As he left the palace yard he passed a curtained two-wheeled cart drawn by small humped bulls, and turned his head in time to see the high priest of Jinendra heave his bulk out from behind the curtains and wheezily ascend the palace steps.
"A little ghostly consolation for the maharajah's sins!" he muttered, as he headed toward his own quarters for another stiff glass of brandy and some sleep. He felt he needed both—or all three!
"If it's true there's no hell, then I'm on velvet!" he muttered. "But I'm a liar! A liar by imputation—by suggestion—by allegation—by collusion— and in fact! Now, if I was one o' them Hindus I could hire a priest to sing a hymn and start me clean again from the beginning. Trouble is, I'm a complacent liar! I'll do it again, and I know it! Brandy's the right oracle for me!"
But there was no consolation, ghostly or otherwise, being brought to Gungadhura. Jinendra's fat high priest, short-winded from his effort on the stairs, with aching hams and knees that trembled from exertion, was ushered into a chamber some way removed from that in which Tom Tripe had had his interview. The maharajah lay now with his head on the lap of Patali, his favorite dancing girl, in a room all scent and cushions and contrivances. (That was how Yasmini learned about it afterward.)
It was against all the canons of caste and decency to accord an interview to any one in that flagrant state of impropriety—to a high priest especially. But it amused Gungadhura to outrage the priest's alleged asceticism, and to show him discourtesy (without in the least affecting his own superstitious scruples in the matter of religion.) Besides, his head ached, and he liked to have Patali's resourcefulness and wit to reenforce his own tired intuition.
The priest sat for several minutes recovering breath and equipoise. Then, when the pain had left his thighs and he felt comfortable, he began with a bomb.
"Mukhum Dass the money-lender has been to me to give thanks, and to make a meager offering for the recovery of his lost title-deed! He has it back!"
Gungadhura swore so savagely that Patali screamed.
"How did he find it? Where?"
Mukhum Dass had told the exact truth, as it happened, but the priest had drawn his own conclusions from the fact that it was Samson's babu who returned the document. He was less than ever sure of Gungadhura's prospects, suspecting, especially since his own night-interview with the commissioner, that some new dark plot was being hatched on the English side of the river. Having no least objection to see Gungadhura in the toils, he did not propose to tell him more than would frighten and worry him.