by Talbot Mundy
“Crowbar!”
Ali Sikunderam — to employ their estimate — scattered in search of cold iron, while Jeff continued torturing his fingers vainly. One of the sons came in from the street on a run with loot from a Moslem godown. Blood on his forearm told the story — view of a crowbar through a window — action — acquisition.
“Good!” said Ramsden, and the woodwork began splintering forthwith — old teak, as dry and hard as temple timber, ripping apart with a cry as if it lived, and desired to live.
“Get a rope — or a ladder!” Ramsden grunted.
Out on the sidewalk, under Jeremy’s running fire of comment and advice, Narayan Singh had vomited and was showing other signs of resuming the burden of life, as Jeremy had prophesied. Cyprian, on the contrary, had fallen into the easy sleep that overtakes old folk and infants, so that Jeremy, sniffing to make sure the gas was all gone, carried him inside presently and up the narrow stone stairs to the first-floor bedroom — clean, simple, severe as a monastery, yet comfortable, since only the needless things were missing.
The head of the bed was backed against an iron door that was papered over, white like the rest of the walls, with an overlapping fringe to hide the tell-tale crack.
The legs of the bed were set tight against wooden blocks screwed down to the floor, with the obvious purpose of re-enforcing the lock that was low enough down on the door to be hidden by the bed-frame. Jeremy noticed how tightly the casters were jammed against the blocks, as if they had been subjected to tremendous pressure, and it was that, as he laid Cyprian down, that caused him to scrutinize the door more curiously.
He is sure of his senses, having trained them. Too used to deceiving others’ eyes he disciplines his own. He could have sworn that the door moved — inward — by a fraction of an inch; that is to say toward the wall and away from the head of the bed. He tested it, after making sure again that Cyprian was sleeping, and discovered he could get the fingers of one hand in between the bedpost and the door. And there was a long mark on the wide paper covering the iron door, in proof that it had recently pressed outward against the bed.
So either the lock was unlocked, or it did not function, or else it had been locked again since he entered the room.
Curiosity eats Jeremy like acid. He must know or be miserable. Mystery merely whets appetite. With an, other glance to make sure Cyprian was sleeping, he cautiously pulled the bed clear of the wooden blocks and rolled it a yard along the floor. Then he stooped to examine the keyhole. There was no key in it, and there had not been, for it was still stuffed with soap, and a piece of white paper rubbed on to the soap was in place — Cyprian’s modest effort at constructive camouflage. On the floor lay an irregularly oblong sliver of white stone — two inches by an inch. The door had been forced from the inside, recently.
Jeremy tore back the paper from door and wall in two considerable strips. The tongue of the old-fashioned lock projected not more than an inch into unprotected stonework and was merely resting now in a neat groove that the fallen sliver fitted. Nothing — on Jeremy’s side, that is — prevented the door from swinging open. He tested it with his fingers. It refused to yield.
And he could swear he had seen it move when he first laid Cyprian on the bed.
He glanced at Cyprian, half-inclined to wake him — glanced at the iron door again and speculated.
“Probably the old boy keeps his books in there. Shock might kill, if he wakes and learns thieves are in the coop. Sleep on, Melchizedek!”
Knowing the danger to himself of using firearms, in a country in more or less perennial rebellion, where the carrying of modern weapons is forbidden except for sport, Jeremy looked about him for an implement less compromising to himself. In a corner, behind a cretonne curtain under which the padre’s garments hung, he found an Irish blackthorn walking stick — a souvenir of Ballyshannon days, where Cyprian once did temporary duty. The stick was as strong as a professional shillalah with twice the length — a deadlier weapon than gun or sword in given circumstances.
Down-stairs Ramsden broke up the trap-door section by section — layer by layer. It was so thick and so well carpentered that nothing less than absolute destruction laid the hinges bare. By the time it was possible to reach the bolt, that swung in place across the whole width of the trap and bit into twelve-inch beams, there was no more sense in fooling with it, for the door was totally destroyed. Jeff used the bolt for a purchase for his rope, the sons of Ali having failed to find a ladder, and went down band over hand into the dark.
