by Talbot Mundy
He wondered what would happen to Lal Rai. To whose lot would he fall? He would surely fall to someone, for a man like that was never any use without a master. And he certainly would never find another master who would understand him and make use of him as he, Prothero, had done. Any one with idiotic notions about conventions and morality might as well hold a two-edged knife by the blade as try to employ Lal Rai. For a while he was almost happy, thinking of the tricks he had turned through Lal Rai’s agency. But the mewing began again.
He was dreadfully tired as well as sore and irritated. He had an idea that his nerve would fail altogether if he continued retreating in front of that beastly, blood-chilling noise. As a man of notorious resourcefulness he felt reasonably sure that if there were a remedy within reach he would not have overlooked it. Death seemed inescapable. No way out. It was undignified, as well as stupid, to keep on running away from what could overtake him whenever it chose.
Beaten — defeated he might be. A cur, never! He chose a tree by the feel of it, and sat down with his back against its bole, to wait for death. He even composed his own epitaph, and wished he had a pencil with which to write it on a scrap of paper for the search-party to find and turn in at headquarters.
He waited a surprisingly long time, and nothing happened, except that the cloud of insects increased, and whenever he moved there was mewing. Hang it, it was almost like a house-cat’s! That thought brought relief, after its absurdity had faded, and it is surprising what relief will do to a man whose nerves are all on edge.
He found himself struggling to keep awake. He had to rub his eyes repeatedly. More and more frequently his head fell forward on his breast. More than once his own half-finished snore brought him back to his senses with a start. When he heard other sounds, and thought he saw eyes in the dark very near him, he could not be sure that he was not dreaming.
Finally he decided that he might just as well be killed while asleep as while awake. So he made himself as comfortable as he could, laying his head against a root and curling up as if he were in bed. He fell asleep almost instantly, and was awakened by loud mewing shortly after sunlight had begun to penetrate the jungle.
He sat up, rubbed his eyes and looked. Six of Ommony’s naked junglis sat around him in a semi-circle — sat and mewed at him, and pointed in the direction of the railway line.
CHAPTER 8. Colonel John Tregurtha, V.C., D.S.O., Etc.
In the big tent by the flagstaff, on the hilltop overlooking the compounds where the prisoners wondered what was next, Macaulay smiled meanly. He was at his best, always, when a reputation was in danger. And his best was his worst. He could break a man more skillfully and painfully, and read a more eloquent lesson from it afterward, than any man in India, except perhaps one missionary, who deserves a story to himself and shall be accommodated — one of these days.
Macaulay did not seem to feel the heat. He was probably as incapable of suffering or sentiment on such occasions as a hound in full cry.
Colonel John Tregurtha V.C., D.S.O., etc., on the other hand, wiped sweat from his forehead and swore in undertones. He sat across the table from Macaulay and studied the map between them in order to keep himself from doing violence — which must never be done to civilians.
Ommony had made the map, and there were ways in which it differed from the Ordnance Survey maps, as Macaulay had been careful to point out; but, as Tregurtha had made answer, Ommony was not an Ordnance Survey man, and it was the only map available.
“He should have taken the trouble to familiarize himself with requirements,” said Macaulay.
“Was he ever paid for his work?” asked Tregurtha.
Macaulay withdrew into cynical silence behind his handkerchief. Tregurtha rubbed it in.
“I understand that we didn’t even lend him the surveying instruments.”
“Why should a Woods and Forests man make maps at all?” demanded Macaulay. “He is paid to look after trees.”
“Don’t his trees look good?” asked Tregurtha. “This is an excellent map.”
“It looks to me like the work of a man whose attention is divided — improperly divided,” said Macaulay.
“He includes geology, altitude, contour, running water with depth and periodicity, standing water, rocks, trees — a very good map,” said Tregurtha. “Just the least confusing to a person not taught to read maps—”
“Do you refer to me as a person?” asked Macaulay.
“These peculiar marks are ancient buildings — not given on our maps at all,” said Tregurtha.
