by Talbot Mundy
“The people threaten insurrection!” he said meaningly.
“Sir William Molyneux will blame you priests,” the diwan answered. “Therefore it is to your advantage to calm the populace.” Discovering strength where he had looked for weakness, Jannath cut short the interview, turning without another word and striding away magnificently, followed by attendants who emerged from shadows as if they were secret-service men to protect him against the diwan’s treachery; instead of being Parumpadpa’s spies intent on taking back an absolutely true version of what took place. Parumpadpa knew better than to trust to Jannath’s sole account.
The crowd at the gate roared jubilantly as the Brahman appeared and the troopers forced an opening for him. Some of them looked for a hint that would have laid the city at their mercy; none expected less than an assurance of great doings presently.
But it may be that Jannath’s face betrayed no optimism, or perhaps his followers, who had heard what passed, dropped words of caution here and there. It happened at all events that Jannath’s progress through the mob was marked by lessening clamor, and within ten minutes of his leaving all the lined-up troopers sat their mounts at ease with only a dwindling crowd to watch. Then —
“We win!” said Ommony, reaching for cigars.
“You mean?” demanded Craig.
“Trees, fellow; trees!”
“My wife—”
“You’ll have her back.”
“You think Parumpadpa can produce her?”
“He must!” answered Ommony. “Brass-Face Molly is no long-range diplomatist. His reputation goes before him, and his trail is up and down the land. They know he’ll fight without gloves. They’ll produce her before he gets here if they have to make a new Eve out of Adam’s rib to do it! Bed! The prescription for you is bed, my friend. Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”
CHAPTER 9. “Obey the priests!”
“Emergency and Heaven are the same thing — there is no night there,” said Ommony, grinning, returning to the veranda. “Poor Craig’s in hell. I gave him a dose of sulphonal. How about you, diwan sahib? Tired?”
“With a weariness none could guess who hadn’t a throne and a people’s destiny to watch. These old bones are all but ready for the dissolution. Months, a year or two perhaps, then rest. None meanwhile if there is duty.”
“Well, there is,” said Ommony, and sat down facing him.
The diwan waited. It was likely the night would hold as much anxiety for him as for Craig. Craig, should the drug do its duty, would suffer no interruption, whereas he would be called to hear every rumor. He preferred to stand the racket sitting upright.
“Those priests will make their big break now,” said Ommony.
“Assuredly.”
“They’ve two chances. The first is to find Mrs. Craig. How much risk is there of your men letting the cat out of the bag?”
“None. None whatever. All those men are absolutely loyal. The priests might search for a month, but they would never find a trace of her.”
“Splendid. Parumpadpa has one move then, and he’s checkmate.”
“Tell me, sahib,” said the diwan, “why did you insist that Mrs. Craig should change into Hindu dress?”
“For the same reason that Diana and the dog-boy are on duty. Don’t ask to know too much just yet, sahib, or you may be obliged to lie your way out of it; that’s a serious matter at your time of life. Are you sure you made it clear to your men that they were to order Mrs. Craig’s own clothes thrown over the wall?”
“They understood. I made them repeat the instructions. I wish I understood your object half as clearly.”
“There’s a hitch somewhere,” said Ommony, pulling out his watch.
For a while he was silent with his elbow on an arm of the chair and the short, crisp hair of his beard protruding through the fingers of one hand. The other was on his knee. He was listening, but the only sounds were the occasional stamping of a trooper’s horse, and now and then voices as the lingering remnants of the crowd resumed stale argument.
“I’ll have to go,” he said after a while. “If I might do that without explaining things that no diwan in your predicament should know—”
“I will wait here for you, sahib.”
“Thanks. That’s good of you.”
Ommony was on his feet when the sound that he listened for arrested him. It was almost like a jackal’s cry, not indistinguishable from that by one unused to night notes in the wilderness. He grinned and sat down. After a pause he whistled one note.
Presently, a shadow among shadows, making no sound, Diana slunk across the driveway, disappearing instantly into the dark under the veranda’s protecting edge. There she whined so softly that it was hardly audible.
Ommony snapped his fingers. The dog came stealthily up-steps and paused when she saw the diwan. He sat still. Ommony motioned to him to turn his head away. The instant he did that Diana leaped and landed in the dark behind Ommony’s chair, thrusting her nose into the hand he let fall.
“When I gave orders to the dog-boy I forgot those gates might be shut and guarded,” Ommony explained. “I suppose Di jumped the wall. That was a wonder of a jump, Di, old lady!”
“And it means?” asked the diwan.
“This.”
He showed a piece of slobbery turban-end the dog had dropped into his hand.
“It’s the dog-boy’s summons.”
He went into the house and came out hooded in the all-disguising cotton sheet the middle classes throw about them when they walk abroad at night. His trousers were rolled up, and his bare feet showed through sandals. On his head was a bunnia’s turban, and his very walk was changed to fit the new part.
“Careful, sahib!” warned the diwan. “If they recognize you—”
“Risks are for the rashly wise to run,” laughed Ommony. “I need your pass to get me by the troopers.”
