by Talbot Mundy
So, on the morning following the flight of Yasmini and Tess, Tom, sore-eyed from lack of sleep but with an eye-opener of raw brandy inside him, and a sense of irritation due to the absence of his dog, roundly cursed nine unhappy mahouts for having dared let an elephant steal his rum — drilled two companies of heavy infantry in marching order on parade until the sweat ran down into their boots and each miserable man saw two suns in the sky where one should be — dismissed them with a threat of extra parades for a month to come unless they picked their feet up cleaner — and reported, with his heart in his throat, at Gungadhura’s palace.
As luck would have it, the Sikh doctor was just leaving. It always suited that doctor to be very friendly with Tom Tripe, because there were pickings, in the way of sick certificates that Tom could pass along to him, and shortcomings that Tom could overlook. He told Tom that the maharajah was in no mood to be spoken to, and in no condition to be seen.
“Then you go back and tell his highness,” Tom retorted, “that I’ve got to speak with him! Business is business!”
The doctor used both hands to illustrate.
“But his cheek is cut with a great gash from here to here! He was testing a sword-blade in the armory, last night, and it broke and pierced him.”
“Hasn’t a soldier like me seen wounds before? I don’t swoon away at the sight of blood! He can do his talking through a curtain if he’s minded!”
“I would not dare, Mr. Tripe! He has given orders. You must ask one of the eunuchs — really.”
“I thought you and I were friends?” said Tom, with whiskers bristling.
“Always! I hope always! But in this instance—”
Tom folded both arms behind his back, drill-master-on-parade fashion.
“Suit yourself,” he answered. “Friendship’s friendship. Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. I want to see his highness. I want to see him bad. You’re the man that’s asked to turn the trick for me.”
“Well, Mr. Tripe, I will try. I will try. But what shall I tell him?”
Tom hesitated. That doctor was a more or less discreet individual, or he would not have been sent for. Besides, he had lied quite plausibly about the dagger-wound. But there are limits.
“Tell him,” he said presently, “that I’ve found the man who left that sword in his armory o’ purpose for to injure him! Say I need private and personal instructions quick!”
The doctor returned up the palace steps. Ten minutes later he came down again smiling, with the word that Tom was to be admitted. In a hurry, then, Tom’s brass spurs rang on Gungadhura’s marble staircase while a breathless major-domo tried to keep ahead of him. One takes no chances with a man who can change his mind as swiftly as Gungadhura habitually did. Without a glance at silver shields, boars’ heads, tiger-skins, curtains and graven gold ornaments beyond price, or any of the other trappings of royal luxury, Tom followed the major-domo into a room furnished with one sole divan and a little Buhl-work table. The maharajah, sprawling on the divan in a flowered silk deshabille and with his head swathed in bandages, ignored Tom Tripe’s salute, and snarled at the major-domo to take himself out of sight and hearing.
Soldier-fashion, as soon as the door had closed behind him Tom stood on no ceremony, but spoke first.
“There was a fracas last night, Your Highness, outside a certain palace gate.” He pronounced the word to rhyme with jackass, but Gungadhura was not in a mood to smile. “An escaped elephant bumped into the gate and bent it. The guard took to their heels; so I’ve locked ’em all up, solitary, to think their conduct over.”
The maharajah nodded.
“Good!” he said curtly.
“I cautioned the relieving guard that if they had a word to say to any one they’d follow the first lot into cells. It don’t do to have it known that elephants break loose that easy.”
“Good!”
“Subsequently, acting on instructions from Your Highness, I searched the cellar of Mr. Blaine’s house on the hill, Chamu the butler holding a candle for me.” “What did he see? What did that treacherous swine see?” snapped Gungadhura, pushing back the bandage irritably from the corner of his mouth.
“Nothing, Your Highness, except that he saw me lift a stone and look under it.”
“What did you see under the stone?”
“A silver tube, all wrought over with Persian patterns, and sealed at both ends with a silver cap and lots o’ wax.”
“Why didn’t you take it, you idiot?”
