Chapter 10

Shiraz expressed wonder, and agreed with Leh Shin that sorcery had been used, shaking his head gravely and at length rising to his feet.

"The shadows lengthen and the hour of prayer draws near. It is time for the follower of the Prophet to give a poor man's alms at the gate of the Mosque, and to pray and praise," he said. "Thy assistant tarries, Leh Shin; let him go forth with speed and place my purchase in thy keeping, since I met thee in a happy hour, and shall return upon the morrow from the _Serai_, where it is Allah's will that I pass the night in peace."

Walking with a slow, regular pace, he left the native quarter, and taking a tram, got out on the road below the bungalow where Hartley's servant waited in the veranda.

"Thy Sahib has cursed thy beard and thine age, and says that he will replace thee with a younger man if thy dealings in the Bazaar are of such long duration."

"Peace, owl," said Shiraz. "The Sahib can no more travel without my assistance than a babe of one day without his mother. Presently, when the Sahib has drunk a peg, he will return to reason."

"The Sahib is not within; he has but now gone out once more, asking from my Sahib for the loan of a prayer-book. Doubtless, there is a _Tamasha_ at the 'Kerfedril,' and Coryndon Sahib goes thither to pray."

"I shall place the buttons in his shirt, and recover an eight-anna piece from the floor, which the master dropped yesterday, to deliver to him when he shall return. Seek to be honest in thy youth, my son, for in later life it will repay thee."

Hartley's boy had not been mistaken when he heard Coryndon ask for a prayer-book and saw him go out on foot. The small persistent bell outside St. Jude's Church was ringing with desperate energy to collect any worshippers who might feel inclined to assemble there for evensong, and the worshippers when collected under the tin roof numbered nearly a dozen.

It was a bare, barn-like Church, for the wealth of the Cantonment had flowed in the direction of the Cathedral. The punkah mats flapped languidly, and the lower part of the church was dark, only the chancel being lighted with ungainly punkah-proof lamps, and the two altar candles that threw their gleam on a plain gold cross, guttered in the heat. A strip of cocoa-nut matting lay along the aisle, and the chancel and altar steps were covered in sad, faded red. The organist did not attend except on Sundays or Feast Days, and the service was plain, conducted throughout by the Rev. Francis Heath.

Coryndon took a seat about half-way up the nave, and when Heath came into the church, he watched him with interest. He liked to watch a man, whom it was his business to study, without being disturbed, and Heath's face in profile, as he knelt at the reading desk, or in full sight as he stood to read the lesson, attracted the fixed gaze of, at least, one member of the small congregation. There was no sermon and the service was short, and as he sat quietly in his place, Coryndon wondered what frenzied moment of fear or despair could have driven this man into the company of Joicey and Mrs. Draycott Wilder, unconscious perhaps of their connection with him, but linked nevertheless by an invisible thread that wound around them all.

Beyond the fact that he had seen Mrs. Wilder, he had not taken her under the close observation of his mental microscope. She stood on one side until such time as he should have need to probe into her reasons for silence, and he wondered if Hartley was right, and if, by chance, the earnest face of the clergyman, with its burning, stricken eyes, had appealed to her sympathy. Could it be so, he asked himself once or twice, but the immediate question was the one that Coryndon gave his mind to answer, and just then he was forming an impression of the Rev. Francis Heath.

He looked at his hands, at his thin neck, at the hollows in his cheeks and the emotional quiver at the corner of his mouth, and he knew the man was a fanatic, a civilized fanatic, but desperately and even horribly in earnest. A believer in torment, a man who held the vigorous faith that makes for martyrdom and can also pile wood for the fires that burn the bodies of others for the eventual welfare of their souls. Unquestionably, the Rev. Francis Heath was a man not to be judged by an average inch rule, and Coryndon thought over him as he listened to his voice and watched his strained, tempest-tossed face. Whether he was involved in the disappearance of Absalom or not, he recognized that Heath was a strong man, and that his ill-balanced force would need very little to make him a violent man. It surprised him less to think that Hartley attached suspicion to the Rector of St. Jude's than it had at first, and he left the church with a very clear impression of the clergyman put carefully away beside his appreciation of Leh Shin's assistant. He had caught just a glimpse of the personality of the man, and was busy building it up bit by bit, working out his idea by first trying to fathom the temperament that dwelt in the spare body and drove and wore him hour after hour.

