ten minutes she was, out of breath, pounding the fancy knocker beside the screen door at the entrance to Rao-Singh's "cottage."
A dark, turbaned Hindu answered the door. Too well trained to register any surprise at the presence of a woman at his master's door at any hour of the day or night, he ushered her into the living-room and disappeared. Carmelita declined the chair he had offered her and shifted from one foot to the other for a few minutes. The Hindu servant reappeared and conveyed the message in broken English that his master desired to see the lady in his study.
Like Rao-Singh's apartment in Paris, this whole house was like a scene from another world. The Indian was a connoisseur of beauty, of rarities, preferably those with an exotic appeal. The floors were laid with oriental rugs that a millionaire collector would have given half his fortune for. A large bronze Buddha set into an altar-like effect seemed to blink at her from one end of the room. The walls were hung with tapestries and a few trophies of big game hunting in his native India. The place was somewhat oppressive and filled with the faint, acrid odor of incense.
And upon every one of his possessions she noticed somewhere the Bengal tiger brand
