Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “One reason why you’re being sent first, my boy,” said the general, holding out his hand again, “is that you and your regiment are fittest to be sent. But I’ve taken into consideration, too, that I don’t want you or your adjutant killed by a cobra in any event. And — snf — snf — the salt sea air gets rid of the smell of musk quicker than anything. Good-by, Kirby, my boy, and God bless you!”

  “Good-by, sir!”

  Kirby stammered the words, and almost ran down the steps to his waiting dog-cart. As all good men do, when undeserved ridicule or blame falls to their lot, he wondered what in the world he could have done wrong.

  He had no blame for anybody, only a fierce resentment of injustice — an almost savage sense of shame that any one should know about the adventure of the night before, and a rising sense of joy in his soldier’s heart because he had orders in his pocket to be up and doing. So, and only so, could he forget it all.

  He whipped up his horse and went down the general’s drive at a pace that made the British sentry at the gate grin from ear to ear with whole-souled approval. He did not see a fat babu approach the general’s bungalow from the direction of the bazaar. The babu salaamed profoundly, but Kirby’s eyes were fixed on the road ahead, and his thoughts were already deep in the future. He saw nothing except the road, until he took the last corner into barracks on one wheel, and drew up a minute later in front of the bachelor quarters that had sheltered him for the past four years.

  “Pack! Campaign kit! One trunk!” he ordered his servant. “Orderly!”

  An orderly ran in from outside.

  “Tell Major Brammle and Captain Warrington to come to me!”

  It took ten minutes to find Warrington, since every job was his, and nearly every responsibility, until his colonel should take charge of a paraded, perfect regiment, and lead it away to its fate. He came at last, however, and on the run, and Brammle with him.

  “Orders changed!” said Kirby. “March at noon! Man’ll be here this morning to take charge of officers’ effects. Better have things ready for him and full instructions. One trunk allowed each officer. Two chargers.”

  “Destination, sir?” asked Brammle.

  “Not disclosed!”

  “Where do we entrain?” asked Warrington.

  “We march out of Delhi. Entrain later, at a place appointed on the road.”

  Warrington began to hum to himself and to be utterly, consciously happy.

  “Then I’ll get a move on!” he said, starting to hurry out. “Everything’s ready, but—”

  “Wait a minute!” commanded Kirby; and Warrington remained in the room after Brammle had left it.

  “You haven’t said anything to anybody, of course, about that incident last night?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then she has!”

  Warrington whistled.

  “Are you sure she has?”

  “Quite. I’ve just had proof of it!”

  “Makes a fellow reverence the sex!” swore Warrington.

  “It’ll be forgotten by the time we’re back in India,” said Kirby solemnly. “Remember to keep absolutely silent about it. The best way to help others forget it is to forget it yourself. Not one word now to anybody, even under provocation!”

  “Not a word, sir!”

  “All right. Go and attend to business!”

  What “attending to business” meant nobody can guess who has not been in at the breaking up of quarters at short notice. Everything was ready, as Warrington had boasted, but even an automobile may “stall” for a time in the hands of the best chauffeur, and a regiment contains as many separate human equations as it has men in its ranks.

  The amount of personal possessions that had to be jettisoned, or left to the tender mercies of a perfunctory agent, would have wrung groans from any one but soldiers. The last minute details that seemed to be nobody’s job, and that, therefore, all fell to Warrington because somebody had to see to them, were beyond the imagination of any but an adjutant, and not even Warrington’s imagination proved quite equal to the task.

  “We’re ready, sir!” he reported at last to Kirby. “We’re paraded and waiting. Brammle’s inspected ’em, and I’ve done ditto. There are only thirteen thousand details left undone that I can’t think of, and not one of ‘em’s important enough to keep us waitin’!”

  So Kirby rode out on parade and took the regiment’s salute. There was nobody to see them off. There were not even women to wail by the barrack gate, for they marched away at dinner-time and official lies had been distributed where they would do most good.

