I only know that that was my terror;
and it was real.
After a long, long while the game stopped, and the door banged. I
slept because I was dead tired. Otherwise I should have preferred
to have kept awake. Not for everything in Asia would I have
dropped the door-bar and peered into the dark of the next room.
When the morning came, I considered that I had done well and
wisely, and inquired for the means of departure.
"By the way, _khansamah_," I said, "what were those three doolies
doing in my compound in the night?"
"There were no doolies," said the _khansamah_.
I went into the next room and the daylight streamed through the
open door. I was immensely brave. I would, at that hour, have
played Black Pool with the owner of the big Black Pool down
below.
"Has this place always been a d?k-bungalow?" I asked.
"No," said the _khansamah_. "Ten or twenty years ago, I have
forgotten how long, it was a billiard room."
"A how much?"
"A billiard room for the Sahibs who built the Railway. I was
_khansamah_ then in the big house where all the Railway-Sahibs
lived, and I used to come across with brandy-_shrab_.
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