He clapped his hands, gave a swift order in some unknown tongue, and as if by magic the servants disappeared, extinguishing the lights as they vanished, leaving those two alone in the rosy radiance of a lamp that swung above the supper table. Its downward light left their two faces in shadow.
"Listen, my lord!" said the Sufi rapidly. "I will waste no time in words. I am here at Akbar's court, a spy. Wherefore, or who my master is, seek not to know. Mayhap time will show. I spy on Prince Dalîl of Sinde--dost know him? Khodadâd Tarkhân, boon companion of the Heir-to-Empire. Start not! I watch him, I wait for him, not for myself only, but for Sinde--for that unhappy country which counts on Akbar's aid, aid which will not come if the assassin's dagger--if conspiracy--succeeds. Dost see? Dost understand? Lo! I am Sinde incarnate--waiting, watching."
He paused again and in the brief silence Birbal could hear a long sobbing breath. The lamp had grown dimmer, and to his half startled eyes its radiance seemed to leave the white-robed figure to chill shadow. He too caught in his breath as a thought came to him.
"But that Payandâr is dead," he began whisperingly, "I should deem----"
"Aye, he is dead!" echoed the other, almost menacingly. "But though he died in the Desert--as thou hast heard from Bayazîd--Love, Unconditioned, Ineffable----"
A sudden distaste to the man who spoke, to the whole tenor of his talk, boastful, as it were, of some hold on the Unseen not known of commoner clay, seized on Birbal.
"Keep that for the King, holy man!" he said decisively. "Birbal talks not till dawn of Wine-cups and Roses and the Beloved."
"Perhaps 'twere better if he did," replied the Sufi boldly. "Nathless I did not bring thee hither to talk of love, but to tell thee by my arts that the King's Luck is stolen."
The impulse to start, to rise, was strong for an instant; then memory came to calm the man of the world.
"Impossible" he said quietly. "I saw it to-day. It is in safe keeping--the worse luck perhaps."