by Talbot Mundy
He leaned slightly from the saddle and spat, with a gesture that was eloquent.
“Then if I let you go alone, you’ll only claim one share in any case?”
“You had no need to ask, sahib. I will neither claim nor accept one copper piece of the reward!”
“I have to consider the Regiment, Dost Mohammed.”
“And I, sahib, who have served her Majesty but twenty years as yet, thought naturally only of the money! Have I your leave to go?”
“Look here, Dost Mohammed, I had no intention of offering you an insult, and you know it. You’ve no right to take my remarks that way. You’re hovering dangerously near a breach of discipline.”
The native officer saluted and sat still.
“D’you understand that I was taking an ordinary elementary precaution on the other men’s behalf?”
“I understand, sahib, that you misunderstood me.”
“And you me. Very well then.”
The Mohammedan did not answer, but he did not have either the air of a man who had not understood his superior officer.
“You’d better tell me what this plan of yours is.”
“Sahib, you would only laugh at me.”
“I give you my word of honor I will not.”
“Neither will you agree, sahib, if I tell you.”
“You want me to take both you and your plan on trust, eh? Very well. I’ll prove my faith in you. You have leave. Now, tell me.”
“I will be Gopi Lall.”
“You!”
“I, sahib.”
“How — why — what the — ?”
“Sahib, on this countryside there are dozens — there must be — who are his friends; who know which way he would run; probably who know which way he did run — who advised him or would advise him—”
“But man alive! Dost Mohammed! You don’t look in the least like Gopi Lall. You couldn’t make yourself look like him even if you plucked one eye out.”
“And sahib, would Gopi Lall — with a hue and cry behind — travel undisguised? His ugliness is a byword even where he is not known. Men know that he has but one eye and tangled hair that never knew the comb, and lips that are like sun- cracked pollution. Would he journey with his name and number on his face for all the world to see, as a trooper wears his crest?”
“But — what language does he speak?”
“From choice? Bengali.”
“And you?”
“I speak it too, as well as he.”
“It’s a deuce of a risky sort of plan, Dost Mohammed!”
“The risk is mine, sahib.”
“I hardly know what to say. You see, you’re an officer; it seems hardly the proper work for a commissioned man. It ‘ud hardly be creditable to the Regiment if you got knifed or shot or run through by one of our own men while disguised as a murdering thief.”
“Will it be a credit to the Regiment, sahib, to go back to the lines without his head; to do no better than the rascally police; to have even the little children ask us where are the soldiers, since the Bengal Horse became constabeels?”
“Why not let a trooper try it?”
“Because I already have permission, sahib!”
“True. You hold me to my word? Very well. Go then, and good luck to you. But for the love of goodness be careful, Dost Mohammed.”
“Sahib, I will be careful at least to live until I track down Gopi Lall.”
CHAPTER VII. — BOILEAU CALLS AGAIN
When lovely woman stoops to scorn,
Know this at least — the truth lies bare.
But when soft-murmured words entrance,
When sweet persuasive dimples dance,
When eyes allure, and smiles adorn,
Beware!
NOW, Captain Fitzherbert Cholmondeley Boileau was something of a devil of a man. There was no mistake about that, and nobody doubted it, least of all himself.He deliberately cultivated the impression. There was nothing really vicious, of course, in his whole makeup or he could neither have come by a commission in the Tail-Twisters, nor, once in the Regiment, have retained it. But he liked to be considered daring, and he was always on the lookout for an opportunity.
The blood that ran in his veins was the same sort that makes a brave and efficient officer of ordinary clay in any country; but in his case it ran rather more racily than usual, and the thought of danger to be courted, and above all of a dangerous woman to be courted, was like ozone to his nostrils.
Yasmini was dangerous. He had been warned against her by more than one native, by his brother officers on various occasions, and by his Colonel. And Yasmini had snubbed him and laughed at him. Therefore — the corollary was obvious — he and Yasmini were destined to cross foils at least once again.
The clerical work of the Regiment grew no less irksome to him as the sultry days wore on, and now that the Colonel had come back, and there was little chance of his getting a ride with the Regiment in any case, his ambition to get the red tape business over and done with died down in him. And he recalled most distinctly how the Colonel had been careful to advise, and not to order, him with reference to Yasmini.
It took him next to no time to make up his mind. On the third afternoon following his evening adventure at the Panch Mahal he got into civilian clothes and set off to Yasmini’s strange jungle nest, this time unaccompanied.
She received him on this occasion without keeping him waiting, and with no exhibition of surprise. She seemed almost to have expected him. Evidently he had been seen approaching, for he had not stood for one minute before the little iron-studded door before the same maid that had admitted him the last time swung it open for him again, and smiled a welcome.
Yasmini came as before to the head of the narrow stair to meet him, and bowed again low to him as if he were the lord of all the East and she his handmaiden. But wonder of wonders in the East! — she provided a European chair, on which he could sit, and even cross his knees, with dignity.
