by John Masters
It was late and no one had eaten. The servants brought tea and scrambled eggs, and Jim signalled to his bearer to pass round the whisky. He took a good large glass himself. A little whisky would help him say what he was going to say.
Kendrick said, The main outline of what has happened tonight seems dear enough. The foreman and his cousin discovered the gold bars, and decided to make off with them. The cart, I notice, is one of yours’ - he looked at Foster - ‘it will have a driver in charge of it?’
‘Yes,’ Jim said. ‘But - ’
‘But he will only have been told that the foreman wanted it left at a certain place. Of course. The two men then fled. But a cobra had secreted itself in the cart, as they sometimes do, and later it attacked them, perhaps when they were moving the straw to shift the load.’
‘The bundle contains local Bundelkhand clothes,’ Smith said. ‘Only one set. It is possible that the robbery was planned by only one of them, and the other came upon him and forced himself into the enterprise. There is a fairly deep knife mark in the back of Ahmed’s neck, and a cut on his ear. They might have been caused by fighting. The gouge in his heel is, I presume, the place where the cobra bit him, and where he had tried to cut out the poison.’
‘Three lakhs each wasn’t enough,’ Rukmini said sadly. Jim flushed, remembering the madness, the magnificent glow of power that had come with the golden light when he realised how much gold lay to his hand.
Smith said, ‘Where did they find the gold?’
A long silence followed. Jim took a deep breath. He said, ‘I don’t know for certain. But I can make a guess. It came from the Buddha Tumulus. ‘Wait’ He slipped out of the central dining-room where they were gathered, and returned a moment later dragging the tin trunk that lived under his own bed. He unlocked it in the same silence and lifted out three bars of gold. Two were partly encrusted with earth. He pointed at them. ‘These were found under the stone leg at the cricket pitch, right at the beginning.’ The other bar was clean. ‘This was found under the Buddha’ he said.
Kendrick’s voice was’ harsh. ‘And why has nothing been said about any of this until now?’
Jim said, ‘Because...’
Smith interrupted. ‘Jim told me about them, Mr Kendrick. I advised that their existence should be kept secret until proper assay should tell us for certain what they were.’
Jim bent his head. He had been about to tell them of his determination to use his contract to keep any precious metals that were found. Smith knew about the first two bars, but not about the one found under the Buddha. Now he was assuming responsibility for all of them. An unaccustomed, pricking behind his eyes made him turn away. By God, he was on the point of crying.
Kendrick snapped, ‘An unjustified, and unjustifiable decision, Smith, I am the Administrator here! I have a right to know! There will be no more secrets from, me. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir’ Smith said politely. ‘I apologise. The assay report should be received in a day or two. But I think we must assume, now, that it is all gold.’
He carried to the table one of the gold bars that had been taken from the cart. It was a little dirty, but a light brushing with a handkerchief removed the dirt easily, leaving it dean and dully shining.
Smith said, ‘You see, the Buddha bar, and all the twenty from the cart, are clean. All bear the stamp of a trident, a bull’s head, and four bows, very small. The original two are earth-encrusted, are not so well finished, and bear the stamp of only a single bow. I think the State Archivist in Deori may be able to decipher the meaning of these marks for us. I will go and see him as soon as I have time... Jim Foster suggests that since the twenty bars from the cart look and are stamped like the one Buddha bar, they came from the same place - the Buddha Tumulus.’
‘That’s right,’ Jim muttered.
Smith said, ‘I agree. But, as we know that the Buddha was planted in the trench, it is probable that all twenty-one gold bars were, also.’
Jim shook his head dully. ‘But,’ he said, ‘the gold is a thousand times more valuable than what we were going to give for finding new objects. We thought someone put the Buddha there to get a reward...’
‘I did not,’ Rukmini interposed.
‘But what’s the point of getting a reward of twenty rupees and giving away half a million?’
