As he drummed his heels against Zam-Zammah he turned now and again from his king-of-the-castle game with little Chota Lal and Abdullah the sweetmeat-seller’s son, to make a rude remark to the native policeman on guard over rows of shoes at the Museum door.  The big Punjabi grinned tolerantly:  he knew Kim of old.  So did the water-carrier, sluicing water on the dry road from his goat-skin bag.  So did Jawahir Singh, the Museum carpenter, bent over new packing-cases.  So did everybody in sight except the peasants from the country, hurrying up to the Wonder House to view the things that men made in their own province and elsewhere.  The Museum was given up to Indian arts and manufactures, and anybody who sought wisdom could ask the Curator to explain.

‘Off!  Off!  Let me up!’ cried Abdullah, climbing up Zam-Zammah’s wheel.

’Thy father was a pastry-cook, Thy mother stole the ghi” sang Kim.  ‘All Mussalmans fell off Zam-Zammah long ago!’

‘Let me up!’ shrilled little Chota Lal in his gilt-embroidered cap.  His father was worth perhaps half a million sterling, but India is the only democratic land in the world.

’The Hindus fell off Zam-Zammah too.  The Mussalmans pushed them off.  Thy father was a pastry-cook -’

He stopped; for there shuffled round the corner, from the roaring Motee Bazar, such a man as Kim, who thought he knew all castes, had never seen.  He was nearly six feet high, dressed in fold upon fold of dingy stuff like horse-blanketing, and not one fold of it could Kim refer to any known trade or profession.  At his belt hung a long open-work iron pencase and a wooden rosary such as holy men wear.  On his head was a gigantic sort of tam-o’-shanter.  His face was yellow and wrinkled, like that of Fook Shing, the Chinese bootmaker in the bazar.  His eyes turned up at the corners and looked like little slits of onyx.

‘Who is that?’ said Kim to his companions.

‘Perhaps it is a man,’ said Abdullah, finger in mouth, staring.

‘Without doubt.’ returned Kim; ’but he is no man of India that I have ever seen.’

‘A priest, perhaps,’ said Chota Lal, spying the rosary.  ’See!  He goes into the Wonder House!’

‘Nay, nay,’ said the policeman, shaking his head.  ’I do not understand your talk.’  The constable spoke Punjabi.  ’O Friend of all the World, what does he say?’

‘Send him hither,’ said Kim, dropping from Zam-Zammah, flourishing his bare heels.  ’He is a foreigner, and thou art a buffalo.’

The man turned helplessly and drifted towards the boys.  He was old, and his woollen gaberdine still reeked of the stinking artemisia of the mountain passes.

‘O Children, what is that big house?’ he said in very fair Urdu.

‘The Ajaib-Gher, the Wonder House!’ Kim gave him no title — such as Lala or Mian.  He could not divine the man’s creed.

‘Ah!  The Wonder House!  Can any enter?’