“Men are unintuitive creatures,” Mrs. Cornock-Campbell answered. “No, John, I won’t bet. The obvious thing was to take the Lama at his word and go straight to Tilgaun. I supposed Cottswold would see that, but he didn’t—did you? What is the objection?”
“This,” said Ommony, pausing, looking obstinate, “he is either my friend, or he isn’t. He has every reason to be frank with me. He has chosen the other line. All right.”
“All wrong!” she answered, chuckling. “In that letter, in his own way, he invited you to trust him.”
“I don’t!” remarked Ommony, shutting his jaws with a snap that could be heard across the room.
He refused to explain himself. He was not quite sure he could have done that, but had no inclination to try. If he had opened his lips it would have been to invite McGregor to throw a plain-clothes cordon around that house at the end of the courtyard, search the place and expose its secrets.
Habitual self-control alone prevented that. Twenty years of living courteously in a conquered country, making full allowance for the feelings of those who must look to him for justice, had bred a restraint that ill-temper could not overthrow. But he did not dare to let himself speak just then. He preferred to be rude—took up a book and began reading.
Mrs. Cornock-Campbell went on playing. John McGregor smoked in silence, pulling out the Lama’s letter, reading it over and over, trying to discover hidden meanings. So more than an hour went by with hardly a word spoken, and it was long after midnight when the wheels of McGregor’s returning dog-cart skidded on the loose gravel of the drive at the rear of the house and Diana awoke on the porch to tell the moon about it.
Dawa Tsering was admitted through the back door and shepherded in by the butler, who held his nose, but who was not otherwise so lacking in appreciation as to shut the door tight when he left the room. Ommony strode to the door, opened it wide, looked into the frightened eyes of the Goanese and watched him until he disappeared through a swinging door at the end of the passage.
“Now,” he said, shutting the door tight behind him.
“The Lama is gone!” Dawa Tsering announced dramatically. “If I had had my knife I would have slain the impudent devil who gave me the news! Tripe out of the belly of a pig is his countenance! Eggs are his eyes! He is a ragyaba![[8]] The son of evil pretended not to know me! When I offered him the letter for the Lama he growled that Tsiang Samdup and his chela had gone elsewhere. When I bade him let me in, that I might see for myself, he answered ignorantly.”