typical Indian coloring and features but was a little heavier than most of his fellow countrymen. With his receding hairline he looked like a Buddha dressed in a white robe. He showed no trace of fear.
'I been talking to 'im, captain,' Tooke said, 'but 'e aint' been—”
'I was merely waiting;' the priest suddenly said in deep tones that resonated through the temple, 'for someone worth speaking to. Whom am I addressing, please?'
'Captain Sir Albert Westphalen.'
'Welcome to the temple of Kali, Captain.'
Westphalen heard no hint of welcome in his voice.
His eye was caught by the priest's necklace—an intricate thing, silvery, inscribed with strange script, a pair of yellow stones with black centers spaced by two links at the front.
'So, you speak English, do you?' he said for want of something better.
This priest—the high priest of the temple, no doubt—unsettled him with his icy calm and penetrating gaze.
'Yes. When it appeared that the British were determined to make my country a colony, I decided it might be a useful language to know.'
Westphalen put down his anger at the smug arrogance of this heathen and concentrated on the matter at hand. He wanted to find the jewels and leave this place.
'We know you are hiding rebel sepoys here. Where are they?'
'There are no sepoys here. Only devotees of Kali.'
'Then what about this?' It was Tooke, standing by a row of waist-high urns. He had slashed through the waxy fabric that sealed the mouth of the nearest one and now held up his dripping knife. 'Oil! Enough for a year. And there's sacks of rice over there. More than any twenty 'devotees' need!'
The high priest never looked in Tooke's direction. It was as if the soldier didn't exist.
'Well?' Westphalen said at last. 'What about the rice and oil?'
'Merely stocking in provisions against the turmoil of the times, captain,' the high priest said blandly. 'One never knows when supplies might be cut off.'
'If you won't reveal the whereabouts of the rebels, I shall be forced to order my men to search the temple from top to bottom. This will cause needless destruction.'
'That will not be necessary, captain.'
Westphalen and his men jumped at the sound of the woman's voice. As he watched, she seemed to take form out of the darkness behind the statue of Kali. She was shorter than the high priest, but well proportioned. She too wore a robe of pure white.
The high priest rattled something in a heathen tongue as she joined him on the dais; the woman replied in kind.
'What did they say?' Westphalen said to anyone who was listening.
Tooke replied: 'He asked about the children; she said they were safe.'
For the first time, the priest admitted Tooke's existence by looking at him, nothing more.
'What you seek, Captain Westphalen,' the woman said quickly, 'lies beneath our feet. The only way to it is through that grate.'
She pointed to a spot beyond the rows of oil urns and sacks of rice. Tooke hopped over them and knelt down.
'Here it is! But'—he jumped to his feet again—'
Westphalen pointed to the soldier nearest him. 'Hunter! Watch those two. If they try to escape, shoot them!'
Hunter nodded and aimed his Enfield at the pair on the dais. Westphalen joined the rest of the men at the grate.
It was square, perhaps ten feet on a side, made of heavy iron bars crisscrossing about six inches apart. Damp air, reeking of putrefaction, wafted up through the opening from the impenetrable darkness below.
Westphalen sent Malleson for one of the lamps from the dais. When it was brought to him, he dropped it through the grate. Its copper body rang against the bare stone floor fifteen feet below as it bounced and landed on its side. The flame sputtered and almost died, then wavered to life again. The brightening light flickered off the smooth stone surfaces on three sides of the well. A dark, arched opening gaped in the wall opposite them.
They looked down into what appeared to be the terminus of a subterranean passage.
And there in the two corners flanking the tunnel mouth stood small urns filled with colored stones—some green, some red, and some crystal clear.
Westphalen experienced an instant of vertigo. He had to lean forward against the grate to keep himself from collapsing.
He quickly glanced around at his men. They had seen the urns, too. Accommodations would have to be made. If those urns were full of jewels, there would be plenty for all. But first they had to get them up here.
He began barking orders: Malleson was sent out to the horses for a rope; the remaining four were told to spread out around the grate and lift it off. They bent to it, strained until their faces reddened in the light filtering up from below, but could not budge it.
