by Talbot Mundy
“Locked up, sahib! Big red seal — much sealing wax, and stamp of police department, with notice regarding penalty for breaking same, and also police sentry at door!”
Looking more unlike a Mohammedan street vendor than ever, the German began to pace the room again with truly martial strides, frowning as he sought through the recesses of his mind for the correct solution of the problem.
“Listen!” he said, coming to a stand in front of Ranjoor Singh. “I have changed my mind!”
“The horses are ready,” answered Ranjoor Singh.
“The German government has been to huge expense to provide aid of the right kind, to be ready at the right minute. My sole business is to see that the utmost use is made of it.”
“That also is my sole business!” vowed Ranjoor Singh.
“You have heard that the police are after me?”
Ranjoor Singh nodded.
“Can you get away from here unseen — unknown to the police?”
Ranjoor Singh nodded again, for he was very sure of Yasmini’s resource.
Again the German began to pace the room, now with his hands behind him, now with folded arms, now with his chin down to his breast, and now with a high chin as he seemed on the verge of reaching some determination. And then Yasmini began to loose the flood of her resources, that Ranjoor Singh might make use of what he chose; she was satisfied to leave the German in the Sikh’s hands and to squander aid at random.
Men began to come in, one at a time. They would whisper to Ranjoor Singh, and hurry out again. Some of them would whisper to Yasmini over in the window, and she would give them mock messages to carry, very seriously. Babu Sita Ram was stirred out of a meditative coma and sent hurrying away, to come back after a little while and wring his hands. He ran over to Yasmini.
“It is awful!” he wailed. “Soon there will be no troops left with which to quell Mohammedan uprising. All loyal troops are leaving, and none but disloyal men are left behind. The government is mad, and I am veree much afraid!”
Yasmini quieted him, and Ranjoor Singh, pretending to be busy with other messengers, noted the effect of the babu’s wail on the German. He judged the “change of mind” had gone far enough.
“We should lose time by following my regiment,” he said at last. “There are now five more regiments ready to mutiny, and they will come to me to wherever I send for them.”
The German’s blue eyes gazed into the Sikh’s brown ones very shrewdly and very long. His hand sought the neighborhood of his hip, and dwelt there a moment longer than the Sikh thought necessary.
“I have decided we must hurry,” he said. “I will show you what I have to show. I will not be taking chances. You must bring a messenger, and he must go for your mutineers while you stay there with me. When we are there, you will be in my power until the regiments come; and when they come I will surrender to you. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” said Ranjoor Singh.
“Then choose your messenger. Choose a man who will not try to play tricks — a man who will not warn the authorities, because if there is any slip, any trickery, I will undo in one second all that has been done!”
So Ranjoor Singh conferred with Yasmini over the two great bowls of flowers that always stand in her big window; and she suppressed a squeal of excitement while she watched the German resume his pacing up and down.
“Take Sita Ram!” she advised.
Ranjoor Singh scowled at the babu.
“That fat bellyful of fear!” he growled. “I would rather take a pig!”
“All the same, take Sita Ram!” she advised.
So the babu was roused again out of a comfortable snooze, and Yasmini whispered to him something that frightened him so much that he trembled like a man with palsy.
“I am married man with children!” he expostulated.
“I will be kind to your widow!” purred Yasmini.
“I will not go!” vowed the babu.
“Put him in the cobra room!” she commanded, and some maids came closer to obey.
“I will go!” said Sita Ram. “But, oh, my God, a man should receive pecuniary recompense far greater than legendary ransom! I shall not come back alive! I know I shall not come back alive!”
“Who cares, babuji?” asked Yasmini.
“True!” said Sita Ram. “This is land of devil-take-hindmost, and with my big stomach I am often last. I am veree full of fear!”
“We shall need food,” interposed the German. “Water will be there, but we had better have sufficient food with us for two nights.”
