I

"Rex will get on all right," said Muriel Alexander pettishly, "you know quite well, Horace, that so long as he has old BisvÂs he wants nothing else. Look at him now! He is quite happy, and the old man would die rather than let any harm happen to the child."

Horace Alexander frowned slightly as he looked through the wide set door of his office room to the verandah beyond. It was a very neat, natty, office room, severely correct and Western in its pigeon-holes, its files, its elegant upholstered chair at the further side of the writing table ready for the confidential visitor. No guns defiled it; no tennis bats, no half-used box of cigars, no general litter of unofficial male humanity such as most Indian office rooms in the past have permitted, was to be seen within the precincts sacred to duty, for Horace Alexander was that curious product of modern times, a clever and advanced man, bent upon progress, who stickles for the commonplace conventional etiquette in all things. So he stirred uneasily at the sight he saw beyond his office doors, dropped his eye-glasses and put them on again petulantly.

Yet it was rather a pretty sight.

A red-haired, fuzzy-headed child of four or five, small, but strong and sturdy, seated with the utmost dignity oh a red velvet cushion, his broad freckled face wearing an expression of conscious majesty, part of which was doubtless due to the insecurity of a gilt paper band which was perched on his goldy-red curls.

Before him, in an attitude of prayerful adoration, squatted a very very old man. At his full height he must still have been tall, and the bent shoulders were broad; broad enough to show up the line of war-medals on the breast of his orderly's coat. They gave the new scarlet cloth a certain personal cachet and toned down its official garishness.

"Come here, Rex!" called Horace Alexander, and the child rose at once. Though high-spirited and a bit of an imp, he was a reasonable, obedient, little chap enough; obedient because he was reasonable.

"What's that you've got on your head?" queried his father irritably.

"It's my c'wown," replied Rex cheerfully. "BisvÂs cut it out for me; and he's goin' to put b'wown paper to make it 'weal stiff--c'wowns onghter be stiff, 'weal stiff, oughtn't they? an' he's going to put things on it like the pictures in the papers, an' then I shall be a 'weal King, shan't I?"

"No, my boy!" said his father sharply. "Crowns don't make kings; remember that always. There was Charles the First----"; then he paused, recognising he was out of the child's depth; and the cult of the weaker brother was not often forgotten by Horace Alexander. It was the secret of his popularity; but how he managed to reconcile it with his passion for progress remained rather a mystery to some people.

"And what were you doing," he continued.

"I wasn't doin' nothin' except be king," replied the child; "but BisvÂs was doin' 'durshan.' What is a 'durshan,' daddy, 'weally?"

The childish forehead was all puckered beneath its crown, and Rex's father, for all he was entitled to linguistic letters after his name, hesitated.

"Sight," he began, "ur--appearance--ur--aspect----"

But Rex shook his head in disapproval. "BisvÂs says it's just for all the same as seein' God--didn't you, BisvÂs?"

The liquid Urdu to which the little fellow's voice turned, echoed through the sunshine to where the tall old trooper, risen to his full height, stood smiling.

"Huzoor! so it is, without doubt. The sight of a King is even as the sight of a God. It is a revelation of the Most High."

"Good Lord!" muttered Horace Alexander under his breath, yet with an amused smile. "The child will grow up a feudal serf combined with a feudal lord, if we don't take care, Muriel! He is too much with old BisvÂs--You'd better take him with you--or--or not go."

His wife did not even frown: her position was too assured in the household for her to be even alarmed. "Of course I must go. I must wear my new frocks. Besides, you forget I'm President of the Veiled-Women's-Guild, and they are going to present a casket. And there isn't room in the Hotel for Rex--I was lucky to get one for myself this morning--besides, it would be bad for him. Of course, when you were going with tents and all that it was different; but now that you've been told to stop--Really, Horace, it is most annoying! What can it mean? There is nothing wrong in the district, is there?"

