“Oh, come, this is too much! Why should Mrs North wish to leave the fort?”
Ismail Bakhsh cast a fierce glance at Mr Burgrave, who had taken no part in the examination. “I can guess the reason, sahib, but it is not expedient to accuse the great ones of the earth to their faces.”
“Now what did I tell you?” asked Colonel Graham of the Commissioner. “I said you were mixed up in it somehow. You would like to have the matter cleared up, of course?”
“By all means,” said Mr Burgrave indifferently. The proceedings bored him, and he did not see why both the Colonel and Ismail Bakhsh should persist in bringing his name into them.
“Speak, and fear not,” said the Colonel.
“Thus then it is, sahib. When the Kumpsioner Sahib came to the border, he found the name of Sinjāj Kīlin in all men’s mouths, and he hated it, and sought to throw dirt upon it, even as an upstart king seeks to defile the monuments of those that were before him. But there were yet living in the land Sinjāj Kīlin’s daughter and her husband, Nāth Sahib, to keep his name in remembrance, and therefore the Kumpsioner Sahib hated them also. His eye was evil against Nāth Sahib, insomuch that he blackened his face in the presence of the tribes and of the Amir of Nalapur. Then, because that was not sufficient, he suborned Bahram Khan to murder him”—the Commissioner, looking bored no longer, tried to interpose a protest, but Ismail Bakhsh disregarded it contemptuously—“and he thought all his enemies were removed, since there was only a woman left of the whole house of Sinjāj Kīlin. But when the Memsahib’s son was born, the Kumpsioner Sahib, remembering the evil deed he had done, feared lest the boy should grow up to avenge his father. The Ressaldar Ghulam Rasul can tell of the wrath and fear with which he heard of the child’s birth, and I myself have watched every night in the Memsahib’s verandah with my weapons, so that no harm should come to the Baba Sahib. And seeing that the Kumpsioner Sahib could not even dissemble his enmity so far as to come and take the child in his arms like the other sahibs, and send messages of good luck to the mother by the Miss Sahibs, I thought at least that he would fight with steel and not with drugs. But the Memsahib knew him better than I, and when this morning I received her order to help her to escape with the child, I knew that she thought it safer to take refuge with the Amir Sahib than to remain in this place. And now they will kill me; but the charge of Sinjāj Kīlin’s son is thine, sahib,” addressing the Colonel, “since the truth has been fully made known to thee by my mouth. For what says the proverb? ‘When the base-born mounts the throne, it is ill to be a king’s son.’ Guard well the Baba Sahib, for the sake of Nāth Sahib, thy friend. And as for the Kumpsioner Sahib, let him know that the men of the regiment have sworn by the holy Kaaba and the sacred well, and by the head of the Prophet of God, that he shall not escape. Once he has succeeded in slaying the Baba Sahib, no land shall be distant enough to afford him a refuge. Each man will hand down to his children the duty of slaying him, and his sons and brothers and nephews, and all his house, even as he has set himself to destroy the house of Sinjāj Kīlin.”
“Good heavens!” said the Commissioner, passing his hand feebly over his damp brow, “do they actually suspect me of plotting to murder a woman and child—and of putting poor North out of the way?”
“Suspect is not the word,” replied Colonel Graham, rather cruelly; “they are absolutely convinced of it.”
“This is one of the things that have to be lived down, I suppose. Well, the offence of our friend here seems to be a matter relating to me personally. Will you kindly release him as a favour to me? I think also it might be as well to let him do perpetual sentry-go in the verandah he seems to affect so much—take up his quarters there, in fact, and protect the baby from my machinations. And tell him that he is welcome to use his weapons on me if he catches me there under suspicious circumstances.”
“Are you inviting him to murder you?” demanded the Colonel.