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Raymond ran to the verandah and saw him thundering down the sandy road that led to the residency. Arrived at the big white building Frank pulled up his panting pony on its haunches and dismounting threw the reins over its head and left it unattended. Walking to the hall door he cried: "Koi hai?" A drowsy chuprassi at the back of the hall sprang up and hurried to receive him. "Memsahib hai?
I took pains to let the chuprassi see that my hands did not touch the powder, which, after due weighing, I bestowed in a paper carefully sealed, instructing him to deliver it to no one but his highness the maharajah. It was only finely ground sugar that the man carried away. But perhaps this is a harmless little trick of my profession which even now I should not disclose."
Seated, as one sometimes sees them, in rows on the steps, augmented by a chuprassi or two, brilliant in uniform they make a sufficiently imposing spectacle.
The chuprassi brought in from time to time a note, laid it on the table and withdrew. Hamilton noticed nothing; he sat still, thinking. Meanwhile Mrs. Hamilton had been driven to the hotel, where she engaged very modest quarters and ordered luncheon.
"No, Captain Barlow " Barlow winced at this formality "Father, I'm sure, wants you in this matter; in fact, I think a chuprassi is on his way now to your bungalow with the Resident's salaams." Barlow laid his fingers on the girl's shoulder: "I'm ghastly tired, Beth. I'll come back to you." "Yes, India is enervating," she commented in a flat tone.
At this the maharajah was sufficiently overjoyed to permit of my withdrawal without obvious embarrassment. I had a smile upon my lips, and the secret package secure in the folds of my girdle. A chuprassi accompanied me to my home to bring back the medicine.
You may catch a chuprassi in the act, you may beat him and insist on his handing back the money, but almost before your back is turned the annas or pice have changed hands again! It is dustoor! My first view of the hospital was rather a shock. Nothing was what I had expected. The beds are square blocks of cement, without even a mattress.
While he was gone Wargrave looked with pleasure at the brilliant flower-beds, green lawn and tall plants and bushes glowing with colour of the carefully-tended and well-watered Residency garden, which contrasted strikingly with the dry, bare compounds of the cantonment. In a minute or two the chuprassi returned and said: "Salaam!"
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