Govind the editor, however, had less difficulty than most in accommodating his mental position to a stool stuck over the reeking gutter of a liquor shop, where he refreshed himself with a brandy-and-soda and an infamous cigar. He was in an evil temper, because the meeting, which he frequented chiefly because the speakers provided him with ideas wherewith to spice his own broadsheet, had been unusually discreet; so he would have to write his own sedition; unless he could pick up some scurrilous news instead. 'Nay, friend! I know naught to suit thy purpose,' replied the stout sergeant of police who frequented the same liquor shop, to whom he applied; 'save the finding of the Lady-_sahib's_ jewel-box.' 'And the pearls?' asked Govind, taking out a greasy stump of pencil. 'The pearls!' echoed the policeman scornfully, 'as if pearls were to be found by us! They can be hid in a body's very mouth, and then, if there be not another mouth with a tongue in it, there is silence! But the box is enough to keep the file of the case open, and the inspector content for a while.' 'How many are in the lock-up concerning it?' asked Govind, out of the fulness of his knowledge regarding police methods. 'Six,' yawned the sergeant. 'The coolie who found the box broken and empty, flung in the bushes by the Lat-_sahib's_ house; he was setting the fireworks for the big spectacle to-morrow. He sold it to a pawnbroker. That makes two for us. Then a woman bought the velvet lining from a rag-merchant. That makes four. She gave it to Hashim, tailor, who works for the _Huzoors_, as a cap to her grandchild. And he, having doubts, informed us. So he makes five. Then the firework-maker's people were turbulent, therefore we arrested one of them to show diligence.' 'And there was naught in the box when it was found?' asked Govind. He was writing now on one of the smoothed-out squares of white waste-paper which lay in a pile beside the liquor seller, who used them for wiping the rims of the tumblers, out of deference to the caste prejudices of his customers against a general cloth. 'God knows!' yawned the policeman piously. 'The man saith not; but there were letters besides the trinkets and the pearls, and we may find _them_, if not the others. Folk will not lose a _cowrie's_ worth of waste-paper these hard times.' 'Ay!' assented the liquor seller, eyeing Govind askance. 'Mine had to be paid for, though some seem to think not. And paid high too, since the firework-makers were in the market for their squibs and crackers for to-morrow.' A man lounging outside in the gutter laughed suddenly, viciously. 'They will find enough for _them_ anyhow, even if they _have_ the police at their tails!' he said, moving off with a defiant _salaam_ to the fat policeman. 'I would I had handcuffed a pair of them,' remarked the latter mildly. ''Twould have been one trouble, and 'tis well to save oneself what one can these hard times.'