Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Next she advanced and threw her veil before him, knelt on it as if imploring him, and backed away, withdrawing veil and all as if he had rejected her advance and she was broken-hearted. Then forward again as if to fall into his arms, he grinning, and away before he could touch her, not a thread of her gossamer shawl as much as brushing against his sleeve.

  “Hah-hah!” laughed Molyneux; and for the first time it seemed to dawn on Strange that possibly he was being mocked. He began to look uncomfortable and a trifle flushed.

  “Hah-hah!” Molyneux laughed again, and the audience all began to laugh too, because that kind of jeer is contagious.

  But the dancing-girl danced on, and the music wailed and shrieked in time to the dinning tom-toms until Strange, feeling all eyes on him, glanced to right and left looking as if he would like to escape. It is all very well to be made a lot of, but to be worshipped in public by a lady in diaphanous attire is more than even millionaires can stand. He glanced up once as if he knew the camera was recording everything.

  “Did you see that?” said Charley. And as he spoke the woman let her gauzy shawl fall over Strange’s head and shoulders. The audience yelled as if she had crowned him king.

  “Did you get it?” squealed Ommony.

  Strange did not know what to do. He simply sat there looking foolish. But Chullunder Ghose appeared from behind somewhere and stood beside him, urging, protesting, gesticulating. Jeff Ramsden laid a hand on Strange’s sleeve, but Strange shook it off; and the girl began to dance as if luring Strange on to heaven knew what behind the dragon screens. Chullunder Ghose took him by the right arm and almost pulled him out of the chair, ignoring Jeff’s protests. Jeff shook his fist in the babu’s face, and Molyneux barked “Hah-hah!” again, while the audience squealed above the din of music. The girl began backing away, and Strange, yielding to Chullunder Ghose, got up and followed her.

  “Oh, gorgeous!” chuckled Ommony.

  “‘Nother reel, quick!” snapped Charley.

  They reloaded like a destroyer’s gun-crew at battle practice, in time to catch Strange sprawling up the steps in the girl’s wake, for somebody or something tripped him. And when he reached the stage the nautch-girls all surrounded him and danced in a whirl, so that for a minute nothing could be seen of Strange at all; it was as if he had been swallowed. They had his coat and collar off, for someone flung them at Zelmira’s feet, where she sat beside Molyneux, bubbling laughter. And when the whirling circle broke at last and the girls spread outward either way along the stage the python-girl was gone, and there stood Strange arrayed in a peacock robe and turban with aigrette, looking pompous and ridiculous with boots and trousers showing underneath. Zelmira’s laugh rang like a peal of bells, and Strange frowned at her.

  “Damn the woman!” muttered Ommony. “She’s done for herself now, that settles it!”

  It was hotter than a Turkish bath in there, but a cold chill swept over him at the thought that none now would have sufficient hold on Strange to make him let the forest go. Half of the plan had failed with Zelmira’s influence. Surely Strange would never listen to her now. Well: there was the other half of the plan — the alternative. Strange looked ridiculous enough, and worse was coming. There would be the pictures to hold over him by way of threat.

  Chullunder Ghose, acting fat, obsequious impresario, climbed the steps and began tutoring Strange again — pointing toward the wooden dragon-screen. His words were totally inaudible in the din of drums and music, but he seemed to insist on something prearranged, with one hand gesturing toward the priests, as if he spoke for them, and with the other pushing Strange toward the dragon-screen. And out of the mouth of the dragon came a hand — a woman’s — certainly the python-dancer’s, for the wrist had the same heavy, jewelled bracelet.

  The music crashed, and ceased. In silence, broken only by a crow’s caw on the roof, Strange walked toward the hand, and seized and kissed it three times. Crash! went the music again, and the native audience seemed suddenly to go mad, rising and leaping and yelling as if all their future had depended on that one piece of foolishness.

  “Have you got that?”

  “Got it all!”

  “Good! Carry on now! I’ll go below. You keep on cranking as long as you’ve a foot of film left!”

