Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “If I weren’t in such an infernal hurry to reach Bombay—” Hyde grumbled; and King nearly laughed aloud then, for the thief knew English, and was listening with all his ears, “ — may I be damned if I wouldn’t get off at this station and wait to see that scoundrel brought to justice!”

  The train jerked itself to a standstill, and a man with a lantern began to chant the station’s name.

  “Damn it! — I’m going to Bombay to act censor. I can’t wait — they want me there.”

  The instant the train’s motion altogether ceased the heat shut in on them as if the lid of Tophet had been slammed. The prickly beat burst out all over Hyde’s skin and King’s too.

  “Almighty God!” gasped Hyde, beginning to fan himself.

  There was plenty of excuse for relaxing hold still further, and King made full use of it. A second later he gave a very good pretense of pain in his finger-ends as the thief burst free. The native made a dive at his bosom for the knife, but he frustrated that. Then he made a prodigious effort, just too late, to clutch the man again, and he did succeed in tearing loose a piece of shirt; but the fleeing robber must have wondered, as he bolted into the blacker shadows of the station building, why such an iron-fingered, wide-awake sahib should have made such a truly feeble showing at the end.

  “Damn it! — couldn’t you hold him? Were you afraid of him, or what?” demanded Hyde, beginning to dress himself. Instead of answering, King leaned out into the lamp-lit gloom, and in a minute he caught sight of a sergeant of native infantry passing down the train. He made a sign that brought the man to him on the run.

  “Did you see that runaway?” he asked.

  “Ha, sahib. I saw one running. Shall I follow?”

  “No. This piece of his shirt will identify him. Take it. Hide it! When a man with a torn shirt, into which that piece fits, makes for the telegraph office after this train has gone on, see that he is allowed to send any telegrams he wants to! Only, have copies of every one of them wired to Captain King, care of the station-master, Delhi. Have you understood?”

  “Ha, sahib.”

  “Grab him, and lock him up tight afterward — but not until he has sent his telegrams!’

  “Atcha, sahib.”

  “Make yourself scarce, then!”

  Major Hyde was dressed, having performed that military evolution in something less than record time.

  “Who was that you were talking to?” he demanded. But King continued to look out the door.

  Hyde came and tapped on his shoulder impatiently, but King did not seem to understand until the native sergeant had quite vanished into the shadows.

  “Let me pass, will you!” Hyde demanded. “I’ll have that thief caught if the train has to wait a week while they do it!”

  He pushed past, but he was scarcely on the step when the station-master blew his whistle, and his colored minion waved a lantern back and forth. The engine shrieked forthwith of death and torment; carriage doors slammed shut in staccato series; the heat relaxed as the engine moved — loosened — let go — lifted at last, and a trainload of hot passengers sighed thanks to an unresponsive sky as the train gained speed and wind crept in through the thermantidotes.

  Only through the broken thermantidote in King’s compartment no wet air came. Hyde knelt on King’s berth and wrestled with it like a caged animal, but with no result except that the sweat poured out all over him and he was more uncomfortable than before.

  “What are you looking at?” he demanded at last, sitting on King’s berth. His head swam. He had to wait a few seconds before he could step across to his own side.

  “Only a knife,” said King. He was standing under the dim gas lamp that helped make the darkness more unbearable.

  “Not that robber’s knife? Did he drop it?”

  “It’s my knife,” said King.

  “Strange time to stand staring at it, if it’s yours! Didn’t you ever see it before?”

  King stowed the knife away in his bosom, and the major crossed to his own side.

  “I’m thinking I’ll know it again, at all events!” King answered, sitting down. “Good night, sir.”

  “Good night.”

  Within ten minutes Hyde was asleep, snoring prodigiously. Then King pulled out the knife again and studied it for half an hour. The blade was of bronze, with an edge hammered to the keenness of a razor. The hilt was of nearly pure gold, in the form of a woman dancing.

