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This lets you know as much as is necessary of the four principal
tenants in the house of Suddhoo. Then there is Me, of course; but
I
am only the chorus that comes in at the end to explain things. So I
do not count.

Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pretended to cut seals was
the
cleverest of them all--Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie--except
Janoo. She was also beautiful, but that was her own affair.

Suddhoo's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old
Suddhoo
was troubled. The seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo's anxiety and
made capital out of it. He was abreast of the times. He got a
friend in Peshawar to telegraph daily accounts of the son's health.

And here the story begins.

Suddhoo's cousin's son told me, one evening, that Suddhoo wanted
to
see me; that he was too old and feeble to come personally, and that
I should be conferring an everlasting honor on the House of
Suddhoo
if I went to him. I went; but I think, seeing how well-off Suddhoo
was then, that he might have sent something better than an ekka,
which jolted fearfully, to haul out a future Lieutenant-Governor to
the City on a muggy April evening. The ekka did not run quickly.

It was full dark when we pulled up opposite the door of Ranjit
Singh's Tomb near the main gate of the Fort. Here was Suddhoo
and
he said that, by reason of my condescension, it was absolutely
certain that I should become a Lieutenant-Governor while my hair
was
yet black. Then we talked about the weather and the state of my
health, and the wheat crops, for fifteen minutes, in the Huzuri
Bagh, under the stars.

Suddhoo came to the point at last. He said that Janoo had told him
that there was an order of the Sirkar against magic, because it was
feared that magic might one day kill the Empress of India. I didn't
know anything about the state of the law; but I fancied that
something interesting was going to happen. I said that so far from
magic being discouraged by the Government it was highly
commended.

The greatest officials of the State practiced it themselves. (If
the Financial Statement isn't magic, I don't know what is.) Then,
to encourage him further, I said that, if there was any jadoo afoot,
I had not the least objection to giving it my countenance and
sanction, and to seeing that it was clean jadoo--white magic, as
distinguished from the unclean jadoo which kills folk. It took a
long time before Suddhoo admitted that this was just what he had
asked me to come for. Then he told me, in jerks and quavers, that
the man who said he cut seals was a sorcerer of the cleanest kind;
that every day he gave Suddhoo news of the sick son in Peshawar
more
quickly than the lightning could fly, and that this news was always
corroborated by the letters. Further, that he had told Suddhoo how
a great danger was threatening his son, which could be removed by
clean jadoo; and, of course, heavy payment. I began to see how
the
land lay, and told Suddhoo that I also understood a little jadoo in
the Western line, and would go to his house to see that everything
was done decently and in order. We set off together; and on the
way
Suddhoo told me he had paid the seal-cutter between one hundred
and
two hundred rupees already; and the jadoo of that night would cost
two hundred more. Which was cheap, he said, considering the
greatness of his son's danger; but I do not think he meant it.

The lights were all cloaked in the front of the house when we
arrived. I could hear awful noises from behind the seal-cutter's
shop-front, as if some one were groaning his soul out. Suddhoo
shook all over, and while we groped our way upstairs told me that
the jadoo had begun. Janoo and Azizun met us at the stair-head,
and
told us that the jadoo-work was coming off in their rooms, because
there was more space there. Janoo is a lady of a freethinking turn
of mind. She whispered that the jadoo was an invention to get
money
out of Suddhoo, and that the seal-cutter would go to a hot place
when he died. Suddhoo was nearly crying with fear and old age.
He
kept walking up and down the room in the half light, repeating his
son's name over and over again, and asking Azizun if the
seal-cutter
ought not to make a reduction in the case of his own landlord.

Janoo pulled me over to the shadow in the recess of the carved
bow-
windows. The boards were up, and the rooms were only lit by one
tiny lamp. There was no chance of my being seen if I stayed still.

Presently, the groans below ceased, and we heard steps on the
staircase. That was the seal-cutter. He stopped outside the door
as the terrier barked and Azizun fumbled at the chain, and he told
Suddhoo to blow out the lamp. This left the place in jet darkness,
except for the red glow from the two huqas that belonged to Janoo
and Azizun. The seal-cutter came in, and I heard Suddhoo throw
himself down on the floor and groan. Azizun caught her breath,
and
Janoo backed to one of the beds with a shudder. There was a clink
of something metallic, and then shot up a pale blue-green flame
near
the ground. The light was just enough to show Azizun, pressed
against one corner of the room with the terrier between her knees;
Janoo, with her hands clasped, leaning forward as she sat on the
bed; Suddhoo, face down, quivering, and the seal-cutter.

