“I could have saved you that trouble, you know. I could have ‘broke’ him. He deserves it,” said McGregor, knitting his brows over the letter in his hand. “Man, man, he certainly deserves it!”
“If we all got our deserts the world ’ud stand still.” Ommony chose a cigar and bit the end off. “He’s a more than half-efficient bureaucrat. Let India suck him dry and spew him forth presently to end his days at Surbiton or Cheltenham.”
McGregor went on reading, holding his breath. “Have you read these?” he asked suddenly.
Ommony nodded. McGregor chewed at his mustache and made noises with his teeth that brought Diana’s ears up, cocked alertly.
“Man, they’re pitiful! Imagine a brute like Jenkins having such a hold on any one—and he—good God! He ought to have been hanged—no, that’s too good for him! I suppose there’s no human law that covers such a case.”
“None,” Ommony answered grimly. “But I’m pious. I think there’s a Higher Law that adjusts that sort of thing eventually. If not, I’d have killed the brute myself.”
“Listen to this.”
“Don’t read ’em aloud, Mac. It’s sacrilege. And I’m raw. It was at least partly my fault.”
“Don’t be an idiot!”
“It was, Mac. Elsa wasn’t so many years younger than me, but even when we were kids we were more like father and child than brother and sister. She had the spirituality and the brains; I had the brute-strength and was presumed to have the common sense; it made a rather happy combination. As soon as I got settled in the forest I wrote home to her to come out and keep house for me. I used to trust Jenkins in those days. It was I who introduced them. Jenkins introduced her to Kananda Pal.”