His eyes met Jim Douglas' surprise boldly.
"How do you know I want to find out anything?" said the latter, after a pause.
Tiddu laughed. "The Huzoor must find a turban heavy, and there is no room for English toes in a native shoe; folk seek not such discomfort for naught."
Jim Douglas paused again; the fellow was a charlatan, but he was consummately clever; and if there was anything certain in this world it was the wisdom of forgetting Western prejudices occasionally in dealing with the East.
"Send that man away," he said curtly, "I want to talk to you alone."
But the request seemed lost on Tiddu. He folded up the veil impudently, and resumed the thread of the former topic. "Yet Jhungi plays the beggar well, for which Fate be praised, since he must ask alms elsewhere if the Huzoor refuses them. For the purse is empty"--here he took a leathern bag from his waistband and turned it inside out--"by reason of the Huzoor's dislike to good mimics. So thou must to the temples, Jhungi, and if thou meetest Bhungi give him the sahib's generous gift; for blows should not be taken on loan."
Jhungi, who all this time had been telling his beads like the best of beggars, looked up with some perplexity; whether real or assumed Jim Douglas felt it was impossible to say, in that hotbed of deception.
"Bhungi?" echoed the former, rising to his feet. "Ay! that will I, if I meet him. But God knows as to that. God knows of Bhungi----"
"The purse is empty," repeated Tiddu in a warning voice, and Jhungi, with a laugh, pulled himself and his disguise together, as it were, and passed out of the tent; his beggar's cry, "_Alakh! Alakh!_" growing fainter and fainter while Tiddu and Jim Douglas looked at each other.
"Jhungi-Bhungi--Bhungi-Jhungi," jeered the Baharupa, suddenly, jingling the names together. "Which be which, as he said, God knows, not man. That is the best of lies. They last a body's lifetime, so the Huzoor may as well learn old Tiddu's----"
"Or Siddu's," assented the mountebank calmly. "But the Huzoor cannot learn to use his gift from that old rascal. He must come to the many-faced one, who is ready to teach it."
"For fifty rupees, Huzoor; not a _pice_ less. Now, in my hand."
Was it worth it? Jim Douglas decided instantly that it might be. Not for the gift's sake; of that he was incredulous. But Tiddu was a consummate actor and could teach many tricks worth knowing. Then in this roving commission to report on anything he saw and heard to the military magnate, it would suit him for the time to have the service of an arrant scoundrel. Besides, the pay promised him being but small, the wisdom of having a second string to the bow of ambition had already decided him on combining inquiry with judicious horse-dealing; since he could thus wander through villages buying, through towns selling, without arousing suspicion; and this life in a caravan would start him on these lines effectively. Finally, this offer of Tiddu's was unsought, unexpected, and, ever since Kate Erlton's appeal, Jim Douglas had felt a strange attraction toward pure chance. So he took out a note from his pocket-book and laid it in the Baharupa's hand.