No More Learning

"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. These three rooms were all one, and
they held a big table on which the Sahibs played every evening. But
the Sahibs are all dead now, and the Railway runs, you say, nearly to
Kabul. "

"Do you remember anything about the Sahibs? "

"It is long ago, but I remember that one Sahib, a fat man and always
angry, was playing here one night, and he said to me:--'Mangal Khan,
brandy-pani do,' and I filled the glass, and he bent over the table to
strike, and his head fell lower and lower till it hit the table, and his
spectacles came off, and when we--the Sahibs and I myself--ran to lift
him he was dead. I helped to carry him out. Aha, he was a strong Sahib!
But he is dead and I, old Mangal Khan, am still living, by your favor. "

That was more than enough! I had my ghost--a firsthand, authenticated
article. I would write to the Society for Psychical Research--I would
paralyze the Empire with the news!
But I would, first of all, put eighty
miles of assessed crop land between myself and that dak-bungalow before
nightfall. The Society might send their regular agent to investigate
later on.

I went into my own room and prepared to pack after noting down the facts
of the case. As I smoked I heard the game begin again,--with a miss in
balk this time, for the whir was a short one.

The door was open and I could see into the room. Click--click! That was
a cannon. I entered the room without fear, for there was sunlight within
and a fresh breeze without. The unseen game was going on at a tremendous
rate. And well it might, when a restless little rat was running to and
fro inside the dingy ceiling-cloth, and a piece of loose window-sash was
making fifty breaks off the window-bolt as it shook in the breeze!

Impossible to mistake the sound of billiard balls! Impossible to mistake
the whir of a ball over the slate! But I was to be excused. Even when I
shut my enlightened eyes the sound was marvelously like that of a fast
game.

Entered angrily the faithful partner of my sorrows, Kadir Baksh.

"This bungalow is very bad and low-caste!