No More Learning

But his guest did not bore the Viceroy. On the contrary, he amused him.
Mellish was nervously anxious to go straight to his Fumigatory, and
talked at random until tiffin was over and His Excellency asked him
to smoke. The Viceroy was pleased with Mellish because he did not talk
"shop. "

As soon as the cheroots were lit, Mellish spoke like a man; beginning
with his cholera-theory, reviewing his fifteen years' "scientific
labors," the machinations of the "Simla Ring," and the excellence of
his Fumigatory, while the Viceroy watched him between half-shut eyes
and thought: "Evidently, this is the wrong tiger; but it is an original
animal. " Mellish's hair was standing on end with excitement, and he
stammered. He began groping in his coat-tails and, before the Viceroy
knew what was about to happen, he had tipped a bagful of his powder into
the big silver ash-tray.

"J-j-judge for yourself, Sir," said Mellish. "Y' Excellency shall judge
for yourself! Absolutely infallible, on my honor. "

He plunged the lighted end of his cigar into the powder, which began to
smoke like a volcano, and send up fat, greasy wreaths of copper-colored
smoke. In five seconds the room was filled with a most pungent and
sickening stench--a reek that took fierce hold of the trap of your
windpipe and shut it. The powder then hissed and fizzed, and sent out
blue and green sparks, and the smoke rose till you could neither see,
nor breathe, nor gasp. Mellish, however, was used to it.

"Nitrate of strontia," he shouted; "baryta, bone-meal, etcetera!
Thousand cubic feet smoke per cubic inch. Not a germ could live--not a
germ, Y' Excellency! "

But His Excellency had fled, and was coughing at the foot of the stairs,
while all Peterhoff hummed like a hive. Red Lancers came in, and the
Head Chaprassi, who speaks English, came in, and mace-bearers came in,
and ladies ran downstairs screaming "fire;" for the smoke was drifting
through the house and oozing out of the windows, and bellying along the
verandahs, and wreathing and writhing across the gardens. No one could
enter the room where Mellish was lecturing on his Fumigatory, till that
unspeakable powder had burned itself out.

Then an Aide-de-Camp, who desired the V. C. , rushed through the rolling
clouds and hauled Mellish into the hall. The Viceroy was prostrate with
laughter, and could only waggle his hands feebly at Mellish, who was
shaking a fresh bagful of powder at him.

"Glorious! Glorious! " sobbed his Excellency. "Not a germ, as you justly
observe, could exist! I can swear it. A magnificent success! "

Then he laughed till the tears came, and Wonder, who had caught the real
Mellishe snorting on the Mall, entered and was deeply shocked at the
scene. But the Viceroy was delighted, because he saw that Wonder would
presently depart. Mellish with the Fumigatory was also pleased, for he
felt that he had smashed the Simla Medical "Ring. ". . . . . . . . .

Few men could tell a story like His Excellency when he took the trouble,
and the account of "my dear, good Wonder's friend with the powder"
went the round of Simla, and flippant folk made Wonder unhappy by their
remarks.

But His Excellency told the tale once too often--for Wonder. As he meant
to do. It was at a Seepee Picnic. Wonder was sitting just behind the
Viceroy.

"And I really thought for a moment," wound up His Excellency, "that my
dear, good Wonder had hired an assassin to clear his way to the throne! "

Every one laughed; but there was a delicate subtinkle in the Viceroy's
tone which Wonder understood. He found that his health was giving way;
and the Viceroy allowed him to go, and presented him with a flaming
"character" for use at Home among big people.

"My fault entirely," said His Excellency, in after seasons, with
a twinkling in his eye. "My inconsistency must always have been
distasteful to such a masterly man. "




KIDNAPPED.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken any way you please, is bad,
And strands them in forsaken guts and creeks
No decent soul would think of visiting.

You cannot stop the tide; but now and then,
You may arrest some rash adventurer
Who--h'm--will hardly thank you for your pains.
--Vibart's Moralities.

