Detailed preparations for the round-up had begun.
The unostentatious mechanism of it seemed more weird and terrible than the conspiracy itself.
There was a full company of Sikhs standing to arms in a side street leading off the Jaffa Road, but they took no notice of us.
Their officer looked keenly at us once, and then very deliberately stared the other way, illustrating how some fighting men make pretty poor dissemblers; every one of his dark-skinned rank and file had observed all the details of our outfit without seeming to see us at all.
"We're using nothing but Sikhs on this job," said Turner.
"British troops wouldn't appreciate the delicacy of the situation.

Moslems couldn't be trusted not to talk.

The Sikhs enjoy the surreptitious part of it, and don't care enough about the politics to get excited.

Wish I might be in at the finish, though! Have you any notion what the real objective is ?" "No," said I, and tried not to feel, or look pleased with myself.
But no mere amateur can conceal that, in the moment of discovery, he knows more about the inside of an official business than one of the Administration's lawful agents.

That is nine-tenths of the secret of "bossed" politics--the sheer vanity of being on the inside, "in the know." I suppose I smirked.