by Talbot Mundy
“You bet!”
“Well — it wasn’t registered. I doubt if you could have enforced it.
Gungadhura is an awful rascal.”
“Gee!” lied Dick. “I never thought of that! I had my other contract registered all right — in your office — you remember?”
“Yes. I warned you at the time about Gungadhura.”
“You did. I remember now. You did. Well, I suppose the wife and I’ll be heading for the U. S. A. soon, richer by the experience. Still — I reckon I’ll wait around and see the new maharajah in the saddle, and watch what comes of it.”
“You’ve no chance, Blaine, believe me!”
“All right, I’ll think it over. Meanwhile, I’ll whistle off these men.”
The next man Samson interviewed was Willoughby de Wing.
“Let me have a commissioner’s escort, please,” he demanded. “I’m going to see Gungadhura now! You’d better follow up with a troop to r eplace the maharajah’s guards around his palace. We can’t put him under arrest without impeaching him; but — make it pretty plain to the guard they’re there to protect a man who has abdicated; that no one’s to be allowed in, and nobody out unless he can explain his business. Then, can you spare some guards for another job? I want about twenty men on the River Palace at once. Caution them carefully. Nobody’s to go inside the grounds. Order the maharajah’s guards away! It’s a little previous. His officers will try to make trouble of course. But an apology at the proper time will cover that.”
“What’s the new excitement?” asked the colonel. “More murders?
More princesses out at night?”
“This is between you and me. Not a word to a living soul, De Wing!”
Samson paused, then whispered: “The treasure of Sialpore!”
“What — in the palace?”
“In the grounds! There’s a tunnel already half-dug, leading toward it from inside the palace wall. I’ve proof of the location in my pocket!”
“Gad’s teeth!” barked Willoughby de Wing. “All right, I’ll have your escort in a jiffy. Have a whisky and soda, my boy, to stiffen you before the talk with Gungadhura!”
A little less than half an hour later Samson drove across the bridge in the official landau, followed by an officer, a jemadar, a naik and eight troopers of De Wing’s Sikh cavalry. Willoughby de Wing drove in the carriage with him as a witness. They entered the palace together, and were kept waiting so long that Samson sent the major-domo to the maharajah a second time with a veiled threat to repeat, said slowly:
“Say the business is urgent and that I shall not be held responsible for consequences if he doesn’t see me at once!”
“Gad!” swore De Wing, screwing in his monocle. “I’d like a second whisky and soda! I suppose there’s none here. I hate to see a man broke — even a blackguard!”
Gungadhura received them at last, seated, in the official durbar room. The bandages were gone from his face, but a strip of flesh-colored court-plaster from eye to lip gave him an almost comical look of dejection, and he lolled in the throne-chair with his back curved and head hung forward, scowling as a man does not who looks forward to the interview.
Samson cleared his throat, and read what be had to say, holding the paper straight in front of him.
“I have a disagreeable task of informing Your Highness that your correspondence with the Mahsudi tribe is known to His Majesty’s Government.”
Gungadhura scowled more deeply, but made no answer.
“Amounting as it does to treason, at a time when His Majesty’s Government are embarrassed by internal unrest, your act can not be overlooked.”
Gungadhura made a motion as if to interrupt, but thought better of it.
“In the circumstances I have the honor to advise Your Highness that the wisest course, and the only course that will avoid impeachment, is abdication.”
Gungadhura shook his head violently.
“I can explain,” he said. “I have proofs.”
Samson turned the paper over — paused a moment — and began to read the second sheet.
“It is known who murdered Mukhum Dass. The assassin has been caught, and has confessed.”
Gungadhura’s eyes that had been dull, and almost listless hitherto, began to glare like an animal’s.
“I have here—” Samson reached in his pocket, “a certain piece of parchment — a map in fact — that was stolen from the body of Mukhum Dass. Perhaps Your Highness will recognize it. Look!”
Gungadhura looked, and started like a man stung. Samson returned the map to his pocket, for the maharajah almost looked like trying to snatch it; but instead he collapsed in his chair again.
“If I abdicate?” he asked, as if his throat and lips could hardly form the words.
“That would be sufficient. The assassin would then be allowed to plead guilty to another charge there is against him, and the matter would be dropped.”
“I abdicate!”
“On behalf of His Majesty’s Government I accept the abdication. Sign this, please.”
Samson laid a formal written act of abdication on the table by the throne.
Gungadhura signed it. Willoughby de Wing wrote his signature as witness.
Samson took it back and folded it away.
“Arrangements will be made for Your Highness to leave Sialpore tomorrow morning, with a sufficient escort for your protection. Provision will be made in due course for your private residence elsewhere. Be good enough to hold yourself and your family in readiness tomorrow morning.”
“But my son!” exclaimed Gungadhura. “I abdicate in favor of my son!”
“In case of abdication by a reigning prince, or deposition of a reigning prince,” said Samson, “the Government of India reserves the right to appoint his successor, from among eligible members of his family if there be any, but to appoint his successor in any case. There is ample precedent.”
“And my son?”
“Will certainly not be considered.”
Gungadhura glanced about him like a frenzied man, and then lay back in a state of near-collapse. Samson and De Wing both bowed, and left the room.
