Again the teeth flashed in the darkness and Safdar Khan laughed.
"For two days I sat by the Delhi Gate and no one spoke to me or dropped a single coin in my bowl. But on the third day a good man, may God preserve him, passed by when I was nearly stifled and asked me why I sat in the heat of the sun under a blanket. Thereupon I told him, what doubtless your Highness knows, that my face is much too holy to be looked upon, and since then your Highness' servant has prospered exceedingly. The device is a good one."
Suddenly Safdar Khan stumbled as he walked and lurched against the horse and its rider. He recovered himself in a moment, with prayers for forgiveness and curses upon his stupidity for setting his foot upon a sharp stone. But he had put out his hand as he stumbled and that hand had run lightly down Shere Ali's coat and had felt the texture of his clothes.
"I had a letter from Calcutta," said the Prince, "which besought me to speak to you, for you had something for my ear. Therefore speak, and speak quickly."
But a change had come over Safdar Khan. Certainly Shere Ali was wearing the dress of one of the Sahibs. A man passed carrying a lantern, and the light, feeble though it was, threw into outline against the darkness a pith helmet and a very English figure. Certainly, too, Shere Ali spoke the Pushtu tongue with a slight hesitation, and an unfamiliar accent. He seemed to grope for words.
"A letter?" he cried. "From Calcutta? Nay, how can that be? Some foolish fellow has dared to play a trick," and in a few short, effective sentences Safdar Khan expressed his opinion of the foolish fellow and of his ancestry distant and immediate.
"Yet the letter bade me seek you by the Delhi Gate of Lahore," continued
Shere Ali calmly, "and by the Delhi Gate of Lahore I found you."
"My fame is great," replied Safdar Khan bombastically. "Far and wide it has spread like the boughs of a gigantic tree."
"Rubbish," said Shere Ali curtly, breaking in upon Safdar's vehemence. "I am not one of the Hindu fools who fill your begging-bowl," and he laughed.
In the darkness he heard Safdar Khan laugh too.