The Rev. Francis Heath had paid some Chinaman to keep silence, but though he might pay a Chinaman, he could do nothing with his own conscience, and it was with a hidden adversary that he wrestled day and night. Coryndon's face was pitiless as the face of a vivisecting surgeon. Had she known of his mission, Mrs. Wilder might have beaten her beautiful head on the stones under his feet, and she would have gained nothing whatever of concession or mercy.

Atkins and the Barrister were dining with Hartley that night, and as Coryndon never cared to hurry over his dressing, he went at once to his room and called Shiraz.

"All is well, my Master," said Shiraz, in a low voice. "But it would be wise if the Master were to curse his servant in a loud voice, since it is expected that he will do so, and the monkey-folk in the servants' quarter listen without, concealing their pleasure in the Sahib's wrath."

When the proceedings terminated and Coryndon had accepted his servant's long excuse for his delay, the doors were closed, Shiraz having first gone out to shake his fist at Hartley's boy.

"Thus much have I discovered, Lord Sahib," said Shiraz, when he had explained that the house was in readiness and the necessary furniture bought and stored temporarily at the shop of Leh Shin, the Chinaman. "There is an old hate between these two men, he of the devil shop, and the Chinaman, a hate as old as rust that eats into an iron bar."

Coryndon lay back in his chair and listened without remark.

"Among many lies told unto me, that is true; and again, among many lies, it is also true that he had not, neither did he ever possess, the gold lacquer bowl, on the subject of which my Master bade me question him. He knows not how Mhtoon Pah found it, but he believes that it was through a sorcery he practised, for the man is as full of evil as the chatti lifted from the brink of the well is full of water."

Coryndon smiled and glanced at Shiraz.

"And you think so also, grandson of a Tucktoo, for though you are old, your white hairs bring you no wisdom."

"I am the Sahib's servant, but who knoweth the ways of devils, since their footprints cannot be seen, neither upon the sand of the desert nor in the snows of the great hills?"

"Did he speak of Absalom?"

"He told me, Protector of the Poor, that the boy, though of Christian caste, was to Mhtoon Pah as the apple of his eye, and that he fed him upon sweets from the vendor's stall. Let it be said, for thy wisdom to unravel, that therefore Leh Shin felt mirth in his mind, knowing that the heart of his foe was wrung as the _Dhobie_ wrings the soiled garment."

Shiraz fell silent and looked up from the floor at the face of his master, who got up and stretched himself.

"Is my bath ready, Shiraz?"

"All is prepared, though the _pani walla_, a worker of iniquity, steals the wood for his own burning; therefore, the water is not hot, and ill is done to the good name of Hartley Sahib's house."

When he was dressed he strolled into the drawing-room, and sat down at the piano, playing softly until Hartley came in.

"Shall you be away long, do you suppose?" he asked, looking with interest at Coryndon's smooth, black head.

"I may be, but it is impossible to tell. If I want you, I will send a message by Shiraz."

The dinner passed off without incident, and not once did Coryndon open the secret door of his mind, to add to the strange store of facts he had gathered there. He wanted nothing from Atkins, who knew less of the Rev. Francis Heath than he did himself, and he had to sustain his rôle of ignorance of the country. The two men stayed late, and it seemed to Coryndon that when men talk they do more than talk, they tell many things unconsciously.

Perhaps, if people realized, as Coryndon realized, the value of restrained speech, we should know less of our neighbours' follies and weaknesses than we do. There was a noticeable absence of interest in what anyone else had to say. Atkins had his own foible, Fitzgibbon his, and Hartley, who knew more of the ways of men, a more interesting, but not less egoistic platform from which he desired to speak. They seemed to stalk naked and unashamed before the eyes of the one man who never gave a definite opinion, and who never asserted his own theories or urged his own philosophy of life.

