“Did you have a ghastly night, son,—your first night at Home in over a year?”
“I prefer to call it an interesting night.”
“You are about to rise with cumulative glory. Do you remember our last talk in the field—the bivouac at Bhurpal?”
Routledge nodded.
“And you suggested that the spies of the Russian Bear had worked down over the hills, and looted certain startling secrets having to do with British India?”
“It was only a suggestion. The facts are not clear to me yet. There was a colossal derangement somewhere—the same, I take it, that hurled England into alliance with Japan. I appear to be the only man in London who has been denied the truth.” Routledge reached for the amber-bit of his nargileh.
“They say a man is last to hear what is going on in his own house.”
“What is the parallel, Jerry?”
“I’ve got to come to that. All London does not know—except that you are under a cloud for treachery. Forty men in London know exactly what has happened in India. Perhaps ten of this forty were at the reception last night. The forty believe you to be the man who turned the monster trick in Afghanistan, well-called the Buffer State. They are the exalted heads of Departments—Foreign, Home, Colonial, War, and Secret-service chiefs—men who live in the shadow of the Throne. Six, at most, of the correspondents are in the secret. The rest can’t tell what you did, but to them, just the same, you are the ranking Iscariot.... Routledge, how many men know the truth about Shubar Khan’s Lotus Expedition?”
“Possibly the same forty men.”