“This is a darbar!” Yasmini announced in a rising, ringing voice. “My darbar, for I summoned it! Did I invite any man to speak?”
There was silence, as a whipped unwilling pack is silent.
“Speak, thou, Kurram Khan!” she said. “Knowing the custom--having heard the order to throw that trophy to them--why act otherwise? Explain!”
Nothing in the wide world could be fairer! She left him to extricate himself from a mess of his own making! It was more than fair, for she went out of her way to offer him an opening to jump through. And she paid him the compliment of suggesting be must be clever enough to take it, for she seemed to expect a satisfying answer.
“Tell them why!” she said, smiling. No man could have guessed by the tone of her voice whether she was for him or against him, and the crowd, beginning again to whisper, watched to see which way the cat would jump.
He bowed low to her three times--very low indeed and very slowly, for he had to think. Then he turned his back and repeated the obeisance to the crowd. Still he could think of no excuse, except Cocker's Rule No. I for Tight Places, and all the world knows that because Solomon said much the same thing first:
“A soft answer is better than a sword!”
But Cocker adds, “Never excuse. Explain! And blame no man.”
“My brothers,” he said, and paused, since a man must make a beginning, even when he can not see the end. And as he spoke the answer came to him. He stood upright, and his voice became that of a man whose advice has been asked, and who gives it freely. “These be stirring times! Ye need take care, my brothers! Ye saw this night how one man entered here on the strength of an oath and a promise. All he lacked was proof. And I had proof. Ye saw! Who am I that I should deny you a custom? Yet--think ye, my brothers!--how easy would it not have been, had I thrown that head to you, for a traitor to catch it and hide it in his clothes, and make away with it! He could have used it to admit to these caves--why--even an Englishman, my brothers! If that had happened, ye would have blamed me!”
Yasmini smiled. Taking its cue from her, the crowd murmured, scarcely assent, but rather recognition of the hakim's adroitness. The game was not won; there lacked a touch to tip the scales in his favor, and Yasmini supplied it with ready genius.