We are a high-caste and enlightened race, and infant-marriage is very
shocking and the consequences are sometimes peculiar; but, nevertheless,
the Hindu notion--which is the Continental notion--which is the
aboriginal notion--of arranging marriages irrespective of the personal
inclinations of the married, is sound. Think for a minute, and you will
see that it must be so; unless, of course, you believe in "affinities. "
In which case you had better not read this tale. How can a man who has
never married; who cannot be trusted to pick up at sight a moderately
sound horse; whose head is hot and upset with visions of domestic
felicity, go about the choosing of a wife? He cannot see straight or
think straight if he tries; and the same disadvantages exist in the
case of a girl's fancies. But when mature, married and discreet people
arrange a match between a boy and a girl, they do it sensibly, with a
view to the future, and the young couple live happily ever afterwards.
As everybody knows.

Properly speaking, Government should establish a Matrimonial Department,
efficiently officered, with a Jury of Matrons, a Judge of the Chief
Court, a Senior Chaplain, and an Awful Warning, in the shape of a
love-match that has gone wrong, chained to the trees in the courtyard.
All marriages should be made through the Department, which might be
subordinate to the Educational Department, under the same penalty as
that attaching to the transfer of land without a stamped document. But
Government won't take suggestions. It pretends that it is too busy.
However, I will put my notion on record, and explain the example that
illustrates the theory.

Once upon a time there was a good young man--a first-class officer in
his own Department--a man with a career before him and, possibly, a K.
C. G. E. at the end of it. All his superiors spoke well of him, because
he knew how to hold his tongue and his pen at the proper times. There
are today only eleven men in India who possess this secret; and they
have all, with one exception, attained great honor and enormous incomes.

This good young man was quiet and self-contained--too old for his years
by far. Which always carries its own punishment. Had a Subaltern, or a
Tea-Planter's Assistant, or anybody who enjoys life and has no care for
tomorrow, done what he tried to do not a soul would have cared. But when
Peythroppe--the estimable, virtuous, economical, quiet, hard-working,
young Peythroppe--fell, there was a flutter through five Departments.

The manner of his fall was in this way. He met a Miss
Castries--d'Castries it was originally, but the family dropped the
d' for administrative reasons--and he fell in love with her even more
energetically than he worked. Understand clearly that there was not a
breath of a word to be said against Miss Castries--not a shadow of a
breath. She was good and very lovely--possessed what innocent people at
home call a "Spanish" complexion, with thick blue-black hair growing low
down on her forehead, into a "widow's peak," and big violet eyes
under eyebrows as black and as straight as the borders of a Gazette
Extraordinary when a big man dies. But--but--but--. Well, she was a VERY
sweet girl and very pious, but for many reasons she was "impossible. "
Quite so. All good Mammas know what "impossible" means. It was obviously
absurd that Peythroppe should marry her. The little opal-tinted onyx
at the base of her finger-nails said this as plainly as print.
Further, marriage with Miss Castries meant marriage with several other
Castries--Honorary Lieutenant Castries, her Papa, Mrs. Eulalie Castries,
her Mamma, and all the ramifications of the Castries family, on incomes
ranging from Rs. 175 to Rs. 470 a month, and THEIR wives and connections
again.

It would have been cheaper for Peythroppe to have assaulted a
Commissioner with a dog-whip, or to have burned the records of a Deputy
Commissioner's Office, than to have contracted an alliance with the
Castries. It would have weighted his after-career less--even under a
Government which never forgets and NEVER forgives.

Everybody saw this but Peythroppe. He was going to marry Miss Castries,
he was--being of age and drawing a good income--and woe betide the house
that would not afterwards receive Mrs. Virginie Saulez Peythroppe with
the deference due to her husband's rank.

That was Peythroppe's ultimatum, and any remonstrance drove him frantic.

These sudden madnesses most afflict the sanest men. There was a case
once--but I will tell you of that later on. You cannot account for the
mania, except under a theory directly contradicting the one about the
Place wherein marriages are made. Peythroppe was burningly anxious to
put a millstone round his neck at the outset of his career and argument
had not the least effect on him. He was going to marry Miss Castries,
and the business was his own business.