  Englishman and Sikh alike rode untormented by the wails or waving farewells of their kindred; and there was only a civilian on a white pony, somewhere along ahead, who seemed to know that they were more than just parading. He led them toward the Ajmere Gate, and by the time that the regiment’s luggage came along in wagons, with the little rear-guard last of all, it was too late to run and warn people. Outram’s Own had gone at high noon, and nobody the wiser!

  There was no music as they marched and no talking. Only the jingling bits and rattling hoofs proclaimed that India’s best were riding on a sudden summons to fight for the “Salt.” They marched in the direction least expected of them, three-quarters of a day before their scheduled time, and even “Guppy,” the mess bull-terrier, who ran under the wagon with the officers’ luggage, behaved as if all ends of the world were one to him. He waved his tail with dignity and trotted in content.

  Hard by the Ajmere Gate they halted, for some bullock carts had claimed their centuries-long prerogative of getting in the way. While the bullocks, to much tail-twisting and objurgation, labored in the mud in every direction but the right one, Colonel Kirby sat his charger almost underneath the gate, waiting patiently. Then the advance-guard clattered off and he led along.

  He never knew where it came from and he never tried to guess. He caught it instinctively, and kept it for the sake of chivalry, or perhaps because she had made him think for a moment of his mother. At all events, the bunch of jasmine flowers that fell into his lap found a warm berth under his buttoned tunic, and he rode on through the great gate with a kinder thought for Yasmini than probably she would guess.

  With that resentment gone, he could ride now as suited him, with all his thoughts ahead, and there lacked then only one thing to complete his pleasure — he missed Ranjoor Singh.

  It was not that the squadron would lack good leading. An English officer had taken Ranjoor Singh’s place. It was the man he missed — the decent loyal gentleman who had worked untiringly to sweat a squadron into shape to Kirby’s liking and never once presumed, nor had taken offense at criticism — the man who had been good enough to understand the ethics of an alien colonel, and to translate them for the benefit of his command. It is not easy for a Sikh to rise to the rank of major and lead a squadron for the Raj.

  He counted Ranjoor Singh his friend, and he knew that Ranjoor Singh would have given all the rest of his life to ride away now for only one encounter on a foreign battle-field. Nothing, nothing less than the word of Ranjoor Singh himself, would ever convince him of the man’s disloyalty. And he would have felt better if he could have shaken hands with Ranjoor Singh before going, since it seemed to be the order of the day that the Sikh should stay behind.

  It did not seem quite the thing to be riding away to war with the best native officer in all India somewhere in Delhi on “special service” — whatever that might be.

  He was given, as a rule, to smiling at any man who did his best. On any other day he would have very likely exchanged a joke with the bullock-man who labored so unavailingly to get the road cleared in a hurry. But today, since his thoughts were of Ranjoor Singh, he paid the man no attention; he had not even formed a mental picture of him by the time he passed the gate.

  It was Warrington, cantering up from behind a minute or so later, who changed the color of the earth and sky.

  “Did you recognize him, sir?”

  “Who
m?”

  “Ranjoor Singh!”

  “No! Where?”

  “Not the bullock-man who blocked the road, but the man who ran out from behind the gate and straightened things out again. That man was Ranjoor Singh in mufti!”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I recognized him. So did his squadron — look at them! They’re riding like new men!”

  Kirby looked, and there was no doubt about D Squadron.

  “Is he there still?” he asked.

  “I can see a man standing there — see him? Fellow in white between two bullock carts?”

  Kirby pulled out to the roadside and let the regiment pass him. Then he cantered back. The man between the bullock carts had his back turned, and was gazing toward Delhi under his hand.

  “Ranjoor Singh!” said Kirby, reining suddenly. “Is that you?”

  “Uh?” The man faced about. He was no more Ranjoor Singh than he was Colonel Kirby.

  “Where is the man who came from behind the gate to clear the road?”

