“It looks very like it,” said Ross. “She is delirious. How did the attack come? That fool of a Secretary will give no explanation of his conduct to you. The Commissioner says he will either apologise or leave the station.”
“The Secretary is a fool,” said Koomadhi. “Great heavens! to think that there are still some men like that—steeped to the lips in prejudice against the race to which I am proud to belong! We’ll not talk of him; but I’ll certainly demand an apology. The poor woman—she is little more than a girl, Ross! The breaking strain was reached when she was in the act of telling me about her husband.”
“Sunstroke, I suppose?”
“Undoubtedly. He has been behaving queerly for some time. Walk back with me and have something to drink.”
“I can only stay for an hour,” said Ross. “Mrs Bryson, the wife of the telegraphist, is nursing Mrs Minton; but it won’t do for me to be absent for long.”
He remained chatting with Koomadhi for about an hour, and then left for the Residency alone.
Dr Koomadhi determined to wait until midnight, when he might be pretty certain that his search for the stones would not be interrupted.
The door of the Residency was opened for Mr Ross by Letts.
“Step this way, Ross,” said he, in a low voice.
Ross went into the Secretary’s room. Sitting on a cane chair with a cigar in his mouth and a tall glass at his elbow was a man from whom came a strong perfume of shaving-soap. The man had plainly been recently shaved. His face was very smooth.