by Talbot Mundy
“But you say it’s difficult to see this person.”
“Difficult for spies, yes, and for busybodies, and for fools. Impossible by day because of suspicion and watchfulness on the part of many who would give one eye for leave to follow. But by night—”
“Which night?”
“This night is as good as another.”
“Very well,” said Gup. But his Scots common sense had not deserted him. “This is a wild borderland. I suppose you came prepared to prove your good faith?”
“By Allah and by my beard, I and my word are the same thing.” Rahman answered. “This, you and I both know: that any liar can come carrying proofs, which are as often as not forged or stolen. Few men know a horse; yet you do. Fewer yet can read a man’s eyes; you may read mine, or you may not read them, just as you will. But I know this: that you yourself were challenged to give proofs of good faith to your government, and that you gave none. What is good for the horse from Kabul, let the horse from Kandahar eat also. I have no proofs.”
“Very well,” said Gup. “That is an honest answer. I will go with you.”
“Let us pack up the tent,” said Rahman. “You can not be back by morning. It would not look well for the tent to be seen, and no owner. Let my servants do it. There shall be nothing lost or stolen.”
Gup hesitated for a moment arguing with himself. But the thought stood foremost that he was invited to explore some byway of life that had been fenced off by bureaucracy. That temptation was almost stronger than the wish to meet the unknown owner of the black horse. Also it still rankled in him that insolent fools had dared to think him guilty of sedition. He knew himself guilty of nothing except rage at false standards of living and outworn methods of compelling men to think and act alike. The ride that afternoon had reawaked in him a fury that knew no limits.
“What about my servant?” he demanded.
“Bring him also. Such men talk if they are left behind.”
“I have three horses here, and three grooms.”
“Bring them.”
“You say there shall be nothing lost or stolen? Down with the tent then. I will hold you answerable.”
Now Disobedience becomes a law
Vampiric — a new fetish to be fed,
A monstrous wind-blown effigy of straw
That will not follow whither Judgment led
Lest Judgment copy Custom.
Fear Hydra-headed has a head unslain
To blood-suck purpose. All gains disappear
And leave the whole long fight to win again.
CHAPTER THREE
“Anybody know anything about McLeod?”
THE Deputy Commissioner was acting for a superior home on leave. He was feverish, overworked and worried. Furthermore, he hated Glint — hated him straight to his face and resented the obligation to have I dealings with him.
“If I believed in reincarnation, Glint, I should say you were once an informer at Nero’s court. I have never heard you give any one except yourself credit for even ordinary decency. And you’re the most ingenious man I’ve ever known when it comes to inventing jobs from which you can’t be dislodged. Damn you, I wish you’d get yourself transferred to another province — or at least to another district.”
“I do my duty and I try to be impersonal,” said Glint. “I don’t expect to be admired for it. The prisons are full of people I have brought to justice. Government offices are overstuffed with men who have sought to prevent me. However, I did not come to you to talk about opinions, but about this case, which leaves no room for opinion. It calls for action.”
“You will have to wait then. I refuse to talk to you alone about it.”
One after another junior members of the district committee drifted in, lighted cigars and took haphazard chairs in the uncomfortable office. It had been furnished with an attempt to combine dignity and ease, a compromise that resulted in formal dreariness, particularly before ten o’clock when the sun would shine through the window and touch things up a bit. Every one looked bored, except Glint, who sat bolt-upright and wore an air of ingenuous virtue. “Secretary, read the minutes.”
“I object.”
“Why?”
“Minutes are confidential. Has Major Glint a letter of appointment to this committee?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Secretary, make a note of that, — objection sustained after consultation. Ayes have it. Now, what?”
“Angus McLeod, ex-brevet major, was in Dera Ismail Khan, in camp, until last night,” said Glint. “Ostensibly here to buy horses.”
