As for the forcible abduction, that could best be got around by obliging
her to write a letter to himself requesting permission to visit the mountains
for a change of air and scenery. There were ways and means of obliging
women to write letters.

Best of all, of course, would be Yasmini's unconditional surrender,
because then he would be able to make use of her wits and her information,
instead of having to explain away her "accident" and cope alone with
any one whom she might already have entrusted with her secret. There
should be a strenuous effort first to bring her to her senses. Physical
pain, he had noticed, had more effect on people's senses than any
amount of argument. There had been a very amusing instance recently.
One of his dancing girls named Malati had refused recently to sing
and dance her best before a man to whom Gungadhura had designed
to make a present of her; but the mere preliminaries of removing a
toe-nail behind the scenes had changed her mind within three minutes.

Then there were other little humorous contrivances. There is a way
of tying an intended convert to your views in such ingenious fashion
that the lightest touch of a finger on taut catgut stretched from limb to
limb, causes exquisite agony. And a cigarette end, of course, applied
in such circumstances to the tenderer parts has great power to persuade.

As to accomplices, those must be few and carefully chosen. Alone
against Yasmini he knew he would have no chance whatever, for she
was physically stronger than a panther, and as swift and graceful. But
there are creatures, not nearly yet extinct from Eastern courts, known
as eunuchs, whose strongest quality is seldom said to be mercy, and
whose chief business in life is to be amenable to orders and to guard