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Commonplace enough all this, but when you have ridden out of town to a little Moorish house on the hillside overlooking the Mediterranean, and are drinking green tea flavoured with mint, on a diwan that must be used with crossed legs, you hardly expect the discussion to be turned to London music-halls. Snake-charmers make a strong appeal to the untutored Moorish crowd.
Nor may it be inappropriate to mention that Rasul Khan was a brother of that same ressaldar Fatteh Khan, who only the month before with a handful of the Guides' cavalry had scattered as chaff before the wind the flower of Diwan Mulraj's horsemen, and chased them into the gates of Mooltan.
The Diwan smiled and his voice changed once more to a note of insolence. "His Highness Wafadar Nazim is now the Khan of Chiltistan. The other, the deposed, lies cooped up in this fort, a prisoner of the British, whose willing slave he has always been. The British must retire from our country. His Highness Wafadar Nazim desires them no harm. But they must go now!"
Near the centre of the room was a canopied chair, of grotesque Chinese design, upon a dais, a big bronze bell hanging from it; and near to the diwan upon which Stuart was lying stood a large, very finely carved table upon which were some open faded volumes and a litter of scientific implements.
At the moment that it reached the boiling point it became colourless. He carefully placed the whole of the liquid in a retort to which he attached a condensor. He stood up. Crossing to a glass case which rested upon a table near the diwan he struck it lightly with his hand.
He moved at his customary slow gait to the table, took up the keys ... and locked both doors! Miska, perceiving in this her chance of aid from Chunda Lal utterly destroyed, sank slowly upon the diwan, her pale face expressing the utmost consternation. Suppose the police did not come! Fo-Hi dropped the keys on the table again and approached her. She stood up, retreating before him.
Gerrard dismissed the explanation with a wave of the hand, but old Sada Sukhi, who had succeeded Dwarika Nath as Diwan, and was by common consent the wiliest man in Agpur, cringed humbly forward. "I will take it upon me to speak, worthless as I am, in the presence of these great ones," he murmured. "Surely there is wrong in speaking of murder, since no sign of any such horror has been found.
The wazir loved her greatly, and was extremely fond of her; so much so, that he had erected an elegant apartment for her behind his own diwan khana; and had procured for her the daughters of noblemen as her companions, and handsome female servants waited on her; with these she passed her time in laughter and joy, and playing and romping about.
Possibly he did not love the Seths, but he feared them, which was sufficient to make him useless to us. "Rai Durlabh Ram, the other Diwan of the Nawab, was the man to whom I was bound to trust most. Before the arrival of Clive he might have been thought the enemy of the English. It was he who pretended to have beaten them and to have taken Calcutta.
Mussoudi, the Diwan, says that the inhabitants had gone to rest as usual as they had done ever since he had settled in the valley, twenty-five years ago when, in the middle of the night, they heard a roar like many thunders, which woke them up to the fact that death was at work in the shape of an enormous volume of water, that, like a wall, came down, tearing the tallest trees with it, carrying away scores of villages at one fell, sure swoop into utter destruction.
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