Ch. 24: The Return of Imray

The doors were wide, the story saith,
Out of the night came the patient wraith,
He might not speak, and he could not stir
A hair of the Baron's minniver---
Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin,
He roved the castle to seek his kin.
And oh,'twas a piteous thing to see
The dumb ghost follow his enemy!
THE BARON.

Imray achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable
motive, in his youth, at the threshold of his career he chose to
disappear from the world---which is to say, the little Indian station
where he lived.

Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence among the
billiard-tables at his Club. Upon a morning, he was not, and no manner
of search could make sure where he might be. He had stepped out of his
place; he had not appeared at his office at the proper time, and his
dogcart was not upon the public roads. For these reasons, and because he
was hampering, in a microscopical degree, the administration of the
Indian Empire, that Empire paused for one microscopical moment to make
inquiry into the fate of Imray. Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed,
telegrams were despatched down the lines of railways and to the nearest
seaport town-twelve hundred miles away; but Imray was not at the end of
the drag-ropes nor the telegraph wires. He was gone, and his place knew
him no more.

Then the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it could
not be delayed, and Imray from being a man became a mystery--such a
thing as men talk over at their tables in the Club for a month, and then
forget utterly. His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highest
bidder. His superior officer wrote an altogether absurd letter to his
mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably disappeared, and his
bungalow stood empty.

After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by, my
friend Strickland, of the Police, saw fit to rent the bungalow from the
native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss Youghal--an
affair which has been described in another place--and while he was
pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life was
sufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs.
There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times for
meals. He ate, standing up and walking about, whatever he might find at
the sideboard, and this is not good for human beings. His domestic
equipment was limited to six rifles, three shot-guns, five saddles, and
a collection of stiff-jointed mahseer-rods, bigger and stronger than the
largest salmon-rods. These occupied one-half of his bungalow, and the
other half was given up to Strickland and his dog Tietjens--an enormous
Rampur slut who devoured daily