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34 "Ah!" breathed the swami, and he did not altogether hide a faint accent of nervousness—"then—it has been talked about—in the south?"

"No!" Thorneycroft replied quickly. "Not talked about. I do not even know what it is. But a voice came to me in the night—whispering, whispering; it was like the whirring of wings, and I followed, followed, followed! Straight on I followed until I came here, to Oneypore, to the palace, the courtyard, your presence, O swami! And now"—he really spoke the truth there, and he used to say afterward that it was doubtless the fact of his speaking the truth which made him so utterly convincing—"now the whirring of wings has stopped. Now there is sweetness and peace as there was"—he shot the words out suddenly—"that day, a few weeks back, on the 15th of January!"

"At what hour?" as suddenly asked the priest.

"At twenty-eight minutes to midnight!" replied Thorneycroft, who had never forgotten the day nor the hour when the Raja of Oneypore had died in the salon of Her Grace of Shropshire.

"Good!" said the swami, rising slowly and leading the way to a massive door.

He drew a foot-long, skewerlike key from his