Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “What for, pray?”

  “Being English. Osseous formations on the occiput.”

  “Well, we can’t help that.”

  “No. On the whole we’re rather proud of it. Do you think you could so far penetrate the brass hats at headquarters as to make them see the wisdom of leaving me here?” said Ommony. “We’re awfully proud of muddling through, you know. Tell them it would be Nelsonic rashness; that should turn the trick. I will act as liaison officer.”

  “If you like to call that a message, I’ll deliver it,” said the cavalryman. “Suppose you put it in writing. Eh? What?”

  Ommony laughed. “I see myself! You might add, will you, unofficially, of course, that as things are likely to move swiftly my permission to remain here ought to be granted definitely within a few hours. How about tomorrow noon?”

  “What d’you mean? Is that a threat?”

  “From several points of view the Moplahs might do worse than kidnap me.”

  Major Pierson stared at Ommony, and Ommony smiled back with unquestionably genuine amusement.

  “You see now why I won’t put my demands in writing, don’t you? They’re demands. There’s going to be wholesale murder, of course — bombs, machine-guns, bayonets — a beastly mess. Naturally, we win. That’s inevitable. I can prevent some of the fighting, and owe no obedience to the army. So either I get my permission in writing before noon tomorrow to remain here — or the Moplahs kidnap me!”

  Major Pierson’s face became a mask — one of those obvious masks that announce to the wide world there is something to conceal.

  “I’ll deliver your message,” he snorted, and Ommony chuckled.

  “I shall be out when the answer comes,” he said. “If it’s ‘Yes,’ I’ll return to the bungalow. Otherwise I’ll be kidnapped.” He turned his head and whistled on a low note that carried amazingly. The dogs, sprawling on mats by the door, looked up but did not move; they knew that whistle.

  The jungli, naked except for a leather strap, appeared in the door and fidgeted. It was possible he might have come in if Ommony had ordered, but a room was too much like a trap for him to venture of his own free will. Ommony merely nodded in his direction.

  “This is the man who will know where to find me. He’ll wait at the station.”

  “D’you think you’re acting loyally?” asked the cavalryman, pushing aside a half-finished glass of whisky-and-soda and brushing away crumbs as if Ommony’s hospitality were now under suspicion.

  “Loyally to whom — to what? I’m no soldier. The minute martial law’s proclaimed I’m under the army’s heel. They mean fight, and I know I can reduce the fighting. Ergo, I make my bargain in advance. I’m sober and in earnest.”

  “Wouldn’t you obey an order to come away?”

  “I should never receive it!”

  The jungli in the door still fidgeted. He had left his lizard-skin tom- tom and stick somewhere and was at a loss how to draw notice to himself. It was the dogs who first sensed the note of alarm; they growled and called Ommony’s attention. He turned his chair about, and the jungli promptly squatted in the doorway with his eyes on Ommony’s face but a sort of glance in reserve for the cavalryman. Ommony grunted a monosyllable and the jungli turned loose floods of speech — little staccato freshets in his case that broke forth and were dry again. It was all about the cavalryman; that much was obvious even to the dogs, who watched him and were restless. The major, too, became impatient.

  “Thus saith the Lord — but what?” he demanded.

  Ommony grunted a dozen monosyllables and turned his chair again. The jungli disappeared. A big winged insect dashed itself to death against the table-lamp with an elan that almost broke the glass — first-class cavalry tactics.

  “Your two orderlies have disappeared,” said Ommony.

  Major Pierson overturned his chair in a hurry to get to the door.

  “Nonsense!” he said. “They can’t have gone far. Orderly! Oh, orderly!”

  He ran down the veranda steps in the pitch darkness and stood still at the bottom, listening, but could hear nothing.

  “Orderly! Oh, orderly! Where are you?”

  There was no answer. His eyes were growing used to the dark so he strode forward, trying far-sightedly to penetrate the blackness where the line of trees began. Suddenly he stumbled, tried to recover, and fell headlong.

