from an imperial point of view. Oh, well—we'll have him shadowed. We can't afford to have chaps like him floatin' loose about Asia—what with these stinking Babus preaching home rule and our beloved white Babus home in England helping them and all that …”
Sir James was a good physiognomist. He had read Hector's thoughts correctly. For, somehow, the other's refusal to issue him a passport had only strengthened his stubborn resolution to go North, to cross the Himalayas, to look beyond the ranges for the chance which England and India, the Empire, denied him.
Yes. He would go.
But—how?
For even if he managed to evade Sir James Rivet-Carnac's watchers, there was the vital question of money, since the ocean journey, including the tips aboard and other incidental expenses, and his five days' stay in Calcutta, had practically exhausted the money which Ali Yusuf Khan had lent him.
“What shall I do? How can I go?”
He asked himself the question as he looked from the balcony of his room, out into the night cloaked streets whence rose a confused mingling of sounds: voices in many languages, rising, then decreasing, the shouts of itinerant fruit and lemonade venders, the tinkle-tinkle-tinkle of some woman's glass bracelets, a shred of laughter flung carelessly to the winds, a sudden dramatic shriek …
The sounds leaped up to his ear—the sounds of
