Part 30 (2/2)

”Ismail!” he shouted, for he was thirsty But there was no answer

”Darya Khan!”

Again there was no answer He called each of the other ot up and realized then for the first tiht before His head felt heavy, and although he did not believe he had been drugged, there was a scent he half-recognized that permeated the cave, and even overcame the dreadful atmosphere that the sick of yesterday had left behind He decided to go to the caveas he had done, sniff the fresh air outside and coain; he would know then whether his nose were deceiving him

But there was no Ismail near the entrance-no Darya Khan-nor any of the other one So was thehe had, except the drugs and instruiven hi about in confusion when he woke

”Isht all be outside

He heard a man hawk and spit, close to the entrance, and went out to see A azine rifle and eyed hirowled, bringing his rifle to the port

”Why not?” King asked him

”Allah! When a camel dies in the Khyber do the kites ask why? Go in!”

He thought then of Yasained him at least civility from every man who saw it He held up his left wrist and knew that instant why it felt uncomfortable The bracelet has disappeared!

He turned back into the cave to hunt for it, and the strange scent greeted his and filthy wounds, there was noit If it had been her special scent in Delhi, as Saunders swore it was, and her special scent on the note Darya Khan had carried down the Khyber, then it was hers now, and she had been in the cave

He hunted high and low and found no bracelet

His pistol was gone, too, and his cartridges, but not the dagger, wrapped in a handkerchief, under his shi+rt The ht him, lay on the floor untouched It was an unusual robber who had robbed him

At least once in his life (or he were not huel) it dawns on a ivable It dawns on most men oftener than once a week So e the guard every two hours!” he ad on the bed ”I wouldn't hesitate to shoot another ht sink in, until the very lees of sha what he was,-and there are not very h to shoulder what lay ahead of him-he set the whole affair behind him as part of the past and looked forward

”Who's 'Bull-with-a-beard'?” he wondered ”nobody interfered with me until I doctored his uess Noho in thunder-by the fat lord Harry-can 'Bull-with-a-beard' be? And why fighting in the Khyber so early as all this? And why does 'Bull-with-a-beard,' whoever he is, hang back?”

Chapter X

Are jackals a tiger's friends because they flatter his?

Choose, ye with stripes and proud whiskers, choose between friend and eneuard two hours after dawn, to the accorowled through theon the rock path King went to the cave entrance, to look the new man over; but because he was in Khinjan, and Khinjan in the ”Hills,” where indirectness is the key to infor to the thunder of tue six feet away that was laid like a knife in the ascending mist

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the new man was a Mahsudi-no sweeter to look at and no less treacherous for the fact Also, that he had boils all over the back of his neck He was not likely to be better tempered because of that fact, either But it is an ill wind that blows no good to the Secret Service