“Jenkins has succeeded Willoughby. Ommony knows jolly well that Jenkins has it in for him. He’s pulling out ahead of the landslide—that’s what.”
“I don’t believe it. Ommony has guts and influence enough to bu’st ten Jenkinses. There’s more than that in it. There never was a man like Ommony for keeping secrets up his sleeve. You know he’s in the Secret Service?”
“That’s easy to say, but who said so?”
“Believe it or not—I’ll bet. I’ll bet he stays in India. I’ll bet he dies in harness. I’ll bet any money in reason he goes straight from here to McGregor’s office. More than that—I’ll bet McGregor sent for him, and that he didn’t resign from the Forestry without talking it over with McGregor first. He’s deep, is Cottswold Ommony—deep. He’s no man’s fool. There’s no man alive but McGregor who knows what Ommony will do next. Anybody want to bet about it?”
The remainder of the conversation at the club that noon rippled off into widening rings of reminiscence, all set up by Ommony’s arrival on the scene, and mostly interesting, but to stay and listen would have been to be sidetracked, which is the inevitable fate of gossips. There was a story in the wind that, if the club had known it, would have set all Delhi by the ears.
He who would understand the Plains must ascend the Eternal Hills, where a man’s eyes scan Infinity. But he who would make use of understanding must descend on to the Plains, where Past and Future meet and men have need of him.
CHAPTER II
NUMBER ONE OF THE SECRET SERVICE.
Ommony did go straight to McGregor but he and Diana, his enormous wolf-hound, walked and club bets had to be called off because there was no cab-driver from whom the chuprassi[[1]] could bludgeon information.