Not even the eyes of Sikunderam could see more than an unexpected red light, and trash heaped in a mess below; but there seemed to be less of the trash than when Ali had flung the three into the pit. Where a pile of boxes had been, that should have lessened Jeff’s descent, there was nothing to meet his exploring feet and he had to drop the last yard, for the rope was short.
The next they all knew was a roar like a bull’s as Jeff joined battle with an unseen foe; and that was followed by an increase of the crimson glow and the indrawn roar of a furnace. It was like a glimpse into the bowels of a great ship, or into Tophet.
“Come on! Help, you fellows!” was all the explanation Jeff had time for — English at that — a sure enough sign he was excited.
King left Narayan Singh in Grim’s hands — came on the run — and swung down the rope like a sailor. And Chullunder Ghose was next, “so curious” as he explained it afterward, resembling a seaman less than any other being in the world, first jammed in the broken trap like a cork in the neck of a bottle — breaking the hold of the wood-work by sheer weight and strength — then suddenly descending with the rope like red hot wire between his hands, to fall the last yard and be met — as it seemed to him — by an ascending floor constructed of upturned splinters.
And down on Chullunder Ghose in that unfortunate predicament there dropped Sikunderam in swift succession, sire and sons, grateful for the cushion — but to Allah, not the babu — and stepping off without pausing to pass compliments.
At the cellar’s farther end there was a door down, and the whole of Cyprian’s arrangements for the eventual holocaust of black books were plain to see in the light of a galloping fire. The holocaust was prematurely born. The three had set the match that was to have been Cyprian’s torch on his last pilgrimage. The books, stacked hundreds in a pile inside an ancient pottery kiln, were all alight and the glue in the backs of some of the more modern ones was priming for the rest.
Cyprian had stacked ample fuel under them in readiness, but to that the three had added trash. There was no fire-door to be shut to exclude a draft; the furnace-jaws gaped wide. The chimney at the junction of Cyprian’s house and the godown was serving its ancient purpose, and the trap-door that Ramsden broke was letting enough draft to feed the ravening fires of Eblis. Out on the sidewalk Grim saw the shadow of sulphur-and-black smoke belching from the summit of the old quiescent kiln; Narayan Singh was left to do his own recovering, and Grim, guided by instinct, took the stairs four at a stride instead of plunging like an ifrit into Ramsden’s broken hole.
He was just in time to see Jeremy swing the blackthorn down two-handed on the back of a head that emerged for reconnoitering purposes through the cautiously opened iron door. The blow would have cut the head clean off if the weapon had only been an ax. A man in yellow fell face-forward and his shoulders prevented the door from shutting, although someone tried to pull him back in by the feet. Simultaneously Grim and Jeremy seized the iron door and wrenched it wide open, and a stab like a fork of lightning missed Grim by the thickness of a moonbeam — missed and was not quick enough, for Jeremy brought the blackthorn down on a long knife with a serpent handle, disarming a yellow, invisible someone, who dropped whatever else he held and retreated into deeper gloom.
Cyprian slept on, moving his lips and old fingers as if dreaming. Jeremy, all-trusting in his own luck, signaled, passed the blackthorn into Grim’s hand and reached for matches. Grim agreed with him. With their feet they sh
oved the victim of Jeremy’s weapon back whence he had come and stepped through over him, closing the iron door at their backs. Then Jeremy struck a match — in time — exactly in the middle of the nick of shaven time. The blackthorn came in use again — crack on a wrist that thrust upward with another such knife as the first man had tried to sting with. The blow broke the wrist. Someone smothered an exclamation.
“Curse these matches!” exclaimed Jeremy, and struck another.
On the floor of a closet about ten by ten lay two of the Three. The man whom Jeremy had first struck was dead undoubtedly. The other’s leg was broken — Ali’s work — and now the wrist was added to his inconveniences. He was writhing in pain, though making no noise, and all mixed up with the dead man. Evidently two of them had been carrying the fellow with the broken leg, and the third had run back through a door that faced the iron one — a rat in a stopped run, panicking this and that way.
