"I was not aware of the mole, sir," replied James Greyman dryly, "but he is a magnificent preacher, a consistent patriot, a born organizer; and he is now on his way to Delhi."
"To Delhi?" echoed the civilian pettishly. "What can a man of the stamp you say he is want with Delhi? A sham court, a miserable pantaloon of a king, the prey of a designing woman who flatters his dotage. I admit he is the representative of the Moghul dynasty, but its record for the last hundred and fifty years is bad enough surely to stamp out sentiment of that sort."
"Prince Charles Edward was not a very admirable person, nor the record of the Stuarts a very glorious one, and yet my grandfather----" James Greyman pulled himself up sharply, and seeing an old prayer-book lying on the table, which, with the alternatives of a bottle of Ganges water and a copy of the Koran, lay ready for the discriminate swearing of witnesses, finished his sentence by opening the volume at a certain Office, and then placing the open book on the top of the proclamation. "It will be no news to you, sir, that prayers of that sort are being used in all the mosques. Of course here, in Lucknow, they are for my late master's return. But if anything comparable to the '15 or the '45 were to come, Delhi must be the center. It is the lens which would focus the largest area, the most rays; for it appeals to greed as well as good, to this world as well as the next."
"Do you think it a center of disaffection now, Mr. Greyman?" asked the military magnate with an emphasis on the title.
"I do not know, sir. Zeenut Maihl, the Queen, has court intrigues, but they are of little consequence."
"I disagree," protested the Political. "You require the experience of a lifetime to estimate the enormous influence----"
"What do you consider of importance, then?" interrupted the soldier rather cavalierly, leaning across the table eagerly to look at James Greyman. There was an instant's silence, during which those voices rehearsing were clearly audible. The tragedy had apparently reached a climax.
"That; and this." He pointed to the Proclamation, and a small fragment of something which he took from his waistcoat pocket and laid beside the paper. The civilian inspected it curiously, the soldier, leaving his chair, came round to look at it also. The sunny room was full of peace and solid security as those three Englishmen, with no lack of pluck and brains, stood round the white fragment.
"Looks like bone," remarked the soldier.
"It is bone, and it was found, so I heard in the bazaar to-day, at the bottom of a Commissariat flour-sack----"