Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  And then Rita came, or so it seemed, although in a certain sense Joe knew she was not Rita. She appeared quite naturally, robed in white — quite simply — there was nothing strange or supernatural about her. But how she came and how Joe saw her was a mystery; she appeared to be standing about two feet above the floor; no light shone on her that Joe could see; none came from her; but he could see her plainly. Presently he noticed there were ropes around her. She appeared to be tied to a stake and there were hands that reached toward her, threatening. He knew one pair of hands were his mother’s and another pair belonged to Poonch-Terai, although he did not know how he knew that. Over Rita’s head there hung a rock suspended by a cord. He saw the left hand of Poonch-Terai seize a sword and start to cut the cord strand after strand. For a moment he saw Poonch-Terai’s face, grinning with malice; and his mother’s. She nodded approval.

  Joe almost shouted. Perhaps he did shout. He made a sound of some sort as he struggled to sit upright. But the moment he moved the vision vanished, and then the Yogi’s voice said calmly:

  “Answer me: was that a dream, or the truth, or what was it?”

  “I was awake,” said Joe.

  “You saw, reflected on infinity, an image of your own bewildered thought,” said the Yogi. “But now answer: Do you dare to accept my guidance?”

  “Tell me first what you saw,” Joe retorted, and the Yogi laughed.

  “I saw a man who would have slain his mother in his own mind, had the vision lasted. And the borderline is thin between the thought and deed.”

  “You are right,” said Joe, “although I don’t know how you know it.”

  “Few men would have pleaded guilty to the thought. Nine hundred and ninety-nine out of any thousand would have sworn that no such idea crossed their minds. You are as ignorant as the men who let the world war happen; but you are as frank as a child. Do you see how simple it would be for some one skilled in malice to induce you to do murder and thus to remove yourself from his path? The law would hang you, and the cause for which you slew would be a lost one. Can you understand that?”

  “Darkly,” Joe said, “I have glimpses. Do you mean that Poonch-Terai can hypnotize?”

  “None can — not in the way that you have heard of it. And I say nothing about Poonch-Terai; him I am not instructing. But I tell you, there is darkness as well as light; and nine-tenths of the evil in the world, nay, more, is done by the ignorant who know not whence the impulse comes. Even as you, they grow bewildered. If they see the light it terrifies them. And the first thought then suggested to them, that they do. And what they do condemns them to the endless chain of hopes deferred and disappointed toil that fools call life on earth.”

  “Do you believe I can break that chain?”

  “Not all the universe can break it until the last soul learns its lesson. But break free from it — you and she — each aiding each — you may go far. But you will need as much courage as she has.”

  “Do you think I have it?”

  There came a startling hollow thunder on the teak door. The Yogi lighted the night-light. He was smiling. The thunder resumed. Annie Weems came hurrying from the inner room, her face haggard in the light of the lantern she held.

  “We are about to find out,” said the Yogi.

  “Open!” a man’s voice shouted. “Let me in!”

  “Shall I?” Annie Weems controlled herself until even the lamp in her hands stood steady. “Who can it be, Ram-Chittra Gunga? Shall I open?”

  “Open,” said the Yogi. “Why not?”

  She set the lamp down on a table, slid the bolt and stepped back. The door swung violently. Hawkes swayed in, staggering. He slammed the door behind him — bolted it — and stood there bleeding, swaying on his feet.

  “There’s dirty work,” he announced, “dam’ black dirty work. I took a long count. I’ll be all right in a minute. Poonch-Terai’s got Rita! Now put on your thinking cap. Get busy quick and tell me what to do next. Damn the army! Damn all consequences! Tell me how to go about it and I’ll fetch her back or bu’st!”

  CHAPTER XXII. “You will keep still.”

  Hawkes sat down on Joe’s bed. Annie Weems came closer to him to examine his injuries, but he objected:

  “Miss, I’m all right. There’s no killing a man till his time comes. My time ain’t yet. Strike me pink, though, it weren’t their fault I’m not all set for the undertaker. If I hadn’t had the sense to sham dead I’d be faking a pass for the Pearly Gate this minute. As you were, Miss; I’m not sneering at religion. Jus’ a bit upset, that’s all. I feel as if I’d had a drink or two. I haven’t.”

