Here I said:  “But what induced Suddhoo to drag me into the business?  Of course I can speak to the seal cutter, and he shall refund.  The whole thing is child’s talk—­shame—­and senseless.”

“Suddhoo is an old child,” said Janoo.  “He has lived on the roofs these seventy years and is as senseless as a milch goat.  He brought you here to assure himself that he was not breaking any law of the Sirkar, whose salt he ate many years ago.  He worships the dust off the feet of the seal cutter, and that cow devourer has forbidden him to go and see his son.  What does Suddhoo know of your laws or the lightning post?  I have to watch his money going day by day to that lying beast below.”

Janoo stamped her foot on the floor and nearly cried with vexation; while Suddhoo was whimpering under a blanket in the corner, and Azizun was trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth.

* * * * *

Now the case stands thus.  Unthinkingly, I have laid myself open to the charge of aiding and abetting the seal cutter in obtaining money under false pretenses, which is forbidden by Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code.  I am helpless in the matter for these reasons, I cannot inform the police.  What witnesses would support my statements?  Janoo refuses flatly, and Azizun is a veiled woman somewhere near Bareilly—­lost in this big India of ours.  I dare not again take the law into my own hands, and speak to the seal cutter; for certain am I that, not only would Suddhoo disbelieve me, but this step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is bound hand and foot by her debt to the bunnia.  Suddhoo is an old dotard; and whenever we meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the Sirkar rather patronizes the Black Art than otherwise.  His son is well now; but Suddhoo is completely under the influence of the seal cutter, by whose advice he regulates the affairs of his life.  Janoo watches daily the money that she hoped to wheedle out of Suddhoo taken by the seal cutter, and becomes daily more furious and sullen.

She will never tell, because she dare not; but, unless something happens to prevent her, I am afraid that the seal cutter will die of cholera—­the white arsenic kind—­about the middle of May.  And thus I shall have to be privy to a murder in the house of Suddhoo.

His Wedded Wife

    Cry “Murder!” in the market-place, and each
    Will turn upon his neighbor anxious eyes
    That ask:—­“Art thou the man?” We hunted Cain
    Some centuries ago, across the world,
    That bred the fear our own misdeeds maintain
    To-day.

_—­Vibart’s Moralities._