was as a man might laugh who has been touched in a bout with foils.
“Oh!--Ismail!” he called, with a voice like a bell, that made King stare.
The Afridi seemed to come out of a deep sleep and looked bewildered, rubbing his eyes and feeling whether his turban was on straight. He combed his beard with nervous fingers as he gazed about him and caught Rewa Gunga's eye. Then he sprang to his feet.
“Come!” ordered Rewa Gunga.
The man obeyed.
“Did you see?” Rewa Gunga chuckled. “He rose from his place like a buffalo, rump first and then shoulder after shoulder! Such men are safe! Such men have no guile beyond what will help them to obey! Such men think too slowly to invent deceit for its own sake!”
The Afridi came and towered above them, standing with gnarled hands knotted into clubs.
“What is thy name?” King asked him.
“Ismail!” he boomed.
“Thou art to be my servant?”
“Aye! So said she. I am her man. I obey!”
“When did she say so?” King asked him blandly, asking unexpected questions being half the art of Secret Service, although the other half is harder to achieve.
The Hillman stroked his great beard and stood considering the question. One could almost imagine the click of slow machinery revolving in his mind, although King entertained a shrewd suspicion that he was not so stupid as he chose to seem. His eyes were too hawk-bright to be a stupid man's.
“Before she went away,” he answered at last.
“When did she go away?”
He thought again, then “Yesterday,” he said.
“Why did you wait before you answered?”
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