Roberts had
given him. The table held his books, his pen and ink and paper.
There was a charpoy in one corner, and under the charpoy a locked
box. There were no windows, and the narrow door opened into a
passage that ran abruptly into a wall, a few feet farther on.
So nobody saw Sunni when he carried his chirag, his little
chimneyless, smoking tin lamp, into his room, and set it in a niche
on the wall, took off his shoes, and threw himself down on his
charpoy at eleven o'clock that night. For a long time he had been
listening to the bul-buls, the nightingales, in the garden, and
thinking of this moment. Now it had come, and Sunni quivered and
throbbed all over with excitement. He lay very still, though, on
the watch for footsteps, whispers, breathings in the passage. Four
years in the palace had taught Sunni what these things meant. He
lay still for more than two hours.
At last, very quietly, Sunni lifted himself up by his elbows, put
first one leg, and then the other, out of the charpoy, and got up.
More quietly still he drew the locked box from under the bed, took
a key from his pocket, and opened it. The key squeaked in the
wood, and Sunni paused again for a long time, listening. Then in
the smoky, uncertain light of the chirag flaring in the niche, he
took from the box three gold bangles, two broken armlets, enamelled
in red and blue, and a necklace of pearls with green enamelled
pendants.
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