By this time, the latter, alias Hector Wade, was becoming familiar with at least an inkling of what he was supposed to accomplish after he would have reached Tamerlanistan, though he was as ignorant as ever as to the special reasons why Fate, with Ali Yusuf Khan and an ancient blade playing Deputy-Fates, had chosen him as the instrument.
The princess party arrived in Peshawar on a Monday, early, just as morning came with the young sun gilding the carved struts of Kabul Gate, spiking a crimson diadem across the face of the lower Himalayas, shooting a glimmering, yellow wedge of light down the length of the Khybar Pass, straight into the stony entrails of Afghanistan.
They were evidently expected, for carriages met them at the station, and they drove rapidly, through that boisterous northern city which guards the gateway of India and seal's the southern end of the Khybar Pass that points straight, like a pistol, at the heart of Asia; through the whirling, choking dust that rose in clouds from the dirty streets; past crowds of ruffianly, swaggering border men, to the house of a wealthy Tamerlani tradesman who dealt in salt and hides and tea; and, shortly after their tiffin of mutton stewed in honey and seasoned with asafoetida, licorice water, sticky sweetmeats, and unripe melons had been served in their host's pavilion, trouble came with a bearded Tajik courier's official, peaked, black turban showing above the scraggly mellingtonia in the yard, and his throaty call: “A visitor! A visitor for the princess!”—and, a minute later, the visitor arrived, atop a smelly, furry camel, yelling, cursing, using the
