Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/320

506 met; and one officer, galloping by on his pony, took a pull at the animal's head and shouted, "Are you coming to the club to-night, sir?"

"No!" roared the captain; for he hadn't the faintest idea of going to a club without an invitation.

"They'll be awfully disappointed," came the echo of the officer's voice as the gharry opened up a gap between them.

"Very kind," muttered Larry; "but I fancy they'll get over it. Must have taken me for somebody else."

And the dragon grin on the face of the alabaster god in his pocket spread out until it was hideous to look upon. Larry didn't see this; he was busy staring open-mouthed at the image of himself sitting in a carriage just in front. The carriage was turning out of a compound, and blocked the road, so that his own driver was forced to stop. He recognized the other man. It was Sir Lemuel, his twin brother.

The recognition was mutual. The commissioner bowed quite coldly as the captain called out, "How are you, Lemuel?"

Then the big Waler horses whipped the carriage down the road at a slashing gait, and Larry was left alone with The Thing in his pocket.

"So that's why they've been taking off their hats to me," he mused. "They take me for Sir Lemuel. Great time he must have ruling these yellow niggers out here. I'd like to be in his shoes just for a day, to see how it feels to be King of Burma."

All the way back to the hotel he was thinking about it. Arrived there he wrote a note addressed to the Chief Commissioner, and sent it off by a native. "That will bring him," he muttered; "he always was a bit afraid of me."

It was six o'clock when Sir Lemuel arrived in his carriage. There was a great scurrying about of servants, and no end of salaaming the "Lat" Sahib; for it was not often the Chief Commissioner honored the hotel with his presence. He was shown to Captain Jones's room.

"Take a seat, Lem," said Captain Larry cheerfully. "I wanted to see you, and thought you'd rather come here than receive me at Government House."

"Please be brief, then," said Sir Lemuel, in his most dignified manner; "I have to attend a dinner at the club to-night in honor of the return of our Judicial Commissioner."

"Oh, Sir Lemuel will be there in time for that," chuckled the captain. "But first, Lem, for the sake of old times, I want you to drink a glass of wine with me. You know we took a drink together pretty often the first year of our existence." Then he broke into a loud sailor laugh that irritated the Commissioner.

"While I don't approve of drinking to the extent you have carried it," said Sir Lemuel, with judicial severity, "still I can't refuse a glass proffered by my brother."

"Your twin brother, " broke in Larry; "of whom you've always been so fond, you know."

"I really must be going, so please tell me why you've sent for me." But when he had drunk the glass of wine, he gave up all idea of going anywhere but to sleep—for it was drugged.

Then Captain Larry stripped his brother, peeled the august body of the Commissioner as one would strip a willow, and draped him in his own sailor outfit.

"You're a groggy-looking captain," he said, as he tried to brace the figure up in a big chair; "you're a disgrace to the service. You'll have your papers taken away, first thing you know."

He had put the alabaster god on the table while he was making the transfer. "This is all your doing," he said, addressing the figure.

When he had arrayed himself in the purple and fine linen of the Commissioner, he emptied the contents of the bottle of wine through the window. Then he went below and spoke to the proprietor. "The captain up-stairs, who had an important communication to make to me, has become suddenly most completely intoxicated. Never saw a man get drunk so quick in my life. Can you have him sent off to his ship, so that he won't get in disgrace? It's my express wish that this should be done, as he has been of service to me."

"All right, sir," exclaimed the hotel-keeper, touching his forehead with his forefinger in salute, "I will get Captain Davin, who is a great friend of his, to take him off right away."

"Most considerate man, the Chief Commissioner," remarked the boniface, as the carriage rolled away.

The carriage swung in under a shedlike portico at the front of a big straggling bungalow. The driver pulled up his horses; the two yaktail-bearing footmen, who had jumped down from their places behind as the carriage turned in off the