Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/63

Rh 'Too late and too dark. Be comforted. Think how far thou art on the road—an hundred kos from Lahore already.' 'Yea—and farther from my monastery. Alas! It is a great and terrible world.'

Kim slipped out and away, as inconspicuous a figure as ever carried his own and a few score thousand other folks' fate slung round his neck. Mahbub Ali's directions left him little doubt of the house in which his Englishman lived; and a groom, bringing a dog-cart home from the Club, made him quite sure. It remained only to identify his man, and Kim slipped through the garden hedge and hid in a clump of plumed grass close to the verandah. The house blazed with lights, and servants moved about tables dressed with flowers, glass, and silver. Presently forth came an Englishman, dressed in black and white, humming a tune. It was too dark to see his face, so Kim tried an old experiment.

'Protector of the Poor!'

The man wheeled toward the voice.

'Mahbub Ali says'

'Hah! What says Mahbub Ali?' He made no attempt to look for the speaker, and that showed Kim that the man knew.

'The pedigree of the White Stallion is fully established.'

'What proof is there?' The Englishman switched at the rose-hedge in the side of the drive.

'Mahbub Ali has given me this proof.' Kim flipped the wad of folded paper into the air, and it fell on the path beside the man, who put his foot on it as a gardener came round the corner. When the man passed he picked it up, dropped a rupee,—Kim could hear the clink,—and strode into the house, never looking round. Swiftly Kim took up the money; but for all his training, he was Irish enough by birth to reckon silver the least part of any game.