by Talbot Mundy
“Even as we saw happen!” said the boatman, off guard.
There was nearly a slip then! Ommony squirmed in his hiding-place. Jannath possibly had not quite realized the depth of the boatmen’s conviction that they really were priests who had come to the hut for Elsa Craig.
All that saved the day was that the money had been passed and counted. It would hardly do to quarrel with the boatmen now and have them perhaps go hurrying to the diwan with their tale before steps could be taken to silence them forever.
“He who speaks rashly to his betters of things he does not understand is a fool without profit to himself or others,” said Jannath sententiously, temporizing, seeking for a loophole; and the proverb opened it, for of all the wisdom-adoring East, boatmen love proverbs best.
“We be plain men, seeking only money for our work,” the boatman answered meekly.
“See to it that ye be plain men!” said Jannath, seizing on the man’s mood. “See ye talk not! I can lay a curse on you that will kill; that will give no rest; that will bring you back to earth in the belly of a dog, a fish, a tadpole, an insect in a dung-heap, a snake without fangs crawling in the slime, a vulture feeding in the cesspits—”
“Peace!” said the boatman, grinding his teeth together.
“Peace! Give a blessing!”
And the other boatmen clucked and grunted restlessly.
Jannath refrained. It may have been beneath his dignity to squander blessings on such common clay.
“Be careful! Obey in all particulars!” he sneered, and went away with his brother-priests on either side of him.
The boatmen sat still, watching them retreat cautiously along the shadows; saying nothing, feeling possibly the Judas-guilt of having traded honest watermanship for silver of the Sadducees. But Ommony crawled out of his box and stretched himself, yawning and then grinning. That changed the aspect of affairs.
“The sahib heard?”
“Heard everything. You nearly spoiled it.”
“Shall we do this thing? What if — ?”
“Obey the priests. Fulfil your bargain.”
“What if—”
“I have told you. Then whatever happens, I’m your friend. If you’re arrested you shall be released.”
CHAPTER 10. “To the Queen’s taste!”
Dawn rose unlovely, yet so like preceding ones that only men in agony of mind for their inventions knew the difference. The morning colors were all there, the quiet, the dissipating dawn-wind bringing in sea-sweetness; an hour of cool relief between a breathless night and baking day, yet few to relish it. The city then was in no mood to be caressed.
Craig came to the veranda red-eyed with a headache, and eyed disgustedly the sloppy saucer with its cup of chota hazri tea awash with buffalo cream. He swallowed the stuff and gasped, denatured profanity.
Ommony came out, brisk as he often was at daybreak. The great gray hound that followed him sniffed half a dozen times upwind, read all there was to know, yawned and lay down disgustedly. Ommony looked at his teacup, dumped its contents over the veranda rail, and shouted for the hamal.
“Chai!”* he demanded. “Chai, not dish-wash-water!” [* Tea]
He looked at Craig, who was pacing the corner like a schooner captain with the reckoning confused.
“How are you?” he demanded.
“Worried.”
“Huh!”
Craig stared at him. He himself would have known how to be sympathetic if the cases were reversed. It dawned on him that this man might be worried too — perhaps had not slept.
“Mr. Ommony.”
“What is it?”
Ommony paused in the act of lighting a pipe — in itself proof of nervousness to anyone who knew him; he almost never smoked until the sun was over the high boughs.
“You are fortunate in that you have no wife to disappear in distracting circumstances, Mr. Ommony. We all have a cross to bear. I am glad for your sake your troubles are not as serious as mine.”
“Damned good of you!” said Ommony, recovering.
He rises to occasions like a war-horse, in the second stride. He had to manage this man. What was worse, he had to spare his feelings to the utmost, and yet did not dare admit him to the secret. He stuffed the unlighted pipe into his pocket.
“Your wife will be found, Craig.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Intuition. Experience. I know these people.”
