"For a good while I hesitated. At last I got up and closed the door into the clerks' room, and when I took the keys and opened the safe, I declare my heart was thumping like a motor engine. The money was in a small drawer; ten days before I had counted over the notes and reported 'all correct,' and I knew that a sum of seven thousand rupees was intact. I drew out the dingy bundle, greasy and discoloured--but good paper for all that--thrust it into my pocket, and locked the safe. Once the deed was actually accomplished, I felt relieved and even cheerful. Next morning I gave the notes to Bunsi Lal's agent, in exchange for a cheque on London."
"So that load was off my back; and then I hedged in case Collarette failed me, and wrote by the same mail to Uncle Horace, begging him to lend me five hundred pounds. I told him that it was a case of the most terrible necessity, and implored him not to fail me. I expect his answer in ten days--but by then it'll be too late. Collarette, as you know, ran a cur; she shut up in the last fifty yards. Then followed the bomb about our reliefs being cancelled. Last, and worst of all, Mills came to me on Saturday and said: 'That canteen money is going to be invested after all; I've been telling the colonel we may as well get some interest this next six months, it is to be made over to Loughton and Law on deposit receipt. I suppose they'll give four per cent., so will you let me have it, Ronnie, and I'll fix it up? A bit over seven thousand rupees, isn't it?'
"I declare to you, Sis, that I felt as if the sky had fallen in. That was Saturday, and here is Monday. If I cannot put the money back in the safe--or rather produce it and pretend I've taken it out--by Wednesday morning, I'm done for. I shall be convicted of making away with the regimental funds, be tried by court martial and cashiered. _My_ alternative was better than that!"
"Oh, Ronnie, Ronnie, don't say it!" I protested in agony.
"Just fancy my being proved to be a regular 'budmash' and thief--if I were out of it all things would be hushed up. I'd just have been bundled into a hole in the cemetery--and nothing _said_. I know the colonel would move heaven and earth to smother the scandal. He thinks so much of the reputation of the regiment, and if one of his officers were to be tried by court martial, and the case came out in all the papers, it would turn his hair white."