And then, refusing to resume any clothing except a mere waist-cloth of decency, or to take his tools or anything which might cause suspicion to go with him, he went out into the bazaars, leaving those two cursing, and swearing, and wondering if by chance they had hit on the right lie! Had the ring really found its way to the ruined palace which was the only other relic of kingship remaining to the Rightful Heir of all?
And even that possession was burdened by conditions!
It is impossible to overestimate what the loss of absolute power means to men like Jehan Aziz who have nothing to take its place. As a rule, when their personal interests do not clash with their environments, they only grin horribly, and contrive to bear the loss. But when, as Jehan Aziz did, they feel enmeshed in a network of petty limitations, their impotent arrogance finds the position intolerable.
As he flung himself angrily once more on the eternal string bed, he felt that the only thing which would satisfy him was the grip upon his finger of a gold circlet set with a green stone, on which was scratched the kingly legend.
And despite Burkut"s help he had failed to get it; as yet--
Meanwhile Lateefa, naked as he was born--save for his rag of decency and an embroidered skull-cap of inexpressibly filthy white muslin set on the oily, grizzled hair that hung in an inward curve about his ears--was at large in the gutters and lanes, feeling the freedom of a bird newly escaped from a cage. His last sense of allegiance to the Nawab had gone; he had not yet attached himself to the Nawabin. He did not really care much as to the fate of the ring. It had been more a desire to outmatch their cunning, than any hope of keeping his promise to Khojee, that had made him transfer the precious ballast--as he had done in the leisure afforded him by that discreet game of cards--from the old kite to a new one, and leave it in the pile. It was a trifle safer there; but, on the other hand, any one might find it at any time.
If so, it would be the fault of Fate. Not Lateefa"s, as it would have been had he been foolish enough to try and take the ring, or even the kites with him. That would have been fatal.
So as, with a twopenny-halfpenny wisp of a muslin scarf he borrowed from a friend, superadded to his costume--or the lack of it--and a certain soft brilliance of opium in his eyes, the kitemaker lounged about in the more disreputable quarters of the town, listening to tales and telling them with equal indifference, he was, in a way, the spirit of an Indian bazaar incarnate. Truth had gone from him utterly. In its place had come an impersonal appreciation of the value of vice or virtue as a mere ingredient of anecdote, and an absolute lack of responsibility for the result of his admixture of good and evil.
Therefore, as he sat crouched up in the corner of a frail lady"s reception room, fingering a lute which he had found there, and trilling softly of "oughts" and "naughts" while she retailed the latest lies to the shifting audience which came and went up and down the steep musk-scented stairs, he was at once a thing dreadful, a thing pathetic.
For his keen face, seen by the smoking oil lamps set high in a bra.s.s trefoil before the mistress of the house, was alight with a sensuous spirituality, and his lean figure, so listless in its lounge, was instinct with that power of energy, of spring, that shows even in a sleeping tiger.
"Lo, thou in the corner!" came the narrator"s voice; "hold thy peace.
What are thy "oughts" and "naughts" to us of the bazaar? Take them to thy virtuous beauties who leave messages for thee at Dilaram"s--at Dilaram"s forsooth! an odd "_post-arffis_"[16] for virtue! And so, my masters," she went on, "the _daghdars_[17]--there were five of them--carried the woman off by force, and----"
Lateefa was not one of the breathless listeners. He was winking elaborately at the buxom a.s.sistant who was handing round the sherbets, and asking irresponsibly, "Didst leave a message for me at Dilaram"s, beloved?"
"Not I, fool!" she giggled; "thou must be drunk indeed to think virtue fits me. Yet it is true. One such _did_ come when I was at Dilaram"s with her----" She nodded to the speaker--who, having reached her climax, was becoming dramatic, the light before her making her face all eyes and lips--"An old body--out on thee for thy bad taste, Lateef! And she says, says she, "Tell Lateef of the house of the Nawab that it is well with us in the prison--that we want no service." See you, friends?
not even his! Nay, take it not to heart, beloved! there be others less unkind."
