Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Cyprian and Jeremy obeyed him, in a twilight so dim now that the pillars of the crypt resembled tree-trunks in a forest, and the shadows moving in among them, ghosts.

  “Tie this man, Jeremy!”

  So Jeremy took the girdle from Cyprian’s black soutane and kneeling on the bronze man lashed his wrists behind him so that nothing less than sharp steel might set them free again.

  “Let me go. I’m going to turn you out of here,” the man protested.

  “I know you are!” Jeff answered.

  As he spoke, in front of him, somewhere among the deepening pillar- shadows, an arm moved swiftly and a knife struck the pillar behind him half an inch above his head. The woman’s laugh rang ghostly like a pixie’s in the forest, but the broken blade fell on Jeff’s trussed prisoner and buried itself in the flesh of his arm. He cursed, and the woman left off laughing. Jeff took aim at where her laugh had seemed to have its origin, and fired. The pistol-flash, like lightning in the night, showed nothing but the pillars — and a gloom beyond — and no less than a dozen faces over yellow smocks, all waiting in the outer dark for something to begin.

  “I’ve four shots left and no spares. Where’s yours?” Jeff asked Jeremy.

  There was no answer, but the sound of a struggle — strangling it might be — then of heavy breathing through the nose — and —

  “Bong!”

  It was the same word in an unknown tongue that had produced obedience before. But it was not the same man using it. It may be that a man with all his wits about him and no other care to subdivide attention might have detected mispronunciation: But there was much to think of. Expectation held its breath. It was pitch-dark now.

  Jeremy, feeling for Jeff’s hand, guided it to the prisoner’s mouth, not speaking. Jeff felt a gag made of a turban end, and understood; his two immense hands closed on the victim’s jaws, and the gag was tightened into place and held there by a pistol-butt. Nevertheless, the voice of the bronze man once more broke the silence — speaking English with an accent learned at one or other of the universities — each word separate.

  “Good. You — have — won — this — bout. It — is — conceded. Go — free. Your — three — lives — in — exchange — for — mine. My — men — will — show — you — to — the — street — in — . Go — free.”

  Then Jeremy’s voice — this time indubitably Jeremy’s:

  “All right, cocky! You come with us to the street as guarantee of good faith! And I want to understand each word you say. Feel the knife on your Adam’s apple? It’ll cut in halves the first word you use in any other than the English language! Now — give your orders!”

  The voice changed to bell-metal.

  “Lead them to the street and let them go. Let no harm touch them.”

  Jeremy’s voice again, high-pitched and disrespectful, taking no man nor his makings seriously:

  “We’ve ten shots and a knife to keep our end up with. We’ll croak you at the first hitch!”

  Bell-metal again:

  “Make haste! The day increases. Lead them to the street.”

  “In darkness!” ordered Jeremy. “No light to see to shoot us by!”

  “In darkness!” said the bell obediently.

  There was movement somewhere — almost inaudible footfalls. Then a voice at a little distance, speaking in Punjabi —

  “This way — come!”

  Jeremy gathered up Cyprian, who leaned back in the hollow of his arm reserving all strength for emergency. Jeff, holding the gag firmly with the pistol-butt, seized the prisoner’s neck in fingers like a vise and put such pressure on the jugular and carotid as answered all objections in advance. Together, in an eight-legged group like a spider treading warily, they started for the voice, each touching each — Jeff’s strength as taut and alert as dynamite with fuse attached.

  “All is well. Keep coming!” said the same voice.

  “All ‘ud better be well!” remarked Jeremy. “We’ve got your chief. He gets it first remember!”

  Whoever controlled that mysterious light obeyed the order to keep it turned off. That made discovery impossible, but eased no nerves. A dozen times the giant whom Jeff was dragging writhed in a sudden effort to eject the gag, and many more than a dozen times between the middle of the crypt and a door set somewhere in its invisible circumference they drew in breath believing they were attacked.

  “This way, sahibs !” the voice kept calling, too sugar-sweetly to be free from guile; and they kept following, too fearful to refuse. Time and again they cannoned into pillars, as if whoever led them was boxing the compass in a calculated effort to confuse.

