I always shall respect the
seal-cutter for keeping so faithfully to the time of the Peshawar
telegrams. It went on to say that skilled doctors were night and
day watching over the man's life; and that he would eventually
recover if the fee to the potent sorcerer, whose servant was the
head in the basin, were doubled.
Here the mistake from the artistic point of view came in. To ask
for twice your stipulated fee in a voice that Lazarus might have
used when he rose from the dead, is absurd. Janoo, who is really a
woman of masculine intellect, saw this as quickly as I did. I heard
her say "Asli nahin! Fareib!" scornfully under her breath; and just
as she said so, the light in the basin died out, the head stopped
talking, and we heard the room door creak on its hinges. Then Janoo
struck a match, lit the lamp, and we saw that head, basin, and seal-
cutter were gone. Suddhoo was wringing his hands and explaining to
any one who cared to listen, that, if his chances of eternal
salvation depended on it, he could not raise another two hundred
rupees.
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