Writing
Captain Donald King is sent to India to carry out a secret mission while the Black Watch, his regiment, leaves for France at the outbreak of the First World War.
In Africa, two hunters meet a girl and her father who are searching for her lost brother. Their search is complicated by rival hunters who are after ivory and by a tribe of hostile natives.
Freshly arrived Sandhurst-trained Captain Alan King, better versed in Pashtun then any of the veterans and born locally as army brat, survives an attack on his escort to his Northwest Frontier province garrison near the Khyber pass because of Ahmed, a native Afridi deserter from the Muslim fanatic rebel Karram Khan's forces. As soon as his fellow officers learn his mother was a native Muslim which got his parents disowned even by their own families, he falls prey to stubborn prejudiced discrimination, Lieutenant Geoffrey Heath even moves out of their quarters, except from half-Irish Lt. Ben Baird.
Andy Brannigan was a good-natured policeman, large of frame, but limited in nerve. He has, however, been very successful in posing as a hero, and deceives all but his wife, who laughs at him when he tells her that he has been awarded a medal for bravery.
Discovering that he has only a brief time to live Louisiana plantation owner Andres Miro makes arrangements to marry his young ward, Jacqueline Lanier, so when he dies, she will inherit his fortune. One of Jacqueline’s rejected suitors, Jack Calhoun kills Miro in a fit of anger, then shoots himself. A sleazy local reporter, looking to make a name for himself, drafts a story about the incident painting Jacqueline as responsible for the deaths of both men due to her infidelity. Big trouble and heartbreak follows.
