CHAPTER I

THE EDGE OF THE RIPPLE

If you go to the Great Bazaar, which lies west of the Old Palace at Indore, you will see him sitting upon a cushion in his alcove-like shop, a very magnificent figure in flowing robes and gold-edged turban.

You will find him busy, whether you visit the bazaar in mid-morning or in the afternoon; or even after sunset, when lamps embroider the lacework of lanes and alleys.

He is an amiable fellow and he will talk for hours—of silks, of jewels (for in those luxuries he deals), or still more eloquently of Peshawar, where the blue peaks of the Hindu Kush let their lips caress the sky as though it were the cheek of some siren. But mention the barbarian with corn-colored hair, or the blue-eyed Punjabi, and he will suddenly become as uncommunicative as the tongueless fakir who sits before the Anna Chuttra and mutely pleads for alms.

For once, at a time not long past, a mysterious hand reached out of nowhere and touched him with two equally as mysterious fingers. The barbarian with corn-colored hair was one finger, the blue-eyed Punjabi the other. And as swiftly, as inexplicably, as it came, this hand withdrew—but not without leaving its mark upon the memory of Muhafiz Ali, merchant and loyal servant of the Raj.

For ten years before that day when he felt the first impelling wave of intrigue his shop was a haunt for tourists and wealthy residents; for ten years he divided his days between salaaming to customers, cooking his meals over a cow-dung fire in the rear, and staring across the roadway with visible contempt at his despised rival, Venekiah, the Brahmin. For all those years Muhafiz Ali had hated Venekiah as only a Mussulman can hate one who wears the trident of Vishnu painted on his forehead. But of late there was another sore that festered deep in his heart and hour by hour fed his rancor with poison. His one son had dared the horrors of an unknown sea (oh, a thousand times larger than Back Bay, Bombay, the only water Muhafiz Ali can offer by way of comparison) on a troop-ship, and in a strange country, where monstrous metal things howled destruction and death, the parts of his only-born were buried—by Christian hands and in a Christian grave!... While Venekiah's son, who never stirred from the bazaar when the sounds of India responding to the

Sirkar's call rumbled from Kabul down to the Gulf of Manaar, lived and walked the streets to talk Swaraj and curse the Sirkar and everything bred of the Sirkar!

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.

The cause of his anger was a Sulaimaneh ring, which he wore at all times. Now it is an established fact in the social orbit in which Muhafiz Ali revolved that these onyx stones will repel devils; therefore, to lose such a talisman is to invite misfortune. And Muhafiz Ali had lost his Sulaimaneh ring. Furthermore, he suspected that his enemy, Venekiah, had stolen it from his finger while he slept—although for a Brahmin to touch a Mussulman is to defile himself. Yet he felt that that heap of offal, to speak in the vernacular of the bazaars, would suffer contamination to see him at the mercy of devils.

So he sat and glared, and swore all manner of Moslem oaths under his beard, and stopped hating only long enough to look toward the kindling west beyond which Mecca lay, and prostrate himself on a rug for evening prayer.

As he lifted his eyes they encountered a Sahib with corn-colored hair and beard; a Sahib who stood not a yard away; who fanned himself with a pith-helmet, and looked upon the Mussulman's religious performances with a slightly cynical smile.

He was handsome, as these white unbelievers go, observed Muhafiz Ali. The eyes smiled with the assurance of one who knows a lot and is aware of his wisdom. Rather reckless eyes. His skin was tanned and the light hair and beard (beard because the word "Van Dyke" is not in Muhafiz Ali's vocabulary) made it more pronounced. White linens completed the picture.

Muhafiz Ali, his rage dissolving, salaamed.

"You're Muhafiz Ali, the lapidary?"

The Mussulman detected in his speech a flaw that suggested he was not an English Sahib; probably American, or from one of those numerous countries behind the sunset, of which he had heard little and knew less.

"Not only a jeweller, Sahib," he returned, for he spoke English fluently, "but a dealer in silks, rugs—"

But the man brushed past him and entered the inner room. Muhafiz Ali rose and clattered after him in his loose Mohammedan slippers.

