* * * * *
Lee flew east. Seven days later he was in Karachi. He scarcely looked
at the place, his eyes turning northward toward Baluchistan; eastward
toward Lucknow and Delhi. In that direction, the roof of the world was
a faint blue haze on the horizon of his imagination. His face was grim
and cold. Seven days had changed him. The fanatic rode high, now. The
reasonable man was a dim spector lurking uneasily in the background.
He changed his money into the coin of the realm and took a train for
Delhi. He rode with strange people, scarcely aware of their presence.
He discovered that traveling from Karachi to Delhi on the railroad of
India was a frustrating and confusing business. He began counting his
money carefully; hoarding it; haggling. When he arrived in Delhi, he
was a lean, bearded stranger with a fever behind his eyes.
But there was a glory in his heart because of a new and sharpened
sensitivity. He was alone and friendless and almost without funds, yet
he had never before felt so able, so competent.
While stalking the streets of Delhi looking for a cheap hotel, he heard
a cheerful voice calling his name. He turned. The voice came from a car
at the curb. A brand new Ford convertible. Lee spoke casually. "How are
you, Mr. Clifford?"
The meeting was as strange and illogical as all the other events and
incidents of Lee's life had been since he had lain in a New York City
gutter.