Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/206

 Decidedly,” went on Koom Khan, “if I were thou, I would cut the saheb's throat.”

He said it with simple, sincere ruthlessness, undisguised, but neither vindictive nor cruel; rather with something which proved beyond all doubt that he was of the Orient, which showed, in a way, how an Asian can hold to the blind belief of his personal will, conviction, or even whim against the opinions, the customs, the saving prejudices, and the codified laws of the rest of the world; something of that profoundly sincere and honest stubbornness, that trust in himself against all odds, which, on the one hand, can turn the leader of a band of nomad cut-throats—an Attila or a Genghiz Khan, a Nadir Shah or a Peshwah Saheb—into a scourge of mankind, and, on the other hand, can change an ordinary peasant or fisherman into a prophet of the faith.

Both ruthlessness, lawlessness, serene contempt and negligence of existing conditions—working for the good or for the bad, as the case may be.

“Kill him, soul of my soul,” Koom Khan repeated, “and let the rest be as Allah willeth.”

The other puffed at his pipe. Of old, he knew Koom Khan; knew, thus, that he was chary of speech and that the blood-thirsty advice was not the result of a sudden racial or cultural animosity against the saheb-log. There must be another, more direct cause.

Finally he decided to ask a frank question—frank, that is, according to the limitations of the Oriental mind.