by Talbot Mundy
“Good, Jeff! Very good!” I heard Joan Angela.
But it was not so good. There were the tribesmen to consider, and none but Kangra Khan to hold them to their word. That look in his eyes was a savage’s. He was ashamed to be beaten so easily. Hate, and his notions of honour, our helplessness, and the obvious fact that a cry from him would bring the tribesmen down on us to end the whole affair in the shortest, simplest way, were among the odds I had to reckon.
I stepped back raising my point, and signed to him to rise, returning to my own end. I even gave him his own ground with his back to the sun, saluting him as he retired to have his wound attended. He answered the salute, and it had an excellent effect on the tribesmen; they did not applaud, but they murmured, and I could actually feel the change of attitude towards myself, as if it were a concrete thing that stirred the atmosphere. It began to look as if another round or two might win their friendship.
However Grim who came to my corner with Narayan Singh to staunch the blood flowing from my neck, brought bad news — worst imaginable.
“The tooth’s gone!” he said. “While I watched you, Akbar bin Mahommed stole it from the pocket in my sleeve! He has sneaked away with it.
“Find another!” I suggested.
“Where? How? A green tooth won’t do.” Grim was all at sea. His nerve seemed to have failed him. “Without that tooth we’re done for. Akbar bin Mahommed can show it to them, and—”
“Break a false one out of your plate!” I answered. I had never known Grim’s fertile imagination to fail in a crisis before, but there comes a time when the best of us succumb to nerves, and the mark of a good man then is the speed with which he regains self-command.
Narayan Singh mopped up the blood on my neck and poured into my ear the abstract of a long experience.
“You should have slain him, sahib! Never mind. Slay him the next time, unless he is so badly hurt as to be helpless. That cut you gave him is nothing much, and now he will be like a wolf at bay. Beware of him! He is cunning; and he will seek to regain the admiration of his men! Stick to the point, sahib! Put the sun in his eyes, and keep him at a distance! The gods are good, and seek to discredit Allah, but they are wise and dislike foolishness! Use only the point, sahib! When you lunge, be swifter, and recover much more slowly, keeping your eye on his eye. Never mind that thing he wields; you have the better weapon. Watch his eyes! Now!”
A roar went up from the Pathans as Kangra Khan stepped out on the rock again. His shirt was a mass of blood, but there was lots of liveliness about him, and he swung the tulwar once or twice, by way of challenge, with all the old skill, making the blade thrum. I walked out to meet him, stood on guard and waited. He crouched low, and waited too, inviting me to attack, but I did not accept the invitation.
Suddenly he rushed in, mowing like a scythe-man at my legs. He forced me to stoop to guard myself. As I crouched lower and lower, playing the waiting game, he watched his chance and, letting my point pass through his shirt (it grazed his ribs), sprang for my neck, and with a jerk of his left hand nearly threw me forward on my face. Before I could quite recover and turn he was down on me with the tulwar. I caught the blow on the guard and it snapped the sabre-blade clean off. I heard Joan Angela scream. The Pathans began yelling and dancing like devils in hell-fire; and I felt the sting as the tulwar blade hit home, gashing me from hip to thigh. But I did not fall, and I did crash the hilt like a cestus into his teeth. He reeled backward, and I closed with him. We went to the rock together, he under me, and I rained blows on him with the hilt, while he struggled to get his right arm free and cut my throat with the tulwar.
“Smash him, Jeff! Oh, smash him!” Grim yelled. “Crush his guts!”
“Get the tulwar, sahib!” roared Narayan Singh. “Throw that hilt away and get the tulwar!”
I let the hilt go, for that gave me two hands, and I felt my strength oozing through the wound. The sole chance left me was speed and sheer strength. I dazed him with blows to the head and then, failing to seize the tulwar, got a hold on his jaw and tried to break his neck. I got my thumb on his windpipe. Over and over we went. He broke the head-lock — nearly broke my grip on his right forearm, chopping me badly in a dozen places — then yelled in agony as I got both hands on his wrist and he had to let the tulwar go.