  Ommony nearly broke the key in his eagerness to get out — slammed the door nearly off its hinges — and ran stumbling down the stairs, kicking open the door at the bottom and wading through the audience like a man waist-deep in sea-water. Zelmira nodded to him, but he took no notice of her; she had failed the forest, and was out of his calculations for good and all. He was actually off his head that minute — worn out with worry and fear and lack of sleep — fired by the sight of victory almost within his grasp. Strange was still standing there, ridiculously foolish with his turban awry, looking rather like Henry the Eighth, and holding the hand through the screen.

  “Chullunder Ghose! Tell him what that means!” yelled Ommony, not recognizing his own voice, it was so strained and high pitched. Jeff Ramsden, recognizing breakdown, understanding men as some know horses, began making his way toward him. The babu grinned, aping humility, bowing and salaaming to Strange, too deferent at last to play a leading part. He began to back away and nearly fell off the stage.

  “Strange, you’re married!” Ommony roared, his voice cracking strangely. “That’s the custom! What’ll you do now? Every one of those nautch-girls has to marry before she dies. Most of ’em marry trees. That one’s got you! Now then!”

  Strange had the effrontery not even to seem sheepish or annoyed. Jeff, getting close enough at last, put his huge arm under Ommony’s and tried to quiet him; but Ommony only drew strength from the contact, not calmness.

  “You’re married, you hear me? You’ve married a nautch-girl before witnesses!”

  It was unseemly — horrible Ommony was screaming at him. Strange with his hunger to exploit had probed the man’s secret passion to its depths and driven all that was evil in him to the surface. He was worse than a woman with her child condemned to death, for in that hour he lacked power to plead — a primitive, abysmal human stricken to the heart and fighting back. He struck Jeff’s arm away, and Molyneux rose from his chair to help restrain him.

  But Strange’s answer brought them all to a stand-still.

  “May I have a Christian ceremony, then?”

  The last chance gone! The monster was willing to marry a nautch-girl He would use that technicality to reinforce his claim on the forest! Ommony stood dumb, bewildered, with the world swaying under his feet, unconscious of Jeff’s arm again through his — staring at Strange as at Nemesis.

  And Strange let go the hand. Grinning, he stepped to the side of the screen to bring the woman forward; and she came, looking scared, because Ommony fainted away.

  She was Ommony’s sister.

  * * * * *

  It was an hour before he returned to consciousness, and the priests, the nautch-girls, and the crowd were all gone. Two women were slapping his hands, and he recognized Zelmira first — hazily, as one awaking from a bad dream. He shook his head at her.

  “Go away!”

  “We’re friends. You know me,” she answered.

  But he only shook his head again.

  “You failed. You promised me you’d be behind the screen and marry Strange. Why didn’t you?” he murmured.

  “I couldn’t. How could I? I’m Lady Molyneux! Sir William Molyneux and I were married this morning at seven o’clock.”

  “I’ll be damned!” murmured Ommony; and Molyneux’ responsive “Hah-hah-hah!” seemed to revive him quite a little. He turned his head to see who held the other hand, and looked into his sister’s eyes.

  “You always would do things your own way,” he grumbled. “Have you saved the forest?”

  “Yes. Here’s Meldrum. He’ll tell you so.”

  Ommony sat up suddenly. Memory galvanized him.

  “Good God, Kate, you’re married to him!”

 
“No,” she said, smiling, “not quite. We’re waiting for you to attend the wedding. When you’re ready we’ll begin.”

  “You saved the forest?” he repeated. “Marry anyone you like!”

  “Oh, closer than a brother!” she laughed delightedly. “Come, Meldrum. Tell him.”

  So Meldrum Strange came forward and played the man.

  “Old fellow,” he said simply, “If I had known how your heart was wrapped up in those trees I’d never have caused you such agony. I beg your pardon.”

  “By Dammy, Ommony, shake hands with him!” roared Molyneux. “He’s played the game. He turned the tables on you. He’s a good sport after all. What’s more, he’s given this Panch Mahal to those rascally priests. No chance for anybody now to get a foothold. Go on, shake hands!”

  “Not yet,” said Ommony. “Where’s Charley Wear?”

  “Here. I’m all right,” said Charley. Then he answered the question unspoken on Ommony’s lips. “Strange has been damn decent. He bought the film for enough to finance a picture-shooting trip all through the Indian jungles. Darned white of him, I’ll say.”

  “All right, I’ll shake hands with you, Strange,” said Ommony.

