eople who, unseen, surrounded me. There were
lodges of the Cult of Fire all over the East, all having power to make
initiates and some to pass disciples into the higher grades. Those who
aspired to the highest rank in the order, however, were compelled to
visit this secret city in the Indian hills.

"Then at last I learned a secret which Naida had for long kept back from
me. These followers of the new Zoroaster were polygamists, and she
was the first or chief wife of the mysterious personage known as
Fire-Tongue. I gathered that others had superseded her, and her lord and
master rarely visited this marble house set amid its extensive gardens.

"Her dignities remained, however, and no one had aspired to dethrone her
as high priestess of the temple. She evidently knew all the secrets of
the organization, and I gathered that she was indispensable to the group
who controlled it.

"Respecting Fire-Tongue himself, his origin, his appearance, she was
resolutely silent, a second Acte, faithful to the last. That the ends of
this cult were not only religious but political, she did not deny, but
upon this point she was very reticent. An elaborate system of espionage
was established throughout the East, Near and Far, and death was the
penalty of any breach of fidelity.

"Respecting the tests to which candidates were put, she spoke with more
freedom. Those who, having reached the second grade, aspired to the
first, were submitted to three very severe ones, to make trial of their
courage, purity, and humility. Failure in any of these trials resulted
in instant death, and the final test, the trial by fire, which took
place in a subterranean chamber of the great temple, resulted in a
candidate whose courage failed him being precipitated into that lake of
flame which I have already described--a dreadful form of death, which by
accident I had witnessed.

"Gentlemen, realizing what the existence of such an organization meant,
what a menace to the peace of the world must lie here, what dreadful
things were almost hourly happening about me at behest of this invisible
monster known as Fire-Tongue, I yet confess--for I am here to speak the
truth--that, although I had now fully recovered my strength, I lingered
on in a delicious idleness, which you who hear me must find it hard to
understand.

"I have the reputation of being a cold, hard man. So had Antony before
he met Cleopatra. But seven years ago, under the Indian moon, I learned
to