"Well … perhaps not altogether. But we needn't go into details, need we?" Labertouche's smile robbed the rebuke of its sting. "The opium simile is a very good one, though I say it who shouldn't. One acquires a taste for the forbidden, and one hires a little room like this from an unprincipled blackguard like Honest George, and insensibly one goes deeper and deeper until one gets beyond one's depth. That is all. It explains me sufficiently. And," he chuckled, "you'd never have known it if your case hadn't been exceptional."
"It is, I think." Amber's expression became anxious. "I want to know what you think of it—now Quain's told you. And, I say, what did you mean by 'news of the Fs.'?"
"News of the Farrells—father and daughter, of course." Labertouche's eyes twinkled.
"But how in the name of all that's strange—!"
"Did I connect the affair Rutton with the Farrells? At first by simple inference. You were charged with a secret errand, demanding the utmost haste, by Rutton; your first thought was to travel by the longer route—which, as it happens, Miss Farrell had started upon a little while before. You had recently met her, and I've heard she's rather a striking young woman. You see?"
"Yes," admitted Amber sheepishly. "But—"
"And then I remembered something," interrupted Labertouche. "I recalled Rutton. I knew him years ago, when he was a young man…. You know the yarn about him?"
"A little—mighty little. I know now that he was a Rajput—though he never told me that; I know that he married a Russian noblewoman"—Amber hesitated imperceptibly—"that she died soon after, that he chose to live out of India and to die rather than return to it."
"He was," said Labertouche, "a singular man, an exotic result of the unnatural conditions we English have brought about in India. The word renegade describes him aptly, I think: he was born and bred a Brahmin, a Rajput, of the hottest and bluest blood in Rajputana; he died to all intents and purposes a European—with an English heart. He is—was—by rights Maharana of Khandawar. As the young Maharaj he was sent to England to be educated. I'm told his record at Oxford was a brilliant one. He became a convert to Christianity—that was predestined—was admitted to the Church of England, a communicant. When his father died and he was summoned to take his place, Rutton at first refused. Pressure was brought to bear upon him by the English Government and he returned, was enthroned, and for a little time ruled Khandawar. It was then that I knew him. He was continually dissatisfied, however, and after a year or two disappeared. It was rumoured that he'd struck a bargain with his prime-minister, one Salig Singh. At all events Salig Singh contrived to usurp the throne, Government offering no objection. Rutton turned up eventually in Russia and married a woman there who died in childbirth—twenty years ago, perhaps. The child did not survive its mother…." Labertouche paused deliberately, his glance searching Amber's face. "So the report ran, at least," he concluded quietly.
"How do you know all this?" Amber countered evasively.