Jaimihr, in a rose-pink pugree still, but not at all the swaggering cavalier who pranced, high-booted, through the streets—­a down-at-heel prince, looking slovenly and heavy-eyed from too much opium—­sat in a long chair under the cloister which faced the barred stone door.  He swished with a rhino riding-whip at the stone column beside him, and the much-swathed individual of the plethoric paunch who stood and spoke with him kept a very leery eye on it; he seemed to expect the binding swish of it across his own shins, and the thought seemed tantalizing.

“It is not to be done,” said Jaimihr, speaking in a dialect peculiar to Howrah.  “That—­of all the idiotic notions I have listened to—­is the least worth while!  Thy brains are in thy belly and are lost amid the fat!  If my brother Howrah only had such counsellors as thou—­ such monkey folk to make his plans for him—­the jackals would have finished with him long ago.”

“Sahib, did I not bring word, and overhear, and trap the man?”

“Truly!  Overheard whisperings, and trapped me a hyena I must feed!  Now thou sayest, ‘Torture him!’ He is a Rangar, and of good stock; therefore, no amount of torturing will make him speak.  He is that pig Mahommed Gunga’s man; therefore, there’ is nothing more sure than that Mahommed Gunga will be here, sooner or later, to look for him—­ Mahommed Gunga, with the half of a Hindoo name, the whole of a Moslem’s fire, and the blind friendship of the British to rely on!”

“But if the man be dead when Mahommed Gunga comes?”

“He will be dead when Mahommed Gunga comes, if only what we await has first happened.  But this rising that is planned hangs fire.  Were I Maharajah I would like to see the Rangar who dare flout me or ask questions!  I would like but to set eyes on that Rangar once!  But I am not yet Maharajah; I am a prince—­a younger brother—­surrounded, counselled, impeded, hampered, rendered laughable by fat idiots!”

“My belly but shows your highness’s generosity.  At whose cost have I grown fat?”

“Ay, at whose cost?  I should have kept thee slim, on prison diet, and saved myself a world of useless problems!  Cease prattling!  Get away from me!  If I have to poison this Ali Partab, or wring his casteless neck, I will make thee do it, and give thee to Mahommed Gunga to wreak vengeance on.  Leave me to think!”

The fat former occupant of the room above the arch of the caravansary waddled to the far end of the cloister, and sat down, cross-legged, to grumble to himself and scratch his paunch at intervals.  His master, low-browed and irritable, continued to strike the stone column with his cane.  He was in a horrid quandary.

Mahommed Gunga was one of many men he did not want, for the present, to offend seriously.  Given a fair cause for quarrel, that irascible ex-Risaldar was capable of going to any lengths, and was known, moreover, to be trusted by the British.  Nobody seemed to know whether or not Mahommed Gunga reciprocated the British regard, and nobody had cared to ask him except his own intimates; and they, like he, were men of close counsel.