Achmed Abdullah

“ It started with a word of admiration in the servants' hall of the Tamerlani merchant who had entertained Aziza Nurmahal in Peshawar:
“A most proper man is Al Nakia, the princess' cousin. Strong and quick and courageous as the male elephant whose cheeks are streaked with passion. There is talk of trouble and mutiny in the western marches of Tamerlanistan, and Al Nakia has sworn a great oath on his blade that he will make the rebel governor eat seventy-seven times seventy-seven pecks of dirt! ”

“ For he was a servant of that intricate and extremely complicated machinery for civilization, progress, and the blessed average decencies called the British Empire, that world-flung organization which spreads like a fine-mesh net over the whole globe and in which, through logical consequence, there are many currents and undercurrents, often one government department giving orders or recommendations completely at variance with those of another, every bit as important, department. ”

“ She is blooming and golden as the sun at dawn, with hair black as the midnight shades, with Paradise in her eyes, her bosom a white enchantment, her lips like the crimson asoka flower, and her lithe form swaying like the tamarisk when the soft wind blows sweetly, sweetly from the purple hills of Nijd. ”

“ Furthermore, for a while to come, it would be impossible for said Hector Wade to get through the Khybar or any other of the minor Northwestern Province border stations as, because of some threatening trouble with the tribesmen, nobody would be allowed, until further orders, to travel out of Peshawar for the North, with the exception of the reigning princess of Tamerlanistan, to whom British, Afghans, and warring tribesmen had granted the courtesy of free conduct. ”

“ And so Sir James returned to attend to some late work at his office—where, a few days later, he frowned at a report telegraphed by one of his sub-agents stationed at Peshawar, near the border of Afghanistan, which said that no person resembling Mr. Hector Wade had crossed the border or tried to; only the bi-weekly caravans for Kabul and Kandahar that filed through the Khybar Pass, and some independent Afghan, Sart, and Hindki traders with proper passports. ”

“ Sir James. I know the sort of reputation the Babus have hereabouts. But my particular Babu is all right.”
“I am so glad,” murmured Sir James—and lied.
Presently, he tried a different method.
“Mr. Warburton,” he asked, “is your business in Tamerlanistan very pressing? ”