Lateefa listened here, listened there, curious, indifferent, receptive; approving--as the East always approves--the voice with authority that speaks not as the scribes.
He wandered here, he wandered there; even, with that absorbing inquisitiveness of his, into the courtyard common to Dilarâm and her neighbours. Her balcony was dark and silent; the police, he told himself, had likely been bothering her. But the light, and the sound of a crank in Govind's room, meant a special edition of lies. Then with his ear to the chink of the door below he could hear Burkut Ali's voice; then Jehân's--louder, shrill with protest or anger. They were quarrelling, likely, over drink or cards.
Yet Burkut was sober enough when--barely giving time for Lateefa to find shelter behind the eternal string-bed which was now reared up against the wall--he came out into the yard.
'Fool!' he muttered as he passed, 'not to see his own good. As if it mattered. He would get house and all. Mayhap he will be drunk enough by morning.'
What new villainy was he planning? Lateefa pondered over the question as he drifted on.
The time of felonies was near, for the dogs were forgetting to skulk; a sign that men were fewer in the lanes and streets. Here and there, round an ebbing flicker of light, listeners lingered, and a drowsy voice droned on; but for the most part the cavernous arcades showed still, white-swathed sleepers, simulating death.
This, however, coming swiftly down the bazaar--a strange, swaying, headless body with many legs, monstrous, weird, half-seen--was death itself being shuffled out secretly to the city gates.
Folks said true, then. The plague was abroad?
He had found himself what he needed for his task--a bit of old iron, a bit of leathern rope; but when he reached the wicket his first stealthy touch on it showed him he needed neither. It was ajar. He pushed it open noiselessly and entered; groping his way, since it was dark in the archway below the naubut khana. Beyond, in the open court, it was lighter; yet, even so, he stumbled over a bed set right in the entrance as watchmen set them.
There was no one in it, but the quilt was warm. So some one had been there a moment ago. Some one who had gone out by the open door, and who would therefore return.