  But Ommony was ill, and very nearly at death’s door. He collapsed when he had seen his sister married, and they put him to bed on the cot in the assembly-room, the women taking turns to watch him; and for four-and-twenty hours he raved in delirium, calling to half the gods of India to come and save his trees, while half a dozen naked junglis camped in the courtyard afraid of every-one, but more afraid they might lose Ommony.

  They found roots in the jungle, and they killed fresh meat, and brought them and laid them at the threshold, where the women stumbled over them and carried them in — to hide them and pretend they had been put to use. So the junglis tell you to this day that they own Ommony by right of capture from death’s claws. (It was they who brought him his dog Diana, to stand guard by the bed; and she did, never stirring until he was well enough to recognize her.)

  Then came a night when the women might safely leave him; and he awoke after dark, believing himself all alone with the dog. But after a while he heard another sound beside her breathing, and saw a white-robed figure dimly outlined in the night-lamp glow — a figure like a great fat idol, motionless. For a long time he thought it was an idol, until he remembered there was nothing of that kind in the room. So he coughed, and it brought the thing to life.

  “This babu salaams respectfully, hoping sahib is remarkably better!”

  “Did the dog let you in?”

  “No, sahib. She-dog was most cantankerous, until memsahib, sahib’s sister, tendered philharmonic offices. She-dog yielded to blandishment and shrewd behaviour. Have sat still.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Sahib’s swift recovery.”

  “What else?”

  “Oh, just to round out.”

  “What?

  “Emolument!”

  “You rascal! You drew pay from Madame Poul — from Lady Molyneux.”

  “Yes, sahib. Likewise percentage from priests in form of cash, and subsidy from rajah, plus gift from Mellidrum Isstrange, added to share of profit from sale of soda-water. Am well contented. Oh, no reason to complain. However, sahib being babu’s friend, in view of Karma and advantage of beneficence — have thought it well to — permit sahib to — acquire much merit by — by contributing like-wise and rounding out — emolument? Eh? Yes, sahib? Your very humble and obedient servant! Chullunder Ghose prays to all the Gods for your honour’s full recovery!”

  THE END

  THE WOMAN AYISHA

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I. “Ali, I say go with him!”

  CHAPTER II. “Once before she called herself his wife, on half the provocation.”

  CHAPTER III. “We’re all set now.”

  CHAPTER IV. “A cent for your sympathy!”

  CHAPTER V. “May you deal with your enemies like iron, even as you deal with me.”

  CHAPTER VI. “I will stick that pig Yussuf when I find him!”

  CHAPTER VII. “Akbar Ali Higg!”

  CHAPTER VIII. “Have you heard of Jimgrim?”

  CHAPTER IX. “Should I stoop to a pig-Pathan, with a prince waiting for me?”

  CHAPTER X. “Wallah! And you say she has a following of fifty men?”

  CHAPTER XI. “I see no sin in holding to my given word. Let Allah judge me!”

  CHAPTER I. “Ali, I say go with him!”

  Consider the situation for a moment first. There were twenty of us — seventeen Arabs, Narayan Singh the Sikh, myself, and Grim. We were in Petra over-Jordan, which was no-man’s land until Ali Higg, self-styled Lion of Petra, friend of the Prophet of Islam, Lord of the Limits of the Desert and Lord of the Waters — Ali Higg the Terrible, swooped into it from Arabia and, with the aid of Jael, his European wife, established himself there as a thorn in the flank of Palestine. You couldn’t choose a better place to be a thorn in. Impregnable without long-range artillery; inaccessible except by aeroplanes, if once the Valley of Moses leading into it through a twelve-foot gap were blocked; furnished with enough half-ruined graves and temples for accommodation purposes; close enough to Palestine for sudden raids, and surrounded by dry desert over which no mandatory power would think of sending an army if that could possibly be helped, Petra is the perfect outlaw’s paradise — a paradise of opal set in savage mountains.

  As for ourselves, you could hardly call us an official expedition, nor even exactly authorized, for Grim enjoyed a free hand subject to the definite proviso that he would be promptly disowned by the Palestine authorities if trouble came of it. The British, having heard from the taxpayer, did not want to send an army against Ali Higg, besides which they had no mandate yet for the trans-Jordan country, as Ali Higg and all the Bedouins were well aware.

