Black Light by Talbot Mundy — Read

Hawkes went in search of a native gharry but it was a long time before he found one. Meanwhile, Joe went to the roof to look for what Hawkes had called the Maharajah's "detail." He saw a shuttered carriage standing by the corner of a side street, its two fine horses stamping fretfully; there were two men on the box, two footmen lolling on the platform at the rear, and several men who looked like loafers near at hand. He had not watched long when a Ford car stopped two streets away and disgorged five Indian troopers, one of whom strolled casually to the intersection of the streets, hardly glancing at the two-horsed carriage, and returned to his friends who hitched themselves a little but appeared to hold no conference, although they stood in an idle-looking group. There might be something wrong with the ramshackle car; with an air of boredom they watched the native driver peer beneath the hood.

Presently a one-horsed, two-wheeled vehicle known as an ekka arrived with four more troopers, who joined the first party, straightening their tunics but not seeming to have anything to say. The driver of the ekka left his sweating horse to peer, too, under the hood of the motor. Presently, one more man came on a motorcycle, the echo of its exhaust spattering off blind house walls like the noise of gun-fire. He leaned his cycle against the stone pillar to which the ekka horse was hitched and joined the others. Still there was no conference; they appeared to act now like automatons guided by one impulse. They formed up two and two and marched with jingling spurs toward the side street where the two-horsed carriage and its attendant loafers waited.