by Talbot Mundy
She was veiled when she knocked at the office door. But the instant Ali opened she threw back the veil, as if she knew whom she would find in there and what means was the best for holding his attention. Certainly she seized it on the instant.
“Queen of all pearls! Pearl among queens!” he said, staring at her.
She being alone, and he well armed, there was nothing about her that he needed to fear; and there was much he found no difficulty in admiring.
She was full-lipped, heavy-breasted, and her long, black, oily hair was coiled in thick ropes that resembled snakes. She had full, bold eyes like Gauri’s, whom Ali had thought of honoring with his feudal attentions until her house was burned, which made her not worthwhile. And she wore the same air of worldly wisdom and of tolerance for the world’s too-little virtue that had made of Gauri such an easy lady to hold converse with. She was Gauri’s size — height — so like Gauri that the floors of memory swept Ali’s caution out from under him. But her golden ornaments were heavier than Gauri’s. The emeralds in her ears were worth as much as all of Gauri’s fortune before da Gama looted her. And in one other aspect she was noticeably different.
There was a swelling under her left jaw that looked almost like the mumps, only it was more inflamed and discolored. Someone or something had struck her, not only recently but terrifically hard.
“Queen of the queens of Paradise, who hit thee?” he demanded.
He spoke tenderly — for him; but the Asian ardor blazed behind his eyes, and no woman not on adventure bent would have faced him without blenching. Ali, however, did not consider that. Men think less alertly after going long without sleep.
“Am I in paradise?” he asked. “Art thou a houri?”
She smiled at him. It may be that the smile cost agonies, on account of the swollen jaw, but she answered in a soft, low voice that thrilled with the suggestion of mystery, speaking — marvel of all marvels! — in his own tongue, the guttural, hoarse Pushtu of Sikunderam.
“Prince of princes! Captain of the thousands!”
Perfect! That is exactly the way to speak to a Northern gentleman. Ali stroked his beard and rearranged the riding-angle of his Khyber knife.
“Djereemee-Rass sahib , King sahib , Jimgrim sahib , Ramsden sahib , all send greeting. With the sons of queens, who call thee sire, your honor’s honor should follow me to a certain place.”
She smiled again, and Ali stroked his beard until it shone under his hand as if from brushing.
“Who struck thee?” he demanded for the second time.
“A man in the street — a badmash * — a man in yellow — one of those who worship Kali,” she answered.
Ali hesitated. Natural suspicion stirred a naturally shrewd wit, and memory, on the verge of sleep, awoke with one of those starts that bring the recent panorama of events in a flash before the mind. That set him thinking. She had asked him to bring his sons; therefore they had not been waylaid yet. She had a tiny spot of crimson on her forehead, where the caste-mark of the Kali sect had been recently rubbed out. She, if one of the enemy, might know the names of all the white men in the party, because of the five-pound note in da Gama’s hat-band, signed by Jeremy, and the sheet of paper in da Gama’s pocket on which the Portuguese had jotted down terms — and undoubtedly names. Ali added those circumstances tip and multiplied the total into certainty: She sought to decoy him in order to force from him news of his friends’ plans and present whereabouts.
“Queen of cockatrices!” he spat out suddenly, and slapped her with his flat hand over the jaw where the swelling was.
He slapped as he augured, shrewdly. Pain was so sudden and intense that for a minute she could not scream, but lay on the office floor holding both hands to her face and rocking herself. He stooped over her, according to his own account to feel for weapons, but made a commencement by twitching at an emerald ear-stud, and the speed with which she drew a dagger then was swifter than a snake’s. He sprang clear, avoiding her upward stab by the width of the goose-flesh on his belly.
“Mother of corruption!”
She had had her chance and lost it. Whipping out his long knife he knocked her dagger spinning, and with his teeth showing clean as a hound’s in a battle-laugh between the gray-shot black of beard and upper-lip he set one foot on her and pressed her to the floor.
“Mother of evil tidings! What ill-omen brought thee? Speak!”
But she would not speak, although he showed his swordmanship, whirling his blade until it whistled within an inch of her defiant eyes. And from that he drew his own conclusions.
“So! Not alone? An escort waits — too far away to hear screams — but will come unless the she-decoy returns in time. Hah!”
He removed his foot from between her breasts and she raised herself with a hand on the floor, but he kicked her under the injured jaw again and with the same toe sent her floundering behind the desk, where the prisoner in yellow lay.
Suddenly then it occurred to him that she and the prisoner should not hold intercourse. It only takes a second for the East to tell the East the news. He pounced on her again and dragging her away, flung her across the room, bending then over the man in yellow to make sure his bonds were taut and cursing him for having dared to see what he could not help seeing.
“Allah! If I were a hard man I would tear thy tongue out to save talk! Luckily for thee my heart is wax. I am a man of mercy.”
He repaid attention to the woman then, and it was time; she was creeping along the wall toward the door. He seized her by one foot and, she kicking like a caught fish, pulled her back to the farthest corner, where he tied her hand and foot with thin string meant for wrapping parcels, using the best part of a ball of the stuff, for Ali was no sailor.
