"Pathan turban!" he ordered; and his servant brought him one.
"Sheepskin cloak!"
In a moment the upper half of him would have passed in the dark for
that of a rather portly Northern trader. He decided that a rug would
do the rest, and snatched one as he ran for the carriage with the
turban under his arm. He gave no order to the driver other than
"Cheloh!" and that means "Go ahead"; so the driver, who was a Sikh,
went ahead as the guns go into action, asway and aswing, regardless
of everything but speed.
"Yasmini's!" said the general, at the end of a hundred yards; and
the Sikh took a square, right-angle turn at full gallop with a
neatness the Horse Artillery could not have bettered. There seemed to
be no need of further instructions, for the Sikh pulled up unbidden
at the private door that is to all appearance only a mark on the
dirty-looking wall.
With a rug around his middle, there shot out then what a watching
small boy described afterward as "a fat hill-rajah on his way to be
fleeced." The carriage drove on, for coachmen who wait outside
Yasmini's door are likely to be butts for questions. The door opened
without any audible signal, and the man with the rug around his
middle disappeared.
He had ceased to bear any resemblance to any one but a stout English
general in mess-dress by the time he reached the dark stairhead; and
Yasmini took the precaution of being there alone to meet him.
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