I hope I may never see another man like that seal-cutter. He was
stripped to the waist, with a wreath of white jasmine as thick as my
wrist round his forehead, a salmon-colored loin-cloth round his
middle, and a steel bangle on each ankle. This was not awe-
inspiring. It was the face of the man that turned me cold. It was
blue-gray in the first place. In the second, the eyes were rolled
back till you could only see the whites of them; and, in the third,
the face was the face of a demon--a ghoul--anything you please
except of the sleek, oily old ruffian who sat in the day-time over
his turning-lathe downstairs. He was lying on his stomach, with
his
arms turned and crossed behind him, as if he had been thrown
down
pinioned. His head and neck were the only parts of him off the
floor. They were nearly at right angles to the body, like the head
of a cobra at spring. It was ghastly. In the centre of the room,
on the bare earth floor, stood a big, deep, brass basin, with a pale
blue-green light floating in the centre like a night-light. Round
that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times. How
he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple along his
spine and fall smooth again; but I could not see any other motion.

The head seemed the only thing alive about him, except that slow
curl and uncurl of the laboring back-muscles. Janoo from the bed
was breathing seventy to the minute; Azizun held her hands before
her eyes; and old Suddhoo, fingering at the dirt that had got into
his white beard, was crying to himself. The horror of it was that
the creeping, crawly thing made no sound--only crawled! And,
remember, this lasted for ten minutes, while the terrier whined,
and
Azizun shuddered, and Janoo gasped, and Suddhoo cried.

I felt the hair lift at the back of my head, and my heart thump like
a thermantidote paddle. Luckily, the seal-cutter betrayed himself
by his most impressive trick and made me calm again. After he
had
finished that unspeakable triple crawl, he stretched his head away
from the floor as high as he could, and sent out a jet of fire from
his nostrils. Now, I knew how fire-spouting is done--I can do it
myself--so I felt at ease. The business was a fraud. If he had
only kept to that crawl without trying to raise the effect, goodness
knows what I might not have thought. Both the girls shrieked at
the
jet of fire and the head dropped, chin down, on the floor with a
thud; the whole body lying then like a corpse with its arms trussed.

There was a pause of five full minutes after this, and the blue-
green flame died down. Janoo stooped to settle one of her anklets,
while Azizun turned her face to the wall and took the terrier in her
arms. Suddhoo put out an arm mechanically to Janoo's huqa, and
she
slid it across the floor with her foot. Directly above the body and
on the wall, were a couple of flaming portraits, in stamped paper
frames, of the Queen and the Prince of Wales. They looked down
on
the performance, and, to my thinking, seemed to heighten the
grotesqueness of it all.

Just when the silence was getting unendurable, the body turned
over
and rolled away from the basin to the side of the room, where it lay
stomach up. There was a faint "plop" from the basin--exactly like
the noise a fish makes when it takes a fly--and the green light in
the centre revived.

I looked at the basin, and saw, bobbing in the water, the dried,
shrivelled, black head of a native baby--open eyes, open mouth and
shaved scalp. It was worse, being so very sudden, than the
crawling
exhibition. We had no time to say anything before it began to
speak.

Read Poe's account of the voice that came from the mesmerized
dying
man, and you will realize less than one-half of the horror of that
head's voice.

There was an interval of a second or two between each word, and a
sort of "ring, ring, ring," in the note of the voice, like the
timbre of a bell. It pealed slowly, as if talking to itself, for
several minutes before I got rid of my cold sweat. Then the
blessed
solution struck me. I looked at the body lying near the doorway,
and saw, just where the hollow of the throat joins on the shoulders,
a muscle that had nothing to do with any man's regular breathing,
twitching away steadily. The whole thing was a careful
reproduction
of the Egyptian teraphin that one read about sometimes and the
voice
was as clever and as appalling a piece of ventriloquism as one
could
wish to hear. All this time the head was "lip-lip-lapping" against
the side of the basin, and speaking. It told Suddhoo, on his face
again whining, of his son's illness and of the state of the illness
up to the evening of that very night. I always shall respect the
seal-cutter for keeping so faithfully to the time of the Peshawar
telegrams. It went on to say that skilled doctors were night and
day watching over the man's life; and that he would eventually
recover if the fee to the potent sorcerer, whose servant was the
head in the basin, were doubled.