  The whole thing was so exquisitely wrought that age had only softened the lines, without in the least impairing them. It looked like one of those Grecian toys with which Roman women of Nero’s day stabbed their lovers. But that was not why he began to whistle very softly to himself.

  Presently he drew out the general’s package of papers, with the photograph on the top. He stood up, to hold both knife and papers close to the light in the roof.

  It needed no great stretch of imagination to suggest a likeness between the woman of the photograph and the other, of the golden knife-hilt. And nobody, looking at him then, would have dared suggest he lacked imagination.

  If the knife had not been so ancient they might have been portraits of the same woman, in the same disguise, taken at the same time.

  “She knew I had been chosen to work with her. The general sent her word that I am coming,” he muttered to himself. “Man number one had a try for me, but I had him pinched too soon. There must have been a spy watching at Peshawur, who wired to Rawal-Pindi for this man to jump the train and go on with the job. She must have had him planted at Rawal-Pindi in case of accidents. She seems thorough! Why should she give the man a knife with her own portrait on it? Is she queen of a secret society? Well — we shall see!”

  He sat down on his berth again and sighed, not discontentedly. Then he lit one of his great black cigars and blew rings for five or six minutes. Then he lay back with his head on the pillow, and before five minutes more had gone he was asleep, with the cold cigar still clutched between his fingers.

  He looked as interesting in his sleep as when awake. His mobile face in repose looked Roman, for the sun had tanned his skin and his nose was aquiline. In museums, where sculptured heads of Roman generals and emperors stand around the wall on pedestals, it would not be difficult to pick several that bore more than a faint resemblance to him. He had breadth and depth of forehead and a jowl that lent itself to smiles as well as sternness, and a throat that expressed manly determination in every molded line.

  He slept like a boy until dawn; and he and Hyde had scarcely exchanged another dozen words when the train screamed next day into Delhi station. Then he saluted stiffly and was gone.

  “Young jackanapes!” Hyde muttered after him. “Lazy young devil! He ought to be with his regiment, marching and setting a good example to his men! We’ll have our work cut out to win this war, if there are many of his stamp! And I’m afraid there are — I’m afraid so — far too many of ’em! Pity! Such a pity! If the right men were at the top the youngsters at the foot of the ladder would mind their P’s and Q’s. As it is, I’m afraid we shall get beaten in this show. Dear, oh, dear!”

  Being what he was, and consistent before all things, Major Hyde drew out his writing materials there and then and wrote a report against Athelstan King, which he signed, addressed to headquarters and mailed at the first opportunity. There some future historian may find it and draw from it unkind deductions on the morale of the British army.

  Chapter II

  The only things which can not be explained are facts. So,

  use ’em. A riddle is proof there is a key to it. Nor is it

  a riddle when you’ve got the key. Life is as simple as all

  that. — Cocker

  Delhi boasts a round half-dozen railway stations, all of them designed with regard to war, so that to King there was nothing unexpected in the fact that the train had brought him to an unexpected station. He plunged into its crowd much as a man in the mood might plunge into a whirlpool, — laughing as he plunged, for it was the
most intoxicating splurge of color, din and smell that even India, the many-peopled — even Delhi, mother of dynasties — ever had, evolved.

  The station echoed — reverberated — hummed. A roar went up of human voices, babbling in twenty tongues, and above that rose in differing degrees the ear-splitting shriek of locomotives, the blare of bugles, the neigh of led horses, the bray of mules, the jingle of gun-chains and the thundering cadence of drilled feet.

  At one minute the whole building shook to the thunder of a grinning regiment; an instant later it clattered to the wrought-steel hammer of a thousand hoofs, as led troop-horses danced into formation to invade the waiting trucks. Loaded trucks banged into one another and thunderclapped their way into the sidings. And soldiers of nearly every Indian military caste stood about everywhere, in what was picturesque confusion to the uninitiated, yet like the letters of an index to a man who knew. And King knew. Down the back of each platform Tommy Atkins stood in long straight lines, talking or munching great sandwiches or smoking.

