The Faraway Drums

by Jon Cleary

  He took a sudden step backwards and I realized that Farnol had abruptly shut the door of his room in his face. Savanna raised a fist as if he were about to batter down the door, then suddenly he went marching down the hall towards his own bedroom. Marching: it struck me that for a man who a moment ago had sounded drunk he was remarkably steady on his feet.

  I closed the door, finished my toilette and got into bed. But I couidn’t sleep; I could smell a story like a magnetic perfume, ink brewed by M. Coty. I tossed and turned for an hour, then I made my decision. I got out of bed and put on my red velvet peignoir. It had been bought for Miss Toodles Ryan, the girl friend of Mayor Honey Fitz, but Toodles was annoyed with Hizzoner for some reason and she had given me the gown. Each time I put it on I felt the delicious thrill of being a kept woman, if only by proxy: the safest and least demanding way. Only a year before he was assassinated I mentioned Toodles Ryan to President Kennedy and he, Boston Irish and a ladies’ man, winked and smiled. Honey Fitz’s hormones were still alive and well in 1962.

  I looked at my hair in the mirror, saw that my tossing and turning had made it into a fright wig. I hastily pushed it up, looked around for something to hold it in place, saw the derby, the bowler hat I had worn that day while riding and shoved it on my head. I remembered one of the few pieces of advice my mother had given me when I told her I was determined to go out into the sinful Protestant world and make my own way: “Always wear a hat, sweetheart. That way you’ll always be thought of as a lady, if only from the neck up.”

  Clasping my notebook and pencil I opened my door, crossed the corridor and tapped gently on Major Farnol’s door. Then I opened it and stepped inside. And felt the pistol pressing against the back of my neck.

  The electric light was switched on. Major Farnol was dressed in pale blue silk pyjamas and looked absolutely gorgeous.

  “They’re not mine—I found them in a drawer. I think they belong to one of the A.D.C.s. Heaven knows what sort of chap wears things like these.”

  “You’re wearing them.”

  “Just as well, if a half-naked woman calls on me in the middle of the night. Do you usually wear a bowler when you go prowling bedrooms?”

  I crossed to a chair beside the bed. “You may get back into bed, Major. You’re perfectly safe. This is a professional call.”

  “Do you charge for your services?”

  I don’t know where Major Farnol learned his badinage with women. I discovered later that he had had considerable success with them, but it could not have been because of his conversational approach. “Put your gun away, Major, and get into bed. I’ve taken you at your word that you’re a liar and I don’t believe you when you say there is no plot to assassinate the King.”

  He put the pistol on a bedside table and got beneath the covers. Thinking back, it was one of the strangest interviews I ever conducted. Both of us were aware of the atmosphere around us: he in his glamorous pyjamas, I in my peignoir (even if the bowler did dampen the effect), and the wide bed itself. But I was there on business and I was determined to keep it that way.

  “Tell me what you really think is going on, Major.”

  He shook his head. “Miss O’Brady, I am what is called a political agent.”

  “Is that something like a ward boss? My father is one in Boston.” I explained what my father did in the interests of democracy and the Democratic Party, which are not necessarily the same thing.

  “No, I don’t think there’s too much similarity. I suppose one could say I’m a cross between your Secret Service and one of your Indian agents from the Wild West.”

  “But that’s exactly what a ward boss is.”

  “Well, I’m sure your father doesn’t give away secrets to the chaps from the newspapers. Or even to you, I’ll wager.”

  “Not unless he’s looking for favours.” I saw the gleam in his eye and got in first: “Please, Major. No more flirting. So you won’t tell me what you suspect?”

  “No.” There was no badinage there: his voice was flat and emphatic.

  “I could write my story without your corroboration.”

  “If you did that and I should ever meet you again, I’d tan your bottom.”

  “An officer and a gentleman?”

  “I make no claim to the latter title. Goodnight, Miss O’Brady. Please turn off the light as you go out.”

  I was used to being dismissed, that was part of the game in my profession; but somehow the dismissal by him hurt me. I knew I had brought it on myself, but there are certain occasions when a woman wishes she could retire with dignity. I tried for that as I walked towards the door, but even then I knew that in my peignoir and derby I could not look regal or even viceregal.

