crept, or glided, not even a slipping purr,
noiseless, just a drifting shadow; only where a ribbon of moonlight
from between a lotus and a leaf picked it out was the brown thing of
evil marked against the marble. Then the divan blurred it from sight.
From behind the divan to the ebony chair, and the wide black-topped
table the shadow drifted; and when Amir Khan had clanged the iron lid
closed, and risen, lamp in hand, there was nothing to catch his eye.

He placed the lamp that was fashioned like a lotus upon the table, and
dropping into his chair, yawned sleepily. Then he raised his voice to
call his bearer:

"Abd--"

The name died on his lips, for the brown thing behind the chair had
slipped upward with the silent undulation of a panther, and a deadly
_roomal_ (towel) had flashed over the Chief's head and was now a
strangling knot about his tawny throat; the hard knuckles of Hunsa were
kneading his spine at the back of the skull with a half twist of the
cloth. He was pinioned to the back of the chair; he was in a vise, the
jaws of which closed his throat. Just a stifled gurgle escaped from
his lips as his hand clutched at a dagger hilt. The muscles of the
naked brown body behind stood out in knobs of strength, and the face of
the strangler, pan-reddened teeth showing in the flickering light as if
they had bitten into blood, was the face of a ghoul.

The powerful Pindari struggled in smothering desperation; and Hunsa,
twisting the gorilla hands, sought in vain to break the neck--it was
too strong.

Then the chair careened sidewise, and the Pindari shot downward, his
forehead striking a marble slab, stunning him. Hunsa, with the
death-grip still on the roomal, planted a knee between the victim's
shoulder-blades, and jerked the head upward--still the spine did not
snap; and slowly tightening the pressure of the cloth he smothered the
man beneath his knee till he felt the muscles go slack and the body lie
limp--dead!

Then Hunsa crossed the _roomal_ in his left hand, and stretching out
his right grasped the Chief's dagger where it lay upon the floor, and
drove it, from behind, through his heart. He placed the knife upon the
floor where drops of blood, trickling from its curved point, lay upon
the white marble like spilled rubies. He unfastened the silver chain
that carried the keys and crossed the floor with the slouching crouch
of a hyena. Rapidly he opened the iron box, took the paper Amir Khan
had pla