Horace Alexander's eyeglass dropped again. It generally did when he was asked for a personal opinion; not from any lack of decision in the man himself, but from that habit of relying on collective as against individual thought which distinguishes so many clever men nowadays; as if the mediocre mass could ever outvalue superior sense.

"I cannot conceive that anything serious can be wrong," he began, then paused almost pathetically before the certainty that his district was admittedly the best managed in the province. "However," he continued, virtuously remembering that the communication which stopped his going to the Big Durbar was strictly confidential, "that is neither here nor there. I have my orders, so that ends it, and----" he glanced out to the verandah where the "durshan" had re-commenced--"I suppose Rex had better remain, if you think it safe. I shall be very busy----"

His wife laughed, and stooping over his chair, kissed the top of his head; it was a trifle bald.

"You dear old stupid," she said kindly. "You've nothing to do with it. I wouldn't leave him if it wasn't for old BisvÂs! You and I, Horace, have grown out of--what shall I call it--feudal relations--but we can understand them. You don't suppose I leave the boy in your charge, do you? No! My dear man! you're not up to it. But BisvÂs! BisvÂs was your grandfather's servant when he was a boy, and he swears Rex is the living image of 'Jullunder Jullunder baba,' whom, I verily believe, he mixes up with Alexander the Great! It doesn't do the child any harm, though it makes him a bit autocratic now. He'll grow out of being King at school. And really it is a pretty sight to see him with his bodyguard of those marvellous old dodderers BisvÂs rakes up from the bazaar----"

"I've seen them," replied her husband gloomily. "I'd have sent them about their business if they hadn't been old pensioners--and in uniform----"

Muriel laughed again. "Such uniforms! But they are magnificent to the child and he's magnificent to them. It's all right, Horace. He is as pleased as Punch, because I've allowed him, as he can't go to Delhi, to have a sham coronation here."

"My dear!" protested her husband; but at that moment an old-fashioned buggy, with a flea-bitten Arab in the shafts, drew up, and Mrs. Alexander discreetly withdrew before an official visitor.

Ere five minutes were over the new comer rose from the upholstered chair, went to the four doors of the office room, looked round for possible eavesdroppers, closed them, then sate down again; for John Carruthers, the Superintendent of Police, was of the old school. He suspected everybody. In his heart of hearts Horace Alexander loathed him: or rather, his methods; but he had to admit that he was an excellent police officer. Short and stout, he looked as if he had a trace of native blood in him, anyhow, none understood the ways of Indian wickednesses better than he.

"This is serious," he said briefly. "I always told you, sir, you would have to face it some time." Then he paused. "I wonder if anyone realises the relief it will be to our force when the whole show goes off well--as it will do! But there's always that off chance--and here is one----"

"I don't believe it," said Horace Alexander stubbornly; "it is unthinkable, inconceivable----"

John Carruthers raised his shaggy eyebrows. "Nothing, sir, is inconceivable in India. There's a lot of lees in four thousand years of civilisation. So long as it's stagnant, well and good; but if you stir 'em up--However! you don't agree. And this----" he touched the confidential communication--"has got to be seen to."

"Yes! it has got to be seen to--wrong or right," echoed the younger man firmly. Outside, the sunshine shone in sultry drowsy peace; but within the closed office room, the air seemed vibrant, as the two, mutually responsible for so much in their world, looked into each other's eyes in perfect unanimity. So it is often in India nowadays; something has to be done and old and new must combine to the doing of it.

"Hullo! what's up?" asked the Superintendent of Police when, having offered to drive his official superior down to the city, they stepped into the verandah; and then he smiled. "The youngster seems to be enjoying himself, eh!"

Under the sirus trees on the opposite side of the drive were drawn up five old men, headed by BisvÂs, who stood next something that was more like a monkey than a man; for Bhim Singh, even when he had been the most swaggering havildar in a Ghurka regiment, had never been tall, and was now almost incredibly shrunken and old. But his eyes still looked out sharp and bright from his wizened face and his military salute shot out smartly at the sight of the masters.

