by Talbot Mundy
“Is he dead?” Strange demanded. “Better put a bullet in him to make sure.”
“Stone dead,” said Ommony.
“Killed a tiger with a chair! Jee-rusalem!” Strange sat down on the cot again. “Can you beat that? Killed a tiger with a chair, you fellows! Can you beat it?”
Ommony, with his back to Strange, stooped down, examining the kill. Jeff joined him.
“Caged for a good many years. Well fed,” said Ommony. “Probably half-tame. See his pugs? They’re soft, and the hair has grown long over the claws. He’s old, too; look at the length of his eye-teeth. That’s a collar-mark on his neck, or I’m mistaken. He’s been somebody’s pet cat.”
“Which explains why he didn’t attack directly he winded us,” said Jeff.
“But he did attack!” Strange got to his feet again and came and stood between them. “I stood there. You see how close he got to me? I wonder if I cracked his skull — must have — his mouth’s full of blood.” He hesitated. “Say, you men, suppose we keep this among ourselves, eh? I don’t choose to be known as a liar. If we took oath to it, nobody’d believe a man of my age killed that brute with a chair-leg. D’ you mind keeping it a secret to oblige me?”
Strange was feeling finely again. Even the memory of goose-flesh raising screams had dimmed in the glory of this achievement.
“With all your strength, bet you never pulled off a stunt like that!” he said digging Jeff in the ribs. “It was luck of course, but—”
“Yes you’re lucky,” Jeff said grinning at him. Then suddenly his face grew sober. “Ommony, old boy, we’re wasting time. Who screamed just now and why? We’ve of to unearth that. Then there’s that corpse—”
“Bunkum! Let’s sit here and see what happens next,” said Ommony. “I don’t know how they did it, but it’s all a trick. The scheme, of course, is to make Strange abandon the place, just as his friend the rajah had to. The priests are old hands at this frightening business.”
“Huh! Scheme to scare me off the lot, eh? Dammit, you told me their claim won’t hold water,” Strange objected.
“It won’t. But they’ve defeated everybody yet who tried conclusions with them.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I warned you. You snorted.”
“Well. I’ll fight ’em.” Strange found a cigar, and began chewing it. “They’ve a Tartar on their hands.”
“There’s a better way,” said Ommony.
“The place is mine.”
“Persuade them to admit that, then. Why run the chance of poison, fire, Lord knows what else. They claim the right to approve or disapprove a tenant for life, and they stop at nothing to uphold their rights.”
“Neither will I.”
“They’ve always managed to get rid of anyone who disputed their right.”
“Oh! They claim right to dispossess?”
“Only if the tenant for life, after they’ve approved him, backs out of his promise to let them hold a yearly ceremony here.”
“Would they exclude me from the ceremony?” Strange asked.
“I think not. You see, they insist on initiating any tenant before they’ll let him occupy in peace.”
“Initiate him into what? Mysteries?”
“Hardly. They’d never admit a white man into those.”
“Well then, into what?”
“I’ve never seen the ceremony. I might not be allowed to witness it, even if they accepted you. But once you’re accepted and admitted, as an initiate they’d very likely let you see the yearly ceremony. It lasts a week, I’m told.”
“That might be fun.”
“They say it’s wild. Its origin is so far back in time that nobody knows its meaning any more, although it was probably religious, once. They used to hold it in the Temple, but it got so scandalous that when this place was built they persuaded the rajah of that day to let them hold it here instead. He was under their thumbs in some way; and ever since then they’ve asserted an unlegal but prehensile claim to nominal overlordship.”
“Scandalous, eh?”
“So I’m told.”
“Well. If it’s a secret, who’s to be any wiser afterwards? It might be good fun.”
“You’re a damned fool, Strange!” Jeff growled. “Keep out of it!”
“I’m no milksop,” Strange retorted. “I’ll keep my head in any situation those fossils can invent. If you’re afraid, suppose you go home!”
“I’ve said my say,” Jeff answered. “I’ll stand by. But you’ll get no sympathy from me, whatever happens.”
