When Mahbub woke, the Flower talked to him severely on the sin of drunkenness. Asiatics do not wink when they have outmanoeuvred an enemy, but as Mahbub Ali cleared his throat, tightened his belt, and staggered forth under the early morning stars, he came very near to it.
“What a colt’s trick!” said he to himself. “As if every girl in Peshawur did not use it! But ’twas prettily done. Now God He knows how many more there be upon the Road who have orders to test me—perhaps with the knife. So it stands that the boy must go to Umballa—and by rail—for the writing is something urgent. I abide here, following the Flower and drinking wine as an Afghan coper should.”
He halted at the stall next but one to his own. His men lay there heavy with sleep. There was no sign of Kim or the lama.
“Up!” He stirred a sleeper. “Whither went those who lay here last even—the lama and the boy? Is aught missing?”
“Nay,” grunted the man, “the old madman rose at second cockcrow saying he would go to Benares, and the young one led him away.”
“The curse of Allah on all unbelievers!” said Mahbub heartily, and climbed into his own stall, growling in his beard.
But it was Kim who had wakened the lama—Kim with one eye laid against a knothole in the planking, who had seen the Delhi man’s search through the boxes. This was no common thief that turned over letters, bills, and saddles—no mere burglar who ran a little knife sideways into the soles of Mahbub’s slippers, or picked the seams of the saddlebags so deftly. At first Kim had been minded to give the alarm—the long-drawn choor—choor ! that sets the serai ablaze of nights; but he looked more carefully, and, hand on amulet, drew his own conclusions.
“It must be the pedigree of that made-up horse-lie,” said he, “the thing that I carry to Umballa. Better that we go now. Those who search bags