The room swam around him and the grim-visaged moullah became a grotesque being, with dragon’s eyes and a turban like a cloud. Yet he kept on, hoping against imminent death itself that his words would reach some willing ear.
“Any man—who tells General Neill-sahib—at Allahabad—that help is wanted—at Lucknow—will be made rich.... Help—at Lucknow—immediately.... I, Malcolm-sahib—of the 3d Cavalry—say....”
He collapsed in the grasp of the men who were holding him.
“Thou has said enough, dog of a Nazarene. Take him without and hang him,” growled Ahmed Ullah.
“Nay,” cried a woman’s voice from behind a straw portière that closed the arched veranda of the house. “Thou art too ready with thy sentences, moulvie. Rather let us bind his wounds and give him food and drink. Then he will recover, and tell us what we want to know.”
“He hath told us already, Princess,” said the other, his harsh accents sounding more like the snarl of a wolf than a human voice. “He comes from Lucknow and he seeks succor from Allahabad. That means—”
“It means that he can be hanged as easily at eventide as at daybreak, and we shall surely learn the truth, as such men do not breathe lies.”
“He will not speak, Princess.”
“Leave that to me. If I fail, I hand him over to thee forthwith. Let him be brought within and tended, and let some ride after his horse, as there may be letters in the wallets. I have spoken, Ahmed Ullah. See that I am obeyed.”
The moulvie said no word. He went back to his praying mat and bent again toward the west, where the Holy Kaaba enshrines the ruby sent down from heaven. But though his lips muttered the rubric of the Koran, his heart whispered other things, and chief among them was the vow that ere many days be passed he would so contrive affairs that no woman’s whim should thwart his judgment.