Suddenly a low laugh startled them, a delicious laugh, full of camaraderie, that would have disarmed the suspicion of a wolf. Just as unexpectedly a curtain less than a yard away from Kirby moved, and she stood before them--Yasmini. She could only be Yasmini. Besides, she had jasmine flowers worked into her hair. Like a pair of bull buffaloes startled from their sleep, the colonel and his adjutant shot to their feet and faced her, and to their credit let it be recorded that they dropped their eyes, both of them. They felt like bounders. They hated themselves for breaking in on such loveliness. "Will the sahibs not be seated again?" she asked them in a velvet voice; and, sweating in the neck, they each sat down. Now that the first feeling of impropriety had given way to curiosity, neither had eyes for anything but her. Neither had ever seen anything so beautiful, so fascinating, so impudently lovely. She was laughing at them; each knew it, yet neither felt resentful. "Well?" she asked in Hindustani, and arched her eyebrows questioning. And Colonel Kirby stammered because she had made him think of his mother, and the tender prelude to a curtain lecture. Yet this woman was not old enough to have been his wife! "I-I-I came to ask about a friend of mine--by name Risaldar--Major Ranjoor Singh. I understand you know him?" She nodded, and Kirby fought with a desire to let his mind wander. The subtle hypnotism that the East knows how to stage and use was creeping over him. She stood so close! She seemed so like the warm soft spirit of all womanhood that only the measured rising and falling of her bosom, under the gauzy drapery, made her seem human and not a spirit. Subtly, ever so cunningly, she had contrived to touch a chord in Colonel Kirby's heart that he did not know lived any more. Warrington was speechless; he could not have trusted himself to speak. She had touched another chord in him. "He came here more than once, or so I've been given to understand," said Kirby, and his own voice startled him, for it seemed harsh. "He is said to have listened to a lecture here--I was told the lecture was delivered by a German--and there was some sort of a fracas outside in the street afterward. I'm told some of his squadron were near, and they thrashed a man. Now, Ranjoor Singh is missing." "So?" said Yasmini, arching her whole lithe body into a setting for the prettiest yawn that Kirby had ever seen. "So the Jat is missing! Yes, he came here, sahib. He was never invited, but he came. He sat here saying nothing until it suited him to sit where another man was; then he struck the other man--so, with the sole of his foot--and took the man's place, and heard what he came to hear. Later, outside in the street, he and his men set on the Afridi whom he had struck with his foot and beat him." "I have heard a variation of that," said Kirby.