The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English
General
The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English
Detective and mystery stories, English; Fiction; Short stories
"I could have chosen no better man myself," said he. "I will see that he
finds the Sending about his path and about his bed."
He lay down on the hearthrug, turned up the whites of his eyes, shivered
all over, and began to snort. This was magic, or opium, or the Sending, or
all three. When he opened his eyes he vowed that the Sending had started
upon the warpath, and was at that moment flying up to the town where Lone
Sahib lives.
"Give me my ten rupees," said Dana Da, wearily, "and write a letter to
Lone Sahib, telling him, and all who believe with him, that you and a
friend are using a power greater than theirs. They will see that you are
speaking the truth."
He departed unsteadily, with the promise of some more rupees if anything
came of the Sending.
The Englishman sent a letter to Lone Sahib, couched in what he remembered
of the terminology of the creed. He wrote: "I also, in the days of what
you held to be my backsliding, have obtained enlightenment, and with
enlightenment has come power." Then he grew so deeply mysterious that the
recipient of the letter could make neither head nor tail of it, and was
proportionately impressed; for he fancied that his friend had become a
"fifth rounder." When a man is a "fifth rounder" he can do more than Slade
and Houdin combined.
Lone Sahib read the letter in five different fashions, and was beginning a
sixth interpretation, when his bearer dashed in with the news that there
was a cat on the bed. Now, if there was one thing that Lone Sahib hated
more than another it was a cat. He rated the bearer for not turning it out
of the house. The bearer said that he was afraid. All the doors of the
bedroom had been shut throughout the morning, and no real cat could
possibly have entered the room. He would prefer not to meddle with the
creature.
Lone Sahib entered the room gingerly, and there, on the pillow of his bed,
sprawled and whimpered a wee white kitten, not a jumpsome, frisky little
beast, but a sluglike crawler with its eyes barely opened and its paws
lacking strength or direction--a kitten that ought to have been in a
basket with its mamma. Lone Sahib caught it by the scruff of its neck,
handed it over to the sweeper to be drowned, and fined the bearer four
annas.
That evening, as he was reading in his room, he fancied that he saw
something moving about on the hearthrug, outside the circle of light from
his reading lamp. When the thing began to myowl, he realized that it was a
kitten--a wee white kitten, nearly blind and very miserable. He was
seriously angry, and spoke bitterly to his bearer, who said that there was
no kitten in the room when he brought in the lamp, and real kittens of
tender age generally had mother cats in attendance.
"If the Presence will go out into the veranda and listen," said the
bearer, "he will hear no cats. How, therefore, can the kitten on the bed
and the kitten on the hearthrug be real kittens?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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