by Talbot Mundy
Grand was thy goal! Thy vision new! Ave, Caesar! Conquest? Ends of Earth thy view? Ave, Caesar! To sow--to reap--to play God's game? How many Caesars did that same Until the great, grim Reaper came! Who ploughs with death shall garner rue, And under all skies is nothing new. Vale, Caesar!
Telling the story afterward King never made any effort to describehis own sensations. It was surely enough to state what he saw, after abreathless climb among the rat-runs of a mountain with his imaginationfired already by what had happened in the Cavern of Earth's Drink.
The leather curtains slipped through his fingers and closed behind himwith the clash of rings on a rod. But he was beyond being startled. Hewas not really sure he was in the world. He knew he was awake, and heknew he was glad he had left his shoes outside. But he was not certainwhether it was the twentieth century, or fifty-five B. C., or earlieryet; or whether time had ceased. Very vividly in that minute thereflashed before his mind Mark Twain's suggestion of the Transposition ofEpochs.
The place where he was did not look like a cave, but a palace chamber,for the rock walls had been trimmed square and polished smooth; thenthey had been painted pure white, except for a wide blue frieze, witha line of gold-leaf drawn underneath it. And on the frieze, done ingold-leaf too, was the Grecian lady of the lamps, always dancing. Therewere fifty or sixty figures of her, no two the same.
A dozen lamps were burning, set in niches cut in the walls at measuredintervals. They were exactly like the two outside, except that theirhorn chimneys were stained yellow instead of red, suffusing everythingin a golden glow.
Opposite him was a curtain, rather like that through which he hadentered. Near to the curtain was a bed, whose great wooden posts werecracked with age. And it was at the bed he stared, with eyes that tookin every detail but refused to believe.
In spite of its age it was spread with fine new linen. Richlyembroidered, not very ancient Indian draperies hung down from it tothe floor on either side. On it, above the linen, a man and a woman layhand-in-hand; and the woman was so exactly like Yasmini, even to herclothing, and her naked feet, that it was not possible for a man to beself-possessed.
They both seemed asleep. It was as if Yasmini, weary from the dancing,had laid herself to sleep beside her lord. But who was he? And why didhe wear Roman armor? And why was there no guard to keep intruders out?
It was minutes before he satisfied himself that the man's breast did notrise and fall under the bronze armor and that the woman's jeweled gauzystuff was still. Imagination played such tricks with him that in thestillness he imagined he heard breathing.
After he was sure they were both dead, he went nearer, but it was aminute yet before he knew the woman was not she. At first a wild thoughtpossessed him that she had killed herself.
The only thing to show who he had been were the letters S. P. Q. R. on agreat plumed helmet, on a little table by the bed. But she was the womanof the lamp-bowls and the frieze. A life-size stone statue in a cornerwas so like her, and like Yasmini too, that it was difficult to decidewhich of the two it represented.
She had lived when he did, for her fingers were locked in his. And hehad lived two thousand years ago, because his armor was about as old asthat, and for proof that he had died in it part of his breast had turnedto powder inside the breastplate. The rest of his body was whole andperfectly preserved.
Stern, handsome in a high-beaked Roman way, gray on the temples,firm-lipped, he lay like an emperor in harness. But the pride andresolution on his face were outdone by the serenity of hers. Very surelythose two had been lovers.
Something--he could not decide what--about the man's appearance kept himstaring for ten minutes, holding his breath unconsciously and lettingit out in little silent gasps. It annoyed him that he could not pin downthe elusive thing; and when he went on presently to be curious aboutmore tangible things, it was only to be faced with the unexplainable atevery turn.
How had the bodies been preserved, for instance? They were perfect,except for that one detail of the man's breast. The air was full of theperfume he had learned to recognize as Yasmini's, but there was no sniffabout the bodies of pitch or bitumen, or of any other chemical. Norwas there any sign of violence about them, or means of telling how theydied, or when, except for the probable date of the man's armor.
Both of them looked young and healthy--the woman younger thanthirty--twenty-five at a guess--and the man perhaps forty, perhapsforty-five.
He bent over them. Every stitch of the man's clothing had decayed in thecourse of centuries, so that his armor rested on the naked skin, exceptfor a dressed leather kilt about his middle. The leather was as old asthe curtains at the entrance, and as well preserved.
But the woman's silken clothing was as new as the bedding; and that wasso new that it had been woven in Belfast, Ireland, by machinery and borethe mark of the firm that made it!
Yet, they both died at about the same time, or how could their fingershave been interlaced? And some of the jewelry on the woman's clothes wasvery ancient as well as priceless.
He looked closer at the fingers for signs of force and suddenly caughthis breath. Under the woman's flimsy sleeve was a wrought goldbracelet, smaller than that one he himself had worn in Delhi and up theKhyber--exactly like the little one that Yasmini wore on her wrist inthe Cavern of Earth's Drink! He raised the loose sleeve to look moreclosely at it.
The sleeve overlay the man's forearm, and the movement laid bare anotherbracelet, on the man's right wrist. Size for size, this was the same asthe one that had been stolen from himself.
