Voices In The Night Author:Flora Annie Steel Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III COBWEBS The noonday sun lay shadowless in every nook of the narrow evil-smelling courtyard which formed a common exit to Jehan Aziz's bachelor ... more »quarters and three or four other houses whose fronts faced the most disreputable bazaar in Nushapore. One of these belonged to Dilaram, the dancer, and the remaining ones were tenanted by folk of similar tastes, such as Burkut Ali, the Delhi pensioner, whom Jack Raymond had styled the biggest brute in Asia; but he had a double reasoning for choosing the courtyard, in that it enabled him better to play his part of Buckingham to the Rightful Heir. Despite its character, however, the courtyard was peace and propriety itself in the perpendicular glare of noon; peaceful and proper with a dreamy drugged peace, a satiated propriety that was in keeping with the heavy yellow sunshine. And Dilaram herself matched the general drowsiness as she sate, muffled in a creased shawl, yawning, blowsy, ill-kempt, upon a wooden balcony overlooking the courtyard. She matched the squalor of the scene also; a squalor which seemed to put the pleasure that has its marketable value out of possibility in such surroundings. Jehan Aziz, who sate on a string bed below, looked a trifle less dilapidated than Dilaram, for his morning toilet had extended to the making of that white parting down the middle of his oiled hair, and a due shaving into line of his thin moustache. Not that these results were due to any energy on his part. They were the work of the barber, who was now occupied, nearer thedoor, in paring Burkut All's nails, while the Heir to Nothingness, in no hurry to proceed, chewed betel thoughtfully, and looked at a caged quail which he meant to fight against a rival's so soon as he could rouse himself sufficiently to dress; for he had ...« less