by Talbot Mundy
He stopped. Molyneux had not been nicknamed Brass-Face without reason. The sight of his jaw alone would have stricken fear into a prize-fighter. When he frowned the brows came down over the normally good-natured eyes, and a thick, untidy crop of hair considerably shot with iron-gray increased the effect. It was growing dawn, and though a light mist moved on the early wind each line and contour of the bold face was discernible.
“Your diwan has the name of an honorable gentleman. I’m not here to listen to tales against him,” he interrupted sternly.
“But, sir, he—”
“I will present my credentials to the diwan after breakfast. At the proper time, if he agrees, I may be willing to hear both sides to any dispute between you. I bid you good morning!”
They drew off, showing their resentment in every way they could, including remarks in their own language intended for his ears.
“Damn them!” exclaimed Molyneux. “I’d rather be friendly than tread on their corns. Can’t they understand that? If there’s anything I hate it is being rude without excuse. Confound them, why do they force it on me? I’ve a sincere respect for priests of all religions, Ommony. If my advice is not impertinent, I’d say — Hullo! Where did you get that stunning stag-hound?”
Diana made friends, and with the diwan’s representative beside them for the sake of the amenities they walked to the guesthouse for breakfast, Molyneux postponing taking over the Residency until, as he expressed it, “the confounded stable’s clean. But gad, sir, I can smell that poor chap’s drugs from here!”
He walked, as his conversation was, down-rightly, not avoiding puddles left by the city bhists,* nor hurrying unduly, looking about him to admire the sights and distributing uncounted small coins to the beggars, who were up betimes for lack of luxury and aware of a generous man from long, long practice.
—— — * Water-carriers who sprinkle the streets from goatskin water-bags —— —
“Might be you and me, you know. Do you believe in all this reincarnation stuff? By gad, if I should be a beggar in the next life for my sins I’d hate to be refused an alms. Have you any more small change, Ommony?”
They breakfasted along with tales of hunting in the Dekkan, sniping in the gray mist up by Dera Ismail Khan, tiger-shooting in the Assam jungle and, above all, snipe.
“I’d rather shoot snipe, my boy, than go to Windsor!”
All things were met down-rightly by Molyneux, and each in turn, including poached eggs. Business and the diwan would come presently.
“We’re young, you know. He’s on in years. Let’s not hustle the old gentleman. Where’s Craig? Is there any means of smuggling comforts in to Mrs. Craig? Too risky? Damn! I hate to leave a woman in a predicament. Are you sure she’s in no immediate danger, Ommony?”
Craig came in, and Molyneux met that emergency with customary frankness.
“So you missionaries have been playing politics, eh? Don’t deny it, sir! Don’t deny it! Let this be a lesson to you, damn me! Will you ever learn, though?”
“Well, so Mrs. Craig is missing, eh? And Ommony tells me you’ve acted like a man. That’s good! That shows guts! We’ll find her for you.”
“Do you smoke? Drink? Chew tobacco? Swear? No? Well, that’s right. I like a man who lives up to his convictions. I do ’em all myself; found chewing a great relief up North after Ovis Ammon — great rocks, you know, and leagues on end without a dram of water. Ever hunt? No? Well, each man to his taste.”
That situation well met, he dismissed Craig from his calculations, and apparently from memory. It was time to visit the diwan before there was any mention of the plan to rescue Mrs. Craig. As they started to leave for the office, Craig put the question— “What do you propose to do?”
“Not much notion yet, sir. Why talk behind the diwan’s back? The man’s an honorable gentleman. He’ll do the right thing certainly.”
Craig remained at the guest-house, none too confident, his head between his hands in the chair on the veranda.
Down-right and all above-board, Molyneux strode into the diwan’s office and refused to let the old man rise to greet him.
“Always glad to be of service to a man of your distinction, sir! I take it you’re a mainspring of the State and I’m an oil-can? Eh? Now what’s the difficulty? Priests, they tell me, and a missionary lady. Any plans?”
The diwan looked appealingly at Ommony, who had promised to bear the brunt and take all risks. So Ommony broke in.
“How much do you want to know, Sir William?”
“All there is to know! What else?”
“Do you wish to override the diwan?”
“No, sir. What the hell d’ye mean?”
“The diwan naturally knows the ins and outs of all this business. I’ve helped him at his request. The thing’s involved, and unless you wish to override him he prefers, and I agree with him, to handle the underground end, if backed up in the open by your prestige. He doesn’t like the idea of your becoming involved behind the scenes in any intrigue between him and the priests—”
“Ha-ha! Intrigue? Me? I never saw the use of it! So you and his honor the diwan have a little plan all cooked between you? Eh? Well—”
He pulled a letter from his pocket, tugged it out of the envelop, consulted it, and thrust it back.
