by Talbot Mundy
CHAPTER XII. “I am dead, but the silver cord is not yet cut.”
GRIM nudged King. King jerked at Jeremy’s flowing Arab headgear.
“Watch the minaret,” Grim whispered.
The crescent moon had gone down. There was no light other than the glorious effulgence of the stars. The minaret — a phallic symbol posing as sublime — rose stately and quiet from a pool of purple darkness. Nothing moved. Not even a dog barked, for a wonder.
“Got the creeps?” asked Jeremy.
“Watch the minaret!”
A lantern appeared at the summit and disappeared — flashed for an instant, as it might be from the skirts of a protecting coat. Then, as whoever held it turned, its rays shone full on a man unmistakable — too tall for the door — bent forward in it, bearded and immense — Narayan Singh! The image was gone in an instant, but left no doubt. The Sikh was alert and moving.
“Something’s wrong,” said Grim.
“Wrong with your nut!” said Jeremy.
The lantern flashed again, and this time did not disappear. In someone’s left hand — not Narayan Singh’s, for they could see the legs beyond it and they did not move as the Sikh’s would — it made the circuit of the gallery three times — then vanished.
“What do you suppose that means?”
“Sons of Ali fell asleep and off their perch. Narayan Singh looking for remains of ’em!” suggested Jeremy.
“It wasn’t Narayan Singh who made the rounds,” King answered. “That light to our right front disappeared and came on again after the signal.”
“Signals, sure!” said Grim.
“Could the Sikh—”
“No!” Grim answered. “Narayan Singh is O.K.”
“Trick-work nevertheless,” said Jeremy. “There were three of Ali’s sons on that gallery. They looked like great horned owls and we wondered before we all went to sleep what it was that resembled horns. Remember? Where are the three now?”
“I vote we investigate,” said Grim.
“Seconded!”
“Unanimous!”
They reached a dark passage by way of neighboring roofs and dropped to street-level, nearly frightening to death the same policeman who had been disturbed by Habibullah. The servant of the public peace retreated at full speed and left them all that part of Delhi for experiments — assassination — robbery — what they willed. Since nationalism raised standard and voice the streets have not been safe for a lone policeman.
“If they’ve rescued our prisoner—” Grim began.
“More likely garroted him to keep him from talking,” said King.
“Well, in either event—”
“We’re flummoxed!”
King made no secret of his pessimism. He was all for action; all for reprisals; but he felt sure there had been disaster.
“If they’ve got him, we’ve lost our inside track. We’ll never get another!” he said miserably.
There were no street sounds as they made their way cautiously along the shadows. Now and then a dog yelped in the distance, but as happens often when the moon has gone down all the neighborhood seemed hushed. Just once they heard — or thought they heard a cry and the thump-thump-thump of something falling. Then all was still again.
Suddenly a voice rose — high-pitched, eager, exultant:
“My son! Oh, Allah! Oh, my son!”
Another voice, low-growling, cursed the first one into silence. Then a door slammed. Voices again rose and fell in excited talk as it might be behind a wall; they were muted; the resonance was gone.
Grim, in the lead, began running. The others broke into a trot behind him. Grim stopped and drew his pistol. King came abreast feeling for his own weapon. Jeremy did the same on King’s right. They were fifty paces from a man sitting in deepest shadow on a stone by the street-door of the minaret, who held his hand up, saying nothing.
“Narayan Singh!” said Grim at half-breath.
“Hurt?” (That was Jeremy.)
The Sikh seemed to be bending over something. He was holding up his hand for silence rather than to ward off an attack. He had recognized friends. They heard him growling in the general direction of the door, as if less talking behind him were what he craved. He rose as they approached, standing astride one fallen object, with another at his feet and a third behind him.
“It is good you came, sahibs . If you will drag these corpses in I will climb the wall and break the necks of Ali’s sons! The sons of evil mothers shut the door on me, and are making more noise than stallions in a horse-camp!”
King laid his head to the door in the wall and gave tongue in the guttural speech of Sikunderam:
“Open, there, Ali! And silence!”
