I have your records before me. There's everything in them, from smuggling to swindling to receiving stolen goods to bare-faced blackmail.

Sir, I resent the accusation of blackmail. It is blackmail to obtain money by threats of publishing information *in* a newspaper. But what blackmail is there in accepting a small retainer for keeping it *out* of a newspaper?

And how did you propose to keep it out?

By telling the editor what I know about his sister, and a certain government official in these parts.

[Referring to Kipling, the journalist present]

Let him put *that* in his paper, if he has need of news.

It would have been wiser if you had both gone home at the end of your army service.

Home to what? A porter's uniform outside a restaurant and tanner tips from belching civilians for closing cab doors on them and their blowzy women?

Not for us, thank you! Not after watching Afghans come howling down out of the hills and taking battle field command when all the officers had copped it!

Well said Brother Dravot!

There may be no criminal charges against you, but I'll see these files reach Calcutta with the recommendation that you be deported as political undesirables! Detriments to the Dignity of the Empire and the Izzat of the Raj!

Detriments you call us? Detriments? Well I want to remind you it was detriments like us that built this bloody Empire and the Izzat of the bloody Raj! Hats on! About turn! By the left, quick march!