"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 dak-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. 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.
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