With an impatient sweep of his arm, Jack shoved the papers away from him. He stretched, got up, and made for the front entrance of Headquarters House. On the raised platform, six steps above the ground, Jack stopped to light a cigarette. As he did so, his attention was caught by a beggar boy coming at a run across the compound. The boy reached the foot of the steps and sprawled on the ground.
“Baksheesh, Sahib! Baksheesh!” the boy wailed.
Jack Hudson looked down at the boy, his feeling of disgust mingled with one of sympathy. These poor kids, he thought, trained to beg from the day they could walk. Baksheesh, the word for a tip, a present, was used in many places in the East and Far East.
“Baksheesh! Baksheesh!” the boy continued to moan.
Jack looked about him. He spotted Chuba’s father.
“Ti Pao. Come here. Chop! Chop!”
Ti Pao came on the run. He could tell Sahib Hudson was annoyed.
“You know my orders, Ti Pao. No beggars allowed in the compound. How did this boy get in?”
Ti Pao shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe slip through gate, or hide in truck coming through.”
“Well, get him out of here. You know that twice a week, we hand out food and alms to the beggars. They are not to come inside.”