Here the mistake from the artistic point of view came in. To ask
for twice your stipulated fee in a voice that Lazarus might have
used when he rose from the dead, is absurd. Janoo, who is really a
woman of masculine intellect, saw this as quickly as I did. I heard
her say "Asli nahin! Fareib!" scornfully under her breath; and just
as she said so, the light in the basin died out, the head stopped
talking, and we heard the room door creak on its hinges. Then
Janoo
struck a match, lit the lamp, and we saw that head, basin, and seal-
cutter were gone. Suddhoo was wringing his hands and explaining
to
any one who cared to listen, that, if his chances of eternal
salvation depended on it, he could not raise another two hundred
rupees. Azizun was nearly in hysterics in the corner; while Janoo
sat down composedly on one of the beds to discuss the
probabilities
of the whole thing being a bunao, or "make-up."

I explained as much as I knew of the seal-cutter's way of jadoo; but
her argument was much more simple:--"The magic that is always
demanding gifts is no true magic," said she. "My mother told me
that the only potent love-spells are those which are told you for
love. This seal-cutter man is a liar and a devil. I dare not tell,
do anything, or get anything done, because I am in debt to
Bhagwan
Dass the bunnia for two gold rings and a heavy anklet. I must get
my food from his shop. The seal-cutter is the friend of Bhagwan
Dass, and he would poison my food. A fool's jadoo has been going
on
for ten days, and has cost Suddhoo many rupees each night. The
seal-cutter used black hens and lemons and mantras before. He
never
showed us anything like this till to-night. Azizun is a fool, and
will be a pur dahnashin soon. Suddhoo has lost his strength and
his
wits. See now! I had hoped to get from Suddhoo many rupees
while
he lived, and many more after his death; and behold, he is
spending
everything on that offspring of a devil and a she-ass, the seal-
cutter!"

Here I said:--"But what induced Suddhoo to drag me into the
business? Of course I can speak to the seal-cutter, and he shall
refund. The whole thing is child's talk--shame--and senseless."

"Suddhoo IS an old child," said Janoo. "He has lived on the roofs
these seventy years and is as senseless as a milch-goat. He brought
you here to assure himself that he was not breaking any law of the
Sirkar, whose salt he ate many years ago. He worships the dust off
the feet of the seal-cutter, and that cow-devourer has forbidden
him
to go and see his son. What does Suddhoo know of your laws or
the
lightning-post? I have to watch his money going day by day to that
lying beast below."

Janoo stamped her foot on the floor and nearly cried with
vexation;
while Suddhoo was whimpering under a blanket in the corner, and
Azizun was trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth.

. . . . . . . . .

Now the case stands thus. Unthinkingly, I have laid myself open
to
the charge of aiding and abetting the seal-cutter in obtaining
money
under false pretences, which is forbidden by Section 420 of the
Indian Penal Code. I am helpless in the matter for these reasons, I
cannot inform the Police. What witnesses would support my
statements? Janoo refuses flatly, Azizun is a veiled woman
somewhere near Bareilly--lost in this big India of ours. I cannot
again take the law into my own hands, and speak to the seal-cutter;
for certain am I that, not only would Suddhoo disbelieve me, but
this step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is bound hand
and
foot by her debt to the bunnia. Suddhoo is an old dotard; and
whenever we meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the Sirkar rather
patronizes the Black Art than otherwise. His son is well now; but
Suddhoo is completely under the influence of the seal-cutter, by
whose advice he regulates the affairs of his life. Janoo watches
daily the money that she hoped to wheedle out of Suddhoo taken
by
the seal-cutter, and becomes daily more furious and sullen.

She will never tell, because she dare not; but, unless something
happens to prevent her, I am afraid that the seal-cutter will die of
cholera--the white arsenic kind--about the middle of May. And
thus
I shall have to be privy to a murder in the House of Suddhoo.

HIS WEDDED WIFE.

Cry "Murder!" in the market-place, and each
Will turn upon his neighbor anxious eyes
That ask:--"Art thou the man?" We hunted Cain,
Some centuries ago, across the world,
That bred the fear our own misdeeds maintain
To-day.

Vibart's Moralities.

