"I am not going to be spoken to like that in my own house and by a nigger!" he exclaimed, seeking to cover his fear by a show of anger. "I don't believe in you or your message. If you have a letter from your master, give it to me, if you haven't, I shan't listen to you. What right have you to come here into my library pretending to have a message from your master, when you haven't even a letter, or his card, or one written word from him?"
"Illustrious," said Koda Bux, with a sudden change of manner, salaaming low and moving backwards towards the door, "the slave of my master forgot himself in the urgency of his message, which my lord, his friend, has not yet heard."
There was an almost imperceptible emphasis on the word "friend" which sent a little shiver through such rudiments of soul as Sir Reginald possessed. He said roughly:
"Very well, then, if you have brought a message what is it? I can't waste half the morning with you."
"The message is short, Sahib," replied Koda Bux, salaaming again, and moving a little nearer towards the door. "I am to ask you what you did at Simla two-and-twenty years ago this night—what you have done with the Mem Sahib who was faithful to my lord's honour when you, dog and son of a dog, betrayed it—and what has become of her daughter and yours? Oh, cursed of the gods, thou knowest these things as thou knowest the two marks of the African spear on thy left arm—but thou dost not know the depth of infamy which thy sin dug for thine own son to fall into."
As he was saying this Koda Bux backed close to the door, locked it behind him, and took the key out.
Bad as he was, the last words of Koda Bux hit Sir Reginald harder even than the others. His son, the heir to his name and fortune, what had he to do with that old sin of his committed before he was born?
"You must be mad or opium-drunk, Koda Bux," he whispered hoarsely, "to talk like that. Yes, it is the 28th of June, and I have two spear marks on my arm—but I am rich, I can make you a prince in your own land. Come, you know something about me. That is why you came here; but what has my son Reginald to do with it? If I have sinned, what is that to him?"
"In the book of the God of the Christians," said Koda Bux, very slowly, and approaching him with an almost hypnotic stare in his eyes, "in that book it is written that the chief God of the Christians will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children. This woman bore you a daughter; your lawful wife bore you a son. The woman who was once the wife of Maxwell Sahib was a drunkard, and now she's a mad-woman. Your own wife bore you a son, and in London your daughter and your son, not knowing each other, came together. Your daughter was what the good English call an outcast, and, knowing nothing of your sin, they lived—"
"God in heaven! can that be true?" murmured Sir Reginald, sinking back against the mantel-piece just as he was going-to pull the bell.