  I stopped at the door and turned. “You and I are not finished with each other, Major. I do not give up easily.”

  “Nor I, Miss O’Brady. Goodnight.”

  I switched off the electric light and opened the door. The club thumped down on my bowler hat and I slumped to the floor.

  End of extract from memoirs.

  II

  Farnol leapt out of bed as the man, masked by a ragged scarf, jumped over the girl and came at him, the club in one hand and a long dagger in the other. Farnol grabbed for the gun on the bedside table, but in the gloom of the darkened room, his eyes still full of the just extinguished electric light, his hand fumbled and knocked the gun to the floor. The intruder dived across the bed at him and he flung himself back, just avoiding the swish of the dagger. He stumbled around in the unfamiliar room, bumped against a clothes-horse. He picked it up and swung it, hitting the assassin full in the face with the wooden shoulders inside his tail-coat. The man let out a gasp and staggered back and Farnol, eyes accustomed to the darkness now, went after him. The thug swung the club blindly and Farnol grunted as it grazed his ribs.

  Then the man was past him, jumping over the still prostrate Bridie in the doorway and racing out into the corridor. Farnol scrambled after him, not stopping to waste time in looking for his gun. The man appeared to know his way about the huge house. He ran along the dimly-lit corridor, out on to the gallery and down the wide stairs. Farnol, a blue silk streak, was only a few stairs behind him as they reached the entrance hall. The thug made no attempt to go out the front doors, as if he knew he might run into one of the roving picquets in the main drive. Instead he went straight down towards the ballroom. Farnol grabbed a heavy brass candlestick from a table and chased after him.

  The man was tall and thin, as tall as Farnol; and he was swift, just that much swifter than Farnol. His clothes were ragged, but he was recognizable as a hillman: the dark turban wound Pathan style, the blue scarf round his face and the sheepskin jerkin said he wasn’t from the plains.

  The next two or three minutes were like some bizarre conducted tour of the Lodge. The two men raced through the huge moonlit ballroom, skidding on the polished floor; through into the dining-room where the logs in the big fireplace still glowed; back across the hall to the drawing-room. Here the thug ran headlong into the great velvet curtain that draped its entrance; he dropped his club and tried to slash his way through the heavy cloth with his knife. Farnol caught him and grappled with him, but once again the man got away. He raced back up the stairs and still Farnol pursued him, wielding the candlestick. But the man was frantic now, drawing away from Farnol with every step. He tore down the corridor between the bedrooms. At the far end Farnol glimpsed the open window. The thug went through it without seeming to lose speed. Farnol reached the window, pulled up gasping and looked down, expecting to see the man spreadeagled on the ground below.

  But the thug had not committed suicide; once again he had shown he knew the lie of the land around the Lodge. There was a great deodar tree outside the window and Farnol saw the stout branch still going up and down from the weight of the man as he had landed on it. A moment later he saw the man run out from the black shadow at the base of the tree, race across the lawn, vault the balustrade and disappear. There was no point in shouting f
or the guard; they would never find the thug in the tangled growth down the steep hillside below the lawn. Farnol turned back, still holding the candlestick, and hurried back along the corridor to his room.

  Bridie was sitting up, feet spread out in front of her, back against the door, her crushed hat in her lap. She looked at him as he squatted down beside her. “Did you get him? I saw you gallop past.”

  “He got away. How are you?”

  “It will teach me not to go uninvited into a man’s room.” She stood up, taking his arm; he could feel she was still shaken. “I’m all right, I think. I’ll have a headache in the morning.”

  He had to admire her composure. The women who had lived in these hills for years were accustomed to the regular emergency: he would have expected them to recover quickly. But Miss O’Brady was a city girl and an American one at that: he knew little or nothing about Boston or New York but he guessed that ladies there did not have to face emergencies too often. “I must say, Miss O’Brady, you’re not the hysterical sort, are you?”

