At last he was made a member of the Secret Service, and was given a secret sign—namely, a badge to wear round his neck and a certain sentence to say, which, if said in a peculiar way, meant he was one of the service. Scouts generally have secret signs by which they can communicate with each other.
The members of the Intelligence Service are very numerous in India, and do not know each other by sight, so they have to have a secret sign by which they will recognise each other among other people who may be their enemies.
Once when travelling in the train Kim met another member whom he did not know. This was a native, who when he got into the carriage was evidently in a great state of alarm, and was rather badly cut about the head and arms. He explained to the other passengers that he had met with an accident from a cart whilst he was driving to the station, but Kim, like a good scout, noticed the cuts were sharp and not grazes such as you would get by falling from a cart, and so did not believe him. While the man was tying up a bandage over his head, Kim noticed he was wearing a locket like his own; so Kim let his own be seen. Directly the man saw it he brought into conversation some of the secret words, and Kim answered with the proper ones in reply. So then the stranger got into a corner with Kim and explained to him that he was carrying out some secret service work, and had been found out and hunted by some of the enemies of the Government who had nearly killed him. They probably knew he was in the train and would therefore telegraph down the line to their friends that he was coming. He wanted to get his message to a certain police officer without being caught by the enemy, but he could not tell how to do it if they were already warned of his coming. Kim thereupon hit upon the idea of disguising him.
Kim disguising the native spy.
In India there are a number of holy beggars who go about the country. They wear next to no clothing and smear themselves with ashes, and paint certain marks on their faces; they are considered very holy, and people always help them with food and money. So Kim made a mixture of flour and wood ashes, which he took from the bowl of a native pipe, and he undressed his friend and smeared these all over him, and finally, with the aid of a little paint-box which he carried, he painted the proper marks on the man's forehead. He smeared the man's wounds with flour and ashes, partly so as to heal them, and also so that they did not show; and he brushed his hair down to look wild and shaggy like that of a beggar, and covered it with dust so that the man's own mother would not have known him. Soon afterwards they got to a big station where on the platform they found the police officer to whom the report was to be made. The imitation beggar pushed up against him and got abused by the officer in English; the beggar replied with a string of native abuse into which he introduced the secret words. The police officer, although he had pretended not to know Hindustani, understood it quite well, and at once recognised from the secret words that this beggar was an agent; and so he pretended to arrest him and marched him off to the police-station where he could talk to him quietly. It was thus done without anyone on the platform knowing that they were in league with each other, or that this native beggar was the escaped Intelligence agent.
Finally, Kim became acquainted with another agent of the department—an educated native or Babu as they are called in India—and was able to give him great assistance in capturing two Russian officers who were acting as spies against the British on the north-west frontier of India.
[Note.—Point out on map respective positions of British and Russians.]
The Babu pretended to the Russians that he was the manager for a local native prince who did not like the English, and travelled with them for some time as representative of this prince. In this way he got to know where they kept their secret papers in their baggage. At last he got up trouble between them and a holy priest, whom they struck; this caused great excitement among the natives, who rushed off with the baggage and got lost in the darkness. Kim, who was among the natives, opened the luggage and found the secret papers which he took out and carried to headquarters.
These and other adventures of Kim are well worth reading, because they show what valuable work a boy scout could do for his country if he were sufficiently trained and sufficiently intelligent.