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Updated: June 24, 2025
It took Mukhum Dass about two minutes to discover the loose stone less than two more to raise it and about ten seconds to see and pounce on the silver tube. He was too bent on business to notice the man with the vertical smile peering down at him through the trap.
If the tale Yasmini told him on the morning of her first visit to Tess had not been enough to determine Mukhum Dass, now, with the lost title-deed recovered, the conviction that Gungadhura wanted the place for secret reasons, and Chamu's objections to confirm the whole wild story, he became as set on his course and determined to wring the last anna out of the mystery as only a money-lender can be.
Mukhum Dass, for his part, did not see Pinga, the one-eyed beggar with his vertical smile, who watched him from behind a rock, for that was not intended either. Pinga himself was noticed closely by another man. The minute Dick was out of sight Mukhum Dass entered the small gate in the wall, and called out for Chamu brazenly.
I shall take my horse from your stable and ride for the camels, bringing them to the house of Mukhum Dass. Let your wife meet me there one hour before dawn." "Dick!" said Tess, with her arm around him. "I want to go! I know it sounds crazy, and absurd, and desperate; but I'm sure it isn't! I want you to let me go with her."
But Tess had recovered her nerve and was determined to see the adventure through, in spite of the discomforts of a seat behind Tom's military saddle. They brought up at last in front of a low dark house at the very edge of the city. It stood by itself in a compound, with fields behind it, and looked prosperous enough to belong to one of the maharajah's suite. "The house of Mukhum Dass!"
Mukhum Dass had told the exact truth, as it happened, but the priest had drawn his own conclusions from the fact that it was Samson's babu who returned the document. He was less than ever sure of Gungadhura's prospects, suspecting, especially since his own night-interview with the commissioner, that some new dark plot was being hatched on the English side of the river.
Gungadhura shook his head violently. "I can explain," he said. "I have proofs." Samson turned the paper over paused a moment and began to read the second sheet. "It is known who murdered Mukhum Dass. The assassin has been caught, and has confessed." Gungadhura's eyes that had been dull, and almost listless hitherto, began to glare like an animal's.
"Was it Mukhum Dass or another, who went to the priest in the temple of Jinendra on a certain afternoon and requested intercession to the god in order that a title-deed might be recovered, that fell down the nullah when the snakes frightened a man's mule and he himself fell into the road? Or was it another accident that split that car of thine in two pieces?"
"Well I will take the hazard. Bring them in. But I will not feed them. And if you fail to come for them before dawn I will turn them out and it shall be all over Sialpore that the Princess Yasmini " "One moment, Mukhum Dass! If one word of this escapes your lips for a month to come, you shall go to jail for receiving stolen money in payment of a debt!
But Patali, sure in her own mind that her second thoughts had been best and determined to have the house for her own, went out to set spies to keep a very careful eye on Mukhum Dass and to report the money-lender's movements to her hour by hour. In less than an hour Dick Blaine arrived by dog-cart in answer to the note, and Patali did her best to listen through a keyhole to the interview.
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