by Talbot Mundy
“How did Mr. Ommony get up there on the Rump? Who carried him? He can’t walk. Find out, will you?”
At the end of five minutes the orderly returned with rather surprising information.
“They do say, sir, that ‘alf a dozen black men came when ‘e whistled an’ carried ‘im up there.”
“Where are the black men now?”
“They’re gone, sir. Cleared out at soon as ‘e give ’em the word.”
“Anybody see them go?”
“No, sir.”
It dawned on Tregurtha again that, in spite of patrols who saw nothing, the whole of the jungle surrounding them might be full of enemies. So an hour before dawn he had all the men wakened, that being the deadliest time for a surprise attack. At dawn the cook and his assistants, cursed and cheerful, served what is known as coffee to the optimists who win wars, and smelling it — for it smells much better than it tastes — Ommony came down from the Rump, sitting and working his way gradually, hanging sometimes to Diana’s collar. At the foot of the track he picked up a stick and used that, limping toward the “kitchen.”
Tregurtha intercepted him, before two officers, a non-com and several men, deliberately.
“Good morning, Mr. Ommony. It appears you were right when you said we would not be attacked.”
“Yes, it seems I was,” he answered. “But after that affair last night I took no chances. There were junglis watching. They would have warned me.”
“But you were asleep.”
“They would have wakened the dogs. They know how to.”
“Well, Mr. Ommony, I’m having your rifle cleaned for you. If you’ll be kind enough to forget my remarks last night, which were totally unjustified, I’ll—”
“Have a cigar,” suggested Ommony, reaching into a hunting-pocket for his case. “I’ll take coffee, please.”
CHAPTER 12. “What’ll you do?”
Macaulay sat in a rigid arm-chair in the big marquee — on the hilltop over by the camps where the Moplah prisoners wondered what was next — sniffed the scent on his handkerchief, and suffered. He always did suffer when unpleasant people inflicted their company on him, and he hated the smell of iodoform. Prothero reeked of the stuff. Moreover, he looked like the deuce, or as much of him did as you could see. Prothero, understanding perfectly, liked to see Macaulay suffer.
He should not have been there. He said so. Macaulay agreed with him. But what he called sense of duty, and what Macaulay knew was a captious spirit of suspicion, had dragged him from a sick-bed, swathed in smelly bandages, to offer advice as poisonous as the mosquito-bites that had given him malaria and, under the guise of conveying information, to find out Macaulay’s intentions.
People who want to be powers have to keep awake and work. Macaulay smoothed his rather heavy black mustache behind the scented handkerchief, stroked his nose, and looked at Prothero from under heavy dark eyebrows with inquisitive malice that he hardly troubled to disguise. He was one of those men who believe there is just so much good in the world, and no more, to go round, and that therefore no profit can come to himself without a corresponding loss to somebody else. It did his heart good to see Prothero suffer, although, unlike Prothero, he would not have admitted it and much though he disliked the vulgarity of the spectacle. His eyes and his philosophy were not one. He could keep them separate, letting not the one know what the other doeth — much preferring toothache for his adversaries, because it hurts so exquisitely and perverts judgment so diabolically without upsetting the beholder’s nerves.
He was obliged to consider Prothero, to listen to him and in fact to treat him as an ally. The rules and constitution of the Commission, whose chief member he believed himself to be, took care of that. To antagonize the Chief of the Intelligence would be suicidal. In the circumstances he believed himself capable of making use of his compulsory ally — his obbligato, as he ironically dubbed him — all things, and especially Prothero’s present state of health, considered. So, although he detested the stench of iodoform, he smiled as he looked at Prothero across the handkerchief.
Nevertheless, you couldn’t see very much of Prothero through the bandages, nor judge much from his bloodshot, protruding, half-closed lobster-eyes. Prothero had thoughts of his own, and much experience in concealing them.
“Trig’ll be here before long,” he remarked, as if the thought gave him comfort. It did, for it discomforted Macaulay. “Trig” was Tregurtha.