  “My God! Ommony! You there, Ommony? Dead horses — two of ’em. Hot! Dead about a minute! Blood! By God, my hands are all sticky with it!”

  “Better come back,” advised Ommony from the veranda.

  “Got to see where the men are. God, if they’re—”

  “If you’ll come back here I’ll get your men for you.”

  Pierson wiped his hands on the dry grass and cocked his service revolver with an ostentatious click.

  “What do you know about this?” he demanded, making his way back cautiously, peering sideways, trying to make out whether Ommony was armed. It was one of those panicky moments, euphemistically termed a crisis, when the army does things not easily explained in the hard light of tomorrow. Ommony recognized it.

  “You’ll be safe up here beside me,” he said in deliberately commanding tones. (You can’t safely plead with hysteria, especially in armed, grown men.) “Come on; I need your advice.”

  “I’ll blow your head off if you try any tricks!” the major answered.

  “Unfortunately I’m no use without my head! Come up!” said Ommony. “Let’s talk this over.”

  “Talk? You do as I say!”

  The major climbed the steps and tapped the muzzle of his revolver against the veranda railing. “Call your servants! Send two of them to the train to find out what’s happening!”

  “My servants have bolted,” Ommony answered. He seemed not to see the revolver at all, although it was within a foot of him, in the shaft of light that came by the window shade. “The butler brought the coffee and followed the others for what they call tall timber in the West. The jungli has gone for your orderlies.”

  “You don’t mean they ran too? For God’s sake—”

  “According to the jungli, they were surprised, gagged, bound, and carried off. He saw it.”

  “Good God! What’s it all about?”

  “The mystery is why the dogs didn’t bark,” said Ommony. “One of my servants must have attended to that. The dogs are above suspicion. So is the jungli.”

  The major sat down on the garden-seat between the door and window, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face. Then he shoved the revolver back into its holster.”

  “I say, was I beastly rude just now?” he asked.

  “Not at all.” Ommony produced his case, chose a cigar, and offered him one.

  “Thanks. I mean, wasn’t I—”

  “Men gone — horses dead — any man would flare up.”

  “Dashed decent of you to admit it. Some men would have — What’s that noise?”

  Out came the revolver and was cocked — quietly meaning business.

  “The jungli’s drum. He’s signaling. Listen.”

  There was no need to listen. You couldn’t help hearing that peculiar, dry rattle. It penetrated like the note of a cicada.

  “They’ll be here in a minute,” said Ommony. “D’you mind unloading that revolver?”

  “What the devil? Do you think I’m—”

  Ommony was much too wise to admit what he thought.

  “I’m going to tell them we’re unarmed.”

  “But suppose—”

  “We’ll know presently. Unload, please.”

  So the cavalryman unloaded, and that chance of accident was barred out. Ommony’s hand closed in the dark on the empty revolver.

  “Not in the holster. Always tell ’em the exact truth. Let me lay it down.”

  He laid it on the window-sill and strode forward to the head of the steps in the full yellow lamplight from the open door. All three dogs came and growled beside him with scruffs raised, and the terrier’s
sawed-off tail disappeared completely.

  “The night’s alive with ’em!” said Ommony. “Could your men scout as quietly? I tell you these Moplahs—”

  A voice from the dark interrupted him.

  “Oh, Ommon-ee!”

  He leisurely lighted the cigar he had chosen two minutes before, and it occurred to the soldier for the first time that his host was in full evening dress — not dinner-jacket. Old-fashioned style. Stiff white shirt. It suited him so well that even out there in the jungle it looked perfectly in harmony.

  “What do you want?” he said at last.

  “Your tracker said that you wish to speak with us. But you are not alone. We see a khaki-sahib. We see his pistol by the window.”

  “It is not loaded.”

  “That is a trick to tempt us.”

  “You have my leave to come up here and talk. You shall not be harmed.”

  “There are dead horses, Ommon-ee!”

  “Very well,” said Ommony. “I will go with this sahib and not come back.”

