by Talbot Mundy
Diana whimpered as Ommony fingered the loose skin above her powerful shoulders.
“Bullet undoubtedly,” said Jeff.
“Might be a 32. Did you notice a weapon of that bore this afternoon?”
“The rajah’s gold-plated toy!”
“Exactly! Nobody else anywhere near this forest owns a 32. That rascally rajah suspected her of carrying a message; Diana’s notorious, ain’t you, old lady! And he’s a good shot with a pistol, damn his eyes!”
“It was a close call for the dog,” said Jeff, examining the wound.
“As close for me, I think! Let’s see what the message says.”
He read it by the bathroom night-lamp, holding Diana with one hand to keep her quiet, while the servant held the flashlight and Jeff syringed out the wound, the dog whimpering.
“Z.P. to C.O. Am sitting tight. Chullunder Ghose met him in forest and told about Strange liking to shoot tigers. Chullunder Ghose says that may open Panch Mahal, but I don’t understand what he means. Will be very sick if necessary. Please meet Charley at noon to-morrow at the lookout rock. He will ride the horse you left here. Chullunder Ghose says the rajah has no funds. Shall I lend?”
“No, no, no!” said Ommony, so that Jeff looked up, whereat Ommony took the scissors and clipped carefully.
“There, old lady; you’ll be all right in a few days.”
He stuffed the note in his pocket and scratched his chin, grinning. “It beats the Dutch,” he said, “the way Dave Destiny arranges things. Strange goes from here to the Panch Mahal. That’s a little old-fashioned palace twenty miles from Chota Pegu, where rajahs hold high revel on occasion. It means ‘the play-place of the ladies.’”
“Gosh!” said Jeff.
“Two tuts! The tiger-shooting’s often very good there. Caretakers have kept the place from ruin, but it hasn’t been used often in the last ten years.”
“Any personal risk to Strange?” Jeff asked, acutely conscious of being on Strange’s pay-roll.
“Prodigious, I should say it means Zelmira marries him!”
In spite of his quarrelsome mood Strange presently wearied of sitting alone, and came blustering in to see what they were doing. Diana, in no sweet mood herself, showed him a glimpse of her fangs.
“Place looks like a butcher-shop!” he snorted, and blustered out again.
“Thought so!” said Ommony.
“Thought what?”
“I have what you’d call the dope on him. Men who want to save the world by system and tyranny are all alike. Everything’s impersonal until it applies to him personally — blood in a bathroom included.”
“Exactly. That’s why I’d rather resign and then like him!” said Jeff. “Do him good!”
“No. Save him for Zelmira! That’s her job. Besides, you see, she has bought my soul!” Ommony answered, grinning his pleasantest.
Jeff had utterly ceased to enjoy his visit. A stickler for loyalty all his life long, he hated to lend a hand against Strange, but hated at least equally the thought of Strange accepting Ommony’s hospitality and using the man’s very roof as a cover for intrigue. Ommony’s loyalty to the forest and the job appealed to Jeff; Strange’s greed and arrogance disgusted him; but worse than either, he despised himself for not knowing what to do about it. Ommony divined the situation pretty accurately.
“Are Strange’s love-affairs your business?” he asked, cleaning out the syringe.
“No, and, by Gad, I’m not his valet!”
“What is your job?”
“I’m his partner in business — salaried partner. He owns control and can vote me out any time he sees fit.”
“Stick to business, then.”
“I’ll have to warn him to pull out of this, then.”
Ommony grinned again. “I wish you would! If you’ll stick strictly to business, and leave him to paddle his love canoe, there’ll be no accidents.”
So Jeff recovered his good-humour, and when bedtime came he followed Strange into his room and sat there for an hour, while Ommony, remaining with his pipe on the verandah, caught fragments of a violent debate, in between the pauses of his own conversation with two men, who wore no clothes, and did not trespass on to the verandah, but spoke like dark goblins from the shadow beyond the flower-bed.
“You’re a natural born employee! You can’t see things on a big scale!”