“Two reasons. Your Highness told me to report to you what I saw, not to take nothing. And Mr. Blaine came to the top of the cellar ladder and was damned angry. He’d have seen me if I’d pinched a cockroach. He was that angry that he locked the cellar door afterward, and nailed it down, and rolled a safe on top of it!”
“Did he suspect anything?”
“I don’t know, Your Highness.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Said I was looking for rum.”
“Doubtless he believed that; you have a reputation! You are an idiot! If you had brought away what you saw under that stone, you might have drawn your pension today and left India for good!”
Tom made no answer. The next move was Gungadhura’s. There was silence while a gold clock on the wall ticked off eighty seconds.
“You are an idiot!” Gungadhura broke out at last. “You have missed a golden opportunity! But if you will hold your tongue — absolutely — you shall draw your pension in a month or two from now, with ten thousand rupees in gold into the bargain!”
“Yes, Your Highness.” (A native of the country would have begun to try to bargain there and then. But there are more differences than one between the ranks of East and West; more degrees than one of dissimulation. Tom gravely doubted Gungadhura’s prospect of being in position to grant him a pension, or any other favor, a month or two from then. A native of the country would have bargained nevertheless.
“Keep that guard confined for the present. You have my leave to go.”
Tom saluted and withdrew. He was minded to spit on the palace steps, but refrained because the guard would surely have reported what he did to Gungadhura, who would have understood the act in its exact significance.
As he left the palace yard he passed a curtained two-wheeled cart drawn by small humped bulls, and turned his head in time to see the high priest of Jinendra heave his bulk out from behind the curtains and wheezily ascend the palace steps.
“A little ghostly consolation for the maharajah’s sins!” he muttered, as he headed toward his own quarters for another stiff glass of brandy and some sleep. He felt he needed both — or all three!
“If it’s true there’s no hell, then I’m on velvet!” he muttered. “But I’m a liar! A liar by imputation — by suggestion — by allegation — by collusion — and in fact! Now, if I was one o’ them Hindus I could hire a priest to sing a hymn and start me clean again from the beginning. Trouble is, I’m a complacent liar! I’ll do it again, and I know it! Brandy’s the right oracle for me!”
But there was no consolation, ghostly or otherwise, being brought to Gungadhura. Jinendra’s fat high priest, short-winded from his effort on the stairs, with aching hams and knees that trembled from exertion, was ushered into a chamber some way removed from that in which Tom Tripe had had his interview. The maharajah lay now with his head on the lap of Patali, his favorite dancing girl, in a room all scent and cushions and contrivances. (That was how Yasmini learned about it afterward.)
It was against all the canons of caste and decency to accord an interview to any one in that flagrant state of impropriety — to a high priest especially. But it amused Gungadhura to outrage the priest’s alleged asceticism, and to show him discourtesy (without in the least affecting his own superstitious scruples in the matter of religion.) Besides, his head ached, and he liked to have Patali’s resourcefulness and wit to reenforce his own tired intuition.
The priest sat for several minutes recovering breath and equipoise. T
hen, when the pain had left his thighs and he felt comfortable, he began with a bomb.
“Mukhum Dass the money-lender has been to me to give thanks, and to make a meager offering for the recovery of his lost title-deed! He has it back!”
Gungadhura swore so savagely that Patali screamed.
“How did he find it? Where?”
Mukhum Dass had told the exact truth, as it happened, but the priest had drawn his own conclusions from the fact that it was Samson’s babu who returned the document. He was less than ever sure of Gungadhura’s prospects, suspecting, especially since his own night-interview with the commissioner, that some new dark plot was being hatched on the English side of the river. Having no least objection to see Gungadhura in the toils, he did not propose to tell him more than would frighten and worry him.
“He said that a hand gave him the paper in the dark. It was the work of Jinendra doubtless.”
“Pah! Thy god functions without thee, then! That is a wondrous bellyful of brains of thine! Do you know that the princess has fled the palace?”