The door opened wide in a moment and Ali stood framed in the gloom:
“King sahib! Sahibs ! Allah’s blessing! Lo my boy! My Habibullah! Pride of my old heart! He slew three yellow ones with three blows of a tulwar ! Three in three blows! There they lie! Lo! Look! The tulwar ! See the blood on it! See the nick in the blade where it bit too deep and struck the wall beyond! A smites! Ho! A true son of Sikunderam!”
“Peace! Silence!” ordered King, and turned again to help drag in the corpses of three men in yellow smocks.
“He shall have a purse and fifty rupees in it!” Ali boasted.
But Narayan Singh cut that short, brushing by him, straight forward to essentials, discovering Chullunder Ghose recumbent on the trap-door, acting dead-weight.
“Back again, then?” said Narayan Singh — it might be scornfully.
“In statu quo ,” the babu answered, smirking. “Unless dead, in which case disembodied spirit might emerge unobserved, prisoner is in durance vile beneath me — among rats!”
“You weren’t here five minutes ago,” said the Sikh. “Get off. Let the sahibs see.”
“I was certainly successful rogue in former incarnation,” said the babu, rolling to his hands and knees and heading for the door. “Karma * now reversing rôle, I get away with nothing — absolutely!”
Narayan Singh raised the trap skeptically. Nevertheless, the prisoner was there. He blinked up at Grim, King and Jeremy. Smocked like himself in yellow they exactly fitted the only mental picture he had. Priest of a dreadful creed, dread was his portion. Likely he was only kept from suicide by the teaching that he who robs Kali of the joy of killing in her own way is doomed to flicker in the astral gloom for aeons, useless and hopeless, until finally he ceases in darkness and never is.
“Others were less fortunate than thee. To them no opportunity to make amends and ease the pangs of afterlife! Behold them!” King said, speaking as if he himself were Karma, judging dead souls.
One by one — head in one hand, body in the other — Narayan Singh dumped the corpses of three followers of Kali down into the rat-infested dark; and Jeremy held the lantern so that he who had not lost his life yet might see and comprehend.
“Consider them ,” King warned him. “They died not by the handkerchief but by the sword, displeasing Her in death as well as life!”
And outside, just beyond the rays of the candle set in the niche of the outer wall, Chullunder Ghose held high dispute with Ali of Sikunderam.
“Shame?” said the babu. “I am utterly disreputable. Therefore appreciate value to others of what I lack. I assess shame of Habibullah at rupees a hundred. Ante up, as Jimgrim has it! Make it slippery and soon, as Jeremy sahib would say!”
“You have no honor!” Ali retorted hotly.
“None!” agreed the babu. “All dishonor me — including you! Insult me with rupees a hundred, or I will tell who slew those three! Habibullah will then resemble egg thoroughly sucked by grandmother — all hollow! The money please.”
“May the curse of the Prophet of Allah, whose name none taketh in vain, wither and disintegrate thy bowels! May the worms that die not eat thee! May food be to thee like ashes and thy drink as bitter as a goat’s gall! May thy—”
“Certainly!” said the babu. “Money please! Or els
e—”
So Ali of Sikunderam drew painfully from somewhere underneath his shirt — like a man pulling out a long thorn or a well barbed arrow- head — one bank-note for a hundred rupees, and the babu pouched it.
“Then it is agreed,” said Ali, “that Habibullah slew those three with three strokes of his tulwar ?”
“Agreed,” said Chullunder Ghose. “Do you wish receipt in writing with stipulation black on white? Will sign same. No extra charge!”
“See this!” said Ali, showing his own knife. “The bargain is made. You have the money. Keep faith, or feel this!”
“My aunt!” said the babu, and shuddered. (But the shudder may have been the camouflaging movement under which he slipped the money into hiding.)
King, Grim and Jeremy emerged from within the minaret, listening to Narayan Singh, who wiped his hands on a piece of sacking and talked in low tones.
