Nor was his rage abated when he was summoned to the palace to answer the charge of instigating the attack on Rahmut's quarters. The king was seated in the hall of public audience, surrounded by a glittering company. The total failure of the night's operations had not yet been fully reported; Bakht Khan was not in attendance; and when the king recited the verses he had composed the day before, the courtiers acclaimed him as the Pearl of Poets and declared that nothing more was wanted to ensure success. But then the commander-in-chief came with his pitiful tale, and the king, with the petulance of dotage, flew into a rage and cried, "You will never take the Ridge; all my treasure is expended; the Royal Treasury is without a pice. And men tell me now that the soldiers are day by day departing to their homes. I have no hope of victory. My desire is that you all leave the city and make some other place the heart of the struggle. If you do not, then will I take such steps as may seem to me advisable."
And while the officers were trying to cheer the miserable old man, declaring that by Allah's help they would yet take the Ridge, Minghal Khan came in answer to the summons. Upon him the king poured out the vials of his wrath, demanding that he should instantly restore to the treasury the money he had been granted two days before, and ordering Bakht Khan once more to proclaim that heavy penalties should be inflicted on any who broke the peace of the city. And when Minghal began to protest, Mirza Akbar Sultan, the prince who was party to the scheme, plucked him by the sleeve and in a whisper bade him be silent. The king was beside himself with rage, he said, and it was not a propitious moment for appeals. The prince accompanied him home, and, over a bottle of spirits sent for in haste from one of the merchants, they laid their heads together, devising a plan by which they might still achieve their designs against Rahmut Khan.
The underground chamber in which Ahmed was confined was perfectly dark. The floor was damp; the air stuffy. He leant for a while against the wall, ruminating on this sudden check in his fortunes. That Minghal Khan had not killed him at once showed that he was reserved for a worse fate. And what had Minghal meant by the reference to Rahmut Khan? His words seemed to imply that he supposed father and son to have entered Delhi together, and to be engaged in some scheme against him. Ahmed was for a time at a loss to understand what had given rise to this belief. Was Minghal unaware that Rahmut was a prisoner of the English? But then he remembered the conversation he had overheard in the room above. This "old rogue," this Asadullah, of whom the officers had spoken--could it be that he was Rahmut Khan? He was a Pathan--so much all Delhi knew; was it possible that the old chief had been released, or had escaped from prison, and had come into the city to wreak vengeance on the sahibs? This was a course he was very likely to follow: yet Ahmed hoped that it was not so; he did not like to think of his adoptive father and himself being on opposite sides.