"Have you ever heard, sahib, that he who strikes the wearer of a Northern knife is like to feel that knife? So Ranjoor Singh, the Jat, is missing?" "Yes," said Kirby, frowning, for he was not pleased to hear Ranjoor Singh spoken of slightingly. A Jat may be a good enough man, and usually is, but a Sikh is a Jat who is better. "And if he is missing, what has that to do with me?" asked Yasmini. "I have heard--men say--" "Yes?" she said, laughing, for it amused her almost more than any other thing to see dignity disarmed. "Men say that you know most of what goes on in Delhi--" "And--?" She was Impudence arrayed in gossamer. Colonel Kirby pulled himself together; after all, it was not for long that anything less than an army corps could make him feel unequal to a situation. This woman was the loveliest thing he had ever seen, but.... "I've come to find out whether Ranjoor Singh's alive or dead," he said sternly, "and, if he's alive, to take him away with me." She smiled as graciously as evening smiles on the seeded plains, and sank on to a divan with the grace it needs a life of dancing to bestow. "Sahib," she said, with a suddenly assumed air of candidness, "they have told the truth. There is little that goes on in Delhi--in the world--that I can not hear of if I will. The winds of the world flow in and out of these four walls." "Then where is Ranjoor Singh?" asked Colonel Kirby. She did not hesitate an instant. He was watching her amazing eyes that surely would have betrayed her had she been at a moment's loss; they did not change nor darken for a second. "How much, does the sahib know already?" she asked calmly, as if she wished to spare him an unnecessary repetition of mere beginnings. "A trooper of D Squadron--that's Ranjoor Singh's squadron--was murdered in the bazaar this afternoon. The risaldar-major went to the morgue to identify the body--drove through the bazaar, and possibly discovered some clue to the murderer. At all events, he is known to have entered a house in the bazaar, and that house is now in flames." "The sahib knows that much? And am I to quell the flames?" asked Yasmini. She neither sat nor lay on the divan. She was curled on it, leaning on an elbow, like an imp from another world. "Who owns that house?" asked Kirby, since he could think of nothing else to ask. "That is the House-of-the-Eight-Half--brothers," said Yasmini. "He who built it had eight wives, and a son by each. That was ages ago, and the descendants of the eight half-brothers are all at law about the ownership. There are many stories told about that house." Suddenly she broke into laughter, leaning on her hand and mocking them as Puck mocked mortals. A man could not doubt her. Colonel and adjutant, both men who had seen grim service and both self-possessed as a rule, knew that she could read clean through them, and that from the bottom of her deep, wise soul she was amused.