Part 22 (1/2)

”Fifty thousand!” Sandip had demanded.

”What is fifty thousand?” cried my intoxicated heart. ”You shall have it!”

How to get it, where to get it, were minor points not worth troubling over. Look at me. Had I not risen, all in one moment, from my nothingness to a height above everything? So shall all things come at my beck and call. I shall get it, get it, get it --there cannot be any doubt.

Thus had I come away from Sandip the other day. Then as I looked about me, where was it--the tree of plenty? Oh, why does this outer world insult the heart so?

And yet get it I must; how, I do not care; for sin there cannot be. Sin taints only the weak; I with my __Shakti__ am beyond its reach. Only a commoner can be a thief, the king conquers and takes his rightful spoil ... I must find out where the treasury is; who takes the money in; who guards it.

I spent half the night standing in the outer verandah peering at the row of office buildings. But how to get that fifty thousand rupees out of the clutches of those iron bars? If by some __mantram__ I could have made all those guards fall dead in their places, I would not have hesitated--so pitiless did I feel!

But while a whole gang of robbers seemed dancing a war-dance within the whirling brain of its Rani, the great house of the Rajas slept in peace. The gong of the watch sounded hour after hour, and the sky overhead placidly looked on.

At last I sent for Amulya.

”Money is wanted for the Cause,” I told him. ”Can you not get it out of the treasury?”

”Why not?” said he, with his chest thrown out.

Alas! had I not said ”Why not?” to Sandip just in the same way?

The poor lad's confidence could rouse no hopes in my mind.

”How will you do it?” I asked.

The wild plans he began to unfold would hardly bear repet.i.tion outside the pages of a penny dreadful.

”No, Amulya,” I said severely, ”you must not be childish.”

”Very well, then,” he said, ”let me bribe those watchmen.”

”Where is the money to come from?”

”I can loot the bazar,” he burst out, without blenching.

”Leave all that alone. I have my ornaments, they will serve.

”But,” said Amulya, ”it strikes me that the cas.h.i.+er cannot be bribed. Never mind, there is another and simpler way.”

”What is that?”

”Why need you hear it? It is quite simple.”

”Still, I should like to know.”

Amulya fumbled in the pocket of his tunic and pulled out, first a small edition of the __Gita__, which he placed on the table-- and then a little pistol, which he showed me, but said nothing further.

Horror! It did not take him a moment to make up his mind to kill our good old cas.h.i.+er! [23] To look at his frank, open face one would not have thought him capable of hurting a fly, but how different were the words which came from his mouth. It was clear that the cas.h.i.+er's place in the world meant nothing real to him; it was a mere vacancy, lifeless, feelingless, with only stock phrases from the __Gita--Who kills the body kills naught! __

”Whatever do you mean, Amulya?” I exclaimed at length. ”Don't you know that the dear old man has got a wife and children and that he is ...”