The Collector had watched the arrest from the interior of the waiting-room, and throwing open its perforated doors of zinc, he was now revealed like a god in a shrine. When Fielding entered the doors clapped to, and were guarded by a servant, while a punkah, to mark the importance of the moment, flapped dirty petticoats over their heads. The Collector could not speak at first. His face was white, fanatical, and rather beautiful—the expression that all English faces were to wear at Chandrapore for many days. Always brave and unselfish, he was now fused by some white and generous heat; he would have killed himself, obviously, if he had thought it right to do so. He spoke at last. “The worst thing in my whole career has happened,” he said. “Miss Quested has been insulted in one of the Marabar caves.”
“Oh no, oh no, no,” gasped the other, feeling sickish.
“She escaped—by God’s grace.”
“Oh no, no, but not Aziz . . . not Aziz . . .”
He nodded.
“Absolutely impossible, grotesque.”
“I called you to preserve you from the odium that would attach to you if you were seen accompanying him to the Police Station,” said Turton, paying no attention to his protest, indeed scarcely hearing it.
He repeated “Oh no,” like a fool. He couldn’t frame other words. He felt that a mass of madness had arisen and tried to overwhelm them all; it had to be shoved back into its pit somehow, and he didn’t know how to do it, because he did not understand madness: he had always gone about sensibly and quietly until a difficulty came right. “Who lodges this infamous charge?” he asked, pulling himself together.
“Miss Derek and—the victim herself. . . .” He nearly broke down, unable to repeat the girl’s name.
“Miss Quested herself definitely accuses him of——”
He nodded and turned his face away.
“Then she’s mad.”
“I cannot pass that last remark,” said the Collector, waking up to the knowledge that they differed, and trembling with fury. “You will withdraw it instantly. It is the type of remark you have permitted yourself to make ever since you came to Chandrapore.”
“I’m excessively sorry, sir; I certainly withdraw it unconditionally.” For the man was half mad himself.
“Pray, Mr. Fielding, what induced you to speak to me in such a tone?”
“The news gave me a very great shock, so I must ask you to forgive me. I cannot believe that Dr. Aziz is guilty.”
He slammed his hand on the table. “That—that is a repetition of your insult in an aggravated form.”
“If I may venture to say so, no,” said Fielding, also going white, but sticking to his point. “I make no reflection on the good faith of the two ladies, but the charge they are bringing against Aziz rests upon some mistake, and five minutes will clear it up. The man’s manner is perfectly natural; besides, I know him to be incapable of infamy.”
“It does indeed rest upon a mistake,” came the thin, biting voice of the other. “It does indeed. I have had twenty-five years’ experience of this country”—he paused, and “twenty-five years” seemed to fill the waiting-room with their staleness and ungenerosity—“and during those twenty-five years I have never known anything but disaster result when Engli............