“I’m afraid you don’t know women. Mr. Ommony, I’m nearly off my head with self-reproach. Elsa was unhappy. A splendid, brave woman — out of her true environment.”
“I’m sorry. The admission is forced from me. I have been unwilling to face the situation all these years; but last night, sleeping a little and dreaming of her, waking a great deal and turning it all over in my mind, I confess to myself that Elsa has been bravely putting up a losing fight.”
“Seven years without vacation. Too long, Mr. Ommony! Seven years in an environment unsuited to her. Never a complaint. Yet never any joy in her task — that true inner joy that makes willing martyrs of some of us.”
“Your arrival on the scene somehow, in some way — I’m not imputing blame to you — brought her unhappiness to the surface. Mr. Ommony — I hate to say it — I—”
Ommony took his arm and paced the veranda beside him, saying nothing.
“ — I fear suicide!”
“Impossible!”
“I regret to say, not impossible. Her grandmother—”
“Fiddlesticks!”
“Pardon me. Her grandmother took her own life.”
“Fiddlesticks!”
Craig’s grief was poignant. Ommony’s dilemma was at least an equal torture. Unlike him, he began to hesitate. Had he a right to inflict such grief on this decent fellow? Did he dare let him into the secret? He decided to feel his way carefully.
“Suicide? What brings that to mind? Are you monkeying with thoughts of it yourself?”
Craig stopped and faced him.
“ — No, no, Mr. Ommony! A man’s cross is his privilege. I will bear mine — bravely if I can. But if I cry out I will bear it. Elsa never cried out, until that first time when you heard her on the roof. I’m afraid — I’m afraid—”
“The fear’s the hell,” said Ommony. “Try faith.”
“In my religion? I have faith.”
“In her.”
“Dread that she has taken her own life amounts almost to conviction.”
“In me then. I believe she will be found alive and well.”
Craig paused in the walk again and turned to look at Ommony with eyes fear-hardened, almost fanatic. They burned under the bushy eyebrows with that zeal that changes into frenzy.
“Are you drugging me, as you did last night? Do you mean to buoy me up with false hope?”
“I suggest you wait and see.”
“It has crossed my mind that you and the divan together are playing some deep game. With me. With my wife Elsa for a pawn, Mr. Ommony. If I thought that — if I believed it—”
“Come on. This will relieve the pressure at least. Let’s sit down and you tell what you’d do in an imaginary case like that. What would you do first?” Ommony suggested. “Let’s suppose I—”
Craig refused to sit down. Taller than Ommony, he looked down into his eyes and laid one fevered, lean hand on the thickset shoulder.
“I know you would play no such trick on me. You’re not a heartless man. But if you did — if it were proven — I would never rest until I had you out of the Service, you and the diwan both! You would not be fit for public trust!”
“You do believe in private vengeance then?”
“Not I. But I believe in duty. In such a case as you suppose duty would be as obvious as daylight. I would ruin you. I would make it impossible for you ever to perpetrate such infamy again.”
“You don’t consider, then, that the public interest might override private feelings on occasion?”
“Not a fair question
, Mr. Ommony. Think for a moment and you will realize it. On occasion, yes; in principle undoubtedly; in instances of this sort, never!”
“Not only is it wrong to draw a missionary into politics, it is ten times over-wrong to draw his wife in! I am forbidden by the terms of my agreement with the Indian Government to enter into politics in any way. To lend my wife to any scheme involving local politics would be unthinkable! However, why flog imaginary horses? We’re talking foolishly.”
“Yes, what’s the use?” said Ommony, and sat down, fingering his chin in discontent. Diana, aware of something wrong, got up and came to sniff the creases at the back of Craig’s knees.
“Perhaps the dog could find her? Elsa! Where is she? Go find her!” Craig said suddenly.
The long tail waved response, but Diana would take orders from none but two men, and from one of those only when Ommony decreed it. She lay down, eyes on her master.
“She seems to understand! Mr. Ommony, send that dog to look for my wife — please!”
