第2章 THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KINGBY RUDYARD KIPLING(2)

"It's more than a little matter," said he, "and that's why I asked you to do it--and now I know that I can depend on you doing it.A Second- class carriage at Marwar Junction, and a red-haired man asleep in it.You'll be sure to remember.I get out at the next station, and I must hold on there till he comes or sends me what I want.""I'll give the message if I catch him," I said, "and for the sake of your Mother as well as mine I'll give you a word of advice.Don't try to run the Central India States just now as the correspondent of the 'Backwoodsman.' There's a real one knocking about here, and it might lead to trouble.""Thank you," said he, simply; "and when will the swine be gone? I can't starve because he's ruining my work.I wanted to get hold of the Degumber Rajah down here about his father's widow, and give him a jump.""What did he do to his father's widow, then?""Filled her up with red pepper and slippered her to death as she hung from a beam.I found that out myself, and I'm the only man that would dare going into the State to get hush-money for it.They'll try to poison me, same as they did in Chortumna when I went on the loot there.But you'll give the man at Marwar Junction my message?"He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected.I had heard, more than once, of men personating correspondents of newspapers and bleeding small Native States with threats of exposure, but I had never met any of the caste before.They lead a hard life, and generally die with great suddenness.The Native States have a wholesome horror of English newspapers, which may throw light on their peculiar methods of government, and do their best to choke correspondents with champagne, or drive them out of their mind with four-in-hand barouches.They do not understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other.They are the dark places of the earth, full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid.When I left the train I did business with divers Kings, and in eight days passed through many changes of life.Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with Princes and Politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from silver.Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get, from a plate made of leaves, and drank the running water, and slept under the same rug as my servant.It was all in the day's work.

Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I had promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where a funny little, happy-go-lucky, native-managed railway runs to Jodhpore.The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar.She arrived just as I got in, and I had just time to hurry to her platform and go down the carriages.There was only one Second-class on the train.I slipped the window and looked down upon a flaming-red beard, half covered by a railway-rug.That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him gently in the ribs.He woke with a grunt, and I saw his face in the light of the lamps.It was a great and shining face.

"Tickets again?" said he.

"No," said I."I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week.He has gone South for the week!"The train had begun to move out.The red man rubbed his eyes."Hehas gone South for the week," he repeated."Now that's just like his impidence.Did he say that I was to give you anything? 'Cause I won't.""He didn't," I said, and dropped away, and watched the red lights die out in the dark.It was horribly cold because the wind was blowing off the sands.I climbed into my own train--not an Intermediate carriage this time--and went to sleep.

If the man with the beard had given me a rupee I should have kept it as a memento of a rather curious affair.But the consciousness of having done my duty was my only reward.

Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any good if they foregathered and personated correspondents of newspapers, and might, if they blackmailed one of the little rat-trap States of Central India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves into serious difficulties.I therefore took some trouble to describe them as accurately as I could remember to people who would be interested in deporting them; and succeeded, so I was later informed, in having them headed back from the Degumber borders.