“Probably not there,” said Macaulay.
“This one is Peria Vur — or so he calls it.”
“That, I take it, is his ultimate effrontery,” Macaulay sneered. “The naming of places is a function of Government, not the privilege of Woods and Forests men. But, of course, as the place is probably not really there—”
Tregurtha got up and strode up and down to make sure of himself, then resumed his chair in the way a man faces the dentist. If his duty, as it seemed, was to speak to Macaulay civilly, he decided he could manage it.
“A spy has reported elephants at a point that seems to correspond with Peria Vur,” he said.
“Doubtless wild ones,” said Macaulay.
“The Air Force reported recently that their men have seen what look like camp-fires close to the same spot.”
“Forest fires,” the other answered. “Ommony was no doubt making maps instead of attending to business.”
Tregurtha was about to retort, but a junior officer brought in a despatch marked “O.H.M.S. Secret.” Tregurtha opened it, studied it, wrinkling his forehead for several minutes, and began wiping away sweat again — a process that annoyed the other, whose only natural function was declared by irreverent juniors to be indigestion.
“Let me remind you,” said Tregurtha, “first and last I have urged reconnaissance of Peria Vur.”
“You have insisted ad nauseam! I suppose you had the right to. I have opposed it for three reasons, which I don’t mind repeating. In the first place, the expense. Second, the rebellion is over; armed reconnaissances should give place to peaceful measures. Third, Peria Vur is a mare’s nest — one of this man Ommony’s inventions for calling attention to himself. He craves notoriety. It’s a disease with him.”
Tregurtha laid the secret despatch face downward on the table, for it had become a habit with all who knew Macaulay to permit him no unnecessary opportunities. “Well, here’s important news,” he said. “From the Intelligence — delayed — cut wire. The train in which Colonel Prothero was traveling was derailed. Prothero was carried off. Ommony’s bungalow was raided the same night; his stores were looted, and Ommony too was carried away prisoner.”
Macaulay refused to be shocked.
“Prisoner fiddlesticks! He’s hand and glove with every disaffected person in the country!”
“I suspect Peria Vur. The report says tracks lead in that direction, and Ommony’s servants confirm the belief.”
“I’d like to interview those servants.”
“Nothing to prevent you. The predicament of Prothero calls for action.”
“You may act in any way within your province, Colonel Tregurtha. Limits were laid down at the recent conference. The predicament of a Colonel of Intelligence! Hah! It ought to make a good story!”
“This is an emergency.”
“I deny that it amounts to that,” Macaulay answered, reaching for the despatch, and turning it face upward.
Tregurtha permitted him with ill-concealed reluctance. The men who write military messages in great haste are not adepts at presenting their case to sarcastic civilians. Macaulay, martinet-civilian, as Tregurtha was practical soldier, was there for the appointed purpose of bringing military measures to an end; he could combine business with pleasure, and did, his pleasure being such as it was.
“On the strength of this one scribbled note do you expect me to risk my reputation by permitting armed extravagance?” he asked with his cho
icest sneer. “What is obviously called for is an investigation as to how Colonel Prothero—”
“I will investigate,” Tregurtha interrupted, pocketing despatch and map and getting to his feet.
“In person?” asked Macaulay, taken aback for the moment; then, recovering himself, “You will report to me, of course.”
Tregurtha made no answer but strode out of the tent and gave his own orders wherever he felt he still had some authority. Under Macaulay’s exacerbating regime the tendency was to set clique against clique, with everybody spying on everybody else and all power consequently centering into Macaulay’s own hands. But not all men are amenable to that kind of thing, and Tregurtha had his resources. He made the most of them. There was no prohibition against sending out patrols in quick succession, so he did that, and gave them orders to rendezvous at a point along the line, whither he himself proceeded in an empty freight train.
