“I buy dem more than two weeks ago from your friend’s kitmatgar, Hurris Chunder.”
Elliott’s heart sank again. “My friend’s a sailorman, and wouldn’t have a servant.”
“Hurris Chunder say his master gif dem to him,” insisted the Jew.
“Can you find Hurris Chunder?”
“Maybe,” with an avid grin.
“Here’s your ten rupees,” said Elliott. “I’ll give you ten more if you’ll manage to have Hurris Chunder here to-night, and he shall have another ten for telling me what he knows. Does it go?”
“Yes,” responded the trader, with lightning comprehension of Western slang. “The Sahib will find Hurris Chunder here to-night. At ten o’clock.”
Elliott had already learned the indefinite notions of the East regarding time, and he did not care to show the impatience he felt, so he did not arrive at his appointment till nearly eleven o’clock. The yellow Jew led him to the rear of the tiny shop and introduced him through an unsuspected door into a small chamber littered with rags, old clothes, rubbish of copper and brass, and dirty-looking apparatus. It was here that the merchant ate and slept, and in the middle of the floor a white-clad figure was squatting, smoking a brass pipe.
“This is Hurris Chunder, Sahib,” said the Jew, eagerly.
The native, a golden-complexioned young man, with a somewhat sleepy Buddha-like face, put down his pipe, and bowed without getting up.