Mrs. Cornock-Campbell looked incredulous.
"A Ringding Gelong Lama—an English Doctor of Divinity? Wonders don't cease, do they! What could he gain by taking that degree? Amusement? Are they as subtle as all that?"
"Subtle, yes. Amusement, no," said Ommony, frowning darkly. "How spike the guns of the persistent missionary, unless they know how the guns are loaded? That's the gist of one of his letters to me. But damn the man! Why couldn't he meet me by appointment instead of writing this stuff? I've suspected him for some time of—"
Mrs. Cornock-Campbell laughed. "He evidently knows you, Cottswold, better than you know him."
"Know him? I've never met him!" Ommony retorted. "I saw him today for the first time, from behind a brass Buddha in Chutter Chand's shop. There've been lots of times when he ought to have met me, to talk over details in connection with the trusteeship, but it all had to be done by correspondence. He has set his signature to every paper I drew up, and he has agreed to every proposal I have made. Confound him! Why is he afraid of me? Why couldn't he come in, instead of leaving that fool letter on the door-step?"
"Wise letter!" (Mrs. Cornock-Campbell went back to the piano. None but Rimsky-Korsakof could describe her sensations.) "He evidently knows how to manage you. Do you ever bet, John? I will bet you five rupees I know what's next!"
John McGregor drew a five-rupee note from his pocket and laid it on the piano. Mrs. Cornock-Campbell began playing. Dawa Tsering, his head to one side like a bird's, watched her fingers, listening intently.
"There are devils inside the machine," he said after a while. "Give me my knife, Ommonee, and let me go." But Ommony, pacing the floor, both hands behind him, frowning, took no notice of any one. He was away off in a realm of conjecture of his own.
"Remember: I stand to lose five dibs!" McGregor remarked at the end of five minutes. "Suppose you put me out of agony. I'm Scots, you know!"
"Damn!" Ommony exclaimed. "Why can't he take me into his confidence? I hate to suspect a man. Pen and ink anywhere?"
"I lose," said Mrs. Cornock-Campbell, nodding toward a gilt-and -ivory writing desk against the wall. "Take back your five rupees, John. You'll find a five of mine being used as a book-mark in one of those volumes of Walter Pater on the shelf. Put something in its place."
McGregor paid himself. Ommony at the desk tore up sheet after sheet of paper, chuckled at last, and wrote a final draft. "There, that should do. That's obscure enough. That hoists him with his own petard. Why don't women ever have clean blotting-paper?"
He showed what he had written to McGregor, who read it aloud, Mrs. Cornock-Campbell playing very softly while she listened.
"To the holy Lama Tsiang Samdup, in the place where he has chosen to secrete himself.
"I will take the Middle Way if I can find it, and I hope neither of us may get lost. I wish you all success.
"Cottswold Ommony."
"Sarcasm?" said Mrs. Cornock-Campbell. "I wonder if that ever pays."
"We'll see!"
Ommony sealed up the envelope, on which he had written simply "Tsiang Samdup," and stood over Dawa Tsering.
"Take this letter to the Lama. Come back here with proof you have delivered it, and you shall have your knife."
"Send him in my dog-cart," McGregor advised. "My sais* is one of those rare birds who do as they're told. He doesn't talk or ask questions."
* Coachman
So Dawa Tsering was seen on to the back seat of the dog-cart, with a horse-blanket under him to keep grease off the cushion, and the conference was resumed. McGregor questioned Ommony narrowly concerning the events of the afternoon, and particularly as to the exact location of the courtyard where the attack had taken place.
"It doesn't look to me as if they meant to kill you," he said at last. "It seems to me they were hell-bent on merely driving you away. Um-tiddley-um-tum-tum—we've made a mess of this—we should have had that building watched. Katherine, I will bet these ten rupees that our friend from Spiti draws blank."
"Men are unintuitive creatures," Mrs. Cornock-Campbell answered. "No, John, I won't bet. The obvious thing was to take the Lama at his word and go straight to Tilgaun. I supposed Cottswold would see that, but he didn't—did you? What is the objection?"
"This," said Ommony, pausing, looking obstinate, "he is either my friend, or he isn't. He has every reason to be frank with me. He has chosen the other line. All right."
"All wrong!" she answered, chuckling. "In that letter, in his own way, he invited you to trust him."
"I don't!" remarked Ommony, shutting his jaws with a snap that could be heard across the room.
He refused to explain himself. He was not quite sure he could have done that, but had no inclination to try. If he had opened his lips it would have been to invite McGregor to throw a plain -clothes cordon around that house at the end of the courtyard, search the place and expose its secrets.
Habitual self-control alone prevented that. Twenty years of living courteously in a conquered country, making full allowance for the feelings of those who must look to him for justice, had bred a restraint that ill-temper could not overthrow. But he did not dare to let himself speak just then. He preferred to be rude—took up a book and began reading.
Mrs. Cornock-Campbell went on playing. John McGregor smoked in silence, pulling out the Lama's letter, reading it over and over, trying to discover hidden meanings. So more than an hour went by with hardly a word spoken, and it was long after midnight when the wheels of McGregor's returning dog-cart skidded on the loose gravel of the drive at the rear of the house and Diana awoke on the porch to tell the moon about it.
Dawa Tsering was admitted through the back door and shepherded in by the butler, who held his nose, but who was not otherwise so lacking in appreciation as to shut the door tight when he left the room. Ommony strode to the door, opened it wide, looked into the frightened eyes of the Goanese and watched him until he disappeared through a swinging door at the end of the passage.
"Now," he said, shutting the door tight behind him.
"The Lama is gone!" Dawa Tsering announced dramatically. "If I had had my knife I would have slain the impudent devil who gave me the news! Tripe out of the belly of a pig is his countenance! Eggs are his eyes! He is a ragyaba!* "
"The son of evil pretended not to know me! When I offered him the letter for the Lama he growled that Tsiang Samdup and his chela had gone elsewhere. When I bade him let me in, that I might see for myself, he answered ignorantly."
"Ignorantly? How do you mean?"
"He struck me with a bucket, of which the contents were garbage unsuitable to a man of my distinction. So I crowned him with the bucket—thus—not gently—and his head went through the bottom of the thing, so that, as it were, he wore a helmet full of smells and could no longer see. So then I smote him in the belly with my fist—thus—and with my foot—thus—as he fell. And then I came away. And there is the letter. Smell it. Behold the dirt on it, in proof I lie not. Now give me my knife, Ommonee."
Ommony went into the hall and produced the "knife" from behind the hat-rack. Dawa Tsering thumbed the edge of the blade lovingly before thrusting the weapon into its leather scabbard inside his shirt.
"Now I am a man again," he said devoutly. "They would better avoid me with their buckets full of filth!"
Ommony studied him in silence for a moment. "Did you ever have a bath?" he asked curiously.
"Aye. Tsiang Samdup and his chela made me take one whenever they happened to think fit. That is how I know they are not especially holy. There is something heretical about them that I do not understand."