Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/49

 Since then we've heard of him occasionally among the tribes. Periodically he seems to vanish. He knew the tribes as no other man in India did"

The major broke off, to puff vigorously at his cigarette.

"Jain Ali Beg who went West said to me more than once that Donovan Khan, his master, had the aspect of one who hunted, although he never killed game except for the pot. Also that riders came from the hill villages—men of a race strange to Jain Ali Beg—to follow Donovan Khan; and there was much fighting. There would be."

"It's all so strange," thought Edith aloud.

"Riddles? Not altogether"—again the officer checked himself. "The Viceroy doesn't let us tell everything we hear. But this man was up to something, on his own. Up yonder, you know. He gathered power to himself, and his followers named him Khan—at any rate, until that caravan called for him at Kashgar. It looks to me as if the hillmen had sent a funeral cortège for him."

He spoke half jestingly, but Edith caught the thoughtfulness that underlay his words. Her brow wrinkled as she remembered the letter addressed to Monsey that she had seen at the Château.

A falcon. A search in the City of the Sun—Srinagar. Sheer nonsense, unless it was code. What had Fraser-Carnie said that reminded her of it? Something about searching—she could not place it.

"Have you," she asked, "a servant with a mark on his face under one eye? He frightened me once."

Fraser-Carnie glanced at her strong, young figure, erect in the saddle, at her friendly, gray eyes. "I hardly fancy you are easily frightened, my dear Miss