“Considering your reports that rebels were no longer in the field, and that Mahommed Babar had probably died of pneumonia — those, and the fact that there’s been a rather sharp engagement, and Tregurtha is bringing in Mahommed Babar alive — I should think you wouldn’t be too pleased to meet him,” said Macaulay.
“I like Trig,” Prothero answered. “He’s such a plain, straight-forward simpleton. If he holds the ace of trumps he leads it. You know where you are all the time. He holds it this time and he’ll lead it this time. You watch.”
“I wonder what you mean?” Macaulay asked acidly. He could not guess whether Prothero was smiling because the bandage almost hid his lower jaw, and his eyes looked parboiled.
“He’ll go for you, if I know Trig. You advised against a reconnaissance of Peria Vur — did everything you could to prevent it — and finally, when he did go, you turned in a report accusing him of insubordination and extravagance—”
“He has lost a lot of men,” Macaulay snapped.
“But — he has brought in the rebel leader,” answered Prothero, enjoying the afternoon and glad he came, although the fever racked him.
“The leader, who your reports said was a dead man long ago!”
“I had to turn in on demand such information as I possessed. Subsequently it was I who advised him to march on Peria Vur,” said Prothero. “Ask Trig when he comes if that isn’t so. You’ll find he’ll confirm it.”
“Damn!” said Macaulay, frowning into his handkerchief. The oath corresponded to the roll of drums that immediately precedes a change of tune.
“Whatsamatter?” asked Prothero, cocking one red eye and trying at the same time to appear considerate.
“Nothing, except that by another of those strings of accidents Tregurtha seems to be snatching the chestnuts again! For a man of no consequence he gets much too much spotlight. Undeserved. He’s only a lucky bungler.”
“Who will lead his ace of trumps,” remarked Prothero. “Can you beat it?”
Macaulay leaned back in his chair — leaned back till it rested on two legs, and his toe against the table was all that preserved equilibrium. From that angle he could look under his eyelashes and study Prothero, who sat in the direct path of a beam of sunlight.
“We might,” he said — not accenting the “we,” but prolonging it a little. “There’ll be very little to divide,” he went on. “A few minor medals, of course, but only one civil and one military distinction. Pity if the military one should go to Tregurtha, who has had so much more than his share.”
“How do you propose to manage it?” asked Prothero, not accenting the “you,” but dwelling on it. Having been caught recently and ignominiously he had no intention of walking into any trap set by such a known bird-limer as Macaulay. “What’s your big idea?”
“Publicity, of course, is what confers distinction,” said Macaulay. “If it gets out that Tregurtha made a raid on Peria Vur and took the redoubtable Mahommed Babar prisoner after a sharp fight against odds — well — imagine that in the papers with Tregurtha’s photograph. All his old regimental friends would start wire-pulling. The sentimental element would shed tears and call the viceroy’s attention. You and I would be obliged to recommend him for reward, to save our own faces.”
“Whereas? You suggest?”
It was uphill work. Prothero was refusing his share of it, leaving the whole pull to Macaulay, who was beginning to wear a look of dark guilt, and was conscious of it — beginning to be conscious, too, that the other was amused behind that mask of evil-smelling calico.
“Look here,” he said suddenly. “We’d better be frank with each other. Time’s short. And I tell you, if I have to support Tregurtha on account of your refusing to take the sensible view and agree with me, that will be the end of our friendship, Prothero. The end of it. You understand?”
“Which end?” asked Prothero, and Macaulay winced. “If you’ve a proposal, make it,” Prothero went on.
There was no one in the tent except themselves, but Macaulay got out of his chair to make sure that the sentry was not exercising every sentry’s prerogative of hearing as much as he might. Then he went to a familiar-looking piece of furniture at the rear of the marquee and produced sounds like the tinkling of fairy sleighbells, doubly seductive and delicious because of the appalling heat. He understood at least one of Prothero’s peculiarities.
“How about a whisky-and-soda?”
“Not too much soda,” answered Prothero.
