'Have you ever tried that trick?' I asked.
'Again and again, but the Residents1 find you out, and then you get escorted to the Border before you've time to get your knife into them. But about my friend here. I must give him a word o' mouth to tell him what's come to me or else he won't know where to go. I would take it more than kind of you if you was to come out of Central India in time to catch him at Marwar Junction, and say to him:?'He has gone South for the week.' He'll know what that means. He's a big man with a red beard, and a great swell2 he is. You'll find him sleeping like a gentleman with all his luggage round him in a Second- class compartment. But don't you be afraid. Slip down the window, and say:? 'He has gone South for the week,' and he'll tumble.3 It's only cutting your time of stay in those parts by two days. I ask you as a stranger?going to the West,'4 he said, with emphasis.
'Where have you come from?' said I. 'From the East,' said he, 'and I am hoping that you will give him the message on the Square5?for the sake of my Mother as well as your own.'
Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their mothers, but for certain reasons, which will be fully apparent, I saw fit to agree.
'It's more than a little matter,' said he, 'and that's why I ask you to do it? and now I know that I can depend on you doing it. A Second-class carriage at Marwar Junction, and a red-haired mart asleep in it. You'll be sure to remember. I get out at the next station, and I must hold on there till he comes or sends me what I want.'
'I'll give the message if I catch him,' I said, 'and for the sake of your Mother as well as mine I'll give you a word of advice. Don't try to run the Central India States just now as the correspondent of the Backwoodsman. There's a real one knocking about here, and it might lead to trouble.'
'Thank you,' said he, simply, 'and when will the swine be gone? I can't
starve because he's ruining my work. I wanted to get hold of the Degumber
Rajah down here about his father's widow, and give him a jump.'
'What did he do to his father's widow, then?'
'Filled her up with red pepper and slippered her to death as she hung from
a beam. I found that out myself, and I'm the only man that would dare going
into the State to get hush-money for it. They'll try to poison me, same as they
did in Chortumna when I went on the loot there. But you'll give the man at
Marwar Junction my message?'
He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected. I had heard, more
than once, of men personating correspondents of newspapers and bleeding
9. This fictitious newspaper appears to be based affairs at the courts of Indian rulers. on the Allahabad Pioneer, for which Kipling 2. Fashionable fellow. worked as a roving correspondent. 'Central India 3. Catch on, understand. States': quasi-independent 'Native States,' as they 4. This phrase and the following one are from the were also known, presided over by Indian royalty. code of the Freemasons. 1. British political officers appointed to oversee 5. Honestly.
.
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING / 1797
small Native States with threats of exposure, but 1 had never met any of the caste before. They lead a hard life, and generally die with great suddenness. The Native States have a wholesome horror of English newspapers, which may throw light on their peculiar methods of government, and do their best to choke correspondents with champagne, or drive them out of their mind with four-in-hand barouches.6 They do not understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other. Native States were created by Providence in order to supply picturesque scenery, tigers, and tall-writing.' They are the dark places of the earth, full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-alRaschid. 8 When I left the train I did business with divers Kings, and in eight days passed through many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with Princes and Politicals,9 drinking from crystal and eating from silver. Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get, from a plate made of a flapjack, and drank the running water, and slept under the same rug as my servant. It was all in the day's work.
Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I had promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where a funny little, happy-go-lucky, native-managed railway runs to Jodhpore. The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar. She arrived as I got in, and I had just time to hurry to her platform and go down the carriages. There was only one Second-class on the train. I slipped the window, and looked down upon a flaming red beard, half covered by a railway rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him gently in the ribs. He woke with a grunt, and I saw his face in the light of the lamps. It was a great and shining face.
'Tickets again?' said he. 'No,' said I. 'I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week. He is gone South for the week!'
The train had begun to move out. The red man rubbed his eyes. 'He has gone South for the week,' he repeated. 'Now that's just like his impidence. Did he say that I was to give you anything??'Cause I won't.'
'He didn't,' I said, and dropped away, and watched the red lights die out in the dark. It was horribly cold, because the wind was blowing off the sands. I climbed into my own train?not an Intermediate Carriage this time?and went to sleep.
If the man with the beard had given me a rupee I should have kept it as a memento of a rather curious affair. But the consciousness of having done my duty was my only reward.
Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any good if they foregathered and personated correspondents of newspapers, and might, if they 'stuck up'1 one of the little rat-trap states of Central India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves into serious difficulties. I therefore took some trouble to describe them as accurately as I could remember to people who would be interested in deporting them; and succeeded, so I was later informed, in having them headed back from Degumber borders.