  “The door in less than ten steps, or I shoot!” said Jeremy at last.

  The click of the slide of his automatic as he tested it confirmed the threat. But they were at the door. He tripped over a step that instant. And if Jeff had not needed his pistol-butt for forcing home the gag there would have been an all-betraying flash — and only India’s gods know what next. Jeff used his fist instead — letting go his prisoner, swinging with all his weight behind a left-hand hay-maker, and hitting he never knew what. It vanished along with what might have been a feminine scream cut short. When he swung again there was nothing there.

  “Come on!” said Jeremy, and:

  “This way, sahibs !” said the voice.

  They mounted invisible steps and came to a ramp sloping upward between stone walls. It seemed to curve around the circumference of three parts of a circle, and they took each step with shoulders against the wall, prospecting carefully, with a foot in advance for fear of traps. Once, when they had mounted for as many minutes as was possible without giving vent to emotion, Jeremy stopped in the lead and forced himself to breathe steadily a dozen times. Then, obtaining self-command:

  “Remember! No lights!” he called out in the bell-metal voice.

  “No lights! This way, sahibs !” came the answer.

  Once or twice bats struck them in the face, but there was no other opposition until a great door creaked on heavy hinges and a darkness something less opaque announced that they were in the temple. It was still impossible to see a hand outstretched a yard before the eyes; but there was another quality to darkness, and the echo changed. The door to the street was shut. They knew it must be daylight, but there was nothing to prove it — not a crack that the faintest ray shone through.

  But there was noise. Something — a man by his breathing — labored at a bolt, or it might be at a swinging bar that held the outer door shut. He muttered at his work.

  “Krishna!” was perfectly distinct — not a word you would expect in Kali’s temple, she having little in common with the god compassionate.

  There was the sound of hoofs — in itself no startling circumstance, for they let the sacred bulls pass freely in and out of many Hindu temples. But the squeak of unoiled wheels was added to it; and if that meant anything it was that the dust of unclean streets had defiled a sacred floor. Dust on a bull’s feet is one thing; on wheels another.

  He who had led the way out of the crypt drew breath between his teeth and called to his chief in the secret tongue for orders. Jeff set his back against the heavy door to hold it open, Cyprian whispered something neither heard, and Jeremy took chances at a venture. He answered in Punjabi, in the bronze voice:

  “I will see these to the street. Return, thou, and call the others to attend to this when these have gone!”

  That certainly was vague enough. But it covered as much of the facts as anybody knew, and there was no need to explain why the chief did not answer in the sacred tongue. How should he dare be misunderstood by the men who held him as their hostage?

  The guide seemed disciplined until his own will was an automatic agent of obedience. He turned with a retching of bare feet on stone and started back. Invisible, he sought the invisible door unerringly, and Jeff — invisible as either, and as ignorant of what might happen next as anyone on earth — played by ear, as a musician might, for the peak of the man’s
jaw as he passed. He hit it, which was a miracle. He sent him stunned down the dark ramp, spinning on his heels and falling backward; and the heavy door shut tight on him before the echo of the blow had ceased.

  “My aunt!” said a voice in English. “Now is winter of a babu’s discontent! O tempora! O mores!”

  The belaboring of fists on iron was resumed as if in panic.

  “To the last man and the last rupee — and then the deluge!” said the same voice.

  The beating on the outer door redoubled — something like the fluttering of a moth against a window-pane, but heavier.

  “Chullunder Ghose!”

  “O gods whom I have mocked, am I in hell? Who knows my name?”

  “Strike a match, Jeremy!”

  The light, as the sound of its striking, was nearly swallowed in the blackness of a domed roof. But a few rays showed two oxen yoked to a two- wheeled covered cart, one standing and the other lying down, while a fat man humped against the temple door shielded his eyes with a forearm.

  Jeff laughed, and Jeremy heaped swift conclusions into one mess to be brushed away:

  “Selling out to the enemy? Double-crossing us? Got captured? What’s the secret, babu-ji?”

