The silhouette ceased wailing long enough to quaver: "Dakktar Sahib!"
The Englishman, his eyes now accustomed to the gloom, strode over to a thong-strung bed and peered down at the form stretched upon it. Unable to see clearly, he struck a match. The tiny flare flickered upon bare brown skin.... Trent swore.
"Stop that damned nonsense!" he commanded. "Chatterjee, you've had some infernal _hakim_ here again--against my orders!"
"My little Ratanamma, dove of my bosom, is dead!" wailed the man.
"Yes, Dakktar Sahib! It was your medicine that killed her. The _hakim_ said so."
Trent swore again. "I've a notion to report you to the Karnal Sahib and have you taken up! You old murderer! Didn't you know better than to let some filthy, stinking _hakim_ burn her stomach with a hot iron?"
"Listen to me, Chatterjee," said Trent sternly, gripping the man's shoulder. "Who did this?"
Trent shook him roughly. "Will you answer me--or...."
"Your medicine, Dakktar Sahib!" insisted the man.
Trent released him, realizing the futility of pressing the question.
"Very well. I'll report you to the Karnal Sahib and he'll have you strung up by your toes!"
He left the house abruptly--followed by feverish, glowing eyes.
Out of Meera he rode, past the temple on the river bank and along the jungle-lined road toward Gaya.
Trent was angry. But his face gave no indication of it. Twenty-three years under a tropical sun (add the ten years at school in Britain and you'll have his age) had baked his skin to a leather brown, and a third of that time spent in the army had taught him that impassivity is man's chief advantage--a citadel against the aggressive. He had, in the vernacular of the times, a "poker face"--the mask of those who share their secrets with few. In either mufti or khaki he was not particularly handsome, and this evening, after a day of work in viscid heat, he was almost ugly. Dust was ingrained into his skin, like an ocher pigment; his throat and brows were moist with perspiration. Yet there was about him something arresting and vital--a challenging strength that pronounced him a man's man. And he was. He talked with men; ate with men; lived with men; understood men. Scales that dip into earth-dust and swing again to regions of exquisite idealism--the eternal weight and counter-weight of Self. That was how he defined them. And his definitions were usually metaphors. An idiosyncrasy. Give him a chair in a dim room with one of Beethoven's sonatas swelling in throat-gripping chords, or a pipe and congenial darkness somewhere close to the stars, and he was in his prime element.