Rudyard Kipling

The Man Who Would be King Rudyard Kipling

The narrator begins by asserting that he almost came to know a king once; more than that he came close to having a role in the king's rule over a kingdom. The king is now dead, however, and so if he wants to get close to a crown again, it will have to be his own crown. He is currently forced to travel by train from Amjir to Mhow in India back in intermediate class because his recent fall into hard times has at least temporarily take him away from his usual accommodations in first class. And so as he shares a car among the lowest class of society, he spies a fellow traveler to far offshoots of his country's empire and soon they are sitting down to trade stories of coming up against that part of traveling to India not found on the tourist agenda. Neither the stranger nor the narrator has funds required to fulfill the man's desire to send a message by telegram so instead he persuades the narrator to travel to Marwar Junction in search of the red-headed man to whom the message will be delivered. The message is cryptic, but not suspicious: "He has gone south for the week. " After a warning from the narrator against posing again as a newspaper reporter, the other man confesses his plan to blackmail the Rajah of Degumber by threatening to file a report about his father's widow unless he receives money not to.