Rukmini said, ‘That is not the right way to look at it, Mr Foster. The Buddha would attract some of us away from the Dobehari Ridge, and the gold would attract others. So much gold as this could do more. It could destroy us. Suppose the cobra had not killed those two poor men. You would have come upon them in the jungle, in the night. They would have attacked you. All three of you, and perhaps Mr Kendrick too, might have been killed in a fight caused by fear and greed born of gold.’
Jim looked down at the bars on the table. Rukmini did not know how truly she spoke. A hair’s width of love - his love for Barbara - had stood between Kendrick and death. And then - he saw it clearly now - the search tor the Venus must have stopped, for the A.G.G. would have come, and agents of the C.I.D., and there would have been courts of inquiry, investigations, trials. Whoever planted that gold had a horrible knowledge of human nature.
Kendrick said angrily, ‘Someone else must have known about the discovery of the gold. Some of the labourers.’
Jim said, ‘Only Shahbaz and Ahmed - that they ever told me.’
‘And the villagers are not going to tell us,’ Smith said.
Mohan said, ‘Someone in the village must know something. The headman can learn nothing. We shall have to distrust all of them.’
Smith said, ‘Not exactly that Whoever these people are, it’s wrong to look on them as our enemies. They are not .They are involved with us in the same problem, only they have a different viewpoint from ours. We’ve already learned more from their actions, although those actions were intended to throw us off the scent, than if they’d done nothing. If we feel pressure we should give with it - but keep our thinking minds unaffected, so that we can recognise the pressure for what it is, and try to understand the true motive for it... For the moment, I think we should recognise that the expenditure of half a million rupees was designed to bring into existence a greed, a hatred, which would have stopped our search. It so happens that the tigress is already slowing down work on the crevice and totally preventing the methodical search of the ground for the cave entrance, but Mr Kendrick may succeed in killing the beast at any moment I think, therefore, since the gold has not caused hatred among us, that another attempt will, be made to stop our search.’
Rukmini muttered, ‘I wish I could think why. It is not what they do, but why. It is not greed, it is not ambition, it is not love... It is fear, but fear of what? I ought to be able to guess.’
Smith said slowly, ‘There is one other point which I must make. In my opinion, it is unlikely that Shahbaz Khan and Ahmed were killed by the cobra.’
The silence was heavy again, with something of the atmosphere of terror that had been so powerful in the jungle.
Smith said, ‘All of us here know that two methods of committing murder are particularly hard to solve, and both are common in India. The victim is bludgeoned unconscious, and then killed by men armed with steel talons and padded clubs resembling a tiger’s claws. Or he is held helpless and venom collected from a poisonous snake is injected by a home-made double syringe that duplicates the marks of a snake’s fangs. Afterwards it is easy enough to make any other marks, such as the hole in Ahmed’s heel. I think the two Pathans were probably murdered in that manner, and the cobra then put into the cart to kill the next man. If we could examine this cobra’s poison sac we could learn something. If the sac were empty it would prove nothing. The snake might have been milked of its venom for use in the murder - or it might have used up its venom in killing the two Pathans, without any human intervention. But if the poison sac were full, we would know that murder had been committed - because, if it had bitten the two men, its sac would be empty.’
&nbs
p; ‘Let’s look!’ Mohan cried, taking half a step towards the corner where the cobra lay.
Smith said, ‘Jim’s shot destroyed the poison sacs.’
‘They call upon the old gods to aid them,’ Rukmini said, and the old gods have the power even to aim a Christian’s bullet’
‘Nonsense,’ Kendrick said loudly. ‘We must now kill the tigress, and then the search for the Venus can continue. This will be the end of their interference, you mark my words.’
Chapter 18
Charles Kendrick carefully wiped his mouth with the comer of the white napkin. The bearer eased back his chair and he stood up. He said, ‘Today I shall stay at home and deal with paperwork.’
‘Very well, Charles,’ his wife said.
‘You, I presume, will pursue your artistic genius ‘
‘Yes, Charles,’ she said.