“Poor devil!” said De Wing, “I’m sorry for him.”
“Would you be a good fellow,” said Samson, “and send off this wire for me? There — I’ve added the exact time of the abdication. I’ve got to go now and summon a durbar of Gungadhura’s state officers, and tell them in confidence what’s happened. I shall hint pretty broadly that Utirupa is our man, and then ask them which prince they’d like to have succeed.”
“Good!” said De Wing. “Nothing like tact! Why not meet me at the club for a whisky and soda afterward?”
Inside the durbar hall Gungadhura sat alone for just so long as it took the sound of the closing door to die away. Then another door, close behind the throne chair opened, and Patali entered. She looked at him with pity on her face, and curiosity.
“That American sold you,” she said after a minute.
“Eh?”
“I say, that American sold you! He sold you, and the map, and the treasure to the English!”
“I know it! I know it!”
“If I were a man—”
She waited, but he gave no sign of manhood.
“If I were a man I know what I would do!”
“Peace, Patali! I am a ruined man. They will all desert me as soon as the news is out. They are deserting now; I feel it in my bones. I have none to send.”
“Send? It is only maharajahs who must send. Men do their own work!
I know what I would do to an American or any other man, who sold me!”
Chapter Twenty-One
The king sent his army and said, “Lo, I did it. Consider my prowess and my strategy!” But the gods laughed. — Eastern proverb
“The guns of the gods!”
Very shortly after dawn on the morning of the polo game Yasmini left the Blaines’ house on business of her own. The news of Gungadhura’s abdication was abroad
already, many times multiplied by each mouth until two batteries of guns had become an army corps. But what caused the greatest excitement was the news, first of all whispered, then confirmed, that Gungadhura himself was missing.
That disturbing knowledge was the factor that prevented Yasmini from returning to her own rifled palace and making the best of it; for it would take time to hedge the place about properly with guards. There was simply no knowing what Gungadhura might be up to. She judged it probable that he had seen through her whole plot in the drear light of revelation that so often comes to stricken men, and in that case her own life was likely in danger every second he was still at liberty. But she sent word to Utirupa, too, to be on the alert. And she saw him herself that morning, in her favorite disguise of a rangar zemindari, which is a Rajput landowner turned Muhammadan. The disguise precluded any Hindu interference, and Muhammadans on that country-side, who might have questioned her, were scarce.
The polo did not take place until late afternoon, because of the heat, but the grounds were crowded long before the time by a multi-colored swarm in gala mood, whom the artillerymen, pressed into service as line-keepers, had hard work to keep back of the line. There was a rope around three sides of the field, but it broke repeatedly, and in the end the gunners had to be stationed a few feet apart all down the side opposite the grand-stand to keep the crowd from breaking through.
There were carriages in swarms, ranging from the spider-wheel gig of a British subaltern to the four-in-hand of Rajput nobility — kept pretty carefully apart, though. The conquerors of India don’t mix with the conquered, as a rule, except officially. And there were half a dozen shuttered carriages that might have contained ladies, and might not; none knew.
It was a crowd that knew polo from the inside outward, and when the ponies were brought at last and stood in line below the grand-stand, each in charge of his sais, there grew a great murmur of critical approval; for the points of a horse in Rajputana are as the lines of a yacht at Marblehead, and the marks of a dog in Yorkshire; the very urchins know them. The Bombay side of India had been scoured pretty thoroughly for mounts for that event. The Rajputs had on the whole the weight of money, and perhaps the showiest ponies, but the English team, nearly all darker in color as it happened, except for one pie-bald, looked trained up to the last notch and bore the air of knowing just what to expect, that is as unmistakable in horses as in men.
Tom Tripe was there with his dog. Trotters had the self-imposed and wholly agreeable task of chasing all unattached dogs off the premises. But Tom Tripe himself was keeping rather in the background, because technically, as a servant of Gungadhura, he was in a delicate position. A voice that he could swear he almost recognized whispered to him in the crowd that the English were going to forbid the next maharajah to have any but employees of his own race. And a laugh that he could pick out of a million greeted his change of countenance. But though he turned very swiftly, and had had no brandy since morning to becloud his vision, he failed to see his tormentor.
Tess and Dick drove down in ample time, as they had imagined, and found hard work to squeeze the dog-cart in between the phalanxes of wheels already massed on the ground. When they went to the grand-stand it was to find not a seat left in the rows reserved for ordinary folk; so Samson, who arrived late too, magnificent in brand-new riding-boots, invited them to sit next him in front.
The ground was in perfect condition — a trifle hard, because of the season, but flat as a billiard table and as fast as even Rajputs could desire. A committee of them had been going over it daily for a week past, recommending touches here, suggesting something there, neglecting not an inch, because the finer stick-work of the Rajput team would be lost on uneven ground; and the English had been sportsmen enough to accommodate them without a murmur.
When a little bell rang and the teams turned out for the first chukker in deathly-silence, it was evident at once what the Rajput strategy would be. They had brought out their fastest ponies to begin with, determined to take the lead at the start and hold it.