Memory prompted him. He felt its outer edge with a finger-nail. Therewas the little nick that he had made in the soft gold when he struck itagainst the cell bars in the jail at the Mir Khan Palace!
That put another thought in his head. It was less than two hours sinceYasmini danced in the arena. It might well be much less than that sinceshe had taken off her bracelets. He laid a finger on the dead man'sstone-cold hand and let it rest so for a minute. Then, running it slowlyup the wrist, he touched the gold. It was warm. He repeated the test onthe woman's wrist. Hers was warm, too. Both bracelets had been worn by aliving being within an hour--
"Probably within minutes!"
He muttered and frowned in thought, and then suddenly jumped backward.The leather curtain near the bed had moved on its bronze rod.
"Aren't they dears?" a voice said in English behind him. "Aren't theysweet?"
He had jumped so as to face about, and somebody laughed at him. Yasministood not two arms' lengths away, lovelier than the dead woman becauseof the merry life in her, young and warm, aglow, but looking likethe dead woman and the woman of the frieze--the woman of thelamp--bowls--the statue--come to life, speaking to him in English moresweetly than if it had been her mother tongue. The English abuse theirlanguage. Yasmini caressed it and made it do its work twice over.
Being dressed as a native, he salaamed low. Knowing him for what he was,she gave him the senna-stained tips of her warm fingers to kiss, and hethought she trembled when he touched them. But a second later she hadsnatched them away and was treating him to raillery.
"Man of pills and blisters!" she said, "tell me how those bodies arepreserved! Spill knowledge from that learned skull of thine!"
He did not answer. He never shone in conversation at any time, havingmade as many friends as enemies by saying nothing until the spirit moveshim. But she did not know that yet.
"If I knew for certain why those two did not turn to worms," she wenton, "almost I would choose to die now, while I am beautiful! Thinkof the fogy museum men!" (She called them by a far less edifying name,really, for the East is frank in that way, especially in its use ofother tongues.) "What would they say, think you, King sahib, if theyfound us two dead beside those two? Would not that be a mystery? Don'tyou love mysteries? Speak, man, speak! Has Khinjan struck you dumb?"
But he did not speak. He was staring at her arm, where two whitish ma
rkson the skin betrayed that bracelets had been.
"Oh, those! They are theirs. I would not rob the dead, or the gods wouldturn on me. I robbed you, instead, while you slept. Fie, King sahib,while you slept!"
But her steel did not strike on flint. It was her eyes that flashed. Hewould have done better to have seemed ashamed, for then he might havefooled her, at least for a while. But having judged himself, he didnot care a fig for her judgment of him. She realized that instantly andhaving found a tool that would not work, discarded it for a better one.She grew confidential.
"I borrow them," she explained, "but I put them back. I take them forso many days, and when the day comes--the gods like us to be exact! Oncethere was an Englishman to whom I lent the larger one, and he refusedto return it. He wanted it to wear, to bring him luck. Collins, of theGurkhas. A cobra bit him."
King's eyes changed, for Collins of the Gurkhas had died in his twoarms, saying never a word. He had always wondered why the native whoran in to kill the cobra had run away again and left Collins lying thereafter seeming to shake hands with him. Yasmini, watching his eyes andreading his memory, missed nothing.
"You saw?" she said excitedly. "You remember? Then you understand! Youyourself were near death when I took the bracelet last night. The timewas up. I would have stabbed you if you had tried to prevent me!"
Now he spoke at last and gave her a first glimpse of an angle of hismind she had not suspected.
"Princess," he said. He used the word with the deference some men cancombine with effrontery, so that very tenderness has barbs. "You mighthave had that thing back if you had sent a messenger for it at any time.A word by a servant would have been enough.
"You could never have reached Khinjan then!" she retorted. Her eyesflashed again, but his did not waver.
"Princess," he said, "why speak of what you don't know?"
He thought she would strike like a snake, but she smiled at him instead.And when Yasmini has smiled on a man he has never been just the same manafterward. He knows more, for one thing. He has had a lesson in one ofthe finer arts.
"I will speak of what I do know," she said. "No, there is no need. Look!Look!"
She pointed at the bed--at the man on the bed--fingers locked in thoseof a woman who looked so like herself.
"You see--yet you do not see! Men are blind! Men look into a mirror, andsee only whiskers they forgot to shave the day before. Women look onceand then remember! Look again!"
He looked, knowing well there was something to be understood, thatstared him in the face. But for the life of him he could not determinequestion or answer.
"What is in your bosom?" she asked him.
He put his band to his shirt.
"Draw it out!" she said, as a teacher drills a child.
He drew out the gold-hilted knife with the bronze blade, with which aman had meant to murder him. He let it lie on the palm of his handand looked from it to her and back again. The hilt might have been aportrait of her modeled from the life.
"Here is another like it," she said, stepping to the bedside. She drewback the woman's dress at the bosom and showed a knife exactly like thatin King's hand. "One lay on her bosom and one on his when I found them!"she said. "Now, think again!"
He did think, of thirty thousand possibilities, and of one impossibleidea that stood up prominent among them all and insisted on seeming theonly likely one.