He would thank you to keep your advice to yourself. With a man in this
condition, mere words only fix him in his purpose. Of course he cannot
see that marriage out here does not concern the individual but the
Government he serves.

Do you remember Mrs. Hauksbee--the most wonderful woman in India? She
saved Pluffles from Mrs. Reiver, won Tarrion his appointment in the
Foreign Office, and was defeated in open field by Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil.
She heard of the lamentable condition of Peythroppe, and her brain
struck out the plan that saved him. She had the wisdom of the Serpent,
the logical coherence of the Man, the fearlessness of the Child, and
the triple intuition of the Woman. Never--no, never--as long as a tonga
buckets down the Solon dip, or the couples go a-riding at the back of
Summer Hill, will there be such a genius as Mrs. Hauksbee. She attended
the consultation of Three Men on Peythroppe's case; and she stood up
with the lash of her riding-whip between her lips and spake. . . . . . .
. . .

Three weeks later, Peythroppe dined with the Three Men, and the Gazette
of India came in. Peythroppe found to his surprise that he had been
gazetted a month's leave. Don't ask me how this was managed. I believe
firmly that if Mrs. Hauksbee gave the order, the whole Great Indian
Administration would stand on its head.

The Three Men had also a month's leave each. Peythroppe put the Gazette
down and said bad words. Then there came from the compound the soft
"pad-pad" of camels--"thieves' camels," the bikaneer breed that don't
bubble and howl when they sit down and get up.

After that I don't know what happened. This much is certain.

Peythroppe disappeared--vanished like smoke--and the long foot-rest
chair in the house of the Three Men was broken to splinters. Also a
bedstead departed from one of the bedrooms.

Mrs. Hauksbee said that Mr. Peythroppe was shooting in Rajputana with
the Three Men; so we were compelled to believe her.

At the end of the month, Peythroppe was gazetted twenty days' extension
of leave; but there was wrath and lamentation in the house of Castries.
The marriage-day had been fixed, but the bridegroom never came; and the
D'Silvas, Pereiras, and Ducketts lifted their voices and mocked Honorary
Lieutenant Castries as one who had been basely imposed upon. Mrs.
Hauksbee went to the wedding, and was much astonished when Peythroppe
did not appear. After seven weeks, Peythroppe and the Three Men returned
from Rajputana. Peythroppe was in hard, tough condition, rather white,
and more self-contained than ever.

One of the Three Men had a cut on his nose, cause by the kick of a gun.
Twelve-bores kick rather curiously.

Then came Honorary Lieutenant Castries, seeking for the blood of his
perfidious son-in-law to be. He said things--vulgar and "impossible"
things which showed the raw rough "ranker" below the "Honorary," and I
fancy Peythroppe's eyes were opened. Anyhow, he held his peace till the
end; when he spoke briefly. Honorary Lieutenant Castries asked for a
"peg" before he went away to die or bring a suit for breach of promise.

Miss Castries was a very good girl. She said that she would have no
breach of promise suits. She said that, if she was not a lady, she
was refined enough to know that ladies kept their broken hearts to
themselves; and, as she ruled her parents, nothing happened. Later on,
she married a most respectable and gentlemanly person. He travelled for
an enterprising firm in Calcutta, and was all that a good husband should
be.

So Peythroppe came to his right mind again, and did much good work, and
was honored by all who knew him. One of these days he will marry; but he
will marry a sweet pink-and-white maiden, on the Government House List,
with a little money and some influential connections, as every wise man
should. And he will never, all his life, tell her what happened during
the seven weeks of his shooting-tour in Rajputana.

But just think how much trouble and expense--for camel hire is not
cheap, and those Bikaneer brutes had to be fed like humans--might have
been saved by a properly conducted Matrimonial Department, under the
control of the Director General of Education, but corresponding direct
with the Viceroy.




THE ARREST OF LIEUTENANT GOLIGHTLY.

