The Pointing Man Part 28

"If thy madness comprehends so much, let it carry thee further still, O stricken and afflicted," said Leh s.h.i.+n, imploring him with voice and gesture. "Night after night have I stood outside his shop, but who may enter through a locked door? A breath, a shadow, or a flame, but not a man." He lay on the ground and dug his nails into the floor. "I know the shop from within and without, and I know that the lock opens with difficulty but to one key, the key that hangs on a chain around the neck of Mhtoon Pah."

Silence fell again as Leh s.h.i.+n wrestled with the problem that confronted him.

"What saidst thou?" said the Burman, suddenly coming to life. "A key?"

He gave a low, chuckling laugh and rocked about in his corner.

"Knowest thou of the story of s.h.i.+raz, the Punjabi?"

"I have no mind for tales," said Leh s.h.i.+n, striking at him with a futile blow of rage.

"Nay, restrain thy wrath, since thou hast spoken of a key. With a key that was made by sorcery, he was enabled to open the treasure-box of the Lady Sahib, and often hath he told me that all doors may be opened by it, large or small. It is not hard for me to take it from under his pillow while he sleeps."

The Chinaman's jaw dropped, and he cast up his hands in mute astonishment. If this was madness, sanity appeared only a doubtful blessing set beside it. He drew his own wits together, and leaning near the Burman laid before him the rough outline of a plan.

Mhtoon Pah's ways were known to him. Usually he went to the PaG.o.da after the shop was closed, and he returned from there late; it was impossible to be accurate as to the exact hour of his return. To risk detection was to shatter all chance of success, and it was necessary to make sure before attempting to break into the shop and identify the silk rag with the original roll, if that might be done.

There was only one course open to the Burman and Leh s.h.i.+n, and that was to wait until there was a _Pwe_ at the PaG.o.da, which Mhtoon Pah would certainly attend, as his new shrine drew many curious gazers to the Temple. It would also draw the inhabitants of Paradise Street out of the quarter, and leave the place practically deserted. For many reasons it was necessary to wait such an opportunity, though Leh s.h.i.+n raved at the delay. It seemed to him that the whole plan was of his suggesting, and he did not realize that every vague question put by the Burman led him step by step to the complicated scheme.

"To-morrow I will send forth my a.s.sistant to bring me word of the next _Pwe_, so that the night may be marked in my mind, and that I shall gain pleasure in considering the nearing downfall of my enemy."

Coryndon slipped off to his house. He was tired mentally and physically, but before he slept, he took a bundle of keys from his dispatch-box and tied them to the waist of his _loongyi_.

In the morning there was a fresh surprise for Leh s.h.i.+n. His a.s.sistant refused to leave the river house, and no persuasion would lure him out to look after his master's shop. He was afraid of something or someone, and he wept and entreated to be left where he was. Leh s.h.i.+n beat him and tried to drive him out, to no purpose, and in the end he prevailed over his master, whose mind was occupied with other and more weighty affairs.

Like a black shadow, Leh s.h.i.+n crept about the streets, and he questioned one and another as to the festivities to be held at the PaG.o.da.

Everywhere he heard of Mhtoon Pah's shrine, and of the great holiness of the curio dealer. Mhtoon Pah was giving a feast at the PaG.o.da with presents for the priests, and the night chosen was the night of the full moon.

"Art thou bidden?" asked one who remembered the day of Leh s.h.i.+n's prosperity.

"It is in my thoughts, friend, to make my peace," said Leh s.h.i.+n, with an immovable face. "On the night when the moon is full, I am minded to do so."

His words were carried back to Mhtoon Pah, who pondered over them, wondering what the Chinaman meant, finding something sinister in the sound that added to his rage against his enemy.

The day of the feast was dark and overcast, and the inhabitants of Paradise Street looked at the sky with great misgiving, but the curio dealer refused to be alarmed.

"The night will be fine, for I have greatly propitiated the _Nats_," he said with conviction, and he lolled and smoked in his chair at an earlier hour than was usual with him.

Even as he had said, the evening began to clear, and by sunset the heavy clouds were all dispersed. A red sunset unfolded itself in a scroll of fire across the sky, and Mangadone looked as though it was illuminated by the flames of a conflagration. A strange evening, some said then, and many said after. Even the pointing man lost his jaundice-yellow and seemed to blush as he pointed up the steps. He had nothing to blush for.

His master was at the summit of his power. The _Hypongyis_ lauded him openly in the streets, and he was giving a feast at the Temple at which the poorest would not be forgotten.