As he entered his study he looked at the painting of his father. The Galahad of Bundelkhand. How would Sir Galahad have solved his problems? By smiling at the harlot Rukmini and, half an hour later, lustfully mounting her? Charles Kendrick glared at his father with real hatred, turned his back, and sat down at the desk.
It was two days since the two Pathans had died, or been murdered. No more evidence, either way. Ahmed had told the driver of the bullock cart to leave it below the Tiger Pool bund at seven o’clock, and he had. Two men had gone with him. They had thought that a tiger might get the bullocks, leaving them there alone, but that was none of their business. They were Foster’s bullocks.
Damned idiots. This plot, and there was one, was far too deep for men of their stupidity to be involved in. No one knew anything about gold, snakes, or the Buddha. The gold bars were safe in the Deori Treasury.
The harlot had said, during that meeting in the Rest House, that the motive mattered. She was wrong. Only the fact mattered, and the fact was that Rukmini needed to find the Venus and the cave, while he, Charles Kendrick, and the unknown plotters, needed to ensure that she did not. His whole future depended on it. If that woman stayed, Mohan would not succeed to the gaddi. Or if he did, her influence, not his own, would govern Mohan. She would see that he never even became Prime Minister. But he would be! He must be! His father had been the Galahad of Deori; he was going to be the Gladstone, the Disraeli, the Great Administrator. When they’d forgotten his father, they’d remember him. The bright dream began to shatter in his mind as he thought of it. He’d got to do something about Rukmini, and soon.
Meanwhile, it would not be safe to find any more excuses to delay action against the tigress. The next time she gave him an opportunity he would have to kill her. It would not do to lose his reputation as a hunter, as the man who protected the poor from the wild animals that preyed upon them. Besides, he liked it Animals were strong and straightforward, and the tracking of them gave power that achieved a climax in the explosion of the cartridge, the ruthless penetration of the bullet.
Someone was knocking at the door. ‘Sahib, sahib!’ It was the butler’s voice. He called, ‘What is it?’
‘The lady Rukmini is here, sahib. The tigress...’
Kendrick got up slowly. Rukmini - tigress. Now she was interfering there too. He went along the passage.
Rukmini waited on the verandah, her sari falling in a clean sweep down the side of her head and on to her shoulders. Barbara was there. Rukmini spoke quickly. ‘I was in Konpara visiting a sick woman. She is dying... A man rushed in to tell me that the tigress has been seen... Mohan’s in bed with a light fever.’
Her sari was pale green, of the thinnest cotton, with no border, and under it the choli was almost transparent.
She said, ‘The tigress was near the path between Konpara and the Gond village an hour ago.’
North-east, about half a mile away, Kendrick thought. Rukmini said, ‘The headman has sent out to order all who were working in the fields to return at once to the village. The men working in the conduit are safe. He has also sent to tell Mr Foster, so that the coolies on the dam can go back to the coolie camp.’
A man burst out of the trees, crossed the lawn, ran up the verandah steps, and hurled himself to his knees at Mr Kendrick’s feet. ‘Sahib, the tiger - a woman - a woman - the wife of...’
Kendrick pulled him to his feet. ‘Tell me! Don’t stutter, man!’
‘A tiger, sahib, not a tigress. In the grass beyond the village - ’ The man flung out his arm. The woman was cutting leaves at the edge of the jungle, not a hundred paces from the houses, with another woman. The order to return to the village reached them, but they did not hurry. They were so close, and the tigress was to the north-east. When they started back, the tiger was there, it must have been there all the time! It took one, left the other. That other ran screaming to the village. Huttoo Lall sent me at once to you.’
Fifteen minutes ago. A tiger. The tiger and tigress must work as a couple, one frightening the people into the arms of the other. The butler was waiting. Kendrick began to rap out orders. ‘Joseph, fetch Aitu! Bring number four rifle, with its cartridge belt. All work is to stop. Everyone inside their houses. Barbara, tell Foster to come here and keep watch over you. Lend him a rifle.’
She said quietly, ‘Very well, Charles.’