Jinendra’s priest feigned surprise.
“Is it not as clear as the stupidity on thy fat face that the ten-times casteless hussy is behind this? Bag of wind and widows’ tenths! Now I must buy the house on the hill from Mukhum Dass and pay the brute his price for it!”
“Borrowing the money from him first?” the priest suggested with a fat smirk. None guessed better than he how low debauch had brought the maharajah’s private treasury.
“Go and pray!” growled Gungadhura. “Are thy temple offices of no more use than to bring thee here twitting me with poverty? Go and lay that belly on the flags, and beat thy stupid brains out on the altar step! Jinendra will be glad to see thy dark soul on its way to Yum (the judge of the dead) and maybe will reward me afterward! Go! Get out here! Leave me alone to think!”
The priest went through the form of blessing him, taking more than the usual time about the ceremony for sake of the annoyance that it gave. Gungadhura was too superstitious to dare interrupt him.
“Better tell that Mukhum Dass to sell me the house cheap,” said the maharajah as a sort of afterthought. Patali had been whispering to him. “Tell him the gods would take it as an act of merit.”
“Cheap?” said the priest over his shoulder as he reached the door. “I proposed it to him.” (That was not exactly true. He had proposed that Mukhum Dass should give the title to the temple as an act of grace.) “He answered that what the gods have returned to him must be doubly precious and certainly entrusted to his keeping; therefore he would count it a deadly sin to part with the title now on any terms!”
“Go!” growled Gungadhura. “Get out of here!”
After the priest had gone he talked matters over with Patali, while she stroked his aching head. Whoever knows the mind of the Indian dancing girl could reason out the calculus of treason. They are capable of treachery and loyalty to several sides at once; of sale of their affections to the highest bidder, and of death beside the buyer in his last extremity, having sold his life to a rival whom they loathe. They are the very priestesses of subterfuge — idolators of intrigue — past — mistresses of sedition and seduction. Yet even Patali did not know the real reason why Gungadhura lusted for possession of that small house on the hill. She believed it was for a house of pleasure for herself.
“Persuade the American gold-digger to transfer the lease of it,” she suggested. “He is thy servant. He dare not refuse.”
But Gungadhura had already enough experience of Richard Blaine to suspect the American of limitless powers of refusal. He was superstitious enough to believe in the alleged vision of Jinendra’s priest, that the clue to the treasure of Sialpore would be found in the cellar of that house, where Jengal Singh had placed it; impious enough to double-cross the priest, and to use any means whatever, foul preferred, to get possession of the clue. But he was sensible enough to know that Dick Blaine could not be put out of his house by less than legal process. Patali, watching the expression of his eyes, mercurially changed her tactics.
“Today the court is closed,” she said. “Tomorrow Mukhum Dass will go to file his paper and defeat the suit of Dhulap Singh. He will ride by way of the ghat between the temple of Siva and the place where the dead Afghan kept his camels. He must ride that way, for his home is on the edge of town.”
But Gungadhura shook his head. He hardly dared seize Mukhum Dass or have him robbed, because the money-lender was registered as a British subject, which gave him full right to be extortionate in any state he pleased, with protection in case of interference. He could rob Dick Blaine with better prospect of impunity. Suddenly he decided to throw caution to the winds. Patali ceased from stroking his head, for she recognized in his eyes the blaze of determination, and it put all her instincts on the defensive.
“Pen, ink and paper!” he ordered.
Patali brought them, and he addressed the envelope first, practising the spelling and the none too easily accomplished English.
“Why to him?” she asked, watching beside his shoulder. “If you send him a letter he will think himself important. Word of mouth—”
“Silence, fool! He would not come without a letter.”
“Better to meet him, then, as if by accident and—”
“There is no time! That cursed daughter of my uncle is up to mischief.
She has fled. Would that Yum had her! She went to Samson days ago.
The English harass me. She has made a bargain with the English to
get the treasure first and ruin me. I need what I need swiftly!”
“Then the house is not for me?”
“No!”
