“But how on earth did it come about?” asked Letts. “Surely you should know better than to go for a nigger as you would for a Christian! Why the mischief didn’t you kick him on the shins, and then put your knee into his face?”
“Give me the tumbler.”
The Secretary handed him the tumbler, containing a stiff “peg,” and he drained it without giving any evidence of dissatisfaction.
“Now, how did it come about?” inquired Letts. “I hope you haven’t dragged us into the business. If you have, there’ll be a question asked about it in the House of Commons by one of those busybodies who have no other way of proving to their constituents that they’re in attendance. ‘Mr Jones asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he had any information to give to the House regarding an alleged outrage by a white man, closely associated with the family of her Majesty’s Commissioner at Picotee, upon a native or natives of that colony.’ That’s how it will read. Then there’ll be puppy leaders in those papers that deal with ‘justices’ justice’: the boy who gets a month’s imprisonment for stealing a turnip—you know that sort of thing.”
“Keep your hair on,” said Minton; “there’ll be no show in the House about this. There has been no row. I went round to Koomadhi’s, and when we were talking together I suddenly fancied that the day was just one for a gymnastic display. I don’t know whether it was that polite manner of Koomadhi’s or something else set me off, but I felt an irresistible impulse to bounce. Without waiting to take off my coat I went out on the verandah and hauled myself up to the roof: I don’t know how I did it. I might have managed it ten years ago, when I was in condition; but, considering how far off colour I am just now, by George! I don’t know how I managed it. Anyhow, I did manage it.”
“At some trifling cost,” said Letts. “And what did you do on the roof when you got there?”
“Well, I swung myself down again. But I seemed to have a notion in the meantime that that nice, well-groomed nigger would try to climb up beside me, and I know that I had an impulse to catch him by the tail—the tail of his coat, of course—and swing him through the shutters.”
“But he didn’t make such an ass of himself as to go through some gymnastics, and the thermometer standing a degree or two under a hundred. Well, you’ve got off well this time, Minton; but don’t do it again, that’s all.”
“I tell you it was an impulse—a curious——”
“Oh, impulses like that don’t come to chaps who have their wits about them.”