The Hindu street-sprinkler does not lay much dust.
“Then come along and have some breakfast while you wait,” returned the Englishman. “Early risers have good appetites, and where would you buy anything fit to eat in Hoogly? I’ve finished, but Maghmood has covers laid for you.”
We entered the bungalow on tiptoe, and sat down at a flower-decked table. Two turbaned servants slipped noiselessly into the room and served us with food from other lands. A punkah-wallah on the veranda kept the great fans in motion. Upon me fell a strange feeling of having been in a scene like this before—somewhere—hundreds of years ago. Even here, then, on the banks of the Hoogly, men ate with knives and forks, from delicate chinaware, wiping their fingers on snow-white linen rather than on a leg of their trousers, and left fruit peelings on their plates instead of throwing them under the table. It seemed as if I were in a dream.
“I told you,” murmured Marten, finishing his steak and a long silence, and mopping his plate dry with a slice of bread plastered with butter from far-off Denmark; “I told you he was the right sort.”
Maghmood entered to tell us we were to follow the commissioner to his office, two miles distant.
An hour later we were journeying contentedly northwestward in a crowded train that stopped at every village and cross-road. Marten had received a ticket to Bankipore. In order to reach this city we had to change at Burdwan. We alighted at this station three hours before the night express. A gazing crowd gathered around us as we halted to buy sweetmeats in the bazaars, and, flocking at our heels, quickly drew the attention of the native police to us.
At that time Russia was at war with Japan, and the Indian government, for some reason, was on the lookout for Russian spies. The police were ordered to watch all foreigners in the country. The native policemen, who wanted to please the English officers, were very anxious to discover such spies. So they asked questions of every sahib stranger they met.
Two lynx-eyed officers hung on our heels, and, following us to the station as night fell, joined a group of railway police on the platform. They talked together for a long time; then they all lined up before the bench on which we were seated, and a sergeant drew out one of the small books that the government uses for recording facts about traveling Europeans.
“Will the sahibs be pleased to give me their names?” coaxed the sergeant in a timid voice.