manner of supreme self-complacency, producing the bronze box and
waddling over to drop it into Rutton's hand. "My lord is satisfied?" he
gurgled maliciously.

Without answering Rutton turned the box over in his palm, his slender
fingers playing about the bosses of the relief work; there followed a
click and one side of it swung open. The Bengali fell back a pace with
a whisper of awe--real or affected: "The Token, hazoor!" Amber himself
gasped slightly.

Unheeded, the box dropped to the floor. Between Rutton's thumb and
forefinger there blazed a great emerald set in a ring of red old gold.
He turned it this way and that, inspecting it critically; and the
lamplight, catching on the facets, struck from it blinding shafts of
intensely green radiance. Rutton nodded as if in recognition of the
stone and, turning, with an effect of carelessness, tossed it to Amber.

"Keep that for me, David, please," he said. And Amber, catching it,
dropped the ring into his pocket.

"My lord is satisfied with my credentials, then?" the babu persisted.

"It is the Token," Rutton assented wearily. "Now, your message. Be
brief."

"The utterances of the Voice be infrequent, hazoor, its words few--but
charged with meaning: as you know of old." The Bengali drew himself up,
holding up his head and rolling forth his phrases in a voice of great
resonance and depth. "These be the words of the Voice, hazoor: