How Time Moves

"Ali, you might send three or four men on to the bungalow to clean up
things. We shall make it tomorrow. It's but two hours' ride, but
there's no hurry; and besides there's a herd of elephants behind us
somewhere. They've come up far for this time of year."

"Any news worth while?"

"Yes, Sahib."

Ali made a gesture; it signified a great many things.

"Bruce Sahib will not believe."

"Believe what?" said Bruce, emptying his pipe against his heel.

"There is a white queen in the city."

"What? What bally nonsense is this?"

"It is only what I've been told, Sahib. Hare Sahib is dead."

Bruce let his pipe slip through his fingers. "Hare? Good lord!"

"Yes, Sahib. But that is not all. It seems the king went mad after we
went to Africa. You remember how Hare Sahib saved him from the leopard?
Well, he made Hare Sahib his heir. He had that right; the law of the
childless king has always read so in Allaha. The white queen is Hare
Sahib's daughter."

Bruce leaned against a tent pole. "Am I dreaming or are you?" he gasped.

"It is what they tell me, Sahib. I know it not as a fact."

"The king dead, Hare dead, and his daughter on the throne! How did she
get here? And what the devil is a chap to do?" Bruce stooped and
recovered his pipe and swore softly. "Ali, if this is true, then it's
some devil work; and I'll wager my shooting eye that that sleek scoundrel
Umballa, as they call him, is at the bottom of it. A white woman, good
old Hare's daughter. I'll look into this. It's the nineteenth century,
Ali, and white women are not made rulers over the brown, not of their own
free will. Find out all you can and report to me," and Bruce dismissed
his servant and fell to pacing before his tent.