The baboon made a grimace and then raised his right hand to the salute—his favourite trick.
Suddenly the doctor produced a sound with his lips, and in an instant the monkey had dropped the helmet and had fled in alarm from the balcony to the roof of the house, whence he gazed in every direction, while the doctor went into the house with his helmet in his hand. He had merely given the simian word of alarm, which the creature, understanding its mother tongue, had promptly acted upon.
“‘You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will, but the scent’—you know the rest, sir,” remarked Mr Letts, the Commissioner’s Secretary, who had observed from his window the whole transaction.
“What was that, Letts?” asked the Commissioner.
“Koomadhi spoke to the baboon in its own tongue, sir, and it took the hint of a man and a brother and cleared off.”
“Yes, but where does the shattering of the vase come in?” asked the Commissioner.
“I mean to suggest that a nigger remains a nigger, and remains on speaking terms with a baboon, even though he has a college degree and wears tweeds,” said Mr Letts.
“Oh,” said the Commissioner.
He had heard the same opinion expressed by various members of his staff ever since he had anything to do with the administration of affairs on the West Coast. He had long ago ceased to take even the smallest amount of interest in the question of the exact depth of a negro’s veneer of civilisation.