So he arrived with about a hundred men next day at the point where Prothero’s train had left the line and was still blocking the way. Labor gangs were already busy with it. Nobody had been killed; no loot had been taken from the train, which, except for minor damage, was unharmed. The train crew, the handful of passengers, Ommony’s servants, and a few other witnesses had been rounded up by the first officer to arrive on the scene in charge of a patrol, and they were all indignantly anxious to tell their story and get away from the miserable wayside station, where they were accommodated in a shed that reeked of ancient skins and similar products of the country.
Tregurtha packed them into his train under guard and sent them back, after hearing what they had to say, and himself remained on the spot with most of his men, planning to return in the derailed train when the gangs should have put it in commission, and providing nothing else transpired meanwhile.
There was no proper breakdown machinery on the spot, and no chance of getting any until the wires should be mended, which was “not yet.” So the soldiers were put to work, and what with showing the railway coolies how to do things, and being shown by them, it was night before the job was nearly done. And there were no flares. If it had not been for a culvert that the engine broke when it left the track — but there is always something.
So the men bivouacked happily, Tregurtha studied the situation, as his report expressed it afterward, and sent out scouts to find natives who might throw some light on events. Nothing happened, except for an incidental fight or two between the soldiers and the half-caste railway underlings, who hate one another as suddenly and fiercely as ants from a different hill. No native informants who had any valuable knowledge were discovered, and when morning came Tregurtha recognized himself as hardly wiser than the day before.
However, when the sun was just beginning to peer over the tree-tops and start the men swearing, there came stumbling to the edge of the bank above the track an apparition in a bloody singlet, with a fragment of a torn khaki shirt knotted around his neck. His eyes were almost entirely closed by bruises and mosquito bites, and he came forward as if goaded like an ox; as if direction were supplied by pin-pricks and the impulse to advance by fear of something following.
He in no wise resembled any form of military man, except for his puttee leggings and boots, which still retained shape, if not slickness and polish. His breeches were a mass of matted leaves and blood, for the jungle insects are hardly delayed by a thickness of cotton twill. He needed shaving, to say nothing of a bath; and in fact had reached the stage of misery, dirt, and discomfort in which he almost ceased to resemble a human being. He did not see the top of the bank, but stepped forward and fell over it, sliding and rolling twenty feet to the bottom, where he sat up presently, making no sound, only his swollen lips moving. A sentry from a point of vantage some way along the bank called attention to him as a man at sea might report a ship on the horizon. But it seemed to be nobody’s business to go and investigate, and finally Tregurtha went himself, rather expecting to have to call for a non-com to arrest a drunken half-breed.
“Who are you, my man?” he asked when he came close enough.
“By Jabez, Tregurtha,” he mumbled. “I’m damned if I know! I was Prothero once!”
Now Prothero and Tregurtha reckoned any way at all were as the poles apart. Tregurtha did not even regard Prothero as a good Intelligence officer, and as for his morals, manners, and personal habits he despised them de profundis. On various occasions he had found him out in ambitious prevarications, without, however, ever having had sufficient proof to force an issue; so almost the first thought that occurred to him as he beckoned for help was that he should guard against trickery.
No cause had any interest for Prothero unless it should profit him personally. That was notorious. It was therefore almost a duty to regard Prothero’s statements with suspicion. There was, moreover, Macaulay. He and Prothero were known as the fox and badger, because they were allies but not friends, and had other peculiar characteristics that endeared them neither to each other nor to their subordinates, but made both of them dangerous to their equals and superiors.
So he avoided confidences for the moment on humanitarian grounds and superintended the sponging of Prothero’s face. Then he had him almost embalmed in vaseline and bandaged from head to foot; all of which was very comforting after such a night as Prothero had spent, and set up a corresponding reaction in his mind — brought his natural inclinations uppermost. If you thaw out a frozen snake you must not be surprised if he bites you, but some folk never learn that.
Tregurtha had learned it, of course, but never really understood. He could dislike, distrust, and despise like any normal man; but he was constitutionally incapable of fathoming the obliquity of either Prothero or Macaulay; and he was unfortunately capable of pitying either of them, even when he felt most sure that they were poisonous rogues.
