So she lay, watching the shadows of the broken-tailed plaster peacocks of royalty above the gateway creep over the courtyard, up the walls, and disappear into thin air. CHAPTER XVII THE PEN AND THE SWORD Jehân Aziz was meanwhile repenting at leisure in Oriental fashion. That is, he had succumbed to the perpetual temptation of a string bed set either in shade or sunshine, to which it is always possible to retire without, as it were, quite throwing up the sponge. An Englishman who seeks his bed and turns his face to the wall gives himself away; the native who does the same thing is not even committed to discouragement. And Jehân, though he had a racking headache from an attempt to drown care in a debauch, was not exactly discouraged. His anger, though impotent, was too strong for that. Indeed, his whole force of character lay in his fierce arrogance; for he was neither clever nor cunning, like Burkut Ali. And so when, the day after the disappearance of the ring, the latter walked coolly in as if nothing had happened, and sat down on the end of the string bed, Jehân only sat up at the other end and glowered at the man, without whom he knew himself to be lost. 'Thou hadst best tell the truth, Lord of the Universe,' said Burkut, with a fine sarcasm, 'for I have heard many lies from the police. My head whirls with women, and pearls, and God knows what! Is there so much as foothold anywhere, whence we may deal a blow?' Jehân felt comforted by that plural, though it roused curiosity to know what Burkut would be at. In truth, the latter's first desire for vengeance on Jehân only, had shifted as he had listened to the tales he bribed the police to tell. Here, it had seemed to him, was the possibility of greater mischief; mischief which, it was true, could have no immediate or definite object, but which would add something fresh to that rock of offence, that stumbling-block in the way of the alien master, on which it was the duty of the disloyal to cast every stone they could. It took five cigarettes, and two whisky-pegs sent for from the liquor-shop next door, ere Jehân--in the absolute undress which seems to afford comfort to all Indians in time of trouble--had finished his tale. 'There is much in it,' remarked Burkut slowly. 'As for the ring, Lateef hath it. There is none else. And he is a friend of thy house. He worked there; is it not so? Bethink thee, is there no woman in it who hath a hold on him?' Jehân frowned horribly at the indecent suggestion; but even this insult, he felt, had to be faced. 'None,' he said shortly, 'unless the jade who escaped.' Burkut grinned cunningly and shook his head. 'My lord doth not understand women. Lateef hath kept the ring for the honour, not the dishonour, of the house. It will go back, if it hath not already gone, to the safe keeping which hath secured it all these years.' Jehân winced again under the innuendo. 'Think you it is there already?'