In justice to a very hard-working class it must be said that the thieves of Upper India have the keenest sense of humour. The last compliment that they can pay a Police officer is to rob him, and if, as once they did, they can loot a Deputy Inspector-General of Police, on the eve of his retirement, of everything except the clothes on his back, their joy is complete. They cause letters of derision and telegrams of condolence to be sent to the victim; for of all men thieves are most compelled to keep abreast of progress.
Strickland was a man of few words where his business was concerned. I had never seen a Police officer robbed before, and I expected some excitement, but Strickland held his tongue. He took the groom’s deposition, and then retired into himself for a time. Then he sent Kennedy, of the Pathankot District, an official letter and an unofficial note. Kennedy’s reply was purely unofficial, and it ran thus: “This seems a compliment solely intended for you. My wonder is you didn’t get it before. The men are probably back in your district by now. My Dhunnera and foot-hill people are highly respectable cultivators, and, seeing my Assistant is an unlicked pup, and I can’t trust my Inspector out of my sight, I’m not going to turn their harvest upside down with Police investigations. I’m run off my feet with vaccination Police work. You’d better look at home. The Shubkudder gang were through here a fortnight back. They laid up at the Amritsar Serai, and then worked down. No cases against them in my charge; but, remember, you imprisoned their head-man for receiving stolen goods in Prub Dyal’s burglary. They owe you one.”
“Exactly what I thought,” said Strickland. “I had a notion it was the Shubkudder gang from the first. We must make it pleasant for them at Peshawur, and in my District, too. They’re just the kind that would lie up under Imam Din’s shadow.”
From this point onward the wires began to be worked heavily. Strickland had a very fair knowledge of the Shubkudder gang, gathered at first hand.
They were the same syndicate that had once stolen a Deputy Commissioner’s cow, put horse-shoes on her, and taken her forty miles into the jungle before they lost interest in the joke. They added insult to insult by writing that the Deputy Commissioner’s cows and horses were so much alike that it took them two days to find out the difference and they would not lift the like of such cattle any more.
The District Superintendent at Peshawur replied to Strickland that he was expecting the gang, and Strickland’s Assistant, in his own district, being young and full of zeal, sent up the most amazing clues.
“Now that’s just what I want that young fool not to do,” said Strickland. “He’s an English boy, born and bred, and his father before him. He has about as much tact as a bull, and he won’t work quietly under my Inspector. I wish the Government would keep our service for country-born men. Those first five or six years in India give a man a pull that lasts him all his life. Adam, if only you were old enough to be my Assistant!” He looked down at the little fellow in the verandah. Adam was deeply interested in the dacoity, and, unlike a child, did not lose interest after the first week. On the contrary, he would ask his father every evening what had been done, and Strickland had drawn him a map on the white wall of the verandah, showing the different towns in which Policemen were on the look-out for thieves. They were Amritsar, Jullunder, Phillour, Gurgaon, Rawal Pindi, Peshawur and Multan. Adam looked up at it as he answered—
“There has been great dikh [trouble] in this case?”
“Very great trouble. I wish that thou wert a young man and my Assistant to help me.”
“Dost thou need help, my father?” Adam asked curiously, with his head on one side.