He wrote the letter, scratching it laboriously in a narrow Italian hand; then sealed and sent it by a messenger. But Patali, sure in her own mind that her second thoughts had been best and determined to have the house for her own, went out to set spies to keep a very careful eye on Mukhum Dass and to report the money-lender’s movements to her hour by hour.
In less than an hour Dick Blaine arrived by dog-cart in answer to the note, and Patali did her best to listen through a keyhole to the interview. But she was caught in the act by Gungadhura’s much neglected queen, and sent to another part of the palace with a string of unedifying titles ringing in her ears.
There was not a great deal to hear. Dick Blaine was perfectly satisfied to let the maharajah search his cellar. He was almost suspiciously complaisant, making no objection whatever to surrendering the key and explaining at considerable length just how it would be easiest to draw the nails. He would be away from home all day, but Chamu the butler would undoubtedly admit the maharajah and his men. For the rest, he hoped they would find what they were looking for, whatever that might be; and he sincerely hoped that the maharajah had not hurt his head seriously.
Asked why he had nailed the cellar door down, he replied that he objected to unauthorized people nosing about in there.
“Who has been in the cellar?” asked Gungadhura.
“Only Tom Tripe.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite. Until that very evening I always kept the cellar padlocked. It’s a Yale lock. There’s nobody in this man’s town could pick it.”
“Well — thank you for the permission.”
“Don’t mention it. I hope your head don’t hurt you much. Good morning.”
Dick little suspected, as he drove the dog-cart across the bridge toward the club, chuckling over the quick success of Yasmini’s ruse, that he himself had set the stage for tragedy.
Chapter Fifteen
He who sets a tiger-trap
(Hush! and watch! and wait!)
Can’t afford a little nap
Hidden where the twigs enwrap
Lest — it has occurred — mayhap
A jackal take the bait.
So stay awake, my sportsman bold,
And peel your anxious eye,
There’s more than tigers, so I’m told,
To test your cu
nning by!
“Me for the princess!”
It is not always an entirely simple matter in India to dismiss domestic servants. To begin with it was Sunday; the ordinary means of cashing checks were therefore unavailable, and Dick Blaine had overlooked the fact that he had no money of small denominations in the house. It was hardly reasonable to expect Chamu and the cook to leave without their wages.
Then again, Sita Ram had not yet sent new servants to replace the potential poisoners; and Chamu had put up a piteous bleating, using every argument, from his being an orphan and the father of a son, down to the less appealing one that Gungadhura would be angry. In vain Dick reassured him that he and cook and maharajah might all go to hell together with his, Dick Blaine’s, express permission. In vain he advised him to put the son to work, and be supported for a while in idleness. Chamu lamented noisily. Finally Dick compromised by letting both servants remain for one more day, reflecting that they could not very well tamper with boiled eggs; lunch and dinner he would get at the English club across the river; for breakfast on Monday he would content himself again with boiled eggs, and biscuits out of an imported tin, after which he would cash a check and send both the rascals packing.
So the toast that Chamu brought him he broke up and threw into the garden, where the crows devoured it without apparent ill-effect; he went without tea, and spent an hour or so after breakfast with a good cigar and a copy of a month-old Nevada newspaper. That religious rite performed, he shaved twice over, it being Sunday, and strolled out to look at the horses and potter about the garden that was beginning to shrivel up already at the commencement of the hot weather.
“If I knew who would be maharajah of this state from one week to the next,” he told himself, “I’d get a contract from him to pipe water all over the place from the hills behind.”
He was sitting in the shade, chewing an unlit cigar, day-dreaming about water-pressure and dams and gallons-per-hour, when Gungadhura’s note came and he ordered the dog-cart at once, rather glad of something to keep him occupied. As he drove away he did not see Mukhum Dass lurking near the small gate, as it was not intended that he should. Mukhum Dass, for his part, did not see Pinga, the one-eyed beggar with his vertical smile, who watched him from behind a rock, for that was not intended either. Pinga himself was noticed closely by another man.