Gordon said nothing, but the red glint in his black eyes was eloquent. He had discovered another reason for destroying this den of snakes. The girl hurried on, stammering in her haste.
“I have dwelt here for a month! I have almost died of shame! I have been whipped! I have seen other girls die of torture. Oh, what shame for my father, that his daughter should be made a slave of pagans and devil-worshippers!
“My heart almost burst when I saw you brought in among Muhammad ibn Ahmed’s swordsmen. I was watching from a tapestried doorway. While I racked my brain for a way to get word with you, the Master of the Girls came to send a girl to the sahib to learn, if possible, whether he were a spy or a true man, and if he possessed any hidden weapon. I prevailed upon the Master of the Girls to send me. I told him I was your enemy, that you slew my brother.”
She meditated for a moment over the enormity of the lie; her brother was one of Gordon’s best friends.
“Azizun, do you know anything of Lal Singh, the Sikh?”
“Yes, sahib! They brought him here captive to make a fedaui of him, for no Sikh has yet joined the cult. But Lal Singh is a very powerful man, as the sahib knows, and after they reached the city and delivered him into the hands of the Arab guards, he broke free and with his bare hands slew the brother of Muhammad ibn Ahmed. Muhammad demanded his head, and he is too powerful even for Othman to refuse in this matter.”
“So that’s why the Shaykh lied about Lal Singh,” muttered Gordon.
“Yes, sahib. Lal Singh lies in a dungeon below the palace, and tomorrow he is to be given to the Arab for torture and execution.”
Gordon’s face darkened and became sinister.
“Lead me tonight to Muhammad’s sleeping quarters,” he requested, his narrowing eyes betraying his deadly intention.
“Nay, he sleeps among his warriors, all proven swordsmen of the desert, too many even for thee, Prince of Swords! I will lead you to Lal Singh!”
“What of the guard hidden in the corridor?”
“He will not see us go. And he will not open the door or allow any one else to enter until he has seen me depart.”
She drew aside the tapestry on the wall opposite the door and pressed on an arabesqued design. A panel swung inward, revealing a narrow stair that wound down into lightless depths.
“The masters think their slaves do not know their secrets,” she muttered. “Come.” Producing and lighting a tiny candle, she held it aloft as she led the way onto the stair, closing the panel after them. They descended until Gordon estimated that they were well beneath the palace, and then struck a narrow, level tunnel which ran away from the foot of the stair.
“A Rajput who planned to run away from Shalizahr showed me this secret way,” she said. “I planned to escape with him. We hid food and weapons here. He was caught and tortured, but died without betraying me. Here is the sword he hid.” She paused and fumbled in a niche, drawing out a blade which she gave to Gordon.
A few moments later they reached a heavy, iron-bound door and Azizun, gesturing for caution, drew Gordon to it and showed him a tiny aperture to peer through. He looked into a corridor flanked by rows of cells with barred doors. Archaic bronze lamps hung at intervals cast a mellow glow. Some fifty feet away the corridor made an abrupt turn.
Before one of the nearer cell doors stood a resplendent Arab in glittering corselet and plumed helmet, scimitar in hand.
Azizun’s fingers tightened on Gordon’s arm.
“Lal Singh is in that cell,” she whispered. “Do not shoot the Arab. Slay him in silence. He has no gun and he is arrogant of his swordsmanship. The ring of steel will not be heard above.”
Gordon tried the balance of the blade she had given him — a long Indian steel, light but well-nigh unbreakable, and about the same length as the Arab’s scimitar.
Gordon pushed open the secret door, and as he stepped into the corridor he saw the face of Lal Singh staring through the bars behind the Arab. The hinges of the hidden door creaked, and the Arab whirled catlike, snarled and glared wildly, and then came to the attack with the instant decisiveness of a panther.
Gordon met him half-way, and the wild-eyed Sikh gripping the bars until his knuckles were bloodless, and the Indian girl crouching in the open doorway witnessed a play of swords that would have burned the blood of kings.
