Explore "The Devil's Guard" by Talbot Mundy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Elmer Rait's letter had been wrapped in dogskin and then enclosed in a tough brown envelope. It smelled vaguely of ghee. The white paper was filthy with finger-marks, torn here and there, and turned yellow in places with age, as if Rait had made use of such stuff as he found in the markets of Lhassa.
"Dear Jeff: What on earth did we quarrel about? I forget. Nothing serious anyhow--probably ethics. You're a muscular moralist, whereas I'm practical and don't even want to make things better than they are. And here I am in Lhassa--the Forbidden City!--thinking of you, wishing you were here too, in spite of those winkers you wear, which you think are respectable compunctions, for all the world like an old maid in a bathing costume with the pants tied round her ankles. You ought to have been a bishop. You'd look splendid with a miter and crook. And how that fist of yours would shake a pulpit! However, there is nobody quite like you: nobody quite so whole-souled in stupidity with so much force behind it; nobody quite so willing to oblige a friend, and especially when the friend least deserves it; nobody more dependable. You're like a phalanx in reserve, or a siege-train--anything heavy and honest, that can hit like Billy-o when pointed in the right direction.