Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/275

Rh 'At Chitor, look you, I was all in Kings' country; for Kotah to the east is beyond the Sirkar's law, and east again lie Jeypur and Gwakior. Neither love spies, and there is no justice. I was hunted like a wet jackal; but I broke through at Bandakui, where I heard there was a charge against me of murder in the city I had left—of the murder of a boy. They have both the corpse and the witnesses waiting.'

'But cannot the Sirkar protect?'

'We of the Game are beyond protection. If we die, we die. Our names are blotted from the book. That is all. At Bandakui, where lives one of us, I thought to slip the scent by changing my face, and so made me a Mahratta. Then I came to Agra, and would have turned back to Chitor to recover the letter. So sure I was I had slipped them. Therefore I did not send a tar (telegram) to any one saying where the letter lay. I wished the credit of it all.' Kim nodded. He understood that feeling well.

'But at Agra, walking in the streets, a man cried a debt against me, and approaching with many witnesses, would have me to the courts then and there. Oh, they are clever in the South! He recognised me as his agent for cotton. May he burn in hell for it!'

'And wast thou?'

'O fool! I was the man they sought for the matter of the letter. I ran into the Fleshers' Ward and came out by the House of the Jew, who feared a riot and pushed me out. I came afoot to Somna Road—I had only money for my tikkut to Delhi, and there, while I lay in a ditch with the fever, one sprang out of the bushes and beat me and cut me and searched me from head to foot. Within earshot of the te-rain it was!'

'Why did he not slay thee out of hand?'

'They are not so foolish. If I am taken in Delhi at the instance