“Oh, that gives the whole thing away,” said Georgia, more cheerfully, “for the Amir’s adoption of Bahadar Shah was recognised by the Government of India. Was all this to happen to-day, Dr Tighe?”
“Yes, at this durbar. Quite thrilling, isn’t it? Well, I must be off on my rounds. When am I to have that game of tennis you promised me, Miss North?” and the doctor rode away, while Georgia drove on, with brows drawn into an anxious frown.
“It’s quite impossible,” she said at last, rousing herself. “He couldn’t spring such a mine upon us. Look, Mab! this is my father’s old house.”
“But why don’t you live in it?” asked Mabel, looking with much interest at the flat-roofed building with its massive stone walls and narrow windows. Georgia laughed.
“Because the accommodation is a little too Spartan for a family,” she said. “My father prided himself on his powers of roughing it, and all his young men had to follow his example. Mr Anstruther inhabits the house at present, in company with the official records, for the office is large and airy, and Dick uses it still.”
“I should have thought General Keeling would have lived in the fort,” said Mabel, as a sharp turn in the road brought them in sight of the dust-coloured walls and mouldering battlements, crowned with withered grass, of the old border stronghold.
“Never!” cried Georgia. “The first thing he did on coming here was to dismantle it. He would never allow either the Khemistan Horse or his British officers to hide behind walls. Their safety had to depend on their own watchfulness.”
“He had the courage of his convictions, at any rate.”
“Of course. He never told any one to do what he would not do himself. He wanted to blow up the fort and destroy it altogether; but the Government objected in the interests of archæology, so he gave it to the station for a club-house. There has never been too much money to spare in Alibad, and people have used it gratefully ever since.”
“What a delicious old place!” sighed Mabel, as they drove in through the hospitable gateway, on either side of which the ancient doors, warped and worm-eaten and paintless, leaned useless against the wall. The block of buildings which had comprised the chief apartments of the fort in the wild days before the coming of the British was now utilised as the club-house, and an inner courtyard had been ingeniously converted into a tennis-ground. As she passed, Mabel caught a glimpse through the archway of Flora Graham and her fiancé, young Haycraft, playing vigorously, but she also noticed something else.