By evening it was all over the city that Dilarâm and her like were to be put in gaol for refusing to kidnap girls for the _Sirkar_. And that the _Sirkar_ in consequence, being hard put to it, would be sure to make the plague--which the doctors had discovered that very day, though, God knows, folk had been dying that way for a week--an excuse to search respectable houses for recruits to Miss Leezie's profession. Such a thing may seem impossible to those who have not lived in a native town, but those who have, know that nothing is incredible to its vast curiosity, its still more vast ignorance. In the dead darkness of that, as in the darkness of night, all voices are equal. And so round the smouldering rubbish-heaps and within the closed doors of the courtyards where the women gathered, as in the bazaar, the tale was told; not with absolute assurance, but tentatively. So folk said; and so, no doubt, it had been in the past. It remained to be seen if it would be so in the present, since _that_ was all poor folk had to consider. And as the tale was told, a sound of sudden wailing would rise far or near in the city to prove part of the tale was true. The plague had come. CHAPTER XVIII THE FREEDOM OF DEATH Jehân Aziz had withdrawn his charge of theft against Lateefa by saying that the whole affair was a misunderstanding, and that the ring was in the possession of the Nawâbin, to whom it really belonged. It had been returned to her without his knowledge; _etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!_ Now a monopoly in lies gives freedom, but when you have an accomplice whose fertility of imagination exceeds your own, there is tyranny in them. Jehân found this out when Lateefa, after one silent second of surprise, had grasped the position, and instantly claimed his right to lie also. For in India false accusation is a sort of personal duel in which the challenger, having chosen his weapon, cannot complain of his opponent's more skilful use of it. So Lateefa had launched into corroborative evidence of the most startling description. Did not the Nawâb-_sahib_ remember this, and that? And Jehân had remembered. What else could he do? But he felt it was dangerous work, and was glad when Lateefa's audience was confined to the coachman who drove them back to the city, in the wagonette lined with red flannel and tied up with string! Yet, all the time that he was enlarging, Lateefa was wondering if there was any truth whatever in the story he had been confirming. Had the ring really been found? The fact that Burkut Ali was waiting to receive them in the little house next Dilarâm's, inclined him to believe it was not, and that there was still some scheming afoot. But, on the other hand, the ring might really be lost. The kite might have fluttered down in the next courtyard, or the next. It was a pure chance.