Jeremy struck another match and Grim tried the inside door. As he laid his hand on it the fugitive, finding retreat cut off below, came charging back and Grim recoiled against the wall, guarding with the blackthorn like a single stick. The man in yellow lunged at him with a knife such as the other two had used, but as he lurched forward with his weight behind the thrust the point of another knife knocked his upper front-teeth out and cut through his upper lip, emerging an inch or two, then turning crimson in the flow of blood. Through the opened inner door came red light glowing and diminishing — glowing and diminishing — silhouetting Ali of Sikunderam.
“It is all in the trick of the thrust, sahibs ,” announced Ali, stooping over the victim to withdraw his beloved weapon. “See — the neck is broken — thus — the point of the knife goes in between two vertebrae, and Allah does the rest!”
“What’s that fire below there?” Grim demanded.
“The old kiln. Rammy sahib—”
“What’s burning?”
“All the priest’s books, praise Allah!”
Grim’s face looked ghastly in the waning red light. In that moment he saw all his hopes go up in smoke and flame.
“There’ll be a blaze through the top of the chimney by now that’ll bring the whole fire brigade!” he announced with resignation.
“Not a bit. Trust Ramsden,” said another voice.
Athelstan King came up like a stoker from a ship’s inferno, more than a little singed and sucking burned finger-ends.
“Ramsden found an old sheet of corrugated iron underneath the litter and bent it to fit the fire-door. The draft’s in control. It was hot work.”
“And the books?” Grim asked him.
“Napoo! No more books! Where’s the padre?”
“Fast asleep.”
“When he learns this it’ll kill him,” said King with conviction, unconsciously confirming Jeremy’s first guess.
Ramsden came up the narrow stairway and demanded light. The glow behind him was so low that his bulk in the door obscured it altogether. Grim cautioned him and opened the door into Cyprian’s room. The light fell on Ramsden’s singed beard and his clothes all charred in patches.
“All red ash now,” he whispered. “No more smoke.” Jeremy tiptoed into the bedroom and stood looking down at Cyprian. Presently he felt his pulse.
“Fever!” he whispered. “He’s unconscious.”
Ramsdell gathered tip the man with the broken wrist and leg and laid him on the floor in Cyprian’s room. They all trooped in, followed by Ali and his sons, Chullunder Ghose last. The babu was the only one who showed any symptoms of contentment, although he, too, was singed, and burned about the hands.
“Expensive consideration for man with family on microscopic stipend!” he remarked, removing a burned silk turban and readjusting it. “What shall do next?”
None answered. None knew exactly what to do. One of Ali’s sons — the youngest — succumbed to the weak man’s impulse to invoke the Blessing of the Platitudes.
“Silence is golden,” he announced sententiously.
“Oh excellent advice! O god out of a Greecian box! O oracle!” Chullunder Ghose exclaimed. “All the wisdom of all those wicked books is incarnated into this fool! Silence is not only golden, it is silent! Silence is as silence does! Verb very sap! O sahibs , let us muzzle all these men! Shut up this shop until darkness intervenes, then beat it, in jargon of Jimgrim sahib — same expressive — very! Beat all concerned, this prisoner included unless the gives us every information, plus!”
“Plus what?” asked Ramsden.
“Plus obedience — not like these sons of Himalayan mothers, whose only virtue is that they economize by sleeping mostly in the jail!”
Ali was over by the window, looking out into the street.
“My sons are here,” he announced grandiloquently, trying to hide a grin.
“Where? Outside? Call them in!” King snapped. “We don’t want more publicity.”
Ali threw the window open and beckoned. The sons came lumbering up-stairs like half-trained animals.
“Tell the sahibs : how did you leave the jail?” demanded Ali. Maybe intuition warned him that they had a splendid lie all cooked and ready to serve.
“We fought our way out! See — we left our knives in the guts of the police! Each of us slew three men!”
“Allah! My boys! My sons!” exclaimed Ali.
The others all looked down at Cyprian. Jeremy took a towel and put water on the old man’s parched lips. None — not even Ali — as much as half-believed the story of the fight with the police, but all knew it was based on lawlessness of some sort that would not add to Cyprian’s peace of mind when he should recover consciousness.
