The Hall of Labour lay deserted as if the artificers who worked in its surrounding arcades had taken profit by the wisdom of Hafiz which came trilling from the furthermost, sun-saturated end of the long parallelogram of roof in which Akbar's especial artificers laboured at especial tasks.

It was a quaint place this Hall or rather Roof of Labour, for it was set high between the higher palaces which rose around it on three sides. The fourth was arcaded as were the others, but in dummy fashion, that is to say with the shallow archways filled in with brick work--and gave on the wide plains of India, which were, however, invisible because of the height of the wall. Most things, indeed of the outside world were invisible from the Hall of Labour; you had to go through the sentry-guarded door opposite the hidden plains before you could get rid of a certain sense of imprisonment, of absorption in duty. The artificers in the cell-like workshops on the left hand of the doorway, were, however, better off in this case than those on the right, since the superstructure above these was but cell wide, and so from their farther ends, high, unattainable windows, partially bricked up, let in a cross light on lathes and crucibles, paint-brushes, and even inkpots; for in one of them near the door Budaoni, the historian, used to sit most days engaged on his uncongenial task of translating the Hindu scriptures, and glaring at another writer over the way who was copying the translation of the Gospels for which Akbar had paid the Jesuits a round sum of money. Money not quite honestly earned, since the text was deftly doctored to suit Jesuit dogma! But even if this had been known it would have mattered little to the jealousies of the rival writers.

Farther down this left hand side worked a chemist employed in testing atomic weights, an engraver busy over a ruby intaglio, an experimentalist attempting to prove the properties of quicksilver in the transmutation of metals, a worker in gold on crystal, and so on; till at the end came an empty arcade with shut door, then William Leedes's workshop, and on the other side the studio of Diswunt the crippled painter. He was especially favoured, for in addition to the high window which, like those in the other cells gave on the Court of Dreams--on the opposite side of which stood the King's Sleeping Palace--he had a corbeilled balcony overlooking the Indian plain; at least so much of it as could be seen by reason of the towering Arch of Victory which thrust itself skyward from its great plinth of steps. Looking downward, one could see them receding in sharp angles almost to the bottom of the rocky ridge. No place here, therefore, for escape or entry, so Diswunt was allowed the luxury of light, even when his great wide door was shut. He kept it so constantly; for he was morose by birth, embittered by the accident of it.

And yet the idle rhymes of Hafiz came to his lips as he sate irresolute, thinking of the paradise one woman had promised him if he did something--a mere trifle!--for her; of the hell with which another woman had threatened him should he fail to do the same thing. It was too bad to have duty and pleasure on the same side; and against them--what? Only loyalty to the man who seeing him--then a mere beast of burden--as he paused in the bazaar to make, with a bit of the charcoal he was carrying and a white-washed wall, a spirited sketch of a dog gnawing a bone, had sent him for training to the Court School of Painting. That, after all, had been but a sorry action! Diswunt looked distastefully at his work--a portrait of Akbar small enough to go into a ring--and his whole soul went out to charcoal and a white wall.

For the misshapen lad whose face had the brilliant, bizarre beauty of strongly marked feature which so often goes with physical deformity, was without doubt part of the sixteenth century crop of genius, of which so much has remained to the world, so much more has passed out of it, unwitting even of itself.

His eyes, as he sate listlessly, were dull with the hemp he drank habitually to deaden the depth of his discontent.

For Akbar had not been able to uphold, against the whole artistic verdict of his court, his own opinion that the "portrayal of real life gave special facilities for true education since every touch that went toward the likeness of reality must make the painter feel his own impotence to bestow life, and so lead him to a right appreciation of the immeasurable dignity of the Creator."

They had been brave words, but they had ended in stipplings and blobs of white paint to imitate pearls!

Yet there were some who thought as he, Diswunt the King's crippled painter thought. He shivered as he remembered the day but a week ago, when the infidel jeweller next door, with whom he had scraped up an acquaintance, had replied to a question he had asked in the lingua franca of mixed Portuguese and Arabic which served as court jargon for strangers.

"Nay friend! such missals, such pictures as these Jesuits bring are but monkish work. There be other painters over the black water. Lo! I studied for a while under one in Italia. Stay! I bethink me to have backed yonder chart on the wall with a copy. Turn it round and see!"

See! Diswunt had seen little else since! It was only a bad copy in red chalk of a torso by Michael Angelo, all blurred and half effaced, but it had been a master key, opening the door of real art to the lad, driven half crazy by dreams and drugs. Since then he had closed his door, and the stippled face of Akbar had not received a single touch; but the back of that closed door, which was made after Indian fashion, of plain whitewashed wood nailed to a strong outside frame-work, showed the cloudy smearings of much charcoal.

Should he, or should he not? It was close on noon. The silence told that the artificers were putting by their tools. Stay, they were beginning again! How was that?

He set the door wide open and carefully fastened it back, then looked out. The reason of this brisking up to business was evident, for the King, followed as usual by Birbal and Abulfazl, was crossing the court. Not that he noticed the general activity; his objective was William Leedes's workshop; for it having been notified that the first facet of the diamond had been duly cut, he was keen to see it. But the sight of his protÉgÉ Diswunt at his door made him forget his hurry, to pause and say kindly:

"Come thou, with the artist's eye, and help Akbar hold his own with these ignorant ones who have it that dulness equals God's luck." He flashed round half-contemptuous raillery even at Birbal.

