“Certainly!” he said.
She laughed at that as if it were the greatest joke she had ever heard. It set her in the best humor possible, and by the time they reached the ebony table and she had taken the pen and dipped it in the ink, she was chuckling to herself as if the one good joke had grown into a hundred.
She wrote in Urdu. It is likely that for all her knowledge of the spoken English tongue she was not so swift or ready with the trick of writing it. She had said herself that a babu read English books to her aloud. But she wrote in Urdu with an easy flowing hand, and in two minutes she had thrown sand on the letter and had given it to King to read. It was not like a woman's letter. It did not waste a word.
“Your Captain King has been too much trouble. He has
taken money from the Germans. He adopted native dress.
He called himself Kurram Khan. He slew his own brother
at night in the Khyber Pass. These men will say that
he carried the head to Khinjan, and their word is true,
for I, Yasmini, saw. He used the head for a passport,
to obtain admittance. He proclaims a jihad! He urges
invasion of India! He held up his brother's head
before five thousand men and boasted of the murder.
The next you shall hear of your Captain King of the
Khyber Rifles, he will be leading a jihad into India.
You would have better trusted me. Yasmini.”
He read it and passed it back to her.
“They will not disbelieve me,” she said, triumphant as the very devil over a branded soul all hot. “They will be sure you are mad, and they will believe the witnesses!”
He bowed. She sealed the letter and addressed it with only a scrawled mark on its outer cover. That, by the way, was utter insolence, for the mark would be understood at any frontier post by the officer commanding.
“Rewa Gunga shall start with this to-day!” she said, with more amusement than malice. After that she was still for a moment, watching his eyes, at a loss to understand his carelessness. He seemed strangely unabased. His folded arms were not defiant, but neither were they yielding.
“I love you, Athelstan!” she said. “Do you love me?”
“I think you are very beautiful, Princess!”