The raillery of her voice matched the derisive shaking of her jewelled finger as he rose sullenly, muttering curses and swearing to stop the old drum-banger's loose lip. "Aye! Thou canst do it with a handful of gold," yawned Siyah Yamin. "Deena's mouth just holds twenty good gold pieces. I have had to gag him myself ere now. Farewell then, conspirator! I will take a thousand of those same myself for the King's Luck, not one dirrhm less!"
Mirza Ibrahîm stood arrested at the stair head. Angry as he was, he knew her wit, and a glance at Khodadâd's face showed that he knew it also.
"How wilt thou compass it?" he asked sullenly.
She looked at him jeeringly. "By my wits, friend. Have I not all the vice of all India at my finger tips? Is not Pâhlu the subtlest thief in Hindustan amongst my brethren? Do not the stranglers, and poisoners, and beguilers rub shoulders with virtuous gentlemen as ye, in this my house? Nay! Leave it to me, Mirza, leave it to me, the courtesan!"
She lay softly laughing to herself when they had gone, until Deena the drum-banger coming up the stairs with laboriously secret creakings whispered: "Mistress Âtma Devi hath been waiting below for a private interview this hour past. Shall she come?"
Then she sate up, suddenly serious.
"Âto!" she said. "Yes! let her come--let her come!"
There was an almost malicious content in her tone, for she realised that here was metal worthy of her steel, that in the coming interview she would have no crass, heavy man's brain and heart to deal with, but a woman's. Dull they might be, it is true, yet would they be full of intuitions, of sudden unexpected grip on motive, and sudden clarities of vision. Yet for this alone, Âtma Devi might be useful to her in the immediate future; since she would need every atom of knowledge, every possible fulcrum, ere she could lay hands on the King's Luck. Aye! Âtma might help, though she was for the King; but that made it all the more imperative, all the more worthy skill, that she should be bent from her purpose, and be made unconsciously to work for the King's disadvantage.
So once more the whole vitality of the courtesan leapt up toward evil.
Woman against Woman! Aye! That was it! Woman glorying in her serpent-bruised heel against Woman treading on the serpent's head. Woman the Temptress, against Woman the Saviour.