In these dak-bungalows, ghosts are most likely to be found, and when
found, they should be made a note of. Not long ago it was my business to
live in dak-bungalows. I never inhabited the same house for three nights
running, and grew to be learned in the breed. I lived in Government-built
ones with red brick walls and rail ceilings, an inventory of the furniture
posted in every room, and an excited snake at the threshold to give
welcome. I lived in "converted" ones--old houses officiating as
dak-bungalows--where nothing was in its proper place and there wasn't even
a fowl for dinner. I lived in second-hand palaces where the wind blew
through open-work marble tracery just as uncomfortably as through a broken
pane. I lived in dak-bungalows where the last entry in the visitors' book
was fifteen months old, and where they slashed off the curry-kid's head
with a sword. It was my good luck to meet all sorts of men, from sober
traveling missionaries and deserters flying from British Regiments, to
drunken loafers who threw whisky bottles at all who passed; and my still
greater good fortune just to escape a maternity case. Seeing that a fair
proportion of the tragedy of our lives out here acted itself in
dak-bungalows, I wondered that I had met no ghosts. A ghost that would
voluntarily hang about a dak-bungalow would be mad of course; but so many
men have died mad in dak-bungalows that there must be a fair percentage of
lunatic ghosts.

In due time I found my ghost, or ghosts rather, for there were two of
them. Up till that hour I had sympathized with Mr. Besant's method of
handling them, as shown in "The Strange Case of Mr. Lucraft and Other
Stories." I am now in the Opposition.

We will call the bungalow Katmal dak-bungalow. But _that_ was the smallest
part of the horror. A man with a sensitive hide has no right to sleep in
dak-bungalows. He should marry. Katmal dak-bungalow was old and rotten and
unrepaired. The floor was of worn brick, the walls were filthy, and the
windows were nearly black with grime. It stood on a bypath largely used by
native Sub-Deputy Assistants of all kinds, from Finance to Forests; but
real Sahibs were rare. The _khansamah_, who was nearly bent double with
old age, said so.

When I arrived, there was a fitful, undecided rain on the face of the
land, accompanied by a restless wind, and every gust made a noise like the
rattling of dry bones in the stiff toddy palms outside. The _khansamah_
completely