Full Moon Read Online Free Page A

reason.”
    “Have you spoken with Chetusingh?” Blair asked him.
    “Yes. But I haven’t his confidence since he fell into that woman’s
clutches. He used to ask my advice. Now, on the rare occasions when I see
him, he is either flippant or silent and, I think, resentful.”
    “Rajput pride is touchy stuff,” said Blair. “You may have flicked him on
the raw.” He passed his cigarette case to the bishop and their eyes met
straight for a moment. His were baffling, although the bishop’s were as easy
to understand as plain print: he was hiding nothing. “I will do what I can,”
he said after a moment, and there was nothing obscure about that remark. It
was a full stop.
    “Bless you,” said the bishop. He lighted the cigarette. The flame of the
match revealed embarrassment as he snatched at thought after thought for a
change of subject. “By the way,” he asked off-handedly, “any news about
Brigadier-General Frensham?”
    “No.”
    “They tell me it’s in headlines in the London papers.”
    “Yes.”
    “Three months missing, and no trace—no clues—is it another of
these insoluble mysteries?”
    “Perhaps,” said Blair. “Good night, sir.”
    “Good night. You forgive my confidences?”
    “Nothing to, forgive. I won’t discuss them.”
    “Sphinx! Well—I enjoyed the dinner immensely. Good night.”
    Blair walked to police headquarters, answering the salutes of constables
on duty with a nod and a stare that seemed to act like a tonic. They
stiffened. Responsibility in some way sat more valiantly on their shoulders
for having seen him. At headquarters. Indian subordinates stirred as a
tuning-fork answers a master-tone. He spoke to one dark-eyed veteran, who
stood at ease with the familiarity of friendship, and who nodded—deep
unto deep.
    “All has been ready,” the Indian answered, “since the chief telephoned at
eight-thirty.” Later, at nearly eleven o’clock, a Pathan walked out,
muttering, through the side-street entrance to the detention cells. It was an
unusual hour, but he could hardly be anything else than a released, prisoner.
He swaggered with the sulky-jaunty truculence, of a Pathan recovering lost
dignity, but he looked rather lost and feckless without a weapon. He thrust
his way between the passers-by, and took the street past the King Edward
Memorial Hospital toward the dera of the Kabuli Afghans, where the
horse-traders stay who come down from the North to sell fat-rumped ponies to
inexperienced British subalterns, and to spread through teeming slums and
credulous bazaars amazing tales of Northern Asia in arms. As he stood for a
moment, etched and shadowed by the naked electric light outside the dera entrance, a bearded Afghan, on his way out of the dera ,
paused and stared.
    “By God, what wonders next?” the Afghan exclaimed. “O Ismail, what
knife-feud brought thee hither? It was in Poona I last saw thee. Was the
Poona hasheesh too strong? Or did the Sellers of Delights neglect thee when
they had thy money? What now?”
    “Get thee back to Kabul, to thy wife!” Ismail retorted. He pushed past the
Afghan, swaggering through into the shadowy saddle- and spice-smell of the dera , vanishing along a corridor, under a stairway. A key that creaked
noisily turned behind him. Then the Afghan followed and stood listening, but
all he heard was the thump of a mattress or something like it against the
door on the inside. He could see nothing through the keyhole, so he went away
about. h!s business with the slippered, awkward gait of a middle-aged man who
has spent two thirds of his life on horse- or camel-back.
    Near midnight, he whom the Afghan had addressed as Ismail walked out of
the dera with another Pathan and the two walked solemnly along the
empty streets until they reached the dismal quarter where the mill-hands
sleep like corpses in the gutter; thence, on through even narrower, shuttered
and winding alley-ways toward a more