The only sounds were the quick, soft, sure shuffle and thud of feet, the slither and rasp of steel on steel, the breathing of the fighters. The long, light blades flickered lethally in the illusive light. They were like living things, like parts of the men who wielded them, welded not only to hand but to brain as well. To the girl it was bewildering and incomprehensible. But Lal Singh appreciated to the fullest the superlative skill which scintillated there in lightning intricasies, and he alternately chilled and burned with the bright splendor of the fray.
Even before the Arab, he knew when the hair-line balance shifted, sensed the inevitable outcome an instant before the Arab’s lip drew back from his teeth in ferocious recognition of defeat and desperate resolve to take his enemy into death with him. But the end came even before Lal Singh realized its imminence. A louder ring of blades, a flash of steel that baffled the eye — Gordon’s flickering blade seemed lightly to caress his enemy’s neck in passing — and then the Arab was stretched on the floor, his head all but severed from his body. He had died without a cry.
Gordon stood over him for an instant, the sword in his hand stained with a thread of crimson. His shirt had been torn open and his muscular breast rose and fell easily. Only a film of perspiration glistening there and on his brow betrayed the strain of his recent exertions.
He stooped and tore a bunch of keys from the dead man’s girdle, and the grate of steel in the lock seemed to awaken Lal Singh from a trance.
“Sahib! You are mad to come here! But what a fight! What a fight!”
Gordon pulled open the door, and the Sikh stepped forth, light and supple as a great panther, and picked up the Arab’s sword. At the feel of the hilt he sighed with deep satisfaction. “What now, sahib?”
“We won’t have a chance if we make a break before dark,” snapped Gordon. “Azizun, how soon will another guard come to relieve the man I killed?”
“They change the guard every four hours. His watch had just begun.”
“Good!” He glanced at his watch and was surprized to note the hour. He had been in Shalizahr much longer than he had realized. “Within four hours it will be sun-down. As soon as it’s dark we’ll make a break to get away. Until we’re ready Lal Singh will hide on the secret stair.”
“But when the guard comes to relieve this one,” said the Sikh, “it will be known that I have escaped from my cell. You should have left me here until you were ready to go, sahib.”
“I didn’t dare risk it. I might not have been able to get you out when the time came. We have four hours lee-way. When they find you’re gone, maybe the confusion will help us. We’ll dress this body in your clothes and lay it in the cell, with the face turned away from the door. When the other guard comes, maybe he’ll think it’s you, asleep or dead, and start looking for the original guard instead of you. The longer it is before they find you’ve escaped, the more time we’ll have.”
“Nay!” exclaimed the Sikh suddenly. “I forgot the other prisoners — in a cell beyond the turn in the corridor. They have heard the sound of the fighting, and our voices. They will betray us to the guard when he comes. I saw the Arabs hustling them along the passage a few hours ago — six villainous Kurds.”
“Kurds?” Gordon looked up with quickened interest. With a few swift strides he rounded the turn in the corridor and halted, staring at a certain cell. Bearded faces crowded the grille of that cell. Lean hands gripped the bars. Poisonous hate burned in the eyes that mutely beat against him.
“You were faithful fedauis,” he said. “Why are you locked in a cell?”
Yusuf ibn Suleiman spat toward him.
“Melikani dog, thou! The Shaykh said we were
either knaves or fools to be surprized on the Stair as you surprized us. So at dawn we die under the daggers of Muhammad ibn Ahmed’s slayers, Allah curse him and you!”
“Yet it must be just, if it be the will of thy master, the Shaykh ez Zurim,” he reminded them.
“May the dogs gnaw the bones of the Shaykh ez Zurim!” they replied with whole-hearted venom, and Gordon decided these men must be new recruits to the cult, lacking the age-old tradition that made most of the Hidden Ones servile slaves to the head of the order.
He weighed in his hand the keys he had taken from the dead guard, and the Kurds looked at them as men in Hell look at an open door.
“Yusuf ibn Suleiman,” he said abruptly, “your hands are stained with many crimes, but not the violation of a sworn oath. The Shaykh has betrayed you — cast you from his service. You owe him no allegiance.”
Yusuf’s eyes were those of a wolf.
“If I could send him to Jehannum ahead of me,” he muttered, “I would die happy.”