But Lateefa had risen with a sudden sense of something beyond his present freedom; that freedom from truth, clothes, kite-making, above all things, from the methods of the police! And that something was Auntie Khojee. For the messenger, he felt, could have been no one else.
Why had she come to say it was well with her? Had they made her do so?
And if so, what had they been doing to those helpless women? What they _could_ have done, had they dared, Lateefa knew only too well; and his brain was too confused to remember that _had_ they dared, they would scarcely have bidden him go back to his workshop in the old palace.
His feet were as confused as his brain, but, in or out of the gutter, they steered him pretty straight for the big iron-studded door with the little wicket in it beneath the _naubat khana_.
"Khojee!" he called cautiously, rattling at the wicket; for it was barred, as usual, at night. There was no answer. He raised his voice--"Auntie Khojee, it is Lateef! Rise, sister, and let me in."
She ought to have heard that; for he knew her to be a light sleeper. He paused doubtfully. Was she simply asleep, or had those two been at work? Then it occurred to him that he had been a fool not to ask the sherbet-hander _when_ the message had been left at Dilaram"s. It might have been that very day, in which case he could afford to postpone his inquiries till the morrow. He must find out. That was the first thing to be done.
Late as it was growing, there was no slackening, as yet, in the tide of life ebbing and flowing through the bazaars, when he returned to them.
Everybody in the city seemed astir, and he hastily turned his face to the lamp-sprinkled caverns of the arcaded shops, as he saw Burkut Ali and Jehan Aziz coming towards him in the crowd. They pa.s.sed him talking together in low tones, and he looked after them doubtfully. Were they simply promenading, as half the town seemed to be doing, or----?
Their sudden turn down a by-lane decided him. He followed cautiously.
Alike though the bazaars and the by-ways of a native city are in form, the change of atmosphere between them is striking beyond words. So here, within a whisper of unceasing talk and movement, Lateefa found all silent, deserted. Lightless too; except when a farthing rushlight at a niched shrine where two lanes crossed, shone on the black slime in the gutters, as if it had been ink, and showed the glistening black streaks upon the windowless walls, down which the sewage from the upper stories of the tall houses trickled to the sewage below. Here and there a dog slunk in the shadows; here and there a woman crept furtively from doorway to doorway. And overhead, with a fathomless depth of purple in which the stars seemed trivial bits of tinsel, a notched ribbon of sky showed between the turreted roofs.
A garland of marigolds--sending their curious odour into the general compound of smells as they hung over a closed door--and a m.u.f.fled sound of women"s laughter told of a marriage within. A knife--still swinging from the touch of the last visitor--and a louder shrill of voices drowning a woman"s cries, told of birth. And that faint whimper--practised, conventional--meant death!
All three within closed doors.
And now, from the vantage-ground of the last turn, Lateefa waited and watched those two go on. Had they been there before? Had they the means of entry?
No! The rattle of the wicket sounded loudly; then the voice of authority--"Open! Open to the Master! Open to the Nawab!"
Even to that there was no answer, and as the two looked at each other, Jehan"s face was fierce with rage. ""Tis as thou saidst, when Dilaram spoke of the message," he muttered savagely. "They are in league!
Lateef is here, and means to defy us."
Then he raised his voice and called again, "Open! Open to the Possessor! Open to the Master!"
A door or two down the alley creaked ajar, showing dim white-sheeted figures of wonder; for that was not a call to be ignored.
Lateefa, from his corner, wondered still more. What could have happened? Something, evidently, about which those two knew nothing.
A man who had pushed past the dim shadows into the lane, started the question as to when the door had last been seen open; whereat voices came from the dim shadows in answer. One had not seen it so these three days, others had noticed Khojee"s limp that morning. The voices grew contentious over the point, so that Nawab Jehan Aziz growled a curse under his breath, and turned away savagely.
"Come, Burkut," he said, "did I not tell thee they could not have arrived by now? The paper at the "estation" says the mail is "change-time." Let me pa.s.s, good folk," he went on irritably to the little group that hung round, curious. "Can a body not come to see if his family be returned from a journey without the neighbours crowding out?"