"Do you have jade?" asked the sahib.

For answer Muhafiz Ali lifted the lid of a brass-bound chest and drew forth a tray of necklaces—lustrous, creamy-green jade from Mirzapore.

"Not that kind," said the sahib, with a gesture (and had Muhafiz Ali known the meaning of the word, "Gallic" he would have applied it to that quick wave of the hand); "the clear sort."

Whereupon the Mussulman separated a string of genuine fei tsui from several necklaces in another tray. The stones glowed deep parrot-green.

"Ah!" This from the white man. "Do you have pearls, too—imitation pearls?"

Muhafiz Ali, somewhat disappointed, produced a necklace of his finest false pearls, and the sahib examined it with the air of one who knew the difference between the nacreous sea-jewel and blown spheres of essence d' Orient.

"Are you alone?" was his next question.

"Alone?" echoed Muhafiz Ali. "Alas, O worthy lordship, my son, my only—"

"No, no!"—with that quick gesture and a significant look toward the rear door. "I mean, is there any one in the back of the shop?"

"Nay, Sahib!"

A germ of suspicion took birth in Muhafiz Ali's brain. What did this foreigner want?

"You have done work for his Highness the Maharajah, I understand," said the sahib, his eyes glittering like black chalcedony. "You re-set several necklaces, and ... you made a copy of the Pearl Scarf ... for, well, for state purposes—didn't you?"

Muhafiz Ali answered in the affirmative, still suspicious. The sahib glanced over his shoulder into the swiftly gathering dusk.

"Could you make another copy, using stones like this?"

For some inexplicable reason Muhafiz Ali felt frightened. The eyes that looked so incisively into his did not match the young face. He had seen the same expression, only more intense, in the eyes of a mad mollah.

"Could you?" pressed the sahib, "or, rather, would you? For an extra gift of thirty rupees?"

Thirty rupees! Muhafiz Ali's commercial instincts led him into planning.... But the Pearl Scarf. Why did he want a copy? The germ of suspicion grew and multiplied.

"Nay, Sahib!" he answered, his better judgment outbalancing the desire for money. "I do not remember how."

"That's a pretty lie," interposed the man, with a laugh—a laugh that carried a cold undercurrent and made Muhafiz Ali shudder, inwardly. "You know the exact number of pearls in the scarf and how they are arranged; nine strands; with eighteen pearls in the neck-piece-clasp, each having a carat diamond inset in it. Come now—I will raise the extra amount to thirty-five rupees."

Thirty-five! The Mussulman's imagination took wings. He saw himself coming into what was to him fabulous wealth.

"The pattern is intricate, Sahib," he said doubtfully.

"I'll risk it." Again that laugh.

Muhafiz Ali felt vaguely nervous. "I will have to think it over, Sahib," he announced.

What did he want with a copy of the Pearl Scarf? That query threaded back and forth across his thoughts.

"I am in the service of the Raj," the man confided quietly, as though answering the native's thoughts—confided a shade too darkly. "The Raj wants a copy of it—oh, for reasons...."

Ah! Muhafiz Ali understood now. The Raj! This handsome sahib was of that invisible army that comes and goes so mysteriously from Afghanistan to Ceylon.

"It is, O fountain of wisdom," he declared, with a sly wink, "as though I stepped from the dark into the light of the sun!" He motioned toward the door, through which Venekiah, seated across the way, could be seen. "I shall be as mute as the six-armed she-devil that yonder louse worships!"

There was a humorous gleam in the white man's eyes.

"Excellent! Make your price and come to me at the dâk bungalow at eight o'clock to-night. Bring a few necklaces for effect. I will be on the veranda. My name is Leroux Sahib."

He tossed several rupees upon one of the chests, and turned and went out.

Muhafiz Ali, reflecting that Allah looked with favor upon him, gathered up the coins. And this, after he had lost the Sulaimaneh ring! Pah! Ill-fortune, indeed! He scoffed.

He was so pleased that, a few minutes later, when a blue-eyed Punjabi inquired the price of a string of ferozees, he did not haggle over it but sacrificed the necklace for exactly what it was worth.

