I always
shall respect the seal-cutter for keeping so faithfully to the time of the
Peshawar telegrams. It went on to say that skilled doctors were night and day
watching over the man's life; and that he would eventually recover if the fee
to the potent sorcerer, whose servant was the head in the basin, were doubled.
Here the mistake from the artistic point of view came in. To ask for twice
your stipulated fee in a voice that Lazarus might have used when he rose from
the dead, is absurd. Janoo, who is really a woman of masculine intellect, saw
this as quickly as I did. I heard her say "Asli nahin! Fareib!" scornfully
under her breath; and just as she said so, the light in the basin died out,
the head stopped talking, and we heard the room door creak on its hinges. Then
Janoo struck a match, lit the lamp, and we saw that head, basin, and seal-
cutter were gone. Suddhoo was wringing his hands and explaining to any one who
cared to listen, that, if his chances of eternal salvation depended on it, he
could not raise another two hundred rupees. Azizun was nearly in hysterics in
the corner; while Janoo sat down composedly on one of the beds to discuss the
probabilities of the whole thing being a bunao, or "make-up.
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