"I saw the knife in your bosom last night," she said, "and laughed sothat I nearly wakened you. Man! Are you stupid? Will that ready wit ofyours not work? Have I bewildered you? Is it my perfume? My eyes? Myjewels? What is it? Think, man! Think!"
But if she wanted to make him guess aloud for her amusement she waswasting time. Had he known the answer he would have held his tongue. Ashe did not know it, he had all the more reason to wait indefinitely, ifneed be. But interminable waiting was no part of her plan. Words werewelling out of her.
"I gave a fool that knife to use, because he was afraid. It gave himcourage. When he failed I knew it by telegram, and I sent another foolbefore the wires were cold, to kill him in the police-station cell forhaving failed. One fool has been stabbed and the English will hang theother. Then I sent twenty men to turn India inside out and find theknife again, for like the bracelets it has its place. And that is why Ilaughed. They are hunting. They will hunt until I call them off!"
"Why didn't you take it with the bracelet?" King asked her, holding itout. "Take it now. I don't want it."
She accepted it and laid it on the man's bronze armor. Then, however,she resumed it and played with it.
"Look again!" she said. "Think and look again!"
He looked, and he knew now. But he still preferred that she should tellhim, and his lips shut tight.
"Why, having ordered your death, did I countermand the order when yourlife had been attempted once? Why, as soon as Rewa Gunga had seen you,did I order you to be aided in every way?"
Still he did not answer, although the solution to that riddle, too,was beginning to dawn on his consciousness. He suspected she would beannoyed if he deprived her of the fun of telling him, so that by beingsilent he played both her game and his own.
"Why did I order your death in the first place?"
The answer to that was obvious, but she answered it for him.
"Because, since the sirkar insisted that one man must come with me toKhinjan, I preferred a fool, who could be lost on the way. I knew yourreputation. I never heard any man call you a fool."
She laughed. He nodded. She was obviously telling truth.
"Can you guess why I changed my mind about you--wise man?"
She looked from him to the man on the bed and back to him again. Havingsolved her riddle, King had leisure to be interested in her eyes, andwatched them analytically, like a jeweler appraising diamonds. They werestrangely reminiscent, but much more changeable and colorful than any hehad ever seen. They had the baffling trick of changing while he watchedthem.
"Having sent a man to kill you, why did I cease to want you killed?Instead of losing you on the way to Khinjan, why did I run risks toprotect you after you reached here? Why did I save your life in theCavern of Earth's Drink to-night? You do not know yet? Then I will tellyou something else you do not know. I was in Delhi when you were! Iwatched and listened while you and Rewa Gunga talked in my house! I wasin Rewa Gunga's carriage on the train that he took and you did not! Ihave learned at first hand that you are not a fool. But that was notenough! You had to be three things--clever and brave and one other. Theone other you are! Brave you have proved yourself to be! Clever youmust be, to trick your way into Khinjan Caves, even with Ismail at yourelbow! That is why I saved your life--because you are those two thingsand--and--one other!"
She snatched a mirror from a little ivory table--a modern mirror--badglass, bad art, bad workmanship, but silver warranted.
"Look in it and then at him!" she ordered.
But he did not need to look. The man on the bed was not so much likehimself as the woman was like her, but the resemblance seemed to growunder his eyes, as such things do. It was helped out by the stain hisbrother had applied to his face in the Khyber. King was the tallerand the younger by several years, but the noses were the same, and thewrinkled fore-heads; both men had the same firm mouth; both looked likeRomans.
"How did you get that scar?"
She came closer and took his hand, holding it in both hers, and he feltthe same thrill Samson knew. He steeled himself as Samson did not.
"A Mahsudi got me with a martini at long range in the blockade of 1902,"he said dryly.
"Look! Did he get his from a spear or from an arrow?"
Almost in the same spot, also on the dead man's left hand, was a scarso nearly like it that it needed a third and a fourth glance to tell thedifference. They both bent over the bed to see it, and she laid ahand on his shoulder. Touch and scent and confidence, all three werebewitching; all three were calculated, too! He could have killed her,and she knew he could have killed her, just as
she knew he would not.Yet what right had she to know it!
"Athelstan!"
She pronounced his given name as if she loved the word, standingstraight again and looking into his eyes. There were high lights in hersthat outgleamed the diamonds on her dress.
"Your gods and mine have done this, Athelstan. When the gods combinethey lay plans well indeed!"
"I only know one God," he answered simply, as a man speaks of the deepthings in his heart.
"I know of many! They love me! They shall love you, too! Many are betterthan one! You shall learn to know my gods, for we are to be partners,you and I!"
She laughed at him, looking like a goddess herself, but he frowned. Andthe more he frowned the better she seemed to like him.
"Partners in what, Princess?"
"Thou--Ismail dubbed thee Ready o' wit!--answer thine own question!"
She took his hand again, her eyes burning with excitement and mysticismand ambition like a fever. She seemed to take more than physicalpossession of him.
"What brought them here? Tell me that!" she demanded, pointing to thebed. "You think he brought, her? I tell you she was the spur that drovehim! Is it a wonder that men called her the 'Heart of the Hills'? Ifound them ten years ago and clothed her and put new linen on their bed,for the old was all rags and dust. There have always been hundreds--andsometimes thousands--who knew the secret of Khinjan Caves, but this hasbeen a secret within a secret. Some one, who knew the secret before I,sawed those bracelets through and fitted hinges and clasps. The men yousaw in the Cavern of Earth's Drink have no doubt I am the 'Heart of theHills' come to life! They shall know thee as Him within a little while!"
