Kim

interview with the girl in the bazar, Mahbub Ali's gravity went from

him. He laughed aloud and beat his hand on his thigh.

'Shabash! Shabash! Oh, well done, little one! What will the healer

of turquoises say to this? Now, slowly, let us hear what befell

afterwards--step by step, omitting nothing.'

Step by step then, Kim told his adventures between coughs as the

full-flavoured tobacco caught his lungs.

'I said,' growled Mahbub Ali to himself, 'I said it was the pony

breaking out to play polo. The fruit is ripe already--except that he

must learn his distances and his pacings, and his rods and his

compasses. Listen now. I have turned aside the Colonel's whip from

thy skin, and that is no small service.'

'True.' Kim pulled serenely. 'That is true.'

'But it is not to be thought that this running out and in is any way

good.'

'It was my holiday, Hajji. I was a slave for many weeks. Why should I

not run away when the school was shut? Look, too, how I, living upon

my friends or working for my bread, as I did with the Sikh, have saved

the Colonel Sahib a great expense.'

Mahbub's lips twitched under his well-pruned Mohammedan moustache.

'What are a few rupees'--the Pathan threw out his open hand

carelessly--'to the Colonel Sahib? He spends them for a purpose, not

in any way for love of thee.'

'That,' said Kim slowly, 'I knew a very long time ago.'

'Who told?'

'The Colonel Sahib himself. Not in those many words, but plainly

enough for one who is not altogether a mud-head. Yea, he told me in

the te-rain when we went down to Lucknow.'

'Be it so. Then I will tell thee more, Friend of all the World, though

in the telling I lend thee my head.'

'It was forfeit to me,' said Kim, with deep relish, 'in Umballa, when

thou didst pick me up on the horse after the drummer-boy beat me.'

'Speak a little plainer. All the world may tell lies save thou and I.

For equally is thy life forfeit to me if I chose to raise my finger

here.'

'And this is known to me also,' said Kim, readjusting the live

charcoal-ball on the weed. 'It is a very sure tie between us. Indeed,

thy hold is surer even than mine; for who would miss a boy beaten to

death, or, it may be, thrown into a well by the roadside? Most people

here and in Simla and across the passes behind the Hills would, on the

other hand, say: "What has come to Mahbub Ali?" if he were found dead

among his horses. Surely, too, the Colonel Sahib would make inquiries.

But again,'--Kim's face puckered with cunning,--'he would not make

overlong inquiry, lest people should ask: "What has this Colonel Sahib

to do with that horse-dealer?" But I--if I lived--'

'As thou wouldst surely die--'

'Maybe; but I say, if I lived, I, and I alone, would know that one had

come by night, as a common thief perhaps, to Mahbub Ali's bulkhead in

the serai, and there had slain him, either before or after that thief

had made a full search into his saddlebags and between the soles of his

slippers. Is that news to tell to the Colonel, or would he say to

me--(I have not forgotten when he sent me back for a cigar-case that he

had not left behind him)--"What is Mahbub Ali to me?"?'

Up went a gout of heavy smoke. There was a long pause: then Mahbub

Ali spoke in admiration: 'And with these things on thy mind, dost thou

lie down and rise again among all the Sahibs' little sons at the

madrissah and meekly take instruction from thy teachers?'

'It is an order,' said Kim blandly. 'Who am I to dispute an order?'

'A most finished Son of Eblis,' said Mahbub Ali. 'But what is this

tale of the thief and the search?'

'That which I saw,' said Kim, 'the night that my lama and I lay next

thy place in the Kashmir Seral. The door was left unlocked, which I

think is not thy custom, Mahbub. He came in as one assured that thou

wouldst not soon return. My eye was against a knot-hole in the plank.

He searched as it were for something--not a rug, not stirrups, nor a

bridle, nor brass pots--something little and most carefully hid. Else

why did he prick with an iron between the soles of thy slippers?'

'Ha!' Mahbub Ali smiled gently. 'And seeing these things, what tale

didst thou fashion to thyself, Well of the Truth?'

'None. I put my hand upon my amulet, which lies always next to my

skin, and, remembering the pedigree of a white stallion that I had

bitten out of a piece of Mussalmani bread, I went away to Umballa

perceiving that a heavy trust was laid upon me. At that hour, had I

chosen, thy head was forfeit. It needed only to say to that man, "I

have here a paper concerning a horse which I cannot read." And then?'

Kim peered at Mahbub under his eyebrows.

'Then thou wouldst have drunk water twice--perhaps thrice, afterwards.

I do not think more than thrice,' said Mahbub simply.

'It is true. I thought of that a little, but most I thought that I

loved thee, Mahbub. Therefore I went to Umballa, as thou knowest, but

(and this thou dost not know) I lay hid in the garden-grass to see what

Colonel Creighton Sahib might do upon reading the white stallion's

pedigree.'

'And what did he?' for Kim had bitten off the conversation.

'Dost thou give news for love, or dost thou sell it?' Kim asked.

'I sell and--I buy.' Mahbub took a four-anna piece out of his belt and

held it up.

'Eight!' said Kim, mechanically following the huckster instinct of the

East.

Mahbub laughed, and put away the coin. 'It is too easy to deal in that

market, Friend of all the World. Tell me for love. Our lives lie in

each other's hand.'

'Very good. I saw the Jang-i-Lat Sahib [the Commander-in-Chief] come

to a big dinner. I saw him in Creighton Sahib's office. I saw the two

read the white stallion's pedigree. I heard the very orders given for

the opening of a great war.'

'Hah!' Mahbub nodded with deepest eyes afire. 'The game is well

played. That war is done now, and the evil, we hope, nipped before the

flower--thanks to me--and thee. What didst thou later?'

'I made the news as it were a hook to catch me victual and honour among

the villagers in a village whose priest drugged my lama. But I bore

away the old man's purse, and the Brahmin found nothing. So next

morning he was angry. Ho! Ho! And I also used the news when I fell

into the hands of that white Regiment with their Bull!'

'That was foolishness.' Mahbub scowled. 'News is not meant to be

thrown about like dung-cakes, but used sparingly--like bhang.'

'So I think now, and moreover, it did me no sort of good. But that was

very long ago,' he made as to brush it all away with a thin brown

hand--'and since then, and especially in the nights under the punkah at

the madrissah, I have thought very greatly.'

'Is it permitted to ask whither the Heaven-born's thought might have

led?' said Mahbub, with an elaborate sarcasm, smoothing his scarlet

beard.

'It is permitted,' said Kim, and threw back the very tone. 'They say

at Nucklao that no Sahib must tell a black man that he has made a

fault.'

Mahbub's hand shot into his bosom, for to call a Pathan a 'black man'

[kala admi] is a blood-insult. Then he remembered and laughed. 'Speak,

Sahib. Thy black man hears.'

'But,' said Kim, 'I am not a Sahib, and I say I made a fault to curse

thee, Mahbub Ali, on that day at Umballa when I thought I was betrayed

by a Pathan. I was senseless; for I was but newly caught, and I wished

to kill that low-caste drummer-boy. I say now, Hajji, that it was well