Full Moon Read Online Free Page B

prosperous section, where a Hindu temple
loomed, its shadow lit by little lamps that looked choked by the hot
dark.
    Near there a police patrol stopped them: it was only three days since some
Moslems had butchered a sacred cow in that temple entrance, and there are
more ways than that of defiling Hindu temple steps. But both men shelved
passes, and the signature on them worked like magic. The police did not even
wait to watch which way they went.
    They took a rather wider street, where tired trees loomed against the
stars. Near the end of the street they made peculiar signals on the door of a
balconied house. There were beggars lurking in the shadows, as always near
such houses: some of them stirred like graveyard ghouls, observed for a
moment and then dozed again: they wasted no importunity on Pathan
night-errants. But there was one near the door, all eyes, amid smelly rags,
in shadow. He might be a Bauriah—one of the criminal tribe that shams
asceticism to impose on poetry. He spoke:
    “Protectors of the poor, nine who have entered this house gave me nothing.
The Allknowing seeth. The Allseeing knoweth. Alms! Alms!”
    “Allah is all around thee! Allah protect thee! Await His pleasure!”
answered the Pathan who had been addressed as Ismail. He gave him
nothing.
    The heavy door opened inward cautiously. The two passed in, in silence,
into darkness, standing still until the outer door was shut and bolted,at
their backs. Then an inner door opened suddenly into an electric lighted
hall, where a number of low-caste, well-dressed servants lurked around a
heavy wooden stairway, and on the tiles, beside a heavy mat, was a row of
slippers, some new, some old. but none of Bombay craftsmanship. Both Pathans
kicked off their footgear: he knew as Ismail tripped on the mat, uncovering a
pair of imported brown-and-white shoes that looked incongruous in that place,
but he appeared not to notice them.
    “See that I get my own again,” he ordered, scowling so fiercely that the
custodian of slippers cringed. Then he led up the dark teak stairway without
ceremony. But a drumstick, pulled by a cord from below, thumped on a gong up
above to announce him, and a door at the stair-head opened before he reached
it.
    A young Chinese girl, as insolent as fate, in a jacket and trousers of
blue-and-amber flowered silk, confronted him beneath a gilded dragon. Behind
her, down a long corridor, there was mandarin-palace
loot—jade—crystal —lacquer—gossamer
curtains—rose-hued light from hidden electric bulbs—a smell of
sandalwood— a haze of incense—weird, dim music. She herself
looked like an antique, sloe-eyed, with a black fringe straight across her
forehead. She was smoking a cigarette in a long jade tube. Her intensely
intelligent eyes —no other gesture—observant, indifferent,
self-assured— directed both men toward a doorway twenty steps along the
corridor on the left hand. She closed the stair-head door behind them and
followed, blowing smoke-rings.
    The Pathans swaggered through a clattering curtain of metallic beads into
a room part Indian, part Chinese, richly carpeted. There was a long, deep
divan. On the floor were heaped cushions of gorgeous colors. Opposite the
door a gilded dragon-screen concealed one corner: and beside that, on a
mandarin’s throne, sat the woman who owned the place. Her age might not be
guessed. Good humor and the full flood of physical health obeyed
intelligence, concealing all but what she chose should seem: and she was
lovelier to the eye than any cream-and-honey quadroon who ever maddened
Paris. Forbidden knowledge, that had not wearied her, laughed forth from dark
eyes and carmined lips. Eurasian, slim, so marvelously formed and subtly
strong that the ease of her poise suggested motion, she was dressed in
jet-black silk. The jacket, open at the throat, revealed a daffodil-yellow
lining and a throat that Rodin might have thumbed from creamy