Coryndon listened because it amused him faintly, but he was glad when the party broke up and they left. What a planet of words it was, he thought, as he sat in his room and reflected over the day. Words that ought to carry value and weight, but were treated like so many loose pebbles cast into void space; and he wondered as he thought of it; and from wondering at the wordy, noisy world in which he found himself, he went on to wonder at the greater silence that was so much more powerful than words. "The value of mystery," was the phrase that presented itself to his mind.

During the evening, three men had enjoyed all the pleasure of self-betrayal, and, from the place where he stood, unable ever to express anything of his own nature in easy speech, he wondered at them, with almost childlike astonishment. Fitzgibbon, garrulous and loose of tongue, Atkins, precise and easily heated to wrath, conscious of some hidden fear that his dignity was not sufficiently respected, and Hartley, who had something to say, but who oversaid it, losing grip because of his very insistence. Not one of them understood the value of reserve, and all alike strove to proclaim themselves in speech, not knowing that speech is an unsound vehicle for the unwary, and that personality disowns it as a medium.

Out of the mouth of a man comes his own condemnation: let him prosper who remembers this truth. The value of mystery, the value of silence, and above all things, the supreme value of a tongue that is a servant and not a master; Coryndon considered these values and wondered again at the garrulity of men. Talk, the fluid, ineffectual force that fills the world with noise, that kills illusions and betrays every latent weakness; surely the high gods laughed when they put a tongue in the mouth of man. He pinched his lips together and his eyes lighted with a passing smile of mirth.

"In Burma, there are no clappers to the bells," he said to himself. "Each man must strike hard before sound answers to his hand, and truly it is well to think of this at times." And, still amused by the fleeting memory of the evening, he went to bed and slept.

XV

IN WHICH THE FURTHERING OF A STRANGE COMRADESHIP IS CONTINUED, AND A BEGGAR FROM AMRITZAR CRIES IN THE STREETS OF MANGADONE

Trade was slack in the shop of Leh Shin, the Chinaman. He had sat in the odorous gloom and done little else than feel his arms and rub his legs, for the greater part of the day. His new acquaintance, Shiraz, had taken over possession of his goods, scrutinizing them with care before he did so, in case the brass pots had been exchanged in the night for inferior pots of smaller circumference, and in the end he had departed into his own rat-burrow, two doors up the street, where his friend the Burman was already established in a gloomy corner. Leh Shin heard of this through his assistant, who had followed the coolie into the house, and investigated the premises as he stood about, with offers of assistance for his excuse.

"They have naught with them, save only a box that has no lock upon it, and also the boxes bought from thy shop, Leh Shin, but these are empty, for I looked closely, when they talked in the hither room, where they are minded to live. Jewels, didst thou say? Then that fox with the red beard has sold them and the money is stored in some place of security."

"Ah, ah," said the Chinaman, his eyes dull and fixed.

"And 'ah, ah' to thee," retorted the assistant, who found the response lacking in interest. "I would I knew where it was hidden."

With a sudden change of manner he squatted near the ear of Leh Shin and talked in a soft whisper.

"Is not the time ripe, O wise old man, is not the hour come when thou mayst go to the house of the white Sahib and demand a piece for closed lips?"

He pursed up his small mouth and pointed at it.

Leh Shin shook his head.

"I am already paid, and I will not demand further, lest he, whom we know of, come no more. Drive not the spent of strength; since the price is sufficient, I may not demand more, lest I sin in so doing."

The assistant glared at him with angry eyes.

"Fool, and thrice fool," he muttered under his breath, but Leh Shin did not heed him, and did not even appear to hear what he said. For a long time the old Chinaman seemed wrapped in his thought, and at last he got up, and leaving the shop, went towards the principal Joss House that faced the river.