She held his hand a little tighter and pressed closer to him, laughingsoftly. He stood as if made of iron, and that only made her laugh themore.
"Tales of the 'Heart of the Hills' have puzzled the Raj, haven't they,these many years? They sent me to find the source of them. Me! Theychose well! There are not many like me! I have found this one dead womanwho was like me. And in ten years, until you came, I have found no manlike Him!"
She tried to look into his eyes, but he frowned straight in front ofhim. His native costume and Rangar turban did not make him seem any lessa man. His jowl, that was beginning to need shaving, was as grim andas satisfying as the dead Roman's. She stroked his left hand with softfingers.
"I used to think I knew how to dance!" she laughed--"For ten years Ihave taken those pictures of her for my model and have striven to learnwhat she knew. I have surpassed her! I used to think I knew how to amusemyself with men's dreams--until I found this! Then I dreamed on my ownaccount! My dream was true, my warrior! You have come! Our hour hascome!"
She tugged at his hand. He was hers, soul and harness, if outward signscould prove it.
"Come!" she said. "Is this my hospitality? You are weary and hungry.Come!"
She led him by the hand, for it would have needed brute force to pry herfingers loose. She drew aside the leather curtain that hung on a bronzerod near the bed, led him through it, and let it clash to again behindthem.
Now they were in the dark together, and it was not comprehended in herscheme of things to let circumstance lie fallow. She pressed his hand,and sighed, and then hurried, whispering tender words he could scarcelycatch. When they burst together through a curtain at the other end ofa passage in the rock, his skin was red under the tan and for the firsttime her eyes refused to meet his.
"Why did they choose that cave to sleep in?" she asked him. "Is not thisa better one? Who laid them there?"
He stared about. They were in a great room far more splendid than thefirst. There was a fountain in the center splashing in the midst offlowers. They were cut flowers. The "Hills" must have been scoured forthem within a day.
There were great cushioned couches all about and two thrones made ofivory and gold. Between two couches was a table, laden with goldenplates and a golden jug, on pure white linen. There were two goblets ofbeaten gold and knives with golden handles and bronze blades. The wholeroom seemed to be drenched in the scent Yasmini favored, and there wasthe same frieze running round all four walls, with the woman depicted onit dancing.
"Come, we shall eat!" she said, leading him by the hand to a couch. Shetook the one facing him, and they lay like two Romans of the Empire withthe table in between.
She struck a golden gong then, and a native woman came in who stared atKing as if she had seen him before and did not like him. Except for thejewels, she was dressed exactly like Yasmini, which is to say that hergauzy stuff was all but transparent. But Yasmini uses raiment as shedoes her eyes; it is part of her, and of her art. The maid, who wouldhave shone among many women, looked stiff and dull by contrast.
"I trust no Hill woman--they are cattle with human tongues," Yasminisaid, frowning at the maid. "Even in Delhi there was only this one womanwhom I dared bring here with me. You brought my men-servants! Theyare loyal, but as clumsy as the bears in their cold 'Hills'! Rewa Gungabrought me this one disguised as a man--you remember?"
She nodded to the servant, who clapped her hands. At once came a streamof Hillmen, robed in white, who carried sherbet in bottles cooled insnow and dishes fragrant with hot food. He recognized his own prisonersfrom the Mir Khan Palace jail, and nodded to them as they set the thingsdown under the maid's direction. When they had done the woman chasedthem out and came and stood behind Yasmini with a fan, for though it wasnot too hot, she liked to have her golden hair blown into movement.
"My cook was a viceroy's," she said, beginning to eat. "He killed anofficer who said the curry had pig's fat in it. That made him free ofKhinjan but of not many other places! I have promised him a swim inEarth's Drink when he ever forgets his art!"
King ate, because a man can not talk and eat at once. It was true thathe was hungry, that hunger is a piquant sauce, and that artist was anadjective too mild to apply to the cook. But the other reason was hischief one. Yasmini ate daintily, as if only to keep him company.
"You would rather have wine?" she asked suddenly. "All sahibs drinkwine. Bring wine!" she ordered.
But King shook his head, and she looked pleased.
He had thought she would be disappointed. When he had finished eatingshe drove the maid away with a sharp word; and when King jumped to hisfeet she led him toward the gold-and-ivory thrones, taking her seat onone of them and bidding him adjust the footstool.
"Would I might offer you the other!" she said, merrily enough, "but youmust sit at my feet until our hearts are one!"
It was clear that she took no delight in easy victories, for she laughedaloud at the quizzical expression on his face. He guessed that if shecould have conquered him at the first attempt a day would have found herweary of him; there was deliberate wisdom in his plan for the present toseem to let her win by little inches at a time. He reasoned that so shewould tell him more than if he defied her outright.
He brought an ivory footstool and set it about a yard away from herwaxen toes. And she, watching him with burning eyes, wound tresses ofher hair around the golden dagger handle, making her jewels glitter witheach movement.