“Nothing’ll happen. Huh! They’ve come to the end of their resources now. We’ve sat here half an hour and not a sign from them. That tiger was the—”
As he spoke the light went out. The chill blast of air was renewed, only tenfold. A man’s shout, and a scream like a woman’s in grief as well as agony froze their blood. Something flapped in the air above them, and there was a sudden hurrying noise across the floor that sounded as if ghouls were chasing one another. Then the thud of a trapdoor closing, or something resembling that; and silence, in which Jeff’s steady breathing sounded like the ebb and flow of six-hour tides. After two interminable, minutes Ommony struck a match.
The tiger was gone. The only trace of him was blood on the wooden floor where his head had lain, and a long smear where he had been dragged across the room. A blast of cool air blew the match out. Something sighed. A shape like a woman’s, faintly phosphorescent, seemed to be wafted on a wind across the room about fifteen feet in front of them. Jeff made a jump for it, and landed heavily on nothing. The shape vanished.
Ommony lit the lamp again, and the three explored the whole room. There were two doors, one they had entered by, and another in the far corner, opposite, but no discoverable trapdoor or sliding panel, although the walls sounded hollow, and in places the floor seemed to hint at booming caverns under it when they jumped.
They opened the door in the corner with difficulty, for although it was not locked something seemed to hold it; but when Jeff exerted his strength and it flew wide, there was nothing there — nobody — no sign of anybody having been there.
So they took two rifles and a shotgun and explored long passages and rooms absurdly furnished with imported export stuff, of the sort that generation after generation of rajahs had believed was “quite the thing.” There was almost nothing antique or genuine in the place, although there was plenty of evidence of reckless spending. Not a sign of a human being; only rats that had nested in the stuffing of arm-chairs and ran as they entered the echoing rooms, striking match after match.
Jeff was for exploring the cellars, too, but Ommony demurred. “Snakes,” he suggested. “Ambush. Anything might happen and be explained away as accident.”
“Upstairs then,” Jeff proposed; but that seemed almost equally risky, especially as they had left shotgun in the assembly-room along with their few other belongings. So they turned back, expecting to find their way easily by the light of the lamp they had left burning.
But the light was out again. Jeff groped his way in the lead and struck out with his fist at something that he felt rather than saw in the passage just before he reached the assembly-room; but whatever it might have been, he missed it.
He struck a match and held it high, to get wide a circle of light as possible, stepped forward, tripped over something, swore; and the match went out. Ommony struck another close behind him. Jeff kicked at what had tripped him, and the pieces of a broken shot gun scattered across the floor.
Ommony looked for the lamp, but it was broke too — smashed into smithereens. His feet crunched broken glass, and his shins struck the legs of the overturned cot. Jeff struck his last match, and by the swiftly waning light of that they could see the furniture overturned and their torn clothes scattered at random about the floor. There was not a seam apparently unripped, and the bags were torn to pieces in the bargain. Then darkness, and no matches.
Nothing for it but the courtya
rd, where the rising moon was just beginning to pour amber light over the roof and change a quarter of the paving into a floor of pale gold. There Jeff took position in the god’s lap that had nursed Zelmira recently, and, looking like a herculean god himself in loose pyjamas, kept a qui vive with the rifle pointing every way, as one sound or another drew attention.
But the only noises now were owls’ hoots. The only movement was the swooping of the big bats, looking like spectres as they swerved across moonlight and plunged into shadow again. A jackal’s yelp broke silence at intervals from over the wall, and once in the distance an elephant trumpeted disgust at something.
“Strange,” Jeff said, at the end of an hour’s vigil, “I advise you to pull out of here first thing in the morning.”
“Yes. In pyjamas! I see myself!” Strange answered. “Mr. Ommony, I’ll have to have my trunk sent over from your place. Can you manage it?”
Ommony supposed he could. There were more impossible things.
“It’ll take time, though,” he warned him. “Meanwhile there’s no knowing what these priests will do.”
“I’ll stay on and stick it out!”
“How would it be for me to suggest to the priests that you’ll stand initiation? That might end this foolishness.”
