‘Now,’ said he, when the lama had come to an anchor in the inner courtyard of a decent Hindu house behind the cantonments, ’I go away for a while — to — to buy us victual in the bazar.  Do not stray abroad till I return.’

‘Thou wilt return?  Thou wilt surely return?’ The old man caught at his wrist.  ’And thou wilt return in this very same shape?  Is it too late to look tonight for the River?’

’Too late and too dark.  Be comforted.  Think how far thou art on the road — an hundred miles from Lahore already.’

’Yea — and farther from my monastery.  Alas!  It is a great and terrible world.’

Kim stole out and away, as unremarkable a figure as ever carried his own and a few score thousand other folk’s fate slung round his neck.  Mahbub Ali’s directions left him little doubt of the house in which his Englishman lived; and a groom, bringing a dog-cart home from the Club, made him quite sure.  It remained only to identify his man, and Kim slipped through the garden hedge and hid in a clump of plumed grass close to the veranda.  The house blazed with lights, and servants moved about tables dressed with flowers, glass, and silver.  Presently forth came an Englishman, dressed in black and white, humming a tune.  It was too dark to see his face, so Kim, beggar-wise, tried an old experiment.

‘Protector of the Poor!’

The man backed towards the voice.

‘Mahbub Ali says -’

‘Hah!  What says Mahbub Ali?’ He made no attempt to look for the speaker, and that showed Kim that he knew.

‘The pedigree of the white stallion is fully established.’

‘What proof is there?’ The Englishman switched at the rose-hedge in the side of the drive.

‘Mahbub Ali has given me this proof.’  Kim flipped the wad of folded paper into the air, and it fell in the path beside the man, who put his foot on it as a gardener came round the corner.  When the servant passed he picked it up, dropped a rupee — Kim could hear the clink — and strode into the house, never turning round.  Swiftly Kim took up the money; but for all his training, he was Irish enough by birth to reckon silver the least part of any game.  What he desired was the visible effect of action; so, instead of slinking away, he lay close in the grass and wormed nearer to the house.

He saw — Indian bungalows are open through and through — the Englishman return to a small dressing-room, in a comer of the veranda, that was half office, littered with papers and despatch-boxes, and sit down to study Mahbub Ali’s message.  His face, by the full ray of the kerosene lamp, changed and darkened, and Kim, used as every beggar must be to watching countenances, took good note.

‘Will!  Will, dear!’ called a woman’s voice.  ’You ought to be in the drawing-room.  They’ll be here in a minute.’

The man still read intently.

‘Will!’ said the voice, five minutes later.  ’He’s come.  I can hear the troopers in the drive.’