The old figure turned, profuse--of course!--in salaam; it showed a wrinkled toothless face, overlaid with the smiles and subtlety of centuries of service. But its reply was dazed, forlorn.
"This slave of the Court," it mumbled, "seeks for a tomb that was but is not. God send some miscreant hath not taken the marble slab thereof for his idolatrous curry-stone! Lo! I can find it nowhere, and the inscription thereof is lost--is lost!"
A world of angry apprehension crept into the tired blear old eyes; the tired old hand shook visibly.
"What inscription?" I asked idly.
"My inscription, Protector of the Poor!" came the tired old voice. "Yea! whatever this slave of the Court said, the writer Abd-un-Nubbi copied it."
I sate up more alert, vaguely reminiscent of something I had seen lately. "What was it about?" I queried; this time curiously.
"About the Heaven-Nestled Kings the slave of the Court served," came the reply, less wearily; and, as if some stored memory cylinder had been set going by keywords, the voice went on, gaining strength: "This old slave of the Court does not feel any shame in serving the Kings and the Nobles! This old slave of the Court, Mahmud, supplicates God that the name of the Heaven-Nestled Emperor Humayon and the Heaven-Nestled Emperor Akbar may be perpetuated for all time! Lo! may they have been given the robe of Paradise! This old slave of the Court honoured by the Earth-Cherished Emperor Jahangir was told, 'You have grown old. Serve in the tomb of the Heaven-Nestled One at Delhi.'
"Humbly says Mahmud, old slave of the Court! He has come nigh to ninety years, he has come nigh his end. He has passed his life in luxury and ease through the kindness of Kings. Oh! Mahmud! no desire is left unfulfilled. Of giving and taking, buying and selling, bargainings in the bazaar, all is done with now!
"Lo! in this seat of Delhi, the rulers and the landholders, the elders and the neighbours should entrust this tomb and shrine (of which the total amount of expenses, including all necessary articles and allowances was 290,000 tankas) to those who are my heirs and who deserve to possess it, as it was built with my honestly-earned money." The long-drawn-out quaintly ungrammatical Persian phrases ceased in a melancholy refrain: "But it has gone, Huzoor! Someone has taken away my tombstone."
I knew now what he was talking about; knew why that faint message of memory had come to me. I had seen this inscription, or something like it, in the Delhi Museum, on a square slab of white marble which the catalogue said had been found amongst some ruins not far from where we were sitting.