Shakespeare says something about worms, or it may be giants or
beetles, turning if you tread on them too severely. The safest plan
is never to tread on a worm--not even on the last new subaltern
from
Home, with his buttons hardly out of their tissue paper, and the red
of sappy English beef in his cheeks. This is the story of the worm
that turned. For the sake of brevity, we will call Henry Augustus
Ramsay Faizanne, "The Worm," although he really was an
exceedingly
pretty boy, without a hair on his face, and with a waist like a
girl's when he came out to the Second "Shikarris" and was made
unhappy in several ways. The "Shikarris" are a high-caste
regiment,
and you must be able to do things well--play a banjo or ride more
than a little, or sing, or act--to get on with them.

The Worm did nothing except fall off his pony, and knock chips
out
of gate-posts with his trap. Even that became monotonous after a
time. He objected to whist, cut the cloth at billiards, sang out of
tune, kept very much to himself, and wrote to his Mamma and
sisters
at Home. Four of these five things were vices which the
"Shikarris"
objected to and set themselves to eradicate. Every one knows how
subalterns are, by brother subalterns, softened and not permitted to
be ferocious. It is good and wholesome, and does no one any
harm,
unless tempers are lost; and then there is trouble. There was a man
once--but that is another story.

The "Shikarris" shikarred The Worm very much, and he bore
everything
without winking. He was so good and so anxious to learn, and
flushed so pink, that his education was cut short, and he was left
to his own devices by every one except the Senior Subaltern, who
continued to make life a burden to The Worm. The Senior
Subaltern
meant no harm; but his chaff was coarse, and he didn't quite
understand where to stop. He had been waiting too long for his
company; and that always sours a man. Also he was in love,
which
made him worse.

One day, after he had borrowed The Worm's trap for a lady who
never
existed, had used it himself all the afternoon, had sent a note to
The Worm purporting to come from the lady, and was telling the
Mess
all about it, The Worm rose in his place and said, in his quiet,
ladylike voice: "That was a very pretty sell; but I'll lay you a
month's pay to a month's pay when you get your step, that I work a
sell on you that you'll remember for the rest of your days, and the
Regiment after you when you're dead or broke." The Worm wasn't
angry in the least, and the rest of the Mess shouted. Then the
Senior Subaltern looked at The Worm from the boots upwards,
and down
again, and said, "Done, Baby." The Worm took the rest of the
Mess
to witness that the bet had been taken, and retired into a book with
a sweet smile.

Two months passed, and the Senior Subaltern still educated The
Worm,
who began to move about a little more as the hot weather came on.
I
have said that the Senior Subaltern was in love. The curious thing
is that a girl was in love with the Senior Subaltern. Though the
Colonel said awful things, and the Majors snorted, and married
Captains looked unutterable wisdom, and the juniors scoffed,
those
two were engaged.

The Senior Subaltern was so pleased with getting his Company
and his
acceptance at the same time that he forgot to bother The Worm.
The
girl was a pretty girl, and had money of her own. She does not
come
into this story at all.

One night, at the beginning of the hot weather, all the Mess, except
The Worm, who had gone to his own room to write Home letters,
were
sitting on the platform outside the Mess House. The Band had
finished playing, but no one wanted to go in. And the Captains'

wives were there also. The folly of a man in love is unlimited.

The Senior Subaltern had been holding forth on the merits of the
girl he was engaged to, and the ladies were purring approval, while
the men yawned, when there was a rustle of skirts in the dark, and
a
tired, faint voice lifted itself:

"Where's my husband?"

I do not wish in the least to reflect on the morality of the
"Shikarris;" but it is on record that four men jumped up as if they
had been shot. Three of them were married men. Perhaps they
were
afraid that their wives had come from Home unbeknownst. The
fourth
said that he had acted on the impulse of the moment. He
explained
this afterwards.

Then the voice cried:--"Oh, Lionel!" Lionel was the Senior
Subaltern's name. A woman came into the little circle of light by
the candles on the peg-tables, stretching out her hands to the dark
where the Senior Subaltern was, and sobbing. We rose to our feet,
feeling that things were going to happen and ready to believe the
worst. In this bad, small world of ours, one knows so little of the
life of the next man--which, after all, is entirely his own concern--
that one is not surprised when a crash comes. Anything might turn
up any day for any one. Perhaps the Senior Subaltern had been
trapped in his youth. Men are crippled that way occasionally. We
didn't know; we wanted to hear; and the Captains' wives were as
anxious as we. If he HAD been trapped, he was to be excused; for
the woman from nowhere, in the dusty shoes, and gray travelling
dress, was very lovely, with black hair and great eyes full of
tears. She was tall, with a fine figure, and her voice had a
running sob in it pitiful to hear. As soon as the Senior Subaltern
stood up, she threw her arms round his neck, and called him "my
darling," and said she could not bear waiting alone in England, and
his letters were so short and cold, and she was his to the end of
the world, and would he forgive her. This did not sound quite like
a lady's way of speaking. It was too demonstrative.