  The man pointed toward the gate. Inside, within the gloom of the gate itself, Kirby was certain he saw a Sikh who stood at the salute. He cantered to the gate, for he would have given a year’s pay for word with Ranjoor Singh. But when he reached the gate the man was gone.

  “And he promised he’d be there to lead his squadron when the blood runs,” wondered Kirby.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Now a trap,” said the tiger, “is easy to spot,”

  (Oh, jungli, be seated and listen!)

  “Some tempt you with live bait, and others do not;”

  (Oh, jungli, be leery and listen!)

  “The easiest sort to detect have a door —

  A box, with three walls and a roof and a floor —

  That the veriest, hungriest cub should ignore.”

  (Oh, jungli, stop laughing and listen!)

  “This isn’t a trap, as I’ll show you, my friend.”

  But the tiger fell into it. That is the end.

  (Oh, jungli, be loving and listen!)

  — from Yasmini’s Song.

  RANJOOR SINGH, on the trail of a murderer, shoved with his whole strength against a little door of the ‘House of the Eight Half-Brothers.’ It yielded suddenly. He shot in headlong, and the door slammed behind him. As he fell forward into pitch blackness he was conscious of shooting bolts behind and of the squeaking of a beam swung into place.

  But, having served the Raj for more years than he wanted to remember, through three campaigns in the Himalayas, once against the Masudis, and once in China, he was in full possession of trained soldier senses. Darkness, he calculated instantly, was a shield to him who can use it, and a danger only to the unwary; and there are grades of wariness, just as there are grades of sloth.

  Two men who thought themselves so wide awake as to be beyond the reach of government, each threw a noosed rope, and caught each other. Ranjoor Singh could not see the ropes, but he could hear the stifled swearing and the ensuing struggle; and an ear is as good as an eye in the dark.

  Something — he never knew what — warned him to duck and step forward. He felt the whistle of a club that missed him by so little as to make the skin twitch on the back of his neck.

  His right leg shot sidewise, and he tripped a man. In another second he had the club, and there was no measurable interval of time then before the darkness was a living miracle of blows that came from everywhere and missed nothing.

  Three men went down, and Ranjoor Singh was in command of a situation whose wherefore and possibilities he could not guess until an electric torch declared itself some twenty feet away, at more than twice his height, and he stood vignetted in a circle of white light.

  “The sahib proves a gentle guest!” purred a voice he thought he recognized. It was a woman’s. “Has the sahib a pistol with him?”

  Ranjoor Singh, cursing his own neglect of soldierly precaution, saw fit not to answer. A human arm reached like a snake into the ring of light. He struck at it with the club, and a groan announced that he had struck hard enough.

  “Does the sahib think that the noise of a pistol would cause his friends to come? Is Ranjoor Singh ashamed? Speak, sahib! Is it well to break into a house and be surly with the hostess?”

  Ranjoor Singh stepped backward, and the ring of light followed him, until he stood pressed against the teak door and could feel the heavy beam that ran up and down it, locked firmly above and below. He prodded over his head behind him with the club, trying to find what held the beam, and the ring of light lifted a foot or two, then five feet, until its center was on the center of the club’s handle.

  A pistol cracked and flashed then, from behind the light, and the club splintered. He dropped it, and the torch-light ceased, leaving him dazed, but not so dazed that he did not hear a man sneak up and carry the splintered club away. He followed after the man, for he knew now that he was in a narrow passage and no man could get by him to attack from behind.

  But again the torch-light sought him out. Half-way to the foot of steep stairs that he could dimly outline he halted, for advance against hidden pistol- fire and dazzling light was futile.

  “Look!” said the same soft, woman’s voice. “Look, sahib! See, Ranjoor Singh! the hooded death! See the hooded death behind you!”

  It was not her command that made him look. He knew better than to turn his head at an unseen woman’s bidding in the dark. But he heard them hiss, and he turned to see four cobras come toward him, with the front third of their bodies raised from the floor and their hoods extended. He saw that a panel in the wooden wall had slid, and the last snake’s tail was yet inside the gap. There was no need of a man to slip between him and the door!

