said Buck, in an uneasy voice, and he walked rapidly back. He came to the picture, stopped in front of it, and looked eagerly round for Jack. He saw the band of singers a short distance away, but took no notice of them. He had seen scores of such bands during the evening. Little did he dream that, under cover of those harmless looking revellers, the body of his young comrade was being dragged among the acacia bushes by the monk and the dancing girl. CHAPTER XXI. JACK FINDS HIMSELF IN BAD HANDS.