by Talbot Mundy
“Well — I will take the hazard. Bring them in. But I will not feed them. And if you fail to come for them before dawn I will turn them out and it shall be all over Sialpore that the Princess Yasmini—”
“One moment, Mukhum Dass! If one word of this escapes your lips for a month to come, you shall go to jail for receiving stolen money in payment of a debt! My name was on the money that Chamu paid you with. You knew he stole it.”
“I did not know!”
“Prove that in court, then!”
“Bring the women in!” he grumbled. “I am no cackler from the roofs!”
Yasmini did not wait for him to change his mind but shepherded her scared dependents through the door, and called for Ismail.
“Did you see these women enter?” she demanded.
“Aye. I saw. Have I not eyes?”
“Stay thou here outside and watch. Afterward, remember, if I say nothing, be thou dumb as Tom Tripe’s dog. But if I give the word, tell all Sialpore that Mukhum Dass is a satyr who holds revels in his house by night. Bring ten other men to swear to it with thee, until the very children of the streets shout it after him when he rides his rounds! Hast thou understood? Silence for silence! But talk for talk! Hast thou heard, too, Mukhum Dass? Good! Shut thy door tight, but thy mouth yet tighter! And try rather to take liberties with hornets than with those five women!”
Before he could answer she was gone, leaving Ismail lurking in the shadows. Tess had dismounted from behind Tom Tripe and climbed up beside her husband so that there were three on the front seat again.
“Now, Tom Tripe!” Yasmini ordered, speaking with the voice of command that Tom himself would have used to a subordinate. “Do you as the elephant did, and cause distraction. Draw Gungadhura off the scent!”
“Hell’s bells, deary me, Your Ladyship!” he answered. “All the drawing I’ll do after this night’s work will be my last month’s pay, and lucky if I see that! Lordy knows what the guard’ll tell the maharajah, nor what his rage’ll add to it!”
“Nonsense! Gungadhura and the guard ran from the elephant like dust before the wind. The guards are the better men, and will be back at their post before this; but Gungadhura must find a discreet physician to bind a slit face for him! Visit the guard now, and get their ear first. Tell them Gungadhura wants no talk about tonight’s work. Then come to Blaine sahib’s house and search the cellar by lamplight, letting Chalmu the butler see you do it, but taking care not to let him see what you see. What you do see, leave where it lies! Then see Gungadhura early in the morning—”
“Lordy me, Your Ladyship, he’ll—”
“No, he won’t. He’ll want to know how much you know about his behavior at the gate. Tell him you know everything, and that you’ve compelled the guard to keep silence. That ought to reconcile the coward! But if he threatens you, then threaten him! Threaten to go to Samson sahib with the whole story. (But if you do dare really go to Samson sahib, never look me in the face again!) Then tell Gungadhura that you searched the cellar, and what you saw there under a stone, adding that Blaine sahib was suspicious, and watched you, and afterward sealed the cellar door. Have you understood me?”
“I understand there’s precious little sleep for me tonight, and hell in the morning!”
“Pouf! Are you a soldier?”
“I’m your ladyship’s most thorough-paced admirer and obedient slave!”
Tom answered gallantly, his mutton-chop whiskers fairly bristling with a grin.
“Prove it, then, this night!”
“As if I hadn’t! Well — all’s well, Your Ladyship, I’m on the job! Crib, crupper and breakfast-time, yours truly!”
“When you have finished interviewing Gungadhura, find for Blaine sahib a new cook and a new butler, who can be trusted not to poison him!”
“If I can!”
“Of course you can find them! Tell Sita Ram, Samson sahib’s babu, what is wanted. He will find men in one hour who have too much honor, and too little brains, and too great fear to poison any one! Say that I require it of him. Have your understood? Then go! Go swiftly to the guard and stop their tongues!”
Tom whistled his dog and rode off at a canter. Dick gave the horse his head and drove home as fast as the steepness of the hill permitted, Yasmini talking to him nearly all the way.
“You must dismiss Chamu,” she insisted. “He is Gungadhura’s man, and the cook is under the heel of Chamu. Either man would poison his own mother for a day’s pay! Send them both about their business the first thing in the morning if you value your life! Before they go, let them see you put a great lock on the cellar door, and nail it as well, and put weights on it! If men come at any time to pry about the house, ask Samson sahib for a special policeman to guard the place!”
“But what is all this leading to?” demanded Dick. “What does it mean?”
“It means,” she said slowly, “that the toils are closing in on Gungadhura!”
“The way I figure it,” he answered, “some one else had a pretty narrow shave tonight!”
Yasmini knew better than to threaten Dick, or even to argue with him vehemently, much less give him orders. But each man has a line of least resistance.
“Your wife has told you what Gungadhura attempted?” she asked him.
“Yes, while you were at the money-lender’s — something of it.”
“If the guard should tell Gungadhura that your wife was in the palace with me and could give evidence against him, what do you suppose Gungadhura would do?”
“Damn him!” Dick murmured.
“There are so many ways — snakes — poison — daggers in the dark—”
“What do you suggest?” he asked her. “Leave Sialpore?”
“Yes, but with me! I know a safe place. She should come with me.”
