"Thy business, thy business," repeated the boy. "Was it in the nature of the evil works of the bad man, thy friend?" He leered his encouragement, and fumbling at his belt took out a small coin. "Here, I will give thee two annas if thou tell the whole story to my liking."
The Burman shook his head, but he appeared to be considering the offer slowly in his obtuse and stagnant brain.
"Give the money into mine own hand, that the reward be sure," he said, as though he toyed with the idea.
"Not so," replied the boy. "First the boiled rice and the salt, and afterwards the payment. Thus is the way in honest dealings."
The Burman shut his mouth tightly and exhibited signs of a return to his former condition of dumbness that worked upon the assistant like gall.
"Then, if nothing less will content thee, take thy money," he said in frothy anger. "Take it and speak low, for it may be that eavesdroppers are without in the street."
He dropped the coin into the outstretched palm, but the Burman did not begin his story. He got up and searched behind boxes and shook the rows of hanging garments. He was so secret and silent that the boy became exasperated and closed the narrow door into the street with a bang, pulling across a heavy chain.
"Let that content thee," he said irritably, chafing under the delay, and sitting down, a frowsy, horrible object, in the dim corner, he prepared to enjoy a further description out of the wild fantastic terrors of the madman's brain.
Surprise does not hover; its coming events are shadowless, and its spring is the spring of a tiger out of the dark, and surprise came upon Leh Shin's assistant as it has come upon men and nations since the world first spun in space.
He looked upon the Burman as a harmless lunatic, and he only half-believed that he had ever been guilty of the act that had ended in a term of imprisonment in the Andaman Islands, but in one moment he realized that it might all be true and that he himself was possibly singled out as the next victim.
In one silent moment he found himself pinned in his corner, the Burman squatting in front of him, a long knife which he had never seen before pointing at his throat with horrible, determined persistency.