Page:The Phantom 'Rickshaw - Kipling (1890).djvu/48

 doolie-bearers came to the bungalow late last night when I was sleeping outside, and said that it was their custom to rest in the rooms set apart for the white men! What honour has the butler? They tried to enter, but I told them to go. No wonder, if these low people have been here, that the Presence is sorely spotted. It is shame, and the work of a dirty man!"

Kadir Baksh did not say that he had taken from each gang two annas for rent in advance, and then, beyond my ear-shot, had beaten them with the big green umbrella whose use I could never before divine. But Kadir Baksh has no notions of morality.

There was an interview with the butler, but as he promptly lost his head, wrath gave place to pity, and pity led to a long conversation, in the course of which he put the fat Engineer-Sahib's tragic death in three separate stations—two of them fifty miles away. The third shift was to Calcutta, and there the Sahib died while driving a dog-cart.

If I had encouraged him the butler would have wandered all through Bengal with his corpse.

I did not go away as soon as I intended. I stayed for the night, while the wind and the rat and the sash and the window-bolt played a ding-dong "hundred and fifty up". Then the wind ran out and the billiards stopped, and I felt that I had ruined, my one genuine ghost-story.

Had I only stopped at the proper time, I could have made nearly anything out of it.

That was the bitterest thought of all!