  The heat smelt and felt of another world. The din was from the same sphere. Yet everywhere was hope and geniality and by-your-leave as if weddings were in the wind and not the overture to death.

  Threading his way in and out among the motley swarm with a great black cheroot between his teeth and sweat running into his eyes from his helmet-band, Athelstan King strode at ease — at home — intent — amused — awake — and almost awfully happy. He was not in the least less happy because perfectly aware that a native was following him at a distance, although he did wonder how the native had contrived to pass within the lines.

  The general at Peshawur had compressed about a ton of miscellaneous information into fifteen hurried minutes, but mostly he had given him leave and orders to inform himself; so the fun was under way of winning exact knowledge in spite of officers, not one of whom would not have grown instantly suspicions at the first asked question. At the end of fifteen minutes there was not a glib staff-officer there who could have deceived him as to the numbers and destination of the force entraining.

  “Kerachi!” he told himself, chewing the butt of his cigar and keeping well ahead of the shadowing native. Always keep a “shadow” moving until you’re ready to deal with him is one of Cocker’s very soundest rules.

  “Turkey hasn’t taken a hand yet — the general said so. No holy war yet. These’ll be held in readiness to cross to Basra in case the Turks begin. While they wait for that at Kerachi the tribes won’t dare begin anything. One or two spies are sure to break North and tell them what this force is for — but the tribes won’t believe. They’ll wait until the force has moved to Basra before they take chances. Good! That means no especial hurry for me!”

  He did not have to return salutes, because he did not look for them. Very few people noticed him at all, although he was recognized once or twice by former messmates, and one officer stopped him with an out-stretched hand.

  “Shake hands, you old tramp! Where are you bound for next? Tibet by any chance — or is it Samarkand this time?”

  “Oh, hullo, Carmichel!” he answered, beaming instant good-fellowship. “Where are you bound for?” And the other did not notice that his own question had not been answered.

  “Bombay! Bombay — Marseilles — Brussels — Berlin!”

  “Wish you luck!” laughed King, passing on. Every living man there, with the exception of a few staff-officers, believed himself en route for Europe; their faces said as much. Yet King took another look at the piles of stores and at the kits the men carried.

  “Who’d take all that stuff to Europe, where they make it?” he reflected. “And what ‘u’d they use camel harness for in France?”

  At his leisure — in his own way, that was devious and like a string of miracles — he filtered toward the telegraph office. The native who had followed him all this time drew closer, but he did not let himself be troubled by that.

  He whispered proof of his identity to the telegraph clerk, who was a Royal Engineer, new to that job that morning, and a sealed telegram was handed to him at once. The “shadow” came very close indeed, presumably to try and read over his shoulder from behind, but he side-stepped into a corner and read the telegram with his back to the wall.

  It was in English, no doubt to escape suspicion; and because it was war-time, and the censorship had closed on India like a throttling string, it was not in code. So the wording, all things considered, had to be ingenious, for the Mirza Ali, of the Fort, Bombay, to whom it was addressed, could scarcely be expected to read more than between the lines. The lines had to be there to read between.

  “Cattle intended for slaughter,” it ran, “despatched Bombay on Fourteen down. Meet train. Will be inspected en route, but should be dealt with carefully, on arrival. Cattle inclined to stampede owing to bad scare received to North of Delhi. Take all precautions and notify Abdul.” It was signed “Suliman.”

  “Good!” he chuckled. “Let’s hope we get Abdul too. I wonder who he is!”

  Still uninterested in the man who shadowed him, he walked back to the office window and wrote two telegrams; one to Bombay, ordering the arrest of Ali Mirza of the Fort, with an urgent admonition to discover who his man Abdul might be, and to seize him as soon as found; the other to the station in the north, insisting on dose confinement for Suliman.

  “Don’t let him out on any terms at all!” he wired.

