Energy flashed into the Mussulman. He ran to the door. The incandescent lamps gleamed through a crystal curtain of rain. The street was deserted. For a moment he stood there, shivering. Then he shut the door; locked it; lay weakly against the panels. When he had recovered, he groped his way to where he knew a lantern hung. He lighted it, and a mellow radiance played upon bits of broken glass.
He rapidly counted the banknotes. Satisfied, he returned to the door and pressed his ear to the crack. Only the slush and drench of rain. He shivered again.
Whither had they gone, this Leroux Sahib and the blue-eyed Punjabi? Their eyes! Black chalcedony and blue sapphires! The Punjabi had a pistol.... Over imitation pearls! Strange were the ways of these white barbarians, stranger still the ways of the Raj. On the morrow would the police come and ask him all manner of confusing questions? Or had the hurricane spent itself? Was this the last he would ever see of the yellow-haired Sahib or the Punjabi?
He turned back, looking half abstractedly upon the gleaming particles of glass. He shivered for the third time. Devil-business!
And so the gods, having no further use for Muhafiz Ali, merchant and loyal servant of the Raj, left him to wonder at the source of these ripples that had touched him; left him to grope behind the drop that had suddenly fallen upon this bewildering interlude; left him to dream of the house in Peshawar and the azure-necked peacock that strutted and shrilled like an angry Rajput.
CHAPTER II
DELHI
Several days after Muhafiz All delivered the imitation Pearl Scarf to the sahib in Indore, the young woman who was marked of Destiny sat in a first-class carriage of the East Indian Railway, her attention divided between a green vellum volume propped against a gray-clad knee and the sun-blistered scenery that unreeled past the window.