“I ordered it,” said King.
“So I imagined. I asked you why.”
King stared at him and then turned to watch the prisoner being dragged away; he was fighting again, striking at his captors' heads with handcuffed wrists.
“Does he look innocent?” asked King.
“Is that your answer?” asked the major. Balked ambition is an ugly horse to ride. He had tried for a command but had been shelved.
“I have sufficient authority,” said King, unruffled. He spoke as if he were thinking of something entirely different. His eyes were as if they saw the major from a very long way off and rather approved of him on the whole.
“Show me your authority, please!”
King dived into an inner pocket and produced a card that had about ten words written on its face, above a general's signature. Hyde read it and passed it back.
“So you're one of those, are you!” he said in a tone of voice that would start a fight in some parts of the world and in some services. But King nodded cheerfully, and that annoyed the major more than ever; he snorted, closed his mouth with a snap and turned to rearrange the sheet and pillow on his berth.
Then the train pulled out, amid a din of voices from the left-behind that nearly drowned the panting of overloaded engine. There was a roar of joy from the two coaches full of soldiers in the rear--a shriek from a woman who had missed the train--a babel of farewells tossed back and forth between the platform and the third-class carriages--and Peshawur fell away behind.
King settled down on his side of the compartment, after a struggle with the thermantidote that refused to work. There was heat enough below the roof to have roasted meat, so that the physical atmosphere became as turgid as the mental after a little while.
Hyde all but stripped himself and drew on striped pajamas. King was content to lie in shirt-sleeves on the other berth, with knees raised, so that Hyde could not overlook the general's papers. At his ease he studied them one by one, memorizing a string of
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