"Huzoor! When your Honour's servant upset the State servant and his dish, I was close by. There was a look on your Honour's servant's face I did not understand. They scrambled instantly for the koftahs--scrambled hastily--to pick them up. But I got one, Huzoor. I gave it to a dog; and Huzoor! the dog is dead!"
I could scarcely speak. "Dead! ye Gods!" Then I remembered that the dog would be needful evidence, and said at once, "Where is the body? Bring it here."
But, if there had been a conspiracy to poison, the conspirators had been too quick for us. The corpus delicti was not where it had been left. Neither was the Substitute to be found. The other servants reported that, overcome with shame at his unpardonable offence in depriving an Earth-Cherished-One of his victuals, he had retired into the wilderness. Whence he never returned.
My Inspector-General used to bewail the Petits Timbales de foie gras à la Belle Eugénie. But I have never ceased to wonder. And every time I go to Delhi I go to the Wonder House and lay a posy on the tombstone of Mahmud, the old Slave of the Court.
The gratitude was to be for ever and ever; so there is time for more yet.
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1]: Ganêsh is the Indian God of Wisdom. He is always portrayed with the head of an elephant.
[Footnote 2]: Old woman.
[Footnote 3]: Pleasant smell.
[Footnote 4]: Hanooman.