'How on earth you got here so soon, I can't think,' said a police-officer who had ridden up in hot haste at the news of some disturbance on the bathing-steps. 'The up-mail? By Jove! what luck! It will settle the whole "biz," I expect.'
And in the city voices were saying much the same thing.
If the troops were there, ready for the first sign, what was the use of making it? Let the rabble rise if they chose. Let fools commit themselves. Wise men would wait a better opportunity.
[CHAPTER XXV]
SECRET DESPATCHES
Nushapore, however, was not all wise; very far from it. Out of its two hundred and odd thousand souls, there were some to whom the possibility of disturbances meant a long-looked-for opportunity of indulging--with comparative safety--in criminal habits. And there were many also, who, without any special desire for evil, regretted the diminishing chance of a night's excitement and amusement.
At first some of these found solace in the catastrophe at the kite-flyers' bastion; though, after a time, this proved to be less disastrous than might have been expected, for, out of all those who were known to have been on the building, only two or three were even injured. Jehân Aziz, it is true, had disappeared, but even in the first knowledge of this, the fact brought scarcely a word of regret--especially in the Royal Family. It felt vaguely that it stood a better chance without him, even though the next heir was not close enough to that dead dynasty to hope for the practical recognition of an increased pension from Government!
Neither did the sight of Burkut Ali being carried off to hospital on a stretcher distress it much. But it had a word or two of encouragement and sympathy for Lateefa who, still clinging to his kites, refused all help as he sat propped against a wall waiting for the numbness to pass from his legs--as it must pass, since he had no pain.
Of Jân-Ali-shân and Chris no one thought on that side of the bridge; for the simple reason that the disaster to the bastion absorbed all tongues for a time, and, in addition, beyond the fact that there had been some fighting for the bridge, no one knew anything.
In the station, also, there was no one to explain what had happened. The baboo, who might have told what he knew, had, in that interval of suspense, discreetly fled to his lodgings in the city, where he was trying to concoct alibis.