“For heaven’s sake, Letts!” cried the Commissioner.
“You infernal nigger!” shouted Letts, as Dr Koomadhi picked himself up. “You infernal nigger! if ever you show your face here again, I’ll break every bone in your body!”
“What the blazes is the matter?” asked. Ross.
“I believe that that devil has killed Mrs Minton,” said the Secretary. “If he has, by God! I’ll kill him.”
XV.
Dr Koomadhi went to his house in dignified silence. He put a couple of glasses of brandy into a bottle of champagne and gulped down the whole. Then he wrote a short note to the officer of the Houssas, mentioning that he would be happy to help him to shoot the great ape at daybreak.
He sent off the letter, and before he closed his desk he thought he would restore the carved stones to their receptacle. He had put them into his pocket before starting for the Residency; but now when he felt for them in his pocket he failed to find them. He was overcome with the fear that he had lost them. It suddenly occurred to him that they had been thrown out of his pocket by the violence of the man who had flung him into the road. If so, they would be lying on the pathway, and they would be safe enough there until dark, when he could go and search for them.
At moonrise he went out and walked down the road to the “Residency, but when just at the porch he was confronted by Ross, who was leaving the house.
“Hallo!” cried the surgeon. “I was just about to stroll up to you.”
“And I was determined not to miss you,” said Koomadhi. “How is Mrs Minton? It will be brain fever, I’m afraid.”