"Went off dead asleep, just as if he'd been drugged. I thought the brute had had a fit at first, but there he was, with his head hanging a little on one side and his mouth open. I knocked up his bearer and told him to take the man to bed. We carried him off and shoved him on his charpoy. He was still asleep, and I didn't think it worth while to undress him. The fit, whatever it was, had worked itself out, and he was limp and used up. But as I was going to leave the room, and went to turn the lamp down, I looked in the glass and saw that he was watching me between his eyelids. When I spun round he seemed asleep. 'That's your game, is it?' I thought, and I stood over him long enough to see that he was shamming. Then I cast an eye round the room and saw his Martini in the corner. We were all bullumteers on the Canal works. I couldn't find the cartridges, so to make all serene I knocked the breech-pin out with the cleaning-rod and went to my own room. I didn't go to sleep for some time. About one o'clock—our rooms were only divided by a door of sorts, and my bed was close to it—I heard my friend open a chest of drawers. Then he went for the Martini. Of course, the breech-block came out with a rattle. Then he went back to bed again, and I nearly laughed.
"Next morning he was doing the genial, hail-fellow-well-met trick. Said he was afraid he'd lost his temper overnight, and apologised for it. About half way through breakfast—he was talking thickly about everything and anything—he said he'd come to the conclusion that a beard was a beastly nuisance and made one stuffy. He was going to shave his. Would I lend him my razors? 'Oh, you're a crafty beast, you are,' I said to myself. I told him that I was of the other opinion, and finding my razors nearly worn out had chucked them into the Canal only the night before. He gave me one look under his eyebrows and went on with his breakfast. I was in a stew lest the man should cut his throat with one of the breakfast knives, so I kept one eye on him most of the time.
"Before I left the bungalow I caught old Jeewun Singh, one of the mistries on the gates, and gave him strict orders that he was to keep in sight of the Sahib wherever he went and whatever he did; and if he did or tried to do anything foolish, such as jumping down the well, Jeewun Singh was to stop him. The old man tumbled at once, and I was easier in my mind when I saw how he was shadowing Stovey up and down the works. Then I sat down and wrote a letter to old Baggs, the Civil Surgeon at Chemanghath, about sixty miles off, telling him how we stood. The runner left about three o'clock. Jeewun Singh turned up at the end of the day and gave a full, true and particular account of Stovey's doings. D'you know what the brute had done?"
"Spare us the agony. Kill him straight off, Saveloy!"
"He'd stopped the runner, opened the bag, read my letter and torn it up! There were only two letters in the bag, both of which I'd written. I was pretty average angry, but I lay low. At dinner he said he'd got a touch of dysentery and wanted some chlorodyne. For a man anxious to depart this life he was about as badly equipped as you could wish. Hadn't even a medicine-chest to play with. He was no more suffering from dysentery than I, but I said I'd give him the chlorodyne, and so I did—fifteen drops, mixed in a wine-glass, and when he asked for the bottle I said that I hadn't any more.
"That night he began praying again, and I just lay in bed and shuddered. He was invoking the most blasphemous curses on my head—all in a whisper, for fear of waking me up—for frustrating what he called his 'great and holy purpose.' You never heard anything like it. But as long as he was praying I knew he was alive, and he ran his praying half through the night.
"Well, for the next ten days he was apparently quite rational; but I watched him and told Jeewun Singh to watch him like a cat. I suppose he wanted to throw me off my guard, but I wasn't to be thrown. I grew thin watching him. Baggs wrote in to say he had gone on tour and couldn't be found anywhere in particular for another six weeks. It was a ghastly time.
"One day old Jeewun Singh turned up with a bit of paper that Stovey had given to one of the lohars as a naksha. I thought it was mean work spying into another man's very plans, but when I saw what was on the paper I gave old Jeewun Singh a rupee. It was a be-auti-ful little breech-pin. The one-idead idiot had gone back to Martini! I never dreamt of such persistence. 'Tell me when the lohar gives it to the Sahib,' I said, and I felt more comfy for a few days. Even if Jeewun Singh hadn't split I should have known when the new breech-pin was made. The brute came in to dinner with a dashed confident, triumphant air, as if he'd done me in the eye at last; and all through dinner he was fiddling in his waistcoat pocket. He went to bed early. I went, too, and I put my head against the door and listened like a woman. I must have been shivering in my pyjamas for about two hours before my friend went for the dismantled Martini. He could not get the breech-pin to fit at first. He rummaged about, and then I heard a file go. That seemed to make too much noise to suit his fancy, so he opened the door and went out into the compound, and I heard him, about fifty yards off, filing in the dark at that breech-pin as if he had been possessed. Well, he was, you know. Then he came back to the light, cursing me for keeping him out of his rest and the peace of Abraham's bosom. As soon as I heard him taking up the Martini, I ran round to his door and tried to enter gaily, as the stage directions say. 'Lend me your gun, old man, if you're awake,' I said. 'There's a howling big brute of a pariah in my room, and I want to get a shot at it.' I pretended not to notice that he was standing over the gun, but just pranced up and caught hold of it. He turned round with a jump and said: 'I'm sick of this. I'll see that dog, and if it's another of your lies I'll——' You know I'm not a moral man."
"Hear! hear!" drowsily from Martha.