Читать книгу The Advanced-Guard онлайн

78 страница из 87

“And what inducement did he offer?” Sir Dugald’s frigid calm in asking the question was intentional, for Major Keeling’s wrath was evidently bubbling up again.

“Half the contents of the treasury, whatever that might prove to be. But is that all you think about? Do you mean to say you don’t see the insult involved in the offer—the fellow’s opinion of us who wear the British uniform? Good heavens! are you made of stone?”

Sir Dugald smiled with some difficulty, for his face had grown tense. “You are the only man who would say such things to me, Major Keeling, and the only man I would allow to do it. With you I have no choice.”

“No, no; I beg your pardon. That abominable coolness of yours—but I shall be insulting you again if I don’t look out. But if you had sat listening to that villain for an hour, while he depicted Nalapur as a perfect hell on earth, and Wilayat Ali as a wholly suitable ruler for it, and then at last brought things round to the point he had been aiming at all along, but which I had never seen, you’d know something of what I feel. Why, the fellow had the inconceivable impudence to say that he thought I understood all the time what he was driving at, and only held back so as to make certain that he put himself completely in my power!”