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Updated: June 2, 2025
I myself kicked an old blackguard of a moonstone-seller or so he described himself off his premises only the other night." Max broke into a laugh. "Did you though?" "Yes. What is there to laugh at? Wouldn't you have done the same? And when I told Nick the day after, he described the old beggar as a friend of his." Max was still laughing. "What a devil of a fellow you are!
Noel swung round on his heel as he did so, and administered a flying kick by way of assisting his departure. Possibly it was somewhat more forcible than he intended; at least it was totally unexpected. The moonstone-seller stumbled forward with a grunt, barely saving himself from falling headlong.
So it's just as well all things considered that you are not going to meet. Well, I must go and get respectable." He rose with a quick, lithe movement, but paused, looking down at her quizzically to ask: "What did you think of my friend the moonstone-seller? Pretty, isn't he?" She smiled for the first time. "I'm sure he's quite disreputable. He disappeared in the most mysterious fashion.
A momentary compunction pricked Noel, for the man was obviously old, and, by the peculiar fashion in which he recovered his balance, he seemed to be crippled also. But the next moment he was laughing, though his mood was far from hilarious. For, with an agility as comical as it was surprising, the moonstone-seller gathered up his impeding garment and fled.
Nick laughed. "Great Scott! You didn't seriously, think he was my bearer, did you? No, he's an old moonstone-seller who comes to see me occasionally. He's not so disreputable as he looks. I find him handy in the matter of bazaar politics, with which I consider it useful to keep in touch." Max received the information with a nod.
A voice answered him a smothered inarticulate voice. A groping hand came up, clutching for deliverance. There came the slip and crackle of broken wood beneath which some living object struggled and fought for freedom. The one wiry arm of the moonstone-seller went down to the rescue. It did good service that night such service as astonished even its owner when he had time to think.
There came a flash of blinding, intolerable brightness a roar as of the roar of a cannon, stunning, deafening, devastating, the smaller sound of wood splintering and falling, and then a dumb and awful silence more fearful than Death. The first to arrive on that scene of darkness and destruction was the old moonstone-seller.
Be off with you, and if I ever catch you skulking round here again, I'll give you a leathering that you'll never forget for the rest of your rascally life!" The moonstone-seller bowed again profoundly. "Yet even a rat has its bite," he murmured in a deferential undertone into his beard. He turned aside, still darkly muttering, and shuffled past Noel towards the road.
Olga suddenly became interested in the messenger. "You are the moonstone-seller, are you?" she said. "Have you ever been here before?" He bent himself before her in a low salaam. "I am my lord's most humble servant," he told her meekly. "A very poor man, most gracious, a very poor man. I come here at my lord's bidding when he needs me." Olga's brow puckered. "How queer!" she said.
Nick had been on the watch for it for some time, had penetrated the city nightly in the garb of a moonstone-seller, collecting evidence, and most masterly stroke of all he had drawn the Rajah into partnership with him. It was due to Nick's influence alone that the Rajah had not been caught in Kobad Shikan's toils. Thanks to Nick's steady call upon his loyalty, he had remained staunch.
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