All stared tensely at Gordon, sensing a purpose behind his words.
“Will you swear, each man by the honor of his clan, to serve me until vengeance is accomplished, or death releases you from the vow?” he asked, placing the keys behind him so as not to seem to be flaunting them too flagrantly before helpless men. “Othman will give you nothing but the death of a dog. I offer you revenge and a chance to die honorably.”
Yusuf’s eyes blazed in response to a wild surge of hope, and his sinewy hands quivered as they grasped the bars.
“Trust us!” was all he said, but it spoke volumes.
“Aye, we swear!” clamored the men behind him. “Hearken, El Borak, we swear!”
He was already turning the key in the lock; wild, cruel, treacherous according to western standards, they had their code of honor, those fierce mountaineers, and it was not so far different from the code of his own Highlander ancestors but that he could understand it.
Tumbling out of the cell they lifted their hands toward him, palms outward.
“Ya khawand! We await orders!”
Motioning them to follow him, he strode back down the corridor to where the dead Arab lay.
“Drag the body into that cell and you, Yusuf ibn Suleiman, put on his garments.”
The celerity with which they obeyed him modified the suspicion in Lal Singh’s dark eyes, and the Sikh relaxed his grip on his scimitar. In a very few moments Yusuf ibn Suleiman emerged in the plumed helmet, corselet, and silken garments of the Arab, and his features were sufficiently Semitic to deceive anyone who was expecting to encounter an Arab in that garb.
“Give him the Arab’s scimitar, Lal Singh,” commanded Gordon, and the Sikh obeyed readily.
“You will play the part of a guard patrolling this corridor,” said Gordon. “These others will hide behind yonder secret door. In four hours time one will come to relieve you. He will think you are the man whose garments you wear, and you must kill or capture him before he recognizes you. With Lal Singh and your companions to aid you, it should be easy.
“That will give us four more hours of time in which to plan and effect our escape from Shalizahr. I’ve made no definite plan yet; that will depend on circumstances. Yusuf ibn Suleiman will patrol the corridors in case someone comes before the guard is due to be changed. Lal Singh and the other Kurds will hide in the tunnel. As soon as it is dark, if I’m still alive and at liberty, I’ll come to you and we’ll make the break, somehow. If anything happens to me the girl Azizun will get the word to you, and you must take her and try to fight your way clear.
“In case you men make it and I don’t, try to get back along the trail and meet the Ghilzai as they come. I sent Yar Ali Khan back after them. He should return with them to the canyon below the plateau some time tomorrow morning.”
They listened in silence, nodding, and Gordon gave his pistol and electric torch to Lal Singh, and the Indian saber to one of the Kurds. Then Azizun relighted her candle, and Gordon pulled open the secret door which, when closed, presented the illusion of being part of the blank stone wall, and showed his followers the tunnel behind it.
“Here you must hide, ready to aid Yusuf ibn Suleiman when the guard comes. If neither I nor Azizun comes to you within seven hours, go up the stairs, open the panel-door and escape if you can.”
“We hearken and obey, sahib,” said Lal Singh. “It is my shame that I was taken unawares, but the Yezidees stole out of the ravine like cats, and struck me down with a stone thrown from a sling before I was aware of them. When I regained my senses I was bound and gagged. In the same way they smote down Ahmed Shah, but him they slew, because the Hidden Ones have naught to do with the hill-folk fearing such men would talk to their kind and so betray the secret of Shalizahr. The Yezidees are like cats in the dark. Nevertheless it is a great shame upon me.”
And so saying he seated himself cross-legged on the tunnel floor, where the Kurds had already deposited themselves, and settled himself tranquilly for his long vigil. Gordon followed Azizun down the tunnel and up the stair, with his whole chance of success and life itself depending on the word of a savage. There was nothing to keep Yusuf ibn Suleiman from seeking to buy his life from Othman by betraying the American — nothing but the primitive honor of a man who knew he was trusted by another man of honor.