  That being all the urgent business, he turned leisurely to face his shadow, and the native met his eyes with the engaging frankness of an old friend, coming forward with outstretched hand. They did not shake hands, for King knew better than to fall into the first trap offered him. But the man made a signal with his fingers that is known to not more than a dozen men in all the world, and that changed the situation altogether.

  “Walk with me,” said King, and the man fell into stride beside him.

  He was a Rangar, — which is to say a Rajput who, or whose ancestors had turned Muhammadan. Like many Rajputs he was not a big man, but he looked fit and wiry; his head scarcely came above the level of King’s chin, although his turban distracted attention from the fact. The turban was of silk and unusually large.

  The whitest of well-kept teeth, gleaming regularly under a little black waxed mustache betrayed no trace of betel-nut or other nastiness, and neither his fine features nor his eyes suggested vice of the sort that often undermines the character of Rajput youth.

  On second thoughts, and at the next opportunity to see them, King was not so sure that the eyes were brown, and he changed his opinion about their color a dozen times within the hour. Once he would even have sworn they were green.

  The man was well-to-do, for his turban was of costly silk, and he was clad in expensive jodpur riding breeches and spurred black riding boots, all perfectly immaculate. The breeches, baggy above and tight, below, suggested the clean lines of cat-like agility and strength.

  The upper part of his costume was semi-European. He was a regular Rangar dandy, of the type that can be seen playing polo almost any day at Mount Abu — that gets into mischief with a grace due to practise and heredity — but that does not manage its estates too well, as a rule, nor pay its debts in a hurry.

  “My name is Rewa Gunga,” he said in a low voice, looking up sidewise at King a shade too guilelessly. Between Cape Comorin and the Northern Ice guile is normal, and its absence makes the wise suspicious.

  “I am Captain King.”

  “I have a message for you.”

  “From whom?”

  “From her!” said the Rangar, and without exactly knowing why, or being pleased with himself, King felt excited.

  They were walking toward the station exit. King had a trunk check in his hand, but returned it to pocket, not proposing just yet to let this Rangar over — hear instructions regarding the trunk’s destination; he was too good-looking and too overbrimming with personal charm to be trusted thus early in the game. Besides, there was that captured knife, that hinted at lies and treachery. Sec
ret signs as well as loot have been stolen before now.

  “I’d like to walk through the streets and see the crowd.”

  He smiled as he said that, knowing well that the average young Rajput of good birth would rather fight a tiger with cold steel than walk a mile or two. He drew fire at once.

  “Why walk, King sahib? Are we animals? There is a carriage waiting — her carriage — and a coachman whose ears were born dead. We might be overheard in the street. Are you and I children, tossing stones into a pool to watch the rings widen!”

  “Lead on, then,” answered King.

  Outside the station was a luxuriously modern victoria, with C springs and rubber tires, with horses that would have done credit to a viceroy. The Rangar motioned King to get in first, and the moment they were both seated the Rajput coachman set the horses to going like the wind. Rewa Gunga opened a jeweled cigarette case.

  “Will you have one?” he asked with the air of royalty entertaining a blood-equal.

  King accepted a cigarette for politeness’ sake and took occasion to admire the man’s slender wrist, that was doubtless hard and strong as woven steel, but was not much more than half the thickness of his own.

  The Rajputs as a race are proud of their wrists and hands. Their swords are made with a hilt so small that none save a Rajput of the blood could possibly use one; yet there is no race in all warring India, nor any in the world, that bears a finer record for hard fighting and sheer derring-do. One of the questions that occurred to King that minute was why this well-bred youngster whose age he guessed at twenty-two or so had not turned his attention to the army.

  “My height!”

  The man had read his thoughts!

  “Not quite tall enough. Besides — you are a soldier, are you not? And do you fight?”

  He nodded toward a dozen water-buffaloes, that slouched along the street with wet goatskin mussuks slung on their blue flanks.

  “They can fight,” he said smiling. “So can any other fool!” Then, after a minute of rather strained silence: “My message is from her.”