"You pleased me by refusing wine," she said. "You please me--oh, youplease me! Christians drink wine and eat beef and pig-meat. Ugh! Hinduand Muslim both despise them, having each a little understanding of hisown. The gods of India, who are the only real gods, what do they thinkof it all! They have been good to the English, but they have had nothanks. They will stand aside now and watch a greater jihad than theworld has ever seen! And the Hindu, who holds the cow sacred, will notsupport Christians who hold nothing sacred, against Muhammadans wholoathe the pig! Christianity has failed! The English must go down withit--just as Rome went down when she dabbled in Christianity. Oh, I knowall about Rome!"
"And the gods of India?" he asked, to keep her to the point now that sheseemed well started.
He was there to learn, not to teach.
"I know them, too! I know them as nobody else does! They are neitherHindu, nor Muhammadan, but are
older by a thousand ages than eitherfoolishness! I love them, and they love me--as you shall love me, too!If they did not love both of us, we would not both be here! We must obeythem!"
None of the East's amazing ways of courtship are ever tedious. Lovesprings into being on an instant and lives a thousand years inside anhour. She left no doubt as to her meaning. She and King were to love,as the East knows love, and then the world might have just what they twodid not care to take from it.
His only possible course as yet was the defensive, and there is nodefense like silence. He was still.
"The sirkar," she went on, "the silly sirkar fears that perhaps Turkeymay enter the war. Perhaps a jihad may be proclaimed. So much for fear!I know! I have known for a very long time! And I have not let feartrouble me at all!"
Her eyes were on his steadily, and she read no fear in his,either, for none was there. In hers he saw ambition--triumphalready--excitement--the gambler's love of all the hugest risks. Behindthem burned genius and the devilry that would stop at nothing. As thegeneral had told him in Peshawur, she would dare open Hell's gate andride the devil down the Khyber for the fun of it.
"Au diable, diable et demie!" the French say; and like most Frenchproverbs it is a wise one. But whence the devil and a half should cometo thwart her was not obvious.
"I must be a devil and a half," he told himself, and very nearlylaughed aloud at the idea. She mistook the sudden humor in his eyes foradmiration of herself, being used to that from men.
"Listen, while I tell you all from the beginning! The sirkar sent me todiscover what may be this 'Heart of the Hills' men talk about. I foundthese caves--and this! I told the sirkar a little about the Caves, andnothing at all about the Sleepers. But even at that they only believedthe third of what I said. And I--back in Delhi I bought books--borrowedbooks--sent to Europe for more books--and hired babu Sita Ram to readthem to me, until his tongue grew dry and swollen and he usedto fall asleep in a corner. I know all about Rome! Days Ispent--weeks!--months!--listening to the history of their great Caesar,and their little Caesars--of their conquests and their games! It wasgood, and I understood it all! Rome should have been true to the oldgods, and they would have been true to her! She fell when she fooledwith Christianity!"
She was speaking dreamily now, with her chin resting on a hand and anelbow on the ivory arm of the throne, remembering as she told her story.And it meant so much to her, she was so in earnest, that her voiceconjured up pictures for King to see.
"When I had read enough I came back here to think. I knew enough nowto be sure that the Sleeper is a Roman, and the 'Heart of the Hills' aGrecian maid. She is like me. That is why I know she drove him to makean empire, choosing for a beginning these 'Hills' where Rome had neverpenetrated. He found her in Greece. He plunged through Persia to build athrone for her! I have seen it all in dreams, and again in the crystal!And because I was all alone, I saw that I would need all the skill Icould learn, and much patience. So I began to learn to dance as shedanced, using those pictures of her as a model. I have surpassed her! Ican dance better than she ever did!
"Between times I would go to Delhi and dance there a little, and alittle in other places--once indeed before a viceroy, and once for theking of England--and all men--the king, too!--told me that none inthe world can dance as I can! And all the while I kept looking for theman--the man who should be like the Sleeper, even as I am like her whomhe loved!
"Many a man--many and many a man I have tried and found wanting! For Iwas impatient in spite of resolutions. I burned to find him at once, andbegin! But you are the first of all the men I have tested who answeredall the tests! Languages--he must speak the native tongues. Brave bemust be--and clever--resembling the Sleeper in appearance. I began tothink long ago that I must forego that last test, for there was nonelike the Sleeper until you came. And when this world war broke--for itis a world war, a world war I tell you!--I thought at last that I mustmanage all alone. And then you came!
"But there were many I tried--many--especially after I abandoned thethought that the man must resemble the Sleeper. There was a Prince ofGermany who came to India on a hunting trip. You remember?"
King pricked his ears and allowed himself to grin, for in common withmany hundred other men who had been lieutenants at the time, he wouldonce have given an ear and an eye to know the truth of that affair. Thegrin transformed his whole appearance, until Yasmini beamed on him.
"I'm listening, Princess!" he reminded her.
"Well--he came--the Prince of Germany--the borrower!"
"Borrower of what, Princess?"
"Of wit! Of brains! Of platitudes! Of reputation! There came a crowdwith him of such clumsy plunderers, asking such rude questions, thateven the sirkar could not shut its ears and eyes!