"Nay sire!" retorted the latter, "If the Light of the World will pardon his slave, we do but hold that the King's Luck equals Brightness."

But Akbar's quick imagination was already caught by the angular speck of clear dark sheen which showed like a shadow on the dull radiance of the uncut diamond, as it lay matrixed in the cutter's lathe. So dark, but so clear.

"It is like a door," he cried exultantly. "Look! Diswunt, is it not as a door through which one might pass and see what other folks see not."

"And therefore desire not!" put in Birbal quickly. "My liege it is not yet too late. Let yonder flaw made of man remain as an outlet or inlet for Akbar's dreams; but let the remainder be, as it has always been, a sign of sovereignty to the people. Ask Abulfazl here. What thinkest thou Diwan-jee, is there danger in this thing or no?"

"There is the chance of it," replied the King's Prime Minister, slowly. "I can say no more, no less."

But Birbal was more vehement. "It is more than chance; it is certainty. I have my finger on the pulse of the people. Already it beats irregularly. Had I but the power----"

"Peace! Birbal," said the King, sternly. "Thou hast it not!" Then turning to William Leedes he continued as if nothing had been said. "And the next?"

The jeweller pointed to the mathematical diagrams at which he had been working.

"That is as fate and figures will have it, my liege. I labour to lose as little as may be."

Akbar's eyes twinkled, he gave a boyish laugh. "For fear of cutting out the King's luck? Lo! that should satisfy thee, Birbal."

"Not one whit, sire," replied the latter stanchly. "Birbal knows his own mind; and by all the gods in Indra's heaven, had I not been put in charge of ill-luck by the King's order--I--I would have stolen luck for him."

He laughed lightly giving his usual slight shrug of the shoulder; but Diswunt turned away suddenly and stood looking out on the sunlight.

Should he, should he not? It meant paradise, it meant escape from hell according to two women; but this was a man; and the King's best friend, the keenest intellect in the court.

"I stay!" he said curtly to the sentry who came to keep watch and ward while William Leedes went out for the mid-day recess.

"Best not!" remarked the latter casually. "Art needs rest, and thou has been at it ever since thou didst see Michael Angelo. Lo! were I to work unceasing at my problem I should grow crazy with angles and take a month where a week would suffice."

"Take the month an thou willst" retorted the cripple ill-humouredly as he banged to his door.

So there was no hurry! He had a week wherein to do the little thing that was asked of him. Only to wile the jeweller from his cell for one brief minute.

It was, however, but two days afterward, that he stood at the lintel of William Leedes's workshop. Something had gone wrong with the latter's calculations and he had lingered after the Hall of Labour had emptied. The lad's eyes were bloodshot, his hands were trembling with the hemp he had drunken. And then suddenly he walked over to the diamond. "Truly, as the King said, it is like a door" he murmured, "a door through which men could see--but these men can see naught. Though every line is true--they cannot see it."

"Cannot see what?" asked William Leedes abstractedly from his compasses.

For answer Diswunt gave a wild jeering laugh and clutched the jeweller by the wrist.

"Come and see it; thou canst see! Come, I say--nay! thou must come and tell me if I be fool utterly."

His door, set wide, almost elbowed that of the jeweller's, and, overborne by Diswunt's wild appeal, William Leedes found himself on its threshold.

"Not that! not that!" almost yelled the lad, his half insane, reckless laughter echoing loudly through the arches. "Didst think I brought thee to see the pattering of flies-paws. Stand forward a bit--so forward----"

The wide door, as he set it aswing, enforced his demand; and what it brought to view as it swung, astonished William Leedes to forgetfulness and left him silent with admiration.

It was a hunting piece in rough charcoal. A buck standing at bay amid a herd of hyenas; but there was something more in it than that and William Leedes involuntarily crossed himself.

"Thou hast a devil, Diswunt," he said at last, and once more the half-mad painter's high, reckless laugh filled the arches.

"So! thou canst see! Dost mark the TarkhÂn's sneer, the Chamberlain's cold glare?"

It was true. Something in the noble poise of the stag's head was reminiscent of the King, and each one of the savage beasts surrounding it recalled by some witchery of touch or line the foremost of the King's enemies.

"Lo! yonder is the stupidity of the MakhdÛm," went on Diswunt punctuating his words by that high laugh; "yonder the self-satisfaction of Budaoni, the fat foolishness of GhiÂss Beg." He paused, almost as if listening to the faint echo of his laughter in the roof. Then sudden seriousness came to him.

"But he will escape them, now. Dost see the javelin to the right yonder--that shall save him and his Luck."

The last word came curiously clear as if intended to awake remembrance. It did so.

"By'r Lady!" cried William Leedes, "I had a'most forgot." He was back in his workshop in a moment to find the diamond matrixed as ever in its place, with the darker sheen of the first facet showing full of promise.

But Diswunt stood at the lintel and looked out, not at the sunshine but at the door of the empty workshop next to William Leedes. It quivered slightly as if wind were behind it, or as if someone were gently closing a bolt.