'Well, I hope you make the King pay for it,' said Tarvin.
'How's that?'
'Why, in my country, when a customer sillies about like that, promising to meet a man one day at, the hotel and not showing up, and then promising to meet him the next day at the store and not paying, a drummer says to himself, "Oh, all right! If you want to pay my board, and my wine, liquor, and cigar bill, while I wait, don't mind me. I'll mosey along somehow." And after the second day he charges up his poker losings to him.'
'Ah, that's interesting. But how does he get those items into his account?'
'They go into the next bill of goods he sells him, of course. He makes the prices right for that.'
'Oh, we can make prices right enough. The difficulty is to get your money.'
'But I don't see how you fellows have the time to monkey around here at this rate,' urged Tarvin, mystified. 'Where I come from a man makes his trip on schedule time, and when he's a day behind he'll wire to his customer in the town ahead to come down to the station and meet him, and he'll sell him a bill of goods while the train waits. He could sell him the earth while one of your bullock-carts went a mile. And as to getting your money, why don't you get out an attachment on the old sinner? In your places I'd attach the whole country on him. I'd attach the palace, I'd attach his crown. I'd get a judgment against him, and I'd execute it too--personally, if necessary. I'd lock the old fellow up and rule Rajputana for him, if I had to; but I'd have his money.'
A compassionate smile ran around the group. 'That's because you don't know,' said several at once. Then they began to explain voluminously. There was no languor about them now; they all spoke together.
The men in the verandah, though they seemed idle, were no fools, Tarvin perceived after a time. Lying still as beggars at the gate of greatness was their method of doing business. It wasted time, but in the end some sort of payment was sure to be made, especially, explained the man in the yellow coat, if you could interest the Prime Minister in your needs, and through him wake the interests of the King's women.
A flicker of memory made Tarvin smile faintly, as he thought of Mrs. Mutrie.
The man in the yellow coat went on, and Tarvin learned that the head queen was a murderess, convicted of poisoning her former husband. She had lain crouching in an iron cage awaiting execution when the King first saw her, and the King had demanded whether she would poison him if he married her, so the tale ran. Assuredly, she replied, if he treated her as her late husband had treated her. Thereupon the King had married her, partly to please his fancy, mainly through sheer delight in her brutal answer.
This gipsy without lineage held in less than a year King and State under her feet--feet which women of the household sang spitefully were roughened with travel of shameful roads. She had borne the King one son, in whom all her pride and ambition centred, and, after his birth, she had applied herself with renewed energy to the maintenance of mastery in the State. The supreme Government, a thousand miles away, knew that she was a force to be reckoned with, and had no love for her. The white-haired, soft-spoken Political Resident, Colonel Nolan, who lived in the pink house, a bow-shot from the city gates, was often thwarted by her. Her latest victory was peculiarly humiliating to him, for she had discovered that a rock-hewn canal, designed to supply the city with water in summer, would pass through an orange garden under her window, and had used her influence with the Maharajah against it. The Maharajah had thereupon caused it to be taken around by another way at an expense of a quarter of his year's revenue, and in the teeth of the almost tearful remonstrance of the Resident.
Sitabhai, the gipsy, behind her silken curtains, had both heard and seen this interview between the Maharajah and his Political, and had laughed.
Tarvin devoured all this eagerly. It fed his purpose; it was grist to his mill, even if it tumbled his whole plan of attack topsy-turvy. It opened up a new world for which he had no measures and standards, and in which he must be frankly and constantly dependent on the inspiration of the next moment. He couldn't know too much of this world before taking his first step toward the Naulahka, and he was willing to hear all these lazy fellows would tell him. He began to feel as if he should have to go back and learn his A B C's over again. What pleased this strange being they called King? what appealed to him? what tickled him? above all, what did he fear?
He was thinking much and rapidly.
But he said, 'No wonder your King is bankrupt if he has such a court to look after.'
'He's one of the richest princes in India,' returned the man in the yellow coat. 'He doesn't know himself what he has.'
'Why doesn't he pay his debts, then, instead of keeping you mooning about here?'
'Because he's a native. He'd spend a hundred thousand pounds on a marriage feast, and delay payment of a bill for two hundred rupees four years.
'You ought to cure him of that,' insisted Tarvin. 'Send a sheriff after the crown jewels.'
'You don't know Indian princes. They would pay a bill before they would let the crown jewels go. They are sacred. They are part of the government.'
'Ah, I'd give something to see the Luck of the State!' exclaimed a voice from one of the chairs, which Tarvin afterward learned belonged to the agent of a Calcutta firm of jewellers.
'What's that?' he asked, as casually as he knew how, sipping his whisky and soda.
'The Naulahka. Don't you know?'
Tarvin was saved the need of an .answer by the man in yellow. 'Pshaw! All that talk about the Naulahka is invented by the priests.'
'I don't think so,' returned the jeweller's agent judicially. 'The King told me when I was last here that he had once shown it to a viceroy. But he is the only foreigner who has ever seen it. The King assured me he didn't know where it was himself.'
'Pooh! Do you believe in carved emeralds two inches square?' asked the other, turning to Tarvin.
'That's only the centre-piece,' said the jeweller; 'and I wouldn't mind wagering that it's a tallowdrop emerald. It isn't that that staggers me. My wonder is how these chaps, who don't care anything for water in a stone, could have taken the trouble to get together half a dozen perfect gems, much less fifty. They say that the necklace was begun when William the Conqueror came over.'
'That gives them a year or two,' said Tarvin. 'I would undertake to get a little jewellery together myself if you gave me eight centuries.'
His face was turned a little away from them as he lay back in his chair. His heart was going quickly. He had been through mining-trades, land-speculations, and cattle-deals in his time. He had known moments when the turn of a hair, the wrinkle of an eyelid, meant ruin to him. But they