ahibs_ take any other way than straight into her
presence!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE RIVER OF DEATH

Dressed now in the Punjabi costume with gorgeous silk turbans, we walked
side by side up the marble steps and knocked on the brass-bound, teak
front door at the top. Exactly as when we arrived on the previous day,
the door was immediately opened by two women.

The Mahatma was in there ahead of us, and had evidently told Yasmini
sufficient of our adventures to make her laugh. She squealed with
delight at sight of us.

"Come! Sit beside me in the window, both of you! My women will bring
food. Afterward you shall sleep--poor things, you look as if you need
it! O, what is that, Ganesha-ji? Blood on your linen? Were you hurt?"

Her swift, restless fingers drew the cloth aside and showed a few inches
of where my bare skin should have been.

"It is nothing. My women shall dress it. They have oils that will cause
the skin to grow again within a week. A week is nothing; you and
Athelstan will be here longer than a week! And you crossed the Pool of
Terrors? I have crossed that too! we three are initiates now!"

"Ye are three who will die unless discretion is the very law ye live
by!" said the Gray Mahatma. He seemed annoyed about something.

"Old Dust-and-ashes!" laughed Yasmini, snapping her fingers at him.
"Hah!" She laughed delightedly. "They have seen enough to make them
believe what I shall tell them!"

"Woman, you woo your own destruction. None has ever set out to betray
that secret and survived the first offense!" he answered.

"It was _you_ who betrayed it to _me_," she said, with another golden
laugh. Then, turning to King again:

"I have sought for that secret day and night! India has always known of
its existence; and in every generation some have fought their way in
through the outer mysteries to the knowledge within. But those who enter
always become initiates, and keep the secret. I was puzzled how to
begin, until I heard how, in England, a woman once overheard the secrets
of Freemasonry, and was made a Freemason in consequence.

"Now behold this man they call the Gray Mahatma! He does as I tell him!
You must know that these Knowers of Royal Knowledge, as they call
themselves, are not the little birds in one nest that they would like to
be; they quarrel among themselves, and there is a rival faction that
knows only street-corner magic, but is more deadly bent on knowing Royal
Knowledge than a wolf i