"Eight o'clock," he repeated to himself. And his own price. He was a loyal servant of the Raj, yes; but that did not in any way affect his intention to charge the Raj well for his services.

He looked toward the shop of Venekiah.

"Brahmin dog!" he hissed in his beard. "Breeder of whelps!"

And he spat eloquently.

2

Night wove its shuttle across the sky, beading the dusk with stars. The Southern Cross lay mirrored in the Sarasvati and the Khan, and in the lake at Sukhnewás; it pulsed above the gardens of Lal Bagh, above Sharifa Street and those other narrow highways that vein the Holkar's capital; it peered down inquisitively into the gloom of the Great Bazaar as Muhafiz Ali, having finished a meal of curry and rice, quitted his shop and hurried toward the dâk bungalow.

That this Leroux Sahib had commissioned him to copy a jewel-pattern of the Maharajah's regalia no longer presaged evil in his mind. Nor did he seek an explanation. True, it mystified him. But there were some things one should not know. And, to him, the secrets of the Government were numbered among these. The Raj had banished the old order of things, for no more did princes sit in golden howdahs upon caparisoned state elephants; nor did they indulge, as of old, in the venerable pastime of pigsticking; they rode in automobiles and played a game on horseback with an absurd ball....

Muhafiz Ali had ceased long ago to wonder at the baffling mechanism of the Government, and satisfied himself with the assurance that Allah did not intend he should understand.

So Raj meant Riddle.

When he reached the dâk bungalow he found Leroux Sahib sitting upon the veranda. The white man led him inside.

"Well?"—this with a gleam of the black eyes.

"I will do it, O cherisher of the poor."

"The price?" The Mussulman named an outrageous figure—and held his breath. The man inquired:

"How long will it take?"

"Seven days; perhaps less."

The sahib frowned, tugged at his yellow beard.

"I must have it in five days."

"Impossible, O Burra Sahib!" A pause. "Unless—of course—"

A smile. "Not another rupee do you get, you old brigand!" he declared good humoredly. "And five days, I say. Settled? Thirty-five rupees extra when it is done, half the price in advance."

He drew from his pocket a wallet and counted out a number of Government of India notes.

"Remember, this is to be quiet," he cautioned. "I will call now and then to see how you are coming on."

As Muhafiz Ali made his way back to the bazaar, he congratulated himself upon getting so easily the price he had set upon the work, and regretted that he had not inflated it a little more. However, he was well pleased with the day's business. He paused once on the homeward journey to place a four-anna bit in the bowl of an emaciated, ash-painted fakir who sat before the alms-house, and arrived at his shop in a state of excellent spirits.

He made a light and opened the chest in which he kept his necklaces. The instant he saw the top tray he detected a flaw. Unlike most merchants, he was very careful in the arrangement of his necklaces; in one tray were agates, in another blue sapphires; thus with all his beads.

And a string of creamy-luster Mirzapore jade lay in the tray with the clear, deep-green fei tsui.

A cold suspicion uncoiled in his brain. He stood motionless. This could mean but one thing: some one had entered his shop while he was away. He quickly counted the necklaces. None were missing. Nor did a hasty inventory of the lower tray show that anything had been removed. The other chests were under the protection of European padlocks.

Who had entered his shop, and why? Nothing had been stolen. The door was locked.... But the rear! Ah! The court! Why had he not thought to barricade that also against thieves? But had a thief disturbed the beads? A thief would have taken them. After all, was not it possible that he had placed the necklaces in the wrong tray? Possible, but not probable. No, he was certain a hand other than his own had dropped the jade from Mirzapore in with the fei tsui stones.

Yet, he told himself, he had not been robbed. So why be uneasy? But he could not rid himself of the uncanny suspicion that devil-business was afoot. He would feel more secure had he not lost the Sulaimaneh ring.

Upon an impulse he went to the door and peered into the street. The shop of Venekiah, the Brahmin, was dark. From a nautch-house close by came the muffled throbbing of tom-toms—a restless pulse of the night. A man in a Punjabi head-dress lounged under a rheumy incandescent further along the dim street.