"'I've forgotten the countersign,' sez 'e.

'Oh! You 'ave, 'ave you? ' sez I.

'But I'm the Colonel,' sez 'e.

'Oh! You are, are you? ' sez I. 'Colonel nor no Colonel, you
waits 'ere till I'm relieved, an' the Sarjint reports on
your ugly old mug. Coop! ' sez I.

. . . . . . . . .

An' s'help me soul, 'twas the Colonel after all! But I was
a recruity then. "

The Unedited Autobiography of Private Ortheris.

IF there was one thing on which Golightly prided himself more than
another, it was looking like "an Officer and a gentleman. " He said it
was for the honor of the Service that he attired himself so elaborately;
but those who knew him best said that it was just personal vanity. There
was no harm about Golightly--not an ounce.

He recognized a horse when he saw one, and could do more than fill a
cantle. He played a very fair game at billiards, and was a sound man at
the whist-table. Everyone liked him; and nobody ever dreamed of seeing
him handcuffed on a station platform as a deserter. But this sad thing
happened.

He was going down from Dalhousie, at the end of his leave--riding down.
He had cut his leave as fine as he dared, and wanted to come down in a
hurry.

It was fairly warm at Dalhousie, and knowing what to expect below, he
descended in a new khaki suit--tight fitting--of a delicate olive-green;
a peacock-blue tie, white collar, and a snowy white solah helmet. He
prided himself on looking neat even when he was riding post. He did
look neat, and he was so deeply concerned about his appearance before he
started that he quite forgot to take anything but some small change with
him. He left all his notes at the hotel. His servants had gone down the
road before him, to be ready in waiting at Pathankote with a change of
gear.
That was what he called travelling in "light marching-order. " He
was proud of his faculty of organization--what we call bundobust.

Twenty-two miles out of Dalhousie it began to rain--not a mere
hill-shower, but a good, tepid monsoonish downpour. Golightly bustled
on, wishing that he had brought an umbrella. The dust on the roads
turned into mud, and the pony mired a good deal. So did Golightly's
khaki gaiters. But he kept on steadily and tried to think how pleasant
the coolth was.

His next pony was rather a brute at starting, and Golightly's hands
being slippery with the rain, contrived to get rid of Golightly at a
corner. He chased the animal, caught it, and went ahead briskly.

The spill had not improved his clothes or his temper, and he had lost
one spur. He kept the other one employed. By the time that stage was
ended, the pony had had as much exercise as he wanted, and, in spite of
the rain, Golightly was sweating freely. At the end of another miserable
half-hour, Golightly found the world disappear before his eyes in clammy
pulp. The rain had turned the pith of his huge and snowy solah-topee
into an evil-smelling dough, and it had closed on his head like a
half-opened mushroom. Also the green lining was beginning to run.

Golightly did not say anything worth recording here. He tore off and
squeezed up as much of the brim as was in his eyes and ploughed on. The
back of the helmet was flapping on his neck and the sides stuck to
his ears, but the leather band and green lining kept things roughly
together, so that the hat did not actually melt away where it flapped.

Presently, the pulp and the green stuff made a sort of slimy mildew
which ran over Golightly in several directions--down his back and
bosom for choice. The khaki color ran too--it was really shockingly bad
dye--and sections of Golightly were brown, and patches were violet,
and contours were ochre, and streaks were ruddy red, and blotches were
nearly white, according to the nature and peculiarities of the dye.
When he took out his handkerchief to wipe his face and the green of the
hat-lining and the purple stuff that had soaked through on to his neck
from the tie became thoroughly mixed, the effect was amazing.

Near Dhar the rain stopped and the evening sun came out and dried him up
slightly. It fixed the colors, too. Three miles from Pathankote the last
pony fell dead lame, and Golightly was forced to walk. He pushed on
into Pathankote to find his servants. He did not know then that his
khitmatgar had stopped by the roadside to get drunk, and would come on
the next day saying that he had sprained his ankle. When he got into
Pathankote, he couldn't find his servants, his boots were stiff and ropy
with mud, and there were large quantities of dirt about his body. The
blue tie had run as much as the khaki. So he took it off with the collar
and threw it away. Then he said something about servants generally and
tried to get a peg. He paid eight annas for the drink, and this revealed
to him that he had only six annas more in his pocket--or in the world as
he stood at that hour.