Yet Mhtoon Pah was not altogether easy. His eyes rolled strangely from time to time, and it was remarked by several that he walked to the end of Paradise Street and looked down the Colonnade of the Chinese quarter, standing there in thought. Old stories of the feud between him and Leh s.h.i.+n were recalled in whispers and pa.s.sed about.

The red of the sunset died out into rose-pink, and the effect of colour in the very air faded and dwindled. People were already dressed out in gala clothing, and streaming towards the PaG.o.da. The giver of the feast did not start with them. He sat in his chair, and then withdrew into his shop. A light travelled from thence to the upper story, and then with slow hesitation, Mhtoon Pah came out by the front of the house and locked the clamped padlock. He stood still for a few minutes, and then he gasped and shook his fist at the empty air, and he, too, took his way across the bridge and was lost in the shadows.

Still the stream from Wharf Street and the confluent streets flowed on up Paradise Street, and gradually only the maimed and the aged, or the impossibly youthful, were left behind, to hear of the wonders afterwards at secondhand, a secondhand likely to add rather than detract from what actually took place. Even the Colonnade was empty and silent. s.h.i.+raz had gone with the crowd to see what might be seen, and Leh s.h.i.+n's a.s.sistant, furtive and watchful, and in great terror of the Burman's knife, was also in the throng that climbed the PaG.o.da steps.

The moon that was to have shone on Mhtoon Pah's feast rose in a yellow ring, and clouds came up, hazy, gaudy clouds that dimmed its light and made the shadows in the silent streets dense and heavy. Usually there was a police guard at the corner where Paradise Street met the Colonnade, but that night Hartley considered the police would be more necessary in the neighbourhood of the PaG.o.da. Mhtoon Pah did not think of this. His conscience was easy, he had propitiated the _Nats_.

The PaG.o.da was one blaze of light, and a thousand candles flamed before every shrine; even the oldest and most neglected had its ring of light.

Small coloured lamps dotted the outlines of some of the booths, and the whole spectacle presented a moving ma.s.s of brilliant colour. Sahibs had come there. Hartley Sahib had agreed to appear for half an hour, and he too looked at the crowd with curious, travelling eyes. Coryndon might be among them, and probably was, he thought, but in any case there was little chance of his recognizing him if he were.

Mhtoon Pah had not spared magnificent display, and the crowd told each other that it was indeed a night to remember in Mangadone. Whispering winds came out and rang the Temple bells, but even when the breeze strengthened, the rain-clouds held off. It became a matter for compliment and congratulation, and Mhtoon Pah accepted his friends'

flattery without pride. He was a good man, a benefactor, a shrine-builder who followed "the Way" with zeal and fervour, and besides, he had propitiated _Nats_; _Nats_ who blew up storms, caused earthquakes and were evilly disposed towards men.

Mhtoon Pah would have been at the point where a man's life touches sublimity, but for one thing. The words of Leh s.h.i.+n echoed in his ears over all the applause and adulation.

"It is in my thought, friend, to make my peace. On the night of the full moon I am minded to do so."

The moon riding clear of clouds, shone out over the concourse of men and women. Anywhere among them all might be Leh s.h.i.+n, the needy Chinaman, and gripping his large hands into fists, Mhtoon Pah watched for him and expected him, but watch as he might, he did not come, neither was there any sign of him among all the crowd of faces that pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed before the new shrine.

XXIII

DEMONSTRATES THE TRUTH OF THE AXIOM THAT "THE UNEXPECTED ALWAYS HAPPENS"

At the time when Mhtoon Pah was standing in the centre of a gazing group before the new shrine, and trying to forget that nothing except the news of Leh s.h.i.+n's hanging would give him real satisfaction, the Chinaman, accompanied by the Burman, slipped up the channel of gloom under the Colonnade and made his way into Paradise Street.

The Burman walked with an easy unconscious step, but Leh s.h.i.+n crept close to the wall and started when he pa.s.sed a sleeping form in a doorway. Night fears and that trembling anxiety that comes when fulfilment is close at hand were upon him. He knew that the point in view was to effect an entrance into the curio shop, the threshold of which he had not crossed since his last black hour of misfortune had struck and he had gone out a beggar.

Everything in his life lay on the other side of the shop door; all his happy, prosperous, careless days, all the good years. Every one of them was stored there just as surely as Mhtoon Pah's ivories and carved screens and silks were stored safe against the encroachment of damp and must. His old self might even be somewhere in the silent house, and it takes a special quality of courage for a man to return and walk through a doorway into the long past. For the first time for years he remembered how he had brought his little son into the shop, and how the child had laughed and crowed at the sight of amber and crystal chains.