  There came the noise of hissed argument from the blackest shadow, and presently the speaker’s voice was raised again.

  “We want your promise there is no trick, Ommon-ee.”

  “There is none.”

  “No attack from the te-rain?”

  “What orders did you give the train crew?” Ommony asked over his shoulder.

  “Just to wait for me.”

  Ommony translated that news into the vernacular, but cautiously.

  “The train-men have no orders to attack. But you must not attack the train.”

  That satisfied them. The three chiefs who had presented themselves that morning rose like goblins from the gloom and approached — grinning — undoubtedly pleased with themselves. They squatted uninvited in the pool of light before the door.

  “Where are the Rajput orderlies?” demanded Ommony.

  “They are not dead — yet, Ommon-ee.”

  They glanced at the major, but he missed the point, not knowing the dialect. Ommony came back promptly with a point that everybody understood.

  “Produce those orderlies unharmed, or clear out!”

  “But we make war, we Moplahs. They are prisoners — our first!”

  “You make war in my clearing and call me friend?” he retorted.

  “We have not touched you,” Red-beard answered lamely.

  Ommony sat down beside the major and crossed his legs. He had won, and he knew it. All that remained was that they should know it too.

  “The word of a Moplah is good or it is not good,” he said abruptly.

  “By Allah, it is very good!”

  “This is sanctuary then. All who wish, of either side, have leave to come and go here unmolested.”

  “But Ommon-ee — they might come to make war here.”

  “Not while I live!” he answered. “Neither side shall make war here. Give back those prisoners.”

  “But Ommon-ee—”

  “I have spoken.”

  They laid their heads together and whispered without much emphasis, there was so little to argue about.

  “Very well, Ommon-ee.”

  The fellow with red in his beard raised his voice, and another man answered from the shadows. One of the three began to converse with Ommony, but he would not listen until the two prisoners were surrendered unhurt. So, as is said there was once in heaven, there was silence for the space of half an hour — lighted by fireflies and the glowing ends of two cigars. The dark was full of witnesses unquestionably, but even the usual jungle noises seemed to be suppressed for the occasion.

  At last came the sound of footsteps and the voice of a native orderly reminding his captors that he had “told them so.” He furthermore asserted they were pigs, and the night became instantly alive with recrimination. The shadows shrilled back with fifty voices that there would presently be no Hindu idolaters in Moplah country and the Rajput prisoners replied in kind. Ommony appealed to the major, who stood up and barked the order for attention. In perfect silence again the orderlies stood at the foot of the steps and saluted.

  They were complete and unharmed, even to their small change, and admitted it reluctantly. They naturally thought that vengeance was in order, and it was pity to reduce the count in any way. Nevertheless, the fact was that although everything had been taken from them, all had been returned.

  “Except the horses,” remarked Ommony.

  “They are dead,” said the chief with the red beard.

  “Have you horses that are fit for army remounts?” Ommony retorted.

  “As Allah is our witness, we have no horses whatever, sahib.”

  “Then you must pay money. The horses were slain in this sanctuary after you had passed your word. You must pay. Everybody knows the price of an army remount.”

  “But we have no money with us, Ommon-ee.”

  “I don’t care. Sign a promissory note, plus interest from date. Pay it here in my house whenever you like, or add it to the fines that the Government will levy after this foolishness is over. You must either pay now or sign.”

  “Very well, we will sign.”

  Ommony went into the house and wrote out a note for the proper amount.

  “All three of you must sign,” he said, handing them his fountain pen. Then, as he shook the paper to dry the signatures:

  “One other thing.”

  “Nay, sahib, this is enough! We have done honorably.”

  “My servants have run away. One of them did as you told him and kept the dogs quiet while you seized the orderlies. Having obeyed you, he is yours. Keep him. Send the others back, and don’t interfere with my servants again.”

  “Very well, Ommon-ee.”

  “And take away those horses. You have paid for them. We are not sweepers here to clean up after you! Leave the saddles and bridles.”

