“Write thine own letter! Invent thine own argument! Persuade her, or die in a new way! I will invent a new way for thee!”
So King began to write, in Urdu, for reasons of his own. He had spoken once or twice in Urdu to the mullah and had received no answer. At the end of ten minutes he handed up what he had written, and Muhammad Anim made as if to read it, trying to seem deliberate, and contriving to look irresolute. It was a fair guess that he hated to admit ignorance of the scholars' language.
“Are there any alterations you suggest?” King asked him.
“Nay, what care I what the words are? If she be not persuaded, the worse for thee!”
He held it out, and as he took it King contrived to tear it; he also contrived to seem ashamed of his own clumsiness.
“I will copy it out again,” he said.
The mullah swore at him, and conceiving that some extra show of authority was needful, growled out:
“Remember all I said. Set down she must surrender Khinjan Caves or I swear by Allah I will have thee tortured with fire and thorns--and her, too, when the time comes!”
Now he had said that, or something very like it, in the first letter. There was no doubt left that the Mullah was trying to hide ignorance, as men of that fanatic ambitious mold so often will at the expense of better judgment. If fanatics were all-wise, it would be a poor world for the rest.
“Very well,” King said quietly. And with great pretense of copying the other letter out on fresh paper he now wrote what he wished to say, taking so long about it (for he had to weigh each word), that the mullah strode up and down the cave swearing and kicking things over.