"Brahmin dog!" he hissed in his beard. "Breeder of whelps!"
And he spat eloquently.
2
Night wove its shuttle across the sky, beading the dusk with stars. The Southern Cross lay mirrored in the Sarasvati and the Khan, and in the lake at Sukhnewás; it pulsed above the gardens of Lal Bagh, above Sharifa Street and those other narrow highways that vein the Holkar's capital; it peered down inquisitively into the gloom of the Great Bazaar as Muhafiz Ali, having finished a meal of curry and rice, quitted his shop and hurried toward the dâk bungalow.
That this Leroux Sahib had commissioned him to copy a jewel-pattern of the Maharajah's regalia no longer presaged evil in his mind. Nor did he seek an explanation. True, it mystified him. But there were some things one should not know. And, to him, the secrets of the Government were numbered among these. The Raj had banished the old order of things, for no more did princes sit in golden howdahs upon caparisoned state elephants; nor did they indulge, as of old, in the venerable pastime of pigsticking; they rode in automobiles and played a game on horseback with an absurd ball....
Muhafiz Ali had ceased long ago to wonder at the baffling mechanism of the Government, and satisfied himself with the assurance that Allah did not intend he should understand.
So Raj meant Riddle.
When he reached the dâk bungalow he found Leroux Sahib sitting upon the veranda. The white man led him inside.
"Well?"—this with a gleam of the black eyes.