Yasmini gave a sharp order, and several of her maids ran out of the room. Ten minutes later they returned with three baskets, and gave one each to the German, to Ranjoor Singh, and to Sita Ram. Sita Ham opened his and peered in. The German opened his, looked pleased, and closed the lid again. Ranjoor Singh accepted his at its face value, and did not open it.
“May the memsahib never lack plenty from which to give!” he said, for there is no word for “Thank you” in all India.
“I will bless the memsahib at each mouthful!” said Sita Ram.
“Truly a bellyful of blessings!” laughed Yasmini.
Then they all went to the stair-head and watched and listened through the open door while a closed carriage was driven away in a great hurry. Three maids and six men came upstairs one after another, at intervals, to report the road all clear; the first carriage had not been followed, and there was nobody watching; another carriage waited. Babu Sita Ram was sent downstairs to get into the waiting carriage and stay there on the lookout.
“Now bring him better clothes!” said Ranjoor Singh.
But Yasmini had anticipated that order.
“They are in the carriage, on the seat,” she said.
So the German went downstairs and climbed in beside the babu, changing his turban at once for the better one that he found waiting in there.
“This performance is worth a rajah’s ransom!” grumbled babu Sita Ram. “Will sahib not put elbow in my belly, seeing same is highly sensitive?”
But the German laughed at him.
“Love is rare, non-contagious sickness!” asserted Sita Ram with conviction.
At the head of the stairs Ranjoor Singh and Yasmini stood looking into each other’s eyes. He looked into pools of laughter and mystery that told him nothing at all; she saw a man’s heart glowing in his brown ones.
“It will be for you now,” said Ranjoor Singh, “to act with speed and all discretion. I don’t know what we are going to see, although I know it is artillery of some sort. I am sure he has a plan for destroying every trace of whatever it is, and of himself and me, if he suspects treachery. I know no more. I can only go ahead.”
“And trust me!” said Yasmini.
The Sikh did not answer.
“And trust me!” repeated Yasmini. “I will save you out of this, Ranjoor Singh sahib, that we may fight our quarrel to a finish later on. What would the world be without enemies? You will not find artillery!”
“How do you know?”
“I have known for nearly two years what you will find there, my friend! Only I have not known exactly where to find it. And yet sometimes I have thought that I have known that, too! Go, Ranjoor Singh. You will be in danger. Above all, do not try to force that German’s hand too far until I come with aid. It is better to talk than fight, so long as the enemy is strongest!”
“Woman!” swore Ranjoor Singh so savagely that she laughed straight into his face. “If you suspect — if you can guess where we are going — send men to surround the place and watch!”
“Will a tiger walk into a watched lair?” she answered. “Go, talker! Go and do things!”
So, swearing and dissatisfied, Ranjoor Singh went down and climbed on to the box seat of a two-horse carriage.
“Which way?” he asked; and the German growled an answer through the shutters.
“Now straight on!” said the German, after fifteen minutes. “Straight on out of Delhi!”
They were headed south, and driving very slowly, for to have driven fast would have been to draw attention to themselves. Ranjoor Singh scarcely troubled to look about him, and Sita Ram fell into a doze, in spite of his protestations of fear. The German was the only one of the party who was at pains to keep a lookout, and he was most exercised to know whether they were being followed; over and over again he called on Ranjoor Singh to stop until a following carriage should overtake them and pass on.
So they were a very long time driving to Old Delhi, where the ruins of old cities stand piled against one another in a tangled mass of verdure that is hardly penetrable except where the tracks wind in and out. The shadow of the Kutb Minar was long when they drove past it, and it was dusk when the German shouted and Ranjoor Singh turned the horses in between two age-old trees and drew rein at a shattered temple door.
Some monkeys loped away, chattering, and about a thousand parakeets flew off, shrilling for another roost. But there was no other sign of life.
“Stable the horses in here!” said the German; and they did so, Ranjoor Singh dipping water out of a rain-pool and filling a stone trough that had once done duty as receptacle for gifts for a long-forgotten god. Then they pushed the carriage under a tangle of hanging branches.