When he came before, she had deliberately tried to make him ill at ease by studied mockery. Now, though, she did exactly the opposite. Without asking him, she sent for sherbet, took the scented, colored stuff from the maid who brought it, and gave it to him with her own little jeweled hands. He drank it from pure politeness and wished immediately that he hadn’t; but she betrayed no amusement at his efforts to straighten out his face and seem appreciative.
She was neither amused, nor yet suppliant. Her raiment was the same — as gorgeous and as wonderful — though slightly modified in color in artful regard to the altered light. It was she who had changed. She wore a look and manner of artless, ingenuous camaraderie.
“I want you to come here often,” she smiled at him, standing before him for a minute, then subsiding with amazing grace among the billowy cushions by the window. He saw no waiting maids in evidence; but he did see that a curtain to her right moved gently, and he guessed that they were neither unseen nor unheard.
“That’s awfully good of you, I’m sure.” He would have liked to kick himself the moment he had said it; but with her eyes on him, even when in her present mood, he could voice nothing but mechanically ready platitudes. Yet he was the Tail-Twisters’ one expert in the game of flirting, just as he was their only Adonis, and the only white-skinned wrestler in the Regiment.
He was no one-sided, overbalanced ladies’ man, but an all around soldier, with sporting instincts, ready wit, and steel wire nerve. But Yasmini — perhaps a hundred pounds of her — could hold him at her mercy! He did not understand the circumstance. On his way to her he had walked with the gait and buoyancy of youth in search of fresh adventure. In her presence he could only sit and let his ears grow red and finger his mustache.
“Are there no other officers whom you could bring with you?” she purred.
That, for the moment, brought him to his senses.
“No. Thank goodness, there are not. I’m full of the idea of enjoying your acquaintance all to myself for the next day or two.”
> She smiled, and drooped her eyelids. Suddenly she clapped her hands and called for cigarettes. When the maid brought them she lit one, and ordered the rest set down between herself and Boileau.
“Are you then all alone?” she asked.
“No. There’s the Colonel sahib.”
“And he? Could he not come?”
“He could. He might. But why? Why ask him? Won’t I do?”
“You? You are only one — and young and—”
She blew great rings of cigarette smoke and if she finished the sentence Boileau, at all events did not catch the words.
“And the Colonel sahib,” he aswered, “is old — and stiff mannered — and pompous — and—”
“The others?”
“Won’t be back for days, most likely. There’s no knowing when. They’re after Gopi Lall.”
She reminded him of a snake the second he said that, though he could not have told why. There was nothing snake-like in her attitude, nor in her eyes; they glowed. He thought it must be something passing in her mind that reached him telepathically. After a few years in the East even the most materialistic, incredulous of men come to believe implicitly in things that savants of the West call foolishness.
“And where do they look for Gopi Lall?”
“Everywhere.”
“How?”
“Oh, by quartering the country and asking questions, and keeping a bright lookout.”
“And, should they fail to find him — ?”
“They won’t fail.”
Now, she really did seem amused, and made no effort to conceal it.
“Will they find him because the men who look for him are mostly Rajputs, or because their officers are English?”
“For both reasons, I expect. But, tell me, why do you want all the other officers to call on you?”
Her eyes changed again, and the momentary display of amusement left her. Now it was a look of almost business acumen that stole across her face; she was a partner all at once, exchanging confidences.
“Because — because people in these parts, strangers to me, who know nothing of me and of whom I know nothing, have been saying things that they have no right to say.”
“What sort of things?”
“Bad things. That I plot against the government.”
Boileau whistled.
“I hadn’t heard of it.”
“And if the officers of your famous Regiment should visit me from time to time, and see what passes here, and know what company I keep, whom I receive, of what they speak, then — then men will still talk, for no woman’s tongue is the equal of a man’s at slandering! But they will talk to little purpose.”
“What harm could that kind of gossip do to you in any case?”
“Much harm. I want to stay here. I choose to stay here. I like this place.”
She was almost vehement.
“But none can buy this house or the ground it stands on, since it has no owner. What, then, could I do were the police to come and order me away? Could I argue with them, or have I friends more powerful — yet? But if your officers should come, and come often, then the police would not dare interfere with an honored friend of theirs.”
“Well, since you put it that way — mind you, I think you’re needlessly alarmed — I’ll ask Colonel Stapleton sahib to call on you.”
“Will you? Please!”
“I suppose that means I sha’n’t get another opportunity of seeing you alone?”
He was recovering his nerve, now that she betrayed symptoms of not being quite at ease herself.
“We are not alone.”
He eyed the curtain, that still moved gently from time to time.
“No? But — the maids are yours — an order—”
She raised her eyebrows very slightly, but enough to warn Boileau that he was what he would have called “running wide.”
“Do your memsahibs receive our native gentlemen alone?” And that was an argument that was unanswerable.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I ever saw,’ he said quite truthfully, but with a soldier’s motive. He had of course the cavalryman’s ingrained belief in flank tactics.
“Yes?”
She seemed scarcely interested.
“That is why you called a second time?”
“That is why I want to see you alone — why I don’t want to bring the Colonel sahib or the others.”