“No harm in that. Any one may buy a horse who has the price. I wish I had; my old Shere Ali has developed a running abscess — three vets had a look at it — they only torture him — it still weeps.”
“Have you tried any of those new chemicals they invented for trench-mouth? Kill anything that wiggles, without harming the tissue.”
“I was speaking of McLeod, if you’ll permit me,” Glint interrupted.
“Go on, then. Try to make it interesting.”
“Order, please. Let’s get this over with. I’ve a hundred and one Fahrenheit. Anybody want my job?”
“I happen to have access to some confidential files,” said Glint, “and I find that McLeod has been suspected for a long time of seditious intention. He has kept bad company. He has been officially cautioned.”
A voice over by the window piped up: “Let’s see the particulars.”
“Certainly not. Such reports are confidential,” Glint retorted. “I should have to get permission, which would take a week unless I wire for it. Do you wish me to wire?”
“Proposal tabled for consideration. Ayes have it. Go on.”
“Last evening I paid him a visit, in his tent.”
“A visitation!”
“Order, please. Don’t interrupt him or it may take all day.”
“I found him in conversation with the Afghan Rahman, and you know what that means.”
“Certainly. Rahman is the safest man to buy a horse from, anywhere north of Delhi.”
“Rahman,” Glint retorted, “is one of the most dangerous intriguers at liberty. He should be required to report to the police twice daily as long as he remains on our territory.”
“Too many have to do that now — fifteen hundred of them,” said the chairman. “The police are becoming clerks.”
“They are,” said the police officer. “And besides: Glint’s little game is to clap an order on ’em to report twice daily. Then, when they start for their own country he has ’em arrested for not reporting. That’s clever, but it isn’t decent, and I object to using the police in that way.”
“Since when have you been dictator of how the police shall be used?” Glint asked him. “As I understand it, you are supposed to obey orders.”
“For God’s sake, let’s get down to business,” said the chairman.
“But for interruptions I could have finished,” said Glint. “I report that McLeod — take this down, please, Secretary, — I report that McLeod was in conference last evening with Rahman. That he caught my servant listening underneath the tent fly—”
“Your what?”
“My servant.”
“Don’t you mean your stool-pigeon?”
“Servant — have you got that, Secretary? — caught my servant listening and whipped him severely. Furthermore, he set a guard outside his tent — a man named Pepul Das, a known renegade, who has served a prison sentence. Pepul Das summoned several Afghans, so that the tent was surrounded by cutthroats—”
“Whose throats did they cut?” the chairman asked.
“Surrounded by Afghans, then, who allowed no one to approach.”
“Perfectly lawful,” said the police officer. “Did they harm any one?”
“No — not as it happened. But they increased my suspicion and caused me to go home and search my confidential files, with the result that I am well satisfied that McLeod is up to mischief. Under the Prevention of S
edition Act we have the right to hold him for investigation on a warrant issued by you acting as Deputy Commissioner for this District. I demand that.”
“Anybody know anything about McLeod?” the chairman asked.
“He’s a gentleman — a damned decent fellow.”
“Quick tempered, but as straight as a shot. Served in the war with distinction. Several medals — one for bravery. Three wounds, I think.”
“We’ll need more facts before we can arrest him,” said the chairman.
“Very well, then. Pepul Das is a paid retainer of the ex-Ranee of Jullunder.”
“Oh!”
“The ex-Ranee of Jullunder is in hiding but is known to be moving about the country. Rahman is known to have carried a message for her when he came down the Gomal Pass a week ago,” said Glint.
“Who knows all this?”
“I know it,” Glint insisted. “Do you wish me to produce my witnesses? That would take twenty-four hours, and in the meantime McLeod may start trouble. Those Afghans pulled his tent down in the night, and they all vanished.”
“Why didn’t you follow them?” the policeman asked. “I don’t see that you did your duty.”
“Thank you. If you would attend to your own duty and not interrupt me this District would be a great deal safer. As it is — I suppose you know that the ex-Ranee of Jullander is an Englishwoman.”
