Then, 'twixt a vice and folly, turned aside
To do good deeds and straight to cloak them, lied.
The Mess Room.
If Reggie Burke were in India now, he would resent this tale being
told; but as he is in Hong-Kong and won't see it, the telling is
safe. He was the man who worked the big fraud on the Sind and
Sialkote Bank. He was manager of an up-country Branch, and a sound
practical man with a large experience of native loan and insurance
work. He could combine the frivolities of ordinary life with his
work, and yet do well. Reggie Burke rode anything that would let
him get up, danced as neatly as he rode, and was wanted for every
sort of amusement in the Station.
As he said himself, and as many men found out rather to their
surprise, there were two Burkes, both very much at your service.
"Reggie Burke," between four and ten, ready for anything from a hot-
weather gymkhana to a riding-picnic; and, between ten and four, "Mr.
Reginald Burke, Manager of the Sind and Sialkote Branch Bank." You
might play polo with him one afternoon and hear him express his
opinions when a man crossed; and you might call on him next morning
to raise a two-thousand rupee loan on a five hundred pound
insurance-policy, eighty pounds paid in premiums.
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