“Here—until to-morrow or the next day,” said the quiet voice.
“Do you know your way about Delhi? Can you find your way to Benjamin, the Jew’s, in the Chandni Chowk? Will you take this handkerchief of mine and go to Benjamin’s, where you will find a very big dog. Show the handkerchief to the dog, and let her smell it. She will follow you to this place.”
Samding smiled engagingly, but incomprehensibly; the smile seemed to portend something.
“Speak louder,” he suggested, as if he were deaf and had not heard the message.
Ommony raised his voice almost to a shout; he was irritated by the enigmatic smile. His words, as he repeated what he had said, echoed under the cloister—and were answered by a deep-throated bay he could have recognized from among the chorus of a dog-pound. A door in the cloister that stood ajar flew wide, and Diana came bounding out like a crazy thing, yelping and squealing delight to see her master, almost knocking him down and smelling him all over from head to foot to make sure it was really he inside the unaccustomed garments. And a moment later Dawa Tsering strode out through the same door, knife and all, blinking at the sunlight, looking half-ashamed.
Ommony quieted Diana, stared sharply at Dawa Tsering, and turned to question Samding. The chela was gone. He just caught sight of his back as he vanished through a door under the cloister, twenty feet away. He questioned the Tibetan, using Prakrit, but the man appeared not to understand him. Dawa Tsering strolled closer, grinning, trying to appear self-confident.
“O Gupta Rao,” he began. But Ommony turned his back.
“Do you know where we are?” he asked Maitraya.
“Certainly. This is where my troupe was to assemble. Let us hope they are all here and that the Jew has delivered the costumes.”
“O you, Gupta Rao,” Dawa Tsering insisted, laying a heavy hand on Ommony’s shoulder from behind to call attention to himself, “listen to me: that dog of yours is certainly a devil, and the Jew is a worse devil, and that man there—” (he pointed at the Tibetan) “—is the father of them both! You had not left the Jew’s store longer than a man would need to scratch himself, when that fellow entered and talked with the Jew. I also talked with the Jew; I bade him supply me with garments according to your command, and two pairs of blankets and a good, heavy yak-hair cloak; and there were certain other things I saw that I became aware I needed. But the Jew said that this fellow had brought word that you had changed your mind regarding me, and that I was to go elsewhere with him. I gave him the lie. I told him who was father of them both, and what their end would be, and they said many things. So I helped myself to a yak-hair cloak, a good one, and lo, I have it with me; and I also picked out one pair of blankets of a sort such as are not to be had in Spiti; and with those and the cloak and some trifles I encumbered myself, so that neither hand was free.