He fled like a ghost through the trees in the palace garden, skirting the portico and the terraces until he reached the servants' quarters and the back door used by underlings. There was nothing normal about that; Bamjee, as official purchasing agent with a position to keep up before the world, had never felt he could afford to be admitted to the palace by any except the front door. Suspicion reared itself against him, blackmail springing from it, as naturally as Minerva from the brow of Jove. He was greeted by a _hamal_, which is a kind of go-between servant who normally does all the butler's work, and gets and deserves all the blame for whatever goes wrong. The _hamal_ refused to recognize him at first, although he did concede the advisability of standing in the dark to talk. Blackmail abhors witnesses as absolutely as nature abhors a vacuum. "I am Bamjee!" "By Siva's necklace, that is an easy thing to say and any one might say it in the dark. But Bamjee _sahib_ has the name of being a liberal gentleman." Bamjee had to feel under his shirt for money, and it was so dark in that corner behind the butler's pantry wall that he could not see the denomination of the bills he drew forth. He had to guess. He guessed wrong. It was too much money for a _hamal_. "Son of an immoral mother, hide that in your belly-band and take my message." But the _hamal_ turned toward the light. He saw a fifty-rupee note. He hid it with the swiftness of a roadside conjurer. "But, Bamjee, _sahib_, my day's work is over. I am not even allowed to enter the kitchen again until to-morrow morning. Will to-morrow not do?" "Do you know what _now_ means? Ingrate! If the nowness of the now does not make you act swifter than dynamite I will see to it that you have no job to-morrow morning. You are out--a screech-owl screaming in a wilderness of debt with a wife on her way to another man's arms and your children following the chickens through the streets to pick up food, unless you take my message now! Now, do you understand me? Go before I beat the teeth out of your head!" "But, _sahib_--" "Very well, I will make a great noise and summon the butler. I will tell him you offered to sell me some of the palace silverware for one-fifth of its weight in rupees." "_Sahib_, the butler would demand at least two hundred rupees to take such a message at this hour. Whereas I, if he should catch me before I whisper to one of the maids, could bribe him with only fifty. So give me fifty more and I will do it. Thus I shall have only forty for myself, because I must give the maid ten--at least ten."