“And let me tell you that it’s common gossip in every gutter in Singapore that your Sultan’s a black-hearted scoundrel who’s only waiting for a chance to double-cross England and do you one in the eye.”
“What happens to be the current gutter gossip about his adviser?” inquired that gentleman blandly.
Ledyard’s jaw looked suddenly aggressive.
“Never mind what it happens to be. What I want to know is why your friend Bhakdi isn’t back in his dirty little capital trying to straighten out some of the messes he’s got himself into instead of squatting up here in the jungle hunting tigers?”
“Because his invaluable adviser advises him to stay precisely where he is,” explained the Honourable Tony cheerfully. “Just between us, there are several nasty bits of international complications and one or two strictly domestic ones that make a protracted absence from the native heath highly advisable—oh, highly. Besides, you’d hardly have us trot back without a tiger, would you? I assure you that so far we haven’t bagged a solitary one. Not a tiger, Bill, not a tiger!”
“Oh, for the love of the Lord, shut up! I tell you this whole thing’s a rotten, ugly, dangerous business, and I didn’t come crawling up through Hades to have you turn it into a joke. I can’t stay jawing about it, and you know it—it’s going to be a darned close squeak to make connections with the steamer as it is. Are you coming or are you not?”
“I are not. Do quiet down and tell me why it is that you’re totally unable to distinguish between comic opera and melodrama? This whole performance is the purest farce, I swear! Wait till you see his Imperial Majesty—as nice a buttery, pompous little blighter as you’d want to lay eyes on, who’s spent six months at Cambridge and comes to heel like a spaniel if you tell him that anything in the world ‘isn’t done.’ He has a solid gold bicycle and four unhappy marriages and a body-guard with bright green panties and mother-of-pearl handles to their automatics! You wouldn’t expect even a Chinaman to take that seriously, would you?”
“I should think you’d go mad in your head trying to get along with a bounder who doesn’t know the first thing in the world about your code of standards or——”
“William, you are the most frightful donkey! The only code that I’ve recognized since I pattered off the ancestral estate is the jolly dot-dash thing that they use for telegrams. I’ve finally got our Bhakdi to the point where he drills his troops in pure British and plays a cracking good game of auction bridge without cheating—civilization’s greatest triumph in the Near or Far East. Personally, I ask no more of it!”
Ledyard mopped his brow despairingly. The dim room with its snowy matting and pale green cushions looked cool enough, but the heat outside would have penetrated a refrigerator. Just the other side of those protecting shutters the sun was beating down on the quiet waters until they glared back like burning silver—the tufts of palm and bamboo were hanging like so many dejected jade banners in the breathless air—the ridiculous little houses were huddled clumsily together on their ungainly piles, shrinking unhappily under their huge hats of nippa thatch.