“Give Habibullah credit for it, sahibs . He was afraid of them, but what odds? He and I climbed down by the broken masonry and waited in the shadow of the wall. I would have used a pistol, but feared the police, so when the three came near I said to Habibullah ‘Draw, and smite!’ The fellow’s hand was trembling so that he nicked the edge of the tulwar against the wall! And they came on, perhaps thinking we were waiting to welcome them. So I took the tulwar from him and struck three times. Then I gave the weapon back and said: ‘Well smitten! Good sword, Habibullah!’ And Ali heard, listening through the key-hole. He opened the door and called his bastard in, slamming it again on me. So I waited, hoping no police would come to see the bodies and start trouble.”
Grim laughed silently. He had seen the Sikh’s harvest before, and could have told his sword-cuts from among a hecatomb.
“Habibullah’s head will swell, though, if we let him boast of what he didn’t do,” said King.
“Let it swell, sahib . It will fall the easier. These men in yellow are no Sadhus* blessing their enemies. They hold revenge more sweet than a hill-bear does wild honey. Let Habibullah boast of it!”
“Let’s go!” said Jeremy suddenly. “I’m betting all I’ve got, those three were watched. For every one Narayan Singh killed there’ll be ten on our track before morning!”
The eyes of all four met in the light of the match that Jeremy struck to light his cigarette. All four men nodded.
“Chullunder Ghose!”
The babu heard King’s low call and came on the run, like a hippopotamus in flight for water.
“Quick now! Think!” King ordered. “Problem is to evacuate. Take away the prisoner — leave corpses here — all go somewhere safe, unseen. Do you think we can make the office in the Chandni Chowk?”
“Oh golly!” said the babu. You could feel him growing gray that instant. “Best imaginable is sane ox-cart used for general obsequies under direction of Ramsden sahib . Same is at Gauri’s — probably — oxen asleep in gutter and—”
“Go get it!” ordered Grim. “Narayan Singh, go with him! Send Ramsden back, and wait at Gauri’s, both of you!”
“For my emolument I take a manifold of risks!” Chullunder Ghose said. “Oh, fickle Fortune, I am undone this time! Eimai, Ollola , as Greeks would say! I vanish!”
And he did. His adiposity was no apparent handicap when sweet life was at stake. He had the gift of making even Ali’s sullen brother open swiftly, and the door slammed shut behind babu and Sikh before King and Grim could light their cigarettes from Jeremy’s. Thereafter he made no more noise than a parish clog would, slinking down dark alleys.
Followed conference. At best they would be a noticeable cortège marching in front and rear of an ox-cart drawn by such magnificent beasts as Chullunder Ghose would bring presently, if luck permitted. And at worst sonic one in yellow would tip off the police to interfere, perhaps accusing them of running contraband. Arrest, then, would be inevitable, and would mean the end of their investigation of the Nine Unknown.
Evidently more than one of the spurious Nines was linked against them, all guided by an unseen hand. There was no guessing whence the next assault would come, although it was fair to presume it would be surreptitious. Ali of Sikunderam, called into conference, turned Job’s comforter:
“They say these followers of Kali have noiseless weapons, sahibs ! Tubes that deliver a poisoned dart with accuracy as far as a revolver shoots! The poison is brewed from the venom of cobras and the blood of vampires — very quick stuff. A man struck by it falls conscious, yet stupefied, and in great pain sees himself decompose until the stink from his own body suffocates him in the end!”
“What do you advise?” King asked him.
“An exorcism! Let my brother hunt up a brewer of potions, and all the darts of Kali will never hurt us! A man known to my brother brewed me a potion before I returned to the Hills once on a time to establish Habibullab’s parentage. Behold me: I live! He who disputed my claim was buried in more than one piece and in more than one place! Ho! I scattered him among the villages as Allah spreads the wind! I hewed him! I—”
“Good! Let your brother go,” King interrupted.
There was virtue in the strange proposal. Ali’s brother was a surly, ill-conditioned brute, too long possessed of a sinecure to be depended on. In a pinch he would be a positive handicap to whichever side he was on, and to be rid of him by any tolerable means was good use of opportunity. The brother himself provided all the absolution necessary.