Even Mhtoon Pah grew dim in his mind, and he dallied with the forgotten memories as he stood shaking in an archway watching the Burman cross the street. Insensibly the Burman's mania had waned in the last few hours, and he had grown silent and preoccupied, a fact that escaped Leh s.h.i.+n's notice. His owl eyes blinked with the strain of staring through the wavering light, and his memories strove with him as though in physical combat. Mhtoon Pah was no longer in the house, and instead of his shadow another influence seemed to brood there, something that called to Leh s.h.i.+n, but not with the wild cry of hate. Before the days of still greater affluence Leh s.h.i.+n had lived there with his little Burmese wife.

The Burman was on his knees, having some difficulty with the lock. He could see him fighting it, and at last he saw the jerk of his hand that told that the key had turned, and that the way was clear. Leh s.h.i.+n dived out of the recess and ran, a flitting shadow, across the road. The door was open, but the Burman for all his madness was not satisfied. There was a way out through the back by which they could emerge, and if the front door hung loose, careless eyes might easily be attracted to the fact. The pointing man was not there for nothing. Almost everyone looked up the steps. Even in his fury of impatience, Leh s.h.i.+n saw the reason for caution, and agreed to open a window, and admit the Burman after he had locked the door again.

The moments were full of the tense agony of suspense, and he peered cautiously out from under the silk blind. A late pa.s.ser-by went slowly up the street, and Leh s.h.i.+n's heart beat a loud obbligato to the sound of his wooden pattens. By craning his neck as the man pa.s.sed, he could just distinguish the Burman crouching behind the wooden man, who blandly indicated the heavy padlock. The wooden man lied woodenly to the effect that all was well within the curio shop, and a few minutes later the Burman swung himself over the bal.u.s.trade and climbed with cat-like agility on to the window-ledge.

The darkness of the room was heavy with scent, and Leh s.h.i.+n stumbled over unknown things. Coryndon struck a match and held it in the hollow of one palm as he opened the aperture in the dark lantern he carried, and lighted it. When he had done so he looked up, and taking no notice of the ma.s.ses of beautiful things, he went quickly to the silk cupboard, opening it with another key on the ring.

"Leh s.h.i.+n," he said, speaking in a commanding whisper, "turn thyself into an ear, and listen for me while I search."

Leh s.h.i.+n nodded silently, half-stupidly it seemed, and went on tip-toes to the door that opened into the pa.s.sage. All the power of the past was over him, and though he heard the Burman's curt command he hardly seemed to understand what he meant. For a little time he stood at the door, hearing the rustling whisper of yards of silk torn down and glanced over and discarded, and then he wandered almost without knowing it up the staircase and through the rooms, until the sight of Mhtoon Pah's bed and some of Mhtoon Pah's clothing recalled his mind to the reason of his being there.

He hurried down, his bare feet making no sound on the stairs, and looked into the shop again. The Burman was seated on the floor, a width of silk over his knees; all the displaced rolls had been put back. He had worked swiftly and with the greatest care that no trace of his visit should be known later.

Leh s.h.i.+n slid out again. The pa.s.sage was dark as pitch, but he knew every turn and twist of its windings, and he knew that it led down to the cellars below the house. He was awake and alert now as Coryndon himself, and as he strained his ears he caught a sound. He listened again with horrible eagerness, looked back into the shop and saw the stooping head going over every yard of a roll of fine silk faithfully; and then he gripped the knife under his belt and, feeling along the wall with his free hand, followed along the corridor. Once only he glanced round and then the darkness of the corridor swallowed him from sight.

Coryndon, busy with the silk made by the lake-dwellers spread over his knees, knew nothing of Leh s.h.i.+n's disappearance. The fever of chase was in his blood, and he threw the flimsy yards through his hands. Nothing, nothing, and again nothing, and again--he felt his heart swell with sudden, stifled excitement. Under his hand was a three-cornered rent, a damaged piece where a patch rather larger than his palm had been roughly cut out. His usually steady hand shook as he put the stained rag over it and fitted it into the place.

"Leh s.h.i.+n," he called, as he rose, but he called softly.

No sound answered his whisper, and he stiffened his body and listened.

He had been wrong. There was a sound, but it did not come from inside the shop: it was the slow footstep of a heavy man pausing to find a key.

Coryndon listened no longer. He closed the door of the silk cupboard, bundled up the yards of silk in his arms and extinguis.h.i.+ng the lamp darted behind a screen. It was a heavy carved teak screen, inset with silk panels embroidered with a long spray of hanging wistaria on a dark yellow ground. As he hid himself, he cursed his own stupidity. In the excitement of his desire to enter the curio shop, he had forgotten to hamper the lock with pebbles.