King found his way on foot through a maze of streets to a palace where he was admitted through one door after another by sentries who saluted when he had whispered to them. He ended by sitting on the end of the bed of a gray-headed man who owns three titles and whose word is law between the borders of a province. To him he talked as one schoolboy to a bigger one, because the gray-haired man had understanding, and hence sympathy. “I don't envy you!” said he under the sheet. “There was an American here not long ago--most amusing man I ever talked to. He had the right expression. 'I do not desiderate that pie!' was his way of putting it. Good, don't you think?” All the while he talked the older man was writing on a pad that he held propped by his knees beneath the bedclothes, holding the paper tight to keep it from fluttering in the breeze of a big electric fan. “There's the release for your prisoners. Take it--and take them! Whatever possessed you to want such a gift?” “Orders, sir.” “Whose?” “His. He sent for me to Peshawur and gave me strict orders to work with, not against her. This was obvious.” “How obvious? It seems bewildering!” “Well, sir,--first place, she doesn't want to seem to be connected with me. Otherwise she'd have been more in evidence. Second place, she has left Delhi--his telegram and Saunders' men on oath notwithstanding--and she did not mean to leave those men. I imagine her best way to manage Hillmen is to keep promises, and they say she promised them. Third place, if those thirty men had been anything but her particular pet gang they'd either have been over the border or else in jail before now,--just like all the others. For some reason that I don't pretend to understand, she promised 'em more than she has been able to perform. So I provide performance. She gets the credit for it. I get a pretty good personal following at least as far as up the Khyber! Q.E.D., sir!” The man in bed nodded. “Not bad,” he said. “Didn't she make some effort to get those men away from Ali's?” King asked him. “I mean, didn't she try to get them dry-nursed by the sirkar in some way?” “Yes. She did. But it was difficult. In the first place, there didn't seem to be any particular hurry. They were eating Ali's substance. The scoundrel had to feed them as long as he kept them there, and we wanted that. We forbade her to pay their debts to Ali, because he has too urgent need of money just now. He is being pressed on account of debts of his own, and the pressure is making him take risks. He has been begging for money from the German agents. We know who they are, and we expect to make a big haul within a few hours now.” “Hope I didn't spoil things by butting in, sir.”