One could hear the crowd breathe when the whistle blew; for in India polo is a game to watch, not an opportunity for small talk. Instantly the ball went clipping toward the English goal, to be checked by Topham at full-back, who sent it out rattling to the right wing. But the Rajput left-wing man, a young cousin of Utirupa, cut in like an arrow. The ball crossed over to the right wing, where Utirupa took it, galloping down the line on a chestnut mare that had the speed of wind. Topham, racing to intercept the ball, missed badly; a second later the Rajput center thundered past both men and scored the goal, amid a roar from the spectators, less than a minute from the start.
“Dick!” Tess exclaimed. “You ought to be ashamed of me! I’m rooting for the Rajputs against my own color!”
“So’m I!” he answered. “I wish to glory there was some one here to bet with!”
Samson overheard.
“Which way do you want to bet?” he asked.
“A thousand on the Rajputs.”
“Thousand what?”
“Dollars. Three thousand rupees.”
“Confound it, you Americans are all too rich! Never mind, I’ll take you.”
“A bet!” Dick answered, and both men wrote it down.
About nine words were said by the captain of the English team as they rode back to the center of the field, and when the ball was in play again there was no more of the scattering open play that suited the other side, but a close, short-hitting, chop-and-follow method that tried ponies’ tempers, and a scrimmage every ten yards that made all unavailing the Rajputs’ speed and dash. Whenever a stroke of lightning wrist-work sent the ball clipping down-field Topham returned it to the center and the scrimmage began all over again. The first chukker ended in mid-field, with the score 1 — 0.
Both sides brought out fresh ponies for the second, and the Rajputs tried again to score with their favorite tactics of long-hitting and tremendous speed. But the English were playing dogged-does-it, and Topham on the pie-bald at full back was invincible. Nothing passed him. Nor were the English slow. Three times they seized opportunity in mid-field and rode with a burst of fiery hitting toward the Rajput goal. Three times the gunners down the line began to yell. The English team were getting together, and the Rajputs a little wild. But the chukker ended with the same score, 1 — 0.
“How d’you feel about it now?” asked Samson, looking as calm as the
English habitually do whenever their pulse beats furiously.
“I’d like to bet too!” Tess laughed, leaning across.
“What — the same sized bet?”
“No, a hundred.”
“Dollars ?”
“Rupees!” she laughed. “I’m not so rich as my husband.”
“Can’t refuse a lady!” Samson answered, noting the bet down. “I shall be a rich man tonight. They play a brilliant game, those fellows, but we always beat them in the end.”
“How do you account for that?” Dick asked, suspecting what was coming.
“Oh, in a number of ways, but chiefly because they lack team-loyalty among themselves. They’re all jealous of one another, whereas our fellows play as a unit.”
As if in confirmation of Samson’s words the Rajput team seemed rather to go to pieces in the third chukker. There was the same brilliant individual hitting, and as much speed as ever, but the genius was not there. In vain Utirupa took the ball out of a scrimmage twice and rode away with it. He was not backed up in the nick of time, and before the end of the third minute the English scored.
“You’d better go and hedge those bets,” laughed Samson when the chukker ended. “There are plenty of the native gentry over yonder who’d be delighted to gamble a fortune with you yet!”
Dick scarcely heard. He was watching Utirupa, who stood by the pony-line where a sais was doing something to a saddle girth. A rangar came up to the prince and spoke to him — a slim, young-looking man, a head the shorter of the two, with a turban rather low over
his eyes, and the loose end of it, for some reason, across the lower half of his face. Dick nudged Tess, and she nodded. After that Utirupa appeared to speak in low tones to each member of his own team.
“I beg your pardon. What was that you said?” asked Dick.
“I say you’d better hedge those bets.”
“I’ll double with you, if you like!”
“Good heavens, man! I’ve wagered a month’s pay already! Go and bet with Willoughby de Wing or one of the gunner officers.”
The rangar disappeared into the crowd before the teams rode out for the fourth encounter, and Tess, who had made up her mind to watch the shuttered carriages that stood in line together in a roped enclosure of their own, became too busy with the game. Something had happened to the Rajputs. They no longer played with the gallery-appealing smash-and-gallop fury that won them the first goal, although their speed held good and the stick-work was marvelous. But they seemed more willing now to mix it in the middle of the field, and to ride off an opponent instead of racing for the chance to shine individually. It became the English turn to drive to the wings and try to clear the ball for a hurricane race down-field; and they were not quite so good at those tactics as the other side were.
All the rest of that game until the eighth, chukker after chukker, the Rajputs managed to reverse the usual procedure, obliging the English team to wear itself out in terrific efforts to break away, tiring men and ponies in a tight scramble in which neither side could score.
“It looks like a draw after all,” said Samson. “Bets off in that case, I suppose?
Disappointing game in my opinion.”
“’Tisn’t over yet,” said Dick.
The Rajputs were coming out for the last chukker with their first and fastest ponies that had rested through the game; and they were smiling. Utirupa had said something that was either a good joke or else vastly reassuring. As a matter of fact he had turned them loose at last to play their old familiar game again, and from the second that the ball went into play the crowd was on tiptoe, swaying this and that way with excitement.