The remark was plausible explanation enough; but as the two pa.s.sed Lateefa in the dark, Jehan could be heard girding at Burkut. Why had he suggested coming on the sly? It would be all over the town how that Jehan"s women had refused him entrance. He, Burkut, would be suggesting the police next.
"Not the police, my lord," came Burkut"s suave, cunning voice; "there be better ways of gaining entry than that nowadays!"
When they had gone, and the lane--with clucks of incredulity and remarks that it was time some folk refused to be treated scandalously--had settled behind closed doors again, Lateefa stole back to the wicket.
Once more he had the advantage. _He_ knew that it was no obstinacy induced by his presence which kept the inmates silent. And Jehan had made noise enough to wake the dead.
The dead? But they could not all be dead! A vast curiosity, more than any apprehension, made Lateefa look up to the balcony of the _naubat khana_ and wonder if he could climb to it. Once there, the shutters he knew were rotten. It seemed possible--if a foothold or two were picked out of the crumbling brick, and a rope hitched on to an iron hook he knew of, some ten feet up the wall. In fact, given a quiet hour or so, he would undertake to make a felonious entry somehow. But it was too early in the night to try. The time for such work came with the false dawn when sleep simulated death. And that was--how many hours away? He did not know, or care. In that strange life of the bazaars, night was as day. No question of bed-time entered into it; so, sooner or later, he would see that the hour he waited for had come, by the look on those ribbons of sky between the close-packed houses; that network of sky, following the pattern of the network of streets and alleys, which was all that thousands in the city knew of the heaven above it.
The bazaars were scarcely more empty, when once again he returned to them; but they were less noisy. Many voices had dwindled to one voice; the voice of the tale-teller. Therefore the voice of the most imaginative mind in the a.s.semblage.
Lateefa listened here, listened there, curious, indifferent, receptive; approving--as the East always approves--the voice with authority that speaks not as the scribes.
He wandered here, he wandered there; even, with that absorbing inquisitiveness of his, into the courtyard common to Dilaram and her neighbours. Her balcony was dark and silent; the police, he told himself, had likely been bothering her. But the light, and the sound of a crank in Govind"s room, meant a special edition of lies. Then with his ear to the c.h.i.n.k of the door below he could hear Burkut Ali"s voice; then Jehan"s--louder, shrill with protest or anger. They were quarrelling, likely, over drink or cards.
Yet Burkut was sober enough when--barely giving time for Lateefa to find shelter behind the eternal string-bed which was now reared up against the wall--he came out into the yard.
"Fool!" he muttered as he pa.s.sed, "not to see his own good. As if it mattered. He would get house and all. Mayhap he will be drunk enough by morning."
What new villainy was he planning? Lateefa pondered over the question as he drifted on.
The time of felonies was near, for the dogs were forgetting to skulk; a sign that men were fewer in the lanes and streets. Here and there, round an ebbing flicker of light, listeners lingered, and a drowsy voice droned on; but for the most part the cavernous arcades showed still, white-swathed sleepers, simulating death.
This, however, coming swiftly down the bazaar--a strange, swaying, headless body with many legs, monstrous, weird, half-seen--was death itself being shuffled out secretly to the city gates.
Folks said true, then. The plague _was_ abroad?
He had found himself what he needed for his task--a bit of old iron, a bit of leathern rope; but when he reached the wicket his first stealthy touch on it showed him he needed neither. It was ajar. He pushed it open noiselessly and entered; groping his way, since it was dark in the archway below the _naubut khana_. Beyond, in the open court, it was lighter; yet, even so, he stumbled over a bed set right in the entrance as watchmen set them.
There was no one in it, but the quilt was warm. So some one had been there a moment ago. Some one who had gone out by the open door, and who would therefore return.
He crouched in a recess by the stairs that led upwards and waited. He had not to wait long. A shuffling step sounded outside, and, after a pause to bar the wicket, some one stumbled to the bed. And then out of the darkness came a quavering grace before meat, that grace which is also the prayer of blood-sacrifice.
"In the name of the Merciful and Clement G.o.d!"