“When?”
“Tonight! Before dawn.”
“How?”
“By camel. I had horses and Gungadhura took them all, but his brain was too sotted to think of camels, and I have camels waiting not many miles from here! I shall take my horse from your stable and ride for the camels, bringing them to the house of Mukhum Dass. Let your wife meet me there one hour before dawn.”
“Dick!” said Tess, with her arm around him. “I want to go! I know it sounds crazy, and absurd, and desperate; but I’m sure it isn’t! I want you to let me go with her.”
They reached the house before he answered, he, turning it over and over in his mind, taking into reckoning a thousand things.
“Well,” he said at last, “once in a while there’s the strength of a man about you, Tess. Maybe I’m a lunatic, but have it your own way, girl, have it your own way!”
Chapter Ten
In odor of sweet sanctity I bloom,
With surplus of beatitude I bless,
I’m the confidant of Destiny and Doom,
I’m the apogee of knowledge more or less.
If I lie, it is to temporize with lying
Lest obliquity should suffer in the light.
If I prey upon the widow and the dying,
They withheld; and I compel them to do right.
I am justified in all that I endeavor,
If I fail it is because the rest are fools.
I’m serene and unimpeachable forever,
The upheld, ordained interpreter of rules.
“Discretion is better part of secrecy!”
Some of what follows presently was told to Yasmini afterward by Sita Ram,
some of it by Tom Tripe, and a little by Dick Blaine, who had it from
Samson himself. The rest she pieced together from admissions by
Jinendra’s fat priest and the gossip of some dancing girls.
Sir Roland Samson, K. C. S. I., as told already, was a very demon for swift office work, routine pouring off him into the hands of the right subordinates like water into the runnels of a roof, leaving him free to bask in the sunshine of self-complacency. But there is work that can not be tackled, or even touched by subord
inates; and, the fixed belief of envious inferiors to the contrary notwithstanding, there are hours unpaid for, unincluded in the office schedule, and wholly unadvertised that hold such people as commissioners in durance vile.
On the night of Yasmini’s escape Samson sat sweating in his private room, with moths of a hundred species irritating him by noisy self- immolation against the oil lamp-whose smoke made matters worse by being sucked up at odd moments by the punkah, pulled jerkily by a new man. Most aggravating circumstance of all, perhaps, was that the movement of the punkah flickered his papers away whenever he removed a weight. Yet he could not study them unless he spread them all in front of him; and without the punkah he felt he would die of apoplexy. He had to reach a decision before midnight.
Babu Sita Ram was supposed to be sitting tinder a punkah in the next room, with a locked door between him and his master. He was staying late, by special request and as a special favor, to copy certain very important but not too secret documents in time for the courier next day. There were just as many insects to annoy him, and the punkah flapped his papers too; but fat though he was, and sweat though he did, his smile was the smile of a hunter. From time to time he paused from copying, stole silently to the door between the offices, gingerly removed a loose knot from a panel, and clapped to the hole first one, and then the other avidious brown eye.
Samson wished to goodness there was some one he dared consult with. There were other Englishmen, of course, but they were all ambitious like himself. He felt that his prospects were at stake. News had reached the State Department (by channels Sita Ram could have uncovered for him) that Gungadhura was intriguing with tribes beyond the northwest frontier.
The tribes were too far away to come in actual touch with Sialpore, although they were probably too wild and childish to appreciate that fact. The point was that Gungadhura was said to be promising them armed assistance from the British rear — assistance that he never would possibly be able to render them; and his almost certain intention was, when the rising should materialize, to offer his small forces to the British as an inexpensive means of quelling the disturbance, thus restoring his own lost credit and double-crossing all concerned. A subtle motive, subtly suspected.
It was no new thing in the annals of Indian state affairs, nor anything to get afraid about; but what the State Department desired to know was, why Sir Roland Samson, K. C. S. I., was not keeping a closer eye on Gungadhura, what did he propose as the least troublesome and quietest solution, and would he kindly answer by return.
All that was bad enough, because a “beau ideal commissioner” rather naturally feels distressed when information of that sort goes over his head or under his feet to official superiors. But he could have got around it. It should not have been very difficult to write a report that would clear himself and give him time to turn around.
But that very evening no less an individual than the high priest of Jinendra had sent word by Sita Ram that he craved the favor of an interview.
“And,” had added Sita Ram with malicious delight, “it is about the treasure of Sialpore and certain claims to it that I think he wants to see you.”
“Why should he come by night?” demanded Samson.
“Because his errand is a secret one,” announced the babu, with a hand on his stomach as if he had swallowed something exquisite.
So Samson was in a quandary, going over secret records getting ready for an issue with the priest. His report had to be ready by morning, yet he hardly dared begin it without knowing what the priest might have in mind; and on his own intricate knowledge of the situation might depend whether or not he could extract, from a man more subtle than himself, information on which to base sound proposals to his government. His reputation was decidedly at stake; and dangerous intrigue was in the air, or else the priest would never be coming to visit him.
Sita Ram kept peeping at him through the knot-hole, as a cook peers at a tit-bit in the oven, to judge whether it is properly cooked yet.
