"Go and tell the whole bazaar I owe you money, you black scoundrel," cried his hearer, annoyed beyond endurance by the man's assumption of equality. "I'll pay you every penny, if I sell my soul for it, curse you!"
"Eighty thousand rupees is a tall price, sahib," sneered the Lâlâ. "And how about the contracts, and the commission, and the general partnership? Am I to tell that also?"
The Colonel stared at him in blank surprise. God knows in his queer conglomerate of morality it was hard to tell what elementary rock of principle might be found; yet to a certain extent honour remained as it were in pebbles, worn and frayed by contact with the stream of life. "General partnership! you black devil, what do you mean?"
"Mean!" echoed the Lâlâ shrilly. "Why, the money I've lent you, paid you for each contract; the commission I've given your clerks; the grain your horses have eaten; the--"
The Colonel's right hand was raised above his head; the first coarse rage of his face had settled into a stern wrath that turned it white. "If you stop here another instant, by God I'll kill you!"
The words came like a steel-thrust, and the Lâlâ without a word turned and fled before the Berserk rage of the Northman; it is always terrible to the Oriental, and the Lâlâ was a heaven-sent coward.
"Stop!" cried the Colonel as the wretched creature reached the door. He obeyed and came back trembling. "Take your money for the contract with you; it's cancelled. I won't have it in the house. Take it back and give me the receipt I gave you; give it me, I say." The Colonel, fumbling at the lock of the safe, stuttered and shook with excitement. "Take 'em back," he continued, flourishing a roll of notes. "The receipt!--quick! out with it!--the receipt for the three thousand five hundred I gave you this morning!"
"Huzoor! Huzoor! I am looking for it; be patient one moment!" The Lâlâ's quivering fingers blundered among the papers in his pocket-book.
"Give it me, or, by heaven, I'll break every bone in your body!" His hand came down with an ominous thud on the table.
"I will give it, sahib,--I have it,--here--no--ah! praise to the gods!" He shook so that the paper rustled in his hand. Colonel Stuart seized it, and tearing it to bits, flung the pieces in the waste paper basket at his feet. "There goes your last contract from me, and there's the door, and there's your money!" As he flung the notes in the man's face they went fluttering over the floor, and he laughed foolishly to see them gathered up in trembling haste.