I worked up my native clerk--Bulaki Ram--to a
ferocious pitch of enthusiasm. He used to calculate the profits
of our cotton-scheme to three points of decimals, after office. I
tell you I envied your magistrates here hauling money out of
motorists every week I had managed to make our ordinary revenue
and expenditure just about meet, and I was crazy to get the odd
two hundred pounds for my cotton. That sort of thing grows on a
chap when he's alone--and talks aloud!"
"Hul-lo! Have you been there already?" the father said, and Adam
nodded.
"Yes. Used to spout what I could remember of 'Marmion' to a tree,
sir. Well then my luck turned. One evening an English-speaking
nigger came in towing a corpse by the feet. (You get used to
little things like that.) He said he'd found it, and please would
I identify, because if it was one of Ibn Makarrah's men there
might be a reward. It was an old Mohammedan, with a strong dash
of Arab--a smallboned, bald-headed chap, and I was just wondering
how it had kept so well in our climate when it sneezed.
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