'And there was naught in the box when it was found?' asked Govind. He was writing now on one of the smoothed-out squares of white waste-paper which lay in a pile beside the liquor seller, who used them for wiping the rims of the tumblers, out of deference to the caste prejudices of his customers against a general cloth.
'God knows!' yawned the policeman piously. 'The man saith not; but there were letters besides the trinkets and the pearls, and we may find them, if not the others. Folk will not lose a cowrie's worth of waste-paper these hard times.'
'Ay!' assented the liquor seller, eyeing Govind askance. 'Mine had to be paid for, though some seem to think not. And paid high too, since the firework-makers were in the market for their squibs and crackers for to-morrow.'
A man lounging outside in the gutter laughed suddenly, viciously. 'They will find enough for them anyhow, even if they have the police at their tails!' he said, moving off with a defiant salaam to the fat policeman.
'I would I had handcuffed a pair of them,' remarked the latter mildly. ''Twould have been one trouble, and 'tis well to save oneself what one can these hard times.'
'Trouble!' echoed a passer-by, shaking his head, 'there will be no saving of that in Nushapore. Jân-Ali-shân hath returned and brought the plague, so folk say.'
The liquor seller turned in quick interest to the sergeant of police.
'Dost know if he hath returned?' he asked; for the loafer was a customer who owed money, and must be got hold of while money was in his pockets.
For answer the policeman chucked away his cigar end, stumbled off the dais of the shop, and stood to attention, as a figure rounded the angle of the next crossway street, followed by a crowd of ragged half-naked urchins. It was Jân-Ali-shân himself, washed, shaved, spruce, in a second-hand suit of khaki uniform and a white helmet which he had redeemed from a pawnshop on the credit of his new appointment as foreman of works. Jân-Ali-shân, who, from sheer habit, had, on finding himself in the city with money in his pocket, gone straight for his old haunt. From the new resolutions, however, which with him always began with new work, he called for a 'gingerade plain' in a voice of authority, which made a little circle gather round him admiringly, as after humming a stave of 'Drink to me only with thine eyes,' while he was opening the bottle, he proceeded to pour its fizzing contents down his throat.
The interest of the crowd seemed to amuse him, he sate down on the plinth and drew out a handful of pice in lordly fashion.