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Updated: May 1, 2025
At night, when all the City was still, came the walk under the evil-smelling boorka, the patrol through Jitha Megji's bustee, the quick turn into Amir Nath's Gully between the sleeping cattle and the dead walls, and then, last of all, Bisesa, and the deep, even breathing of the old woman who slept outside the door of the bare little room that Durga Charan allotted to his sister's daughter.
There was a young moon, and one stream of light fell down into Amir Nath's Gully, and struck the grating, which was drawn away as he knocked. From the black dark, Bisesa held out her arms into the moonlight. Both hands had been cut off at the wrists, and the stumps were nearly healed.
Trejago cannot tell. He cannot get Bisesa poor little Bisesa back again. He has lost her in the City, where each man's house is as guarded and as unknowable as the grave; and the grating that opens into Amir Nath's Gully has been walled up. But Trejago pays his calls regularly, and is reckoned a very decent sort of man.
"It might certainly be safer for you not to bring that recognition to the knowledge of his Highness," mused Gerrard. Dwarika Nath's face grew avaricious. "But there is my duty to his Highness. How could I consent to keep silent on a matter that affects him so nearly?" "I really don't know. Your conscience ain't in my keeping. Settle it for yourself," said Gerrard carelessly.
Gerrard remained silent a moment, Dwarika Nath's interview with him in his tent, and the expulsion of the disgraced Diwan from the city, jostling one another in his mind. Then quite another thought came upper-most. "So you set spies on me in my own tent, Maharaj-ji!" he cried indignantly. "And you call me your friend!"
As he dropped out of the window, she kissed his forehead twice, and he walked home wondering. A week, and then three weeks, passed without a sign from Bisesa. Trejago, thinking that the rupture had lasted quite long enough, went down to Amir Nath's Gully for the fifth time in the three weeks, hoping that his rap at the sill of the shifting grating would be answered. He was not disappointed.
He felt tempted to do so, for it was to Surendra Nath's ingenuity in interpolating the incident of the key into a well-known story that he owed the clay pattern of the warder's key. But Surendra Nath was excitable; he was quite capable of uttering a yell of delight that would waken the other men and force a premature disclosure.
The message ran then: "A widow dhak flower and bhusa at eleven o'clock." The pinch of bhusa enlightened Trejago. He saw this kind of letter leaves much to instinctive knowledge that the bhusa referred to the big heap of cattle-food over which he had fallen in Amir Nath's Gully, and that the message must come from the person behind the grating; she being a widow.
If there was any truth in Surendra Nath's suspicions, he would be quite ready to betray his fellows; and if looks and manner were any criterion, the suspicions were amply justified. True, the man had gained nothing by his former treachery, but that might not prevent him from repeating it, in the hope that a second betrayal would compel reward.
So he went, that very night at eleven, into Amir Nath's Gully, clad in a boorka, which cloaks a man as well as a woman. Directly the gongs of the City made the hour, the little voice behind the grating took up "The Love Song of Har Dyal" at the verse where the Panthan girl calls upon Har Dyal to return. The song is really pretty in the Vernacular. In English you miss the wail of it.
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