"I did not know all about sahibs in those days. I thought that, althoughthis man is what he is, yet he is a prince, and perhaps I can fire himwith my genius. I could have taught him the native tongues. I thoughthe had ambition, but I learned that he is only greedy. You see, I wasfoolish, not knowing yet that in good time if I am patient my man willcome to me! But I learned all about Germans--all!
"I offered him India first, then Asia, then the world--even as I nowoffer them to you. The sirkar sent him to see me dance, and he stayedto hear me talk. When I saw at last that he has the head and heart of ahyena I told him lies. But he, being drunk, told me truths that I haveremembered.
"Later he sent two of his officers to ask me questions, and they werelittle better than he, although a little better mannered. I told themlies, too, and they told me lies, but they told me much that was true.
"Then the prince came again, a last time. And I was weary of him. Thesirkar was very weary of him too. He offered me money to go to Germanyand dance for the kaiser in Berlin. He said I will be shown there muchthat will be to my advantage. I refused. He made me other offers. So Ispat in his face and threw food at him.
"He complained to the sirkar against me, sending one of his highofficers to demand that I be whipped. So I told the sirkar some--notmuch, indeed, but enough--of the things he and his officers had toldme. And the sirkar said at once that there was both cholera and bubonicplague, and he must go home!
"I have heard--three men told me--that he said he will never rest untilI have been whipped! But I have heard that his officers laughed behindhis back. And ever since that time there have always been Germans incommunication with me. I have had more money from Berlin than wouldbribe the viceroy's council, and I have not once been in the dark aboutGermany's plans--although they have always thought I am in the dark.
"I went on looking for my man--studying all, Germans, English, Turks,French--and there was a Frenchman whom I nearly chose--and an American,a man who used the strangest words, who laughed at me. I studied Hindu,Muslim, Christian, every good-looking fighting man who came my way,knowing well that all creeds are one when the gods have named theirchoice.
"There came that old Bull-with-a-beard, Muhammad Anim, and for a time Ithought he is the man, for he is a man whatever else he is. But I tiredof him. I called him Bull-with-a-beard, and the 'Hills' took it up andmocked him, until the new name stuck. He still thinks he is the man,having more strength to hope and more will to will wrongly than anyman I ever met, except a German. I have even been sure sometimes thatMuhammad Anim is a German; yet now I am not sure.
"From all the men I met and watched I have learned all they knew! And Ihave never neglected to tell the sirkar sufficient of what men have toldme, to keep the sirkar pleased with me!
"Nor have I ever played Germany's game--no, no! I have talked with aprince of Germany, and I understand too well! Who sups with a boar mayget good roots to eat, but must endure pigs' feet in the trough! Pigs'hides make good saddles; I have used the Germans, as they think theyhave used me! I have used them ruthlessly.
"Knowing all I knew, and being ready except that I had not found my manyet, I dallied in India on the eve of war, watching a certain Sikh todiscover whether he is the man or not. But
he lacked imagination, andI was caught in Delhi when war broke and the English dosed the KhyberPass. Yet I had to come up the Khyber, to reach Khinjan.
"So it was fortunate that I knew of a German plot that I could spoilat the last minute. I fooled the Germans by letting the Sikh whom I hadwatched discover it. The Germans still believe me their accomplice--andthe sirkar was so pleased that I think if I had asked for an Englishpeerage they would have answered me soberly. A million dynamite bombswas a big haul for the sirkar! My offer to go to Khinjan and keep the'Hills' quiet was accepted that same day!
"But what are a million dynamite bombs! Dynamite bombs have been cominginto Khinjan month by month these three years! Bombs and rifles andcartridges! Muhammad Anim's men, whom he trusts because he must, hid itall in a cave I showed them, that they think, and he thinks, has onlyone entrance to it. Muhammad Anim scaled it, and he has the key. But Ihave the ammunition!
"There was another way out of that cave, although there is none now,for I have blocked it. My men, whom I trust because I know them, carriedeverything out by the back way, and I have it all. I will show it to youpresently.
"I know all Muhammad Anim's plans. Bull-with-a-beard believes himself astatesman, yet he told me all he knows! He has told me how Germany plansto draw Turkey in and to force Turkey to proclaim a jihad. As if I didnot know it first, almost before the Germans knew it! Fools! The jihadwill recoil on them! It will be like a cobra, striking whoever stirsit! A typhoon, smiting right and left! Christianity is doomed, andthe Germans call themselves Christians! Fools! Rome called herselfChristian--and where is Rome?
"But we, my warrior, when Muhammad Anim gets the word from Germany andgives the sign, and the 'Hills' are afire, and the whole East roars inthe flame of the jihad--we will put ourselves at the head of that jihad,and the East and the world is ours!"
King smiled at her.
"The East isn't very well armed," he objected. "Mere numbers--"
"Numbers?" She laughed at him. "The West has the West by the throat!It is tearing itself! They will drag in America! There will be no armednation with its hands free--and while those wolves fight, other wolvesshall come and steal the meat! The old gods, who built these caverns inthe 'Hills,' are laughing! They are getting ready! Thou and I--"
As she coupled him and herself together in one plan she read the changedexpression of his face--the very quickly passing cloud that even thebest-trained man can not control.