Things seemed black indeed, and the Captains' wives peered under
their eyebrows at the Senior Subaltern, and the Colonel's face set
like the Day of Judgment framed in gray bristles, and no one spoke
for a while.

Next the Colonel said, very shortly:--"Well, Sir?" and the woman
sobbed afresh. The Senior Subaltern was half choked with the
arms
round his neck, but he gasped out:--"It's a d----d lie! I never had a
wife in my life!" "Don't swear," said the Colonel. "Come into the
Mess. We must sift this clear somehow," and he sighed to himself,
for he believed in his "Shikarris," did the Colonel.

We trooped into the ante-room, under the full lights, and there we
saw how beautiful the woman was. She stood up in the middle of
us
all, sometimes choking with crying, then hard and proud, and then
holding out her arms to the Senior Subaltern. It was like the
fourth act of a tragedy. She told us how the Senior Subaltern had
married her when he was Home on leave eighteen months before;
and
she seemed to know all that we knew, and more too, of his people
and
his past life. He was white and ashy gray, trying now and again to
break into the torrent of her words; and we, noting how lovely she
was and what a criminal he looked, esteemed him a beast of the
worst
kind. We felt sorry for him, though.

I shall never forget the indictment of the Senior Subaltern by his
wife. Nor will he. It was so sudden, rushing out of the dark,
unannounced, into our dull lives. The Captains' wives stood back;
but their eyes were alight, and you could see that they had already
convicted and sentenced the Senior Subaltern. The Colonel
seemed
five years older. One Major was shading his eyes with his hand
and
watching the woman from underneath it. Another was chewing his
moustache and smiling quietly as if he were witnessing a play.
Full
in the open space in the centre, by the whist-tables, the Senior
Subaltern's terrier was hunting for fleas. I remember all this as
clearly as though a photograph were in my hand. I remember the
look
of horror on the Senior Subaltern's face. It was rather like seeing
a man hanged; but much more interesting. Finally, the woman
wound
up by saying that the Senior Subaltern carried a double F. M. in
tattoo on his left shoulder. We all knew that, and to our innocent
minds it seemed to clinch the matter. But one of the Bachelor
Majors said very politely:--"I presume that your marriage
certificate would be more to the purpose?"

That roused the woman. She stood up and sneered at the Senior
Subaltern for a cur, and abused the Major and the Colonel and all
the rest. Then she wept, and then she pulled a paper from her
breast, saying imperially:--"Take that! And let my husband--my
lawfully wedded husband--read it aloud--if he dare!"

There was a hush, and the men looked into each other's eyes as the
Senior Subaltern came forward in a dazed and dizzy way, and took
the
paper. We were wondering as we stared, whether there was
anything
against any one of us that might turn up later on. The Senior
Subaltern's throat was dry; but, as he ran his eye over the paper,
he broke out into a hoarse cackle of relief, and said to the
woman:--
"You young blackguard!"

But the woman had fled through a door, and on the paper was
written:--"This is to certify that I, The Worm, have paid in full my
debts to the Senior Subaltern, and, further, that the Senior
Subaltern is my debtor, by agreement on the 23d of February, as by
the Mess attested, to the extent of one month's Captain's pay, in
the lawful currency of the India Empire."

Then a deputation set off for The Worm's quarters and found him,
betwixt and between, unlacing his stays, with the hat, wig, serge
dress, etc., on the bed. He came over as he was, and the
"Shikarris" shouted till the Gunners' Mess sent over to know if they
might have a share of the fun. I think we were all, except the
Colonel and the Senior Subaltern, a little disappointed that the
scandal had come to nothing. But that is human nature. There
could
be no two words about The Worm's acting. It leaned as near to a
nasty tragedy as anything this side of a joke can. When most of
the
Subalterns sat upon him with sofa-cushions to find out why he had
not said that acting was his strong point, he answered very
quietly:--"I don't think you ever asked me. I used to act at Home
with my sisters." But no acting with girls could account for The
Worm's display that night. Personally, I think it was in bad taste.

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