“Pooh! Of course we haven’t. Why, you’ve only just come. Besides, you can get to Shâlalai at any time. That’s settled then. But I have an idea. We might go down to Mehriâb station and see them off. There are some things I am getting up, and that idiot of a Babu in charge can’t send an intelligent answer to any question I write him. It’s not a bad sort of ride down there, and we’ll kill two birds with one stone. What do you say, Viv?”
“I beg to second it, Uncle Edward. The idea is an extremely good one.”
To him who watched it, while not seeming to, there was an entire revelation in Vivien’s face during that momentary lifting of the veil. She was as anxious to prolong the time as—he was. Yes, that is what it amounted to. The experiment, from its coldblooded side, seemed to have failed.
“We shall be up here some weeks longer, Campian”—went on the Colonel—“but of course if you have to go, it is easy enough to get to Shâlalai. Meanwhile my boy, as long as you can make yourself happy here we are only too glad.”
“Oh, I can do that all right, Colonel. And I’m not tied to time in any way either.”
Again that relieved look on Vivien’s face. Some weeks! What might not be the result of those weeks was the thought that was in the minds of both of them? What might not transpire within those weeks? Ah, if they had only known.
“By the way there’s another item of kubbar in Upward’s letter,” went on the Colonel, fumbling for that missive. “A budmâsh named Umar Khan has started out on a Ghazi expedition down Sukkâf way. He and several others rode out along the road and cut down a couple of poor devils of gharri-wallahs. Killed ’em dead as a door nail. There was a mûllah in one of the gharris, and they plundered him. He got out a Korân and put it on his head—singing out that he was a mûllah. ‘Mûllah or not,’ says Umar Khan—‘hand out those seven hundred rupees you’ve got on board.’ And he had to hand them out. Sacrilegious scamps—ha, ha! But if he hadn’t been a mûllah they’d have cut him up too. Well these budmâshes will have to swing for it. They’ll soon be run to earth. Nice country this, eh, Campian?”
“Rather. It seems to me only half conquered, and not that.”
“Yes. It’s run at a loss entirely. A mere buffer State. We hold it on the principle of grabbing as much as we can and sticking to it, all the world over—and in this particular instance putting as much as we can between the Russians and India.”
“And what if Umar Khan is not speedily run to earth?”