‘This man is cut and bruised all over.  I go about to cure him,’ Kim retorted.  ‘None interfered between thy babe and me.’

‘I am rebuked,’ said the Kamboh meekly.  ’I am thy debtor for the life of my son.  Thou art a miracle-worker — I know it.’

‘Show me the cuts.’  Kim bent over the Mahratta’s neck, his heart nearly choking him; for this was the Great Game with a vengeance.  ‘Now, tell thy tale swiftly, brother, while I say a charm.’

’I come from the South, where my work lay.  One of us they slew by the roadside.  Hast thou heard?’ Kim shook his head.  He, of course, knew nothing of E’s predecessor, slain down South in the habit of an Arab trader.  ’Having found a certain letter which I was sent to seek, I came away.  I escaped from the city and ran to Mhow.  So sure was I that none knew, I did not change my face.  At Mhow a woman brought charge against me of theft of jewellery in that city which I had left.  Then I saw the cry was out against me.  I ran from Mhow by night, bribing the police, who had been bribed to hand me over without question to my enemies in the South.  Then I lay in old Chitor city a week, a penitent in a temple, but I could not get rid of the letter which was my charge.  I buried it under the Queen’s Stone, at Chitor, in the place known to us all.’

Kim did not know, but not for worlds would he have broken the thread.

‘At Chitor, look you, I was all in Kings’ country; for Kotah to the east is beyond the Queen’s law, and east again lie Jaipur and Gwalior.  Neither love spies, and there is no justice.  I was hunted like a wet jackal; but I broke through at Bandakui, where I heard there was a charge against me of murder in the city I had left — of the murder of a boy.  They have both the corpse and the witnesses waiting.’

‘But cannot the Government protect?’

’We of the Game are beyond protection.  If we die, we die.  Our names are blotted from the book.  That is all.  At Bandakui, where lives one of Us, I thought to slip the scent by changing my face, and so made me a Mahratta.  Then I came to Agra, and would have turned back to Chitor to recover the letter.  So sure I was I had slipped them.  Therefore I did not send a tar [telegram] to any one saying where the letter lay.  I wished the credit of it all.’

Kim nodded.  He understood that feeling well.

’But at Agra, walking in the streets, a man cried a debt against me, and approaching with many witnesses, would hale me to the courts then and there.  Oh, they are clever in the South!  He recognized me as his agent for cotton.  May he burn in Hell for it!’

‘And wast thou?’

’O fool!  I was the man they sought for the matter of the letter!  I ran into the Fleshers’ Ward and came out by the House of the Jew, who feared a riot and pushed me forth.  I came afoot to Somna Road — I had only money for my tikkut to Delhi — and there, while I lay in a ditch with a fever, one sprang out of the bushes and beat me and cut me and searched me from head to foot.  Within earshot of the te-rain it was!’