by Talbot Mundy
When King began to make his circuit of the clearing the mullah heard a few dry twigs break, as King intended that he should. Thereafter was silence, and the mullah lay shamming sleep, with one eye watching the direction whence the noise of breaking twigs had come. At the end of half an hour he could endure the suspense no longer. He got up suddenly, and ran for the point where he had heard the twigs break, found nothing, beat about the bush for fifteen minutes, and returned jumpily nervous to the rock, where he had left his bundle of traveling necessities. It was gone!
The ground was too dry to take footprints. There was nothing to show whether bird, beast, or man had done the lifting, and the mullah in his heart suspected devils. Even his cotton umbrella was gone — that inseparable emblem of his dignity that, unlike all other dignities in this world, provided comfort too!
One point was settled at all events. It was a common thief, and not the Sirdar Mahommed Akbar Khan. No sirdar would steal a mullah’s cloth bundle containing snuff, soap, tobacco, socks and a change of shirts. Luckily he had tucked his small supply of money into the fold of his belly-band. Luckily, too, he knew of a lodging for the night, where he would be treated with proper dignity, umbrella or no umbrella. He resumed his journey angrily, yet praising Allah in that he had not been killed.
He was telling his beads as he turned the corner into the jungle lane on the far side of the clearing, and it should not be written of a mullah that he screamed. It was not a scream. It was blended of oath, prayer, exclamation, agony of fear, astonishment, roar of rage, and recovering presence of mind. There is no one word in all the dictionaries that covers that ground completely; but there is one sound that expresses all of it, and the mullah used the sound, leaping backward at the same time like a colt that sees an adder in the path.
King rose easily from a sitting posture, holding the mullah’s bundle and umbrella — very careful indeed not to startle his man any further. For that rusty Mauser pistol might go off after all, supposing the mullah could find it among the folds of his clothes.
“I saw that your eminence was tired, so I picked these up to carry them for a while!”
“How — why — what? — Allah! Why are you not where I told you to stay?”
“The saber was clean and sharp. None came. I was curious to see the village. I emerged — looked about me — caught sight of your eminence — and naturally followed.”
“Naturally!” the mullah snorted. “Did the door open naturally? The lock was smashed to atoms!”
“Yes. A poor lock and a good saber! Which way shall I carry your eminence’s bundle — forward or toward home?”
The mullah eyed him, hesitating. He looked tired, and there was pain behind his eyes as if his head ached terribly; but none the less he was an antagonist too well-set-up and limber-looking to be tackled except as a last resource. Besides —
“I have no means of protecting you. Can you protect me if we march together?” asked the mullah.
But no wise man shows his weapons until he means to use them.
“We came thus far,” King answered, smiling. “If Allah pleases — is the road much longer?”
The mullah decided on direct tactics. This was a crafty fellow, who could outwit craft. It would be waste of words to try cozening him.
“Tell me truly how you stand toward Mahommed Babar!” he demanded. “Are you his friend or his enemy? I charge you, answer the the truth, or the curse of Allah and of all His angels shall pursue you forever!”
King answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“Mahommed Barbar is a friend of the Moplahs and of all who love liberty,” he answered.
“And you?”
“I, too, am a friend of the Moplahs.”
That was as direct an answer as a man may expect in a land that had studied evasiveness for seven thousand years.
“You spy on me on his behalf?” asked the mullah.
“I am his friend. And you?” King retorted.
The mullah made a virtue of necessity — an easy enough thing to do when you are a fatalist by profession. Believing in prayer and direct answer to prayer — failing any means to rid himself of this man — and having prayed repeatedly for guidance in the present difficult turn of affairs, the mullah considered himself guided accordingly. This sirdar must be a guide sent purposely by Allah.
“I am his good friend!” he answered. “It was I who placed in his hands the saber that you sharpened, in token of Allah’s blessing. He hitched the saber on and has gone foraying.”
They swung into step together and walked in silence for a mile or two, until the sun got down so low that all was deep gloom under the trees; and the monkeys chattered overhead quarreling about perches for the night.
“Where are we going?” King asked at last.
“Podanaram. But not tonight. Tomorrow. I go to find out what the Khalifate Committee says about our friend Mahommed Babar. The news had gone ahead of me; no need for us to hurry. We are near a place where we can spend the night.”
From under the trees you can see the stars before the sun goes down, but dimly. It was just as the stars shone forth with full brilliancy that the mullah pushed King up a side path whose existence was concealed by a tree-trunk lying parallel with the main track.
“Most men are afraid of this place,” he said. “Are you timid about devils?”
Suddenly the mullah turned aside again, and a dim light showed itself a hundred yards away at the end of the gut of gloom. A man was holding a lamp — one of those earthenware things like a saucer, with a lip to take the wick. They followed the light, and the man led the way into an ancient temple that was part cave, part masonry — a Hindu temple, very likely once Buddhist, now indubitably Moslem superficially. For the noses had been knocked off the images that lined the walls, and some parts of their anatomy were missing altogether.
“This man was a Hindu priest,” said the mullah with a self-satisfied smirk, taking the lamp and shifting it this way and that so that King could have a good view of their host. “I circumcised him. He is grateful. He and I have been good friends ever since.”