"It is all old BisvÂs' fault," excused Rex's father, giving a disturbed look at his son and heir, who--with the gilt paper circlet still on his fuzzy head--was apparently drilling the ancient warriors, "I've told my wife that it's a mistake, but you see, BisvÂs looked after my grandfather when they were kids together, and so----"

"And so," interrupted John Carruthers with a chuckle, "you have the most valuable asset in the world! If I were you I would encourage it! Good Lord! man!----" he forgot etiquette for the moment--"that sort of thing is the safety of--of everything."

So the two men drove off to the office, to confer secretly with other good men and true, and the child, with the gold circlet on his fuzzy hair, stood in the half shade, half shine of the sirus trees, and dressed his army autocratically. And the old warriors--there was BisvÂs who had fought at Sobraon, and Bhim Singh who had fought everywhere indiscriminately for sheer love of fighting, and old ImÂn, the hair of whose body still stood on end as he told tales of how he had waged war for the Sirkar against his own brothers in Mutiny time, and Pir Khan, Yusufzai, who still talked of Nikalseyn sahib as if he were not dead, and last but not least, most ancient of all, a nameless fossil of humanity called by the others "Baba" (father), who bewailed the fact that he had not been at both sieges of Bhurtpore--these all obeyed the child's orders, and nodded and winked and swore that he was the living spit and image of "Gineral Jullunder Jullunder Sahib Bahadur," who had led them to victory again and again. The smallest cavalry officer in JÂn KampÂni's army; but the bravest and the best loved!

II

Three days had passed, and once again the two men sate facing each other in the tidy, conventional office room. The confidential box was open and papers littered the table; but the hint of possible trouble remained still a mere hint.

"And yet," said John Carruthers thoughtfully, "I don't like it. I told you about that temple incident? Quite a trivial affair, but in my experience--and that is pretty wide, sir--that sort of thing always means something. But the fact is, I haven't time----" his bright eyes grew restless--"to unearth anything."

Horace Alexander smiled. "Because, my dear fellow, there is nothing to unearth. I told you so from the beginning. I am pretty well up in my own district, Carruthers----"

"That you may be, sir; but pure anarchism isn't a thing of districts: it's--what do they call it!--a zeit geist! How many fools do you suppose are in your towns and villages, sir? Well! everyone of them is a danger if there is a good agitator within hearing. Anyhow, I am so far dissatisfied, that I am going to propose to you a plan----" He got up as he had done before, closed every door after a good look round for eavesdroppers, and finally paused before little Rex, who was sitting in a corner of the room, playing with a pen and paper and some red and black ink which his father had given him. His mother having gone off to the Big Show, which was to take place next day, the little fellow had been tearful and needed consolation. Now, however, he appeared quite absorbed in his occupation.

"What are you doing, Rex?" asked John Carruthers.

The child held up a round of white paper with cabalistic signs on it.

"I'm makin' a medal to give to my army," he said with importance. "And 'Wex' is to be in 'wed and so's 'Imp.' Then 'et' will be black, don't you see?"

The men laughed, and settled themselves over the railway map which John Carruthers spread out on the table.

"You see," said the police officer in a low voice, "the Royal train focusses anxiety according to these hints----" he pointed to the confidential papers--"and I can't help a feeling that they are right. I've got a sort of second-sight in these ways--perhaps because I was born and brought up in the country--and I believe there is something in it. I'd ferret it out if I'd time; but I haven't. So why run risks? The Royal train is timed to run the sixty odd miles through your district on the direct line between three and five a.m. to-morrow morning-- just before dawn. Now why should it? Why shouldn't it do the eighty odd miles of the loop line?"

"But that would bring it right here--right in the very heart----" interrupted Horace Alexander.

