He remembered vividly the incident of the jade necklace. Could it be that Venekiah, that mountain of corruption, had spied upon him?... O Allah, Allah, he wailed in silence, it was written that his lot should be misfortune from the moment he lost the Sulaimaneh ring!
Inwardly, he writhed while Mohammed Khan talked on. He was in no mood for more gossip, but Mohammed Khan stayed—stayed until late afternoon when little spirals of dust began to rise from the street, when clouds materialized out of nowhere and blotted out the sun.
After Mohammed Khan took his leave, Muhafiz Ali tried to reason with himself. The sahib had said the scarf was for the Raj, and was not that assurance enough? No. And he strove to press behind the veil and find an explanation for the affair; but his Kismet decreed that he should be a pawn, and he dug at the mystery in vain.
A dark sky, threatening rain, hastened the dusk; and when, one by one, lights appeared in the street, like yellow sentinels, Muhafiz Ali uttered a sigh of relief and rose and entered the shop. A moment later he heard a soft patter and inhaled the fresh, cool smell of rain upon dusty air.
"Please buy my nicklass!" shrilled Venekiah's voice, and he looked over his shoulder to see a Memsahib clatter by on horseback.
Behind her walked a man in a Punjabi head-dress, swinging along at a leisurely gait despite the rain.
4
The usual heavy downpour following a break in the monsoon drenched the bazaar. It came with a high wind, and doors strained at their locks and windows rattled as legions of rain rode through the streets. The torrent rumbled upon tin roofs and roofs of corrugated iron; reduced the dust in alleys to mud; lashed the thirsty, sun-scorched trees.
Muhafiz Ali sat on a cushion in the inner room of his shop with a copy of the Koran open in his lap, more intent upon the eerie sounds than the book. Frequently his eyes left the pages and sought the door as gusts of wind smote its panels, and when sudden draughts made the lamp-flame flicker and sent the shadows shuddering over the walls, a chill dread spread through him. Not until that accursed thing of imitations had been taken away would he feel safe. Surely the devils were hard besetting him for losing the Sulaimaneh ring!
The door shook—as though impatient with the lock and hinges that held it. Outside, the storm wrung wails and groans from the bazaar. Again the door rattled, furiously.