by Talbot Mundy
“Why should I?”
“Will you help me against the priests?”
“It’s against British policy to interfere in religious matters. You must manage them yourself. Perhaps the priests may make first overtures. They’re omniscient, you know. They read thoughts. They’re always forehanded. You won’t have to eat humble-pie if they come to you first.”
“I must think this over.” said the rajah.
“Do.”
“And Madame Poulakis?”
“For the moment leave her out of it.”
“How can I? She is becoming a nuisance. I cannot invite Strange to the palace while she is there, and she has begun to have sick headaches. She complains she is too unwell to travel.”
“Keep Strange away, then. Take him to the Panch Mahal.”
“But I can’t go away and leave her in the palace.”
“Why not?”
“It is unthinkable.”
“Try to think it. She’s a gentlewoman. You can’t be rude to her.”
The rajah hesitated, then took two steps and stood in front of Ommony with arms folded.
“Tell me what she is doing here!” he said. “Chullunder Ghose persuaded me I might reap advantage from her visit. Whenever I ask her why she came, she laughs; and the babu swears he’s afraid to tell what her business is. Am I being made a catspaw in some scheme?”
“I’d let the babu manage that, if I were you.”
“That rascal!”
“You took his advice in the first place. Carry on! You’ve never failed when you took my advice. Go home and think it over!”
The rajah snapped his fingers with irritation, chewed at his moustache a moment, scowled, swore irresolutely, scowled again, glanced once at Ommony, who met his eyes good-humouredly, kicked at a stone, and made his mind up.
“I will try the luck a last time. All or nothing! I will carry on. Ommony, old boy, if you’ve misled me this time—”
He left the nature of the threat to be imagined, mounted, and rode away, glancing back twice swiftly over-shoulder, as if to catch Ommony’s expression unalert and so divine his secret mood. But he was out of sight before a peacock-coloured turban arose slowly from within the well, and a full, fat face beneath it surveyed the scene cautiously.
“Sahib, choose new assignation spot! Standing on six-inch ledge, holding with fingers of one hand, with drop into watery bowels of underworld the penalty for least slip, is Grand Guignol sensation!
“Why not hold on with both hands?” Ommony asked, without looking round.
“Needed one for pistol, which sahib dumped. Self was dumped. Said very valuable weapon fell on this babu. Having caught same, could not move for purpose of disposal within clothing. Verb. sap. Am emasculated — very!”
He climbed out over the rim of the well and stretched himself painfully, one section at a time.
“Am creased like old kerosene can! Yow! I need a hammer to outflatten me!”
“Did you hear what was said?” Ommony asked, lighting his pipe, and not even looking at him sideways.
The babu sat down cross-legged on a broken stone to one side of the well, where he was least conspicuous, and proceeded to examine the pistol. He faced away from Ommony. Their conversation might have been directed to the empty air.
“Unlike regal artillery, am not gold-plated. Oh, no, very far from it. Am impoverished person. Nevertheless, resembling gun in other matters, I go off when safety catch is released and trigger pressed — thus. Yow! I did not know it was loaded!”
“Hurt yourself?”
“No.”
“Answer my question then.”
“All things on this plane are relative and governed by desire. How much did the sahib wish me to hear?”
“What did you hear?”
“Acoustic properties of well are excellent.”
“Can you take a hint?”
“On paper is easiest, sahib — with signature of executive of bank of issue!”
“Get your pay from your employer.
“Sahib, it is difficult for untitled and impecunious babu to obtain permit to carry firearms. Now if influential sahib—”
“Should demand the pistol back,” suggested Ommony.
“Will try again! There are but five shots left in magazine, plus one empty cartridge, which might be refilled by expedient person in emergency. Sale of ammunition to this babu being ultra vires of inspected commerce, sahib in his magnanimity might—”
“Better take the hint,” suggested Ommony. “If I heard too much talk about pistols I might begin to look for one.”
“Ah doo me!”
“Have you made the acquaintance of the priests?”
“Have accumulated glamour of much sanctity.”