Macaulay did not drink, but made a gesture with his hand as much as to say that men just out of sick-bed were entitled to peccadilloes. Prothero drank copiously and with absolute indifference to anyone’s opinion.
“That was good,” he said, gasping. “Another one would be better.”
Macaulay returned to the sideboard and refilled the glass, resuming his chair with a surreptitiously amused expression.
“Now that you think you’ve made me drunk, suppose you spill the beans,” suggested Prothero. “I’m still sober enough to listen.”
“You’re a conscienceless brute,” said Macaulay. “But I’ve brains. Trig hasn’t. I like Trig.”
“A recommendation from you to the effect that Mahommed Babar’s capture should be kept secret would receive my indorsement. One more vote would give us a majority on the committee. My influence will secure that. In fact, I can swing the committee at almost any time; but the recommendation should come from you; it would have more weight and would make my task easier.”
Prothero waved his nearly empty glass, and now the other could tell he was grinning, for the whisky had wetted the bandage so that it drooped from his mouth. He looked more than ever like a swathed and parboiled corpse, and the sight of him made Macaulay feel physically sick, but heroes are made of stern stuff, and it is a gross mistake to imagine that all heroes are virtuous. The public will decorate anyone who overcomes his limitations and gets away with most of the Ten Commandments without being actually caught at it. Macaulay was working for a decoration, and would have been a hero in his own opinion even if seasick. He made the supreme effort of an arduous career.
“Well, old fellow?” he asked.
“I’ve heard what you want,” Prothero answered. “Point is, are you willing to pay for it — er — old fellow?”
Macaulay gasped. In all his long official experience he had never listened to anything quite so indecent. Men should be known by their fruits, not by their frank admissions. To talk like that was worse than to walk naked.
“Pay for it?” he asked with eyebrows raised, fiddling with his fountain- pen as if he expected to have to write a stiff check presently. “If you mean you want to borrow money—”
“Oh, you silly ass!” said Prothero. “I’ve got more money than you — more than I’ll ever need. What’ll you do, damn it? You want me to do something. What’ll you do that’ll do me any good? Don’t look like an old maid in a Turkish bath — name your offer and give hostages, for I wouldn’t trust you out of this tent!”
Macaulay was utterly scandalized, but did not see how to back out. Prothero had diagnosed him perfectly; he could be anything except naked. He enjoyed the smell of a pink much better when he called the thing Dianthus Jedewegii. His napkin was a serviette. Quid pro quo was “listening to reason,” and he much preferred Dame Reason with her skirts below her knees, immoral old trot though he knew that she frequently was. He never paid cash for anything, but liked to have statements sent him subject to varying discounts, and when he didn’t trust a man he never said so.
“Trig’ll be here soon,” Prothero repeated by way of clearing the atmosphere. “Suppose you measure me another whisky?” Macaulay measured him a stiff one, and it began to have its own peculiar effect, which varies with each patient, both in kind and degree. You never can tell in advance what the fumes will do. They made Prothero think of Ommony, who had thrashed him, Prothero, most confoundedly and kicked him into the jungle and dreadful night; Ommony, who now had Tregurtha’s ear.
“There’s a man I don’t like,” he said simply.
“Oh, very well,” Macaulay answered, visibly relieved, although he disliked the vulgarity of the admission. “What is his name, I wonder.”
“Cotswold Ommony is the name his carcass goes by.”
Macaulay smiled thinly but seraphically. One of his own pet dislikes, and yet some people refuse to believe in coincidence.
“I want him broke!” said Prothero, and Macaulay smiled more perceptibly.
“My word, Prothero, aren’t you vindictive?”
“I am! You bet I am! I want him broke. Break him, and I’ll help you do Tregurtha out of a ribbon.”
Macaulay was happy again. He had Prothero committed and the market beared; all that remained was to resume, deftly and immediately, garments of virtue that Prothero had rudely torn off.
“I take it we’re agreed about Tregurtha being overrated,” he said thoughtfully. “Neither of us would care to stand in the way of a first-class man.”