“I see more than you imagine! I’m warning you.”
“You’ve osseous formations on the occiput! Bone and beef aren’t brain! How d’you suppose I made millions? By being afraid of things? You and this man Ommony would make a pair in double harness! Go to bed.”
“All right. I’ve said my say, and you won’t listen. I tell you again, you’re wrong. D’you want my resignation?”
“No, you ass! When I want that I’ll tell you quick enough. You’re a first-class detail man — a perfect child when it comes to visualizing. Turn in and sleep off your fears!”
Jeff came glooming out on the way to his tent, and sat down for a minute beside Ommony; and once again, as the pipe-ash glowed and dimmed, Ommony divined the wise remark to offer:
“You see, you’re a bit too big to quit in the middle of it all. I’ve depended on you all along to go to the Panch Mahal with Strange and see him through it.”
“I’m dumb from now on!” Jeff retorted, and, shoving his pipe in his pocket, strode discontentedly to bed. Ommony sat still on the verandah for half an hour, chuckling at intervals.
Next morning only the servants saw him, for he breakfasted alone, and thereafter rode to the new plantations, superintending precautions against drought until it was nearly noon and time to keep the appointment with Charley Wear. He was seated up on the look-out rock when Charley came galloping down the glade, and Charley, squinting at lights and half-lights, climbed up to sit beside him.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t get the message,” Charley began, when lie had his breath. “The rajah said he saw your dog limping along as if someone had shot her. He sent out men to hunt for anyone with a firearm who might have done it.
“In America you call that ‘bull,’” Ommony answered. “Here it’s known as eye-wash. He shot the dog, but she got home.”
“How do you know that?”
Ommony whistled. Two black, naked shadows emerged from the trees and stood bathed in the sun.
“Those men saw it. They came last night and told me.”
He whistled again and the junglis disappeared.
“Well I’m damned!” muttered Charley.
“No. The rajah is. It’s too bad poor old Di got hurt, but she’ll recover, and the rajah won’t. For doing that, he shall have his own way and go to Paris, where the last state of that rajah will be worse than the first. Do you know Paris, Charley? There are professionals there, male and female, who can squeeze a rajah dry in shorter time than it takes you and me to squeeze a lemon. Thereafter, the ash-heap! He’s a nuisance here.”
“Too bad, it’ll be his subjects’ money.”
“No. Strange’s money!”
“I don’t get you.”
“Strange will! And Zelmira will get him, if she plays her hand wisely. There’s only one link missing now. What did you come to talk to me about?”
“Nothing serious,” said Charley. “There’s a box on the way from Delhi, addressed to me in your care. Do you mind paying the charges on it and arranging for me to get it somehow?”
Ommony filled his pipe and lit it carefully before he answered. He likes to suppress excitement. He crowded it down the way he put tobacco in, making sure none protruded.
“I believe I’ll be delighted,” he said then. “Is it bad manners to ask what’s in the box?”
“My motion picture outfit.”
“Any film?”
“Scads of it.”
Ommony’s outgoing breath, smoke-burdened, bore a prayer of thanks into the Infinite.
“The last link! Charley, you shall have that box if I have to set it on my own head, and carry
it on foot, alone, all the way across the forest to Chota Pegu! What did the gods look like who put that thought into your head?”
“She’s a goddess. Zelmira had me send for before he left Delhi,” Charley answered. “She’s as mad about movies as the rest of ’em.”
“Whom attack hath made mad let none offend!” answered Ommony, piously quoting Scripture.
VII. — KEY TO DESTINY!
There were days after that when Strange fretted, and the problem was to distract him from a too quick move that might have been equally advantageous for Ommony, who held all trumps, but none the less fatal to Zelmira Poulakis. And Ommony considered her his partner now, to be considered only less than the forest.
The old disease that had rioted unchecked in Strange for forty years, lulled for a while by his now great scheme to be the world’s arch-sleuth, had broken out anew with threefold virulence.