“English be blowed! She’s a Cape-Dutch girl.”
“Well, half-English. Doubly dangerous. Cold-shouldered by her own race and maddened by a taste of power. Plenty of money. Capable of any sort of intrigue and very difficult to keep an eye on because of the purdah customs. Ever since the Rajah died she has been financing seditious movements and corresponding with the tribes across the border. I believe I have told you enough. I demand a warrant for McLeod’s arrest.”
Glint crossed his legs and waited.
“This ought to go to the Lieutenant-Governor,” said the chairman.
“Not at all. This is an emergency,” Glint answered. “And I would like personally to serve the warrant on McLeod.”
“Why?”
“Because I would like the chance to talk to him for his own good.”
“I thought I smelled a nigger in the wood-pile,” said the voice by the window. “Nothing personal in this?”
“I am never personal,” said Glint, “in matters of duty. I believe McLeod needs some advice, and I believe I am the one to give it. It may be not too late to make him see the error of his ways. He is tinged with Bolshevism.”
“What do you know about Bolshevism?” asked the voice near the window. All that Glint could see was rounded shoulders turned toward him and the outline of a graying bullet head.
“I have no time to give you a lecture on that subject. I believe McLeod is tainted. His mood is rebellious. He can see no good in any established order. I gathered that from conversation with him yesterday.”
“Scots verdict,” said the chairman, “I find nothing proven. What say the rest of you?”
“Put it up to the Lieutenant-Governor.”
“Pass the buck, eh? I say, scotch it.”
“Same here.”
“Glint,” said the chairman, “can go to the civil court and get a summons against McLeod for having whipped that eavesdropper.”
“No witnesses,” said Glint.
“Nevertheless you can summons him, can’t you, and gain time. It may bring him to his senses. Request for a warrant refused for reasons stated. Objections? None. Ayes, have it. Have to ask you fellows to excuse me, I think my temperature’s going up. I’m off to bed. Any one passing the doctor’s bungalow? Mind asking him to drop in and see me?”
“Such is government. Such is imperial recognition of a public servant’s zeal!” Glint grumbled as he stalked out.
So sought he the New Grail. Impenitent
He pledged impenitence to unknown gods,
His own imagin’d creatures. Fury, pent
Within him burst. He said: If great Jove nods
While agony each act of faith pursues,
Nor marks the bitter anguish of a world that weeps,
I go alone! No more I pay those dues
Nor ever bow this forehead to a God who sleeps.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Is this the Redhead?”
RAHMAN was a man of tact as well as mystery and strategy. He mounted McLeod on Iskander again, thus creating a mood. A romantic Scotsman astride a splendid horse at night under the stars, ignorant of where he is going, becomes a vehicle for utterly unconventional ideas. In other words he becomes a poet. Rahman ordered his own men to surround McLeod’s servants and to lead them with their baggage to a rendezvous. Apparently he had a horde of followers; he sent another party in an opposite direction, selecting for their leader a man who, in darkness, looked so like himself as to deceive keen eyes. He gave that man orders to attract attention, so as to draw off pursuit.
“Beat whoever offers thee excuse. If the police arrest thee, say thou art Rahman. I will pay the fine.”
He and McLeod and another rode away into a stream of mist that flowed along-wind from the Indus. In the mist they changed direction eastward, going slowly lest their horses leave too deep an imprint on the ground, but at the end of a mile they swung northward again, and when they could see the stars they broke into the easy lope at which horses can go for hours without wearying. Speech at that speed would have been easy but there was nothing said until Rahman drew rein to ease his horse into a nullah, where in the shadowy depth he waited for the third man to overtake them.
“This is Pepul Das,” he announced then. “He was an idolator once. Ill-fortune in those days dogged his footsteps, as it should be. Allah! May all idolators die ugly deaths! He was caught and thrown in prison, where Allah saw fit to enlighten him and he adopted the true religion, becoming circumcized. Thenceforth he was a man to reckon with, although he looks like nothing much.”