He went to the Station-Master to negotiate for a first-class ticket to
Khasa, where he was stationed. The booking-clerk said something to
the Station-Master, the Station-Master said something to the Telegraph
Clerk, and the three looked at him with curiosity. They asked him to
wait for half-an-hour, while they telegraphed to Umritsar for
authority. So he waited, and four constables came and grouped themselves
picturesquely round him. Just as he was preparing to ask them to go
away, the Station-Master said that he would give the Sahib a ticket
to Umritsar, if the Sahib would kindly come inside the booking-office.
Golightly stepped inside, and the next thing he knew was that a
constable was attached to each of his legs and arms, while the
Station-Master was trying to cram a mailbag over his head.

There was a very fair scuffle all round the booking-office, and
Golightly received a nasty cut over his eye through falling against
a table. But the constables were too much for him, and they and the
Station-Master handcuffed him securely. As soon as the mail-bag was
slipped, he began expressing his opinions, and the head-constable
said:--"Without doubt this is the soldier-Englishman we required. Listen
to the abuse! " Then Golightly asked the Station-Master what the this
and the that the proceedings meant. The Station-Master told him he was
"Private John Binkle of the----Regiment, 5 ft. 9 in. , fair hair, gray
eyes, and a dissipated appearance, no marks on the body," who had
deserted a fortnight ago. Golightly began explaining at great length;
and the more he explained the less the Station-Master believed him. He
said that no Lieutenant could look such a ruffian as did Golightly, and
that his instructions were to send his capture under proper escort to
Umritsar. Golightly was feeling very damp and uncomfortable, and the
language he used was not fit for publication, even in an expurgated
form. The four constables saw him safe to Umritsar in an "intermediate"
compartment, and he spent the four-hour journey in abusing them as
fluently as his knowledge of the vernaculars allowed.

At Umritsar he was bundled out on the platform into the arms of a
Corporal and two men of the----Regiment. Golightly drew himself up
and tried to carry off matters jauntily. He did not feel too jaunty in
handcuffs, with four constables behind him, and the blood from the
cut on his forehead stiffening on his left cheek. The Corporal was not
jocular either. Golightly got as far as--"This is a very absurd mistake,
my men," when the Corporal told him to "stow his lip" and come along.
Golightly did not want to come along. He desired to stop and explain.
He explained very well indeed, until the Corporal cut in with:--"YOU
a orficer! It's the like o' YOU as brings disgrace on the likes of US.
Bloom-in' fine orficer you are! I know your regiment. The Rogue's
March is the quickstep where you come from. You're a black shame to the
Service. "

Golightly kept his temper, and began explaining all over again from the
beginning. Then he was marched out of the rain into the refreshment-room
and told not to make a qualified fool of himself.

The men were going to run him up to Fort Govindghar. And "running up" is
a performance almost as undignified as the Frog March.

Golightly was nearly hysterical with rage and the chill and the mistake
and the handcuffs and the headache that the cut on his forehead had
given him. He really laid himself out to express what was in his mind.
When he had quite finished and his throat was feeling dry, one of the
men said:--"I've 'eard a few beggars in the click blind, stiff and crack
on a bit; but I've never 'eard any one to touch this 'ere 'orficer. '"
They were not angry with him. They rather admired him. They had some
beer at the refreshment-room, and offered Golightly some too, because
he had "swore won'erful. " They asked him to tell them all about the
adventures of Private John Binkle while he was loose on the countryside;
and that made Golightly wilder than ever. If he had kept his wits about
him he would have kept quiet until an officer came; but he attempted to
run.

Now the butt of a Martini in the small of your back hurts a great deal,
and rotten, rain-soaked khaki tears easily when two men are jerking at
your collar.