Muhafiz Ali turned back, gravely troubled. He locked the door.

Of a certainty devil-business was afoot.

3

A film of dust wavered over the bazaar and introduced a drowsy golden effect into the mid-afternoon atmosphere. Few human beings ventured forth in the glare. A half-naked bhisti splashed water over the dusty roadway; at one corner a street-juggler sat with a torpid python coiled in his lap.

Muhafiz Ali, absorbed in utter languor, squatted upon a brocade of light and shadow woven by the sunlight that filtered through the dust-laden leaves of a tree outside his doorway and watched a green-bronze lizard drowsing upon the flagstones. The slumberous atmosphere of the bazaar, the mingled odors of fruit, fish and cologne, held no portent of the thunderbolt that very shortly was to jar Muhafiz Ali out of his peaceful sphere.

Five days had passed since he visited Leroux Sahib at the dâk bungalow. The copy of the Pearl Scarf was finished; it lay in a chest in the inner room. He had despatched the son of Khurrum Lal, the fruit vender, with a chit to the sahib telling him this, and the sahib had answered that he could call after nightfall.

Muhafiz Ali felt singularly relieved. For the past few days the Mohammedan equivalent of the sword of Damocles had hung over his head. The white man had called several times, and on each occasion the sight of him reassured Muhafiz Ali, but after his departure the native invariably relapsed into a state of nervous anticipation.

Now it was done. To-night the sahib would call and he, Muhafiz Ali, would settle back into an untroubled existence—many rupees the better. He felt peace upon him already. So he sat in the doorway of his shop and contemplated the green-bronze lizard, and breathed, almost with relish, the mingled odors of fruit and fish and cologne.

Muhafiz Ali had in him the makings of a psychic. He anticipated happenings with amazing accuracy. Therefore, when a shadow fell upon the roadway in front of him and he looked up to see Mohammed Khan, the money lender, he felt a pall descend upon him. Mohammed Khan, bearded and turbaned to exaggeration, frequently came to indulge in bazaar gossip. With a word of greeting, he sank upon the doorstep beside his brother-Mussulman.

He had startling news this day. Sadar Singh, who belonged to the Indian Escort of the Agent, had come to pay the fifteen rupees he owed him, and Sadar Singh, who never lied, had that very morning heard the Residency Surgeon talking with the Commissioner Sahib. The substance of their conversation was that there had been a robbery at the palace. The vaults had been looted of the state treasures. The famous Peacock Turban was stolen.... And the Pearl Scarf.

Muhafiz Ali's brain did not function normally for some time after this announcement. He felt frightened—nauseated.

The Pearl Scarf stolen. Suppose the copy was found in his possession, and the police, who had strange ways, connected him with the robbery? The house in Peshawar dwindled; he saw the jail looming before him. He was innocent, but how could he explain?

He remembered vividly the incident of the jade necklace. Could it be that Venekiah, that mountain of corruption, had spied upon him?... O Allah, Allah, he wailed in silence, it was written that his lot should be misfortune from the moment he lost the Sulaimaneh ring!

Inwardly, he writhed while Mohammed Khan talked on. He was in no mood for more gossip, but Mohammed Khan stayed—stayed until late afternoon when little spirals of dust began to rise from the street, when clouds materialized out of nowhere and blotted out the sun.

After Mohammed Khan took his leave, Muhafiz Ali tried to reason with himself. The sahib had said the scarf was for the Raj, and was not that assurance enough? No. And he strove to press behind the veil and find an explanation for the affair; but his Kismet decreed that he should be a pawn, and he dug at the mystery in vain.

A dark sky, threatening rain, hastened the dusk; and when, one by one, lights appeared in the street, like yellow sentinels, Muhafiz Ali uttered a sigh of relief and rose and entered the shop. A moment later he heard a soft patter and inhaled the fresh, cool smell of rain upon dusty air.

"Please buy my nicklass!" shrilled Venekiah's voice, and he looked over his shoulder to see a Memsahib clatter by on horseback.

Behind her walked a man in a Punjabi head-dress, swinging along at a leisurely gait despite the rain.

4