This was artistic. Most of us forget to preserve our own characteristics in diverging from the truth. The tangled web is only woven when first we practise to deceive. Later on the facility is greater, the handling superior, and the web runs smooth and straight. Seymour Michael was apparently no novice at this sort of thing. He was even at that moment making mental note of the fact that up-country mails were in a state of disorganisation, and a letter which was never written may easily be made to have miscarried later on.
But even he could not foresee everything—no one can. Not even the righteous man, much less the liar.
“Do you mean to say,” pursued the newcomer, “that you are not writing to your family about it—only to the Company?”
“That is all.”
“Rum chap you are, Michael,” said the other, lighting a cheroot. “Heartless beggar I take it.”
“Not at all. The simple fact is that I have no one to write to. I only possess one or two distant relatives, and they would probably be rather sorry than otherwise to have the report contradicted.”
The younger officer—a mere boy—with a beardless, happy face, walked to the door of the bungalow.
“Of course there is always this in it,” he said carelessly. “By the time the contradiction reaches home the news may be true.”
Seymour Michael laughed lamely. A joke of this description made him feel rather sick, for a Jew never makes a soldier or a sailor, and they are rarely found in those positions unless great gain is holden up.
With this pleasantry the youth departed, leaving Michael to write the letter which he had advised as written. As he drew the writing materials towards him he cursed his brother officer quietly and politely for a meddling young fool. He wrote a formal letter to the Company—the old East India Company which administered an empire with ledger and daybook—calling their attention to the mistake in the newspaper, and begging them not to trouble to give the matter publicity, as he had already advised his friends.