silent, as passive as a bronze Buddha, listening; and the creeping
thing was but a blur, a shadow without movement, silent. Then he
raised the lid of the box and paused, holding it with his right hand,
the flickering light upon his bronze face showing a smile as his eyes
dwelt lovingly upon the gold and jewels within.

And again the thing crept, or glided, not even a slipping purr,
noiseless, just a drifting shadow; only where a ribbon of moonlight
from between a lotus and a leaf picked it out was the brown thing of
evil marked against the marble. Then the divan blurred it from sight.
From behind the divan to the ebony chair, and the wide black-topped
table the shadow drifted; and when Amir Khan had clanged the iron lid
closed, and risen, lamp in hand, there was nothing to catch his eye.

He placed the lamp that was fashioned like a lotus upon the table, and
dropping into his chair, yawned sleepily. Then he raised his voice to
call his bearer:

"Abd--"

The name died on his lips, for the brown thing behind the chair had
slipped upward with the silent undulation of a panther, and a deadly
_roomal_ (towel) had flashed over the Chief's head and was now a
strangling knot about his tawny throat; the hard knuckles of Hunsa were
kneading his spine at the back of the skull with a half twist of the
cloth. He was pinioned to the back of the chair; he was in a vise, the
jaws of which closed his throat. Just a stifled gurgle escaped from
his lips as his hand clutched at a dagger hilt. The muscles of the
naked brown body behind stood out in knobs of strength, and the face of
the strangler, pan-reddened teeth showing in the flickering light as if