  Annie Weems went out in haste for a sponge and water. Suddenly Hawkes turned and faced the Yogi:

  “Damn you, couldn’t you foresee this?” he almost shouted. “You with your astrology and second sight and magic — couldn’t you have warned me? She’d ha’ done what you said. Couldn’t you have told her to stay home to-night and not go singing in the prison yard? God-dammit, somebody — probably Cummings — got the acting commandant to order all troopers kept in barracks. Last minute order. Me, I was the only bodyguard she had and I’m no fighting man. I thought I was. I swung for three of ’em — hand running — and I hit two — solid. One fell. Then they got me. Miss, I wish you wouldn’t.”

  But Annie Weems was one of those women who deal with crises by doing promptly and efficiently the first job that presents itself. Hawkes had to hold his head the way she wanted it and to continue his remarks in jerks between the ministrations of the sponge. He talked to the world at large, but at the Yogi:

  “Came a carriage and they popped her into it, all wrapped up in about a bale o’ white cloth — smothered like as not, God-dammem! Not a scream from her. I let out a yell that any one had thought would bring the prison roof off. But I didn’t wake nobody. And then they got me. Couldn’t recognize a mother’s son of ’em; they all had cloths to hide their faces. But they were Poonch-Terai’s men or I’ll eat my tunic. Now what?”

  He glared at the Yogi, raising his head so that water ran down in his eyes and he wiped them, all unconsciously, with the end of Annie Weems kimono.

  “He will wonder what we will do; and he will come to find out,” said the Yogi. “Furthermore, he will wish to prove he knows nothing about it, and he will think that to come here will be the best possible proof. He will have a most ingenious excuse for coming. He will be here in a moment. He would have been here while the incident was taking place, but for the fact that men who deal with evil never are quite confident; so he watched from a point of vantage. Possibly he saw you come here.”

  There came a noise at the end of the passage. Voices. Footsteps. Then a knock on the door of the room.

  “Right you are, here he is.” Hawkes took the towel from Annie Weems and stood up. “Miss, I’m grateful. Thanks to you it don’t hurt half as much as I wish it did. If I had my rights I’d be a dead man — me — to let that happen!” Fiercely he turned on the Yogi: “You — with all your second sight and what not else! If I’m a rotter to have let this happen — and I am, Goddammit! — what price you that could have warned us? No, don’t open; I’m not through yet; keep that black swine waiting out there, alibi and all. See here — you let me handle this from now on.”

  “You will sit down,” said the Yogi. “You will keep still.”

  “Will I?”

  “Yes,” said the Yogi. “You will remember your own promise. You are forgiven for forgetting for the moment what a man of your word you are. But now, remember it. And having done your best, improve on it by letting me do mine.”

  Annie Weems brought a chair and Hawkes sat in it, wiping his face, perhaps to hide embarrassment.

  “Somebody open the door,” said the Yogi and Annie Weems drew the bolt gingerly, stepping aside at once as if she feared contamination. She was ashen-grayfaced in the lamplight, evidently conquering hysteria by sheer will. If she should break down it would be from over-exercise of self-control, not lack of it. The Yogi observ
ed her calmly.

  In strode the Maharajah, but the Yogi hardly seemed to notice him; he was booted and spurred, magnificent, and jeweled as if he had just come from a durbar; there was an emerald in his turban whose price would have fed his peasantry for a whole season. He affected to notice Hawkes first, but Joe detected his swift glance around the room and grudgingly admired the man’s vitality. His self-assurance was superb.

  “Brawling? Drunk again?” he asked, with the easy tolerance of a man who sympathized with soldiers. “You should drink like I do, systematically, then you’d carry it better and not get found out. Ah — Annie Weems sahiba — my respects, ma’am. Too bad that I had to close your mission, but even princes have to stick to principles, and religion, you know, is an exacting mistress; I shall go to a Christian hell most probably for having let you use that house so many years. I invite your prayers on my behalf. Will you pray for me? Yes?”

