by Talbot Mundy
Then Yasmini ceased dancing. Then one of the Europeans drew his watch out; and he had to show it to the other two before he could convince them that they had sat for two hours without wanting to do anything but watch and listen.
“So was!” said one of them — the drunken.
“Du lieber Gott — schon halb zwölf!” said the second.
The third man made no remark at all. He was watching Ranjoor Singh.
The risaldar — major had left the divan by the end wall and walked — all grim straight lines in contrast to Yasmini’s curves — to a spot directly facing the three Europeans; and it seemed there sat a hillman on the piece of floor he coveted.
“Get up!” he commanded. “Make room!”
The hillman did not budge, for an Afridi pretends to feel for a Sikh the scorn that a Sikh feels truly for Afridis. The flat of Ranjoor Singh’s foot came to his assistance, and the hillman budged. In an instant he was on his feet, with a lightning right hand reaching for his knife.
But Yasmini allows no butcher’s work on her premises, and her words within those walls are law, since no man knows who is on whose side. Yasmini beckoned him, and the Afridi slouched toward her sullenly. She whispered something, and he started for the stairs at once, without any further protest.
Then there vanished all doubt as to which of the three Europeans was most important. The man who had come in first had accepted sherbet from the maid who sat beside him; he went suddenly from drowsiness to slumber, and the woman spurned his bullet-head away from her shoulder, letting him fall like a log among the cushions. The stout second man looked frightened and sat nursing helpless hands. But the third man sat forward, and tense silence fell on the assembly as the eyes of every man sought his.
Only Yasmini, hovering in the background, had time to watch anything other than those grey European eyes; she saw that they were interested most in Ranjoor Singh, and the maids who noticed her expression of sweet innocence knew that she was thinking fast.
“You are a Sikh?” said the grey-eyed man; and the crowd drew in its breath, for he spoke Hindustani with an accent that very few achieve, even with long practise.
“Then you are of a brave nation — you will understand me. The Sikhs are a martial race. Their theory of politics is based on the military spirit — is it not so?”
Ranjoor Singh, who understood and tried to live the Sikh religion with all his gentlemanly might, was there to acquire information, not to impart it. He grunted gravely.
“All martial nations expand eventually. They tell me — I have heard — some of you Sikhs have tried Canada?”
Ranjoor Singh did not wince, though his back stiffened when the men around him grinned; it is a sore point with the Sikhs that Canada does not accept their emigrants.
“Sikhs are admitted into all the German colonies,” said the man with the grey eyes. “They are welcome.”
“Do many go?” asked Ranjoor Singh.
“That is the point. The Sikhs want a place in the sun from which they are barred at present — eh? Now, Germany—”
“Germany? Where is Germany?” asked Yasmini. She understands the last trick in the art of getting a story on its way. “To the west is England. Farther west, Ameliki. To the north lies Russia. To the south the kali pani. Where is Germany?”
The man with the grey eyes took her literally, since his nation are not slow at seizing opportunity. He launched without a word more of preliminary into a lecture on Germany that lasted hours and held his audience spellbound. It was colorful, complete, and it did not seem to have been memorized. But that was art.
He had no word of blame for England. He even had praise, when praise made German virtue seem by that much greater; and the inference from first to last was of German super-virtue.
Some one in the crowd — who bore a bullet-mark in proof he did not jest — suggested to him that the British army was the biggest and fiercest in the world. So he told them of a German army, millions strong, that marched in league-long columns — an army that guarded by the prosperous hundred thousand factory chimneys that smoked until the central European sky was black.
Long, long after midnight, in a final burst of imagination, he likened Germany to a bee-hive from which a swarm must soon emerge for lack of room inside. And he proved, then, that he knew he had made an impression on them, for he dismissed them with an impudence that would have set them laughing at him when he first began to speak.
“Ye have my leave to go!” he said, as if he owned the place; and they all went except one.
“That is a lot of talk,” said Ranjoor Singh, when the last man had started for the stairs. “What does it amount to? When will the bees swarm?”
The German eyed him keenly, but the Sikh’s eyes did not flinch.
“What is your rank?” the German asked.
“Squadron leader!”
“Oh!”
The two stood up, and now there was no mistake about the German’s heels; they clicked. The two were almost of a height, although the Sikh’s head — dress made him seem the taller. They were both unusually fine-looking men, and limb for limb they matched.
“If war were in Europe you would be taken there to fight,” said the German.
Ranjoor Singh showed no surprise.
“Whether you wanted to fight or not.”
There was no hint of laughter in the Sikh’s brown eyes.
“Germany has no quarrel with the Sikhs.”
“I have heard of none,” said Ranjoor Singh.
“Wherever the German flag should fly, after a war, the Sikhs would have free footing.”
Ranjoor Singh looked interested, even pleased.
“Who is not against Germany is for her.”
“Let us have plain words’ said Ranjoor Singh, leading the way to a corner in which he judged they could not be overheard; there he turned suddenly, borrowing a trick from Yasmini.
“I am a Sikh — a patriot. What are you offering?”
“The freedom of the earth!” the German answered. “Self-government! The right to emigrate. Liberty!”
