When Swinton knocked the ash from his cheroot, disclosing the lighted end, the pedestrian acquired an instantaneous limp; his rather lethargic mentality was quickened by an inspiration, and he hobbled up the steps and along the verandah at a pathetic pace.
"Been long home, anxious guardian?" he gasped, sinking into a chair.
"About an hour," Swinton answered blithely.
"I got moony lonesome," Lord Victor explained as the smoker evinced no curiosity.
"And went for a walk, eh? Where did you go--down to the bazaar?"
Even to Gilfain's unperceptive mind the opening for a sweeping lie seemed a trifle too wide. Indeed, the fact that he had on riding boots was rather against this proposition. He didn't answer at once, a twinge in his newly injured ankle giving him an opportunity for a pause.
"You didn't see my syce about, did you?" he asked as a feeler.
"No; I went for a bit of a ride--down by the river--and just where the road forks over by that nala where we took the elephant after the tiger something sprang out of the jungle, let an awful roar out of him, and that fool country bred of mine bolted--he's a superb ass of a horse--jinked at a shadow, and went over a cut bank into a little stream kind of a place; I came a cropper, with my foot caught in a stirrup, and was dragged a bit. In fact, I went by-by for a few minutes. How the devil my foot came out of the stirrup I don't know. When I came to that three-toed creature they call a horse had vanished, and it's taken me rather well over an hour to limp back."
Then the cripple, holding his ankle in both hands across his knee, leaned back in his chair with eyes closed as if in agony, inwardly muttering: "Gad! I wonder if that bally romance hangs together."
"Was it a tiger or a leopard?" Swinton asked in an even voice.
"I--I rather fancy it was a leopard. I didn't see overmuch of the silly brute, my mount being in such an ecstasy of fright."
"What about the syce; perhaps the leopard nailed him?" the captain asked solicitously.
"Hardly think it; I didn't see the bloomer after I left the bungalow. Oh!" It was the ankle.
This cry of pain galvanised Swinton into compassion; it also gave him an idea of how to mete out retribution to the awful liar beside him.