  He was received with stony silence, which he seemed to enjoy.

  “Ah — his reverence,” he continued in English, raising both hands to his face with perfectly simulated respect. “I kiss feet. I beseech your blessing.”

  Sonorously, solemnly the Yogi blessed him, stressing vowel sounds and rounding out the olden phrases so that organ music seemed to come from nowhere and imblend itself. A man felt blessed, not merely noticed, when Ram-Chittra Gunga did it. Even Poonch-Terai lost something of his swagger. To revive it he turned on Joe:

  “How is our invalid? Better? You look a great deal better.”

  “I will soon be able to attend to business,” Joe answered, letting the words dwell on his teeth, his eyes narrowing.

  Poonch-Terai misunderstood him adroitly: “Ah, you Americans! Always business! Well — you are well enough now to be moved to a more comfortable place. I have my carriage waiting.”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  “A command! I am commanded by your more than regal mother to transport you to a guest-house that I am privileged to place at her disposal. She awaits you in the carriage.”

  “I won’t go,” Joe said simply.

  “She assured me you would say that. She instructed me that, should you say it, I am to exhort you. Will you consider yourself exhorted, or shall I — thank you, we will call that done then. Exhortation failing, I am privileged to intimate you will be forcibly removed. Permit me—” With the sudden lithe speed of a leopard he thrust his hand under the pillow.

  “No revolver? Wounded men are sometimes irritable. You will pardon the inquiry? Your annoyance is entirely offset by my satisfaction to know that you have no weapon. Are you ready? Shall I call my servants?”

  “Bring my mother here,” Joe answered grimly.

  “Bring her? My dear man, she terrifies me!”

  Hawkes sat silent. Annie Weems stood, staring at Poonch-Terai’s back with an expression of frozen horror. The only really calm man in the room was the Yogi; Poonch-Terai was obviously masking either triumph or else nervousness; his insolence was skilful but too carefully deliberate; he was fencing. The Yogi looked interested, but merely as a dispassionate observer, his eyes moving but his body absolutely still as he considered first one individual, then the other. Joe, wondering what to say next, recalled the Yogi’s conversation and it suddenly became very clear to him that Poonch-Terai was trying to goad him either into speech or action, either of which might be deadly dangerous. There was some sort of trap, although he could not imagine what it might be. Silence, at the moment at least, seemed the best alternative; and the moment he decided on that he thought he saw a thin smile of approval flicker at the corners of the Yogi’s eyes. Poonch-Terai betrayed a trace of impatience.

  “Shall I call my servants?” he repeated.

  “You will suit yourself,” Joe answered. “I have told you to bring in my mother. You will do anything else entirely on your own responsibility, and you will take the consequences.”

  Poonch-Terai smiled, showing marvelous, malicious teeth; it appeared that Joe had suggested to him something that he might not otherwise have thought of:

  “Let me explain to you what the consequences will be if you offer resistance. The law is that only a Hindu may reside within these walls. Two-thirds of the revenues of this temple are dependent on strict observance of that law. One infringement known to and connived in by the temple authorities would oblige me, naturally much against my will, to discontinue payment of that money, which would revert to me for other uses. The Brahminical council that decides such matters probably would rule that reasonable sanctuary extended to a wounded man is legitimate; but when that wounded man is convalescent, and is requested to take that strain off hospitality, the case is different — particularly when other, more suitable and entirely free quarters are placed at your disposal. You doubtless get my point. But perhaps you would like to say good-by to some one?” He smiled with exquisitely acted condescension. “I don’t, for instance, in the least mind waiting while you send for Miss Amrita. I am told that you and she have struck up quite a friendship.”

  Joe wished then that he did have a revolver. He could have shot the man without a trace of compunction. It was a moment before he could trust himself to speak calmly. Then he turned to the Yogi:

  “Is he telling the truth? Can he cut off the revenue as he says, and for that reason?”