Coryndon had chosen the empty shop in the Colonnade for two reasons. It was near Leh Shin, and near the strange assistant, who interested him nearly as much as Leh Shin himself, and also it had the additional advantage of being the last house in the block. A narrow alley full of refuse of every description lay between it and the next block, and the rickety house had doors that opened to the front, and to the side, and by way of a dark lane directly from the back, making ingress or egress a matter of wide choice.

The shop front was shuttered, and left to the rats and cockroaches, and up a flight of decrepit and shaky stairs, Shiraz had made what shift he could to provide comfort for his master in the least dilapidated room in the house. The walls were thin, and the plaster of the low ceiling was smoke-grimed and dirty. The "bed of lesser value" was stored away in the garret that lay beyond, and the prayer-mat was placed alongside the toil-worn wooden _charpoy_, that was at least fairly clean and had all four legs intact; and under this bed, the box that held a strange assortment of clothing was put safely away. At the bottom of another box, one of those bought by Coryndon himself from Leh Sin's assistant, Shiraz had laid a suit of tussore silk, a few shirts and collars, and anything that his master might require if he wished to revisit those "glimpses of the moon" in the Cantonments; for Shiraz neglected nothing, and had a genius for detail.

A hurricane lamp, that threw impartial light upon all sides, stood on a round table, and lighted the small room, and at one corner Coryndon sat, clad in his Burmese _loongyi_ and white coat, thinking, his chin on his folded hands. He had taught himself to think without paper or pens, and to record his impressions with the same diligent care as though he wrote them upon paper. He could command his thoughts, and direct them towards one end and one issue, and he believed that notes were an abomination, and that, in his Service, memory was the only safe recorder of progress.

He was fully aware that he was hunting what might well be a cold line, and he thought persistently of Leh Shin, putting the other possible issues upon one side. Hartley had allowed himself to be dominated by a predisposition to account for everything through Heath, and Coryndon warned himself against falling into the same snare with Leh Shin. He thought of the Chinaman's shop, and he knew that it was built on the same plan as his own dwelling. There was no basement, and hardly any room beyond the open ground-floor apartment and the two upper rooms. Nowhere, in fact, to conceal anything; and its thin walls could not contain a single cry for help or prayer for mercy. It was possible to have drugged the boy and smothered him as he lay unconscious, but unless the murderers had chosen this method, Absalom could not have met his end in the Chinaman's shop. There remained the house by the river to investigate, and there remained hours and days, and possibly weeks, of close watching, that might reveal some tiny clue, and for that Coryndon was determined to wait and watch until it lay in the hollow of his palm.

Acting the part of a man more or less astray in his wits, he wandered out either late or early, with the vague, aimless step of a dreamer, and stood about, staring vacantly. Leh Shin's shop attracted him, and he would squat on the ground either just outside the narrow entrance, or just within, and, with flaccid, dropping mouth, stare at the hanging array of secondhand clothes, making himself a source of endless entertainment for the boy, who found him easy to annoy and distress, and consequently practised upon him with unwearying pleasure.

"Wise one, where are the jewels stolen by thy Master?" he asked, throwing the dregs of his drink over the Burman's bare feet.

"Jewels, jewels? Nay, friend, jewels are for the rich; for the Raj and the Prince; I have never seen one to hold in my hand and to consider closely. As for the Punjabi, he is no master of mine. I did him a service--nay, I have forgotten what the service was, as I forget all things, save only the guilt of the evil man, once my friend."

"Tell me once more thy story."

The Burman cowered down and whimpered.

"Since I put it into speech for thy ears, my trouble of mind has grown, like moonlight in the mist. I may not speak it again. They, yonder, would hear," he pointed at the clothes, that napped a little in the hot, heavy wind that came in strong with the scents and smells of the Bazaar.

"Oh, oh," said the boy, with a crackling laugh. "I will tell them not to speak or stir. I have power over them, and they shall repeat nothing. Tell me the story, fool, or I will drive thee from thy corner, and the children shall throw mud upon thee in the streets."