Attain! Acquire! Possess! Exploit! Then on to something else! It boiled in his veins — set his brain on fire. It was all so easy! All a man needed was the money and initiative — that, and the gift of recognizing opportunity.
The only immediate outlet for his surging energy was the forest, so he began to butcher game. The slaughtered buck meant no more to him than yesterday when it is past. Blood-lust was not in him. He recoiled from carcases, cared nothing for the trophies, only ached to demonstrate his own ability and feel the power that fed. Blood on his hands disgusted him; it was all too personal. When his clothes were soiled he changed them, and returned for more hunting. He was not cruel in the ordinary sense; he killed clean, or when he failed to kill, kept after the wounded beast until he had it. But the power to kill was his, and he used it, stoking the fires beneath that other power, to have, that he intended to use too.
Jeff protested on occasion, for he was a big-game hunter born.
“If I don’t, someone will,” Strange answered. “Life’s like that. Take, or it shall be taken from you, even that which you have. I’ve neglected this part of my education. You’ve neglected business. The result is I’ve got millions to your thousands, but you’re the better shot. I’ll learn this. You cultivate your head!”
Ommony knew what was going on, but had no time to interfere, not much inclination. The game had to be sacrificed on the forest altar. Nature, left alone, would restore the balance presently. He had the big victory to plan for. This butchery was an affair of outposts, not beneath his notice, but insufficient to distract him from the main plan. However, it did not reduce his grim determination to make the ultimate defeat of Meldrum Strange a rout, and if he once had thought of offering quarter, that sweet reasonableness vanished. The devil, that in varying percentage lives in every human, had Cottswold Ommony by the heart-strings; nor was its grip loosened in the least by knowledge that Strange had sent to Bombay for money in large quantities, and that the money had arrived.
So he himself sent a telegram, and then rode to interview the rajah; but this time instead of waiting at the outer gate for the usual rigmarole, he sent in a note, and rode away to a clearing near the forest edge, where the masonry of an ancient well was crumbling to decay. There he dismounted and waited, peering curiously into and around the well, as if he had expected something, and presently was satisfied. He did not wait long; there was that in his note that had not suggested dalliance.
The rajah came cantering, and drew rein just in sight of him, then advanced at a walk, endeavouring to look at ease with all the world and his own thoughts. The result was an absurd mixture of nerves and indifference, whose effect was heightened by the extravagant gesture with which he threw away a half-smoked cigarette.
“Shall we ride together?” he suggested.
“Sit here,” said Ommony, laying his hand on the stonework of the ruined well.
The rajah immensely disliked receiving orders, but an open quarrel would have been no convenient thing to have on hand at that crisis of his affairs; he dismounted with an ill grace, threw his reins over a tree-stump, and sat down with arms folded.
“Well?” he asked. “What?”
“Have you your pistol with you?”
“No.”
“You’re mistaken. It’s in that side pocket.”
The rajah muttered an exclamation. It was easy enough to guess what he would have liked to do.
“Huh! My servant put it there, eh? The fool must have thought—”
“May I see it?” asked Ommony.
There was no alternative. As resentfully as a boy caught stealing apples, the rajah produced the gold-plated thing butt-end first. Ommony took it, glanced at it, and dropped it down the well, with his other hand preventing the rajah from peering down after it. The well must have been either deep or empty. There came no sound of the pistol’s reaching bottom.
“You won’t shoot any dog again with that, at all events.”
“I did nothing of the kind—”,
“I have the dog to prove it, and two witnesses. Shall we ask the dog to settle the point? She’s not fit to run yet, but I can have her carried over; or you may come to my place, and we’ll know in a minute who’s telling the truth.”
The rajah showed his teeth and chewed the end of his moustache. Then he glanced to right and left. There were no witnesses.
“The beast was being used to carry messages from spies on me!” he snarled. “How dare you do that!” he demanded.
“I dare worse. I dare charge you with plotting to sell this forest to Meldrum Strange without so much as notifying the Government of your intention! But be satisfied with throwing your pistol down the well, provided!”