“We might do worse,” he answered. “Di, go find her!”
The hound trotted off, stern down, broke into a canter on the driveway, bayed at the corner gate a minute or two, then, none answering, turned and sprang over the stone wall at the third attempt. Craig’s hands as he watched were trembling, opening and shutting.
“Man!” He turned to Ommony. “I hope! There’s new hope born to me! Elsa went off with the dog! She saw your dog in the mission compound. She asked me to go on pitching the tent, and walked off to speak to the dog. She was always soft-hearted with animals. Your dog knows where she is — what happened to her! Oh, God! Let’s hope—”
“Yes, let’s hope,” said Ommony, aware of new developments. Craig with his head between his hands did not see the diwan’s uniformed messenger coming up the driveway from the southern gate.
“The diwan sahib sends salaams, and will Ommony sahib please come immediately to the office?”
“I’ll walk there with you,” Craig announced. “Might be news; you never know.”
Ommony could not refuse him, though he would have liked to. He dreaded what he knew was coming, knowing he would have his work cut out to manage the diwan and the priests without Craig on his hands in the bargain. It was a long walk to the diwan’s office, and that was additional annoyance; he would have preferred to ride, but Craig for some reason objected to horseback, and he felt he owed Craig all the consideration possible.
So it was half an hour before they entered the courtyard of an ancient palace that had long ago been converted into suites of offices. There was bustle and activity, prevailing custom being to begin the day’s business soon after dawn and close through the hot hours.
The courtyard was crowded. Some were the usual petitioners armed with screeds done by the public letter-writer, but the most were obvious partizans of the priests with the inevitable curious hangers-on.
“The High-Church Party,” Ommony murmured, and Craig almost laughed.
There was no demonstration as they passed through the crowd, but none the less an atmosphere of insolent anticipation.
Upstairs in the spacious place that once had been the royal durbar-hall the old diwan sat in an office chair before a great teak desk. Jannath, avid of high-priesthood and too proud to sit, stood erect a little to one side, and there were priests behind him. Over against them a policeman and two of the diwan’s subordinates stood looking worried.
On the blotting-paper on the desk lay an ominous bundle covered with a piece of cloth. Hardly acknowledging Craig’s bow or Ommony’s spoken greeting, the diwan drew the cloth back.
“Can you identify these garments, Mr. Craig?”
Craig stepped forward. One look satisfied him. He covered the bundle with the cloth at once as if it were his dead wife’s face.
“Yes, Elsa’s. My wife’s. Where were these found?”
“In the water! In the diwan’s fishing-nets!” said a small man from between two priests.
No priest himself, he had been brought to interpret, and as plainly enjoyed a chance to show spleen.
“By whom?” asked Craig.
“By the diwan’s boatmen!” sneered the same assertive individual.
Craig turned to Ommony.
“I warned you I feared this,” he said. Then: “Has her body not been found?”
“No,” said the diwan, looking miserable, avoiding Ommony’s gaze.
“That,” said the priest’s interpreter, “is for obvious reasons!”
And Jannath signified approval of the speech by nodding three times gravely.
“What do you mean?” snapped Ommony.
He looked belligerent, as if it might be well to answer him.
“The clothes were found in the diwan’s nets, and our contention is that the diwan is the author of the charge that this lady was kidnaped by the priests. We believe he knows who made away with her.
“The clothes were thrown into the water, and he hoped they would be found and used as evidence against us. But, you see — his own men found them in his own nets! And in further proof that he has guilty knowledge he has caused those boatmen to be locked up where none can submit them to examination. They should be brought before a magistrate.”
“Is all this true?” asked Ommony, as if every word of it were news to him.
Craig went and sat down in a chair in a corner with his head between his hands.
Jannath whispered. The interpreter nodded like a lawyer prompted from behind and resumed the attack.