“Well? What are you waiting for?
“Emolument!”
“I tell you I’m not your employer.”
“Oh, no! You are only person who can send me on red stallion through forest full of tigers, a pulled by cannibals, who drive me before them, replacing me on back of said terrifying stallion when I frequently fall off! You are unconnected person, who can nevertheless compel me to cling by toe and finger-nails to wall of snakesome well. Not my employer! Nevertheless, this babu awaits emolument.”
But Ommony knew better. Fifty rupees from him would have made the babu as undependable as a dog that is bribed to obey.
“Get on or get out!” ordered Ommony. “I can manage well without you.”
“Is gratitude always ex post facto? May not generosity cast its shadow in advance?” the babu grumbled.
“It’s getting late,” said Ommony. “Suppose you walk to the palace and present my compliments to Madame Poulakis. Ask, if her head doesn’t ache too much if she’d care to meet me in the grounds.”
The babu sighed, salaamed, and waddled off. Ommony gave him ample time to get out of sight, then mounted and rode slowly after him for a quarter of a mile, in order to make sure he had not doubled back to watch him through the trees. However, he saw the broad back continuing in the right direction; and a back tells more than some men’s faces; the babu’s air was business-like, and Ommony turned again, contented.
He rode into the forest by a trail not often used, pulled out his watch, whistled, peered about him, cantered for a mile or so along a glade, found rising ground, and ascending that, at last saw what he was looking for. A thing of many legs, like a prehistoric monster, passed slowly over a rise a mile beyond him, moving his way. He sat down then and waited until he heard grunts, complaints, and quarreling; but before their source appeared in sight he mounted and rode back slowly toward the well.
He had not dared wait. He had done a miracle. He had persuaded sixteen junglis, to whom toil at anything but hunting is a worse contemplation than hunger, to carry a load to him across the forest, and they are literal-minded folk. They would have dropped the load and run away if they found him anywhere before the journey’s end. So he sat down by a stone but with an iron roof, that he himself had built years ago to hold tools, when planting was in progress thereabouts. The hut was almost hidden in the trees and undergrowth, and the padlock had rusted into uselessness, but he smashed that and put a new one in its place.
Then the junglis came, weary beyond belief, thin-legged and all new to the exercise, carrying shoulder high a big box lashed in the midst of four poles.
He praised them, promising that the devils of the jungle should impose no more red-sickness for seven years, and rewarded them fabulously from the contents of his saddle-bag. Each bewildered one received, when the box was safely in the hut, a brand-new, glittering, imported knife, whose blade would actually fold into the handle. Each knife had a ring on it, to hang it to a fellow’s neck by, and a bright brass chain through the ring. It was incredible; but there the knives were, and they ran lest the devils should see, and envy them, and make new sorts of trouble.
No need to warn them not to talk. Only Ommony in all that forest could converse with them. They understood no
t more than ten words in any other language than their own decayed Lemurian.
With the key of the hut in his pocket Ommony rode on to the palace, and was admitted this time by a side gate, since there was nothing official about his call. Zelmira with Charley in attendance waited for him in an open-sided summer-house in the midst of three acres of neglected garden. There was no chance of eavesdropping, but they themselves were easily visible from the palace windows.
“What’s that?” asked Charley.
“A key to Destiny! Your box is in a hut I’ll show you. Have you developer?”
“Plenty.”
“Can you overcome the mechanical difficulties?”
Ommony spoke calmly, but fear was creeping up his back. Knowing nothing of the nature of the difficulties, he had not even imagined any until that moment, when it dawned on him like the knell of disaster that a reel of film might be unmanageable without extensive apparatus.
“I don’t know,” said Charley. “I’ve spent part of two years figuring out a kit that would serve in emergencies. It’s all in that box. The hardest job is washing and drying. But I’ve got a collapsible drum to wind the stuff on, if there’s scads of decent water, cool enough—”
“There’s a perennial spring of cool water within fifty yards of where your box is,” Ommony assured him. “It flows over clean rock, rather slowly.”