“What does initiation amount to? Don’t know, eh? Well, dammit, I’m interested — yes try anything once. Yes, get word to ’em!”
“Strange,” growled Jeff Ramsden, “You’re a fool for all your money. You’re a gilt-edged rube — no better!”
X.— “UP TO YOU, SIR!”
Long before dawn they let Ommony out to interview the priests and send for clothes, provisions, servants, and what not else. Strange’s cigars had all been ruined; the tobacco in Jeff’s tin can was scattered on a dusty floor; they were a desperate garrison in danger of ill-temper.
“Tobacco first!” said Jeff. “Send stacks of it.
“And tell those priests I’ll fight ’em to the last ditch unless they’re reasonable,” was Strange’s final word.
So Ommony took the dusty road along to where an idol sat in moonlight on a pile of masonry that might have been a wayside altar once on a time. The idol came suddenly to life as he drew within ten feet of it, rolling off-centre and lurching into the road before him.
“Have seat, sahib. Meditation-place of fakirs — most gregarious for wisdom — just like sitting under shower-bath of ideas! Thoughts being habituated like trained animals to come to holy man in certain place, whoever sits there — take a seat and try, sahib!”
Ommony preferred to take it standing up, and declined the invitation. Too obviously Chullunder Ghose was seeking to soften the impact of bad news.
“What did the priests say?” he demanded.
“They are worse than Christian Devil, which is saying much!”
“What did they say?”
“Very little, yet ultimatively! Proud fools! Unwilling to concede your honour’s right to dictate outcome of events! This babu, using seven keys of argument to unlock hierophantic minds, failed nevertheless. Said locked minds are rusty. Nobody home, and nothing doing, same as Charley sahib says! The best they will concede is that Panch Mahal must become theirs absolutely. On such terms they will play into sahib’s hands in matter of initiation. They demand explicit promise.”
“Meanwhile, how much more of this horseplay have they in mind?”
“Hee-hee! In mind, much. In posse, very much. In esse, at moment, no more. There is armistice. Temporary respite for accumulation of resources. Hee-hee! Sahib, they have congeries of living animals, reptiles, and insects, that would make Zoological Society of London gnash teeth in envy! Noah should be relegated now to second place! Hee! They have gas composed of petrifying corpses, mixed with dust of red pepper and sal volatile! They have a corpse so realistic that there is serious anxiety lest the God of the Dead should demand its immediate decomposition! There is a tube concealed in the walls that will magnify a scream; and there are two tunnels, through which they have access to the interior of the building by secret doors.”
“If they’re not careful Strange will discover those tunnels — or Ramsden will. Then the game will be up.”
“They will be very careful, sahib. They are most resourceful. Trust them.”
“I don’t, and I won’t. But will they trust me If I tell them they may have the Panch Mahal, will they believe it?”
“Why not? A promise made to the priests and broken subsequently is—”
“I get you.”
“Sahib, there was a High Commissioner once who broke a promise to the priests, and took long leave, and went to London. He had a servant to taste his food, but neglected to consider the gum on the flaps of envelopes he licked. It is possible to oppose the priests, and even to defeat them without unpremeditated consequences. But to break a promise made to them is suicide. Speaking of which, I see Charley sahib riding this way on native pony!”
Ommony, who had turned his back to the moonlight in order to see the babu’s face, did not look round.
“How d’you know it’s Charley?”
“Blind idiot with head in hag could recognize in darkness U.S. effort to ride bareback in fashion of Chota Pegu. Backbone of lean old pony proves uncomfortable — very!”
The pony’s hoofs drummed nearer, and Ommony expecting new awkward developments, turned slowly to watch the herald of disposing gods. It was not such a bad attempt, after all, that Charley made to ride in Chota Pegu style; he looked like a native of the country mimicking a white man, with turban end a-stream behind him and his right arm working like a flail to keep his balance. The pony ‘planted’ twenty yards from Ommony, and Charley saved himself from a header by vaulting.
“Glad I’ve found you,” he said. “Your sister has come, along with Sir William Molyneux!”