“What?”
“Provided you’re reasonable, too.”
The rajah glanced to right and left again. The only audience was the horses. Rage had him by the throat, but princes in these drab, degenerate days are worse off than beggars, in that a beggar need have no master. He choked the rage down with an effort, and forced a smile.
“Well, all right then, we’re quits. I did shoot your infernal dog, and that well’s deep, confound you! But look here, Ommony, old boy, I must have money, and the shroffs won’t lend.”
“I understand you’ve told Strange I’m corruptible,” said Ommony.
The rajah glared.
“He told you that?” He lies! He—”
“Oh, no, he didn’t lie.”
The enemy’s mistakes win the victor’s battle. The astonishing thought that Strange (not Ramsden) had betrayed him to Ommony more unmanned the rajah than a thrashing would have done; and Ommony was quick to seize advantage.
“What a fool you are to trust a stranger and betray an old friend,” he said indignantly. “I’ve been your friend through thick and thin! I’ve backed you against the priests, against the central government, against your creditors — against your — self! You’ve never set a foot wrong when you listened to me. Your revenue is nearly double what it was. You’ve received a coveted honour on my recommendation. You know as well as I do that my one concern is this forest. And you reward friendship by trying to undo my life’s work! What do you think would happen if Strange should ever get a foothold here?”
Now the rajah traced his ancestry so far back into the dawn of time, and was so inbred (lest the royal strain should be defiled), that European kings were vulgar riff-raff by comparison. And that is a condition that begets a point of view. The ancientry arose within him.
“What do I care? Who are you, you foreigner!” he snorted, “to come here and meddle? The land and the forest are mine — you hear me? mine! You English are thieves, that’s all — thieves who will be kicked out presently, those of you who are not dead with—”
“With our boots on,” Ommony suggested. “Let’s not worry about after that. Until then, is the problem. Until the Powers hoist my number I’m forest guardian, and you’ve me to deal with. Now then. What are you going to do?”
The rajah confessed to himself, at any rate, that he did not know, and his face told Ommony the tale. That is a state of mind that jumps
at ready-made solutions.
“What you thought of doing was to sell to Meldrum Strange alleged forest rights, that are doubtful, to put it mildly, and to leave him to fight through the courts for the title. That’s dishonest. Why don’t you sell him something you do own?”
“For instance?”
“Do you own the Panch Mahal?”
The rajah scowled. That was another property on which the shroffs would not lend one rupee, not because the rajah’s heritage was doubtful, but because the priests of the temple of Siva in Chota Pegu claimed a lien on it. There was no pretence of its being a legal lien, only one of those theoretical and subtly enforced claims that the Church in all ages and all climes has maintained irresistibly.
“You know what the priests say.”
“What can they do?” demanded Ommony.
“Dogs! I won’t go near them! They avoid my court. They set the rabble against me. They have me hooted in the streets. They deny me caste. I will make no overtures to that swarm of cankering worms!”
Pride of that sort is impregnable by direct assault, but more susceptible to flank attack than an over-extended speculator.
“Chullunder Ghose has no pride,” Ommony remarked, as if to the blue sky, apropos of nothing.
That set the rajah thinking on a new line. He would have loved to cheat the priests — to double-cross and laugh at them; but he did not dare attempt that; the priests’ power is too subtle and far-reaching, as well as ruthless. Pride, that is sweeter than success, restrained him from an open bargain with them. Poverty — extravagance — the distant lights of La Ville Lumiere impelled. Chullunder Ghose was a rogue with brains, who would serve any master who paid him well enough. Strange vs. Priests of Siva would be a game worth while for the Pantheon of Heaven to come and watch!
Ommony, watching the rajah as a salesman studies his prospect, judged his time and struck.
“I’m against Strange,” he said frankly, leaning back against the masonry with both hands in his pockets. “You’d better sell him the Panch Mahal, and stick to your old friends.”
“Will you not prevent my selling him the Panch Mahal?”