'That,' said Kim slowly, 'I knew a very long time ago.'

'Who told?'

'The Colonel Sahib himself. Not in those many words, but plainly
enough for one who is not altogether a mud-head. Yea, he told me in
the te-rain when we went down to Lucknow.'

'Be it so. Then I will tell thee more, Friend of all the World, though
in the telling I lend thee my head.'

'It was forfeit to me,' said Kim, with deep relish, 'in Umballa, when
thou didst pick me up on the horse after the drummer-boy beat me.'

'Speak a little plainer. All the world may tell lies save thou and I.
For equally is thy life forfeit to me if I chose to raise my finger
here.'

'And this is known to me also,' said Kim, readjusting the live
charcoal-ball on the weed. 'It is a very sure tie between us. Indeed,
thy hold is surer even than mine; for who would miss a boy beaten to
death, or, it may be, thrown into a well by the roadside? Most people
here and in Simla and across the passes behind the Hills would, on the
other hand, say: "What has come to Mahbub Ali?" if he were found dead
among his horses. Surely, too, the Colonel Sahib would make inquiries.
But again,'--Kim's face puckered with cunning,--'he would not make
overlong inquiry, lest people should ask: "What has this Colonel Sahib
to do with that horse-dealer?" But I--if I lived--'

'As thou wouldst surely die--'

'Maybe; but I say, if I lived, I, and I alone, would know that one had
come by night, as a common thief perhaps, to Mahbub Ali's bulkhead in
the serai, and there had slain him, either before or after that thief
had made a full search into his saddlebags and between the soles of his
slippers. Is that news to tell to the Colonel, or would he say to
me--(I have not forgotten when he sent me back for a cigar-case that he
had not left behind him)--"What is Mahbub Ali to me?"?'

Up went a gout of heavy smoke. There was a long pause: then Mahbub
Ali spoke in admiration: 'And with these things on thy mind, dost thou
lie down and rise again among all the Sahibs' little sons at the
madrissah and meekly take instruction from thy teachers?'

'It is an order,' said Kim blandly. 'Who am I to dispute an order?'

'A most finished Son of Eblis,' said Mahbub Ali. 'But what is this
tale of the thief and the search?'

'That which I saw,' said Kim, 'the night that my lama and I lay next
thy place in the Kashmir Seral. The door was left unlocked, which I
think is not thy custom, Mahbub. He c