“I should be paid!” he objected. “They ask to have their lives preserved. They could not find the magician without me. They should pay me rupees fifty!”
He could have had more, if he had only known. Grim paid him fifty and spoke him civilly, shoving him out through the gate. It was Jeremy, watching him curiously over the top of the wall where a broken stone provided a safe vantage point — just out of curiosity, to see which way he went, as he explained it afterward — who saw him shot down from behind by a dart that made no noise.
A part, then, of Ali’s croaking had been accurate! His brother lay, if not dead, motionless. Jeremy, up at his niche in the wall, reported someone in what might be a yellow smock creeping up along the darkest shadows, searching the body, taking money and everything else he could find. Whereat Ali, using Habibullah’s back for vaulting horse, leaped on the wall with the stone in his hands that had once sat in Jeremy’s niche and, standing for better effect, hurled the stone down on the back of the head of the robber — and was gone down like a deep-sea diver in its wake before a voice could check hint. None knew — not even he — whether he had lost his footing or just followed to make sure.
They heard a skull crack under the impact of the stone, and Ali’s voice, calling before his feet touched earth for the door to be opened for him. King opened and admitted someone else! A man in a yellow robe, exactly like those they three were wearing, strode in and stood with folded arms confronting them — producing the effect of ice on hot imagination! Habibullah raised the candle. Its light shone on beads of sweat on the cruellest face, as the handsomest, that any of the three had ever seen.
Bronze, as the other men had been. Smiling like the Sphinx — an incarnate enigma. Tall. Strong as a gorilla, judging by the heft and set of splendid shoulders. Standing with the air of absolute authority that only years of use of it can give. In majesty, in intellect, and in impressiveness, as far above those others who had hounded them as eagles are above the beasts they watch.
He stood in silence, and in due time with one finger pointed at the tell-tale cigarettes. Those contradicted the disguise of yellow robes and caste-mark. Surprise, or whatever it was that had numbed the minds of all three, now set King’s wits moving again. He wondered why Ali had not taken advantage of the open door, and strode to shut it before any more of the enemy could enter. He with the bronze face touched him on the arm. King kicked the door shut with his foot, and as the spring-lock snapped he turned about to face a weapon he knew well.
He had cut his eye-teeth in the Indian Secret Service, and therefore knew the feel of hypnotism. He kn
ew the only way to stand against it — switched his thought instantly to another object — anything — anything whatever, so be it served to concentrate his will and was outside the thought of the practitioner. Mathematics was King’s formula. They vary. Each man acts on experience, and some withstand while others fail. He worked out in his head the cube of 77, and turned to swing for the jaw of the hypnotist.
His brain felt free but the blow failed. It glanced off as if guarded by a pugilist; and yet the newcomer had not moved. That was descent into subjection — step one! The others would follow swiftly. The man with the bronze face smiled at him, and King faced about — turned his back on him — worked with an ice-cold frenzy at the problem of the square of the hypotenuse — eliminating all else, visualizing the diagram — winning back to self-command and sanity.
The other two stood motionless. As they described it afterward, they thought they had been struck by one of Ali’s fabled darts, making them inert while still aware of what was happening. They felt no pain, but there was a strange sensation in the ears and behind the eyes.
King was not more than half-in-command of himself. Habibullah and the other two of Ali’s sons were stricken with superstitious awe. And on the door that King had kicked shut Ali of Sikunderam was now thundering with a fist and the hilt of his knife; it sounded like marriage tom-toms in the distance — somewhere away at the other side of Delhi — yesterday — last week — months ago — anywhere and any time but here and now.
“So it’s up to me, is it?” said King to himself.
He sized up his antagonist, and fancied matching strength with him still less than he did the risk of attracting police to the scene. Suddenly he drew his automatic. And as suddenly the man in yellow moved a hand that touched the pistol. A shock like electricity went up King’s arm and he dropped the pistol because he could not help it. The man in yellow, still smiling through his bronze mask, kicked it away into the shadows.
“Any more weapons?” he asked — in English! His voice was as magnificent as his stature — as surprising.