The man described as “nothing much” looked almost dwarfish on the big horse he was riding, and the sheepskin jacket threw his body out of all proportion. The end of his turban, thrown over his mouth, served as a mask, and there was nothing to judge him by except Rahman’s introduction and a pair of small, bright, sunken eyes that danced with interest.
“I hope I speak to one with whom my destiny runs parallel,” he said in neatly pronounced English. “Has Rahman told you whom we ride to see?”
“No!” Rahman interrupted. “Let him see for himself. Let him judge for himself.” He spurred his horse, led the way out of the nullah and made room for McLeod beside him on a trail that barely allowed room for two horses abreast, thus forcing Pepul Das to keep his distance. He made his horse kick when the smaller man crowded him.
They rode in silence until within a half-hour of daylight, roughly following the direction of the River Indus toward the mountains. It was cold and dark when Rahman at last drew rein and threw up a warning hand. There was nothing visible except deeper shadow a hundred yards ahead and McLeod felt suddenly the same loneliness that he had experienced in No Man’s Land in Flanders, where a bullet might pop out of nowhere and plunk into its mark, as weirdly free from relevancy as life and death are. There was no reason why they should not be shot, all three of them; that northwest border is a land where as many hairy human thieves as jackals prowl by night. Rahman turned on Pepul Das.
“Speak, thou!” he commanded. “Speak swiftly!”
He may have thought it beneath his own dignity to make such a noise as Pepul Das did, ululating a weird cry like nothing human; it suggested horror, but it was answered after a moment, almost echoed, from the gloom in front, and Rahman led forward at a snail’s pace.
“Ahsti! Ahsti! Hold that stallion. If we come too fast they may think we are police who have our signal. A policeman’s life is worth less than an anna in this place.”
There came a challenge out of the darkness. Rahman answered it. A man came picking his way slowly between sharp stakes set into the ground.
He set his foot into each stirrup in turn and raised himself to examine all three faces.
“Who is this one?” he demanded, balancing, with his hand on McLeod’s saddle.
“Fool!” said Rahman. “For whom went I? And whose black stallion is he riding, thou owl out of hell!”
The “owl out of hell” swung himself up behind McLeod, but Rahman would have none of that.
“Get down and lead!” he ordered. “Shall we gut good horses on the stakes? Show thou the way.”
It was a winding way, so guarded by stakes, with their sharp ends made hard by burning, as to impale the horse of any one intruding in too great haste. It led to a low wall, ruinous and overgrown with creepers, and beyond that, in gloom was a formless mass of something solid. The horses’ hoofs rang on stone pavement that was, nevertheless, too covered with dust and dead weeds to be visible. These seemed to be the ruins of an ancient fort. A red light appeared through a chink in masonry, or it might be from a dugout.
“Is your Honor afraid of devils?” Rahman asked, laughing to hide a certain nervousness he felt himself. “This place is near where in former times the British took a beating from the Sikhs. Many were lost on both sides and they say” — he paused and listened— “they say the spirits of those men still fight their battles here. Few visit the place. There were robbers in hiding when we came, but we drove them forth.”
He rode a little closer to the shadowy ruins and some men clad in sheepskin cloaks came out and took the reins. Rahman gave them gruffly explicit orders regarding the horses, following with threats of what would happen if the stallion caught cold.
“And if there is no room in hell for you, what care I,” he added. He seemed relieved at last and almost genial, as if a weight were off his mind. “Huzoor,” he said, signing to McLeod to follow him, “it was naught else than Allah’s will that has brought this to pass. Let Allah guide you and all of us henceforth.” Then he led on, striding with the irregular footfall of a horseman born amid mountains. Pepul Das wanted to follow but he turned on him.
“Go thou and do thy business!”