“If he pulls through this, the worry and disappointment will kill him anyhow,” said Ramsden, rather ignoring the circumstance that for upward of eighty years Cyprian had been training himself to withstand the slings of fortune.
“We might give the old boy a chance,” suggested Jeremy. And in his eye there gleamed antipodean mischief.
Ali was still at the window.
“Lo, a constabeel!” he announced. “He observes smoke issuing from the chimney without a tikut.[*] Lo, he speaks with Narayan Singh, who lies to him. A child can tell you when a Sikh lies. Lo, he writes a reeport in his parketbuk.[* *] There will be a summons before municipal magistrates. I know the custom.”
Narayan Singh, a little weak yet as to equilibrium, came up-stairs and thrust his head cautiously through the bedroom doorway.
“There will be a summons for smoke-nuisance against a Hindu, name of Murgamdass,” he announced with a grin.
Grim caught all eyes, glancing from face to face, as a captain measures up his team in an emergency.
“Did the policeman appear suspicious?” he asked quietly.
“Very!” Narayan Singh answered. “He suspected a Hindu of seeking to avoid payment of fee for necessary permit to use furnace within municipality. I confirmed his plausible suspicion, hoping—”
“Anything else?” Grim asked him.
“No, sahib . Nothing else.”
“You fellows game?”
Grim caught all eyes again. If they were not game, none are. There were all the brands and all the elements of that geist that is all-conquering because it simply cannot understand defeat.
“Two courses,” Grim announced. “We can call in the police, and quit.”
Chullunder Ghose sighed like a grampus coming up for air.
“Or we can carry on and face the consequences. Vote please. Those in favor—”
Chullunder Ghose raised both hands; all the others one.
“Ayes have it. Very well. Then after dark we’ll take these two dead yellow-boys and plant them where their friends put da Gama. Meanwhile, take Cyprian somewhere and get a good doctor for him. Don’t say who he is. Ali, you and your sons guard the prisoner while we find a good place to hide him in.”
CHAPTER X. “Can’t hatch a chicken from a glass egg.”
THAT night there stood in front of Cyprian’s an ox-cart,
tented and painted to resemble the equipage of old-fashioned country gentry’s womenfolk. Chullunder Ghose had conjured the thing from somewhere, magnificent Guzerati bullocks included, selecting the form of conveyance least likely to be interfered with by police.
But to make assurance on that ground doubly sure there was Narayan Singh as driver, naked of leg and otherwise garbed as a Hindu, reenforced by Ramsden and two of Ali’s sons, the latter shaven, and so angry at having to adopt Hindu disguise that it would have called for a whole squad of “constabeels” to arrest them.
Directed by Ramsden the corpses of the two followers of Kali were laboriously trundled by the oxen as far as possible in the direction of the scene of da Gama’s death, and thence carried by Ali’s protesting sons, who dumped them naked into the débris where the Portuguese had lain, and rolled the same broken pillar over both of them that once had helped to hide da Gama’s remains.
Judged as corpses they would have looked more edifying in the orange- yellow smocks they wore in life, but smocks, dyed just that color, are not purchasable in the open market. Thrift is thrift — the careful use of opportunity.
In another part of Delhi a more dangerous negotiation was proceeding, rendered no easier by the almost unconquerable yearning to fall asleep that was the natural consequence of two nights’ wakefulness in Punjab heat.
It was Jeremy’s proposal. Grim had seconded. King demurred. Chullunder Ghose had so squealed and chuckled with approval, vowing the whole proposal a stroke of genius “better than the gods could think of,” that King gave in.
They drove the still unconscious Cyprian, wrapped in a blanket, to Gauri’s house and lodged him there — a member of an order of strict celibates, in the house of a lady of Rahab’s trade!
“What’s the odds? He doesn’t know it,” argued Jeremy.
The lady was over ears and eyes in delicious responsibility — intrigued until her fat ribs shook with giggling — unaware of the patient’s identity, for they had put him into a nightshirt, but as sure as that the stars were shining, that life — her life as she loved it — was being lived.