"I know!" she asserted, sitting upright and coming out of her dreamto face facts as their master. She looked more lovely now than ever,although twice as dangerous. "You are thinking of your brother--of hishead! That I am a murderess who can never be your friend! Is that notso?"
He did not answer, but his eyes may have betrayed something, forshe looked as if he had struck her. Leaning forward, she held thegold-hilted dagger out to him, hilt first.
"Take it and stab me!" she ordered. "Stab--if you blame me for yourbrother's death! I should have known him for your brother if I had comeon him in the dark!--His head might have come from your shoulders!--Youwere like a man holding up his own head, as I have seen in pictures in abook! I would never have killed him!"
Her golden hair fell all about his shoulders, and its scent was notintended to be sobering. She ran warm fingers through his hair while sheheld the knife toward him with the other hand.
"Take it and stab!"
"No," he said.
"No!" she laughed. "No! You are my warrior--my man--my well--beloved!You have come to me alone out of all the world! You would no more stabme than the gods would forget me!"
Their eyes were on each other's--deep looking into deep.
"Strength!" she said, flinging him away and leaning back to look at him,almost as a fed cat stretches in the sunlight. "Courage! Simplicity!Directness! Strength I have, too, and courage never failed me, but mymind is a river winding in and out, gathering as it goes. I have nodirectness--no simplicity! You go straight from point to point, mysending from the gods! I have needed you! Oh, I have needed you so much,these many years! And now that you have come you want to hate me becauseyou think I killed your brother! Listen--I will tell you all I knowabout your brother."'
Without a scrap of proof of any kind he knew she was telling truthunadorned--or at least the truth as she saw it. Eye to eye, there aretimes when no proof is needed.
"Without my leave, Muhammad Anim sent five hundred men on a foray towardthe Khyber. Bull-with-a-beard needed an Englishman's head, for prooffor a spy of his who could not enter Khinjan Caves. They trapped yourbrother outside Ali Masjid with fifty of his men. They took his headafter a long fight, leaving more than a hundred of their own in payment.
"Bull-with-a-beard was pleased. But he was careless, and I sent my mento steal the head from his men. I needed evidence for you. And I swearto you--I swear to you by my gods who have brought us two together--thatI first knew it was your brother's head when you held it up in theCavern of Earth's Drink! Then I knew it could not be anybody else'shead!"
"Why bid me throw it to them, then?" he asked her, and he was aware ofher scorn before the words had left his lips.
She leaned back again and looked at him through lowered eyes, as if shemust study him all anew. She seemed to find it hard to believe that hereally thought so in the commonplace.
"What is a head to me, or to you--a head with no life init--carrion!--compared to what shall be? Would you have known it was hishead if you had thrown it to them when I ordered you?"
He understood. Some of her blood was Russian, some Indian.
"A friend is a friend, but a brother is a rival," says the East, out ofworld-old experience, and in some ways Russia is more eastern than theEast itself.
"Muhammad Anim shall answer to you for your brother's head!" she saidwith a little nod, as if she were making concessions to a child. "Atpresent we need him. Let him preach his jihad, and loose it at theright time. After that he will be in the way! You shall name hisdeath--Earth's Drink--slow torture--fire! Will that content you?"
"No," he said, with a dry laugh.
"What more can you ask?"
"Less! My brother died at the head of his men. He couldn't ask more. LetBull-with-a-beard alone."
She set both elbows on her knees and laid her chin on both hands tostare at him again. He began to remember long-forgotten schoolboy loreabout chemical reagents, that dissolve materials into their componentparts, such was the magic of her eyes. There were no eyes like hers thathe had ever seen, although Rewa Gunga's had been something like them.Only Rewa Gunga's had not changed so. Thought of the Rangar no soonercrossed his mind than she was speaking of him.
"Rewa Gunga met you in the dark, beyond those outer curtains, did henot?"
He nodded.
"Did he tell you that if you pass the curtains you shall be told all Iknow?"
He nodded again, and she laughed.
"It would take time to tell you all I know! First, I think I will showyou things. Afterward you shall ask me questions, and I will answerthem!"
She stood up, and of course he stood up, too. So, she on the footstoolof the throne, her eyes and his were on a level. She laid hands onhis shoulders and looked into his eyes until he could see his own twinportraits in hers that were glowing sunset pools. Heart of the Hills?The Heart of all the East seemed to burn in her, rebellious!
"Are you believing me?" she asked him.
He nodded, for no man could have helped believing her. As she knewthe truth, she was telling it to him, as surely as she was doing herskillful best to mesmerize him. But the Secret Service is made up of mentrained against that.
"Come!" she said, and stepping down she took his arm.
She led him past the thrones to other leather curtains in a wall, andthrough them into long hewn passages from cavern into cavern, until eventhe Rock of Gibraltar seemed like a doll's house in comparison.
In one cave there were piles of javelins that had been stacked there bythe Sleeper and his men. In another were sheaves of a
rrows; and in onewere spears in racks against a wall. There were empty stables, withrings made fast into the rock where a hundred horses could have stood inline.