So — the diwan wrote an order to pass Bunnia Chirol Varma out or in, and Ommony sent his great hound into the bedroom out of harm’s way. Then, having salaamed the diwan obsequiously, he walked to the nearest gate with the heels of his loose sandals rutching on the gravel and dislike of exercise written all over him as if he were a Hindu merchant to the manner born.
He swallowed insult at the gate, as bunnias must who crave the good-will of the military, answering abuse with meekness and sufficient flattery.
“It is good,” said he, “that we have brave men for our protection. May many gods strengthen and bless you to preserve us from violence and our godowns from plundering if insurrection comes!”
Some coins changed hands — the “slipper-money” due by ancient custom from visitors to a gate’s custodian, and no less welcome to a soldier in the right recipient’s eclipse.
“Would that all bunnias were as wise as that one!”
With his turban just a little to one side, as surely no man in disguise would think of wearing it; he disappeared into the gloom, avoiding moonlight, threading unlighted thoroughfares with a woodsman’s sixth sense of direction, and arrived presently at the little two-room hut with a wall behind it, in the alley where the boatmen lived. There, in the evil-smelling shadow of the trees beside the road, he sat down and whistled softly.
No sound answered him, not even footfall, but what might have been the dog-boy’s ghost flitted across a shaft of moonlight and squatted down beside him. Even his breathing was inaudible.
“You found the clothing?”
“Nay, Dhai Enna did. They who tossed it over the wall are fools, moreover without conscience, making no signal. So the bundle fell into such a tangle of thorns and rocks as snakes love.”
“I waited until God made me impatient. Then I sent Dhai Enna to make circuit of the walls, and she smelled it, where it lay so that no eye could have seen it. And so I, naked, wrapped my clothes on her for fear of cobras, and she brought it, leaving my jacket among the thorns. I did not dare fetch the jacket nor send the dog back for it, for fear of snakes.”
&nb
sp; “You shall have a new one,” said Ommony.
“Nay, sahib, not a new one. The shooting-jacket with the leather pockets that the sahib tore at the armhole when he jumped off the elephant!”
“Yes.”
The dog-boy thrilled in silence for a moment, then resumed:
“So I carried the bundle of clothing to the priests in the temple of Siva as the sahib ordered. I having no jacket, they believed my tale that I was a son of a gardener working for Bunnia Chirol Varma at his house by the waterside. They answered they had never heard of him, but what of that?”
“I said I had found the clothing by the water’s edge and had wondered at how excellent it was. Meaning to steal it, I had run away. Then, fear obliging me, I had brought it back to them. I begged them to take it and to let me go and to say nothing. But they said much, calling me thief and what not else. One — a great one with a snout like a dog’s and the upper half of his head bald and, as it were, swollen, said I should be kept within the temple. But I cried no, that the gods would visit me—”
“You will be a great man some day,” said Ommony.
“ — and they saw I was afraid. So another said I will be given to the police if I am found within the city. And at that I ran crying, ‘No, no!’ and found Dhai Enna where I had left her hidden, and had much trouble to bring her away unseen because of many men who watched the priests and some who saw me and wished to question me. But I escaped them all. Only the dog broke my hold and attacked some men who looked for me in a clump of bamboos in a garden. They cried out that Ommon-ee must be near and no doubt spying on the priests.”
“Excellent!” said Ommony.
“So I came to this place, and sent the dog with a rag from my turban as the sahib ordered. I shall need a new turban.”
“Granted. How did you get from the place where the memsahib is hidden to the temple of Siva? That is a great distance, isn’t it?”
“There rode a fool of a peasant, much afraid of darkness, and his horse, which was a young one, was afraid of Dhai Enna. The man fell off and ran, crying, ‘Bagh!’* So I caught the horse and rode, Dhai Enna following, and I turned the horse loose when I came to the city.” [* Tiger]
“Very good. Now bring the head boatman here,” ordered Ommony. “Be swift.”
So after not much tapping on a broken pane but much whispering, the head boatman’s bulk took form against a background of purple sky between the tree- trunks, and Ommony bade him squat down.
“Sahib, there came a priest who offered us money to leave the city,” he began abruptly, being, too, a tactician in his way.
“How much money?”
“Not enough. We receive very small pay from the diwan, but it is every month, and we would be fools to forfeit that. He went away to get permission to increase his offer, saying he will return tonight.”
“I think he will return with a totally different offer — perhaps a better one,” said Ommony.
The boatman’s self-importance was increasing; it could be actually felt. But watermanship breeds corollary; sly he could be, and avaricious; but he could not help responding to bold appeal and downright daring any more than his simple thinking could resist intrigue. He stated his case deliberately, as he would have faced a rising sea.
“If we should leave the city, then the sahib will have no more hold over us in the matter of our trying to steal his dog.”
It was clear enough that the offense had dwindled to extremely small proportions in the boatmen’s estimation.
“I undertook to be your friend,” said Ommony. “Has that no bearing on it?”
“But the priest who came declared the priests are our friends.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Nay, he was a liar. We know that. But the priests are willing to pay us much money perhaps.”
“I’m not,” answered Ommony. “I don’t buy or sell friendship.”
