Page:Achmed Abdullah--Wings.djvu/34

18 abominations behind the curtains of the zenana. This time it is—"

"Priestcraft?"

"You have said it, sahib!" came the babu's reply in a flat, frightened whisper.

"All right!" Thorneycroft gave a short, unpleasant laugh. "Let's go to Deolibad first and call on my friend Youssef Ali." And a few words of direction to the driver, who grunted a reply, jerked the heads of the trotting animals- away from the north and toward the northwest, and plied their fat sides with the knotted end of his whip.

All night they drove. They rested near a shallow river. But they did not tarry long. They watered the team, rubbed them down with sand, and were off again.

It was a long, hot drive. The silence, the insolent nakedness of the land, the great, burning sun lay on Thorneycroft's soul like a heavy burden. Time and again he was conscious of the whirring of wings, and with each league it seemed to lay closer to the ears of his inner self. It seemed born somewhere in the heart of the purple, silver-nicked gloom that draped the hills of Rajputana.

The babu, too, was conscious of it. His teeth