She showed him a cave containing great forges, where the bronze had beenworked, with charcoal still piled up against the wall at one end. Therewere copper and tin ingots in there of a shape he had never seen.
"I know where they came from," she told him. "I have made it mybusiness to know all the 'Hills.' I know things the Hillmen'sgreat-great-great-grand-fathers forgot! I know old workings that wouldmake a modern nation rich! We shall have money when we need it, neverfear! We shall conquer India while the English backs are turned and thebest troops are oversea. We will bring a hundred thousand slaves backhere to work our mines! With what they dig from the mines, copper andgold and tin, we will make ready to buy the English off when they arefree to turn this way again. The English will do anything for money!They will be in debt when this war is over, and their price will be lessthen than now!"
She laughed merrily at him because his face showed that he did notappreciate that stricture. Then she called him her Warrior and herWell-beloved and took him down a long passage, holding his hand all theway, to show him slots cut in the floor for the use of archers.
"You entered Khinjan Caves by a tunnel under this floor, Well-beloved.There is no other entrance!"
By this time Well-beloved was her name for him, although there was noair of finality about it. It was as if she paved the way for use ofAthelstan and that was a sacred name. It was amazing how she conveyedthat impression without using words.
"The Sleeper cut these slots for his archers. Then he had anotherthought and set these cauldrons in place, to boil oil to pour down.Could any army force a way through by the route by which you entered?"
"No," he said, marveling at the ton-weight copper cauldrons, one to eachhole.
"Even without rifles for the defense?"
"No," he said.
"And I have more than a thousand Mauser rifles here, and more than amillion rounds of ammunition!"
"How did you get them?"
"I shall tell you that later. Come and see some other things. See andbelieve!"
She showed him a cave in which boxes were stacked in high square piles.
"Dynamite bombs!" she boasted. "How many boxes? I forget! Too many tocount! Women brought them all the way from the sea, for even MuhammadAnim could not make Afridi riflemen carry loads. I have wondered whatBull-with-a-beard will say when he misses his precious dynamite!"
"You've enough in there to blow the mountain up!" King advised her. "Ifsomebody fired a pistol in here, the least would be the collapse of thisfloor into the tunnel below with a hundred thousand tons of rock on topof it. There is no other way out?"
"Earth's Drink!" she said, and he made a grimace that set her tolaughing.
But she looked at him darkly after that and he got the impression thatthe thought was not new to her, and that she did not thank him forthe advice. He began to wonder whether there was anything she had notthought of--any loophole she had left him for escape--any issue she hadnot foreseen.
"Kill her!" a secret voice urged him. But that was the voice of the"Hills," that are violent first and regretful afterward. He did notlisten to it. And then the wisdom of the West came to him, as epitomizedby Cocker along the lines laid down by Solomon.
"It isn't possible to make a puzzle that has no solution to it. The factthat it's a puzzle is the proof that there's a key! Go ahead!"
It was the "Go ahead!" that Solomon omitted, and that makes Cocker suchcheerful reading. King ceased conjecturing and gave full attention tohis guide.
She showed him where eleven hundred Mauser rifles stood in racks inanother cave, with boxes of ammunition piled beside them--each rifle andcartridge worth its weight in silver coin--a very rajah's ransom!
"The Germans are generous in some things--only in some things--verymean in others!" she told him. "They sent no medical stores, and noblankets!"
Past caves where provisions of every imaginable kind were stored,sufficient for an army, she led him to where her guards slept togetherwith the thirty special men whom King had brought with him up theKhyber.
"I have five hundred others whom I dare trust to come in here," shesaid, "but they shall stay outside until I want them. A mystery is agood thing! It is good for them all to wonder what I keep in here! It isgood to keep this sanctuary; it makes for power!"
Pressing very close to him, she guided him down another dark tunneluntil he and she stood together in the jaws of the round hole above theriver, looking down into the cavern of Earth's Drink.
Nobody looked up at them. The thousands were too busy working up afrenzy for the great jihad that was to come.
Stacks of wood had been piled up, six-man high in the middle, and thenfired. The heat came upward like a furnace blast, and the smoke was agreat red cloud among the stalactites. Round and round that holocaustthe thousands did their sword-dance, yelling as the devils yelled atKhinjan's birth. They needed no wine to craze them. They were drunk withfanaticism, frenzy, lust!
"The women brought that wood from fifty miles away!" Yasmini shouted inhis ear; for the din, mingling with the river's voice, made a volcanochord. "It is a week's supply of wood! But so they are--so they will be!They will lay waste India! They will butcher and plunder and burn! Itwill be what they leave of India that we shall build anew and govern,for India herself will rise to help them lay her own cities waste! It isalways so! Conquests always are so! Come!"
She tugged at him and led him back along the tunnel and through othertunnels to the throne room, where she made him sit at her feet again.
The food had been cleared away in their absence. Instead, on the ebonytable there were pens and ink and paper.
She leaned back on her throne, with bare feet pressed tight against thefootstool, staring, staring at the table and the pens, and then atKing, as if she would compose an ultimatum to the world and send King todeliver it.
"I said I will tell you," she sad slowly. "Listen!"
Chapter XIV