Mr. David Amber looked the gentleman over with heightened interest. He saw a man of medium height, with a sturdy figure that bore without apparent fatigue the years that go with slightly greyish hair. He was quietly dressed and had intelligent eyes, but was altogether unimpressive of manner, save for a certain vague air of reserve that assorted quaintly with his present attitude.
"You've the advantage of me, sir," Amber summed up the result of his scrutiny.
"It's not the first time," asserted the other, with an argumentative shake of his head. "No-o?" Light leaped in Amber's eyes. "Labertouche!"
"Surprised you, eh?" The Englishman grinned with pleasure, pumping
Amber's arm cordially. "I don't mind owning that I meant to."
"Well, considering that this is positively your first appearance as yourself on the stage of my life, you don't deserve any credit for being able to deceive me. When one gets accustomed to remembering you only as a native—generally as a babu in dirty pink satin—…Do you know, I made all sorts of enquiries after you, but they told me, in response to my wires to Calcutta, that you'd dropped out of the world entirely. I had begun to fear that those damned natives must have got you, after all, and that I'd never see you again."
"I'd almost given up hope of ever seeing myself again," said
Labertouche drily.
"But why didn't you—?"
"Business, dear boy, business…. I was needed for several days in the neighbourhood of Kathiapur."
"It seems as though I'd waited several years for news of Kathiapur. The papers—"
"There are a good many things that happen in India that fail to get into the newspapers, Amber. It wasn't thought necessary to advise the world, including Russia, that half the native potentates in Hindustan had been caught in the act of letting the Second Mutiny loose upon India." A network of fine wrinkles appeared about his eyes as he smiled enjoyment of what he seemed to consider a memorable joke.