d now..."

I would have pronounced him perfectly sober hadn't he paused in great
concern to try and brush a hole off the knee of his trousers.

"I have money--and friends. Every gentleman has. Perhaps you would like
to know my friend? His name is Falk. You could borrow some money. Try to
remember. F-A-L-K, Falk." Abruptly his tone changed. "A noble heart," he
said muzzily.

"Has Falk been giving you some money?" I asked, appalled by the detailed
finish of the dark plot.

"Lent me, my good man, not given me. Lent," he corrected suavely.
"Met me taking the air last evening, and being as usual anxious to
oblige--Hadn't you better go to the devil out of my compound?"

And upon this, without other warning, he let fly with the banana which
missed my head, and took the constable just under the left eye. He
rushed at the miserable Johnson, stammering with fury. They fell....
But why dwell on the wretchedness, the breathlessness, the degradation,
the senselessness, the weariness, the ridicule and humiliation
and--and--the perspiration, of these moments? I dragged the ex-hussar
off. He was like a wild beast. It seems he had been greatly annoyed
at losing his free afternoon on my account. The garden of his bungalow
required his personal attention, and at the slight blow of the banana
the brute in him had broken loose. We left Johnson on his back, still
black in the face, but beginning to kick feebly. Meantime, the big woman
had remained sitting on the ground, apparently paralysed with extreme
terror.

For half an hour we jolted inside our rolling box, side by side, in
profound silence. The ex-sergeant was busy staunching the blood of a
long scratch on his cheek. "I hope you're satisfied," he said suddenly.
"That's what comes of all that tomfool business. If you hadn't
quarrelled with that tugboat skipper over some girl or other, all this
wouldn't have happened."

"You heard _that_ story?" I said.

"Of course I heard. And I shouldn't wonder if the Consul-General himself
doesn't come to hear of it. How am I to go before him to-morrow with
that thing on my cheek--I want to know. Its _you_ who ought to have got
this!"

After that, till the gharry stopped and he jumped out without
leave-taking, he swore to himself steadily, horribly; muttering great,
purposeful, trooper oaths, to which the worst a sailor can do is like
the prattle of a child. For my part I had just the strength to crawl
into Schomberg's coffee-room, where I