Page:Henry rideout--The siamese cat.djvu/201

 at his toilet—gallop free down the alley. "Back aboard ship," Owen had told himself after each failure; and as often, disgust at losing the sole reward for all their trouble and danger, goaded him to another last attempt. "Just once more," he was saying; as if fortune agreed, he saw Chao Phya caught up by the native in the dhoti.

Into which shop they disappeared, as he ran nearer, he could not be certain; for that end of the lane proved a small colony of Bengalis. But beneath the sign "Gobind Dass, Pinwallah of Calcutta," the slamming of a door gave him pause.

"I want that cat," he panted, to a dim figure that squatted by the pulsing coal of the hookah. "He's mine. Quick! Hand him over!"

Gobind Dass rose and salaamed in the bitter smoke. Smiling, fawning, he submitted to the Sahib that there was no cat. How should there