"Oh, well," mumbled Raynier, jerkily, "you can't see anybody stranded like that--a lady especially--in a totally strange place without doing something to straighten things out for them." Hilda Clive smiled. "None of the others seemed to be of that opinion, at any rate," she said. Snapped Tarleton, "Well, you can't expect a lot of people just landed from a voyage to think about anything but themselves and their own belongings." For once Raynier felt frankly grateful to the contentious one--if only that it was sufficient for Tarleton to lay down a statement on any given subject to cause his ordinary hearers to drop that subject like a red-hot bar. Wherefore these promptly turned to another. Sunt Singh and Kaur Singh, chuprassis, were aroused from the drowsy enjoyment of their hubble-bubbles by a very unwonted intruder in the Political Agent's compound late at night, and were well-nigh speechless with supercilious amazement. The fat trader they had left on the road! See the _Huzoor_! At that time of night! It was the Police Station the fool wanted. Something of the highest importance? Let him come in the morning. It would keep until then. Besides, the _Huzoor_ was out dining. In a direful state of fear and perplexity Chand Lall, thus rebuffed, got out into the road again, and with a scared look over each shoulder, took his way as quickly as he could from the gate. But this was not quick, for even in the darkness it might have been seen that he walked with a painful limp. In the darkness too, something else might have been seen--two figures stealing along in the deeper shade of the tamarisk hedge. He whom they shadowed saw them not--at first--then having chosen their spot, they quickened their pace, and darting forward flung themselves upon him. The yell which the assailed man opened his mouth to utter died in his throat as the white light of a long knife blade streaked before his eyes. "Silence or thou art dead," snarled a harsh voice. "So, dog, thou wouldst betray us?" In the dirty-white turbans and hairy, hook-nosed faces, Chand Lall knew only too well who were these. Already they had begun to drag him swiftly along. Then in his frenzy of terror at the recollection of the fate he had escaped from and which certainly waited him now, even the fear of instant death did not avail. A loud, quavering shriek for aid rang from his lips. But it died in a choking gasp. The white knife blade disappeared, to emerge again red--and this not once only. A corpse lay wallowing in the road, and two loosely-clad figures vanished into the darkness, even as they had come out of it. CHAPTER EIGHT. THE MARK OF MURAD AFZUL.