Charley nodded. That was settled. But now another dread took Ommony by the throat, so that he coughed.
“Have you a projector?”
“Bet your life! No use developing film on the spot unless you can test it and see what you’re doing.”
Ommony laughed outright.
“What’s the joke?”
“It’s on Strange!”
“I think it’s on me,” said Zelmira. “I’m feeling so well I could walk twenty miles, and I have to play sick with any head in a shawl! I want to ride, and dance, and sing, and be alive, but I have to pretend that even the phonograph makes my head ache! The rajah’s hints that I’ve been here long enough are getting positively rude.”
“That nabob will have his head punched presently!” said Charley, nodding confirmation.
“Faint heart never won fair plutocrat!” laughed Ommony. “Stick it out, madame! The rajah will change his tune from now on. Strange goes to the Panch Mahal within a day or two. Then everything depends on you. I’ll have a parson in attendance.”
“So quick?”
“Surely. Strange needs distraction, or he’ll murder everything on four legs and cut down all the trees in the universe! Charley, I want you to look over that kit of yours and foresee every possible chance of accident. We can’t afford one faux pas.”
Charley promised that and they went into session of agenda, ways and means, Zelmira bubbling laughter and Charley exploding approval at intervals, as Ommony unfolded all his plan.
“It’s a sizzling scheme!” said Charley.
“And if it goes wrong it’s only another scandal in high life!” Zelmira added, chuckling mischievously.
“If it misses one cog, Amen to my career!” said Ommony, not copying the fabled ostriches that stick their heads in sand. He likes to face all issues.
“The safe bet is,” said Charley, “Strange won’t dream anyone would try to put that over on him. He’s so used to people being scared of him, he’ll try to bluster, and make it worse.”
“Well, let’s hope!” said Ommony; and then, as darkness fell, he went to interview the rajah.
He found him téte-â-téte with the babu, on a side verandah, facing the other way from the summer-house. Chullunder Ghose was squatting on the floor near the rajah’s foot, catching a purple handkerchief between his toes, as he let it fall and pulled it back repeatedly in sign of nervousness. They were conversing in English, as a precaution against eavesdropping, and because each understood that language better than he did the other’s; but all Ommony overheard was:
“They are worse than moneylenders!”
“True, mighty one, they are priests! They will take no loss.”
“Curse them!”
“This babu, sympathising with your Highness, curses them devoutly! Nevertheless — shall I not say — fifty-fifty? Yes?”
“May gangrene rot them! Yes.”
“And my honorarium?”
“Here — take this — there’s someone coming — go away’hurry!”
The babu slunk into the shadows, stowing paper money into some recess between his stomach and loin cloth.
“Oh, hullo, Ommony, old boy, I’m glad to see you,” said the rajah. “Are you feeling sprightly and full of the old corn and all that kind of thing? What do you say to a ride through the jungle tonight to your place? Dinner and forty winks, then up like Gay Lochinvar and to hell with caution! I’d like to ride with you, and call on Strange at breakfast.”
“Suits me well,” said Ommony. “You’ve done your thinking then?”
“Yes, dammit! Those lousy priests want everything! They won’t sell their claim or release it. They offer to say nothing for the present on a fifty-fifty basis.”
“Will they do anything?” asked Ommony.
“That’s just what puzzles me,” said the rajah. “They sent that babu to say they’d do anything in reason. They don’t know what reason is, confound them! I don’t know what they mean, or what you mean, either! You must be a wizard! How have you contrived to make priests offer to do anything?”
“I haven’t been near them,” said Ommony truthfully.
“You’ve had correspondence then!”
“No.”
“You’ve threatened them?”
“No. I don’t interfere with priests.”
“I wish you’d let me alone as religiously! Well the priests know everything in advance as usual; and as usual I’m the only one in the dark — the reigning rajah! Huh! Why don’t you take me into your confidence?”
“I will when my dog recovers.”