The boatman was silent for a long while. Longshore avarice pulled tug-o’- war with the spirit of open water in his inner man. The fact that Ommony was in disguise and obviously scheming did not simplify the issue.
“Are we to lose the priests’ money and have their enmity?” he asked at last.
“Take it!”
“And deceive them?”
“Deceive nobody. I think the priests will come presently and offer you money for a service and for silence afterward. Accept the money, perform the service and keep silent.
“The priests will choose you because they already have a certain hold over you in the matter of your idiotic boasts about the dog and because you are the diwan’s men, and they wish to make the diwan look ridiculous; moreover, because they know it is your business to draw the diwan’s fish-nets before dawn, and there is no other crew available that might be trusted and that knows just where the diwan’s fish-nets are.”
“And the sahib will not turn his back on us afterward?”
“No. When the priests come, don’t admit them to the house. Pretend there are women in there. Talk among these trees, so I may listen. When they have gone I will tell you whether it is safe or otherwise to carry out their orders. Go now, and caution the others.”
Ommony moved back into the deepest shadow between the trees and the wall, where an old, ill-smelling crate up-ended offered absolute concealment. He tested the crate a time or two to make sure it would not squeak under his weight and then crawled into it, sitting motionless like a fakir meditating. The dog-boy retreated down the alley and hid where there was no earthly risk of discovery.
Ommony’s state of mind was the hunter’s who, with all the resources at his command and vast experience of beasts’ ways, has set a trap and sits to watch it. He knew the priests were in a quandary; knew they were alarmed at the news of Molyneux being on the way. Was sure they were mystified by their belief that the diwan did not know Mrs. Craig’s whereabouts; expected them to jump to conclusions, to which he had contributed by maneuvering the dog-boy. And he staked all on one shrewd guess, that the priests would be true to the past and, following the line of least resistance, try to compromise the diwan and absolve themselves in one stroke.
The risk was that it looked too easy. They might hesitate for just that reason. But there is always a risk, and if forestry is your religion you must be willing to take chances for it, going to the stake if necessary, blaming yourself for failure, adoring forestry for its success.
No Ananias holding back a sure thing for himself can win against the forces of reaction. For the sake of trees unborn, then, Ommony crouched in a filthy packing-case, chancing life, pension, and preferment on one main with India’s priesthood.
If he should fail — if there were insurrection — even if the priests’ hand should be strengthened as the net result, he would have all the blame. If he should win there would be a forest where none had been, and for himself, in course, oblivion. He judged the scales fair enough, but wished he dared smoke; the mosquitoes tortured him.
It was two hours after midnight — time enough to undergo the agonies of twenty times repeated fears — before the priests came; three, with Jannath in their midst. This time there was no ostentation; they came adroitly along the shadows where moonlight made splotches of dark purple hiding the pale-amber road.
The boatmen kept them waiting. There was maybe a conference within the hut, with someone holding out for a double-cross all round; but, if so, single views prevailed. There followed altercation at the door, for the priests were unwilling to expose their persons any longer in the alley for the benefit of chance wayfarers. If there were truly women in there, let the women be driven forth.
Noise won that argument. The priests could not afford to wake the neighborhood, and yielded for the sake of silence.
So the boatmen all filed out, none yawning; there had evidently been excitement enough already to drive sleep out of their thoughts. They sat down in a group beneath the trees with the backs of the nearest not a yard from Ommony’s lurking-place, and promptly the head boatman, actin
g spokesman for the group, dispensed with inessentials.
“Have you brought the money with you?”
“Yes, but there is work to do for it. The money must be earned.”
“Such work as what, for instance?”
“Oh, a little work. No danger. Nothing to fear. A little, simple task. An act. A statement of the plain truth. And then no talking afterward.”
“Speak plainly,” said the boatman. “We be plain men, not priests.”
“Fifty rupees for each of you!”
“Little enough!”
“Nothing to do but take this bundle of a woman’s garments with you when you go to draw the diwan’s nets. Open it at the nets. Throw the garments in the water. Leave them long enough to let the water soil them. Gather them again. Return; and if you should meet one of us at the wharfside, say, ‘We found these in the water.’ That is all.”
“And what if the police should meet us?”
“Say the same thing.”
“And if we are arrested?”
“You will not be. We promise that.”
The promise was received in silence. From that negative comment the priests might draw such solace as they chose.
“We should be told the true reason for this,” said the boatman after some reflection; but the veriest child would have recognized the bargain formula.
He wanted the money and was afraid the priests might hang back if he agreed too quickly. Jannath saw the point. There followed a chink of silver as a bag changed hands, and then more chinking and much muttered counting.
“We have not said we will leave the city!” the head boatman announced then with a note of triumph.
He considered he had scored, and sought to establish the fact.
“No need!” Jannath answered. “Lo, these two are witnesses. Ye have the money. If ye fail now, or if ye talk unwisely afterward, or if ye say aught except that ye found the woman’s clothing in the diwan’s nets, then this will be said against you — aye, and proven! That ye told us where the garments are, and that we paid you to go and find them, because of a rumor that the woman has been carried off by priests.”