Son of Power | Page 9

correctly dressed Englishmen all the way; stopping over more than seven hours at Kullian--so as to reach the great city at night.
Next morning two clean-faced and very much alive Americans arrived at the Polo Club for late breakfast. Indeed they were good to look at, being in the finest kind of health and full of initiative. That breakfast was royal in every flavour; they felt like young spendthrifts squandering their patrimony. Just as they were finishing, a distinguished looking Englishman came across the room and greeted Cadman:
"Now this is my own proverbial good luck! Come away up to the house and give account of yourself. Where are the pictures? We'll take 'em along."
Cadman presented Skag to Doctor Murdock of the University, explained that it was imperative for them to do some general outfitting, but promised to bring his friend in the afternoon.
"Doctor Murdock is an extraordinary man, Skag," said Cadman, as the Englishman hurried away. "Beside his chair in the University, he is said to be top surgeon of Bombay. Barring none, he has more of different kinds of knowledge than any man I know; becomes master of whatever he takes up--authority, past question."
"I wondered why you promised to take me along," Skag put in.
"You'll be glad to have met him. He'll be interested in you," Cadman answered. "He's quite likely to take us to see some of the Indian nautch-girls. They're one of his fads--for their beauty. He has specialties in art as well as in science; but he's clean stuff--nothing rotten in him."
They forgot time in the Bombay bazaars; first looking for bags, to be easily carried on their own persons; and then giving themselves to quality and workmanship in things designed for their special uses. There was no hurry. All life stretched before them, in widening vistas.
Doctor Murdock's house was high on Malabar Hill. Their hired carriage came in behind his trim little brougham, as it turned on the driveway into his compound.
"My fortune again!" the Doctor called. "I've been detained by a case and properly sweating for fear you'd reach my den first."
Tea was served on a verandah entirely foreign and tropical and strange looking to Skag. A field of palm-tops stretched away from their feet to the sea. They told him the city of Bombay was hidden under those fronds.
"And now you understand, Cadman," the Doctor was saying, "there's your own room and one next for your friend Hantee. Your traps will be up before you sleep, which may not be early, for I've a tamasha on for you this night--you remember, I enjoy dinner in the morning?"
That tamasha was a maze of strange colour, strange motion and stranger perfume to Skag; not penetrating his conscious nature at all--feeling unreal to him.
"I've been watching you without shame this night, young man," the Doctor said to him, as they finished the after-midnight meal. "My entertainment fell dead with you. Sir. You've been 'way off somewhere else. I'm simply consumed to know what you have found in life, to make your eyes blind and your ears deaf to the lure of human beauty. You're not to be distressed by my impudence--it's innocent."
"If I may answer for my friend, I belive [Transcriber's note: believe?] I can tell you, Doctor." Cadman saw consent in Skag's eye and went on: "He has found the lure of creatures. He has entered into the spell of a young tigress playing with her kittens, in her own place. He has watched another tigress fight her mate to a finish, defending her little ones from their sire. He has listened to the symphonies of night and seen the drama of the wild. He lives in the clean glamour of the primeval jungle."
The Doctor's eyes widened for seconds; then they gloomed as he spoke:
"Between you, you challenge modern manhood. We have not conceived that 'clean glamour' since men were young--forgotten ages past. No, there was no human beauty to-night to make a man forget those tigresses. . . . She was not there. I am one of many who miss her, but I would give--" The Doctor broke off, searching their faces before he spoke again: "There is no hope you will know the depth of the calamity; the bitterness of the loss. Speaking of clean things--"
"Who was she?" Cadman asked.
"She was the most beautiful thing on earth. She was indeed the most marvellous thing on earth, being a Bombay singing nautch-girl--undefamed. There has been no one else, these ages."
The Doctor sat smoking, apparently oblivious of his guests.
"The Spartan Helen?" Cadman suggested.
"Hah! The Spartan Helen was not invincible!"
"The Noor Mahal?"
"The Noor Mahal was always in seclusion."
"Her name?" Skag questioned.
"She had no name," the Doctor answered, "but she was called 'Dhoop Ki Dhil'--Heart-of-the-Sun; possibly on account of her voice. There has been none like it. The