“You need not bring the others—”
He started almost to his feet.
“You could send them, one by one or two by two, whichever would be better, and come yourself some other time.”
“Some evening? I am busy in the daytime.”
“Some other time. You will be welcome. You will all be welcome.”
She was eying him very narrowly now, and he was conscious of it. He knew perfectly well, too, that she was fencing with some definite end in view, quite different from the one she had professed. It needed little knowledge of the East to divine that much. Nothing in the East is ever done directly, least of all love making. Boileau remembered, then, that he was a very handsome man; and next, he realized again that she was eying him through lowered lids. With a flash of intuition it occurred to him that one English officer on the calling list of a native lady would be likely to cause scandal, whereas the better part of a dozen, calling constantly, would silence it. The rest would be a most effective blind. The one would —
“I begin to understand,” he said, working away at his mustache.
She smiled at him bewitchingly, and he felt the blood go mounting to his temples. But he could not guess whether she was laughing at him, or was in love with him, or was approving his ready recognition of her subtlety.
“Then bring the Colonel sahib as a beginning,” she said, nodding sagely. “Later, when the others come from seeking Gopi Lall, send them here also.”
“Send the Colonel sahib now, you mean to-day?”
“Why not to-day? Will the sudden summons disconcert him?”
Boileau laughed aloud at the idea of anything — of even a woman, however lovely — disconcerting Colonel Stapleton; he knew his Colonel from experience as being a man with a polite speech and a precept and a plan for every possible occasion.
“Is he very fierce? Is he unmannerly? I have seen him from a distance; his mustaches go like this.”
She imitated, very prettily, the motions of a military gentleman attending to the dressing of his upper lip.
“You’ll find him courtlier than even your own native Princes when they come to ask favors of our Viceroy.”
“Then bring him. Send him.”
“Very well. But, Yasmini—”
“My lord?”
“Don’t, for the love of goodness, make eyes at him. He’d get young again! We all want him to grow old; he’s standing in the way of promotion.”
“I? I make eyes at him?”
She bowed him out with a dignity that somewhat undermined his growing sense of intimacy. But she smiled at him again as he started down the stairs.
CHAPTER VIII.— “GOPI LALL”
When scent is stale, when down the vale
The pack is cast, and cast in vain,
’Tis then the younger hounds give tongue,
But old hounds find the scent again.
FEW natives of the North of India would find it difficult to change their appearance, so far as their heads are concerned. Under their turbans they wear long black hair, that can be twisted and tangled into knots or let fall disheveled. It took Dost Mohammed less than half a minute to make himself look like a devil, or a fakir — which is much the same thing — or anything he chose to call himself, except a soldier. He made the change, though, well out of eyesight of the Regiment, for his own pride’s sake.
A patch over one eye was easily arranged, and a cloth wrapped round his mouth prevented anyone from knowing whether or not his lips were horrible. But his clothing was a different matter. So was his horse.
Two things w
ere certain. Gopi Lall had not taken with him, and could not have obtained, a charger such as Dost Mahommed’s; and Dost Mohammed would not think of starting on any kind of hunt without his horse.
The problem would have beaten any ordinary man. He did not dare, for instance, to borrow clothing from a villager, or to take it by main force, for news of such extraordinary conduct would have spread like wildfire, and if Gopi Lall should happen to be hiding anywhere within a radius of forty miles he would know within a day or less that an officer was after him disguised. Dost Mohammed had to find another way than that.
First, he let the troop ride out of sight of him. Then he picketed his horse in a hollow down among some trees, where he could not be overlooked. Nobody had troubled to ask him why he kept back a live goat from the tiny flock the Regiment had bought for sustenance, but now he proceeded to kill the beast, slicing off its head with one clean blow of his saber. Next he removed his stirrup irons and smeared them thoroughly with blood, and put more blood on the horse’s withers and on his mane. Then he smeared plenty of the blood about himself, and eyed the whole result.
It was good. Anyone might reasonably think that he had slain the horse’s rider and ridden off on him. He stripped off his uniform and cached it together with his scabbard; but the saber itself he kept, smearing it with blood and holding it naked in his hand.
After a cautious look around him, he mounted and spurred out of the hollow at a gallop, careering like a man possessed, and giving a good imitation of a rider frightened of his horse, or not at ease on him.
He drew the horse up on his haunches at the first hut he came to, left him standing, and sprang like a lunatic, bare legged and blood-smeared, to the hut door, which he proceeded to hammer with his saber hilt until the frightened owner came. The man was speechless from sheer amazement — Dost Mohammed speechless for reasons of his own. Instead of speaking, he began to tear the loin cloth from the man’s middle, hitting him a smart rap on the head with the saber hilt when he resisted. He had donned the loin cloth, leaped on his horse again, and ridden off before the man had time to more than realize that he had been attacked. Dost Mohammed left in the opposite direction to that his troop had taken, with the certainty in his mind that whether Gopi Lall were in the neighborhood or not the rumor of his being there would scatter broadcast within an hour.