“Look about you!” advised the German, as he emptied food for the horses on the temple floor; and babu Sita Ram made very careful note of the temple bearings, while Ranjoor Singh and the German blocked the old doorway with whatever they could find to keep night-prowlers outside and the horses in.
Then the German led the way into the dark, swinging a lantern that he had unearthed from some recess. Babu Sita Ram walked second, complaining audibly and shuddering at every shadow. Last came Ranjoor Singh, grim, silent. And the rain beat down on all three of them until they were drenched and numb, and their feet squelched in mud at every step.
For all the darkness, Ranjoor Singh made note of the fact that they were following a wagon track, into which the wheels of a native cart had sunk deep times without number. Only native ox-carts leave a track like that.
It must have been nine o’clock, and the babu was giving signs of nearly complete exhaustion, when they passed beyond a ring of trees into a clearing. They stood at the edge of the clearing in a shadow for about ten minutes, while the German watched catwise for signs of life.
“It is now,” he said, tapping Ranjoor Singh’s chest, “that you begin to be at my mercy. I assure you that the least disobedience on your part will mean your instant death!”
“Lead on!” growled Ranjoor Singh.
“Do you recognize the place?”
Ranjoor Singh peered through the rain in every direction. At each corner of the clearing, north, south, east and west, he could dimly see some sort of ruined arch, and there was another ruin in the center.
“No,” he said.
“This is the oldest temple ruin anywhere near Delhi. On some inscriptions it is called ‘Temple of the Four Winds,’ but the old Hindu who lived in it before we bribed him to go away called it the ‘Winds of the World.’ It is known as ‘Winds of the World’ in the books of the German War Office. I think it is really of Greek origin myself, but I am not an Orientalist, and the text-books all say that I am wrong.”
“Lead on!” said Ranjoor Singh; and the German led them, swinging his lantern and seeming not at all afraid of being seen now.
“We have taken steps quite often to make the people hereabouts believe this temple haunted!” he said. “They avoid it at night as if the devil lived here. If any of them see my lantern, they will not stop running till they reach the sea!”
They came to a ruin that was such an utter ruin that it looked as if an earthquake must have shaken a temple to pieces to be disintegrated by the weather; but Ranjoor Singh noticed that the cart-tracks wound around the side of it, and when they came to a fairly large teak trap-door, half hidden by creepers, he was not much surprised.
“My God, gentlemen!” said Sita Ram. “That place is wet-weather refuge for many million cobras! If I must die, I will prefer to perish in rain, where wife and family may find me for proper funeral rites. I will not go in there!”
But the German raised the trap-door, and Ranjoor Singh took the unhappy babu by the scruff of his fat neck.
“In with you!” he ordered.
And, chattering as if his teeth were castanets, the babu trod gingerly down damp stone steps whose center had been worn into ruts by countless feet. The German came last, and let the trap slam shut.
“My God!” yelled the babu. “Let me go! I am family man!”
“Vorwärts!” laughed the German, leading the way toward a teak door set in a stone wall.
They were in an ancient temple vault that seemed to have miraculously escaped from the destruction that had overwhelmed the whole upper part. Not a stone of it was out of place. It was wind and water-tight, and the vaulted roof, that above was nothing better than a mound of debris, from below looked nearly as perfect as when the stones had first been fitted into place.
The German produced a long key, opened the teak door, and stood aside to let them pass.
“No, no!” shuddered Sita Ram; but Ranjoor Singh pushed him through; the German followed, and the door slammed shut as the trap had done.
“And now, my friends, I will convince you!” said the German, holding the lantern high. “What are those?”
The light from the solitary lantern fell on rows and rows of bales, arranged in neat straight lines, until away in the distance it suggested endless other shadowy bales, whose outlines could be little more than guessed at. They were in a vault so huge that Ranjoor Singh made no attempt to estimate its size.
