Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Ranjoor Singh looked sidewise. He could see that Yasmini was absorbed in contemplation of her prisoners. Her little lithe form was pressed tightly against the wall, less than two yards away. He could guess, and he had heard a dozen times, that dancing had made her stronger than a panther and more swift. Yet he thought that if he had her in his arms he could crush those light ribs until she would yield and order her prisoner released. The trooper’s confidence deserved immediate, not postponed, reward.

  He watched for a minute. He could see that her bosom rose and fell regularly against the woodwork; she was all unconscious of her danger, he was sure of it. He changed his position, and she neither looked nor moved. He changed it again, so that his weight was all on his left foot; he was sure she had not noticed. Then he sprang.

  He sprang sidewise, as a horse does that sees a snake by the roadside, every nerve and sinew keyed to the tightest pitch — eye, ear and instinct working together. And she, in the same second, turned to meet him smiling, with outstretched arms, as if she would meet him half-way and hug him to her bosom, only she stepped a pace backward, instead of forward as she had seemed to intend.

  He landed where he had meant to, on the spot where she had stood. His left hand clutched at the wall, and a second too late he made a wild grab at the hole she had peered through, trying to get his fingers into it. What she had done he never knew, but the floor she had stood on yielded, and he heard her laugh as he slipped through the opening like a tiger into a pit-trap, and fell downward into blackness.

  With a last tremendous effort he caught at the floor and held himself suspended by his finger-ends. But she came and trod on them, and though her weight was light, malice made her skillful, and she hurt him until he had to set his teeth and drop. He would never have believed that those soft slipper- soles could have given so much pain.

  “Forget not thy trooper in his need!” she called, as he fell away through the opening. And then the trap shut.

  To his surprise he did not fall very far, and though he landed on an elbow and a hip, he struck so softly that for a moment he believed he must be mad, or dead, or dreaming. Then his fingers, numb from Yasmini’s pressure, began to recognize the feel of gunny-bags, and of cotton-wool, and of paper. Also, he smelled kerosene or something very like it.

  “Forget not the water for thy trooper, Ranjoor Singh!”

  He looked up to see Yasmini’s face framed in the opening, and he thought there was more devilment expressed in it, for all her loveliness, than in her voice that never quite lost its hint of laughter. He did not answer, and the trap-door closed again.

  He knelt and began to grope through the dark on hands and knees, but gave that up presently because the dust from old sacks and piles of rubbish began to choke him. Then rats came to investigate him. He heard several of them scamper close, and one bit his leg; so he made ready to fight for his life against the worst enemy a man may have, praying a little in the Sikh way, that does not reckon God to be far off at any time.

  Suddenly the trap-door opened, and the rats scampered away from the light and noise.

  “Thus is a soldier answered!” muttered Ranjoor Singh.

  “Is the risaldar-major sahib thirsty?” wondered Yasmini.

  He could hear her pouring water out of a brass ewer into a dish, and pouring it back again. The metal rang and the water splashed deliriously, but he was not very thirsty yet; he had been thirstier on parade a hundred times.

  When her head and shoulders darkened the aperture, he did not trouble this time to look at her.

  “Is it dark down there?” she asked him; but he did not answer.

  So she struck a match and lit a newspaper. In a moment a ball of fire was floating downward to him, and it was then that the smell of dust and kerosene entered his consciousness as pincers enter the flesh of men in torment. He stood up with hands upstretched to catch the fire — caught it — bore it downward — and smothered it in gunny-bags.

  “Still dark?” she said, looking through the aperture once more. “I will send another one!”

  So Ranjoor Singh found his tongue and cursed her with a force and comprehensiveness that only Asia can command; he gave her to understand that the next fire she dropped on him should be allowed to work God’s will and burn her — her, her rats, her cobras, and her cutthroats. Two honest Sikhs, he swore, would die well to such an end.

  “Drop thy fire and I will fan the flame!” he vowed, and she believed him.