Strange that a man should feel grateful for being circumcised against his will, and for having his temple walls shorn of their beauty. King met the Hindu’s eyes, and one of those intuitive flashes of intelligence passed between them as incomprehensible as ether and electricity, no more, no less. The Hindu offered them water, washed the mullah’s feet, then King’s, with the forlorn air of a man who has lost his caste forever; and then brought food, which he served on the temple floor. King sat thinking, saying nothing. The mullah patronized the ex-Hindu, tossing him insignificant scraps of news and asking questions.
At last the mullah wiped his beard and announced his intention of sleeping until an hour before dawn, when he expected to resume his journey. With a dumb glance in King’s direction that implored him to stay where he was, the Hindu led the mullah away to some chamber in the rear and presently returned. He made a small fire of crossed sticks on the temple floor between himself and King, and sat before it, saying nothing until the mullah’s snores came thundering and rasping through an open door. Then:
“You are a Hindu at heart!” said King, looking straight at him.
“You are a white man — English!” the Hindu answered.
“If that were true, would it mean anything to you?” King asked.
“Hope!” he replied, speaking English. “I had almost given up hope. My spirit said you are English. You are a secret agent of the Government — an officer, I think. If you stay here I can be useful to you after that mullah has gone in the morning. Can you think of an excuse?”
“Easily. My head is injured. But how can you be useful?”
“Listen, sahib. You are here to work against these Moplahs — is it not so? I would give my right hand, and my left hand — my feet, eyes, liver — and all my life for one real chance to do the Moplah cause an injury! I am a renegade outcast, without honor in this world or the next. Nothing is l
eft for me but vengeance, and I crave that as a hungry man craves food. I could have slain this cursed mullah, but I yearn to do the whole Moplah brood an injury! That mullah thinks he is the only guest who uses this place, and his talk is forever of devils, to keep others away from here. Stay here, sahib, and you shall know all the reports that reach the Khalifate Committee. Only promise me — on your sacred honor, sahib — that you will use the information against the Moplahs!”
“They must be defeated,” King answered.
He showed King a place to sleep, in a niche behind a great stone image, and lent him a pair of most unpriestly blankets. But King was not allowed to sleep much, either during that night or those that followed. What the snoring mullah fondly dreamed was his own private preserve turned out to be a secret meeting-place. Ex-Hindus who had been converted forcibly to Islam, losing caste so that return to their own religion was hopeless, as every suppressed people in the world has always done, had formed themselves into a secret society with passwords, signs, and countersigns. But they were much more deadly dangerous than most in that they eschewed murder and confined their activities to spying, hoping to know so much about the Moplah cause that they could some day ruin it with information laid in the proper quarter.
King was awakened about midnight to sit up behind the stone image and listen to a man whose brother was secretary to the self-appointed Khalifate Committee. They had had to make use of ex-Hindus because the number of Moplahs who can read and write is approximately zero. A few mullahs. A few headmen. A few of the sons of the wealthier land-owners. No Moplah wanted any such menial task, and the virtue of the ex-Hindu consisted in his being so utterly forlorn and spiritless as not to be dangerous to anyone — presumably.
He described the Committee’s reception of the news of Mahommed Babar’s coup d’etat. They had approved the idea of a leader who led; who rallied a village around him and started on a foray almost before his leadership had been confirmed; a soldier, who had training and experience. But they objected emphatically to a leader who preached observance of the rules of war. In perfect pantomime, and even mimicking the voices, the man described each member of the Committee’s reaction to the news.
“And they will do something terrible to offset the preaching of Mahommed Babar,” he prophesied before he left.
There was no danger of the mullah overhearing, even if his own snores had not rendered the feat impossible. There were some small boys, who appeared from nowhere in particular and sat on guard in the doorway of the mullah’s chamber. If he had wakened the alarm would have been given.
Never more than one visitor entered the temple at a time. There was some means of signaling with the lamp that kept new arrivals at a distance until whoever was talking to the ex-priest took his leave. In that way none but the ex-priest received the news, and none could swear who his informant had been. There was almost no chance for treachery.
It was like being in the center of a well-laid system of wires. Not an hour of the night went by but someone brought news. Of a Moplah raid. Of a Hindu village burned. Of a British force entangled in the trees and badly cut up. Of a counter-attack and a Moplah retreat. The dates of events were confusing, but the particulars were clearly given, as if the informants had trained themselves determinedly.
News came, about fifteen minutes before the mullah snored his final blast and came out to pray noisily on the temple portico, of Mahommed Babar’s night’s adventure. He had burned the railway bridges over the most difficult section of the line, and had chased away a contingent of sappers who had been trying to make the track practicable for an armored train.
“But they stole no Hindu women, and burned no villages!” said the informant, as if that were much the most important part of the story.
The ex-priest told the mullah that King was delirious with fever, and the mullah was so little disturbed by the news that he did not even trouble to confirm it, mumbling only something about the devils of the place.
“I will call for him on my return,” he said blandly. Then, accepting a handful of chupatties to break his fast with on the way, he stepped out into the cool, rustling darkness that precedes dawn.