  “They greet me with an insult! Oh, my elements! A Frenchman would have fallen on my neck! This Anglo-Saxon race is—”

  “ — in a hurry!” Jeremy cut in. “Omit the captions — spill beans!”

  “Are spilt! Any one can pick up same! Was suitably engaged in losing ox-cart — uncamouflaged and less amenable to shrinkage than well fed elephant or long-distance cannon. Very exercised in mind — verb, sap . Could neither sell nor give away same for obvious motives. Hyena-headed shroff * approached clandestinely refused to lend even small sum on such security without proof of ownership. Same being non est in legal verbiage, sought to leave oxen straying in public thoroughfare. Brute beasts, having appetites, refused to be lost, and followed lone acquaintance — me! — presumably on off-chance. Most perplexing! Prayed. Not often efficacious, gods who are neglected in between-times continuing stand-offish in emergency as working rule. Nevertheless, bright notion burst bomb-like on imagination. Bring outfit here! Deposit same in midst of enemy, decamping forthwith. Off-shoulder burden of responsibility in lap of adversary, handicapping same! No sooner said than attempted — came here — door open — drove in — caught by curiosity was urged by inner impulses to forage, being poor babu with family in need of aliment. Shut temple-door accordingly in fear of observation from without. Immediately all was dark! Panic! Terror- stricken! Sought to open door again and failed! O God, what shall we do?”

  Jeff Ramsden felt his way to the temple-door and groped for the fastenings.

  “Where are our friends?” he asked.

  “Presumably in office wondering what next! Oh, we are in the wrong place for solaces of friendship! O my God, what next!”

  Jeremy, groping, lifted Cyprian into the ox-cart and asked him to stay in there. Ramsden discovered the trick of the door-fastening and set his strength against a spring that held a beam in place. It yielded inch by inch.

  “Pull on the door!” he grunted.

  Chullunder Ghose obeyed and in another second sat down hard on the stone floor, blinded by inrushing light. The street outside was bathed in the early sunshine, and a loiterer or two — the usual beggars and the usual social nondescripts — turned to observe what might he. The least commotion would have brought a crowd wondering. Whatever was to be done must be commonplace — as calm and apparently in keeping with ancient precedent as all the other unnoticed extravagances of a land of paradox.

  Jeff glanced behind him, screwing his eyes up to penetrate the gloom.

  “Chuck the prisoner in!”

  “Leave him!” urged Jeremy.

  Jeff strode into the dark, felt the prisoner with his toe, gathered him up, and hove him like a sack of potatoes in through the embroidered curtains.

  “Chullunder Ghose! Get in and sit on him!”

  The babu knew better than to disobey. Jeff in that mood is force in motion, not to be turned aside or made to cease.

  “Jeremy! Walk in front!”

  Jeremy looked once at him, no more afraid of Jeff than of the oxen, yet aware of something else. The idea that had caught Jeff Ramsden in its orbit and was using him as steam can use the locomotive, was irresistible. He grinned, saluted impudently, turned on his heel, and led the way, the rents that the woman had made in his yellow smock making him look more than ever like a member of India’s great uncountered and unquestioned beggar-holymen.

  Jeff, with a tail in each hand and his toes at work, tooled the ox-cart carefully out through the temple-door, leaving it gaping wide behind him, not once looking back, assuming to the best of his ability the expression of bored insolence that sits so often on the faces of men who deal with privilege. Even his voice as he cried to the oxen (that refuse to go unless they hear agony) had the tired note of second-hand sanctity. The ox-cart bumped over the cobbles. The splendid, hungry brutes helped themselves at random from frequent sacks of grain beneath the street-side awnings, and from infrequent carts — objurgated, but indifferent from long use. Jeremy reproved with time-worn proverbs someone who kicked the off-side bullock in the mouth for too bold robbery. All was well; or all seemed well, until from behind embroidered curtains at Jeff’s back Chullunder Ghose piped up again.

