Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/138

 Legislative Council of the Calcutta Municipality, decorated, deservedly, with the Star of the Indian Empire? A young prince, furthermore, who travels in the retinue of the ruling princess of Tamerlanistan! The jackal—and the pig—will bow their filth-scabbed necks. And the British Raj will also bow—for Central Asia is Central Asia …”

“And the Russian squints down from the North!” smiled Hector. “I understand!”

“As I knew thou wouldst! And now, follow me, young heart of my old heart, and”—running a sly hand over the other's flannel-clad shoulder—“we'll change these foreign clothes of yours into a dress more befitting a prince of the Gengizkhani.”

Three hours later, with the sudden young sun of the tropics splintering out of the east and all Calcutta awakening and sitting up to its daily round of abusing itself, the Government, and the weather. Hector Wade was sitting in a low victoria drawn by a brace of squealing, shaggy, rat-like, up-country ponies. He was dressed as became a rollicking, rich young Central Asian prince come to Calcutta to see the sights, to buy useless goods and, perchance, get drunk on foreign wine; from immense, black Persian lamb cap to yellow leather slippers with coquettishly upturned toes, from richly embroidered waistband, with the hilt of the ancient blade showing grimly above it, to open work silk socks in hopeful cerise, from the foppish sprig of rose-geranium behind his left ear to the great, flat-cut canary diamond that twinkled on his thumb. By his side sat the Princess Aziza Nurmahal in a