Thereafter King slept in snatches, and was entertained in snatches. His host never once let him be seen by the men who brought information. That seemed to be the first and most strictly observed rule of all, that each was entitled to full secrecy and only the ex-priest should meet any informant face to face.
The Khalifate Committee aired their views rashly, considering that their servants were all forcible converts. Not even the General Staffs in France ever talked more incredibly loosely. Almost every argument and change of opinion reached King’s ears within six hours of its expression by an irritated member of the Committee.
More and more their discussion raged around the subject of Mahommed Babar. Reports were so constantly and so cleverly turned in that King even got to know what policy was favored by which Committee-man, and who were the most consistent zealots of the nine.
By midnight of the second night the news had become fixed in an alarming groove, as disturbing to the ex-Hindus as to King himself.
“Many villages, some a long way off, are offering allegiance to Mahommed Babar, and to all he makes the stipulation that the rules of war shall be observed. The Committee desire outrages. They wish to force the British to make stern reprisals. They have sent their messengers in every direction, urging the contrary of what Mahommed Babar teaches, and now they have a worse plan. They desire to antagonize the British against Hindus and Moslems equally. Thereby they propose to torture and kill the two English prisoners — the Kadi and his memsahib — and to lay the blame to Hindu converts; the argument being that British soldiery will draw no distinction between Hindu or convert but will retaliate on all and sundry. Well handled, that would make a good story with which to goad the rest of India to rebellion.”
“If that is their plan, why do they delay?” asked the ex-priest shrewdly cross-examining.
“Because they hope for more prisoners. They wish to perpetrate a thorough- going outrage that will madden the English to a pitch of frenzy.”
King waited the whole of another day listening to the development of that plan, and then there came news that put an end to mere eavesdropping. It was time to move swiftly. The mullah had not returned, and there was no news of him; so King accepted the chupatties that were ever a symbol of action in the Hindu world, and set forth with a lean, half-naked boy, who knew the distant village where Mahommed Babar was.
CHAPTER 15. “That kind of talk is always true.”
The mullah, returning from Podanaram, avoided the temple where he had left King, reasoning that if, as was likely enough, the sirdar should escape, the ex-priest would be blamed for it. For himself, he had troubles enough without any added difficulty of making explanations to Mahommed Babar.
He returned to his own village in doubt about Mahommed Babar. The Khalifate Committee head decided to throw their whole influence against him. Choosing the weaker of two sides was not the mullah’s guiding principle, and he would have cheerfully given the amount of a year’s stipend for sure, prophetic knowledge as to which of the rival influences would prevail.
As a Moslem and a mullah, he could hardly disapprove a plan to murder a couple of foreign infidels, if the cause of Islam was to be gained by it. What did prisoners expect? They would be lucky not to be tortured as well as murdered. Nevertheless, the project scared him. In the long run the British always had been victorious. It would be unpleasant to be hanged. Vastly safer to have an alibi. If Mahommed Babar were really strong enough to prevail against the Khalifate Committee, undoubtedly the best plan would be to notify Mahommed Babar of the project. He could manage that without the Khalifate Committee learning of his “discretion,” as he described it to himself, because he had promised them to return to his village and spy on Mahommed Babar. But he must have a witness, otherwise the double play would be no use. He must be able to prove, in the contingency o
f British victory, that he used his influence against the murder of European prisoners.
It was in that frame of mind that he approached his village near nightfall. The village was almost empty of inhabitants, excepting women and children, who, however, were creating a prodigious disturbance at the foot of the hill, where the one street entered the jungle. He hurried downhill to investigate, and was met by Ommony on pony-back, who knew him slightly, and whom he knew very well indeed by reputation.
“You step down opportunely out of Allah’s lap,” said Ommony by way of greeting. “Save these men’s lives, will you? This is a British officer. These are three of his men. The remainder were killed in the jungle, while marching behind me under flag of truce — a bad mistake! Now these idiots of women want to kill the rest of them.”
“Where are you going?” asked the mullah.
“To Podanaram.”
The mullah thumbed his beads in secret recognition of the wondrous ways of Allah, and launched forth a string of abuse that sent the women homeward. That left some half-dozen old men and cripples, and four or five armed youths who for one reason or another had not accompanied the raiders. The mullah gave Linkinyear and the three men into their charge. Ommony protested. The mullah excused himself, but was adamant. He said it would cause a bad impression in the village if he acted otherwise, but invited Ommony, as a favored individual, to come to the mosque with him and talk the situation over.
Ommony yielded the point temporarily, knowing from experience how vastly easier it is to conduct an argument without an audience. Linkinyear did his best to look cheerful, and encouraged his three remaining men by sitting down beside them, ignoring rank over their protests. The mullah took Ommony’s stirrup uphill, and the four Moplahs who had been lent by the chief for an escort took to their heels incontinently. Ommony tied the pony to a tree outside the mosque, and a jungli, whom no one had noticed hitherto, came and sat in the dust beside the animal. The mullah led the way around the mosque and through a gap in the fence into the room whence King had cut his way out with a saber. The door had not been repaired.