Lateefa listened here, listened there, curious, indifferent, receptive; approving--as the East always approves--the voice with authority that speaks not as the scribes. He wandered here, he wandered there; even, with that absorbing inquisitiveness of his, into the courtyard common to Dilarâm and her neighbours. Her balcony was dark and silent; the police, he told himself, had likely been bothering her. But the light, and the sound of a crank in Govind's room, meant a special edition of lies. Then with his ear to the chink of the door below he could hear Burkut Ali's voice; then Jehân's--louder, shrill with protest or anger. They were quarrelling, likely, over drink or cards. Yet Burkut was sober enough when--barely giving time for Lateefa to find shelter behind the eternal string-bed which was now reared up against the wall--he came out into the yard. 'Fool!' he muttered as he passed, 'not to see his own good. As if it mattered. He would get house and all. Mayhap he will be drunk enough by morning.' What new villainy was he planning? Lateefa pondered over the question as he drifted on. The time of felonies was near, for the dogs were forgetting to skulk; a sign that men were fewer in the lanes and streets. Here and there, round an ebbing flicker of light, listeners lingered, and a drowsy voice droned on; but for the most part the cavernous arcades showed still, white-swathed sleepers, simulating death. This, however, coming swiftly down the bazaar--a strange, swaying, headless body with many legs, monstrous, weird, half-seen--was death itself being shuffled out secretly to the city gates. Folks said true, then. The plague _was_ abroad? He had found himself what he needed for his task--a bit of old iron, a bit of leathern rope; but when he reached the wicket his first stealthy touch on it showed him he needed neither. It was ajar. He pushed it open noiselessly and entered; groping his way, since it was dark in the archway below the _naubut khana_. Beyond, in the open court, it was lighter; yet, even so, he stumbled over a bed set right in the entrance as watchmen set them. There was no one in it, but the quilt was warm. So some one had been there a moment ago. Some one who had gone out by the open door, and who would therefore return. He crouched in a recess by the stairs that led upwards and waited. He had not to wait long. A shuffling step sounded outside, and, after a pause to bar the wicket, some one stumbled to the bed. And then out of the darkness came a quavering grace before meat, that grace which is also the prayer of blood-sacrifice. 'In the name of the Merciful and Clement God!' It had not needed the grace to tell Lateefa that this was Aunt Khôjee. She must have gone out to draw water from the well down the lane, for the grace was followed by the sound of rapid, thirsty drinking. But why had she not drawn water as usual from the well in the women's courtyard? He must find out.