’..........I will lay a plot for their ruin!   O Prophet, bear with
the unbelievers.   Let them alone awhile!’  Huneefa’s face, turned to
the northward, worked horribly, and it was as though voices from the
ceiling answered her.

Hurree Babu returned to his note-book, balanced on the window-sill, but his hand shook.  Huneefa, in some sort of drugged ecstasy, wrenched herself to and fro as she sat cross-legged by Kim’s still head, and called upon devil after devil, in the ancient order of the ritual, binding them to avoid the boy’s every action.

’With Him are the keys of the Secret Things!  None knoweth them besides Himself He knoweth that which is in the dry land and in the sea!’ Again broke out the unearthly whistling responses.

‘I — I apprehend it is not at all malignant in its operation?’ said the Babu, watching the throat-muscles quiver and jerk as Huneefa spoke with tongues.  ’It — it is not likely that she has killed the boy?  If so, I decline to be witness at the trial .....What was the last hypothetical devil mentioned?’

‘Babuji,’ said Mahbub in the vernacular.  ’I have no regard for the devils of Hind, but the Sons of Eblis are far otherwise, and whether they be jumalee [well-affected] or jullalee [terrible) they love not Kafirs.’

‘Then you think I had better go?’ said Hurree Babu, half rising.  ’They are, of course, dematerialized phenomena.  Spencer says ’

Huneefa’s crisis passed, as these things must, in a paroxysm of howling, with a touch of froth at the lips.  She lay spent and motionless beside Kim, and the crazy voices ceased.

’Wah!  That work is done.  May the boy be better for it; and Huneefa is surely a mistress of dawut.  Help haul her aside, Babu.  Do not be afraid.’

‘How am I to fear the absolutely non-existent?’ said Hurree Babu, talking English to reassure himself.  It is an awful thing still to dread the magic that you contemptuously investigate -to collect folk-lore for the Royal Society with a lively belief in all Powers of Darkness.

Mahbub chuckled.  He had been out with Hurree on the Road ere now.  ‘Let us finish the colouring,’ said he.  ’The boy is well protected if — if the Lords of the Air have ears to hear.  I am a Sufi [free-thinker), but when one can get blind-sides of a woman, a stallion, or a devil, why go round to invite a kick?  Set him upon the way, Babu, and see that old Red Hat does not lead him beyond our reach.  I must get back to my horses.’

‘All raight,’ said Hurree Babu.  ’He is at present curious spectacle.’

About third cockcrow, Kim woke after a sleep of thousands of years.  Huneefa, in her corner, snored heavily, but Mahbub was gone.

‘I hope you were not frightened,’ said an oily voice at his elbow.  ’I superintended entire operation, which was most interesting from ethnological point of view.  It was high-class dawut.’

‘Huh!’ said Kim, recognizing Hurree Babu, who smiled ingratiatingly.