The collector handed us a well thumbed copy of the Red Book.
"They're all in that," he said. "I'll lend it to you, or you can buy one almost anywhere in town. If you decide after reading that to go farther up country I'm willing to issue provisional game licenses, subject to confirmation after I've looked into any evidence you care to submit on your own behalf. You can have your guns against a cash deposit—"
"How big?"
"Two hundred rupees for each gun!"
Fred laughed. The demand was intended to be away over our heads. The collector bridled.
"But no ammunition," he went on, "until your claim to respectability has been confirmed. By the way, the only claim you've made to me is for the guns. You've told me nothing about yourselves."
"Two hundred a gun?" said Fred. "Counting a pistol or revolver as one? Three guns apiece—nine guns—eighteen hundred rupees' deposit?"
The collector nodded with a sort of grim pleasure in his own unreasonableness. Fred drew out our new check book.
"You fellows agreeable?" he asked, and we nodded.
"Here's a check on the Mombasa Bank for ten thousand, and your government can have as much more again if it wants it," he said. "Make me out a receipt please, and write on it what it's for."