"Exactly. And while we say Ananda is insane, and all these things are child's play, think of the trifling things that were used as factors to breed that holocaust of hate. The Mussulmans told that the British Raj had greased the cartridges they had to bite with pig's fat to defile their religion; that suttee had been abolished to break the Hindu faith by filling the land with widow prostitutes; that water the Hindu sepoys drank had come in contact with leather valves made from the skin of a cow. There were other trivial things lied into mountains of sins. Ananda knows all that; he has the cunning of a serpent and the viciousness of a black leopard."
The Banjara had arrived, and Finnerty counted out five rupees; then, with a touch of Irish humour, he added another, saying, with a smile: "This for your disappointment in not having a dog killed."
"If the monkey man, Mahadua, had been true to his caste, which is to watch and not talk, there would have been profit for both sides--the sahib would have obtained a kill."
When he had tucked away his money, the Banjara said: "My brother is not now keeper at the tiger garden."
"Darna Singh let the black leopard out to meet Rajah Ananda at Jadoo Pool."
"The rajah wasn't there," Finnerty declared in a drawling way.
"No; there was some talk that was either a lie or a mistake; it was another at the pool."
"The horse of the young sahib was found on the hill, and the mem-sahib was seen between the pool and her bungalow."
"A ghost story, Banjara, and it's all finished."
"A bullock that is dead is dead, but a herdsman watches that the other bullocks do not also die from the same thing."
"I trust you, Banjara," Finnerty said, seemingly at an irrelevant angle.
"The mem-sahib rides every day up into the hills, and the roads are not good for pleasure. Packets of cotton that have stomachs come down over the road; cotton grows here."
"What has cotton to do with the one who rides?"
"Perhaps the mem-sahib rides to meet the one who comes behind the packets. My brother, who was the son of a Banjara priest, one who had visions that all the tribe believed, has also had a vision. Perhaps the beating caused a fever, for visions come thus."
"What saw he?" Finnerty asked, knowing that the herdsman had something of moment to tell in this way.