Golightly rose from the floor feeling very sick and giddy, with his
shirt ripped open all down his breast and nearly all down his back.

He yielded to his luck, and at that point the down-train from Lahore
came in carrying one of Golightly's Majors.

This is the Major's evidence in full:--

"There was the sound of a scuffle in the second-class refreshment-room,
so I went in and saw the most villainous loafer that I ever set eyes on.
His boots and breeches were plastered with mud and beer-stains. He wore
a muddy-white dunghill sort of thing on his head, and it hung down in
slips on his shoulders, which were a good deal scratched. He was half in
and half out of a shirt as nearly in two pieces as it could be, and he
was begging the guard to look at the name on the tail of it. As he had
rucked the shirt all over his head, I couldn't at first see who he was,
but I fancied that he was a man in the first stage of D. T. from the way
he swore while he wrestled with his rags. When he turned round, and I
had made allowance for a lump as big as a pork-pie over one eye, and
some green war-paint on the face, and some violet stripes round the
neck, I saw that it was Golightly. He was very glad to see me," said the
Major, "and he hoped I would not tell the Mess about it. I didn't, but
you can if you like, now that Golightly has gone Home. "

Golightly spent the greater part of that summer in trying to get the
Corporal and the two soldiers tried by Court-Martial for arresting an
"officer and a gentleman. " They were, of course, very sorry for their
error. But the tale leaked into the regimental canteen, and thence ran
about the Province.




THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO

A stone's throw out on either hand
From that well-ordered road we tread,
And all the world is wild and strange;
Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite
Shall bear us company tonight,
For we have reached the Oldest Land
Wherein the Powers of Darkness range.
--From the Dusk to the Dawn.

The house of Suddhoo, near the Taksali Gate, is two-storied, with four
carved windows of old brown wood, and a flat roof. You may recognize
it by five red hand-prints arranged like the Five of Diamonds on the
whitewash between the upper windows. Bhagwan Dass, the bunnia, and a
man who says he gets his living by seal-cutting, live in the lower story
with a troop of wives, servants, friends, and retainers. The two upper
rooms used to be occupied by Janoo and Azizun and a little black-and-tan
terrier that was stolen from an Englishman's house and given to Janoo by
a soldier. Today, only Janoo lives in the upper rooms. Suddhoo sleeps on
the roof generally, except when he sleeps in the street. He used to go
to Peshawar in the cold weather to visit his son, who sells curiosities
near the Edwardes' Gate, and then he slept under a real mud roof.

Suddhoo is a great friend of mine, because his cousin had a son who
secured, thanks to my recommendation, the post of head-messenger to
a big firm in the Station. Suddhoo says that God will make me a
Lieutenant-Governor one of these days. I daresay his prophecy will come
true. He is very, very old, with white hair and no teeth worth showing,
and he has outlived his wits--outlived nearly everything except his
fondness for his son at Peshawar. Janoo and Azizun are Kashmiris,
Ladies of the City, and theirs was an ancient and more or less honorable
profession; but Azizun has since married a medical student from the
North-West and has settled down to a most respectable life somewhere
near Bareilly. Bhagwan Dass is an extortionate and an adulterator. He
is very rich. The man who is supposed to get his living by seal-cutting
pretends to be very poor.

This lets you know as much as is necessary of the four principal tenants
in the house of Suddhoo. Then there is Me, of course; but I am only the
chorus that comes in at the end to explain things. So I do not count.

Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pretended to cut seals was the
cleverest of them all--Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie--except Janoo.
She was also beautiful, but that was her own affair.

Suddhoo's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old Suddhoo
was troubled. The seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo's anxiety and made
capital out of it. He was abreast of the times. He got a friend in
Peshawar to telegraph daily accounts of the son's health.

And here the story begins.

Suddhoo's cousin's son told me, one evening, that Suddhoo wanted to see
me; that he was too old and feeble to come personally, and that I should
be conferring an everlasting honor on the House of Suddhoo if I went to
him. I went; but I think, seeing how well-off Suddhoo was then, that he
might have sent something better than an ekka, which jolted fearfully,
to haul out a future Lieutenant-Governor to the City on a muggy April
evening. The ekka did not run quickly.