Then to get the tulwar! Slimy with each other’s blood, we rolled and strained and fought to reach it, while the Pathans danced in circles around us, yelling themselves hoarse. We were both growing weak, I bleeding worse than he, which gave me a strange advantage; his hand slipped wherever he gripped me. To offset that he set his fingers into a cut in my arm, and the agony of that spurred me to a last prodigious effort. I knew it was my last. He had me beaten if I failed. I gripped him round the waist, pinning one arm, whirled him, staggering to my feet, and hurled him into the midst of his yelling men. Then the world seemed to slide out from under my feet; I sat down backwards, still more or less conscious, but weak, and without even will to recover.
What followed was like the vivid details of a nightmare, in which I seemed to have no part except as the arena in which opposing arguments struggled for the mastery. I felt Narayan Singh’s arms, and Joan Angela’s, but nothing seemed to matter, even when King came, and I recognized his voice quite close to me. He was talking with Grim to windward — in low tones, probably — but the wind carried both voices, and my hearing-sense was all at sixes and sevens. Joan Angela’s voice in my ear seemed a mile away, and her words were a jumble; King’s and Grim’s were perfectly distinct.
“He stole the tooth.”
“Who did?”
“The Waziri who killed Akbar bin Mahommed. Then three more Waziris fought him for it, and between them they lost it. It’s gone. Are your fingers strong? Quick! Pull out one of my teeth!” That was King.
Then Grim: “A green tooth won’t do! Wait — I’ve got it! Stand in front of me!”
Then I heard, as distinctly as I now can hear the ticking of the clock on the wall above me, the crack as Grim broke up two hundred dollars’ worth of U.S. dentistry.
“The biggest one!” said King. “Quick! They’re coming! Give me the rest — I’ll hide them.”
Then a war of words, in which izzat and shirm predominated, along with excited argument about Waziri rifles. I know now what happened, but then it seemed no possible concern of mine.
Kangra Khan was too beaten and weak to control the Pathans, until King’s experienced fingers bandaged him and chafed him back to full consciousness. There were men there who considered themselves his formidable rivals for the chieftainship who would have preferred to see him dead. But King helped him to the middle of the battle-rock, and Grim presented him with the tooth, wrapped in a page of Persian notes extracted from his memorandum book. After that it was only a question of whether Kangra Khan would keep his word; no Pathan dared disobey him, now that he had the Prophet’s Tooth to curse or bless with.
Our Waziris refused point blank to keep their part of the agreement, and therein lay the difficulty. They refused to surrender their rifles, offering rather to do battle, man for man, with the Pathans. The idea of single combat had taken hold, and challenge followed challenge. It was King and Grim, pouring wise words into Kangra Khan’s ears, who managed the business finally. Our Waziris were allowed to take their rifles with them over the British border (where they were confiscated promptly by the authorities, for various and sundry reasons, including the good one that every single rifle was originally stolen).
And to their honor be it written that, though we had two-score Waziris who could stand and march and bear a load, they were eight Pathans who carried me to the border on a stretcher made of poles and sheepskin. And they have sent a deputation since, to tell me I am free of all their country; although I don’t intend to test that generous laissez passer.
Joan Angela came and nursed me in the hospital, and when my great heap of thews and bones turned atavistic and recalled the caveman trick of recovery from what commonsense wo
uld say was certain death, she renewed her offer, very gently and sincerely.
But my head, as well as my heart, was functioning by that time.
“God knows,” I said, “I’ll wear your offer in my hat until I die, and will try to live up to it. But I’m a middle-aged man, of middle-class means. You’re a young girl, with millions, and all your life in front of you. There’s the right man somewhere. I won’t wrong him — or you.”
She said she was in earnest, and she was undoubtedly. But so was I, and I’m the man I have to live with. So we parted good friends. And if any of you ever chance to meet Joan Angela and win her friendship, you may take it from me, you are fortunate; her friendship is stronger and longer, and has more grain in it than most have nowadays.
THE END
THE MARRIAGE OF MELDRUM STRANGE
CONTENTS
I.— “WELL MET!”
