“How do you mean—­right?” asked the Colonel.

“I mean that the sooner Linforth is fetched out to India and sent up to Chiltistan, the better it will be,” said the Commissioner.

CHAPTER XVII

NEWS FROM MECCA

Mr. Charles Ralston, being a bachelor and of an economical mind even when on leave in Calcutta, had taken up his quarters in a grass hut in the garden of his Club.  He awoke the next morning with an uncomfortable feeling that there was work to be done.  The feeling changed into sure knowledge as he reflected upon the conversation which he had had with Colonel Dewes, and he accordingly arose and went about it.  For ten days he went to and fro between the Club and Government House, where he held long and vigorous interviews with officials who did not wish to see him.  Moreover, other people came to see him privately—­people of no social importance for the most part, although there were one or two officers of the police service amongst them.  With these he again held long interviews, asking many inquisitive questions.  Then he would go out by himself into those parts of the city where the men of broken fortunes, the jockeys run to seed, and the prize-fighters chiefly preferred to congregate.  In the low quarters he sought his information of the waifs and strays who are cast up into the drinking-bars of any Oriental port, and he did not come back empty-handed.

For ten days he thus toiled for the good of the Indian Government, and, above all, of that part of it which had its headquarters at Lahore.  And on the morning of the eleventh day, as he was just preparing to leave for Government House, where his persistence had prevailed, a tall, black-bearded and very sunburnt man noiselessly opened the door of the hut and as noiselessly stepped inside.  Ralston, indeed, did not at once notice him, nor did the stranger call attention to his presence.  He waited, motionless and patient, until Ralston happened to turn and see him.

“Hatch!” cried Ralston with a smile of welcome stealing over his startled face, and making it very pleasant to look upon.  “You?”

“Yes,” answered the tall man; “I reached Calcutta last night.  I went into the Club for breakfast.  They told me you were here.”

Robert Hatch was of the same age as Ralston.  But there was little else which they had in common.  The two men had met some fifteen years ago for the first time, in Peshawur, and on that first meeting some subtle chord of sympathy had drawn them together; and so securely that even though they met but seldom nowadays, their friendship had easily survived the long intervals.  The story of Hatch’s life was a simple one.  He had married in his twenty-second year a wife a year younger than himself, and together the couple had settled down upon an estate which Hatch owned in Devonshire.  Only a year after the marriage, however, Hatch’s wife died, and he, disliking