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THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY

Imray had achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable
motive, in his youth and at the threshold of his career he had chosen
to disappear from the world--which is to say, the little Indian station
where he lived. Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great
evidence at his club, among the billiard-tables. Upon a morning he was
not, and no manner of search could make sure where he might be. He
had stepped out of his place; he had not appeared at his office at the
proper time, and his dog-cart was not upon the public roads. For these
reasons and because he was hampering in a microscopical degree the
administration of the Indian Empire, the Indian Empire paused for one
microscopical moment to make inquiry into the fate of Imray. Ponds were
dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams were dispatched down the lines
of railways and to the nearest seaport town--1,200 miles away--but Imray
was not at the end of the drag-ropes nor the telegrams. He was gone,
and his place knew him no more. Then the work of the great Indian Empire
swept forward, because it could not be delayed, and Imray, from being a
man, became a mystery--such a thing as men talk over at their tables
in the club for a month and then forget utterly. His guns, horses, and
carts were sold to the highest bidder. His superior officer wrote
an absurd letter to his mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably
disappeared and his bungalow stood empty on the road.

After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by,
my friend Strickland, of the police force, saw fit to rent the bungalow
from the native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss
Youghal--an affair which has been described in another place--and while
he was pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life was
sufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs.
There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times for
meals.
He ate, standing up and walking about, whatever he might find on
the sideboard, and this is not good for the insides of human beings.
His domestic equipment was limited to six rifles, three shotguns, five
saddles, and a collection of stiff-jointed masheer rods, bigger and
stronger than the largest salmon rods. These things occupied one half of
his bungalow, and the other half was given up to Strickland and his dog
Tietjens--an enormous Rampur slut, who sung when she was ordered, and
devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke to Strickland in a
language of her own, and whenever, in her walks abroad she saw things
calculated to destroy the peace of Her Majesty the Queen Empress, she
returned to her master and gave him information. Strickland would
take steps at once, and the end of his labors was trouble and fine and
imprisonment for other people. The natives believed that Tietjens was a
familiar spirit, and treated her with the great reverence that is born
of hate and fear One room in the bungalow was set apart for her special
use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket, and a drinking-trough, and if any
one came into Strickland's room at night, her custom was to knock down
the invader and give tongue till some one came with a light. Strickland
owes his life to her. When he was on the frontier in search of the local
murderer who came in the grey dawn to send Strickland much further
than the Andaman Islands, Tietjens caught him as he was crawling into
Strickland's tent with a dagger between his teeth, and after his record
of iniquity was established in the eyes of the law, he was hanged. From
that date Tietjens wore a collar of rough silver and employed a monogram
on her night blanket, and the blanket was double-woven Kashmir cloth,
for she was a delicate dog.

Under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland, and when
he was ill with fever she made great trouble for the doctors because she
did not know how to help her master and would not allow another creature
to attempt aid. Macarnaght, of the Indian Medical Service, beat her over
the head with a gun, before she could understand that she must give room
for those who could give quinine.

A short time after Strickland had taken Imray's bungalow, my business
took me through that station, and naturally, the club quarters being
full, I quartered myself upon Strickland. It was a desirable bungalow,
eight-roomed, and heavily thatched against any chance of leakage from
rain. Under the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling cloth, which looked just
as nice as a whitewashed ceiling. The landlord had repainted it when
Strickland took the bungalow, and unless you knew how Indian bungalows
were built you would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the
dark, three-cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the under
side of the thatch harbored all manner of rats, hats, ants, and other
things.