“See this!” said the German, walking close to something on a wooden stand, and he held the light above it. “In the office in Delhi that the police have just sealed up there is a wireless apparatus very much like this. This, that you see here, is a detonator. This is fulminate of mercury. This is dynamite. With a touch of a certain key in Delhi we could have blown up this vault at any minute of the past two years, if we had thought it necessary to hide our tracks. A shot from this pistol would have much the same effect,” he added darkly.
“But the bales?” asked Ranjoor Singh. “What is in the bales?”
“Dynamite bombs, my friend! You native soldiers have no artillery, and we have seen from the first the necessity of supplying a substitute. By making full use of the element of surprise, these bombs should serve your purpose. There are one million of them, packed two hundred in a bale — much more useful than artillery in the hands of untrained men!
“Those look like bales of blankets. They are. Cotton blankets from München-Gladbach. Only, the middle blankets have been omitted, and the outer ones have served as a cushion to prevent accidental discharge. They have been imported in small lots at a time, and brought here four or five at a time in ox-carts from one or other of the Delhi railway stations by men who are no longer in this part of India — men who have been pensioned off.”
“How did you get them through the Customs?” wondered Ranjoor Singh.
“Did you ever see a rabbit go into his hole?” the German asked. “They were very small consignments, obviously of blankets. The duty was paid without demur, and the price paid the Customs men was worth their while. That part was easy!”
“Of what size are the bombs?” asked Ranjoor Singh.
“About the size of an orange. Come, I’ll show you.”
He led him to an opened bale, and showed him two hundred of them nestling like the eggs of some big bird.
“My God!” moaned Sita Ram. “Are those dynamite? Sahibs — snakes are better! Snakes can feel afraid, but those — ow! Let me go away!”
“Let him go,” said the German. “Let him take his message.”
“Go, then!” ordered Ranjoor Singh; and the German walked to the door to let him out.
“What is your message?” he asked.
“To Yasmini first, for she is in touch with all
of them,” said Sita Ram. “First I will go to Yasmini. Then she will come here to say the regiments have started. First she will come alone; after her the regiments.”
“She had better be alone!” said the German. “Go on, run! And don’t forget the way back? Wait! How will she know the way? How will you describe it to her?”
“She? Describe it to her? I will tell her ‘The Winds of the World,’ and she will come straight.”
“How? How will she know?”
“The priest who used to be here — whom you bribed to go away — he is her night doorkeeper now!” said Sita Ram. “Yes, she will come veree quickly!”
The German let him out with an air mixed of surprise and disbelief, and returned to Ranjoor Singh with far less iron in his stride, though with no less determination.
“Now we shall see!” he said, drawing an automatic pistol and cocking it carefully. “This is not meant as a personal threat to you, so long as we two are in here alone. It’s in case of trickery from outside. I shall blow this place sky-high if anything goes wrong. If the regiments come, good! You shall have the bombs. If they don’t come, or if there’s a trick played — click! Good-by! We’ll argue the rest in Heaven!”
“Very well,” said Ranjoor Singh; and, to show how little he felt concerned, he drew his basket to him and began to eat.
The German followed suit. Then Ranjoor Singh took most of his wet clothes off and spread them upon the bales to dry. The German imitated that too.
“Go to sleep if you care to,” said the German. “I shall stand watch,” he added, with a dry laugh.
But if a Sikh soldier can not manage without sleep, there is nobody on earth who can. Ranjoor Singh sat back against a bale, and the watch resolved itself into a contest of endurance, with the end by no means in sight.
“How long should it take that man to reach her?” asked the German.
“Who knows?” the Sikh answered.
“Perhaps three hours, perhaps a week! She is never still, and there are those five regiments to hold in readiness.”
“She is a wonderful woman,” said the German.
Ranjoor Singh grunted.
“How is it that she has known of this place all this time, and yet has never tried to meddle with us?”