With a wry face at the splintered trap-door, and a shrug of his shoulders of the kind he used when clients begged in tears for extra time in which to pay, Mukhum Dass looked about for Chamu with a sort of half-notion of giving him a small bribe.  But Chamu was not to be seen.  So he left the house by the way he had come, mounted his mule where he had left it in a hollow down the road, and rode off smiling.

Ten minutes later Chamu and the cook both left by the same exit.  Chamu had with him, besides his own bundle of belongings, a revolver belonging to Dick Blaine, two bracelets belonging to Tess, a fountain-pen that he had long had his heart on, plenty of note-paper on which to have a writer forge new references, a half-dozen of Dick’s silk handkerchiefs and a turquoise tie-pin.  The revolver alone, in that country in those days, would sell for enough to take him to Bombay, where new jobs with newly arrived sahibs are plentiful.  The cook, not having enjoyed the run of the house, had only a few knives and a pound of cocoa.  They quarreled all the way down-hill as to why Chamu should and should not defray the cook’s traveling expenses.

A little later, in the ghat between Siva’s temple and the building, where the dead Afghan used to keep his camels, Mukhum Dass, smiling as he rode, was struck down by a knife-blow from behind and pitched off his mule head-foremost.  The mule ran away.  The money-lender’s body was left lying in a pool of blood, with the clothing torn from it; and it was considered by those who found the body several hours afterward and drove away the pariah dogs and kites, that the fact of his money having been taken deprived the murder of any unusual interest.

Late that evening Dick Blaine, returning from a desultory dinner at the club across the river, very nearly fell into the trap-door, for the hamal had run away too, thinking he would surely be accused of all the mischief, and no lamps were lit.

“Well!” he remarked, striking a match to look about him, “dad-blame me if that isn’t a regular small town yegg’s trick!  You’d think after I gave Gungadhura the key and all, he’d have the courtesy to use it and draw the nails!  His head can’t ache enough to suit me!  Me for the princess!  If I’d any scruples, believe me, bo, they’re vanished—­gone—­Vamoosed!  That young woman’s going to win against the whole darned outfit, English, Indian and all!  Me for her!  Chamu!  Where’s Chamu?  Why aren’t the lamps lit?”

He wandered through the house in the dark in search of servants, and finally lit a lamp himself, locked all the doors and went to bed.

Chapter Sixteen