Kim Rudyard Kipling (web ebook reader .TXT) 📖

distance, touched him with horrible soft fingers, but Mahbub’s grip never shifted from his neck till, relaxing with a sigh, the boy lost his senses.

“Allah! How he fought! We should never have done it but for the drugs. That was his white blood, I take it,” said Mahbub testily. “Go on with the dawut.45 Give him full Protection.”

“O Hearer! Thou that hearest with ears, be present. Listen, O Hearer!” Huneefa moaned, her dead eyes turned to the west. The dark room filled with moanings and snortings.

From the outer balcony, a ponderous figure raised a round bullet head and coughed nervously.

“Do not interrupt this ventriloquial necromanciss, my friend,” it said in English. “I opine that it is very disturbing to you, but no enlightened observer is jolly-well upset.”

“… I will lay a plot for their ruin! O Prophet, bear with the unbelievers. Let them alone awhile!” Huneefa’s face, turned to the northward, worked horribly, and it was as though voices from the ceiling answered her.

Hurree Babu returned to his notebook, balanced on the windowsill, but his hand shook. Huneefa, in some sort of drugged ecstasy, wrenched herself to and fro as she sat cross-legged by Kim’s still head, and called upon devil after devil, in the ancient order of the ritual, binding them to avoid the boy’s every action.

“With Him are the keys of the Secret Things! None knoweth them besides Himself He knoweth that which is in the dry land and in the sea!” Again broke out the unearthly whistling responses.

“I⁠—I apprehend it is not at all malignant in its operation?” said the Babu, watching the throat-muscles quiver and jerk as Huneefa spoke with tongues. “It⁠—it is not likely that she has killed the boy? If so, I decline to be witness at the trial⁠ ⁠… What was the last hypothetical devil mentioned?”

“Babuji,” said Mahbub in the vernacular. “I have no regard for the devils of Hind, but the Sons of Eblis are far otherwise, and whether they be jumalee46 or jullalee47 they love not Kafirs.”

“Then you think I had better go?” said Hurree Babu, half rising. “They are, of course, dematerialized phenomena. Spencer says⁠—”

Huneefa’s crisis passed, as these things must, in a paroxysm of howling, with a touch of froth at the lips. She lay spent and motionless beside Kim, and the crazy voices ceased.

“Wah! That work is done. May the boy be better for it; and Huneefa is surely a mistress of dawut. Help haul her aside, Babu. Do not be afraid.”

“How am I to fear the absolutely nonexistent?” said Hurree Babu, talking English to reassure himself. It is an awful thing still to dread the magic that you contemptuously investigate⁠—to collect folklore for the Royal Society with a lively belief in all Powers of Darkness.

Mahbub chuckled. He had been out with Hurree on the Road ere now. “Let us finish the colouring,” said he. “The boy is well protected if⁠—if the Lords of the Air have ears to hear. I am a sufi,48 but when one can get blindsides of a woman, a stallion, or a devil, why go round to invite a kick? Set him upon the way, Babu, and see that old Red Hat does not lead him beyond our reach. I must get back to my horses.”

“All raight,” said Hurree Babu. “He is at present curious spectacle.”

About third cockcrow, Kim woke after a sleep of thousands of years. Huneefa, in her corner, snored heavily, but Mahbub was gone.

“I hope you were not frightened,” said an oily voice at his elbow. “I superintended entire operation, which was most interesting from ethnological point of view. It was high-class dawut.”

“Huh!” said Kim, recognizing Hurree Babu, who smiled ingratiatingly.

“And also I had honour to bring down from Lurgan your present costume. I am not in the habit offeecially of carrying such gauds to subordinates, but”⁠—he giggled⁠—“your case is noted as exceptional on the books. I hope Mr. Lurgan will note my action.”

Kim yawned and stretched himself. It was good to turn and twist within loose clothes once again.

“What is this?” He looked curiously at the heavy duffle-stuff loaded with the scents of the far North.

“Oho! That is inconspicuous dress of chela attached to service of lamaistic lama. Complete in every particular,” said Hurree Babu, rolling into the balcony to clean his teeth at a goglet. “I am of opeenion it is not your old gentleman’s precise releegion, but rather sub-variant of same. I have contributed rejected notes to Asiatic Quarterly Review on these subjects. Now it is curious that the old gentleman himself is totally devoid of releegiosity. He is not a dam’ particular.”

“Do you know him?”

Hurree Babu held up his hand to show he was engaged in the prescribed rites that accompany tooth-cleaning and such things among decently bred Bengalis. Then he recited in English an Arya-Somaj prayer of a theistical nature, and stuffed his mouth with pan and betel.

“Oah yes. I have met him several times at Benares, and also at Buddh Gaya, to interrogate him on releegious points and devil-worship. He is pure agnostic⁠—same as me.”

Huneefa stirred in her sleep, and Hurree Babu jumped nervously to the copper incense-burner, all black and discoloured in morning-light, rubbed a finger in the accumulated lampblack, and drew it diagonally across his face.

“Who has died in thy house?” asked Kim in the vernacular.

“None. But she may have the Evil Eye⁠—that sorceress,” the Babu replied.

“What dost thou do now, then?”

“I will set thee on thy way to Benares, if thou goest thither, and tell thee what must be known by Us.”

“I go. At what hour runs the te-rain?” He rose to his feet, looked round the desolate chamber and at the yellow-wax face of Huneefa as the low sun stole across the floor. “Is there money to be paid that witch?”

“No. She has charmed thee against all devils