Ommony glanced into the shop. There were two men, evidently unarmed or the “constabeel” would never have admitted them, standing talking to the clerk across the show-case-counter. One was apparently a very old man and the other very young. Both were dressed in the Tibetan costume, but the older man was speaking English, which was of itself sufficiently remarkable, and he appeared to be slightly amused because the clerk insisted that Chutter Chand was “absent on a journey.” Neither man paid the slightest attention to the jewelry in the show-case; they were evidently bent on seeing Chutter Chand, and nothing else.
“Admit ’em!” whispered Ommony. “I’ll hide. No, never mind the dog; she’ll follow them in and sniff them over. If they ask about the dog, say she belongs to one of your customers who left her in your charge for an hour or two. What’s behind that brass Buddha?”
“Nothing, Sahib. It is hollow. There is no back.”
“That’ll do then. Help me pull it out from the wall—quick!—quiet!”
They made rather a lot of noise and Diana came in to investigate, which was opportune. Ommony gave her orders sotto voce and she returned into the shop to watch the two curious visitors.
“Now, don’t let yourself get frightened out of your wits, Chutter Chand. Encourage ’em to talk. Ask any idiotic question that occurs to you. When they’re ready to go, let ’em. And then, whatever you do, don’t say a word to the policeman.”
Ommony stepped behind the image of the Buddha. Chutter Chand, leaning all his weight against it, shoved it back nearly into place, but left sufficient space between it and the wall for Ommony to see into an old cracked mirror that reflected almost everything in the room. Then, taking a visible hold on his emotions, Chutter Chand strode to the door and stood there for a moment looking—listening—trying to breathe normally. He forced a smile at last.
“Oh, let them in—I will talk to them,” he said to the clerk in English, with an air of almost perfect, patronizing nonchalance. Only a very close observer might have known he was afraid—that fear, perhaps, in him was more than “recognition of something that the senses do not understand.”
We should ascend out of perversity, even as we ascend a mountain that we do not know, with the aid of guides who do know. None who sets forth on an unknown voyage stipulates that the pilot must agree with him as to the course, since manifestly that would be absurd; the pilot is presumed to know; the piloted does not know. None who climbs a mountain bargains that the guide shall keep to this or that direction; it is the business of the guide to lead. And yet, men hire guides for the Spiritual Journey, of which they know less than they know of land and sea, and stipulate that the guide shall lead them thus and so, according to their own imaginings; and instead of obeying him, they desert and denounce him, should he lead them otherwise. I find this of the essence of perversity.