“He’s nothing but an interloper, sir, and thirty years back would have been harried out of Calcutta. I’m much mistaken if all his wealth is the result of honest trading. He’s hand and glove with Omy Chund and the other Gentoos, visiting even at their private houses, which no other gentleman in the factory does, and the President finds him useful as a means of communicating with ’em. If he sells the secrets with which he has been injudiciously entrusted, we have a key to all that betraying of our plans to the Muxadavad Durbar which has gone on for years before poor le Beaume came here.”
“Come, Captain, don’t talk scandal,” says my papa, seeing my eyes fixed eagerly on Captain Colquhoun, for indeed I am perpetually on the watch for any chance of ridding myself of Mr Menotti. “We are as slanderous as any three old tabbies over their dish of tea, and Miss here is listening with all her ears.”
“And indeed, sir,” put in Mr Dash, “I can’t see that we have any reason to regret Mr Menotti’s friendliness with the Gentoos. Omy Chund and Govinderam Metre have both been hardly treated, and ’tis well they should be cultivated.”
“They are a pair of rascals, sir!” cried Mr Freyne, with a strong word, “and should have been turned out of the bounds when the Company’s service was rid of ’em.”
“Oh, come, sir, sure you must grant that the Zemindar used ’em with great hardness, worse even than the rest of the Indians he misrules.”
“No abuse of Mr Holwell here, sir, if you please.”
“But, sir, the place rings with tales of his injustice. There’s that affair of Rangeeboom Coberage, Raja Tillokchund of Burraduan’s[01] go-master—his entire possessions were sold for a debt of seven thousand rupees. That has inflamed the Gentoos, and ’tis not the only case.”
“When you have lived a little longer in Bengall, sir, you’ll understand that if King Solomon himself were judge in the Cutcherry Court, the losing side would infallibly declare he’d been bribed.”
“But ’tis well known, sir, that Mr Holwell increases the Company’s revenues by permitting persons of infamous character to settle here on payment of a price.”
“That’s Mr Holwell’s affair, sir, and if it be true, he must settle it with his conscience and the Company, which is for ever pressing him to raise more money. But I entirely disbelieve the report. Why, this very morning there was a dispute in the Council over some vagabond or other, whom Holwell desired to admit, while Drake and the other two were resolved to expel him. I suppose you’ll say that the Zemindar had took money from him?”