In
the evening, Dumoise told his locum tenens, who was an old friend of
his bachelor days, what had happened at Bagi; and the man said that
Ram Dass might as well have chosen Tuticorin while he was about it.
At that moment a telegraph-peon came in with a telegram from Simla,
ordering Dumoise not to take over charge at Meridki, but to go at
once to Nuddea on special duty. There was a nasty outbreak of
cholera at Nuddea, and the Bengal Government, being shorthanded, as
usual, had borrowed a Surgeon from the Punjab.
Dumoise threw the telegram across the table and said:--"Well?"
The other Doctor said nothing. It was all that he could say.
Then he remembered that Dumoise had passed through Simla on his way
from Bagi; and thus might, possibly, have heard the first news of
the impending transfer.
He tried to put the question, and the implied suspicion into words,
but Dumoise stopped him with:--"If I had desired THAT, I should
never have come back from Chini. I was shooting there. I wish to
live, for I have things to do . . . .
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