Not so the gurgle that she gave, for a
man's breath bubbling through the blood of a slit throat makes the
same shuddersome sound exactly. The general took no notice whatever
of that, for wise men of the West understand the East's attempts to
scandalize them. It is the everlasting amusement of Yasmini, and a
thousand others, to pretend that the English are even more blood
careless than themselves, just as it is their practise to build
confidently on the opposite fact.
"Did _you_ fire the House-of-the-Eight-Half-brothers?" asked
the general suddenly. "Am I a sweeper?" she retorted.
"Did you order it done?"
"Did Jumna rise when the rain came? There were six good cobras of
mine burned alive, to say nothing of the bones of a dead Afridi! Nay,
sahib, I ordered a clear trail left from there to here, connecting me
and thee and Ranjoor Singh to the Germans and a dog of an Afridi
murderer. I left a trail that even the police could follow!"
"Whose property is that house?"
"Whose? Ask the lawyers! They have fought about it in the courts
until lawyers own every stick and stone of it, and now the lawyers
fight one another! The government will spend a year now," she
laughed, "seeking whom to fine for the fire. It will be good to see
the lawyers run to cover!"
"This is a bad business!" said the general sternly; and he used two
words in the native tongue that are thirty times more expressive of
badness as applied to machinations than are the English for them.
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