  “There are more in the wall, Ranjoor Singh! Will they follow thee upstairs? See, they come! Step swiftly, for the hooded death is swift!”

  The light went out again, and his ears were all he had to warn him of the snakes’ approach — ears and imagination. Swift as a well launched charge of light cavalry, he leaped for the stairs and took them four at a time. He reached the top one sooner than he knew it. The torch flashed in his eyes, and he saw a pistol-mouth just beyond arm-reach.

  “Stand, Ranjoor Singh!” said a voice that he felt sure he recognized. His eyes began to search beyond the light for glimpses of dim outline.

  “Back, Ranjoor Singh! Back to the right — toward that door! In, through that door — so!”

  He obeyed, since he knew now with whom he had to deal. There was no sense at all in taking liberties with Yasmini. He stepped into a bare, dark, teak- walled room, and she followed him, and she had scarcely closed the door at her back before another door opened at the farther end, and two of her maids appeared, carrying candle-lamps.

  “What do you want with me?” demanded Ranjoor Singh.

  “Nay! Did I invite the sahib?”

  “I came about a murderer who entered by that door through which I came.”

  “To pay him the reward, perhaps?” she asked impudently.

  “Is this thy house?” asked Ranjoor Singh.

  “This is the ‘House of the Eight Half-Brothers,’ sahib.”

  “This is a hole where murderers hide! A man of mine was slain in the street below, and the murderer came in here. Where is he now?”

  “He and the bigger fool who followed him,” said Yasmini, poising herself like a nodding blossom and smiling like the promise of new love, as she paused to be insolent and let the insolence sink home, “are at my mercy!”

  Ranjoor Singh did not answer, but she could draw no amusement from his silence, for his eye was unafraid.

  “I am from the North, where the quality of mercy is thought weakness,” she smiled sweetly.

  “Who asks mercy? I was seen and heard to enter. There will be a hundred seeking me within an hour!”

  “Sahib, within two hours there will be five thousand around this house, yet none will seek to enter! And they will find no murderer, though thou shalt see thy murderer. Com
e this way, sahib.”

  A whiff of warm wind might have blown her, so swiftly, lissomely she ran toward the other door, laughing back at him across her shoulder and leaving a trail of aromatic scent. The two maids held their candle-lanterns high, and, striding like a soldier, Ranjoor Singh followed Yasmini, not caring that the maids shut the heavy door behind him and bolted it. He argued to himself that he was as safe in one room as in another, and she as dangerous; also, that it made no difference in which room he might be when the squadron or his colonel missed him.

  “Look, Ranjoor Singh! Look through that hole!”

  There was plenty of light in this room, for there was a lantern in every corner. He could see that she was gazing through a hole in the wall at something that amused her, and she motioned to another hole eight feet away from it. He crossed a floor that was solid and age-old; no two planks of it were of even width or length, but none creaked.

  At her invitation he looked through the little square hole she pointed out. And then, for the first time, he confessed surprise.

  “Thou, Jagut Singh!” he exclaimed.

  He stepped back, blinked to reassure himself, and stepped to the hole again. Back to back, tied right hand to right, left hand to left, so that their arms were crossed behind them, and lashed waist to waist, a trooper of D Squadron and the Afridi whom he had kicked at Yasmini’s sat on the floor facing opposite walls. Dumb misery was stamped on the Sikh’s face, the despair of evaporated savagery on the Afridi’s.

  “Jagut Singh!” said the risaldar-major, louder this time; and the trooper looked up, almost as if hope had been that instant born in him.

  “Jagut Singh!”

  The trooper grinned. A white row of ivory showed between his black beard and mustache. He tried to look sidewise, but the rope that held him tight to the Afridi hurt his neck.

  “I knew it, sahib!” he shouted. “I knew that one would come for me! This hill wildcat has fought until the ropes cut both of us; but take time, sahib! I can wait. Attend to the duty first. Only let him who comes bring water with him, for this is a thirsty place!”