In other words, Tregurtha was a plain and decent fellow, who knew obliquity existed, and regretted the fact. But he was as a rod in the hands of any high-placed crook who dared make use of him. He might have learned the facts if he had questioned Prothero the minute he came on him, but he did not.
So by the time he had Prothero comfortably stretched on a seat in the very car from which he had been dragged by Mahommed Babar’s men, with his own effects around him and his own servants, cook included, sent for from the railway station, the advantage had passed entirely into the wrong hands. It is a maxim of the Intelligence to say nothing without good reason; and Prothero, with his wits just sufficiently recovered to make him cautious, determined to give away no information unless and until he could find out how much was known already.
It would have been a breach of discipline, punishable under King’s Regulations, to refuse to answer questions, so he took the simply obvious course of pretending to be “all in.” He certainly looked the part, and the bandages added their picturesque suggestion.
“Lal Rai,” he mumbled with his eyes closed, instead of answering the questions Tregurtha put to him.
His purpose was to commit himself to nothing; his interest in Lal Rai’s whereabouts would be taken as only natural, no matter how much Tregurtha knew already or would be likely to find out later.
“I have no news of Lal Rai,” said Tregurtha. “Try to collect your thoughts now. Just nod or shake your head, while I put questions. You were captured from this train and carried off — which direction? East? Northeast?”
It might have been the bandages that made the head movement so difficult to interpret. It seemed like a combination of nod and shake.
“Southeast?” Tregurtha suggested, and received the same answer — or so nearly the same answer that no sane man would swear to the difference.
“Who carried you off?” Tregurtha asked. “Mahommed Babar? Was Ommony a prisoner too? Did you see him?”
The movements of his head continued to mean either yes or no, until gradually Prothero became convinced that Tregurtha knew literally nothing, or he would not have asked such questions.
There was no doctor on the scene, as
Prothero lapsed unchallenged into a kind of coma in order to think uninterrupted. He took his time about recovering; did not recover, in fact, until the culvert was reported practicable and Tregurtha went out to examine it. In Tregurtha’s absence he sat up and demanded whisky; and the whisky provided just that touch of daring that, in his condition, was all that was needed to change irresolution into decision. As Ommony had correctly diagnosed, he was a man who would inevitably make mistakes.
As an inventor, who had wrestled with a problem for endless weeks, may sit up in the night and see in a flash the false key to his discovery, so, with the whisky fumes in his brain, Prothero saw not only how to have revenge on Ommony, but how to gather credit for himself. To men of his disposition no success is genuinely palatable unless it includes failure for someone else.
He saw how to discredit Tregurtha, who in his opinion was overrated and needed showing up. Overrated men ought to be shown up as a matter of religion. The solution was perfect — three-sided, as all perfection should be! He was careful to show just sufficient symptoms of recovery to induce Tregurtha to resume his questioning on his return from inspecting the culvert and ordering steam up on the engine.
Face to face with Tregurtha across the narrow compartment he allowed it to be dragged forth from him that a considerable body of outlaws, about whose numbers he succeeded in being unintelligibly vague, was at large in a clearing to the eastward. It was no part of his intention that Tregurtha should snatch one of those quick successes on which he had risen to distinction. So whenever Tregurtha questioned him about Peria Vur and ancient Buddhist temples he fell back on silence, vertigo, and incomprehensible mumblings through lips that masked his trickery to perfection.
Had not he himself cross-questioned hundreds of prisoners in his day? Did he not know all the side-steps of evasiveness, and how to state the truth while conveying the meaning of untruth? He contrived to convey the impression that these outlaws were a very ordinary company of malcontents, who might be surprised and rounded up without much difficulty; and the surprising fact that the train had not been burned or looted lent color to the suggestion. To Tregurtha, whose mind was direct and uncompromising, drawing simple conclusions from plain facts, it looked as if Mahommed Babar and a miserable handful had pounced on a couple of more or less important Englishmen with the notion of holding them as hostages — possibly to be exchanged eventually against indemnity for themselves.