But Brown was not bent
just then on dissertation. He changed his tactics.
"Do you want to die, a little slowly, before all those obedient
worshipers of yours, and in such a way that they will see and understand
that you can not help yourself, and therefore are a fraud?"
The Beluchi repeated the question in the guttural tongue that apparently
the fakir best understood. In the fitful light cast by the burning
roofs, it was evident that the fakir had been touched in the one weak
spot of his armor.
There can scarcely be more than one reason why a man should torture
himself and starve himself and maim and desecrate and horribly defile
himself. At first sight, the reason sounds improbable, but consideration
will confirm it. It is vanity, of an iron-bound kind, that makes
the wandering fakir.
"Ask him again!" said Brown.
But again the fakir did not answer.
"Tell him that I'm going to let him save his face, provided he saves
mine. Explain that I, too, have men who think I am something more
than human!"
The Beluchi interpreted, and Brown thought that the fakir's eyes
gleamed with something rather more than their ordinary baleful light.
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