boy is good for nothing,” declared Jinnah Jad, indicating Chandra. “So I make him go for good. You watch.”
Before Chandra could dart away, Jinnah Jad grabbed him and thrust him into the basket, which was roundish and bulging at the sides. Jinnah Jad threw a cloth over the boy’s head and shoulders and suddenly, Chandra’s form collapsed beneath it. Triumphantly, Jinnah Jad jumped into the basket and trampled the cloth there.
Chandra had vanished from the basket, and to prove it, Jinnah Jad not only stamped his feet all around, he squatted down in the basket, filling it with his fat form, while he clucked like a happy hen seated on a nest. Then, emerging from the basket, Jinnah Jad snatched up a long sword, shouting, “I show you boy is really gone!” With that, he stabbed the sword through one side of the basket and out the other side.
While the crowd gasped, Jinnah Jad repeated the thrust again and again, one direction, then another. The jadoo wallah had worked himself into a frenzy when the men who owned the basket stopped him and babbled in a native dialect.
“They know the boy is gone,” translated Jinnah Jad, for the benefit of the crowd. “They do not want me to spoil their basket.” He waved to the basket and told the two bearers, “All right, take it.”
Eagerly, the two natives piled their bundles into the basket, thrust the pole through its handles and hoisted it on their shoulders. By then, Jinnah Jad was in the midst of another miracle. He was pouring rice from a bowl into a square teakwood box that had a glass front, while he stated:
“One time, in India, there was great famine, with people everywhere needing rice. So a great yogi in the Himalayas fill a box with rice like this – ”
The throng was hushed, for Calcutta itself had suffered from great famines, even in comparatively recent years.
“So by magic, he sent rice everywhere, to everybody!” Jinnah Jad gave the box a flip. Instantly, the rice was gone from behind the glass and he was opening the box wide, showing it to be totally empty. “Yes, to everybody! To you – to you – to you.” Jinnah Jad was jabbing his finger from person to person. “So look in your pockets and find it! You, sahib – you, babu – find rice!”
People were bringing fistfuls of rice from their pockets. Biff smiled, thinking these were friends of the jadoo wallah, until he saw total astonishment on faces close by. Those included Li’s, for a dozen feet away, the Hawaiian youth was bringing out two handfuls of the tiny grains from each coat pocket. Still skeptical, Biff thrust his hands into his own pockets and brought them out – containing rice!
The deeper he dug, the more he found. Biff was almost ready to accept the jadoo of Jinnah Jad as real indeed, when he brought out something else, a crinkly wad of paper, with more rice inside it. Puzzled, Biff pulled it open and found it to be a penciled note that stated:
Follow men who go with basket. Go alone. Tell no one where you go. Important.
None of the other spectators had found a note like that, for they were simply staring at the rice, while Jinnah Jad moved through the crowd, taking up a new collection in person. Biff looked for the basket bearers and saw them starting slowly away, as if they had waited just long enough for Biff to find the note.
So Biff started after them, working his way through the crowd so that he went past Li. Quickly, Biff muttered:
“Don’t look now. Just find Kamuka and wait for me here. I’ll be back – soon.”
III
The Rajah’s Ruby
By the time the basket carriers had turned a few corners, Biff was not so sure that he would rejoin his companions as soon as he expected. The lazily moving pair suddenly stepped up their pace and the narrow, poorly paved streets looked so much alike that Biff had no idea where they were leading him.
The streets were flanked by chawls or native houses that were scarcely more than hovels. From the suspicious glances that Biff received, and from the way the buildings encroached upon the narrow alleys, he felt as though a whole sea of humanity was closing in upon him. He realized that he would need a compass to find his way back. There was no telling by the sun, which was out of sight even over the low roofs, although the day was becoming so hot that Biff wished he were back in a rickshaw instead of footing it through these dismal, dirty streets.
Then they reached a better section, where the buildings were higher, with occasional shop fronts. There, the basket bearers slackened pace and turned into a passage beneath an archway that bore the sign:
Biff followed cautiously and saw the two men cross a little courtyard and continue through another archway well beyond. There they disappeared from view but only long enough to set down the basket, because one of them returned to the inner arch and closed a big metal gate behind him. He then went to rejoin his companion.
By then, Biff was moving into the courtyard himself. He edged over to one side and gained a look through the inner arch. Beyond the closed gate he saw what appeared to be a large storeroom, for there were many crates, boxes, and other bulky objects stacked there. From his angle, Biff could see nothing of the two men, so he moved cautiously toward the inner arch, hoping to get a closer and more direct view.
At that moment, a clang sounded behind him, and Biff turned to see that another gate had closed in the outer arch. A tall man in baggy white clothes had stepped in from the street and was now locking the gate behind him. Biff was trapped in the open space between the archways. He looked quickly for an outlet, and saw one on the other side of the courtyard, in the form of an open doorway.
Biff hurried in that direction, only to stop short as a man appeared in the doorway to meet him with a polite, welcoming bow. The man was dressed in European clothes, but his broad, bland face, with fixed smile and bushy eyebrows above his large-rimmed glasses, was definitely Asiatic. So was his cool, even-toned pronouncement:
“I am Diwan Chand. I have been expecting you. Come in.”
Then, as Biff hesitated, glancing back at the white-garbed Hindu, who was coming from the outer gate, Diwan Chand added a further introduction:
“This is Nathu, my special watchman. I thought it best to have him lock the gate, so we cannot be disturbed. He will wait here until we return.”
Chand said nothing about the pair who had gone through the inner archway with the basket. Biff followed the bland merchant through a room equipped with a long row of vacant desks, like an old-fashioned counting house.
“Our clerks work here,” explained Chand, “but they have all gone out to lunch, so no one will know of your visit.”
Whether that was good or bad, Biff wasn’t sure. He felt a nervous tingling that seemed an instinctive warning of some close danger; yet it might be that all these precautions were for his benefit.
This seemed doubly so when they reached Chand’s quiet private office at the rear of the long counting room. There, the merchant closed the door, gestured Biff to a chair, and opened a small safe that was cunningly concealed in the elaborately carved woodwork of the wall.
“You received your father’s message,” commented Mr. Chand, “and now I have something for you to take to him. This.”
Biff gasped at the object Mr. Chand placed on the table before him. There, in a small case lined with white velvet, gleamed the largest and most magnificent gem that Biff had ever seen. It was a blood-red ruby, with a touch of purple that gave it a glow like living fire, even in the subdued light of the office. In his study of mineralogy, Biff had viewed many fine stones, but never one that even approached this ruby.
“A padmaraga,” Mr. Chand said. “A true Brahmin ruby, not to be confused with those of lesser caste. Whoever carries such a gem as this one can live in perfect safety in the midst of many enemies, totally without fear.”
At first, Biff thought that Mr. Chand was simply repeating some Hindu legend concerning rubies, but he soon saw that the merchant’s steady smile had become very serious.
“For this I can vouch,”