Voices in the Night. Flora Annie Webster Steel
with the empty polished floor, were suggestive of a ballroom; the dancing-saloon of the café chantant!
In the very centre, however, of the emptiness was a low roly-poly tomb, above which rose a musty-fusty baldequin which had once been stately in velvet and pearls. But the moth had fretted new patterns on the curtains, and the cobwebs lay like torn lace on the canopy. Nevertheless, two faintly-smouldering silver censers, standing at the foot of the tomb, showed it not all neglected. And something else, witness to memory, lay between the censers, under a common glass shade such as covers the marble-and-gilt timepiece of a bogus auction, or the dusty waxen flowers of a cheap lodging.
It was the last Nawâb's turban of state.
For the rest, the hall lay empty save for its officials; the minor canons as it were, who still received the stipends set apart by the deceased kings for due daily chantings of dirges, and so clustered round Jehân with courtier-like salaams.
But not for long; since almost before they had conducted him to the royal pew--an inlaid square of flooring close to the baldequin--a fresh arrival sent them cringing and fluttering to greet it, with greed in their hungry faces; the faces of custodians to whom strangers give tips.
And this party of English tourists looked promising, if only from the reluctant way in which, in obedience to a notice on the door, they took off their hats, and then glanced round with the 'Thank-the-goodness-and-the-grace-which-on-my-birth-hath-smiled' expression which our race learns in the nursery. For this is a frame of mind which leads to a contemptuous tipping of inferior races.
'Guide says that's the last Johnnie's cap--beastly dirty, isn't it?' said one in a churchy whisper, and the others nodded in churchy silence. So, decorously--barring a faint desire to try the waltzing capabilities of the floor on the part of a brother and sister in one corner--they hesitated round the building with the half-shy, half-defiant, 'thus far I will go but no further' reluctance to admit any interest in strange places of worship, which is also a sign of race.
And Jehân from his royal square watched them, oblivious of his prayers, until quite calmly, innocently, they included him as part of the show.
Then he rose and said to Burkut, who was praying to perfection behind----
'I stay not for this. And we are too soon, for all thy fuss of being late. 'Twill be a good half-hour ere the dirge begins. So I go to Lucanaster's.--Nay!' he added hastily, as Burkut began to rise also, 'thou canst stay here, and if any of note come in my absence, tell them I return.'
So with a cunning smile leavening his scowl at the tourists, he passed out. In truth he was glad of the excuse which made it possible to take no one but Lateefa, who was to be trusted--who indeed had to be trusted in all things, since he knew all things--with him to Mr. Lucanaster's house; for even if he had left Burkut outside during his interview, there was no saying what the latter might not have discovered, or say he had discovered, which would answer his purpose of pressure quite as well! For Jehân, like most of Burkut's acquaintances, was quite aware of the latter's method.
Five minutes after, therefore (since Mr. Lucanaster's house lay conveniently close to the city and his numerous clients there), Jehân found himself tête-à-tête with a shrewd commercial face intent on the scientific counting of a string of pearls with a paper-knife.
'Three, six, nine, twelve,' came Mr. Lucanaster's voice as the ivory slipped between the triplets of pearls.
'Fifty and five,' he said finally, and Jehân nodded.
'Fifty and five,' he assented. 'What will you give me for them, Huzoor?'
Mr. Lucanaster drew a despatch-box towards him, opened it, looked at a paper, and smiled lavishly.
'Nothing, Nawâb-sahib,' he said calmly; 'for, to begin with, there are five short on the string. There were sixty on it when it was stolen.'
Jehân nearly jumped from his chair. 'Stolen!' he echoed. 'It is a lie--they are mine--they were my mother's.'
The lavish smile continued. 'Exactly, Nawâb-sahib, the description says so; and they were stolen from Government House two nights ago.'
'But I tell you it is impossible--my house was wearing them----'
'Excuse me; but you sold your mother's pearls last year! I happen to know, because Gunga Mull, who bought them, was acting for me. You had refused my direct offer, if you remember, and you lost a thousand rupees in consequence. It is safer to trust me in the end, Nawâb-sahib,' put in Mr. Lucanaster suavely.
'But not one string,' protested Jehân, trying to be haughty. 'This one I kept, and if the Huzoor does not wish to buy, I can sell it elsewhere, as I did before.'
He stretched his hand for the string, but Mr. Lucanaster sate back in his chair dangling the pearls, and looked at the Rightful Heir as a spider looks at a fly.
'I wouldn't try if I were you, Nawâb-sahib,' he said slowly. 'It might lead to--to difficulties. And the coincidence is not very--very credible. But if you are really in need of money'--he spoke still more slowly--'there is always the emerald. Let me see! I offered you six thousand, didn't I?--well, let us say eight; and--and nothing to be said about--about these----' He passed the pearls deftly through his fingers as if appraising them, and added, 'They are really very fine pearls, Nawâb-sahib, quite noticeable pearls. I haven't seen better for a long time, so it is a pity they are unsaleable at present. By and by, perhaps, or in some other place----'
'Does the Huzoor mean----' began Jehân blusteringly.
Mr. Lucanaster looked up suddenly, sharply, drew the open despatch-box closer, dropped the pearls into it, and closed the box with a snap. 'I mean nothing, Nawâb-sahib, except that, for your own sake, those pearls had better stay there for the present. You will only be tempted to raise money on them in the bazaar, and as I--if I were asked my opinion, as I certainly should be--would say they were the stolen pearls, it is better not to run the risk of my having to give evidence.'
'I--I will complain--I will go to the commissioner,' stammered Jehân, completely taken aback.
'I wouldn't if I were you; a police inquiry would be the devil to a man of your character; and meanwhile--until you let me have the emerald--here's something for current expenses.'
Jehân looked for a moment as if he would dearly have liked to fling the notes which Mr. Lucanaster pushed over the table to him back in the donor's face; but he refrained. Money was always something, and some of it might even go to pay the poisoning of this hell-doomed infidel, who dared to pretend he thought the pearls were stolen; for Jehân was shrewd enough to see the other's game. Not that it mattered whether he pretended to think, or really thought. The pinch lay in that threat of a police inquiry; and neither the truth nor the falsehood of a charge mitigated or increased the sheer terror of that possibility.
So Jehân, minus his pearls, but with five hundred rupees in his pocket, drove back to the tomb of his dead ancestors in a tumult of impotent anger. He felt himself closer in the toils than he had been, and--naturally enough in a man of his sort--the utmost of his rage was expended on the person over whom he had most power of retaliation--that is, on Noormahal.
Why, he asked himself, had he been fool enough to let her get hold of the emerald again? It had been within his reach, and now it was gone again--hoarded by a foolish woman for the sake of a barren honour.
Barren? No! not altogether barren! As he stood once more in the arched doorway of the mausoleum, this feeling came to assuage the sting of his treatment by Mr. Lucanaster, and yet to make its smart more poignant.
For the assemblage had gathered. The chandeliers were lit, and the myriad-hued flash of their prisms hid the dust, hid the cobwebs, and gave a new brilliance to the mourners gathered in their appointed places. The tourists were gone now. These were his own people. They were waiting for him.
As he paused, a new arrival entering by a side door paused also--paused right in front of him before the glass case containing the last king's turban of state. So,