Black Light by Talbot Mundy — Read

Joe was usually most unhappy when his mother was most in her element. What amused her made him miserable. He could endure her, even if he did not like her, when she was frankly predatory, taking what she could because the law was too ill-served to interfere. But when she talked high altruism while she did damned cruelty, he hated her. His brain groped blindly for the opposite of what she would expect him to do--some move that she would not understand. He thought of and found he could not dismiss from his mind the Yogi by the temple wall. Calling himself an idiot for his pains, he hired a horse and cantered to the temple, knowing it was out of bounds without a permit or an official escort; but at that, he supposed he had escort enough; the ayah and Chandri Lal pursued him, dodging through traffic, taking short-cuts, stealing rides on motor-wagons; whenever he glanced backward one or the other was not very far behind him.

He found the Yogi seated in his beehive hut. The old man's eyes shone in the darkness, though his shape was hardly visible; his nose looked beaklike and his beard was the shape of a gray owl's body. Wondering how to open up a conversation Joe fetched a stone and sat on it before the hut door, so that he could peer upward and seem not too disrespectful. For a long time then he waited for the Yogi to say something, but the silence only deepened as the minutes marched.