For this outpost, which was garrisoned by Dermot's Double Company of a
Military Police Battalion, guarded one of the _duars_, or passes, through
the Himalayas into India from the wild and little-known country of Bhutan.
Its Commanding Officer watched the elephant disappear down the hill before
returning to his little stone bungalow, which stood in a small garden
shaded by giant mango and jack-fruit trees and gay with the flaming lines
of bougainvillias and poinsettias.
Dismissing the post orderly, who was still waiting, Dermot threw himself
into a long chair and took up the letters that he had flung down when
Badshah's screams attracted his attention. They were all routine official
correspondence contained in the usual long envelopes marked "On His
Majesty's Service." The registered one, however, held a smaller envelope
heavily sealed, marked "Secret" and addressed to him by name. In this was a
letter in cipher.
Dermot got up from his chair and, going into his bedroom, opened a trunk
and lifted out of it a steel despatch box, which he unlocked. From this he
extracted a sealed envelope, which he carried back to the sitting-room.
First examining the seals to make sure that they were intact, he opened the
envelope and took from it two papers. One was a cipher code and on the
other was the keyword to the official cipher used by the military
authorities throughout India.
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