Explore "A Bank Fraud" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
He drank strong waters and his speech was coarse; / He purchased raiment and forebore to pay; / He struck a trusting junior with a horse, / And won Gymkhanas in a doubtful way. / Then, 'twixt a vice and folly, turned aside / To do good deeds and straight to cloak them, lied. / The Mess Room.
If Reggie Burke were in India now, he would resent this tale being told; but as he is in Hong-Kong and won't see it, the telling is safe. He was the man who worked the big fraud on the Sind and Sialkote Bank. He was manager of an up-country Branch, and a sound practical man with a large experience of native loan and insurance work. He could combine the frivolities of ordinary life with his work, and yet do well. Reggie Burke rode anything that would let him get up, danced as neatly as he rode, and was wanted for every sort of amusement in the Station.