"That wouldn't matter, provided nobody knew," came the quick reply. "And nobody need know--except, of course, the railway bosses. Just look at it on the map. Points changed at BarÂwal Junction--then straight away, past us, to the northern branch, and so back a bit--only a bit--to the main line again. It wouldn't delay them half an hour, if that----"

Horace Alexander's finger traced out the line on the map.

"But the direct line is guarded," he began.

"Inadequately," persisted John Carruthers, "at least, to my mind. Now, by taking this new loop you are safe. It only needs a telegram--for the trains haven't begun yet to run at night, and it will be 'line clear' all through. The usual pilot engine, of course--so no one need know."

Horace Alexander nodded. "No! poor devils!" he assented, a bit irrelevantly, "and dozens of them would have rejoiced to do 'durshan.'"

The child in the corner of the room looked up at the familiar word and listened.

But the men were too much immersed to notice him.

"Well, it may be wise!" said Horace Alexander at last. "I don't agree with you, Carruthers, of course. The whole thing's a mare's nest. But, as you say, it won't disarrange anything. The Royal train will be up to time for early tea at Sonabad, and there all is safe: so if you'll drive me down to the telegraph office, I'll send the cipher myself."

"H'm," said John Carruthers thoughtfully, "I wouldn't cipher. Don't trust 'em a bit. The clerks in my office know 'em, I'm sure. Try French--it's safer."

Horace Alexander laughed a superior laugh.

"Mine don't! not the real confidential one. Why! I don't suppose you do."

"That's a different matter," replied the police officer drily. "However! it's for you to decide."

"Yes," said the District Officer firmly. "Well! goodnight, Rex! I shan't be back, child, till breakfast to-morrow."

"Where are you going, Daddy?" asked the boy.

"I'm going to do durshan," replied his father carelessly.

The child rose and came towards the table with shining eyes, the medal in his hand.

"Daddy!" he said, "I should like to do 'durshan' too. Mayn't I?"

His father shook his head and smiled. "Impossible, Rex! You can't ride forty miles over the desert along a railway as I shall, can you? You wouldn't like to do what Daddy's got to do to-night, I can tell you, young man! Wait a while! Your turn'll come." He was busy locking the confidential box.

"But I meant here, Daddy," persisted the child.

"Here?" echoed his father carelessly, "Oh! here! Yes! You and old BisvÂs can amuse yourselves with doing durshan as much as you like. Now good-night--and--and be sure to say your prayers, Rex." He stooped down to kiss the child, and as he did so, "Rex Imp" in red with the et in black, caught his eye. "Rex, Imp," he muttered, "not a bad name for you, though you're a good little chap on the whole."

And he went off, feeling virtuous. Whatever his own beliefs, or rather lack of belief, might be, no one could say that he was forcing it prematurely on the weaker brother. Perhaps, however, the thought that his little son's lips--which had never to his knowledge been soiled by a lie--had begged dear God to take care of his Daddy, was unconsciously a help to the man during the anxious night. For it was anxious. To be responsible meant much to both those men, and this sudden change of plan--though it certainly removed risk--threw a still heavier burden of care on the shoulders of those two who had suggested it.

Therefore, when, just as the primrose dawn of another day had begun to dissipate the shadows of the night, the Royal train, safe and sound, steamed into the station at Sonabad, Horace Alexander and John Carruthers looked at each other as they stood on the platform and positively laughed.

"That nightmare's over," said the latter.

"I always said it was a mare's nest," replied the former.

"Well! we needn't quarrel about it now. I've handed over charge to Evesham, and you to Coleridge, and that's all. And I shall be glad to have a cup of tea. I've been too busy to eat for the last few days."

Half-an-hour afterwards they were in Horace Alexander's motor, going full speed along the Grand Trunk road.

"We shall be back by breakfast time," said John Carruthers, whose thoughts ran upon food.

But Horace, as he steered his way past the long lines of lumbering wains laden with corn, which still, in India, cling to the roads, despite railways, was jubilant over his district.

