“Of course!” he said, “of course you would—­you lucky beggar!” Then added triumphantly, “But anyway, I told her so!”

CHAPTER XXIX

  “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine!”—­The Bible.

Guy Dean, the cheery optimistic lad who worshipped openly at Leonie’s beautiful feet, and who was seeing the world at the behest of his wealthy old father, had been as good as his word.

Bursting with excitement, he hurled himself into his racing-car one Sunday morning, about a fortnight after Leonie’s hasty ride riverwards, and passed like a whirlwind through the fairly empty streets of Calcutta and the suburb of Ballygunge to the Jodhpur Club.

She was waiting for breakfast under the trees with some friends, discussing the four-some they had just finished, and watching the arrival of various cars which were parked, with some difficulty, with the others which had arrived earlier.

“Sounds all right,” said Cuxson, as he looked with disfavour upon the club’s breakfast piece de resistance, namely fatty sausages and mashed of all things.  “I am beginning to feel quite thrilled.  Let’s see, it will take us about a day to get to Tiger’s Point by launch from Kulna, and there we find monkeys, adjutant birds, spotted deer, and tigers all ready.”

“Don’t rot!” said young Dean.  “I’ve bribed the finest shikari in the whole of Bengal to stage-manage the whole thing; he did seem rather contemptuous over the chotar shikar, as he called it, I must say, until I began to juggle with backsheesch, and then he bucked up considerably and said he would do his very best to provide sport for the mems.  The programme includes a ruined temple but not a tiger, ’cause he says it would be too risky a job at such short notice; also, and the real reason I should say, there hasn’t been a tiger seen, anyway killed, since one was wounded and caught near that same Hindu temple umpteen years ago.”

Leonie wrinkled her forehead at the last sentence, and looking up caught Jan Cuxson’s eyes upon her.

“That sounds so familiar,” she said perplexedly, “I——­”

“The tiger at the Zoo which we knew all those years ago was trapped near a ruined Hindu temple in the Sunderbunds, Lady Hickle,” he said quietly, watching the curious dilation of the pupils in the greenish eyes as he spoke.

“The very one!” broke in young Dean, as he suspiciously eyed a proffered curry.

“How did you come to think of the stunt?”

“I ran up against a perfectly top-hole native prince at polo last month.  Amongst other things we started talking elephant and bagh—­tiger, you know,” laughed the lad, who always seemed to be on the point of bursting with high infectious spirits.  “No, take it away, I will not eat a cold chupattie of the consistency of a bicycle tyre—­as I was saying, we talked tiger, and somehow or other he suggested a few days’ pursuit, through the Sunderbunds, of the spotted deer, muntjak or sambur——­”