The rest of his task was simple enough — and satisfying. He removed the emeralds from her ears, the gold from her neck, wrists and ankles, and every one of the jeweled brooches that fastened her outer garments.
She called him a pig of an Afghan for that, and he was in the act of gagging her by way of reprisal when another knock sounded on the office door.
He knew it was none of his sons. They had their own private code of signals. He picked up the only rug and heaped it over the woman to conceal her.
“Mother of a murrain!” he growled in Pushtu. “Does death tempt you? If so, make one sound, and die thus!”
In pantomime he showed how a Khyber knife goes in below the stomach and rips upward. Then he arranged the rug over her and turned to face the door.
“Open!” commanded someone — a stranger with a strange voice, speaking Hindu.
There was only one voice. He could only hear one man shifting his feet restlessly. He could not see through the frosted-glass panel of the door, nor through the keyhole for the key was in it.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“A messenger. The sahib’s sons have sent me.”
That was an obvious lie. The sons of Ali of Sikunderam knew better than to instruct their furious sire by, deputy.
“How many of you?” he demanded.
“One.”
But he suspected, and suspicion was unthinkable without its concrete consequence, with Ali’s nerves in that state. He struck the glass panel with his knife-point and as the glass broke clapped his eye to it.
He could only see one man — a fellow in a yellow smock, apparently unarmed. He, too, used the broken pane to get a glimpse of Ali. He used it to good purpose. Drawing back suddenly he thrust a long stick through with such force that it drove Ali back on his heels and sent him reeling against the desk. And before he could recover a lean hand beneath a yellow sleeve inserted itself through the broken pane and turned the key. One man walked in, followed by five others, the last of whom closed the door behind him and stood with his back against the broken glass.
“Be swift!” said the first man. “Two belonging to us are here. A woman and a man. Where?”
But six to one, though odds enough, were no conclusive argument to Ali of Sikun
deram. And there are few, who have not seen it, who are able to imagine the swiftness and the spring-steel savagery of the North at bay. All six drew knives from under their smocks, but all too late — Ali had laid out two of them, gutted and writhing in their own hot bowels, before he had as much as to guard himself. And as the third man advanced with a jump to engage, the sixth screamed; someone in the passage thrust a long knife through the broken glass and pierced him through the kidneys from behind.
The reserves had come! Now three men had to deal with Ali and with six of Ali’s sons!
But they were three stern fighters, and they, too, had reenforcement.
She on the floor, whom Ali had struck and kicked and covered up, struggled — only ifrits or a sailor could explain how — from the tight-wound string, and seized a knife whose hilt was slippery with the blood of its erstwhile owner. With that she slashed the lashing on her ankles, and a yell from one of Ali’s sons warned him in the nick of time that she was up on her feet and coming.
Rahman’s pantomime saved him. Rahman, speechless with excitement, ducked as he, too, would have ducked if the knife had been swinging at the base of his on skull. And Ali imitated, hardly knowing what he did, guided more by telepathic instinct than by his reason. For the second time the woman’s knife missed him by a hair’s breadth. The back of his neck felt seared as if a hot iron had almost touched it, so close and so terrific was the woman’s lunge.
But it was her last act, not his. The North’s retort discourteous is quicker than the wild boar’s jink and rip. The impulse brought her stumbling against his back and he threw her with the “chuck” they boast in Cornwall — over his shoulders, forward — caught her as she fell — thrust her like a shield with his left hand into an opponent, driving the long knife with his right into her body three times — and then slew the man behind her with a downward blow that split his skull midway to the mouth. The knife stuck in the tough bone. The men in yellow rushed him, taken in the rear themselves by Rahman and the other sons. Ali let go the Khyber knife and drew his dagger; and from that moment there was no more hope or thought of quarter — no hope for whichever side was weaker, unless interruption came. And the odds were five to two, for two of Ali’s sons were down.
And who should trespass into other men’s disputes in Delhi, in these days of non-cooperation and distrust? A man might yell for help the day long, and no more than tire his lungs. There is trouble without wooing it, and he who starts a fight may finish it counting on no interference from strangers.
Now the office was a shambles — blood and bowels on the floor — loose-limbed dead men yielding this and that way to the kicks of the frenzied living — grunts — low, explosive oaths — the sudden, sullen, lightning thrust and parry as the daggers struck or missed — no shouting now. — no breath for it — the stink of raw blood and the electric thrill of death’s wings — thumping of feet growing fewer. No beasts fight as evilly as men.
Three of Ali’s sons, including Rahman bled to death on the office floor while their sire raged like a typhoon over them, working with a dagger for room and time in which to free the long knife from his victim’s skull. And then with a foot on the skull and a wrench he had it. So, not neatly, as Narayan Singh would have slain, but roughly like the butchers who cleave meat in a hurry as it hangs, he hacked the two remaining Kali-men to death, saving three sons — one so badly wounded that his only chance was in the hospital.
“And so what?” he demanded, questioning Allah it might be as he wiped his reeking blade on a victim’s smock.
The two whole sons asked nothing, but proceeded to the looting, one stripping his dead brothers first of every valuable thing and the other naturally picking out the woman. Ali laughed at him.
