"Waiting for him! Well, I guess! First thing Ashburton ran up against was one of the blackamoors he had hired to take care of Jack. When he had left the fellow he was clothed in a full suit of yellow dust with a rag around his loins. Now he was gotten up in a red turban and pajamas trimmed with gewgaws. The blackamoor prostrated himself and began kotowing backward toward a marquee erected on a little knoll under some trees and surrounded by elephants in gorgeous trappings. 'The Rajah of Bungpore'--that was Jack--'had sent him,' he said, 'to conduct his Royal Highness into the presence of his illustrious master!' "When Ashburton reached the door of the marquee and peered in, he saw Jack lying back on an Oriental couch at the other end smoking the pipe of the country--whatever that was--and surrounded by a collection of Hottentots of various sizes and colors, who fell on their foreheads every time Jack crooked his finger. At his feet knelt two Hindoo merchants displaying their wares--pearls, ivories, precious stones, arms, porcelains--stuffs of a quality and price, Ashburton told me, that took his breath away. Jack kept on--he made out he didn't see Ashburton--his slaves bearing the purchases away and depositing them on a low inlaid table--teakwood, I guess--in one corner of the marquee, while a confidential Lord of the Treasury took the coin of the realm from a bag or gourd--or whatever he did take it from--and paid the shot. [Illustration: At his feet knelt two Hindu merchants displaying their wares.] "When the audience was over, Jack waved everybody outside with a commanding gesture, and still lolling on his rugs--or maybe his tiger skins--told his Grand Vizier to conduct the strange man to his august presence. Then Jack rose from this throne, dismissed the Grand Vizier, and fell into Ashburton's arms roaring with laughter." "And Ashburton had to foot the bills, I suppose," I blurted out. It is astonishing how suspicious and mean a man gets sometimes who mixes as little as I do with what Marny calls "the swim." "Ashburton foot the bills! Not much! Listen, you six by nine! Stirling hadn't been alone more than a week when along comes the Maharajah he had met on the steamer. He lived up in that part of the country, and one of his private detectives had told him that somebody was camping out on his lot. Down he came in a white heat, with a bag of bow-strings and a squad of the 'Finest' in pink trousers and spears. I get these details all wrong, old man--they might have been in frock-coats for all I know or care--but what I'm after is the Oriental atmosphere--a sort of property background with my principal figure high up on the canvas--and one costume is as good as another.