  The man with the red beard shouted and again the night became full of noise-grunting, many exclamations, much advice, and the sound of heavy bodies being dragged.

  “You have my leave to go,” said Ommony, and the three chiefs shook hands with him and went not quite so turbulent, but still looking fairly well pleased with themselves.

  “By God!” exclaimed the major. “May I be eternally damned if I ever saw anything like it! Mr. Ommony, if my report of this affair counts you’ll be here whether you like it or not until the chiefs are all hanged and this extraordinary show is over!”

  CHAPTER 6. “Engage the enemy more closely.”

  In every generation there are scores of men who can disguise themselves as natives of the East and get by undetected. The really rare men are those who can do it and regain their Western heritage. It means something more than merely staining your whole skin black to act Othello. It is more like dying and being born again.

  Athelstan King was dead to his own kind — to the past — to the world that knew him — possibly to the future. If he should die, they would say only this of him — that no man knew how he met his death, or why he courted it, and that few except Ommony had ever understood him. But that, too, is a most rare gift — the ability to go without praise and recognition. Ommony and King were both men who valued praise merely at its asset value. If it gave them command of more resources for the great game, good; if not it bored them.

  King limped a little, for the white man’s feet grow soft in boots, however hard he uses them meanwhile. He looked so like Mahommed Babar from the rear that even in broad daylight the Northerner’s relatives might easily have jumped to the wrong conclusion. But it was dark in the jungle, although still fairly light overhead, and he held the end of a khaki turban between his teeth, as the men of that land do when in haste; from in front, when he strode into the luminous gloom of a clearing, you could not have told whether or not he was bearded, and Mahommed Babar might have thought himself face to face with his own shadow.

  A jungli, who had never seen King clothed and in his right mind, and was too incurious to be suspicious, was leading jungle fashi
on at a dog-trot, not boldly down the middle of the lanes, as King went, but flitting from shadow to shadow, afraid of the dark and of devils, but much more afraid to disobey Ommony — who owned both devils and forests, as every jungli knew.

  King ran heavily. The jungli made no sound that any but an animal could hear. King breathed heavily. The jungli, like a phantom, seemed to do without breath. At intervals the woods resounded with the crash of falling branches, and at every one of those sounds the jungli would leap almost out of his skin, springing, like Puck, from side to side of the fire-lane. Now and then there would come the clear cry of a hunted animal, and at every one of those sounds King would stiffen tensely, but the jungli took no notice.

  They did not speak, for they had no word in common, Ommony being one of half a dozen men who have ever learned the jungli-bat,* and very few junglis knowing anything except their own and the animals’ language. Ommon-ee had spoken. The jungli showed the way, and thereafter would say nothing because he knew nothing and did not care to know.

  —— — * The incomprehensible language spoken by the aborigines, who live in the jungle, and who are probably the last of a race that was conquered and proscribed when India was first invaded, thousands of years B.C. —— —

  Mahommed Babar doubtless believed himself beyond pursuit. Like all Northerners, and Highlanders especially, he had an inconvincible contempt for Southern, and above all lowland ways. As Ommony’s steward of supplies, he had seen the junglis at their work reporting every incident in the forest, including the tigers’ and the leopards’ meals, but that had not persuaded him that such folk could ever outwit a campaigner like himself.

  Was he not born in the Northern mists? Had he not scouted unseen on Allah’s slag-heap by Quetta, where men are trained to outview the kites? Had he not been guide to the Guides* themselves? When such as he decide to vanish and leave no trace, there is less trace than a light wind leaves! Gone on a gray horse — that was the last the curious would know until it should suit him to enlighten them! [* A famous Indian regiment]

  Nevertheless, four hours after he left it was told to Ommony that a panther had slain the gray horse while Mahommed Babar rested under a tree. Hairs from the mane and tail of the horse were brought in proof, together with a bit of fly-decked meat to show that the leopard had one eye-tooth missing.