smoke--the
inimitable air of a Punjab autumn morning.

CHAPTER X.

"The tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things....

The tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly
poison."--ST JAMES iii 5-8.

Roy spent ten days in Delhi--lodging with one Krishna Lal, a jewel
merchant of high standing, well known to Sir Lakshman--and never a word
or a sight of Dyan Singh. The need for constant precautions hampered him
not a little; but if the needle he sought was in this particular
haystack, he would find it yet.

Meanwhile, at every turn he was imbibing first impressions, a
sufficiently enthralling occupation--in Delhi, of all places on earth:
Delhi, mistress of many victors; very woman, in that she yields to
conquer; and after centuries of romance and tragedy, remains, in
essence, unconquered still. The old saying, 'Who holds Delhi, holds
India,' has its dark counterpart in the unwritten belief that no alien
ruler, enthroned at Delhi, shall endure. Hence the dismay of many loyal
Indians when the British Government deserted Calcutta for the Queen of
the North. And here, already, were her endless, secretive byways
rivalling Calcutta suburbs as hornet-nests of sedition and intrigue.

Roy was to grow painfully familiar with these before his search ended.
But the city's pandemonium of composite noises and composite smells was
offset by the splendid remnants of Imperial Delhi:--the Pearl Mosque, a
dream in marble, dazzling against the blue: inlaid columns of the
Dewan-i-Khas--every leaf wrought in jade or malachite, every petal a
precious stone; swelling domes and rose-pink minarets of the Jumna
Musjid rising superbly from a network of narrow streets and shabby
toppling houses. For, in India, the sordid and stately rub shoulders
with sublime disregard for effect. In the cool aloofness of tombs and
temples, or among crumbling fragments of them on the plain, or away
beyond the battered Kashmir Gate--ground sacred to heroic memories--he
could wander at will for hours, isolated in body and spirit, yet
strangely content....

And there was yet a third Delhi, hard by these two; yet curiously aloof:
official, Anglo-Indian Delhi, of bungalows and clubs and painfully new
Government buildings. Little scope here for imaginative excursions, but
much scope for thought in the queer sensation, that beset him, of seeing
his father's people, as it were, through his mother's eyes.

New as he was