Muhafiz Ali came from the North, from Peshawar, and the sultry, throbbing heat of Central India dried up the life in his veins. He longed for the sight of his brother-hillmen swaggering through the Bokhara Bazaar, at Peshawar; for the smell of camels (perfume to a Peshawari) clinging to the chilly dusk. He hoped some day to have enough rupees to board one of those terrifying, though thoroughly convenient, iron demons that he frequently saw panting in the railway station and ride back to Peshawar, where he would dwell for the rest of his earthly days in a house with a garden and an azure-necked peacock that strutted and shrilled like an angry Rajput.
Meanwhile, to this end he sat daily in his shop, not shrieking at prospective customers with "Please buy my nicklass!" like that offspring of the sewer across the way, but waiting with the dignity befitting a son of the Prophet for those who came to buy. And many came. For the fame of his silks (bales from Bokhara frail as spun moonlight and the raw sheeny stuff from Samarkand) had spread through the Residency and haunted every Memsahib and Ladyship who once allowed herself to be enticed into his felt-floored treasure-room.
But his fame lay not only in silks. In formidable chests in the inner room were many necklaces and ornaments--stones precious and semi-precious, and even paste. He was a lapidary and had once served in the establishment of a great jeweller in Delhi. It required but a single glance for him to find the matrix in falsely beautiful gems, or to appraise any sort of stone from diamonds down to chalcedony. Even his Highness the Maharajah had heard of his skill in cutting and setting jewels, and on two occasions had given him commissions.
On this particular day when the mysterious hand was very close, and Destiny had placed a chalk-mark upon a certain young woman and an officer of the empire, his hatred for Venekiah swelled to such proportions that it included every one; it quivered against the walls of his being, hot as the Indian sun that throughout the noonday blazed above the sweltering bazaar. Nor did his rage cool when, toward sundown, lilac shadows lounged in the street and a hundred-hued swarm jostled by.