CHAPTER III

The colonel of Outram's Own dropped into a club where he was only one, and not the greatest, of many men entitled to respect. There were three men talking by a window, their voices drowned by the din of rain on the veranda roof, each of whom nodded to him. He chose, however, a solitary chair, for, though subalterns do not believe it, a colonel has exactly that diffidence about approaching senior civilians which a subaltern ought to feel.

In a moment all that was visible of him from the door was a pair of brown riding-boots, very much fore-shortened, resting on the long arm of a cane chair, and two sets of wonderfully modeled fingers that held up a newspaper. From the window where the three men talked he could be seen in profile.

"Wears well—doesn't he?" said one of them.

"Swears well, too, confound him!"

"Hah! Been trying to pump him, eh?"

"Yes. He's like a big bird catching flies—picks off your questions one at a time, with one eye on you and the other one cocked for the next question. Get nothing out of him but yes or no. Good fellow, though, when you're not drawing him."

"You mean trying to draw him. He's the best that come. Wish they were all like Kirby."

The man who had not spoken yet—he looked younger, was some years older, and watched the faces of the other two while seeming to listen to something in the distance—looked at a cheap watch nervously.

"Wish the Sikhs were all like Kirby!" he said. "If this business comes to a head, we're going to wish we had a million Kirbys. What did he say? Temper of his men excellent, I suppose?"

"Used that one word." "Um-m-m! No suspicions, eh?" "Said, 'No, no suspicions!'" "Uh! I'll have a word with him." He waddled off, shaking his drab silk suit into shape and twisting a leather watch-guard around his finger.

"Believe it will come to anything?" asked one of the two men he had left behind.

"Dunno. Hope not. Awful business if it does."

"Remember how we were promised a world-war two years ago, just before the Balkans took fire?"

"Yes. That was a near thing, too. But they weren't quite ready then. Now they are ready, and they think we're not. If I were asked, I'd say we ought to let them know we're ready for 'em. They want to fight because they think they can catch us napping; they'd think twice if they knew they couldn't do it."

"Are they blind and deaf? Can't they see and hear?"

"Quern deus vult perdere, prius dementat, Ponsonby, my boy."