It was full dark when we pulled up opposite the door of Ranjit Singh's
Tomb near the main gate of the Fort. Here was Suddhoo and he said that,
by reason of my condescension, it was absolutely certain that I should
become a Lieutenant-Governor while my hair was yet black. Then we talked
about the weather and the state of my health, and the wheat crops, for
fifteen minutes, in the Huzuri Bagh, under the stars.

Suddhoo came to the point at last. He said that Janoo had told him that
there was an order of the Sirkar against magic, because it was feared
that magic might one day kill the Empress of India. I didn't know
anything about the state of the law; but I fancied that something
interesting was going to happen. I said that so far from magic being
discouraged by the Government it was highly commended.

The greatest officials of the State practiced it themselves. (If
the Financial Statement isn't magic, I don't know what is. ) Then, to
encourage him further, I said that, if there was any jadoo afoot, I had
not the least objection to giving it my countenance and sanction, and to
seeing that it was clean jadoo--white magic, as distinguished from
the unclean jadoo which kills folk. It took a long time before Suddhoo
admitted that this was just what he had asked me to come for. Then he
told me, in jerks and quavers, that the man who said he cut seals was
a sorcerer of the cleanest kind; that every day he gave Suddhoo news of
the sick son in Peshawar more quickly than the lightning could fly, and
that this news was always corroborated by the letters. Further, that he
had told Suddhoo how a great danger was threatening his son, which could
be removed by clean jadoo; and, of course, heavy payment. I began to see
how the land lay, and told Suddhoo that I also understood a little jadoo
in the Western line, and would go to his house to see that everything
was done decently and in order. We set off together; and on the way
Suddhoo told me he had paid the seal-cutter between one hundred and
two hundred rupees already; and the jadoo of that night would cost two
hundred more. Which was cheap, he said, considering the greatness of his
son's danger; but I do not think he meant it.

The lights were all cloaked in the front of the house when we arrived. I
could hear awful noises from behind the seal-cutter's shop-front, as if
some one were groaning his soul out. Suddhoo shook all over, and while
we groped our way upstairs told me that the jadoo had begun. Janoo and
Azizun met us at the stair-head, and told us that the jadoo-work was
coming off in their rooms, because there was more space there. Janoo is
a lady of a freethinking turn of mind. She whispered that the jadoo was
an invention to get money out of Suddhoo, and that the seal-cutter would
go to a hot place when he died. Suddhoo was nearly crying with fear
and old age. He kept walking up and down the room in the half light,
repeating his son's name over and over again, and asking Azizun if
the seal-cutter ought not to make a reduction in the case of his own
landlord.

Janoo pulled me over to the shadow in the recess of the carved
bow-windows. The boards were up, and the rooms were only lit by one tiny
lamp. There was no chance of my being seen if I stayed still.

Presently, the groans below ceased, and we heard steps on the staircase.
That was the seal-cutter. He stopped outside the door as the terrier
barked and Azizun fumbled at the chain, and he told Suddhoo to blow out
the lamp. This left the place in jet darkness, except for the red glow
from the two huqas that belonged to Janoo and Azizun. The seal-cutter
came in, and I heard Suddhoo throw himself down on the floor and groan.
Azizun caught her breath, and Janoo backed to one of the beds with a
shudder. There was a clink of something metallic, and then shot up a
pale blue-green flame near the ground. The light was just enough to show
Azizun, pressed against one corner of the room with the terrier between
her knees; Janoo, with her hands clasped, leaning forward as she sat on
the bed; Suddhoo, face down, quivering, and the seal-cutter.

