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And there was Rustam Karin whom long ago she had secretly credited with Ralph Dacre's death the serpent in the garden the serpent in the desert also whose evil coils, it seemed to her, were daily tightening round her heart. It was three days later that Tommy came striding in from the polo-ground in great excitement with the news that Captain Ermsted's murderer had been arrested.
Most of the men were at the band-stand in the public gardens from the Club verandah you could hear the native Police band hammering stale waltzes or on the polo-ground, or in the high-walled fives-court, hotter than a Dutch oven. Half a dozen grooms, squatted at the heads of their ponies, waited their masters' return.
Horses galloped, either in Roman stadium or modern polo-ground; a girl's skirts were fluttered by a rain-storm; a giant's hand, with unerring skill, bowled a ball at ten-pins in a bowling alley; the names of theaters, of hotels, of drugs, of patent foods, of every known variety of caterer for human needs and amusements, flickered, and winked, and stared, at the passer-by from ground floor to attic while each and all horses, skirts, rain-drops, hand, ball, pins, and names glowed in every known shade of color from every known form of electric lamp.
The cantonments were well out of sight, more than a mile away along the dusty road, further than the polo-ground and race-course. Behind the bungalow, approached only through a dense mass of tall jungle grass, stretched the jungle, mile upon mile of untamed wilderness, home of wild pig and jackals, monkeys and flying foxes.
"Really, Monica, how fortunate to have secured you at short notice like this," Lord Bracondale was saying. "I only found I had a free evening at breakfast, and I met Jack on my way to the polo-ground just in the nick of time." "We love coming," Mrs. Ellerwood replied. "For unsophisticated English people it is a great treat.
At 3.30 a.m. someone came and fetched me in a pony-cart, and we drove out to the polo-ground, where, by brilliant moonlight, we saw the column come into camp. Strings and strings of waggons were soon drawn up; next to them black masses, which were the guns; and beyond these, men, lying down anywhere, dead-tired, beside their horses.
The polo-ground at Lebong that afternoon presented an animated scene, filled with colour by the bright-hued garments of the thousands of native spectators surrounding it, the uniforms of the British soldiers in the crowd, and the frocks of the English ladies in the reserved enclosure, where in large white marquees the officers of Charlesworth's regiment acted as hosts to the European visitors.
From Poppy's balcony, however, the palings offered no impediment to observation. All the green expanse of the smaller polo-ground was visible. So was the whole height of the grove of majestic elms on the right and the back of the club house; and, and the left, between massifs of shrubbery, a vista of lawns sloping towards the river peopled by a sauntering crowd.
Most of the men were at the band-stand in the public gardens from the Club verandah you could hear the native Police band hammering stale waltzes or on the polo-ground, or in the high-walled fives-court, hotter than a Dutch oven. Half a dozen grooms, squatted at the heads of their ponies, waited their masters' return.
Near the centre of the marg, on a small hill, was a large wooden building surrounded by many satellite huts and tents: this we rightly guessed to be Nedou's Hotel. Below, on a spur, was the little church, and to the right, in the hollow, the club-house faced the level polo-ground.
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