“Fool! Am I brainless? Should I tie her and not scratch?”
He had no more breath for words. Disgust at losing three, it might be four sons in such a mean fight half-unmanned him. With a gesture he ordered the woman thrown under the rug again where he himself had hidden her, and the son obeyed. He did not really know why he ordered that. He was hardly thinking. Rather he was looking about him for a bandage for his son’s wounds. Suddenly he thought that if he left the wounded son there, as he must, the presence of the woman’s body might make lying difficult; and Ahmed would have to lie like history or else say nothing when relief should come. Lying is much the easier of those alternatives, to a man born north of where the Jumna bends by Dera Ghazi Khan.
“Take her out! Cover her in that!” he ordered; and the prisoner behind the desk, hearing but not seeing, made a mental note of it.
He heard, too, the grunting and heavy footsteps as the two uninjured sons picked up the rug with the woman’s body and carried it out to be dumped in the unused cellar where rats would eat it, and whoever found bones might conjecture what he pleased.
Then Ali, bandaging his wounded son as carefully as circumstance permitted, gave him water and forbidden whisky from the office gallon jar, and bade him sit there with his back propped in a corner until someone should come from the Moslem hospital — to whom he should lie like a gentleman.
“These men in yellow came — broke in — found me and my brothers — attacked us murderously — and were slain by me, Ahmed son of Ali ben Ali of Sikunderam. I know not why they came, nor who they are.”
That was the lie, and surely good enough for a man at death’s door, in a land where a trial may take a year awaiting.
“There will be no witnesses: Say that and stick to it!” said Ali. “Beg of the Wakf for proper burial for thy brothers and, it may be, also for thyself!”
Then he gagged and blindfolded his prisoner, released his legs and hurried him out between the two uninjured sons through the door at the end of the passage into the warehouse, where all was gloom among the bales and none asked questions in any event. Thence he sent one son running to find a man, whose word was good with the Moslem hospital, and sat down on a bale of aloes to consider.
The problem was how now to get in touch with King, Grim, Jeremy and Ramsden. He was not afraid of being caught, because only his friends had keys to the warehouse door, nor afraid of consequences if he should be caught, since in a land of lies, who lies the best is king. Dead men are not efficient witnesses, and Ahmed had been well trained. But the prisoner was an embarrassment, and he did not care to dispose of him without instructions.
He removed the stuffy blindfold from the prisoner, not from merciful but mercenary reasons. The drugs in the bales all about them were pungent and exceeding dry. He had a thought, that became him as soldier of fortune.
“Are you thirsty?” it occurred to him to ask.
Unwilling to admit it, for he guessed the motive, the prisoner shook his head. Ali gravely doubted him. He sought a bale of capsicum, and pulling loose a handful crushed the stuff to powder under the prisoner’s nose. If he had not been thirsty previous to that, his condition now was indisputable.
“You shall drink when you tell me where my friends are!” he said bluntly.
“I don’t know that,” the prisoner answered.
“By Allah, but you do! You saw the fellow with the green-lined cloak, who took my friends the sahibs and the Sikh away with him. You recognized him, for I saw your eyes. Tell me where he lives.”
The prisoner coughed up most of the torturing dust.
“I will tell you when you tell me what you did with HER,” he answered, the water running from his eyes. “Where have you hidden her?”
“I killed her,” Ali answered, so promptly and frankly, that the prisoner was sure he lied.
“Let me speak with HER, and I will tell you anything you want to know,” he answered.
“Answer my question. Moreover write an order for a thousand rupees payable to my son, who will collect the money and bring water back with him. Then you shall drink,” said Ali; and having thrown more dust of capsicum into the prisoner’s lips and nostrils, he settled down to bide his time and meditate.
Sleep was overtaking him ag
ain. He had to wrestle with his senses. Thoughts shaded into one another, and the outlines blurred until a half- dream and a fact were indistinguishable. He could not guess what capital to make of the prisoner’s belief that SHE — whoever she was — was still living. He had slain her, that was sure.
The prisoner wished to speak with her, that was also sure. Ergo, she meant something to the prisoner; but what? And what might it all mean to his friends the sahibs ? Ali was forever thoughtful for his friends, when his own immediate and perhaps prospective needs had had attention. How he wished he had brains like Jimgrim sahib , or King sahib’s experienced wisdom, or Jeremy sahib’s swift intuition, or even the ability to grind an answer out as Rammy sahib did, seeming to compel his intellect to work by brute force! He tried that, but solutions would not come.
He heard his son return and listened dully to the account of how the ambulance was coming presently. He heard the ambulance arrive, as in a dream, and heard the tramping and excited comments of the men, who found all those corpses and one unconscious Hillman in the office, and were suitably impressed. He heard the tramping and the voices die away, and later, as the heat increased, sent one of his two sons for water, which he drank in the prisoner’s presence. Then, giving orders to his sons to increase the prisoner’s thirst by all means possible, he fell asleep and dreamed, according to his own account of it, of emeralds and wild-eyed women and of a great high-priest who came and blessed him, making signs in the air as he did so with an unsheathed Khyber knife.
He awoke with a start, and stared into a strange face!