‘What do you want?’ he heard a wheezy, unpleasant voice say, and he knew it was the headman who spoke. The tone in which the question was asked was harsh and unfriendly, and an ugly smile passed over the listener’s face as he noted it.
‘I am come to lodge a complaint against Iyan Elúvan,’ replied the púsári shortly.
‘I thought so,’ wheezed the headman. ‘You are as quarrelsome as a wanderoo he-monkey. Do you think I have nothing to do but to listen to your fools’ quarrels?’
‘You will listen readily enough,’ retorted the púsári angrily, ‘when Iyan Elúvan comes with his hands full of rupees!’
‘What!’ exclaimed the headman, wheezing and choking with wrath, ‘do you charge me, the múdliya of Mánkúlam, with receiving bribes?’
‘Ay, I do,’ replied the púsári sternly. ‘All the villages know it. Many a time have I brought just complaints to you, and you would not hear them. When Iyan threw a dead dog into my well; when he set fire to my straw stack; and when, by manthiram’ [magical arts], ‘he caused my cattle to fall ill, why did you not inquire into the complaints I made—why? but because your granary was bursting with the rice that Iyan gave you as hush-money!’
‘Get out of my house!’ screamed the headman huskily—‘get out, I say!’
‘I’ll have justice,’ shouted the púsári fiercely. ‘I am a poor man, and cannot bribe you; but I swear by Púliya-deva that I will have justice. I will make you both suffer for this. You shall pay for that buffalo that Iyan has lamed to the last hair on his tail. It shall be an evil day for you that you refused me justice. Look to yourself, múdliya; look to yourself, I say!’
‘Leave my house, you madman!’ exclaimed the headman in a voice scarcely articulate with rage.
A moment later, Iyan, from his hiding-place, saw his enemy burst out of the house almost beside himself with rage, his eyes ablaze, his lips drawn back in a grin of fury, and his whole frame trembling with excitement. He watched him stride across the inclosure and make for the path leading to Pandiyán, swinging his arms and gesticulating like one demented. Just as the púsári disappeared, a little boy came out of the hut, and Iyan heard him uttering exclamations of excitement and astonishment. He could also hear the voice of the headman inside wheezing out threats and curses. Presently, the little boy went out at the gate and disappeared in the village, and Iyan rose to leave his hiding-place. As he did so, he saw lying in the path a knife, which he at once knew must have been dropped by the púsári as he rushed out of the hut. Picking it up, Iyan crept back into his hiding-place, and crouching down, examined it long and earnestly, feeling its edge, and making motions with it in the air. Suddenly, an idea seemed to strike him. He looked up hastily and around with a scared, startled air, and then felt the edge of the knife again with his thumb slowly while he gazed earnestly in the direction of the door of the hut. Presently, an evil, cruel smile curled his lips and sent a baleful gleam into his little eyes. Muttering to himself, ‘Yes; I’ll do it; the suspicion is sure to fall on him!’ he rose slowly, glanced round again, to assure himself that no one was watching him, and then, with a rapid, silent step, entered the hut.