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Bursting through the glass-bead curtains at the door, the great savage strode down the room, holding out a telegram. Rewa Gunga looked as if he would have snatched it, but King's hand was held out first and Ismail gave it to him. With a murmur of conventional apology King tore the envelope and in a second his eyes were ablaze with something more than wonder.
The company clapped applause, and No. 4 especially must have been very fond of laughing, for the glass-bead anecdote set her off again as heartily as ever, and the rest followed in her wake, and while so doing, never noticed that Aunt Judy had slipped away.
But the little maid beckoned them on, still showing her teeth and tripping in front of them as if a gust of wind were blowing her. Her motion was that of a dance reduced to a walk for the sake of decorum. Through another glass-bead curtain at the farther end of the long room she led them to a second room, all hung about with silks and furnished with deep-cushioned divans.
We repaired there as before, putting the medicines into the sextand-stand box, and found him lying at full length on the platform of his throne, with a glass-bead necklace of various colours, and a charm tied on his left arm. Nobody was allowed to be present at our interview. The medicines, four varieties, were weighed out into ten doses each, and their uses and effects explained.
The glass-bead curtain jingled, and a maid backed through it giggling, followed in a hurry by a European, dressed in a white duck apology for evening clothes. He seemed a little the worse for drink, but not too drunk to recognize the real Yasmini when he saw her and to blush crimson for having acted like an idiot. "Queen of the Night!" he said in Hindustani that was peculiarly mispronounced.
"He draws aside a silk fibre curtain in a corner of the room and shows me a pile of buckskin sacks. "'Forty of 'em, says Shane. 'One arroba in each one. In round numbers, $220,000 worth of gold-dust you see there. It's all mine. It belongs to the Grand Yacuma. They bring it all to me. Two hundred and twenty thousand dollars think of that, you glass-bead peddler, says Shane 'and all mine.
Christmas tree tinsel and salted peanuts, jazz music and mittens. The curtain is up. Egad, what a masterly scene. A kitchen Coney Island. A puzzle picture of isles, signs, smells, noises. Cinderella wandering wistfully in the glass-bead section looking for a fairy godmother. A clinking obbligato by the cash registers. The poor are buying gifts.
The piece of silver she would have stooped for gold, just as surely as she would have recognized its ring lay where it fell. Ranjoor Singh stepped forward toward a glass-bead curtain through which a soft light shone, and an unexpected low laugh greeted him. It was merry, mocking, musical and something more.
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