"I told you it was all right," he said finally, "but you and your sort, Carruthers, can't see that we are in a new age. We are out of the past----"

"That doesn't look like it," interrupted John Carruthers, pointing to a group in the verandah; for at that moment the car swept easily into the gateway of Horace Alexander's house. The latter frowned, for Rex's army was awaiting them, drawn up to stiff military salute, while in front of them, his small broad face full of smiles, was Rex himself holding a box in his hand.

"We got it, Daddy!" he shouted. "We got it all 'wight, and the men 'wan away, and Baba-jee emptied it, because he was the older-est, and it's all quite 'wight."

"Good God," cried John Carruthers, leaping out of the car, his eyes almost out of his head. "It's an infernal machine. I--I--I--'ve seen--'em--before--I--I----"

Horace Alexander turned pale as ashes. "Put it down, Rex. Gently--gently--but--but----"

Old BisvÂs salaamed down to the ground. "The Presence need not fear. The child did not touch it, of course, till the poisonous thing had been emptied of its venom."

"But how----" began Horace Alexander helplessly.

John Carruthers, however, had his wits about him, and said in a low voice, "Look here, sir! This had better be kept dark; for the present, anyhow."

Old ImÂn, who understood a little English, nodded approvingly. "Without doubt it is a concealed word," he said suavely. "And so I told BisvÂs. Therefore none know of it save those here present. So we had to do often in Mutiny time when news meant much; and Gineral-Jullunder-Jullunder-sahib-bahadur would say----"

The police officer cut the old man's reminiscence short. "You have done well, risildar-jee," he said curtly, but the praise brought an unwonted flush to the withered cheek. "We'd better hear the story in camera, sir."

So the five old warriors filed into the office room, the doors were shut, and Rex sate on his father's knee, while John Carruthers carefully examined the infernal machine which had been laid on the table.

"Paris," he said laconically, "one of the latest sort. What did I tell you, sir--anarchy isn't a thing of districts."

"Go on, BisvÂs!" replied Horace Alexander evasively.

"As I was saying, Huzoor, when the Huzoor left to do durshan last night, Jullunder Baba came to me and said, 'BisvÂs! get ready to go and do durshan likewise; my father said I might----'"

"And you did, daddy, didn't you?" broke in the little lad's voice confidently. His father hesitated, then remembering his uncomprehending words, nodded and held the child closer.

"So I, knowing that the word of Jullunder Baba is even as the word of a King, unbreakable, said, 'But whither, my lord?' And he said, 'That will I show thee! Do thou as thou art bid, slave!' Now the night, as the Huzoor knows, was dark, and I grow old. So I bethought me of help, lest evil should befall. Therefore I said, 'Lo! it is not meet to go without the Army.' So these came willingly. For, see you, Protector of the Poor, we are all old, and the durshan is even as the sight of a god--it heals sin. Therefore, in the darkness we set off, and I wrapped the chota sahib in blankets and took the trick lamp and a ternus of hot milk also----"

John Carruthers looked up.

"He means electric and thermos," said Horace Alexander, with an odd sort of cackle in his voice; something seemed to have risen in his throat and prevented his speaking clearly.

"We carried the chota sahib by turns, seeing there might have been serpents in the way," continued the old man, "and made for the railway, since that was all the direction Jullunder Baba would give. Then ImÂn, remembering the old tomb--the Huzoor will remember it also, since there was a case about it in his court----"

"And the Huzoor," broke in ImÂn, "decided virtuously, that being the tomb of a saint, it should stand, and the railway move----"

"Remembering it," went on old BisvÂs, "he said, 'It would give shelter to the child.' So thither we went, and there the chota sahib, having remembered he had not said his prayers as he had promised the Huzoor, said them. He knelt, Huzoor, on that slab, lest the floor should be damp----"

"Yes," assented the child's father as the old man paused. Once again there was that lump in his throat. He saw, as in a vision, the old Mahomedan tomb rearing its half-ruined dome so close to the railway--the white-faced child praying God to bless everyone he loved, those dark faces standing round reverently.

