“Funny how that old song came up in my head. That was fairly non-committal and encouragin’. The only flaw was that his Emperor wasn’t appeased by very long chalks. Stalky extricated himself from his mountain fastnesses and loafed up to Simla at his leisure, to be offered up on the horns of the altar.”
“But,” I began, “surely the Commander-in-Chief is the proper—”
“His Excellency had an idea that if he blew up one single junior captain—same as King used to blow us up—he was holdin’ the reins of empire, and, of course, as long as he had that idea, Von Lennaert encouraged him. I’m not sure Von Lennaert didn’t put that notion into his head.”
“They’ve changed the breed, then, since my time,” I said.
“P’r’aps. Stalky was sent up for his wiggin’ like a bad little boy. I’ve reason to believe that His Excellency’s hair stood on end. He walked into Stalky for one hour—Stalky at attention in the middle of the floor, and (so he vowed) Von Lennaert pretending to soothe down His Excellency’s topknot in dumb show in the background. Stalky didn’t dare to look up, or he’d have laughed.”
“Now, wherefore was Stalky not broken publicly?” said the Infant, with a large and luminous leer.
“Ah, wherefore?” said Abanazar. “To give him a chance to retrieve his blasted career, and not to break his father’s heart. Stalky hadn’t a father, but that didn’t matter. He behaved like a—like the Sanawar Orphan Asylum, and His Excellency graciously spared him. Then he came round to my office and sat opposite me for ten minutes, puffing out his nostrils. Then he said, ‘Pussy, if I thought that basket-hanger—’”
“Hah! He remembered that,” said McTurk.
“‘That two-anna basket-hanger governed India, I swear I’d become a naturalized Muscovite to-morrow. I’m a femme incomprise. This thing’s broken my heart. It’ll take six months’ shootin’-leave in India to mend it. Do you think I can get it, Pussy?’
“He got it in about three minutes and a half, and seventeen days later he was back in the arms of Rutton Singh—horrid disgraced—with orders to hand over his command, etc., to Cathcart MacMonnie.”