house of Suddhoo, near the Taksali Gate, is two storied, with four
carved windows of old brown wood, and a flat roof. You may recognize it by
five red handprints arranged like the Five of Diamonds on the whitewash
between the upper windows. Bhagwan Dass, the bunnia, and a man who says he
gets his living by seal-cutting live in the lower story with a troop of
wives, servants, friends, and retainers. The two upper rooms used to be
occupied by Janoo and Azizun and a little black-and-tan terrier that was
stolen from an Englishman's house and given to Janoo by a soldier. To-day,
only Janoo lives in the upper rooms. Suddhoo sleeps on the roof generally,
except when he sleeps in the street. He used to go to Peshawar in the cold
weather to visit his son, who sells curiosities near the Edwardes' Gate,
and then he slept under a real mud roof. Suddhoo is a great friend of
mine, because his cousin had a son who secured, thanks to my
recommendation, the post of head messenger to a big firm in the Station.
Suddhoo says that God will make me a Lieutenant-Governor one of these
days. I daresay his prophecy will come true. He is very, very old, with
white hair and no teeth worth showing, and he has outlived his
wits--outlived nearly everything except his fondness for his son at
Peshawar. Janoo and Azizun are Kashmiris, Ladies of the City, and theirs
was an ancient and more or less honorable profession; but Azizun has since
married a medical student from the Northwest and has settled down to a
most respectable life somewhere near Bareilly. Bhagwan Dass is an
extortionate and an adulterator. He is very rich. The man who is supposed
to get his living by seal cutting pretends to be very poor. This lets you
know as much as is necessary of the four principal tenants in the house of
Suddhoo. Then there is Me, of course; but I am only the chorus that comes
in at the end to explain things. So I do not count.

Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pretended to cut seals was the
cleverest of them all--Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie--except Janoo.
She was also beautiful, but that was her own affair.

Suddhoo's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old Suddhoo was
troubled. The seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo's anxiety and made capital
out of it. He was abreast of the times. He got a friend in Peshawar to
telegraph daily accounts of the son's health. And here the story begins.

Suddhoo's cousin's son told me, one evening, that Suddhoo wante