“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. He was 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—“whoosh! The stink!”

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.

The grate was square, measuring perhaps ten feet on a side. It was made of heavy iron bars criss-crossing about six inches apart. Damp air, reeking of putrefaction, wafted up through the bars. The darkness below was impenetrable.

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 twenty 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 were looking down into what appeared to be the terminus of a subterranean passage.