Just for that I'll go with you." He winked at de Crespigny, nodded to me, pulled on a black-and-white striped Bedouin cloak, and went off with them at once.

Whereat Narayan Singh came in, looking like another person altogether, although, if anything, bigger than before.

He had got out of uniform and was dressed in a medley of Indian and Arab costume that made him look like one of those slaves in the "Arabian Nights" who cut off the heads of women.

All he needed was a big curved simitar to fill the bill.
"Henceforth I am the _hakim's_ servant," he said, showing his teeth in an enormous grin.

"Only," he added, "since it will be I who instruct the _hakim,_ in secret the sahib must listen to me." He got out the medicine-chest, and being a Sikh with all of a soldier's opinion of civilians proposed to teach me what the labels on the little bottles stood for.