Ram Nad had absent-mindedness down to a science. He could roll up his eyeballs and go off like a bullet. When not abstracted he usually played jackstraws. What recondite connection there was between him and jackstraws I never made out, but I suspected it was the delicate sleight of hand required, and the practice it gave him, which fastened him to that Occidental game. Certainly I would back him against any jackstraw player—But there never was such a jackstraw player before. The laws of physics were nothing to him. Gravitation in jackstraws he ignored.
Sadler, Susannah, and I were in conversation under the awning, but Mrs. Ulswater sat a long time silent.
“Doctor,” she said at last, “do you think Ram Nad could have Georgiana and Dolores in his basket?”
Susannah started. On me too the idea had a certain volcanic effect.
“Why suppose so?” I said. “Is there evidence? Have you a subtle instinct? Does he look a shade more virtuous than usual? If he does, it would go to prove he has been accumulating sin. But does he? He looks to be precisely as usual. Why suppose they didn't go overboard? Why not adopt my theory and Susannah's of Dolores' pathetic departure?”
“I suppose they did.”
Mrs. Ulswater sighed, and was silent for some moments before she went on:
“But if Ram Nad churned them into his basket the way he does with things, after what I've told him, it's flat disobedience, and I won't stand it from a heathen. Georgiana never would go on deck when the wind blew, and they were both in the cabin the night before the water spouts. Of course if I accused him of it, and it wasn't so, he'd be perfectly crushing. He'd be crushing if it was true, for that matter. But somehow I don't see how it could have happened, and I won't have Ram Nad getting the best of me. I wish you'd see if you can find out.”
Now if anything suits my temperament and talent, it is wily diplomacy, and the worming out of another man by devious ways the carefully guarded secret of his soul. I took a camp stool and sat down before Ram Nad. He was abstracted behind the whites of his rolled-up eyes. I said with subtle suavity:
“Wake up, you old Cingalese snake of a juggler!”