II.— “I’M THINKING”
III.— “PERHAPS A HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW”
IV. — AS ESTHER TO AKAZUERUS
V. — SHEEP’S BONES AND NO STRYCHNINE!
VI.— “C.O. TO Z.P. Z.P. TO C.O.”
VII. — KEY TO DESTINY!
VIII.— “AND NOW FOR THE REALLY DIFFICULT PART!”
IX.— “TIGER!”
X.— “UP TO YOU, SIR!”
XI.— “WHO EATS CROW, EH? WAIT AND SEE!”
XII.— “IS EVERYTHING READY?”
XIII-— “AH-H-H!”
XIV. — CHULLUNDER GHOSE PRAYS TO ALL THE GODS
I.— “WELL MET!”
This is an immoral story. It proves without intending to that the best of us are weak, and the worst have elements of decency that overwhelm them when the gods get ready; none of which, of course, is orthodox. But orthodoxy is missing from the calculations of those Powers that rule us— “whatever gods there be” as Swinburne calls them.
Cottswold Ommony is incorruptible according to report. Report is wrong. They say — the Press particularly says it and infers it, nearly every morning — that Meldrum Strange is a billionaire with brains but no heart; that his heart, if he has one, is made of iron filings; that his belly is of brass, and his feet of clay; that his friendship is imaginary, but his enmity a bitter and appalling truth; that he lacks remorse, but has insane ambition; and that his superficial outward resemblance to General Ulysses Grant was devised by Satan expressly to bring the memory of that gallant soldier into disrepute.
Unexplainably in the circumstances, Meldrum Strange has friends, and Cottswold Ommony has enemies. We, who view all life accurately, classing this man as a hero, that man as a villain, may wonder; but the fact is so. Ommony stands for nearly all the things that Meldrum Strange objects to, including the heresy that more than enough is much; Strange never had enough, and loves power of money, which Ommony despises, like the rest of us he has to bow to it quite often. Ommony approves of individual liberty whereas Strange believes that all men should be beaten into ploughshares for uplifting use by their betters. They met, and there was no explosion, which is the most remarkable circumstance; but much else happened.
Charlie Wear began it. Charley stepped from a first-class compartment (it was labelled first-class) on the single-track branch of the Bombay and Southern Railway that winds among hills and trees until it makes a short cut through the forest where Ommony lives at intervals and is almost king.
Charley smiled at the naked legs of a porter nearly twice as large as himself, and sent up word on the back of a calling card that he had come, and would Mr. Ommony care to see him. So Ommony, who cares about everything interesting under the sun, sent the tonga. Less than an hour later Charley jumped off the back seat of that prehistoric vehicle, pitched his valise on to the lower step of the verandah (having not got used yet to being waited on) and is aware of Ommony taking his time about rising from a chair under the stags’ antlers on the verandah. Three dogs came down and made instant friends with Charley, while a fourth took guard.
“Well met,” said Ommony. “Come up.”
So Charley climbed the seven steps, shook hands, and sat in a canvas chair, while an enormous staghound sniffed him over carefully and Ommony filled a pipe.
“You like it here?” asked Charley.
“I’ve liked it for twenty years,” said Ommony, observing that Charley stroked the staghound’s ears without waiting for introductions — a thing very few strangers dare attempt. “Have you had breakfast?”
“Forgotten what it ‘ud feel like! Ate dead goat yesterday afternoon at a junction restaurant.”
Ommony sent for the butler, gave orders, and turned to his guest again.
“You’ve come to stay, of course?”
“If that’s agreeable. You got my letter?”
“Yes, but you didn’t say much. Tell me who you are.”
“Nobody important. Strange hired me to travel with him, but I haven’t seen him in two weeks. He sends me ahead. Time he gets to a place I’m miles away.”
“I begin to understand,” said Ommony without changing his expression. “You’re here in advance of Meldrum Strange to—”
“Dope you out? Lord, no! I did that coming up the steps. You’re O.K.”
