Leh Shin curled his bare toes on the edge of his bed and looked at them with a great appearance of interest.
"Was the thief taken, O son of a Prophet?"
"He was not. I have cried in the veranda, to see the Lady Sahib's sorrow, and I have also prayed and made many offerings at the Mosque, but the thief escaped. Now that my service with the Lord Sahib is finished, and as he has assisted my poverty with small gifts, I would like to make a present to the Lady Sahib. Some trifling thing, costing a small sum in rupees, for her grief was indeed great, and it may avail to console her sorrow."
"For which sorrow thou, also, wept in the veranda," added Leh Shin.
"The Lady Sahib had many bowls of lacquer, some green, some red, some spotted like the back of a poison snake, but she lacked a golden bowl, and, should I be able to procure one for a moderate price, it would add greatly to her pleasure in remembering her servant, for, says not the Wise One, 'a gift is a small thing, but the hand that holds it may not be raised to smite.'"
Shiraz, all the time he was speaking, had regarded the Chinaman from behind his respectable gold-rimmed spectacles, and he noticed that Leh Shin did not seem to care for the subject of lacquer, for his face darkened and he stopped scratching.
"I deal not in lacquer," he said quickly. "Neither touch thou the accursed thing, O Shiraz. Leave it to Mhtoon Pah, who is a sorcerer and whose lies mount as high as the topmost pinnacle of the Pagoda." The Chinaman's lips drew back from his teeth, and he snarled like a dog. "I will not speak of him to thee, but I would that the face of Mhtoon Pah was under my heel, and his eyeballs under my thumbs."
"Yet this golden bowl has been in my thought," the voice of Shiraz flowed on evenly. "And I said that here, in Mangadone, I might find such an one. Thou art sure that lacquer is accursed to thine eyes, Leh Shin? That thou hast not such a bowl by thee, neither that thy assistant, when he seeks the bed for myself and the lesser bed for my friend, could not look craftily into the shop of this merchant, and ask the price as he passeth, if so be that Mhtoon Pah has such a bowl to sell?"
Leh Shin spat ferociously.
"There was a bowl, a bowl such as you describe, O servant of Kings, and I thought to procure it, for word was brought me that Mhtoon Pah had need of it, and I desired to hold it before him and withdraw it again, and to inspire his covetousness and rage and then to sell it from my own hand, but he leagues with devils and his power is great, for, behold, Honourable Haj, the bowl that was mine was lost by the man from the seas who was about to sell it to me. Lost, in all truth, and after the lapse of many days, Mhtoon Pah had it in his shop, and sold it to the Lady Sahib."