“No, because a first-class man would lick the hell out of both of us,” said Prothero. “If Trig had brains he’d beat us. As it is, we’ll beat him.”
Naked again! Macaulay clenched his teeth. He simply couldn’t understand the nature of a man who liked his cynicism unadorned, or his oysters raw, as Prothero would probably have phrased it. However, virtue will assert herself:
“I have no compunctions about Ommony — another vastly overrated man,” he said with the angular sneer of a cross-examining attorney. “I’m acquainted with the head of his department and will write a letter throwing light on some of Mr. Ommony’s activities. He is notoriously hand in glove with every rebel in—”
“Don’t make a fool of yourself,” Prothero advised him. “Remember he’s coming in with Trig, who tells the truth the way a mule kicks, at all four points of the compass. Trig may say that Ommony induced the surrender. There are more unlikely things, and people will believe Trig.”
“Well, I happen to know something else against him. He draws a salary for looking after the forest, and spends the time that belongs by rights to his department making maps and things of that sort that are no possible concern of his.”
The whisky was working in Prothero’s brain, but not making him stupid — belligerent perhaps, and cynical, but it took nine or ten stiff shots as a general rule to upset his critical judgment.
“All right,” he said suddenly. “Write your letter and I’ll drop it in the post. You’ve got to prove to me that you’ll break Ommony.”
Macaulay frowned — more nakedness — but wrote and signed the letter.
“You’ll indorse my recommendation as to secrecy about the capture of Mahommed Babar?”
“Sure. Whenever you make it,” answered Prothero. And you couldn’t see whether his tongue was in his cheek, because of the bandages.
CHAPTER 13. “Let the man alone!”
Ommony sat on a stone, gulping down stuff the cook described as coffee, and Tregurtha superintended the construction of litters for his wounded, Ommony and prisoner included; for a man can’t march on a twisted ankle nor should a prisoner be dragged, and the horses taken from Ommony’s stable by Mahommed Babar and his men had vanished in the general retreat. He took special pains about Ommony’s litter and consulted him about it, seeking to make amends for his rudeness of the night before.
One of the easiest habits to acquire is forgetfulness of insult. Most successful men and all wise ones pick it up naturally and become incapable of carrying resentment in their thoughts. Like practiced mountaineers,
they would laugh at the notion of burdening themselves with useless luggage, which is all resentment is. But the habit has its disadvantages, for it sometimes arouses the suspicion of the people who expect to be the butts of your resentment. They think you are either a hypocrite or a very subtle schemer, and of the two the suspicion of subtlety is usually worst.
Ommony, of course knew that, being a philosopher in some ways, but he forgot it for the moment under the agreeable influence of Tregurtha’s frank apology. He, too, was desirous to please, and Tregurtha was communicative.
“Rotten bad about Mahommed Babar,” he remarked. “The silly fool is so ill- tempered I daren’t trust him. Have to tie him. Much rather treat him decently.”
“Suppose I talk with him,” suggested Ommony. “I haven’t had a word with him since he was captured. Perhaps if I could speak with him alone I might—”
“You recognized him?” Tregurtha interrupted abruptly.
“Yes. Recognized the sword, too — it’s there in that bundle. Let me see it.”
An orderly brought the sword. Ommony, drawing it from the scabbard, looked for some initials scratched deep on the blade and began to explain how they came there. To Tregurtha’s agitated mind he showed a little too much knowledge of the rebel’s history.
“The point is, you recognize it?” he said, intertupting again.
“Yes, he’s proud of it. Never let anyone else touch it, I believe. Now, if I should take that sword to him — he’s sentimental like all patriots — and I might—”
“Thanks, the less you say to him the better!” Tregurtha snapped. “He told you he’d surrender! Did he? You’ll oblige me, please, by keeping away from him.”
Ommony understood that, very likely better than Tregurtha did. He knew he could only stir suspicion deeper by attempting to argue the point or to justify his own motives. Besides, the rebel leader had broken the promise in two ways by surrendering neither himself nor Ali Khan, so he needed no excuse for staying away from him.