“Angel of light and devil of darkness in same train, eh!” said the babu.
“Came at midnight in a special locomotive, one car, and caboose. She’s A-1. Nice old lady. Don’t know what to make of him. His voice is like a kerosene can falling downhill. He looks like a cross between a prize-fighter and an Anglican bishop.”
“He is,” said Ommony..
“I’d nothing to do — couldn’t sleep — so I went to the station to get pointers on how a deaf and dumb Hindu should behave himself. Usual ten or a dozen people there, sleeping on the platform, ready for to-morrow’s train, so I sat around and watched ’em, having fun with the station babu who asked to see my ticket. He told me at last to beat it, but I got wise a train was coming, so I shook my head and stayed on squatting in the lamp-light like a—”
“Wait!” said Ommony. “How did you cover twenty miles to the palace in an ox-cart before midnight?”
“Hell! That was easy. I ditched the cart and turned the oxen loose. Zelmira and I both figured we’d sooner walk. I guess we walked a mile, till we came to a thing they call a house in these parts. There were two ponies in a thorn corral; this beast’s one of ’em. We waked the owner and Zelmira bought the critturs; she had cash with her, but it took us half an hour to make the guy see reason. Then we rode, and gee! she looked funny. But she beat me to the palace gate. I couldn’t go in, of course, in this disguise, so I went to the station after a while, as I told you; and along come Molyneux and your sister, he helping her down out of the car as if she were the queen.
“How’s she looking?” Ommony interrupted.
“Fine. The people on the platform all did poojah and the babu fussed like a wet hen. Nobody’d expected ’em, and there weren’t any orders, so nobody knew what to do about it, and they all did nothing at the limit of their lungs. I sat there looking deaf and dumb. I guess I was the only one on the platform not yelling — except maybe your sister; she was coaxing Molyneux to keep his temper. Seems a telegram had mined fire. Nowhere to go — nobody to meet ’em — nothing. Your name bursting on the scene like hand-grenades at intervals. Me sitting still.
“Pretty soon Molyneux gets your sister back in the c
ar, and demands a messenger to go and find you. No messenger. Nobody knows where you are. Nobody cares a damn, either. The babu tells Molyneux in English that the train’s got to move of the way, or go back to Sissoo Junction or something, and Molyneux swears it shall stay right where it is for a week unless he gets a messenger to go on horseback and find Ommony sahib.
“Well, the babu points to me and says I’m a deaf and dumb lunatic who won’t go away. He adds I’ve a pony hitched to the station railings. Molyneux strides up to me, takes me by the ear, and yanks me upstanding.
“‘Let’s see whether I can make him understand’, he said, scowling with his forehead all over his eyes — just like a pug.
“I didn’t take to that any too cordially. So he says: ‘Hello! A Hindu who can use his fists? What does this mean?’ And he pulled my turban off. ‘Short hair, eh?’ I said: ‘Shut up, you fool!’ and he looked kind of hard at me in the lamp-light. I was getting ready to run, for he could have whipped me with one hand tied. However, he says: ‘We must look into this. Come with me.’ So I went with him into the car, where I told Miss Ommony howdy and said how glad I was to meet a sister of her brother.
“Well: Molyneux thinks at once I’m in the secret service, and I had a dickens of a time to unconvince him. Then he starts to shoot questions at me like an old stork picking a dead dog to pieces, and I was plumb scared. I didn’t know how much it was safe to tell him. At last I doped it out that as your sister was there, and he was talking right out in front of her, he was prob’ly o.k. with you. I took a chance on that and told him all of it.
“He laughed for about seven minutes straight on end. His laugh’s worse than his talking voice. When I’d done counting all the fillings in his teeth he asked me to go on the pony and find you. I guessed I’d better. ‘Tell him’, he said, that Brass-face says he is anxious Ommony should watch his step. Say, the Rajah of Chota Pegu has wired to the central government that Ommony is accepting bribes in league with some priests to give a millionaire named Strange a half-nelson on the forest. Tell him we’ve got to straighten this out without pulling feathers within the week or there’ll be trouble.’ That’s the message.”