It sounded like a boy's voice—young—educated. It was not pitched high; there was no note of excitement—hardly any emphasis. Diana barked again furiously, and there was no time for hesitation; either he was in danger or he was not; the hound said, Yes; the boy's voice implied it; curiosity said, Stay! Common sense said, Make for the open quickly! Intuition said, Jump! and intuition is a despot whom it is not wise to disobey.
He reached the courtyard neck and neck with Diana, who nearly knocked him over as she faced about savagely with every hair bristling, fangs bared, eyes aglare. He seized her by collar and tail and threw his weight backward to stop her from springing at the throat of a man in dingy gray, who paused in mid-stride, one hand behind him, in the doorway. There was another man behind him, dimly outlined in the gloom. Their faces, high-cheek-boned and fanatical—almost Chinese—were fiercely confident, and why they paused was not self-evident; for the man who held a hand behind his back was armed, and with something heavy, as the angle of his shoulder proved.
Diana saved that second. Her animal instinct was quicker than Ommony's eye, that read anticipation in the faces in front of him. She nearly knocked Ommony over again as she reversed the direction of effort, broke the collar-hold and sprang past him, burying her fangs in something (Ommony knew that gurgling, smothered growl). She had knocked him sidewise and he spun to regain his balance while a ten-pound tulwar split the whistling air where his back had been. He was just in time to seize the wrist that swung the weapon—seize it with both hands and wrench it forward in the direction of effort. The saw-edged tulwar clattered on the paving-blocks, but the enemy did not fall, for Diana had him by the throat and was wrenching in the opposite direction. It was Dawa Tsering!
The Hillman's hands groped for the hound's forelegs; to wrench those apart was his only chance, unless Ommony could save him. A spring tiger-trap was more likely to let go than Diana with a throat-hold. Ommony took the only chance in sight; he yelled "Guard!" to Diana, and crashed his fist into the Hillman's jaw, knocking him flat on his back as Diana let up for a fraction of a second to see what the new danger might be. He seized her by the tail then and dragged her off before she could rush in to worry her fallen foe.
Her turn again! Struggling to free herself, she dragged Ommony in a half-circle, nearly pulling him off his feet as the man in the doorway lunged with a long old-fashioned sword. The third man seemed to prefer discretion, for he still lurked in the shadow, but the man with the sword came on, using both hands now and raising the sword above his head for a swipe that should finish the business.
There was nothing for it but to let Diana go. Ommony yelled "Guard!" again, and jumped for the saw-edged tulwar that had clattered away into the shadow. His foot struck it and he stooped for it as the swordsman swung. The blow missed. Diana seized the foe from behind and ripped away yards of his long cloak. Dawa Tsering struggled to his feet, more stunned by the blow on the back of his head when he fell than mangled by Diana's jaws; he staggered and seemed to have no sense of direction yet.
And now Ommony had the tulwar. He was no swordsman, but neither was his antagonist, who was furthermore worried by Diana from the rear.
"Guard, girl!" Ommony yelled at her, and discipline overcame instinct. She began to keep her distance, rushing in to scare the man and scooting out of reach when he turned to use his weapon. The third man possibly had no sword, for he still lurked in the doorway. Ommony ran, calling Diana, who came bounding after him, turning at every third stride or so to bark thunderous defiance.
The strange thing was that no crowd had come. The walls had echoed Diana's barks and Ommony's sharp yells to her, that must have sounded like the din of battle in the stone-walled silence. It was almost pitch-dark now, and there were no lights from the upper windows, although the glow of street-lights was already visible like an aura against the sly. The whole affair began to seem like a dream, and Ommony felt his hip pocket to make sure the jade was still there. He paused in the throat of the narrow passage by which he had come, sent the hound in ahead of him, and turned to see if he was followed. He heard footsteps, and waited. In that narrow space, with Diana to guard his back, he felt he could protect himself with the tulwar against all comers.
But it was only one man—Dawa Tsering—holding a cloth to his throat and walking unsteadily.
"Give me back my weapon, Ommonee!"
The words, spoken in Prakrit, were intelligible enough but gurgled, as if his throat was choked and hardly functioning. Diana tried to rush at him, but Ommony squeezed her to the wall and grabbed her collar.
"Down!" he ordered, and she crouched at his feet, growling.
"Aye, hold her! I have had enough of that incarnated devil. Give me my knife, Ommonee!"
"You call this butcher's ax a knife! You rascal, it's not a minute since you tried to kill me with it!"
"Aye, but that is nothing. I missed. If you were dead, you might complain. Give me the knife and be off!"
Ommony laughed. "You propose to have another crack at me, eh?"
"Not I! Those Lamas are a lousy gang! They told me I could come to no harm if I obeyed them and said my prayers! Their magic is useless. That she-devil of thine has torn my throat out! I doubt if I shall ever sing again. Give me the knife, and I will go back to the Hills. I wish I had never left Spiti!"
"I told you I am a friend," said Ommony, spearing about in his mind for a clue as to how to carry on.
"Aye. I wish I had believed you. Give me the knife."
"Do you know your way around Delhi?"
"No. May devils befoul the city! That is, I know a little. I can find my way to the te-rain."
Ommony felt in his pocket, found an envelope, and penciled an address on it in bold printed characters.
"Midway between ten and eleven o'clock tonight, go out into the streets and get into the first gharri* you meet.
* Carriage
Give that to the driver. If the driver can't read it, show it to passers-by until you find some one who can. Then drive straight to that address, and I will pay the gharri-wallah.* If your throat needs doctoring, it shall have it."
* Cab-driver
"And my knife?"
"I will return it to you tonight, at that address."
"All right. I will come there."
"I suppose, if I had given you the knife back now, you would have killed me with it!"
"Maybe. But you are no fool, Ommonee! You had better go quickly, before those Lamas find some way of making trouble for you."
Ommony accepted that advice, although he did not believe that, if they really were Lamas, they would go out of their way to make trouble for any one outside their own country. It is one thing to attack an intruder; quite another thing to follow a man through the streets and murder him. He was glad he had hurt nobody. Dawa Tsering's hurt was plainly not serious. There is no satisfaction whatever in violence (if it can possibly be avoided) to a man of Ommony's temperament. He walked in a hurry along the narrow, winding passageways and found the street again, bought food for Diana, gave her the package to carry (for she was temperamentally dangerous in a crowd after having used her jaws in action, unless given something definite to do), and after fifteen minutes' search found a gharri, in which he drove to McGregor's office. McGregor was not there, so he pursued him to his bungalow, where he fed Diana and examined curios for fifteen minutes before deciding what to say.
McGregor understood that perfectly. He might not know Ommony as he knew files, the law of probabilities, and criminal statistics; he might, from deep experience, mistrust his own opinion; but he did know that when Ommony poked around in that way, picking up things and replacing them, it was wise to wait and not ask questions. He smoked and watched his servant putting studs into a clean dress-shirt.
"Have you one man you can absolutely bet on, who could take a package to Tilgaun and could be trusted not to monkey with it on the way, or lose it, or