During the evening, three men had enjoyed all the pleasure of self-betrayal, and, from the place where he stood, unable ever to express anything of his own nature in easy speech, he wondered at them, with almost childlike astonishment.  Fitzgibbon, garrulous and loose of tongue, Atkins, precise and easily heated to wrath, conscious of some hidden fear that his dignity was not sufficiently respected, and Hartley, who had something to say, but who oversaid it, losing grip because of his very insistence.  Not one of them understood the value of reserve, and all alike strove to proclaim themselves in speech, not knowing that speech is an unsound vehicle for the unwary, and that personality disowns it as a medium.

Out of the mouth of a man comes his own condemnation:  let him prosper who remembers this truth.  The value of mystery, the value of silence, and above all things, the supreme value of a tongue that is a servant and not a master; Coryndon considered these values and wondered again at the garrulity of men.  Talk, the fluid, ineffectual force that fills the world with noise, that kills illusions and betrays every latent weakness; surely the high gods laughed when they put a tongue in the mouth of man.  He pinched his lips together and his eyes lighted with a passing smile of mirth.

“In Burma, there are no clappers to the bells,” he said to himself.  “Each man must strike hard before sound answers to his hand, and truly it is well to think of this at times.”  And, still amused by the fleeting memory of the evening, he went to bed and slept.

XV

IN WHICH THE FURTHERING OF A STRANGE COMRADESHIP IS CONTINUED, AND A BEGGAR FROM AMRITZAR CRIES IN THE STREETS OF MANGADONE

Trade was slack in the shop of Leh Shin, the Chinaman.  He had sat in the odorous gloom and done little else than feel his arms and rub his legs, for the greater part of the day.  His new acquaintance, Shiraz, had taken over possession of his goods, scrutinizing them with care before he did so, in case the brass pots had been exchanged in the night for inferior pots of smaller circumference, and in the end he had departed into his own rat-burrow, two doors up the street, where his friend the Burman was already established in a gloomy corner.  Leh Shin heard of this through his assistant, who had followed the coolie into the house, and investigated the premises as he stood about, with offers of assistance for his excuse.

“They have naught with them, save only a box that has no lock upon it, and also the boxes bought from thy shop, Leh Shin, but these are empty, for I looked closely, when they talked in the hither room, where they are minded to live.  Jewels, didst thou say?  Then that fox with the red beard has sold them and the money is stored in some place of security.”

“Ah, ah,” said the Chinaman, his eyes dull and fixed.

“And ‘ah, ah’ to thee,” retorted the assistant, who found the response lacking in interest.  “I would I knew where it was hidden.”