Back in the ivory-domed chamber, Azizun carefully hung the tapestry over the fake panel, and Gordon said: “You’d better go now. If you stay too long, they may get suspicious. Contrive to return to me here as soon as it’s dark. I’ve got an idea that I’m to remain in this chamber until this fellow Bagheela returns. When you come back, tell the guard outside that the Shaykh sent you. If the Shaykh questions you concerning me, tell him I’m a bloody-handed outlaw, eager to join the Hidden Ones — and that I have no hidden weapons on me.”
“Yes, sahib! I will return after dark.” The girl was trembling with fear and excitement, but she controlled herself admirably. There was pity in Gordon’s black eyes as he watched her slender figure, carried bravely, pass through the door.
Then the hard-limbed American stretched himself on the couch. Four hours at least must pass before he could make any kind of a move. Long ago he had learned to snatch food and sleep when he could. He was playing a game with Life and Death for stakes. His masquerade hung by a hair. He had as yet no plan for escaping from the city or descending the cliffs afterward. He was gambling that he would be able to find or make a way when the time was ripe. And in the meantime he slept as tranquilly and soundly as if he lay in the house of a friend, in his native country.
V
THE MASK FALLS
Like most men who live by the skin of their teeth, Gordon’s slumber though sound, was light. He awoke the instant a hand touched the door, and he was on his feet, fully alert, when Musa entered, with the inevitable salaam. He knew he had not slept four hours.
“The Shaykh ez Zurim desires your presence, sahib. The lord Bagheela has returned, ahead of time.”
So the mysterious Panther had returned sooner than the Shaykh had expected. Gordon felt a premonitory tightening of his nerves as he followed the Persian out of the chamber. A backward glance showed a man emerge from the tapestry where he had glimpsed the helmet, and fall in behind them.
Musa did not lead him back to the chamber where the Shaykh had first received him. He was conducted through a winding corridor to a gilded door before which stood an Arab swordsman. This man opened the door, and Musa hurried Gordon across the threshold. The door closed behind them, and Gordon halted suddenly.
He stood in a broad room without windows, but with several doors. Across the chamber the Shaykh lounged on a divan with his black slaves behind him, and clustered about him were a dozen armed men of various races, including one Orakzai, the first Pathan Gordon had seen in Shalizahr — a hairy, ragged, scarred villain whom Gordon knew as Khuruk Khan, a thief and murderer.
But the American spared these men only the briefest glance. His eyes were glued on the man who do
minated the scene. This man stood between him and the Shaykh’s divan, with the wide-legged stance of a horseman — handsome in a dark, saturnine way. He was taller than Gordon and more wiry in build, his leanness being emphasized by his close-fitting breeches and riding boots. One hand caressed the butt of the heavy automatic which hung at his thigh, the other stroked his thin black mustache. And Gordon knew the game was up. For this was Ivan Konstantine, a Cossack, who knew El Borak too well to be deceived as the Shaykh had been.
“This is the man,” said Othman. “He desires to join us.”
The man they called Bagheela the Panther smiled thinly.
“He has been playing a role. El Borak would never turn renegade. He is here as a spy for the English.”
The eyes fixed on the American grew suddenly murderous. No more than Bagheela’s word was necessary to convince his followers. They did not understand why the American laughed suddenly. Konstantine did not understand. He knew Gordon well enough to know El Borak was a foe, not a friend of the Hidden Ones, but he did not know him well enough to understand that laugh, or the dark flame that rose in the black eyes.
Gordon’s laughter was not of self-mockery, or of that cynicism which derides its own defeat. It welled from the depths of his elemental soul in the knowledge that all masks were fallen, subtlety and intrigue were done with, and only fighting remained — fighting in which he exulted blindly, unreasoningly, whatever the odds, as his berserk ancestors exulted. But for the moment he held himself hard in check, and his enemies did not recognize the warning that burned in his black eyes.
The Shaykh made a gesture of repudiation.
“In these matters I defer to your judgment, Bagheela. You know the man. I do not. Do what you will. He is unarmed.”
At the assurance of the helplessness of their prey, wolfish cruelty sharpened the tense faces, and Khuruk Khan half drew a three-foot Khyber knife from its embroidered scabbard. There was plenty of edged steel in evidence, but the Cossack’s gun was the only one in sight.
El Borak and Other Desert Adventures Page 66