as also obliged to
leave the packing of my collection of Malay _krises_ and Indian
_kookeries_ to my bearer.

I wondered as I drove along why Sir John had sent for me. Worse, was he?
Dying? And without a friend. Poor old man! He had done pretty well in
this world, but I was afraid he would not be up to much once he was out
of it; and now it seemed he was going. I felt sorry for him. I felt more
sorry when I saw him--when the tall, long-faced A.D.C. took me into his
room and left us. Yes, Sir John was certainly going. There was no
mistake about it. It was written in every line of his drawn fever-worn
face, and in his wide fever-lit eyes, and in the clutch of his long
yellow hands upon his tussore silk dressing-gown. He looked a very sick
bad old man as he lay there on his low couch, placed so as to court the
air from without, cooled by its passage through damped grass screens,
and to receive the full strength of the punka, pulled by an invisible
hand outside.

"You go to England to-morrow?" he asked, sharply.

It was written even in the change of his voice, which was harsh, as of
old, but with all the strength gone out of it.

"By to-morrow's mail," I said. I should have liked to say something
more--something sympathetic about his being ill and not likely to get
better; but he had always treated me discourteously when he was well,
and I could not open out all at once now that he was ill.

"Look here, Middleton," he went on; "I am dying, and I know it. I don't
suppose you imagined I had sent for you to bid you a last farewell
before departing to my long home. I am not in such a hurry to depart as
all that, I can tell you; but there is something I want done--that I
want you to do for me. I meant to have done it myself, but I am down
now, and I must trust somebody. I know better than to trust a clever
man. An honest fool--But I am digressing from the case in point. I have
never trusted anybody all my life, so you may feel honored. I have a
small parcel which I want you to take to England for me. Here it is."

His long lean hands went searching in his dressing-gown, and presently
produced an old brown bag, held together at the neck by a string.

"See here!" he said; and he pushed the glasses and papers aside from the
table near him and undid the string. Then he craned forward to look
about him, laying a spasmodic clutch on the bag. "I'm watched! I know
I'm watched!" he said in a whisper, his pale eyes turning slowly i