“Thanks,” said Ommony, without a trace of sarcasm, and sat still, smoking, looking at his guest.
They resembled each other as much as a terrier does a grizzly. Ommony’s short beard disguises the kindest mouth and the firmest chin in Asia. His shoulders have stood up under responsibility for so long that the stamp of that is on them permanently. He is staunchly built, muscled up, and is exactly in the prime of life — an age that varies with individuals.
Charley Wear, on the other hand, with no more than five feet seven to boast of, and not much more than a hundred pounds of it, shows twenty-three years and weasel alertness on a clean-shaven face. You can’t tell what his hand holds, but you know he has played worse ones, and at the first glance you would trust him with your shirt. He looks like a man who has been hit hard, but who invariably won in the last round, if not sooner; nervous, keen, amused, aware of the world’s rough edges, and as hard to beat as a royal flush. His steely grey eyes looked straight into Ommony’s dark ones, and each in their own way betrayed absorbing interest.
“Strange heard of you from the gang,” said Charley. “Say this for him he has the best string ever. Picks ’em. Knows the trick. James Schuyler Grim’s a pippin. Jeff Ramsden, half-a-ton of he-man, right end up; bet your back teeth on him. Athelstan King — Englishman, but not half-bad — used to be major in the army, but wears no monocle. Says, ‘Haw, dontcherknow,’ like the rest of ’em, but I’ll say he’s a scrapper if scars mean anything. Olive skin, burnt on from outside. Been to places.”
Ommony smiled.
“You know him?”
“Years. He’s my friend.”
“You’re lucky. Strange hired him over the cable and sent Jeff sliding like an elephant on ice to deed him up. Strange keeps you busy — pays good, and has his money’s worth. Jeff’s sweated off about two hundred, but there’s lots left. Grim and King got past the sweating stage before Strange hired ’em, so they don’t show it much, but they kind o’ know they’ve made the team.”
“What is Meldrum Strange doing?” asked Ommony.
“Bits of everything. Reorganizing the universe mostly. They say his roll grows faster than he can peel it off; and he’s sore with his brother man — thinks we’re crashing down to the kyoodles—”
“Which?”
“Dogs. Wants to stop it, and has it all figured out, I guess. He started a kind of detective bureau in New York with branches everywhere, and they tell me it went good until he started sleuthing in the U.S. We have legislators over there, the same as everywhere; but there’s more of ’em, and more pork. Strange has his; so he looks back at the barrel and gets disgusted — goes bald-headed after corruption in politics, and siks the gang on. Inside three weeks he’s foul of the Senate, House o’ Representatives, Treasury, and every state legislature in the Union. Foul of
all the labour unions, most o’ the newspapers, half the courts, and all the banks. They crucified him good between ’em, some just for the fun of it, a few because they were scared, and the rest because they didn’t see why Meldrum Strange’s millions gave him any right to call names.”
“I take it you joined him after this?”
“You bet. I wanted to see the world, but all I’d got was the ambition and an imported camera. I’ve been studying that for seven years, and I’ve learned a little — not much, you understand, but more than some of ’em. A picture concern I was working for went fluey, so I thought I’d pick a fat one next time. Strange looked good to me.”
“But what would he do with a camera-man?” asked Ommony.
“That’s it! He hates ’em. When a man gets money he’s always crazy on some point or other. Strange ‘ud rather get shaved than have his picture taken, and he’s worn foliage since he was old enough to smoke cigars. A man in his office told me Strange was all fed up and going to travel. I began to figure on it.”
“It sounds like a difficult sum,” said Ommony.
“No. Just like any other sum. You’ve got to know the formula; then it all works out. None of the papers had Strange’s picture. They were crazy to get it, but he was careful. There’s an alley behind the office, and he can step out of the backdoor into a limousine, and straight home. He doesn’t golf. He likes yachting, but the crew’s hand-picked, and he stays below as long as there’s chance to snap him. Simply nothing doing; but I’m set on making the long trip, and down to borrowing by that time — mighty near taking a job, and praying like a priest to Lady Luck. She shows up at the very last minute.”