  An American, even though commissioned in the British Army, can get away with things no Britisher would dare attempt because, of course, the authorities would have to stand behind a Britisher, whereas Americans are all born crazy and act without authority, and everybody knows it, and there you are, old top, so what’s the use?

  And Grim, by using brains and information, which is a combination nobody can beat, had cornered Ali Higg, as I told in another story. One hundred and forty of Ali’s men under a veteran named Ibrahim ben Ah were resting their camels miles away in an oasis. The remaining forty and odd were camped in another direction. Jael, Ali Higg’s wife, after being made prisoner, had grudgingly agreed to help Grim tame her lord and master; and what with drenching him thoroughly, lancing his boils and catching him at an all-round disadvantage, we had forced him to give a hostage for good behavior in the shape of a deposit of fifty thousand pounds lying in his wife’s name in the Bank of Egypt.

  So far, good; but there were complications. In the first place, that document was not worth a plugged piastre until safely under lock and key in Jerusalem, for Ali Higg would surely steal it back if he could. The money had been paid into the bank in gold, mainly half-sovereigns that were earned by Arab troops in the war against the Turks. The man who could squeeze all that money out of fighting Bedouins was unlikely to lose his grip on it, even for the three-year term of the agreement, if force or chicanery should provide him an alternative. If those troops of his should suddenly return, for instance, not only the agreement but our lives would be at stake.

  The easiest course would have been to scoot out of Petra and head for Palestine, avoiding that oasis where the “army” waited. But Grim had made a promise which prevented that. In return for Ali Higg’s pledge and in the general interest of peace he had undertaken to deal with a Sheikh at Abu Lissan, farther South, who with eight hundred men proposed to come and “eat up” the terrible Ali and his scant ten score. While on our way southward there would be nothing to prevent Ali Higg from swooping on us treacherously from behind; but in dealing with people who might perhaps break faith there is nothing nearly so important as observing your own promises.
/>
  Nor was that all. Our opportunity to visit Petra, give the slip to Ali Higgs’ men, capture his head wife and corner the gentleman himself had come through Ayisha, his second wife, whom Grim had found making purchases in Hebron and who welcomed our escort on her way home across the desert. On the way she had fallen in love with Grim after the desperately swift fashion of the country. Thinking to poison Ali Higg she had given him croton oil, which we provided. It served our purpose famously, but rather naturally maddened the fierce polygamist, who divorced her on the spot. So we had Ayisha on our hands, for we couldn’t decently leave her to take the consequences.

  When I was a boy at school I once borrowed from another boy a dime manual entitled “What to do with a dead policeman.” But that problem, solved, I remember, clumsily, was a very simple one compared to what we had to face. Ayisha was a beautiful young woman, wholly bereft of convention in the Western sense, and totally resolved to win Grim for her own or know the reason why. Our rank and file, excepting Narayan Singh and myself, were all profound polygamists from El-Kalil, thieves by profession and conviction, and inclined to treat Ayisha’s love affair as a prodigious joke; which, of course, it was, but for the infernal danger.

  In fact, the whole situation was a joke, if you could only bring yourself to look at it in that way. What else could you call the intention of twenty men (not one an Englishman), cut off from supplies and support, to interfere between the warring tribes of North Arabia and breed peace in the process where none had ever been since history was written?

  As I sat with my back against the wall of Ali Higg’s cave overlooking the gorge of the City of Ghosts (as they call Petra) I tried to figure on our chances, but could reach no conclusion. Not that we weren’t a pretty resourceful crew of a sort, and fit to fight, perhaps, three times our number, but the odds seemed overwhelming in that land where, as they say, “in the desert all men are enemies.” There wasn’t one of us who could not mount his camel on the run, with a rifle in one hand, and our camels were the finest beasts that ever swung leg out of Syria. There was nothing about desert work that you could teach Grim or any of our seventeen Arabs. Narayan Singh was a Sikh in a thousand — a bold soldier of the old school, who should have been born a hundred years ago. As for myself, although comparatively new to Arabs and Arabia, I have prospected and hunted big game for a living up and down the length of Africa; and if diplomacy is not my long suit, I can endure, and physical strength has advantages.