Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/91

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The princess was alone in a tower room of the palace when she opened the message and read it.

“The ancient prophecy she murmured. “The ancient prophecy of the Gengizkhani!”

And as she stepped to the window and looked south toward India, where, under the sweep of the twilight, the bunched mass of the town reddened to russet, then chilled to flat, silvery gray, while, in the office of the Anglo-Asian Cable Company, at the corner of the Nahassim Street, Chandra's busy brown fingers were clicking a message to a gentleman from New York, temporarily at the Savoy, London.

“Wahab al-Shaitan,” said Aziza Nurmahal to the regent-executioner, “as soon as my preparations are made, I shall go south, to Calcutta. Rule thou the land in my absence, and—if thou shouldst not know what to do—consult thy beheading ax. And the rest shall be as Allah willeth!”

“My dear,” said Mr. Ezra W. Warburton to his daughter, “I have to go to Calcutta, and thence up into Central Asia on business. Would you like to come with me?”

“You just bet, you dear old dad!”

And she gave him a hug and a large, moist kiss.