  “I will send my cobras down to keep the sahib company!” she mocked.

  But Ranjoor Singh proposed to take one danger at a time, and he was quite sure that she wanted him alive, not dead, for otherwise he would have been dead already. He held his tongue and listened while she splashed the water.

  “Thy trooper is very thirsty, sahib!”

  She was on a warmer scent now, for that squadron of his and the men of his squadron were the one love of his warrior life. Some spirit of malice whispered her as much.

  “The trooper shall have water when Ranjoor Singh sahib has promised on his Sikh honor.”

  “Promised what?” His voice betrayed interest at last; it suggested future possibilities instead of a grim present.

  “That he will do what is required of him!”

  “Is that the price of a drink for Jagut Singh?”

  “Aye! Will the sahib pay, or will he let the trooper parch?”

  “Ask Jagut Singh! Go, ask him! Let it be as he answers!”

  He could hear her hurry away, although she slammed the trap-door shut. Evidently she was not satisfied to speak through the little hole, and he suspected that she was showing the man water, perhaps giving some to the Afridi for sweet suggestion’s sake. She was back within five minutes, and by the way she opened the trap and grinned at him he knew what her answer would be.

  “He begs that you promise! He begs, sahib! He says he is thy trooper, thy dog, thy menial, and very thirsty!”

  “Bring some one who knows better how to lie!” said Ranjoor Singh. “I know what his answer was! He said, ‘Say to the risaldar-major sahib that I have eaten salt, but I am not thirsty!’ Go, tell him his answer was a good one, and that I know he said it! I know that man, as men know each other. Thou art a woman, and thy knowledge is but emptiness. Thou hast heard now twice what the answer is, once from him and once from me!”

  “I will leave thee to the rats!” she said, slamming the trap-door tight.

  The rats came, and he began to grope about for a weapon to use against them. He caught one rat in his fingers, squeezed the squealing brute to death and flung it away, and he heard a hundred of its mess-mates race to devour the carcass.

  He began to see little active eyes around him in the blackness, that watched his every movement, and he kept moving since that seemed to puzzle them. Also he wondered, as a drowning man might wonder about things, how long it would be before Colonel Kirby would send for him to ask about the murdered trooper. Something would happen then, he felt quite sure.

  The rats by this time had grown very daring, and he had been bitten again twice; he found time to wonder what lies Yasmini would tell to account for her share in things. He did not doubt she would lie herself out of it, but he wondered just how, along what unexpected line. It began to seem to him that the colonel and his squadron were a very long time coming.

  “But they will come!” he assured himself.

  He was nearer to the mark when he expected unexpectedness from Yasmini, for she did not disappoint him. A door opened at one end of the black dark cellar, and again the rats scampered for cover as Yasmini herself stood framed in it, with a lantern above her head. She was alone, and he could not see that she had any weapon.

  “This way, sahib!” she called sweetly to him.

  Never — North, South, East or West, in olden days or modern — did a siren call half so seductively. Every move she ever made was poetry expressed, but framed in a golden aura shed by the lamp, and swaying in the velvet blackness of the pit’s mouth, s
he was, it seemed to Ranjoor Singh, as no man had ever yet seen woman.

  “Come, sahib!” she called again; and he moved toward her.

  “Food and water wait! Thy trooper has drunk his fill. Come, sahib!”

  She made no move at all to protect herself from him. She did not lead into the cavern beyond the door. She waited for him, leaning against the door- post and smiling as if she and he were old friends who understood each other.

  “I but tried thee, Ranjoor Singh!” she smiled, looking up into his face and holding the lantern closer to his eyes, as if she would read behind them. “Thou art a soldier, and not a buffalo at all! I am sorry that I called thee buffalo. My heart goes out ever to a brave man, Ranjoor Singh!”

  He was actually at her side, her clothes touched his, and he could have flung his arms around her. But it was the move next after that which seemed obscure. He wondered what her reply would be; and, moving the lantern a little, she read the hesitation in his eyes — the wavering between desire for vengeance, a soldierly regard for sex, and mistrust of her apparent helplessness. And, being Yasmini, she dared him.

