Carried away by enthusiasm, he volunteered to show Lurgan Sahib one evening how the disciples of a certain caste of fakir, old Lahore acquaintances, begged doles by the roadside; and what sort of language he would use to an Englishman, to a Punjabi farmer going to a fair, and to a woman without a veil. Lurgan Sahib laughed immensely, and begged Kim to stay as he was, immobile for half an hour - cross-legged, ash-smeared, and wild-eyed, in the back room. At the end of that time entered a hulking, obese Babu whose stockinged legs shook with fat, and Kim opened on him with a shower of wayside chaff. Lurgan Sahib - this annoyed Kim - watched the Babu and not the play.
`I think,' said the Babu heavily, lighting a cigarette, `I am of opeenion that it is most extraordinary and effeecient performance. Except that you had told me I should have opined that - that - that you were pulling my legs. How soon can he become approximately effeecient chain-man? Because then I shall indent for him.'
`That is what he must learn at Lucknow.'
`Then order him to be jolly-dam'quick. Good-night, Lurgan.' The Babu swung out with the gait of a bogged cow.
When they were telling over the day's list of visitors, Lurgan Sahib asked Kim who he thought the man might be.
`God knows!' said Kim cheerily. The tone might almost have deceived Mahbub Ali, but it failed entirely with the healer of sick pearls.
`That is true. God, He knows; but I wish to know what you think.'
Kim glanced sideways at his companion, whose eye had a way of compelling truth.
`I - I think he will want me when I come from the school, but' - confidentially, as Lurgan Sahib nodded approval `I do not understand how he can wear many dresses and talk many tongues.'
`Thou wilt understand many things later. He is a writer of tales for a certain Colonel. His honour is great only in Simla, and it is noticeable that he has no name, but only a number and a letter - that is a custom among us.'
`And is there a price upon his head too - as upon Mah - all the others?'
`Not yet; but if a boy rose up who is now sitting here and went - look, the door is open! - as far as a certain house with a red-painted veranda, behind that which was the old theatre in the Lower Bazar, and whispered through the shutters: `Hurree Chunder Mookerjee bore the bad news of last month', that boy might take away a belt full of rupees.'
`How many?' said Kim promptly.
`Five hundred - a thousand - as many as he might ask for.'
`Good. And for how long might such a boy live after the news was told?' He smiled merrily at Lurgan's Sahib's very beard.
`Ah! That is to be well thought of. Perhaps if he were very clever, he might live out the day - but not the night. By no means the night.'
`Then what is the Babu's pay if so much is put upon his head?'
`Eighty - perhaps a hundred - perhaps a hundred and fifty rupees; but the pay is the least part of the work. From time to time, God causes men to be born - and thou art one of them - who have a lust to