“On what condition? For a bargain has two sides.”
“That the Sikhs fail England!”
“When?”
“When the time comes! What is the answer?”
“I will answer when the time comes,” answered Ranjoor Singh, saluting stiffly before turning on his heel.
Then he stalked out of the room, with a slight bow to Yasmini as he passed.
“Buffalo!” she murmured after him. “Jat buffalo!”
Then the Germans went away, after some heavy compliments that seemed to amuse Yasmini prodigiously, helping along the man who had drunk sherbet and who now seemed inclined to weep. They dragged him down the stairs between them, backward. Yasmini waited at the stair-head until she heard them pull him into a gharry and drive away. Then she turned to her favorite maid.
“Them — those cattle — I understand!” she said. “But it does not suit me that a Sikh, a Jat, a buffalo, should come here making mysteries of his own without consulting me! And what does not suit me I do not tolerate! Go, get that Afridi whom the soldier kicked — I told him to wait outside in the street until I sent for him.”
The Afridi came, nearly as helpless as the man who had drunk sherbet, though less tearful and almost infinitely more resentful. What clothing had not been torn from him was soaked in blood, and there was no inch of him that was not bruised.
“Krishna!” said Yasmini impiously.
“Allah!” swore the Afridi.
“Who did it? What has happened?”
“Outside in the street I said to some men who waited that Ranjoor Singh the Sikh is a bastard. From then until now they beat me, only leaving off to follow him hence when he came out through the door!”
Yasmini laughed, peal upon peal of silver laughter — of sheer merriment.
“The gods love Yasmini!” she chuckled. “Aye, the gods love me! The Jat spoke of a squadron; it is evident that he s
poke truth. So his squadron watched him here! Go, jungli! Go, wash the blood away. Thou shalt have revenge! Come again tomorrow. Nay, go now, I would sleep when I have finished laughing. Aye — the gods love Yasmini!”
CHAPTER 3
The West Wind blows through the Ajmere Gate
And whispers low (Oh, listen ye!),
“The fed wolf curls by his drowsy mate
In a tight — trod earth; but the lean wolves wait,
And the hunger gnaws!” (Oh, listen ye!)
“Can fed wolves fight? But yestere’en
Their eyes were bright, their fangs were clean;
They viewed, they took but yestere’en,”
(Oh, listen, wise heads, listen ye!)
“Because they fed, is blood less red,
Or fangs less sharp, or hunger dead?”
(Look well to the loot, and listen ye!)
— from Yasmini’s Song.
THE colonel of Outram’s Own dropped into a club where he was only one, and not the greatest, of many men entitled to respect. There were three men talking by a window, their voices drowned by the din of rain on the veranda roof, each of whom nodded to him. He chose, however, a solitary chair, for, though subalterns do not believe it, a colonel has exactly that diffidence about approaching senior civilians which a subaltern ought to feel.
In a moment all that was visible of him from the door was a pair of brown riding-boots, very much fore-shortened, resting on the long arm of a cane chair, and two sets of wonderfully modeled fingers that held up a newspaper. From the window where the three men talked he could be seen in profile.
“Wears well — doesn’t he?” said one of them.
“Swears well, too, confound him!”
“Hah! Been trying to pump him, eh?”
“Yes. He’s like a big bird catching flies — picks off your questions one at a time, with one eye on you and the other one cocked for the next question. Get nothing out of him but yes or no. Good fellow, though, when you’re not drawing him.”
“You mean trying to draw him. He’s the best that come. Wish they were all like Kirby.”
The man who had not spoken yet — he looked younger, was some years older, and watched the faces of the other two while seeming to listen to something in the distance — looked at a cheap watch nervously.
“Wish the Sikhs were all like Kirby!” he said. “If this business comes to a head, we’re going to wish we had a million Kirbys. What did he say? Temper of his men excellent, I suppose?”
“Used that one word.”
“Um-m-m! No suspicions, eh?”
“Said, ‘No, no suspicions!’”
“Uh! I’ll have a word with him.”
He waddled off, shaking his drab silk suit into shape and twisting a leather watch-guard around his finger.
“Believe it will come to anything?” asked one of the two men he had left behind.
“Dunno. Hope not. Awful business if it does.”
“Remember how we were promised a world-war two years ago, just before the Balkans took fire?”
“Yes. That was a near thing, too. But they weren’t quite ready then. Now they are ready, and they think we’re not. If I were asked, I’d say we ought to let them know we’re ready for ’em. They want to fight because they think they can catch us napping; they’d think twice if they knew they couldn’t do it.”
“Are they blind and deaf? Can’t they see and hear?”
“Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat, Ponsonby, my boy.”
The man in drab silk slipped into a chair next to Kirby’s as a wolf slips into his lair, very circumspectly, and without noise; then he rutched the chair sidewise toward Kirby with about as much noise as a company of infantry would make.
“Had a drink?” he asked, as Kirby looked up from his paper. “Have one?”
“Ginger ale, please,” said Kirby, putting the paper down.
A turbaned waiter brought long glasses in which ice tinkled, and the two sipped slowly, not looking at each other.
