18. A Tanjong

Forty minutes! What could I do in that time to insure the safety of the prineess? Had I found her only a little sooner, I could have summoned soldiers and surrounded the building. They would not have killed her had they known they were going to be taken. But I must do something. The precious minutes were slipping by. There was nothing for it but to take the bull by the horns and do the best I could. I rose and felt my way to the corner of the room. On hands and knees I groped about in the darkness for the trap door, and at last I found it. Gingerly I tried it to learn if it were locked from below. It was not. I raised it quickly and jumped through, my pistol still in my hand. I heard it slam shut above my head as I touched the floor. Luckily, I did not fall; and my advent had been so sudden and so unexpected that for an instant Muso and his companion seemed unable to move or speak. I backed to the wall and covered them.

"Don't move," I warned, "or I'll kill you both."

It was then that I first saw two men in the far corner of the dimly lighted room as they leaped to their feet from a pile of rags upon which they had been lying asleep. As they reached for their pistols I opened fire on them. Muso dropped to the floor behind the table at which he had been sitting, but his companion now drew his own weapon and levelled it at me. I shot him first. How all three of them could have missed me in that small room I cannot understand. Perhaps the brains of two of them were dulled by sleep, and the other was unquestionably nervous. I had seen his hand shake as it held his weapon; but miss me they did, and the second and third went down before they could find me with the deadly stream of r-rays from their guns. Only Muso remained. I ordered him out from under the table and took his pistol from him; then I looked about for Nna. She was sitting on a bench at the far side of the room.

"Have they harmed you in any way, Nna?" I asked.

"No; but who are you? Do you come from my father, the jong? Are you a friend or another enemy?"

"I am your friend," I said. "I have come to take you away from here and back to the palace. She did not recognize me in my black wig and mean apparel.

"Who are you?" demanded Muso, "and what are you going to do to me?"

"I am going to kill you, Muso," I said. "I have hoped for this chance, but never expected to get it."

"Why do you want to kill me? I haven't harmed the princess. I was only trying to frighten Taman into giving me back the throne that belongs to me."

"You lie Muso," I said; "but it is not this thing alone that I am going to kill you for--not something that you may say you did not intend doing, but something you did."

"What did I ever do to you? I never saw you before."