"The pattern is intricate, Sahib," he said doubtfully.
Muhafiz Ali felt vaguely nervous. "I will have to think it over, Sahib," he announced.
What did he want with a copy of the Pearl Scarf? That query threaded back and forth across his thoughts.
"I am in the service of the Raj," the man confided quietly, as though answering the native's thoughts--confided a shade too darkly. "The Raj wants a copy of it--oh, for reasons...."
Ah! Muhafiz Ali understood now. The Raj! This handsome sahib was of that invisible army that comes and goes so mysteriously from Afghanistan to Ceylon.
"It is, O fountain of wisdom," he declared, with a sly wink, "as though I stepped from the dark into the light of the sun!" He motioned toward the door, through which Venekiah, seated across the way, could be seen. "I shall be as mute as the six-armed she-devil that yonder louse worships!"
There was a humorous gleam in the white man's eyes.
"Excellent! Make your price and come to me at the dâk bungalow at eight o'clock to-night. Bring a few necklaces for effect. I will be on the veranda. My name is Leroux Sahib."
He tossed several rupees upon one of the chests, and turned and went out.
Muhafiz Ali, reflecting that Allah looked with favor upon him, gathered up the coins. And this, after he had lost the Sulaimaneh ring! Pah! Ill-fortune, indeed! He scoffed.
He was so pleased that, a few minutes later, when a blue-eyed Punjabi inquired the price of a string of _ferozees_, he did not haggle over it but sacrificed the necklace for exactly what it was worth.
"Eight o'clock," he repeated to himself. And his own price. He was a loyal servant of the Raj, yes; but that did not in any way affect his intention to charge the Raj well for his services.
"Brahmin dog!" he hissed in his beard. "Breeder of whelps!"
Night wove its shuttle across the sky, beading the dusk with stars. The Southern Cross lay mirrored in the Sarasvati and the Khan, and in the lake at Sukhnewás; it pulsed above the gardens of Lal Bagh, above Sharifa Street and those other narrow highways that vein the Holkar's capital; it peered down inquisitively into the gloom of the Great Bazaar as Muhafiz Ali, having finished a meal of curry and rice, quitted his shop and hurried toward the dâk bungalow.