"What a joke! What a colossal joke! And they think it is for them.... Bon Dieu!"
The door rattled; the lamp-flame rippled threateningly.
"I shall place it in a tin box, Sahib," Muhafiz Ali said, for the sooner the thing was gone the sooner he would feel at ease. "See, a box no larger than the one you carry."
He moved the lid. Pearls rattled coolly. Meanwhile, the sahib counted out several banknotes.
"Count them," he instructed as Muhafiz Ali handed him the tin box, wrapped and tied.
The Mussulman obeyed. The door shook again. A sudden burst of wind almost carried the notes out of his hand. The lamp gasped. A slam followed.
Muhafiz Ali looked up quickly to behold a strange tableau—a tableau that for the while suspended all thoughts from his brain and drew from his limbs the power to move.
A man had entered—a blue-eyed Punjabi. The face was vaguely familiar, and Muhafiz Ali's memory groped.... A string of ferozees.... The Punjabi stood with his shoulders pressed against the door, his feet planted wide apart. His soaked garments clung to his body; his turban dripped water into his eyes. But that did not quench the fire in them. How they burned! Blue sapphires! In his hand he held a thing that glittered like an evil eye.
Leroux Sahib had swung about. His feet, too, were planted well apart, as though he were steadying himself for an impact. The muscles of his throat stood out like white cords in the shadow of his beard. There was a hard gleam in his eyes; more than ever they resembled black chalcedony.
Afterward, Muhafiz Ali never quite remembered how it all happened. At the time he was too stupefied to observe details. The blue-eyed Punjabi laughed. It was a challenge. Leroux Sahib, suddenly smiling, answered it; lunged toward the lamp. The ring of shattered glass—and darkness wiped out the scene. Followed the thudding jar of muscle and bone against yielding flesh; swift, staccato breathing. The door was flung wide. Muhafiz Ali, crouching in a corner, saw a figure faintly silhouetted in the door-frame, an amorphous shadow upon the paler darkness of the street. It vanished. Another figure lurched out after it, and was swallowed by the storm.