  “Like swords I have seen!” she laughed. “Two cutting edges and a point! Not to be held save by the hilt, eh, Ranjoor Singh? Search me for weapons first, and then use that dagger in thy hair — I am unarmed!”

  “Lead on!” he commanded in a voice that grated harshly, for it needed all his willpower to prevent his self-command from giving out. He knew that behind temptation of any kind there lie the iron teeth of unexpected consequences.

  She let the lantern swing below her knees and leaned back to laugh at him, until the cavern behind her echoed as if all the underworld had seen and was amused.

  “I called thee a buffalo!” she panted. “Nay, I was very wrong! I laugh at my mistake! Come, Ranjoor Singh!”

  With a swing of the lantern and a swerve of her lithe body, she slipped out of his reach and danced down an age-old hewn-stone passage, out of which doors seemed to lead at every six or seven yards; only the doors were all made fast with iron bolts so huge that it would take two men to manage them.

  He hurried after her. But the faster he followed the faster she ran, until it needed little imagination to conceive her a will-o’-the-wisp and himself a crazy man.

  “Come!” she kept calling to him. “Come!”

  And then she commenced to sing, as if dark passages beneath the Delhi streets were a fit setting for her skill and loveliness. Ranjoor Singh had never heard the song before. It was about a tiger who boasted and fell into a trap. It made him more cautious than he might have been, and when the darkness began to grow less opaque he slowed into a walk. Then he stood still, for he could not see her any longer.

  It occurred to him to turn back. But that thought had not more than crossed his mind when a noose was pulled tight around his legs and a big sheet, thrown out of the darkness, was wrapped and wrapped about him until he could neither shout nor move. He knew that they were women who managed the sheet, because he bit one’s finger through it and she screamed. Then he heard Yasmini’s voice close to his ear.

  “Thy colonel sahib and another are outside!” she whispered. “It is not well to wait here, Ranjoor Singh!”

  Next he felt a great rush of air, and after that the roar of flame was so unmistakable — although he could feel no heat yet — that he wondered whether he was to be burned alive.

  “Is it well alight?” asked Yasmini.

  “Yes!” said a maid whose teeth chattered.

  “Good! Presently the fools will come and pour water enough to fill this passage. Thus none may follow us! Come!”

  Ranjoor Singh was gathered up and carried by frightened women — he could feel them tremble. For a moment he felt the outer air, and he caught the shout of a crowd that had seen flames. Then he was thrown face downward on the floor of some sort of carriage and driven away.

  He lost all sense of direction after a moment, though he did not forget to count, and by his rough reckoning he was driven through the streets for about nine minutes at a fast trot. Then the carriage stopped, and he was carried out again, up almost endless stairs, across a floor that seemed yet more endless, and thrown into a corner.

  He heard a door slam shut, and almost at the same moment his fingers, that had never once ceased working, tore a corner of the sheet loose.

  In another minute he was free.

  He threw the sheet from him and looked about, accustoming his eyes to darkness. Presently, not far from him, he made out the sheeted figure of another man, who lay exactly as he had done and worked with tired fingers. He drew the dagger out of his hair and cut the man loose.

  “Jagut Singh!” he exclaimed.

  The trooper stood up and saluted.

  “Who brought thee here?”

  “Women, sahib, in a carriage!”

  “When?”

  “Even now!”

  “Where is that Afridi?”

  “Dead, sahib!”

  “How?”

  “She brought us water in a brass vessel, saying it was by thy orders, sahib. She cut us loose and gave him water first. Then, while she gave me to drink the Afridi attacked her, and I slew him with my hands, tearing his throat out — thus! While the life yet fluttered in him they threw a sheet over me — and here I am! Salaam, sahib!”

  The trooper saluted again.

  “Who made thee prisoner in the first place?”