“Know Yasmini?” asked the man in drab silk suddenly.
“Heard of her, of course.”
“Ever see her?”
“No.”
“Ah! Most extraordinary woman. Wonderful!”
Kirby looked puzzled, and held his peace.
“Any of your officers ever visit her?”
“Not when they’re supposed to be on duty.”
“But at other times?”
“None of my affair if they do. Don’t know, I’m sure.”
“Um-m-m!”
“Yes,” said Kirby, without vehemence.
“Look at his beak!” said one of the two men by the window. “Never see a big bird act that way? Look at his bright eye!”
“Wish mine were as bright, and my beak as aquiline; means directness — soldierly directness, that does!”
“Who is your best native officer, supposing you’ve any choice?” asked the man in the drab silk suit, speaking to the ceiling apparently.
“Ranjoor Singh,” said Kirby promptly.
It was quite clear there was no doubt in his mind.
“How is he best? In what way?”
“Best man I’ve got. Fit to command the regiment.”
“Um-m-m!”
“Yes,” said Kirby.
The man in drab sat sidewise and caught Kirby’s eye, which was not difficult. There was nothing furtive about him.
“With a censorship that isn’t admitted, but which has been rather obvious for more than a month; with all forces undergoing field training during the worst of the rains — it’s fair to suppose your men smell something?”
“They’ve been sweating, certainly.”
“Do they smell a rat?”
“Yes.”
“Ask questions?”
“Yes.”
“What do you tell them?”
“That I don’t know, and they must wait until I do.”
“Any recent efforts been made to tamper with them?”
“Not more than I reported. You know, of course, of the translations from Canadian papers, discussing the rejection of Sikh immigrants? Each man received a copy through the mail.”
“Yes. We caught the crowd who printed that. Couldn’t discover, though, how it got into the regiment’s mail bags without being postmarked. Let’s see — wasn’t Ranjoor Singh officer-of-the-day?”
“Yes.”
“Um-m-m! Would it surprise you to know that Ranjoor Singh visits Yasmini?”
“Wouldn’t interest me.”
“What follows is in strict confidence, please.”
“I’m listening.”
“I want you to hear reason. India, the whole of India, mind, has its ear to the ground. All up and down the length of the land — in every bazaar — in the ranks of every native regiment — it’s known that people representing some other European Power are trying to sow discontent with our rule; and it’s obvious to any native that we’re on the watch for something big that we expect to break any minute. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“Our strongest card is the loyalty of the native troops.”
“Yes.”
“Everybody knows that. Also, this thing we’re looking for is most damnably real — might burst today, tomorrow — any time. So, even with the censorship in working order, it wouldn’t be wise to arrest a native officer merely on suspicion.”
“I’d arrest one of mine,” said Kirby, “if I had any reason to suspect him for a second.”
“Wouldn’t be wise! You mustn’t!” The man in drab silk shook his head. “Now, suppose you were to arrest Ranjoor Singh—”
Kirby laughed outright.
“Suppose the Chandni Chowk were Regent Street!” he jeered.
“Last night,” said the man in drab silk, “Risaldar-Major Ranjoor Singh visited Yasmini, leaving six or more of the men of his squadron waiting for him in the street outside. In Yasmini’s room he listened for hours to a lecture on Germany,
delivered by a German who has British naturalization papers, whether forged or not is not yet clear.
“After the lecture he had a private conversation lasting some minutes with the German who says he is an Englishman, and who, by the way, speaks Hindustani like a native. And, before he started home, his men who waited in the street thrashed an Afridi within an inch of his life for threatening to report Ranjoor Singh’s presence at the lecture to the authorities.”
“Who told you this?” asked Colonel Kirby.
“The Afridi, Yasmini, and three hillmen who were there by invitation. I spoke with them all less than an hour ago. They all agree. But if Ranjoor Singh were asked about it, he would lie himself out of it in any of a dozen ways, and would be on his guard in future. If he were arrested, it would bring to a head what may prove to be a passing trifle; it would make the men angry, and the news would spread, whatever we might do to prevent it.”
“What am I to understand that you want, then?” asked Kirby.
“Watch him closely, without letting him suspect it.”
“Before I’d seriously consider orders to do that, they’d have to come through military channels in the regular way,” said Kirby, without emotion.
“I could arrange that, of course. I’ll mention it to Todhunter.”
“And if the order reached me in the regular way, I’d resign rather than carry it out.”
“Um-m-m!” said the man in drab silk.
“Yes,” said Kirby.
“You seem to forget that I, too, represent a government department, and have the country’s interests at heart. Do you imagine I have a grudge against Ranjoor Singh?”
“I forget nothing of the kind,” said Kirby, “and imagination doesn’t enter into it. I know Ranjoor Singh, and that’s enough. If he’s a traitor, so am I. If he’s not a loyal gallant officer, then I’m not either. I’ll stand or fall by his honor, for I know the man and you don’t.”
“Uh!” said the man in drab silk.
“Yes,” said Colonel Kirby.
“Look!” said one of the two men at the window. “Direct as a hornet’s sting — isn’t a kink in him! Look at the angle of his chin!”