Again and again the drama was repeated, and as Coryndon became part of the day's amusement to Leh Shin's assistant, he grew to know exactly what both the boy and his master did during the hours of the day. Unknown and unsuspected, the Burman went in and out as they went in and out. He appeared at the house by the river, he sat with his legs dangling over the drop from the Colonnade into the streets, and he wore out the hours in idleness, the dust of the Bazaar powdering his hair and griming his face, but behind his vacant eyes, his quick brain was alive and burning, and he felt after Leh Shin with invisible hands.

Coryndon was never at the mercy of one idea only, and he began to see, very soon after he had investigated the two houses--the ramshackle shop and the riverside den--that if he intended to progress he could not afford to sit in the street and drink in the café opposite Leh Shin's dwelling for an interminable space of weeks. He had limitless patience, but he was quick of action, and saw any flaw in his own system as soon as a flaw appeared. Leh Shin was suspicious, and took precautions when he went out at night, and this in itself made it dangerous to be continually upon his heels in a character he knew and could recognize. So long as there was anything to gain by remaining in his Burmese clothing, Coryndon used it, avoiding the Chinaman and cultivating the society of his assistant, but he soon began to realize that if he were to follow as closely as he desired, he could not do so in his present disguise.

All day he sat watching the crowded street, shivering, though the sun was warm, and breaking his silence with complaints that the fever was upon him, and that he was sick, and that he could not eat. He whimpered and whined so persistently that the assistant drove him off, for he feared infection, and fancied he might be sickening for the plague.

"Neither come thou hither, until thou art fully recovered," he added, "lest I use my force upon thee."

If a certain beggar who had sat for a whole month outside the Golden Temple at Amritzar was to become reincarnated in the person of the idiot Burman, the Burman must have a reason to offer to the inquisitive for his temporary absence. Sickness is sudden and active in the streets of any Bazaar, and when Shiraz learnt that he was to keep within the house and report the various stages of the fever of his friend, he salaamed and drew out the battered box from under the bed, and folded away the _loongyi_ and coat with care.

Coryndon explained his plan of coming and going when the streets were silent, and when he could do so without being noticed. If he came in the daytime and asked for alms, Shiraz was to open and call him in to receive food, but he would only do this in great emergency, as the beggar did not wish to establish any connection with the Punjabi. If, on the other hand, it was a matter of necessity for the Burman to reappear, Shiraz was to walk along the street and bestow alms in the beggar's bowl; and on the first opportunity Coryndon would return and make the necessary change. The first difficulty was to get out of the house, and to be in the street by twilight, when the close operation of watching would have to begin.

"The doors of the merciful are ever open to the poor; yet there is great danger in going out by the way of the Bazaar."

"There is a closed door at the back that I have well prepared," said Coryndon, pulling a bit of sacking over his bent shoulders. "Remember that an oiled hinge opens like the mouth of a wise man."

The addition of one to the brotherhood of vagrancy that is part of every Eastern Bazaar calls the attention of no one, and being a newcomer, Coryndon contented himself with accepting a pitch in a district where alms were difficult to obtain and small in value, but his humility did not keep him there long, and he made a place for himself at the top of Paradise Street, in the shadow of an arched doorway, where a house with carved shutters and horseshoe windows was slowly mouldering through the first stages of decay. From here he could see down the Colonnade, and also watch the shop of Mhtoon Pah, as he alternately cursed or blessed the passers, according to their gifts or their apathy.

The heavy, slouching figure of the assistant went by to take up his master's place in the waterside house, and the beggar wasted no time in glancing after him. He knew his destination, and had no need to trouble about the ungainly, walloping creature, who kicked him as he passed. It was fresh, out in the street, and pleasant, and in spite of his musty rags and his hidden face, Coryndon enjoyed the change of occupation.

He saw the place much as it had been on the evening of July the 29th. Mhtoon Pah came out and sat on his chair, smoking a cheroot, and observing the street. In a good humour it would appear, for when the beggar cringed past and sent up his plea for assistance, the curio dealer felt in his pouched waist-sash and threw him a coin.

"Be it requited to thee in thy next life, O Shrine-builder," murmured the beggar, and he squatted down on the ground a little further on.