“Give it him and tell him to show us a devil, and if he plays any tricks I’ll chivy him into Nikko, and give him up to the police.”
“Don’t be a fule,” said Mac testily. “A’weel!”
Leslie put the piece of gold into the creature’s hand, who put it to his ear for a moment, and then hid it in his rags. Then he bent his head sideways to the road.
“What’s he doing now?”
“He’s listening if the road’s clear; he says there’s nothing on it for two ri on either side, but he hears seven rikshas coming in the direction of Nikko, but he’ll have time to do what he wants before they arrive.”
The Blind One bent down rapidly and traced an almost perfect circle around himself in the dust of the road; then hurriedly outside this he traced what an initiate might have taken for the form of the Egg, the horns of Simara, and another form needless to describe. Then he said something to Mac.
“He says, we’re not to speak, or touch the circle or go near it. I have not paid for this entertainment, and I juist think I’ll take a bit walk doon the road.”
“Sit down, you old coward,” said Leslie. “I’m the one that has paid, and I’m the one the ‘deevil’ will carry off if there is a deevil. Look!”
The Blind One took from his rags a cane pipe such as blind men use in Japan, only larger, and began to blow mournful notes out of it. It was as strange a sound as ever left human lips, now ear-piercing, now low, low and soothing; his face flushed and swelled; he seemed enraptured, entranced with his own music, and the searching sound of it caused things to move disturbedly in the trees around, and a low croaking, as if from some feathered creature disturbed, to come from the cypress wood.
As he played, he turned north, south, east, and west, lingering, at last, with the reed pipe pointing between the cypress trees, as though he were calling to the blue hills in the distance.