  “Not knowing plans, not offering to pass on same. Respectfully advise attention, nevertheless! In Chandni Chowk and environments this ox-cart will be as invisible as elephants in Pall Mall! Ford car might pass through unnoticed. Airplane would not cause comment. We are antique anachronism, subject to inquisitive police and mockery of youthful element. I urge judiciousness! Moreover, of two religious personages in my charge, one peeps through the curtains at the rear and the other chokes as if the gag were disagreeing with him. On which one shall I sit?”

  It was Father Cyprian who solved that riddle — he who eased the gag in the prisoner’s mouth in time to prevent asphyxiation, and he who whispered to Jeff through the front curtains, annoying Chullunder Ghose, who yearns to enjoy full confidence in everything.

  “I have seen a friend of mine — Bhima Ghandava by name. I did not know he was in India. He must have just returned from his travels. We shall be safe in his house.”

  “Who is he? Will he admit us?” Jeff objected. Jeff’s mind was bent on another course, and he yielded ungracefully.

  “Yes, he will admit us. He will hide this cart. He is my friend.”

  “Which way?”

  Jeff drove his toe under the tail of the near ox, crying like a sea-bird in the gale’s lee, and they changed direction, leaving Jeremy to walk the middle of a street alone until he turned of his own accord and took the situation in. Thereafter he strove to follow with dignity, as he had led with grace.

  They wended time-hallowed streets, avoiding the great thoroughfares and hunting quiet as the homing pigeon goes. There might have been a compass under the naked crown of Cyprian’s head. And at last they reached a wide teak gate in a high wall at an alley’s end, where Cyprian, reaching from the ox-cart, pulled a brass chain. Eyes scrutinized them through an iron grill.

  “Can you entertain us? Have you a messenger?” asked Cyprian. And a voice with a smile in it answered in English:

  “Why certainly. Welcome! Come in!”

  Then someone rattled iron bars, and the great gate swung inward to admit them.

  CHAPTER XV. “Abandon can’t and cant all ye who enter here!”

  “WE’RE no good!”

  Athelstan King was spokesman, on a cushion on the office floor with his shoulders wedged into the corner and Grim facing him, on another cushion, backed against the desk. King was suffering from ex-officialitis, a disease that gets men harder in proportion to their length of service. His best work had been done without the shadow of officialdom — over the border, where the longest purse, the longest wit, and the longest knife are Law — but that had not preserved him
from official commendation afterward, which is a poison more subtle than cocaine.

  Grim, on the other hand, had never been praised by anyone except his enemies, and by them only for ulterior purposes.

  “I feel good,” said Grim, yawning and keeping an eye on the prisoner, who was blindfolded and tied behind the desk.

  “Phah! Melikani! “* remarked Ali of Sikunderam, sitting son-less and despondent with his back against the door. “Moreover, shaven and unmarried! What do you know of life’s bitterness?”

  “Nothing!” Grim agreed. “Life’s sweet.”

  “I have lost my son — my best son!” Ali grumbled. “Allah is Lord of Mercies, but my Habibullah was a jewel too good to die.”

  They had heard that a dozen times at least between the night that seemed a thousand years away and morning that was just beginning to describe how villainously filthy was the office window. They spared their comments.

  “I dare not claim the body, but the Wakf * * will bury it, which is something .”

  Narayan Singh, his black beard resting on his chest, woke out of a reverie and seemed to consider Ali for the best part of a minute.

  “Unless your remaining sons are more wakeful and alert than pigs that perish, they will be even as Habibullah,” he said presently.

  “Pigs?” Ali bridled at the word. Nerves were on edge that morning. “My sons are posted all about us as the eyes of angels! What do you mean by pigs?”

  “I go to see how many of them sleep,” the Sikh answered. “Let me pass.”

  Ali moved away from the door ungraciously and as slowly as he dared. If the Sikh had only weighed a little less — had only lacked an inch or so of reach — had only a shade less courage and a shorter list of dead men to his credit — there would have been a fight that minute. As it was, there was only a delay while Ali removed his mat, lest the Sikh’s foot subject it to defilement. Narayan Singh strode out, and Ali slammed the door behind him with violence that made the clouded-glass pane rattle.

  “We erred in demeaning our society, admitting persons without izzat ,”* he announced to whom it might concern.