"By the first available train. More than that, I am to telegraph your decision to Whitehall. Between you and me, some people are in a howling funk lest a question should be put in the House."
"That isn't the frontier method. Men who appeal to Parliament when things go wrong are of no value to India. But I don't want to preach."
"Won't you come in?"
"If you'll pardon me, I'll hurry back to Nuttonby. That telegram is called for urgently. What about your deputy?"
"Collins was transferred to Oudh because he supported me. Send him to Barapur. The natives will understand that better than a dozen gazettes."
"Thanks. That clinches it, Sir Robert. Mr. Dobb, do you mind if we start immediately?"
Mr. Dobb did mind. For one thing, he had not spoken a word to Sir Robert Dalrymple yet. For another, Nuttonby loomed larger in his mind than some wrangle in far-away Hindustan, and Nuttonby was seething with rumors anent present and past inhabitants of the Grange.
"We, like the State of Barapur, have our little troubles," he said guardedly. "Sir Robert has shown already that he appreciates their gravity. My car will take you to Nuttonby, Mr. Morand, and come back for me."
The representative of the India Office was only too pleased to get away on any terms. He knew that a reassuring message was wanted in Whitehall. There were wheels within wheels. A question was put in the House that night, and an Under-Secretary scoffed at the notion that Sir Robert Dalrymple, "a trusted servant of his country, whose splendid work on the Indus was most thoroughly appreciated by the Government of India," had been requested to resign. As a matter of public interest, he was pleased to inform the honorable questioner that Sir Robert Dalrymple, only that day, had put forward the name of Mr. Mortimer Collins, I.C.S., to act as his deputy in Barapur until he returned from short leave granted on "urgent private affairs."
The motor was already trumpeting its way through a mob of Elmdale urchins, who seldom saw a car, and had never before seen two in one day, when Dalrymple found himself regretting he had not inquired how Morand contrived to get on his track so easily. Some weeks elapsed before he learned that the only friend in London who knew his whereabouts thought it a duty to speak when the hue and cry went forth from the India Office.