compound in disguise!'

'No,' said Strickland. 'Tell your lawyer-fool, whoever he is, to get up
something strong about "inherent improbabilities" and "discrepancies of
evidence". He won't have to speak, but it will make him happy, _I_'m
going to run this business.'

Biel held his tongue, and the other men waited to see what would happen.
They trusted Strickland as men trust quiet men. When the case came off
the Court was crowded. Strickland hung about in the veranda of the
Court, till he met the Mohammedan _khitmutgar_. Then he murmured a
_fakir's_ blessing in his ear, and asked him how his second wife did.
The man spun round, and, as he looked into the eyes of 'Estreekin
Sahib', his jaw dropped. You must remember that before Strickland was
married, he was, as I have told you already, a power among natives.
Strickland whispered a rather coarse vernacular proverb to the effect
that he was abreast of all that was going on, and went into the Court
armed with a gut trainer's-whip.

The Mohammedan was the first witness, and Strickland beamed upon him
from the back of the Court. The man moistened his lips with his tongue
and, in his abject fear of 'Estreekin Sahib', the _fakir_ went back on
every detail of his evidence--said he was a poor man, and God was his
witness that he had forgotten everything that Bronckhorst Sahib had told
him to say. Between his terror of Strickland, the Judge, and Bronckhorst
he collapsed weeping.

Then began the panic among the witnesses. Janki, the _ayah_, leering
chastely behind her veil, turned grey, and the bearer left the Court. He
said that his Mamma was dying, and that it was not wholesome for any man