That rebuke having reduced the rajah to glowering silence, Ommony pursued the advantage. “It’s enough for you to know there’s nothing legal in the priests’ claim; but I advise you to mention it to Strange and to tell him it isn’t legal and can’t be enforced in court. If Strange asks me, I’ll confirm that. Represent to Strange that if he buys the Punch Mahal and pays you cash for it, then you’ll consider the forest deal, but not otherwise. I’ll admit to him, if necessary, that as a property-owner he’ll have a better leg to stand on when it comes to arguing with the Government. Now, are we agreed? Then good; we’ll start after midnight, in time to reach my place for breakfast.”
VIII.— “AND NOW FOR THE REALLY DIFFICULT PART!”
“Apprends-moi z’a parler,
Apprends-moi la manière
Comment l’amour se fait!”
Ommony liked himself in the guise of good Dan Cupid, and as he rode through the forest beside the rajah the trees and rocks re-echoed to his song. All he needed was a stringed instrument of some kind to make him look like an old-time wandering troubadour. His voice was ordinary, but his instinct for the music true. His short, not too well-ordered beard, and a way of throwing back his sturdy shoulders as he sang, with face toward the tree-tops, made him seem hardly of this day and generation. Moonlight in the clearings, gleaming on bridle, his grey shirt, and the bare skin where the shirt lay open at the neck, touched him with romance and annoyed the rajah beyond reasonableness.
“You’ll attract wild beasts,” he objected.
“Yes, I seem to do that naturally. You and Strange, for instance! Problem is to tame you. Can’t be done by cruelty. World’s already full of brute force. Marry Mars to Venus, and produce what? Trees!”
“I often think you’re crazy,” said the rajah.
“And you’re right. We all are. The least crazy of us are the keepers of the rest. We’re Adams, loose in Eden, and we’ll get kicked out unless we tend to business.”
That being over the rajah’s head (for there is no romance and no true vision left in men o
n the descending arc of the Wheel) he lapsed into moody silence, wishing the stars between the tree-tops were the lights of Paris, and that Ommony’s intermittent singing might be conjured into cabaret revelry. He hated the night, and the loneliness. Ommony revelled in it — had not known the feel of loneliness since the early days, when the forest swallowed him and where began his education. And a pair of junglis, flitting in and out among the shadows, peering this and that way on the qui vive for marauding animals, believed that Ommony was some old god incarnated — his song the echo of the splendour of another world. So do opinions differ, on all sorts of subjects, with the point of view. By the time they reached Ommony’s house on the edge of the forest the rajah was bordering on homicidal frenzy.
However, Ommony was feeling at his best, which was the main thing. Adam in Eden never managed the assembled creatures better. He put Strange in good humour by saying wealth must have been imposed on him for inscrutable reasons by Providence.
“There’s nothing inscrutable about it,” answered Strange. “We’re given brains; and if we use them we get wealth. That’s all there is to it.”
But Ommony was not disturbing heresies that morning. When they finished breakfast he led Strange to the verandah.
“You’ll need your brains,” he said, “if you really mean business with that rajah. He has been trying to get hints from me as to how to handle you.”
“Bah! All he wants is money,” Strange retorted. “Western degenerates are exactly like him. First they try to borrow. When that fails they sell out. There isn’t a creative atom in them.”
He paused, and looked at Ommony with slightly changed perspective. So Ommony was coming over, was he? Tipping off the rajah how to make the right approach, eh? Hah He had seen that happen scores of times. A government official, bound by oath of office to present an impregnable front, knows better than anyone where the flank is weakest. Same old game, eh? Show the line of least resistance surreptitiously, and trust to be rewarded afterwards.
“I’ll remember!” he said, nodding. “Does the rajah want to talk to me?”
So Strange and the rajah walked off together, out of earshot of a world that might put false constructions on a simple stroke of business. Jeff, on the verandah, smoked in ponderous disgruntlement, admiring nothing not above-board and branded with its proper name. Ommony opened his mail, and studied it until Strange came to interview him in the office, with an unlighted cigar projecting upwards from the left side of his mouth — a symptom Jeff recognized.