  “I suppose that’s an Englishman’s compliment, is it? Thank you. No, I’m not the hysterical sort.”

  “Jolly good.”

  Assured that she was uninjured except for a sore head, he abruptly left her, went along to the gallery and looked down into the entrance hall. Then he came back.

  “I wonder where all the servants are? It’s late, but I thought someone would have heard me chasing that chap up and down the stairs. Go back to your room and lock the door.”

  “No. I’ll stay with you till . . . You’re worried about something.”

  She was still shaken, but she was recovering fast. Her auburn hair hung down over her shoulders in wild disarray, her voice was a little breathless, she held her bowler hat before her like a battered beggar’s bowl. She was a damned good-looking woman. He wished he had met her a week later, down in Delhi.

  “We’ll go and wake up Major Savanna. He’s probably dead to the world with all that drink he had.”

  They went down the corridor to the room at the end. Its door was beside the open window through which the thug had escaped; the cold night air pressed in against them and Farnol shut the window. Then he knocked on Savanna’s door.

  With still no answer to his third knock, he opened the door and went in. He fumbled for the light switch, clicked it on. The room was empty, the big four-poster bed unslept in. On the bed was tossed Savanna’s tail suit, his boiled shirt and his dress suit. The wardrobe’s doors were open and the clothes were strewn on the floor in front of it.

  “Right, go back to your room, lock the door and stay there.” He was already on his way back along the corridor. He still carried the heavy brass candlestick, as if he had forgotten it was still in his hand. He paused by Bridie’s door, swung it open and motioned with the candlestick for her to go in. He looked and sounded like a schoolmaster who had found a pupil in some after-lights-out escapade. “Come on—inside! Lock the door. I’ll be back!”

  He didn’t wait to see if she obeyed him. He went back to his own room, dragged on the clothes nearest to hand, the tailcoat and dress trousers, over his pyjamas, pulled on his shoes; then, still carrying the candlestick but also his pistol this time, he went down to the entrance hall. He switched on lights, found a bell-pull and gave it several tugs that almost pulled it out of the ceiling, creating a carillon effect down in the depths of the servants’ quarters. In less than two minutes the butler and two bearers, stumbling with haste, puzzlement and the effects of the sleep from which they had been disturbed, came up from the rear of the house. With them was Karim Singh, the only one who looked fully alert.

  “Where’s Major Savanna?” Farnol addressed the butler, an elderly Punjabi who had a proprietary interest in the Lodge; he had seen Viceroys come and go, none of them had the tenure that a good servant had. “Did he say anything to you about going out tonight?”

  “No, sahib.” The butler looked bewildered and indignant: it wasn’t right that he should be aroused in the middle of the night, in His Excellency’s own house, and rudely interrogated by this army officer who was only a major, not even a colonel. “He should be asleep in his room.”

  “He isn’t—his bed hasn’t been slept in. And I’ve had a chap in here who tried to kill me.” He didn’t mention Bridie. The attack on her had been accidental, he was certain, and he wanted to protect her from any further involvement.

  The two bearers hissed with shock, looked over their shoulders, waiting for another attack. The butler said, “I regret that, sahib. It has never happened before. His Excellency will be most disturbed—”

  “I’m sure he will. Karim, get down to the guard-house, get the guard up here on the double—”

  “You can call them on the telephone, sahib.” The butler lifted a big red velvet cover, like a huge tea-cosy, from a side-table, exposing a telephone. “We have every modern convenience.”

  Every modern convenience but an effective guard system. Farnol called the guard-house and a minute later there was a banging on the front door. The butler, moving with all the dignity of a State occasion, went to the doors and opened them. Three soldiers came plunging in, a sergeant and two rankers, one of them Private Ahearn.

  “How many did you have on picquet tonight?” Farnol demanded.

  The sergeant blinked in the light; he, too, had been sound asleep down in the guard-house. “May I ask who you are, sir?”

  “Major Farnol.” He saw Ahearn’s eyebrows go up; then he remembered he had shaved off his beard. “Private Ahearn escorted me up here earlier this evening.”

  The sergeant stood to attention. “Four men on picquet, sir. Did they miss something?”

