‘Another stabbing, sir.’
‘Native job, was it?’
‘They all are,’ he said.
The sepoy gave me a sheepish smile. It was rough luck on those boys. Because we’d taken over their country some time ago, they had to help us take over someone else’s – this latest acquisition being the one place on earth more infernally hot than their own land.
Just then the door behind the man opened; it gave on to a room that was also part of the red caps’ set-up in the hotel. A military police sergeant came out of it, together with a rather seedy-looking fellow that I recognised. It was the pock-marked man I’d seen coming out of the post room in the Residency when I’d telegrammed to Manners. Evidently, he was being taken in charge for some misdemeanour. No, wait. He was being let go – didn’t look too pleased about it though, and he gave a glare at the red caps before making towards the main doors of the lobby. He’d been let off with a warning, I decided.
I followed the man out into the glare. He turned sharp left‚ then left again; he was into a short street leading down to the quays, and here he was pushing at the door of the place known as The Oasis. Officially this was Wet Canteen Number Two, but somebody had painted an oasis on walls with three beautiful women lying about in it wearing white summer dresses. I followed him in. The place had electricity; perhaps not enough of it though, for the central ceiling fan turned too slowly, and the bright lights flickered. The place (being close to the river) smelt of sewage, and was horribly hot. There was a makeshift bar at the far end with a tea urn on it, some very British-looking cakes under glass, and beer bottles, still in their crates. The pock-marked man was after beer, and the orderly was turning him down flat.
‘Not while five o’clock,’ he was saying – a bloody-minded Yorkshireman, by the sound of him. The pock-marked man was unexpectedly Irish, and with a high, fluttery voice. He said, ‘What a depressing outlook this is: I’ve a choice of mouldy rock cake and a cup of stewed tea or nothing.’ He ought not to have been talking to me, since I was an officer and I hadn’t talked to him, but he was doing.
I said, ‘Are you going to salute?’ and he did after a fashion, saying, ‘Sorry about that, sir, I’m not right in myself. I’m a sickbay case, I think.’
I said, ‘You’ve been in with the monkeys,’ and that pulled him up sharp, as it did the orderly standing behind him. An officer shouldn’t speak of His Majesty’s Military Mounted Police in that fashion. I had a pocketful of rupees and I put some on the counter, saying, ‘I want to have a talk with this man on Corps business, and we’d both like a bottle of beer.’
The bottles were given over, and I sat the Irishman down at the furthest table from the orderly, who continued to eye us from his post during the following.
The Irishman was Private Lennon. He’d been born in Ireland but lived in London. At least he did when there wasn’t a war on. After I’d got this out of him, he said, ‘What’s this about, sir?’
‘A confidential matter,’ I said.
He was eyeing my white tabs.
I meant to ask him something about methods of communication from the Residency. I didn’t know quite what, but I kept thinking of the bunch of keys he’d been jangling.
I said, ‘They were putting the screws to you. Do you want to tell me why?’
‘Are you Intelligence, sir?’
‘Correct,’ I said immediately. Well, I could always deny it. Anything claimed by a man like Lennon could be denied.
‘Do you really not know?’ he said.
I gave that one the go-by, since he evidently believed I did know what he had been questioned about, or that I would be able to find out with no trouble.
‘See, sir,’ he said, ‘I work in the Residency, second floor—’
‘As what?’
He shrugged: ‘General knockabout – mainly in the post room. We’re all trusted men in the post room – have to be. But those coppers don’t trust me, sir.’
‘That’s a shame,’ I said, ‘why ever not?’
He took a belt on his beer, weighing me up; I took a belt on mine.
‘They think I’m sending ordinary mails by the bag.’
‘The bag?’
‘The diplomatic bag.’
‘Ordinary mails,’ I said, ‘you mean ordinary blokes’ mails?’
‘That’s correct sir. That’s what they think.’
It would be a way for your average Tommy Atkins to avoid having his letter read over by an officer. But I didn’t see quite how it would work. I said, ‘The diplomatic mail only goes to government offices, or the offices of our allies.’