Voices in the Night Part 35

His mother gave a horrified exclamation. 'And she did fling the corn in the gutter! The G.o.ds are good that worse did not come of it! The wicked one! For this I might have killed my son; for hadst thou come in, I would have known----'

'I was not coming in,' said Chris, reverting to a Western quickness of speech, 'tell her that, please, _Amma_.'

His mother pursed up her lips. 'I have a mind not; as I have a mind not to give thee what she sent.'

'What she sent?' echoed Chris hotly. 'Give it me, mother, give it at once!'

One corner of the shroud came out from the folds obediently. It was knotted round something small and scented; and--even through that shroud--the perfume of roses drifted from it into the rosy room.

'Lo! there it is--that, and her sense of sin. She hath done penance, as I said, but she shall do ten more or ever I return!'

It was only a little round cardboard box she put into his hand; a box with a quaint domed lid such as girls keep their trinkets in, but it was covered and lined with brocaded silk that must have been soaked in _attar_ from the scent it held, and that somehow suggested the scented fingers which had sewed on the silver and gold twists, the little pearls and crystals, with which it was so cunningly adorned. Chris had seen such caskets often in the days when he had gone to weddings with his mother; they were part of the bride's trousseau, made always by the bride herself.

And this one Naraini had made. He opened it with a strange mixture of fear and hope: fear lest it might contain something to spoil that picture of the girl his memory held, and that held his fancy; hope that it might hold something to enhance it.

And it did. For it was full of golden corn, such corn as she had thrown in the gutter at his feet.

He sat looking at it long after he had returned from seeing his mother safe back to the city. He sat looking at it until the rumbling of carriages outside told him his wife would soon be coming from the burlesque. Then he took the pink-shaded lamp again, and put the little box away in his room, in a drawer where there was already a little packet of yellow corn. And, as he did so, he felt that he was in the toils indeed.

The sound of his wife and Mr. Lucanaster's voices as they bade good-night to each other in the garden did not tend to lessen that sense.

But, in truth, that feeling of being enmeshed was not peculiar to Chris Davenant, even in Shark Lane.

Ram Nath himself, as he finished an article which was to appear in the _Voice of India_--an article which he wrote coolly, calmly, with a certain pride in its even balance of thought, and then deliberately interspersed with glowing periods of pure pa.s.sion for the sake of his audience--felt as an engineer might feel who knows that the pressure on a throttle valve is getting beyond the escape he can give it, and knows also that he cannot stop the stokers from putting on more coal. He comforted himself, however, by thinking, what was indeed the truth, that he was actually doing no more than many a party politician does in England. The difference lay in the environment: the difference of throwing matches into a fire which burns rubbish, and the throwing of them into rubbish which turns to fire.

Then Mr. Lucanaster, even as he told Mrs. Chris tenderly that he had had what he called 'ripplin' time' in her company, and that he meant to dream of it, knew that before he granted himself the luxury of sleep, he must think over more important matters than his relations with her, and find out how far he had committed himself in regard to them.

For he had been taken by surprise that day. Without a word of warning, the detectives had consulted him, as an expert in pearls, regarding the four found in Miss Leezie's house. As usual when taken aback--for he was not a villain of the first water--he had temporised with the question. Second thoughts, however, had shown him that by failing at once to admit that he held the remainder of the string for Jehan, he had tied his own hands from doing so in the future. Therefore, if the latter was called upon to produce them, he had only two alternatives.

He must either deny possession, or yield it before that possession was publicly a.s.serted at all. In either case he lost his hold on the emerald. So, partly for this reason, partly because he was not prepared to go to the extremes of villainy, he felt that he regretted having touched the business at all.

Jehan himself, however, had no conception that his position in regard to Mr. Lucanaster had altered, except by his own possession of the ring. The presence of that on his finger, indeed, would have given him perfect confidence, but for the fact that it brought with it a strange recrudescence of responsibility. Jehan with the ring and Jehan without it were two different men. He found himself, even as he wept--and he did weep copiously and openly over little Sa'adut's loss--thinking of another heir, of vague possibilities and powers. His very determination to mete out proper punishment to Sobrai grew in dignity; the necessity for it became more of a duty, less of a revenge. And all this made him defer, till the last minute, any communication with Mr. Lucanaster.

Time enough to let him know that the ring was really within reach, when the police should ask for the production of the pearls. That might be never; and then, indeed, Jehan felt he would be free to make bargains.

Meanwhile, the safest place in which to keep the treasure, seeing that for all he knew Noormahal might have discovered its abstraction, and set her agents to recover it, was his own finger. So there it remained day and night.

