Caves of Terror by Talbot Mundy

Author:Talbot Mundy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

CHAPTER VIII

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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 is determined to get lamb.”

The Gray Mahatma saw fit to challenge some of that statement.

“It is true, that there are wolves who seek to break in,” he said quietly, “but it is false that there are quarrels among ourselves.”

“Hah!” That little laugh of hers was like the exclamation of a fellow who has got home with his rapier point.

“Quarrels or not,” she answered, “there is a faction that was more than willing to use the ancient passage under my palace grounds, and to hold secret meetings in a room that I made ready for them.

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