LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

and begot my man, Sahib.’

      ‘You impenitent old heathen.’ Creighton turned to Lurgan. The black beard nodded assent to the wisdom of the Afghan’s dyed scarlet.

      ‘I should have used him long ago,’ said Lurgan. ‘The younger the better. That is why I always have my really valuable jewels watched by a child. You sent him to me to try. I tried him in every way: he is the only boy I could not make to see things.’

      ‘In the crystal—in the ink-pool?’ demanded Mahbub.

      ‘No. Under my hand, as I told you. That has never happened before. It means that he is strong enough—but you think it skittles, Colonel Creighton—to make any one do anything he wants. And that is three years ago. I have taught him a good deal since, Colonel Creighton. I think you waste him now.’

      ‘Hmm! Maybe you’re right. But, as you know, there is no Survey work for him at present.’

      ‘Let him out—let him go,’ Mahbub interrupted. ‘Who expects any colt to carry heavy weight at first? Let him run with the caravans like our white camel-colts—for luck. I would take him myself, but——’

      ‘There is a little business where he would be most useful—in the South,’ said Lurgan, with peculiar suavity, dropping his heavy blued eyelids.

      ‘E.23 has that in hand,’ said Creighton quickly. ‘He must not go down there. Besides, he knows no Turki.’

      ‘Only tell him the shape and the smell of the letters we want and he will bring them back,’ Lurgan insisted.

      ‘No. That is a man’s job,’ said Creighton.

      It was a wry-necked matter of unauthorised and incendiary correspondence between a person who claimed to be the ultimate authority in all matters of the Mohammedan religion throughout the world, and a younger member of a royal house who had been brought to book for kidnapping women within British territory. The Moslem Archbishop had been emphatic and over-arrogant; the young prince was merely sulky at the curtailment of his privileges, but there was no need he should continue a correspondence which might some day compromise him. One letter indeed had been procured, but the finder was later found dead by the roadside in the habit of an Arab trader, as E.23, taking up the work, duly reported.

      These facts, and a few others not to be published, made both Mahbub and Creighton shake their heads.

      ‘Let him go out with his Red Lama,’ said the horse-dealer with visible effort. ‘He is fond of the old man. He can learn his paces by the rosary at least.’

      ‘I have had some dealings with the old man—by letter,’ said Colonel Creighton, smiling to himself. ‘Whither goes he?’

      ‘Up and down the land, as he has these three years. He seeks a River of Healing. God’s curse upon all——’ Mahbub checked himself. ‘He beds down at the Temple of the Tirthankers or at Buddh Gaya when he is in from the Road. Then he goes to see the boy at the madrissah as we know, for the boy was punished for it twice or thrice. He is quite mad, but a peaceful man. I have met him. The Babu also has had dealings with him. We have watched him for three years. Red Lamas are not so common in Hind that one loses track.’

      ‘Babus are very curious,’ said Lurgan meditatively. ‘Do you know what Hurree Babu really wants? He wants to be made a member of the Royal Society by taking ethnological notes. I tell you, I tell him about the lama everything that Mahbub and the boy have told me. Hurree Babu goes down to Benares—at his own expense, I think.’

      ‘I don’t,’ said Creighton briefly. He had paid Hurree’s travelling expenses, out of a most lively curiosity to learn what the lama might be.

      ‘And he applies to the lama for information on lamaism, and devil dances, and spells and charms, several times in these few years. Holy Virgin! I could have told him all that yee-ars ago. I think Hurree Babu is getting too old for the Road. He likes better to collect manners and customs information. Yes, he wants to be an F.R.S.’

      ‘Hurree thinks well of the boy, doesn’t he?’

      ‘Oh, very indeed—we have had some pleasant evenings at my little place—but I think it would be waste to throw him away with Hurree on the Ethnological side.’

      ‘Not for a first experience. How does that strike you, Mahbub? Let the boy run with the lama for six months. After that we can see. He will get experience.’

      ‘He has it already, Sahib—as a fish controls the water he swims in; but for every reason it will be well to loose him from the school.’

      ‘Very good, then,’ said Creighton, half to himself. ‘He can go with the lama, and if Hurree Babu cares to keep an eye on them so much the better. He won’t lead the boy into any danger as Mahbub would. Curious—his wish to be an F.R.S. Very human, too. He is best on the Ethnological side—Hurree.’

      No money and no preferment would have drawn Creighton from his work on the Indian Survey, but deep in his heart also lay the ambition to write “F.R.S.” after his name. Honours of a sort he knew could be obtained by ingenuity and the help of friends, but, to the best of his belief, nothing save work—papers representing a life of it—took a man into the Society which he had bombarded for years with monographs on strange Asiatic cults and unknown customs. Nine men out of ten would flee from a Royal Society soirée in extremity of boredom; but Creighton was the tenth, and at times his soul yearned for the crowded rooms in easy London where silver-haired, bald-headed gentlemen who know nothing of the Army move among spectroscopic experiments, the lesser plants of the frozen tundras, electric flight-measuring machines, and apparatus for slicing into fractional millimetres the left eye of the female mosquito. By all right and reason, it was the Royal Geographical that should have appealed to him, but men are as chancy as children in their choice of playthings. So Creighton smiled, and thought the better of Hurree Babu, moved by like desire.

      hurry chunder mookerjee

      He dropped the ghost-dagger and looked up at Mahbub.

      ‘How soon can we get the colt from the stable?’ said the horse-dealer, reading his eyes.

      ‘Hmm. If I withdraw him by order now—what will he do, think you? I have never before assisted at the teaching of such an one.’

      ‘He will come to me,’ said Mahbub promptly. ‘Lurgan Sahib and I will prepare him for the Road.’

      ‘So be it, then. For six months he shall run at his choice: but who will be his sponsor?’

      Lurgan slightly inclined his head. ‘He will not tell anything, if that is what you are afraid of, Colonel Creighton.’

      ‘It’s only a boy, after all.’

      ‘Ye-es; but first, he has nothing to tell; and secondly, he knows what would happen. Also, he is very fond of Mahbub, and of me a little.’

      ‘Will he draw pay?’ demanded the practical horse-dealer.

      ‘Food and water allowance only. Twenty rupees a month.’

      One advantage of the Secret Service is that it has no worrying audit. The service is ludicrously starved, of course, but the funds are administered by a few men who do not call for vouchers or present itemised accounts. Mahbub’s eyes lighted with almost a Sikh’s love of money. Even Lurgan’s impassive face changed. He considered the years to come when Kim would have been entered and made to the Great Game that never ceases day and night, throughout India. He foresaw honour and credit in the mouths of a chosen few, coming to him from his pupil. Lurgan Sahib had made E.23 what E.23 was, out of a bewildered, impertinent, lying, little North-West Province man.

      But the joy of these masters was pale and smoky beside the joy of Kim when St. Xavier’s Head called him aside, with word that Colonel Creighton had sent for him.

      ‘I

Скачать книгу