"Mark well all that is said, that when I return it may be disclosed to mine eyes through thy spectacles," he concluded, tying the ragged ends of his head-scarf over his forehead.
He went down the staircase with a slow, dragging step, leaning on the rail of the Colonnade when he got out into the street, and halting, with a vacant stare, outside the shop of Leh Shin.
"So thy devils have not yet caught thee and scalded thee with oil, or burned thee in quicklime?" jeered the boy, as he watched a coolie sweep out the shop.
He was chewing a raw onion, and he swung his legs idly, for there was nothing to do, and, on the whole, he was glad to have the mad Burman to bait for half an hour's entertainment.
"The sickness is heavy upon me, my legs are loaded as with wet sand, and my mouth is parched like a rock in the desert," whined the Burman plaintively.
"Nay, nay, not _thy_ legs, and _thy_ tongue. The legs and the mouth of the evil man, thy friend, O dolt."
"The will of the Holy Ones is that I shall recover, and my friend has said that I shall go a journey. I go by the terrain this night at sunset."
"Whither doth he send thee, unclean one?"
The Burman smiled with a sudden look of cunning.
"That is a word unspoken, and neither will I tell it. Thy desire to know what concerns thee not is as great as thy fatness."
With a doggedness that is often part of some forms of mania, the Burman squatted in the dust, and under no provocation could he be induced to speak. After midday he indicated by lifting his fingers to his mouth that he intended to go in search of food; having worked Leh Shin's assistant into a state of perspiring wrath by the simple process of reiterating in pantomime that he was dumb. It must be admitted that Coryndon got no small amount of pleasure out of his morning's entertainment, and he doubled himself up as though in pain as he dragged himself back to the house.
The vanished beggar's tracks were entirely obliterated, and when the Burman went off in a _gharry_ in company with Shiraz, the whole street knew that he was being sent away on a secret mission of great importance.
To know something that other people do not know is to be in some way their superior. It is a popular fallacy to believe that we all of us are gifted with special insight. The dullest bore believes it of himself, but when it comes to the possession of an absolute fact superiority becomes unmistakable, particularly in circumscribed localities, and Leh Shin's assistant remembered how the sudden dumbness of the crazy Burman had irked his own soul. He told a little of what he professed to know, and having done so, refused to admit more, and so it was current in the Bazaar that the friend of the rich Punjabi was gone to receive money paid for jewels, and that the place of his destination was known only to Leh Shin's assistant, who, having sworn on oath, would by no means divulge the name of the place.