"Lo!" continued old BisvÂs gently, "I think the saint down below must have heard--ImÂn says he did--for what followed was of no man's making. We were all drowsing in the tomb--'tis a good five miles from the Huzoor's bungalow to the railway, for all it goes so near to the city--when Baba-jee--he hath the ears of a mouse still--said 'Hist!'

"So I looked out, and there were men--five or six of them, on the line. Then it came to me what the ill-begotten hounds had been doing in Bengal, and a sort of fury seized on me. So I crept back. Jullunder Baba was asleep among the blankets on the tomb slab, but I whispered the others, and they unbuckled their swords and made ready."

The faces of the four old warriors who, standing two on one side two on the other of the speaker, had watched his every word, were a study. Exultation, pride, absolute satisfaction showed in every line of them, and the lean old fingers gripped their sword-hilts once more.

"Then Baba-jee gave the word--he was 'senior-orfficer,' and--and--Huzoor, they ran away!!!"

Even John Carruthers' chuckle had a suspicion of a sob in it.

"And then! Oh! hero!" he said, "what then?"

"Huzoor! I looked out over the desert and far, far away on the straight line I saw light. And there was a faint rumble in the air. It was a train. Mayhap the chota sahib had been right, mayhap it was the Train-of-Majesty! So I turned on the 'trick lamp,' and there it was on the line--that thing--it had a string to it that lay on the rail. And--and--Huzoor! my memory fails me--There was the child, and there was the train!--I had to decide----

"Then I cried to ImÂn, 'Quick! the chota sahib! Run far with him--far!--far!' So when that was done I up with my sword and I smote the string that lay on the rail!----" he paused, then went on--

"So that was done also; and ImÂn brought the child back, and the train sped past, and we all stood in a row and did durshan; though I know not if it was durshan or not, since, mayhap, it was not the Royal train after all."

The old eyes looked almost wistfully at those two men in office, but the child's were on his father's confidently:

"But it was the Royal train, wasn't it, daddy?" said the child's voice, and Horace Alexander's answered huskily:

"Perhaps it was, Rex; anyhow, you and the others did durshan. Of that I am sure."

Content settled to those two faces, the old and the young, and the ancient warrior went on--

"Then there was nothing to do, Huzoor, save to come home and bring the poisonous thing with us. I was for sending the chota sahib on in ImÂn's care and carrying the thing myself; but Jullunder Baba would not go without it. So Bhim and the Father took the devil's box apart lest it should kill everyone, and with Bhim's kukri they prized it open"--a faint sigh came from the Europeans--"and spilt the witches' brew in the sand. That is all, Huzoor! Your slaves did what they could. The men ran away so fast, it was not possible for us, aged ones, to pursue them."

"But," broke in the most aged, "they were dressed like the Huzoors--in trousers, and my sword was bloody, so I must have hit someone."

"And so was mine," said each of the ancient warriors in turn.

Horace Alexander cleared his throat.

"Really!" he began, "I scarcely know how to thank----"

"Daddy!" said Rex's eager voice, "I know! I'm goin' to give each of 'em my army medal with 'Wex and Imp in 'wed, and et in black on it; an' they'll be orful pleased--won't you, Army?"

"Huzoor!" The old arms were stiff in salute, and then the oldest voice struck up quaveringly. "Lo! sahibÂn! it is enough for us that we have done durshan ere death. It brings contentment, even though both sieges of Bhurtpore is denied to some of us."

As, led by Rex, they marched out to the verandah, the two officials looked at one another.

But they said nothing for a minute. Then John Carruthers burst out:

"Damn the cipher! I told you it wasn't safe. Look here, sir, we must keep this quiet for the time."

Horace Alexander nodded.