  Ram-Chittra Gunga nodded. “Malice usually uses as much truth as serves its purpose,” he remarked. “And it is very true indeed that he would not mind waiting while you summon Miss Amrita. Am I right?” He looked suddenly, keenly at Poonch-Terai, who returned the stare with interest. Wills clashed, as it were, in mid-air, and the Yogi’s by some means so enraged the Maharajah that his eyes flashed and he clenched his fingers.

  “Do you mock me? Do you dare to mock me?” he demanded.

  “Did I not say you are telling the truth? Is it true you are willing to wait?”

  “True? Yes. I will wait ten minutes.” He spoke with a curl of the lip and a sneer that made Annie Weems shrink toward the wall and stare astonished at Ram-Chittra Gunga, who seemed to be chiefly interested in Hawkes’ emotions. Hawkes was knotting his fist and flexing his right-arm muscles in readiness for action. “Ten minutes gives you time enough for whatever nonsense you are contemplating.”

  “One suffices,” said the Yogi. “I will summon her. She may come now.” But he sat still, making no sign nor any further sound.

  There was a minute’s silence. Hawkes leaned forward ready for a sign from Joe, and Annie Weems shrank tight against the wall, for she could see that Poonch-Terai’s hands, too, were ready for instant violence. Wondering what the Yogi’s purpose possibly could be, Joe shook his head, hoping to make Hawkes calm himself; there was not a doubt in Joe’s mind that Poonch-Terai wanted a fight. He probably had attendants outside the door, ready to break it down and rush in to his rescue. Hawkes was probably out of bounds and possibly absent without leave; a fight within the temple precincts could only end in disaster to him and it would do neither Joe nor Rita any good whatever. Poonch-Terai sucked at his teeth impatiently.

  “Well?” he demanded at last. “Where is she?”

  Then the door that led into the fountain-courtyard opened wide and Rita stood there framed against the starlight. She looked like a white ghost. She was draped in the swathing soft cloth Hawkes had seen wrapped around her near the prison gate, but it hung from her now like a shroud, with one end thrown over her head.

  There was a whisper of wind in the courtyard; it moaned low in the cloisters and a shutter trembled against its bolt. If she herself made any sound at all those others smothered it. Her wide eyes gazed into the room as if she wondered at the importunity that summoned her from her eternal peace. She seemed come from a tomb, she who was singing an hour ago and was surely not yet buried. Poonch-Terai backed away from her and almost crushed Annie Weems against the wall; his left spur pricked her ankle before he controlled himself enough to step aside and borrow the wall’s stiffness for his back. He was like to have backed clear thro
ugh it had it been less solid. Joe’s skin tingled from head to foot and a sweat broke out all over him. Hawkes sat gaping. Silence — subdivided into eons by the Maharajah’s almost strangled breathing.

  Ram-Chittra Gunga’s voice broke on the silence — cavernous — sonorous — seeming to come from almost anywhere but where he sat:

  “Is this true — or a lie — or a dream?”

  Poonch-Terai spoke scurrilously in his own tongue, snarling, until he suddenly thought he might need witnesses and changed to English, picking his phrases and growing gradually bolder as the sound of his own voice heartened him:

  “Trickery, such as any wayside fakir can do in the dark! — Treachery, intended to convict me! I know what is coming. Some one has hidden the girl away. I am to be accused—” “Of having killed her,” Joe said grimly. “I accuse you of having caused her death.”

  “But is she dead?” Ram-Chittra Gunga asked. He stared at Joe. “What need was there to accuse one who is self-accused?”

  Joe gathered strength from somewhere and sat upright. He stared, remembering all kinds of stories, his heart in his teeth and his incredulity alert. But the light was baffling. Hawkes suddenly leaned backward in his chair and glanced at Annie Weems, trying to make some signal to her, but her hands were before her face. The Maharajah spoke again:

  “You say self-accused. You lie, you outcaste renegade! Unless you knew the girl were dead you couldn’t produce her resemblance. I am not ignorant. I know something of the arts you practice. You propose to terrify me, and then by trumped up evidence to lay her death at my door. Come on, magician! Make your specter speak! Perhaps you can make her say who killed her!”