  “Hillmen, sahib, at the orders of the Afridi who is now dead. They made ready to torture me, showing me the knives they would use. But she came, and they obeyed her, binding the Afridi fast to me. After that I heard the sahib’s voice, and then this happened. That is all, sahib.”

  “Well!” said Ranjoor Singh. And for the third time his trooper saw fit to salute him.

  CHAPTER 11

  Who shall be trusted to carry my trust?

  (Hither, and answer me, stranger!)

  Slow to give ground be he — swifter to thrust —

  Instant, — yet wary o’ danger!

  Hand without craftiness, eye without lust,

  Lip without flattery! Such an one must

  Prove yet his worthiness — yet earn my trust!

  (Closer, and answer me, stranger!)

  First let me lead him alone, and apart;

  There let me feel of his pulse and his heart!

  (Hither, and play with me, stranger!)

  MEN say Yasmini does not sleep. Of course, that is absurd. None the less, it is certain she must do much of her plotting in the daytime, for by night, until after midnight, she is always the Yasmini whom the Northern gentry know, at home to all comers in her wonderful apartment.

  It is ever a mystery to them how she knows all that is going on in Delhi, and in India, and in the greater outer world, although they themselves bring her information that no government could ever suck out of the silent hills. They know where she keeps her cobras — where the strong-box is, in which her jewels lie crowded — who run her errands — and some of her past history, for not even a mongoose is more inquisitive than a man born in the hills, and Yasmini has many maids. But none — not even her favorite, most confidential maids — know what is in the little room that she reaches down a private flight of stairs that have a steel door at the top.

  She keeps the key to that steel door, and it has, besides, a combination lock that only she understands.

  Once a very clever hillman, who had been south for an education and had learned skepticism in addition to the rule of three, undertook to discover wires leading over roof-tops to that room; but he searched for a week and did not find them. When his search was over, and all had done laughing at him, he was found one night with a knife-wound between his shoulder-blades, and, later still, Yasmini sang a song about him. None searched for wires after that, and the consensus of opinion still is that she makes magic in the room below- stairs.

  She sought that room the minute Ranjoor Singh was safely locked in with his trooper, although her maids reported more than o
ne Northern gentleman waiting impatiently in the larger of her two reception-rooms for official information of the war. Government bulletins are regarded as pure fiction always, unless confirmed by Yasmini.

  And, within five minutes of Ranjoor Singh’s release of his trooper from the sheet, no less a personage than a general officer had thrown aside other business and had drawn on a cloak of secrecy that not even his own secretary could penetrate.

  “Closed carriage!” he ordered; and, as though the fire brigade were doing double duty, a carriage came, and the horses, rump-down, halted from the gallop outside his door.

  “Pathan turban!” he ordered; and his servant brought him one.

  “Sheepskin cloak!”

  In a moment the upper half of him would have passed in the dark for that of a rather portly Northern trader. He decided that a rug would do the rest, and snatched one as he ran for the carriage with the turban under his arm. He gave no order to the driver other than “Cheloh!” and that means “Go ahead”; so the driver, who was a Sikh, went ahead as the guns go into action, asway and aswing, regardless of everything but speed.

  “Yasmini’s!” said the general, at the end of a hundred yards; and the Sikh took a square, right-angle turn at full gallop with a neatness the Horse Artillery could not have bettered. There seemed to be no need of further instructions, for the Sikh pulled up unbidden at the private door that is to all appearance only a mark on the dirty-looking wall.

  With a rug around his middle, there shot out then what a watching small boy described afterward as “a fat hill-rajah on his way to be fleeced.” The carriage drove on, for coachmen who wait outside Yasmini’s door are likely to be butts for questions. The door opened without any audible signal, and the man with the rug around his middle disappeared.

  He had ceased to bear any resemblance to any one but a stout English general in mess-dress by the time he reached the dark stairhead; and Yasmini took the precaution of being there alone to meet him. She held, a candle- lantern.

  “Whom have you?” he demanded.