'The novel opens on board the yacht Cushu Doo, of Colaba Point, Bombay. The narrator, Hal Ravenhurst, cruising for pleasure, has a faithful servant – Laljee; and, one day, an apparently innocent conjurer makes his appearance, with his stock-in-trade. The incident is significant. This man has been seeking his quarry with a powerful motive, all over India; next morning Laljee is found stabbed through the heart, outside his master's cabin door, the assassin leaving no trace behind. Ravenhurst, knowing that fanaticism lies at the bottom of the crime, determines to seek out and punish the murderer, in addition to un-ravelling the mystery. On Laljee's first sight of the conjuror he feels that his last hour has come, and he tells his master how, many years ago, in a Southern Indian State he escaped death at the hands of the Prime Minister, a chief priest of Yama, in the Temple of Death. Ravenhurst, unluckily, forgets the names, and so has a difficult quest. He makes up his mind, however, to visit an old friend – Chris Selden – and his unmarried sister, at Cochin, and enlist their active assistance, strongly reinforced by the help of an old gentleman named Suddleigh, who is living at a recluse in the country with his devoted servitor, Hassan. Suddleigh, years ago, has thrown up his appointment in the Civil Service, through the death of his wife and the abduction of his infant daughter by a native nurse. In vain has he traversed India, in all sorts of disguises, seeking her; his knowledge of Oriental habits, languages, and customs proving him a veritable Captain Burton. Ravenhurst finds the old gentleman a ready help, and they all start away to the native state of Noorjehnupur, at the chief town of which Suddleigh had lost the only clue to his child. Here we find the Prime Minister, the Rao Bahadur Turaki Munguldas, high priest of Yama, with his one hundred assistants, performing the hideous rites of human sacrifice to the God of Death, who "wafts away the souls of men." In his zenana is the lost Miss Suddleigh, who is being kept as a victim or an offering to Yama, it being customary every twenty-five years to propitiate the deity by the death of a European girl. How the rescue of the lost Eileen is effected and the secrets of Yama become known are the property of the story.'
Source: 'The Temple of Death', Clarence and Richmond Examiner, 30 June 1894, p.6.