Jinendra’s priest had had time for reflection. True to his kidney, he trusted nobody, unlike Yasmini who knew whom to trust, and when, and just how far. It was all over the city that Gungadhura’s practises were hastening his ruin, so it was obviously wise not to espouse the maharajah’s cause, in addition to which he had become convinced in his own mind that Yasmini actually knew the whereabouts of the Sialpore treasure. But he did not trust Yasmini either, nor did he relish her scornful promise of a mere percentage of the hoard when it should at last be found. He wanted at least the half of it, bargains to the contrary notwithstanding; and he had that comfortable conscience that has soothed so many priests, that argues how the church must be above all bargains, all bonds, all promises. Was there any circumstance, or man, or woman who could bind and circumscribe Jinendra’s high priest? He laughed at the suggestion of it. Samson was the man to see — Samson the man to be inveigled in the nets. So he sent his verbal message by the mouth of Sita Ram — a very pious devotee of Jinendra by Yasmini’s special orders; and, disguising his enormous bulk in a thin cloak, set forth long after dark in a covered cart drawn by two tiny bulls.
There were two doors to Sita Ram’s small office; two to Samson’s large one — three doors in all, because they shared the connecting one (that was locked just now) in common. At the first sound of the long- awaited heavy footsteps on the outer porch Sita Ram hurried to do the honors, and presently ushered into Samson’s presence the enormous bulk of the high priest, spreading a clean cloth for him on an easy chair because the priest’s caste put it out of the question for him to sit on leather defiled by European trousers.
Then, while the customary salaams were taking place, and the customary questions about health and other matters that neither cared a fig about, Sita Ram ostentatiously drew a curtain part-way over the connecting door, and retired by way of the other door and the passage to remove the knot from its hole.
It was part of Samson’s pride, and one of his stoutest rungs in the ladder of preferment, that be knew more Indian languages than any other man of his rank in the service, and knew them well. There were asterisks and stars and twiggly marks against his name in the blue book that would have passed muster as a secret code, and every one of them betokened passed examinations in some Eastern tongue. So he was fully able to meet the high priest on his own ground, as well as conscious of the advantage he held to begin with, in that the priest had come to him instead of his going to the priest.
“Well?” he demanded, cutting the pleasantries short abruptly as soon as Sita Ram had closed the door.
“I came to speak of politics.”
“I listen.”
Samson leaned back and scrutinized his visitor with deliberate rudeness.
Having the upper hand he proposed to hold it.
But Jinendra’s high priest was no beginner either in the game of Beggar-my-neighbor. He understood the value of a big trump to begin with, provided there is other ammunition in reserve.
“The whereabouts of the treasure of Sialpore is known!”
“The deuce it is!” said Samson, in good plain English. “Who knows it?” he demanded.
The high priest smiled.
Samson, as was natural, felt that tingling up and down the spine and quickening of the heart-beats that announces crisis in one’s personal affairs, but concealed it admirably. It was the high priest’s turn to speak. He waited.
“Half of that treasure belongs to the priesthood of Jinendra,” said the priest at last.
“Since when?”
“Since the beginning.”
“Why?”
“We were keepers of the treasure once years ago, before the English came. There came a time when the reigning rajah deceived us by a trick, including murder; and ever since the English took control the priests have had less and less authority. There has been no chance to — to bring any — to put pressure — to reestablish our rights. Nevertheless, our rights in the matter were never surrendered.”
“What do
you mean by that exactly?”
“The English are now the real rulers of Sialpore.”
Samson nodded. That was a significant admission, coming from a
Brahman priest.
“They should claim the treasure. But they can not claim it without knowing where it is. The priests of Jinendra are entitled to their half.”
“You mean you are willing that my government should take half the treasure, provided the priests of Jinendra get the other half of it?”
The priest moved his head and his lips in a way that might be taken to mean anything.
“If you know where the treasure is, dig it up,” said Samson, “and you shall have your answer!”
Yasmini in the heat of excitement had called Samson an idiot, but he was far from being that, as she knew as well as any one. He judged in that moment that if Jinendra’s priest knew really where the treasure was, he would never have come to drive a bargain for the half of it, but would have taken all and said nothing. On the other hand, it well might be that Gungadhura’s searchers had stumbled on it. In that case, there was that secret letter from headquarters hurriedly placed in his top drawer when the priest came in, that would give good excuse for putting screws on Gungadhura. A coup d’etat was not beyond the pale of possibility. As a champion of indiscretion and a judge of circumstances, he would dare. The gleam in his eyes betrayed that he would dare, and the priest grew uneasy.
“It is not I who know where the treasure is. I know who knows.”
“You mean Gungadhura knows!”
The priest smiled again. The commissioner was not such a dangerous antagonist after all. Samson’s eyes betrayed disappointment, and the priest took heart of grace.
“For one-half of the treasure I will tell you who it is that knows. You can take possession of the of the person. Then—”
“Illegal. By what right could I arrest a person simply because some one else asserts without proof that that person knows where the treasure is?”
“Not arrest, perhaps. But you might protect.”
“From whom? From what?”
“Gungadhura suspects. He might use poison — torture — might carry the person off into hiding—”