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There were flecks of foam on his lips, and his eyes rolled as he dashed through the door and out down the steps, rending the air with cries of murder. He was too late, the Chinaman had gone. When the street flocked out to see what the disturbance meant, Mhtoon Pah was crouching on his steps in a kind of fit.
Upon the silence came the sounds of scuffling and hoarse cries, and it seemed to Absalom that Leh Shin had called out that he had already cut the heart from his ribs, and was about to force it down Mhtoon Pah's throat, and then nothing was very clear until voices and lights roused him from stupor to fresh terror and alarm.
"Why he left there and went to live with Leh Shin is unknown. He has secrets. He knows the best mixtures of opium, he knows " "I don't want to hear what he knows." "He knows where Absalom is." "You only think that," said Hartley, roughly. "It is a dangerous thing to make these assertions. It is only your idea, Mhtoon Pah." The Burman groaned aloud and held the rag between his hands.
The friendship between them dated back to the days when Leh Shin and Mhtoon Pah were small boys running together in the streets of Mangadone, and no antipathy that is a first instinct has ever the depth of root given to the bitterness that can spring from a breach in long friendship, and Leh Shin and Mhtoon Pah hated as only old friends ever do hate.
"I can't go and arrest Leh Shin on suspicion, because there isn't a vestige of suspicion attached to the man." "Not after this?" Mhtoon Pah pointed to the rag that lay loathsomely on the table. "That may be goat's blood, or dog's blood; we can't say it is Absalom's," objected Hartley. "Leave the horrid thing there, Mhtoon Pah, and I will have it analysed later on."
A thin scream came up to him, and without waiting to consider, he ran down quickly. At the bottom he found Mhtoon Pah's overturned lantern, and relighting it, he followed the intermittent call of fear that echoed through the damp, cavernous place he found himself in.
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 Shin'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.
Just the hour when Shiraz was lying on his mat asleep, and when Leh Shin slept, and Mhtoon Pah drowsed against his cushion from Balsorah, each dreaming after his own fashion; and it was an hour when white men were sure to be in their bungalows. Hartley was lying in a chair in the veranda, and all through Mangadone men rested from toil and relaxed their brains after the morning's work.
From here he could see down the Colonnade, and also watch the shop of Mhtoon Pah, as he alternately cursed or blessed the passers, according to their gifts or their apathy. The heavy, slouching figure of the assistant went by to take up his master's place in the waterside house, and the beggar wasted no time in glancing after him.
A drop in the temperature had driven the sleepers who usually preferred the open to the closeness of walls, within, and the whole double row of houses slept with gaping windows and open doors. Mhtoon Pah's curio shop was entirely closed. Every window had outer shutters fastened, and no gleam of light showed anywhere, up or down the high narrow front.
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