“It is not only true, but we know it was by the diwan’s orders she was killed! We know she was carried off in a covered cart by night. After that the diwan spread a tale that priests had done it. So when a man came and said a woman’s clothes were in a water-way the priests paid the diwan’s boatmen to go and look for them; and the boatmen told the truth to us—”
“That’s more than you’ve told!” Ommony interrupted with a grin.
“Our point is that Craig memsahib is dead and that the priests are not responsible,” said the interpreter, swallowing the insult. “The facts must be made public. There should be an investigation of the diwan’s conduct—”
“Stop!”
The amazing happened. Craig rose from his chair in the far corner and strode over to the desk, with his own grief thrust into the background and a fine compassion softening the hard lines of his face. He laid his right hand on the diwan’s shoulder.
“I know you would never be guilty of any such crime,” he said simply. “During seven years that you and I have known each other you have been an honorable gentleman. I denounce the charges now made against you as unworthy.”
The diwan’s eyes were moist, and he could not speak. He glanced appealingly at Ommony.
“Good man, Craig!” said Ommony. “Wet clothes don’t prove your wife’s dead.”
“The boatmen have told me, not one of them faltering, that it was priests who took her away,” said the diwan struggling with emotion. “They are locked up to prevent tampering with evidence. They will be kept so until Sir William Molyneux arrives, after which there shall be full inquiry. Craig sahib—”
“Yes.”
Craig was discovering new iron in his character. He stood erect. The patience he had lavished on the mission bricks and mortar was forcing a new channel for itself now the old was blocked.
“If I were you I would not lose heart,” said the diwan.
“Not I!” Craig answered. “You may count on me to a conclusion. There is a motive. If these priests have made away with my wife for the purpose of discrediting you, they will have us both to reckon with! I’m with you! I will not believe she is dead until it is proven. Let the whole city search for her! Offer a reward! Make it ample!”
The diwan’s eyes met Ommony’s and read prodigious satisfaction there.
“From my own purse,” said the diwan, “I will offer at once a reward of rupees one thousand to whoever finds Memsahib Craig.”
“Alive,” Craig added.
“I’ll contribute a thousand to that.”
“Me too. A thousand,” said Ommony quietly.
“There shall be a proclamation. Meanwhile,” said the diwan, turning to the priests and speaking in their tongue, “the Maharajah’s troops will enforce the law against rioting. Even outside the temple there must be no assembly. I urge you before these witnesses to use your influence to keep peace.”
Jannath’s puffy face for a moment lost its proud indifference. Black anger darkened it, and to Ommony’s observing eyes the weakness of an underlying fear betrayed itself. Possibly the vision of high-priesthood was slipping away into the never-never land of useless dreams.
Then spite took hold, and Ommony, observing, scratched his chin. He made a signal to the diwan.
Stately, venerably dignified, the diwan rose and left the room by a door at the rear. Ommony glanced at Craig, who hesitated, then knocked at the diwan’s private door and followed him in.
He caught Jannath’s eye. Jannath stood still. He looked straight and curiously at the diwan’s subordinates and the policeman; they excused themselves, mumbling this and that reason for retreating by the front way.
“We’re not alone yet,” said Ommony in the native tongue, smiling at Jannath dryly.
Jannath’s face did not move. He was thinking furiously behind the mask. Every one of his entourage except the little restless rat of an interpreter was doing the same thing, like a group of graven images. The little man glanced sharply from face to face, alert for his cue.
Jannath muttered something. All except the interpreter walked out through the front door, and the doorkeeper closed it from the outside.
“We are not alone yet!” remarked Ommony.
Jannath’s face remained perfectly expressionless. Not even the shark eyes betrayed the least emotion. He was mastering thought again, unlike Ommony, who was its servant, choosing between good and bad, wisdom and unwisdom, letting intuition lead him. At the end of a minute Jannath spoke again, and the interpreter followed the others out by the front door.
Ommony looked under the desk, out along the ledge below the windows, behind the big wall-map, into a cupboard partly filled with stationery, behind a screen in a corner.