Then he looked at the crumpled document again. It was merely a précis as it were, written in a clerkly hand, of what the rescinded confidential instructions might have been, such as any one who by chance had seen them--or any scoundrel who had not--could easily have written. Absolutely unauthentic, and of no possible value, as proof of anything.
It was characteristic of Jack Raymond that the idea of taking back the notes which he had given Govind, as had been stipulated in advance, never occurred to him. He was a backer of odds, a better of bets. He had staked money lightly, and lost it. So far good; but he meant to have his money's worth.
'Hold up, you brute!' he said, as Govind writhed at the first touch on the scruff of his neck. 'I won't kill you, but you shall have the soundest licking you ever had in your life.'
As he spoke the lash of the hunting-whip, with which he always rode, curled round Govind's thin legs, making their owner in his sheer animal terror escape from Jack Raymond's hold-strong as it was--to the floor, where he lay on his back, his limbs crunched together like a dead crab's--a hideous spectacle. So hideous that the very licking of such an abject beast seemed impossible.
'Huzoor, no!' he gasped. 'No, Huzoor! not that! not that! I will pay it back! I will pay--I will pay----'
'Get up, you brute, and take it decently,' interrupted Jack, feeling more decidedly that if the brute would not, he would have to give up the sickening business. He emphasised his command by another flick with the thong.
The crumpled crablike terror gave a sort of sob, and edged itself--still on its back--till it could kiss Jack Raymond's boots frantically. 'Not that! not that!' it moaned. 'I will pay--yea! I can pay!' Then in a purely insane fear of physical pain, Govind's English came back to him--'O my lord god almighty, I can give money's worth--I can give cheap--O lord god, yes! I can tell--listen, listen!' So, without a pause, he burst out into words which first made Jack Raymond hesitate, and then--catching the lash of the whip back into his hand--point to the corner and say, 'Sit down there, you skunk, and tell the truth; don't try to escape, or I really will do for you.'
The tale which came from between Govind's chattering teeth made the listener set his. Here was confirmation of old Khôjee's story with a vengeance; explanation also of the closed shops, the empty alleys. And the explanation was so natural. Given an amulet which brought death by the visitation of God at once, or, in lieu of that, death by removal to hospital and subsequent poisoning, what more obvious palliative--since God's act must stand--than to strike at the works of the devil? If, by dawn, neither hospitals nor doctors remained, that would surely mend matters. Meanwhile, in every house to which the cursed charm had gone, there must be purification by prayer and fasting, by spells, and incantations, and burnings of the hateful thing.
It did not need much imagination to picture the scene. A narrow court, a dead child or husband awaiting dusk for secret removal, shuddering excited women, hysterical from lack of food, listening to the denunciations of officiating priests and mullahs, looking at their dead, at their living--round whose wrists the amulet had been perhaps an hour before--and remembering that though half the evil in the future lay with God, Who was beyond coercion, the other half lay with men who were!
Not a reassuring scene in a city whose two hundred and odd thousand inhabitants were curiously unreliable.