Before long Pink Satin diverged into the Chitpur Road, with Amber a discreet shadow. So far the latter had been treading known ground, but a little later, when Pink Satin dived abruptly into a darksome alleyway to the right, drawing Amber after him as a child drags a toy on a string, the Virginian lost his bearings utterly and was thereafter helplessly dependent upon the flutter of Pink Satin, and unworried only so long as he could see him, in a fidget of anxiety whenever the labyrinth shut Labertouche from his sight for a moment or two.
It was quiet enough away from the main thoroughfare, but with a sinister quiet. Tall dwellings marched shoulder to shoulder along the ways, shuttered, dark, grim, with an effect of conspirators, their heads together in lawless conference. The streets were intolerably narrow, the paving a farce; pools of stagnant water stood in the depressions, piles of refuse banked the walls. The fetid air hung motionless but sibilant with stealthy footsteps and whisperings…. Preferable to this seemed even the infinitely more dangerous and odorous Coolootollah purlieus into which they presently passed—nesting place though it were for the city's most evil and desperate classes.
In time broad Machua Bazaar Street received them—Pink Satin and the sailorman out for a night of it. And now Pink Satin began to stroll more sedately, manifesting a livelier interest in the sights of the wayside. Amber's impatience—for he guessed that they neared the goldsmith's stall—increased prodigiously; the shops, the stalls, the thatched dance-halls in which arose the hideous music of the nautch, had no lure for him, though they illustrated all that was most evil and most depraved in the second city of the Empire. He was only eager to have done with this unsavoury adventure, to know again the clean walls of his room in the Great Eastern, to taste again the purer air of the Maidan.
Without warning Pink Satin pulled up, extracted from the recesses of his costume a long, black and vindictive-looking native cigar, and lighted it, thoughtfully exhaling the smoke through his nose while he stared covetously at the display of a slipper-merchant whose stand was over across from the stall of a goldsmith.
With true Oriental deliberation Pink Satin finally made up his mind to move on; and Amber lurched heavily into the premises occupied by one Dhola Baksh, a goldsmith.
A customer, a slim, handsome Malayan youth, for the moment held the attention of the proprietor. The two were haggling with characteristic enjoyment over a transaction which seemed to involve less than twenty rupees. Amber waited, knowing that patience must be his portion until the bargain should be struck. Dhola Baksh himself, a lean, sharp-featured Mahratta grey with age, appraised with a single look the new customer, and returned his interest to the Malay. But Amber garnered from that glance a sensation of recognition. He wondered dimly, why; could the goldsmith have been warned of his coming?
Two or three more putative customers idled into the shop. Beyond its threshold the stream of native life rolled on, ceaselessly fluent; a pageant of the Middle Ages had been no more fantastic and unreal to Western eyes. Now and again a wayfarer paused, his interest attracted by the goldsmith's rush of business.
Unexpectedly the proprietor made a substantial concession. Money passed upon the instant, sealing the bargain. The Malay rose to go. Dhola Baksh lifted a stony stare to Amber.
"Your, pleasure, sahib?" he enquired with a thinly-veiled sneer. What need to show deference to a down-at-the-heel sailor from the Port?
"I want money—I want to borrow," said Amber promptly.