I hope I may never see another man like that seal-cutter. He was
stripped to the waist, with a wreath of white jasmine as thick as my
wrist round his forehead, a salmon-colored loin-cloth round his middle,
and a steel bangle on each ankle. This was not awe-inspiring. It was
the face of the man that turned me cold. It was blue-gray in the first
place. In the second, the eyes were rolled back till you could only
see the whites of them; and, in the third, the face was the face of
a demon--a ghoul--anything you please except of the sleek, oily old
ruffian who sat in the day-time over his turning-lathe downstairs. He
was lying on his stomach, with his arms turned and crossed behind him,
as if he had been thrown down pinioned. His head and neck were the only
parts of him off the floor. They were nearly at right angles to the
body, like the head of a cobra at spring. It was ghastly. In the centre
of the room, on the bare earth floor, stood a big, deep, brass basin,
with a pale blue-green light floating in the centre like a night-light.
Round that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times. How
he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple along his spine
and fall smooth again; but I could not see any other motion.

The head seemed the only thing alive about him, except that slow
curl and uncurl of the laboring back-muscles. Janoo from the bed was
breathing seventy to the minute; Azizun held her hands before her eyes;
and old Suddhoo, fingering at the dirt that had got into his white
beard, was crying to himself. The horror of it was that the creeping,
crawly thing made no sound--only crawled! And, remember, this lasted for
ten minutes, while the terrier whined, and Azizun shuddered, and Janoo
gasped, and Suddhoo cried.

I felt the hair lift at the back of my head, and my heart thump like a
thermantidote paddle. Luckily, the seal-cutter betrayed himself by his
most impressive trick and made me calm again. After he had finished that
unspeakable triple crawl, he stretched his head away from the floor as
high as he could, and sent out a jet of fire from his nostrils. Now, I
knew how fire-spouting is done--I can do it myself--so I felt at ease.
The business was a fraud. If he had only kept to that crawl without
trying to raise the effect, goodness knows what I might not have
thought. Both the girls shrieked at the jet of fire and the head
dropped, chin down, on the floor with a thud; the whole body lying then
like a corpse with its arms trussed.

There was a pause of five full minutes after this, and the blue-green
flame died down. Janoo stooped to settle one of her anklets, while
Azizun turned her face to the wall and took the terrier in her arms.
Suddhoo put out an arm mechanically to Janoo's huqa, and she slid it
across the floor with her foot. Directly above the body and on the wall,
were a couple of flaming portraits, in stamped paper frames, of the
Queen and the Prince of Wales. They looked down on the performance, and,
to my thinking, seemed to heighten the grotesqueness of it all.

Just when the silence was getting unendurable, the body turned over and
rolled away from the basin to the side of the room, where it lay stomach
up. There was a faint "plop" from the basin--exactly like the noise
a fish makes when it takes a fly--and the green light in the centre
revived.

I looked at the basin, and saw, bobbing in the water, the dried,
shrivelled, black head of a native baby--open eyes, open mouth and
shaved scalp. It was worse, being so very sudden, than the crawling
exhibition. We had no time to say anything before it began to speak.

Read Poe's account of the voice that came from the mesmerized dying man,
and you will realize less than one-half of the horror of that head's
voice.

There was an interval of a second or two between each word, and a sort
of "ring, ring, ring," in the note of the voice, like the timbre of a
bell. It pealed slowly, as if talking to itself, for several minutes
before I got rid of my cold sweat. Then the blessed solution struck me.
I looked at the body lying near the doorway, and saw, just where the
hollow of the throat joins on the shoulders, a muscle that had nothing
to do with any man's regular breathing, twitching away steadily. The
whole thing was a careful reproduction of the Egyptian teraphin that
one read about sometimes and the voice was as clever and as appalling a
piece of ventriloquism as one could wish to hear. All this time the head
was "lip-lip-lapping" against the side of the basin, and speaking. It
told Suddhoo, on his face again whining, of his son's illness and of
the state of the illness up to the evening of that very night. I always
shall respect the seal-cutter for keeping so faithfully to the time
of the Peshawar telegrams. It went on to say that skilled doctors were
night and day watching over the man's life; and that he would eventually
recover if the fee to the potent sorcerer, whose servant was the head in
the basin, were doubled.