‘Everyone must keep out of my way. That is the reason for these precautions, not safety. I cannot guess what the animals will do if people are moving about.’
Aitu, the Gond tracker who had been living in the caretaker’s hut since the first coming of the tigress, soon appeared and crouched ready, black, simian, and silent at the foot of the verandah, the short bow in his hand and the quiver across his shoulders. Joseph handed Kendrick the double-barrelled rifle and cartridge belt He checked them carefully, loaded the rifle, and set off down the cart track. A slight south wind blew straight across the ridges and up the face of the Konpara Cliffs, but it was not yet strong enough to form the spray and the rainbow.
The headman met him at the outskirts of Konpara, together with two or three other men. Kendrick said ‘I am going on with Aitu. Watch carefully, from the top of the village. But first point out the place.’ They hurried down the street among the piles of dust and offal, through the black pools of cow urine. At the last house the headman stopped and pointed. ‘There, sahib, by the lone fig tree.’
Kendrick said, ‘I see it. Now get up on to your roof. I must know what the tiger does if I cause it to move.’
He waited impatiently while the headman and the others hurried up a narrow lane to the right. A few moments later they appeared on the flat roof of a house, and Kendrick made a sign to his tracker.
Together they walked out on to the village common. It was-an irregular-shaped piece of land, about four hundred yards by two hundred in extent, from which the jungle had been excluded over the centuries by the feeding of goats and a few cattle, but there were small patches of dense scrub on it, such as covered the floor of the pit. In the open areas the grass was thin and the ground broken up by dried hoof-prints and wheel ruts. The herd boys often lay in the shade of a scrub patch, and played on their pipes. Once, through the binoculars, he had seen a girl come out from the village to one of those places where a boy lay on his back with his reed pipe, and, after a little play, the boy had had carnal knowledge of her. Neither of them could have been more than twelve years old. That one, it was: the patch he was now approaching on his left. He felt again the sharp, bitter hatred he had known while watching them, again every detail of the spectacle recreated itself before his eyes, as it had in the circle of the binoculars - the girl standing, kneeling, lying back, pulling up her skirt.
He motioned Aitu farther to the right, and himself stood at the edge of a thorn patch, the rifle held before him, loaded and cocked, his finger on the trigger. Aitu trusted him and went forward quickly, making no sound. The Gonds were little removed from animals themselves. Aitu and one or two others in the village on the upper plateau had even retained a sense of scent, like a hunting dog’s...
Aitu reached the fig tree and looked carefully roun
d in all directions. Then he crouched and sniffed the air, turning his head slowly from side to side. At last, he beckoned, and Kendrick went forward.
Aitu pointed at the ground. A large splash of blood stained the grass near the foot of the tree. Aitu walked slowly northward, pointing here and there at the grass. Kendrick peered closely, but could see nothing to show that a heavy body had recently passed over it; but, as Aitu trusted him, so he trusted Aitu. This was the way the animal had gone... north-east now, as he had expected.
A little farther on, when the village had fallen from sight behind them, Aitu stopped in light jungle, and knelt. The ground here was softened by the welling-up of some underground moisture, and Kendrick thought he could almost make out the shape of a tiger’s pug mark.
Aitu said, ‘Male tiger. Left forepaw, one toenail does not pull back. Very large paw.’
Very large paw. Kendrick thought hard. Last year, about this time, he had been in the Saugor club. Some men were talking about two man-eaters that had been ravaging the district. A pair, male and female, who worked as a team. Nothing about a damaged toenail, but some mention of the male’s very large pug marks. Disproportionately large, they said - the animal had been seen and was big but not exceptional. They had killed a woman near Saugor only two weeks ago. The Saugor District adjoined Deori to the south-west He - must telegraph the Deputy Commissioner there as soon as he got back, find out whether the pair had left the district, and all that was known about their careers, habits, and attempts that had been made to kill them. He must know, for his own safety, even though he delayed killing them. Good! He could kill one now, and the other would still hold up the search for the Venus.