But Noormahal had not discovered her loss. Khojee had told her lie all too well for any doubt in the poor bewildered brain, which had more than it could compa.s.s in the hopeless effort to realise that Sa'adut was dead and buried. For the memory of that first day, when they had roused her at the last, and she had sate clutching at the little swathed bundle of white and gold till they took it from her, had happily gone from her also. She still lay, for the most part, in a stupor. Lateefa saw her so, when--the etiquette of a mourning house making it inconvenient for him to continue his trade of kite-making in the wide outer courtyard--he had gone to take away his materials. But Khojee had told him it was not always so; that sometimes the Nawabin had paroxysms of grief, for which there could be, there never, had been, but one remedy. And that was a most precious essence compounded out of the sweetest flowers in a King's garden. In the old days it had always been ready in the palace; but now whence was a poor old woman to get '_khush-itr_'? that' essence of happiness' which cost G.o.d knows how many times its weight in gold! As it was, she had gone the length of p.a.w.ning Khadjee's best pink satin trousers on the sly, in order to get cheaper specifics; and somehow or another, those precious garments must be redeemed before the mourning-parties began, or Khadjee would die of chagrin also. Then there would be no one left, since even he, Lateefa, was going. She spoke, as ever, without a suspicion of blame, and when she hoped he had not forgotten his promise regarding the ring, her voice was an apology in itself.

Lateefa, as he went out under the gateway with its plaster peac.o.c.ks, told himself that he almost wished he could forget. As it was, the green gleam on Jehan's finger kept him on the strain in a quite unexpected way. He never saw it but Khojee's kind wrinkled face, and her appeal for old Khojee, ugly Khojee, came back to his mind with a curious compelling force.

As he sat, afterwards, in one corner of the tiny square of courtyard that was set round, like a well, with high brick walls, where Jehan and Burkut were playing _ecarte_ with an intolerably dirty pack of cards, each crouched on the same string bed (which also served as a table), he could not help watching that gleam, and thereby imperilling the perfect balance of some kites he was fitting with their tails. For there was a notable series of matches to be flown that evening, and the side-way sweep of a real kite overhead warned him that there would be wind. Wind sufficient to warrant a trifle of ballast, perhaps, to these light creatures of his. He had one afloat already, on trial, just above the top of the houses, where, gay in the sunlight, it hung tilted to leeward almost motionless. Lateefa tested the strain on the cord with a finger, as if it had been a violin string, and as he did so his high trilling voice warbled over one of those ingenious versicles that are more of a puzzle than of poetry--seeing that almost every letter in them has a mathematical value--which the idle in India love to turn and twist.

'Lateefa made of naught, made thee of naught, Lateef who never sought the life G.o.d brought, Lateef who's bound and caught in right and ought, But _he_ forbids thee naught, since thou _art_ naught, Sail east, west, south, or north, choose thine own port!

Thou thing of naught?'

Jehan swore under his breath; the cards were against him. The stakes laid on the bed between him and his adversary had taken his last available rupee; and, of late, even Burkut had refused to play without money down. He looked round sullenly, then turned again to shuffle the pack.

'My nakedness against thine,' he said gruffly; 'the clothes are worth a gold _mohur_, I'll warrant.'

That was about it, since they were both dressed in the ordinary white garments of n.o.bility at its ease.

Burkut shrugged his shoulders. 'If it please thee--as we sit, then.

'Tis thy turn to deal!'

Lateefa looked up quickly from his work. 'The Nawab will deal better without the signet of royalty,' he said significantly, and as Jehan paused, Burkut frowned and laughed at the same time.

'Yea!' he said airily, 'that would fetch more than a gold _mohur_ if 'twere sold. Take it off, my lord.'

'I will do what I choose without thy bidding,' retorted Jehan haughtily, as he drew the ring from his finger and laid it for safety just behind him on the string bed.

Lateefa could see it plainly as the cards fell from Jehan's hand; cards that were in his favour; so much so that he could not avoid a triumphant smile.

The game seemed his, but he played a false card and lost a point.

He dashed the tricks down with such force that the springy plaited twine recoiled from the blow; recoiled and sprang up again.

Lateefa could see the green gleam more clearly than ever now, for the ring lay in the dust within reach of his hand. It had jumped from the bed, like a clay pigeon from a trap, under that petulant blow. But the players had not noticed it, they were going on with their game unconcernedly.

Only Lateefa's eyes were on that gold and green, half hidden in the dust!

'_If thou hast the chance_.' He heard the words as plainly as if Khojee had been beside him.

But this was no chance. The loss would be discovered in a minute or two. And then it would be a mere question of search; for there could be no suspicion of any one else, since the bed on which those two were playing was set right across the only entrance to that well of wall in which there was no place of concealment--none!

No! it was not a chance!

Yet he heard his reply now--

'_On my kites I promise; since they be my creatures, to fly or fail as I make them_.'

On his kites!...

A sort of dazzle came to the sunshine, a dazzle to his brain. He gave a sudden reckless laugh, his hand went out to the ring swiftly, and busied itself still more swiftly as he sang, in the varying measure to which such versicles lend themselves, a new version of the old words--

'Lateefa made of naught, Lateef who's bound and caught; Lo! he forbids thee naught, Sail east, west, south, or north!

Choose thine own port!'

The kite which--as he sang--twisted and twirled upwards from his dexterous throw, seemed at first as if it was uncertain what to choose.

'I mark the king!' said Burkut with an oily smile, and once more Jehan with an oath flung down the cards.

But by this time both kites were tilting steadily to leeward, and only Lateefa's skilful finger could, in striking the strings that held them captive, have told that one had a trifle more ballast to carry than the other.