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 "_Ash 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 anyone 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.
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