  “They missed a bloody thug who got in here and tried to kill me. He got away, went down the south side of the hill. There’s no point in going after him,” he said as the sergeant looked over his shoulder to give an order to Ahearn and the other ranker. “He’ll be halfway to Kalka by now. Have you seen Major Savanna at all?”

  The sergeant looked at his two men and Ahearn said, “Yes, sir. He went out on his horse about half an hour ago.”

  “Riding?”

  “Yes, sir. I thought it was a bit queer, too.”

  “How was he dressed?”

  “Why, like he was going on a trip, sir.” Ahearn was a young man, skinny and short, with the long Irish upper lip, thick black eyebrows that looked like caterpillars ready to advance on the potato of his nose and an expression that hinted he had come out of his mother’s womb without bothering to bring any innocence with him. “Breeches, bandolier, the lot. He had a rifle in his saddle scabbard.”

  “You don’t miss much.”

  “No, sir. The Irish can’t afford to.”

  “That’s enough!” snapped the sergeant, Irish too, but careful of his sergeant’s pay. A few shillings a day extra could buy an Empire-builder, Farnol thought. “Do you want me to send someone after the Major, sir?”

  “Did he say where he was going?” Farnol looked back at Ahearn.

  “No, sir. Didn’t say a word, just rode right by me like I wasn’t there.”

  Farnol now was mystified and worried; but did his best not to show it. “Righto, sergeant. Double the picquet, stay up here close to the house. I’ll see you at six in the morning. Dismiss.”

  The soldiers went away, then Farnol dismissed the butler and the two bearers. At last he looked at Karim Singh. “It was meant to be another ambush, Karim.”

  “I should never have left your door, sahib.” Karim was looking around him, shaking his head in wondering disgust. He had a proper respect for surroundings and something was wrong with the scheme of things when some bugger would try to murder a British officer in the Viceroy’s own house. “I should be ashamed that I went down to the servants’ quarters and allowed myself the luxury of a charpoy. To sleep in a bed is jolly marvellous, but not while your master has his throat cut.”

  “Bring your things up to my room and sleep inside my door.”

  Kari
m disappeared towards the depths of the house and Farnol climbed the stairs. Normally a clear thinker, his mind now seemed a mud-heap of confusion. He was no stranger to mystery; that was part of the trade of a political agent. But, had he ever had occasion to give the matter any thought, he would have classified Rupert Savanna as the least mysterious man in India, no more opaque than the air of these mountains on a clear day, every thought, prejudice and remark open to even the simplest intelligence. He tried to run his mind back over the evening, rummaging for a clue that might have hinted at Savanna’s intention to depart secretly; but he could think of nothing, Savanna had been as bland as his boiled shirtfront. In future he would watch Rupert Savanna more closely.

  At the top of the stairs Bridie was waiting for him. She was still in her peignoir and her hair was still down round her shoulders; but she had run a brush through it and she looked beautiful and composed. He wondered at the mysteries he might find in her if given the opportunity. “Is everything safe now?”

  “I think so. I just hope Major Savanna is safe. He’s—”

  “I heard. I’ve been standing up here listening.”

  “Well, there’s nothing we can do till morning.”

  “If he hasn’t returned by then, you might ask the Ranee where he is. I was down in the hall this evening when she arrived. I heard her tell him that if he wasn’t gone by this morning, he would have her to answer to.”

  III

  Savanna had not returned by morning. Farnol borrowed two horses from the Lodge stables and he and Karim rode along one of the lower roads to the Barracks. Simla was the summer capital of the Government of India and for eight months of the year the sub-continent was ruled from the over-crowded, stacks-on-the-mill town clinging to its narrow-spined ridge. In late October the government departments moved back to Calcutta where the commercial population, swallowing its sourness at having been deprived of all the summer trade, welcomed them with over-stocked stores and inflated prices, a state of business affairs that lasted only a few days, after which both resentment and prices fell. Next year the government would be moving to Delhi for those months when it was not at Simla and the merchants of Calcutta were ready to start their own Mutiny for being thus deserted.