“ — my instructions give me latitude. They say you may be trusted, Ommony. I like a man who may be trusted. I invariably trust him once at any rate!”
“But, understand me, I’m responsible. By gad, sir, I accept responsibility! I trust you at my own risk! You fail, and you’re responsible to me! I’ll be abrupt with you! I’ll take no excuses, mind! If your guts won’t hold on that, you may tell me your whole plan and I’ll adopt it or reject it. Now think it over.”
“There’s nothing to think over,” said Ommony. “If you knew all I know you’d be handicapped, that’s all. I invite you to play the hand as dealt. I’ll lead up to you, and his honor the diwan will follow suit.”
“Good. I like a man with guts. Dig your trenches, fire your mines, send for your shock troops, lay down your barrage, and over the top! That’s business! Fail, and the drumhead afterwards; that’s business too! Now what?”
It was the priests. They flocked in with the same interpreter, and he was primed, for they had had time to study their plan carefully, and they had new ammunition. One of them stood forward and reeled off a speech in his own language, pointing his finger at the diwan, but addressing Molyneux.
“Explain,” said Molyneux when he was done, and the interpreter stepped up beside his chief.
“Memsahib Craig, the wife of a Christian missionary, has disappeared, following a slaughter of innocents in the city streets by elephants, who subsequently smashed the mission, all of which was brought on purposely by the missionaries in order that they might bring accusations against us! The diwan—”
“His honor the diwan,” Molyneux interrupted.
“His honor the diwan caused a rumor to be spread that we, the priesthood of Siva, were responsible for all this and for the woman’s disappearance.”
“You mean Memsahib Craig’s disappearance?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why in blazes don’t you say so?”
“Whereas we know nothing of the matter except this: that word was brought to us, saying a lady’s clothes are in the waterway. So we paid the diwan’s boatmen to look for them, and they found clothes, identified subsequently in our presence as Memsahib Craig’s by Craig sahib himself — found them in the diwan’s fishing-nets; which nets, I may add incidentally, are spread nightly by the diwan’s orders for his own use and profit, he employing for the purpose boatmen paid from the tax receipts. We ask your honor to question those boatmen, whom the diwan now has under lock and key.”
“Is that agreeable?” asked Molyneux.
“Perfectly,” said the diwan. “The boatmen will tell you that they saw priests carry off Memsahib Craig.”
“We maintain that they were not priests. We assert that t
hey, if they exist at all, were villains in the diwan’s pay. In further proof of which, a priest of ours named Jannath, who knew more about this business than his honor the diwan thought convenient, has likewise disappeared. We accuse the diwan of instigation and complicity!”
Molyneux leaned on the arm of his chair and faced the diwan.
“Any knowledge of this?” he asked.
“None,” said the diwan truthfully. Molyneux frowned toward the priests again.
“Damme! What a mess of lies this is!”
“Sahib, we tell only the plain truth.”
“Then you don’t know where Memsahib Craig is?”
“No, sahib; but we believe she is dead, and that Jannath has also been drowned by the diwan’s orders.”
“Put that in writing!” ordered Molyneux.
They tried to avoid it, whispering excuse after excuse to the interpreter, the last of which was nearly valid:
“We have no authority. Our high priest Parumpadpa is absent.”
“You seem to think you have authority to accuse the diwan sahib!” Molyneux retorted. “Bring Parumpadpa here!”
“Sahib, it is not fitting that our high priest should be subject to possible insult. We—”
“All right. I respect a high priest. Paper-pen-ink-blotter? Thank you. Now!”
He drew his chair up to the table and began to write in a fist of tombstone-maker’s script, reading aloud as each word bit into the paper.
We the undersigned, being priests of Siva’s temple, do declare on oath that we do not know the present whereabouts of Mrs. Elsa Craig, wife of a missionary, and furthermore that we had nothing to do with her disappearance.
“Sign that, all of you, in my presence.”
The interpreter interpreted. The thing looked innocent enough. One by one they came to the desk and wrote their signatures. Molyneux blotted it and handed it back to the nearest priest.
“Take that to Parumpadpa. Have him sign it too. Tell him that if he refuses I’ll know exactly what to think! Meanwhile I’ll interview those boatmen. Bring that signed document to me this afternoon. If Mrs. Craig isn’t found by six o’clock this evening I’ll search the temple!”
“But the charge against us should also be in writing.”
“Who has charged you?” Molyneux demanded, and they hardly dared admit possession of copies of official telegrams. They filed out.
“Has His Highness the Maharajah any troops that could be counted on in an issue with the priests?” asked Molyneux as soon as the door was shut.
“Many of them might be afraid of the priests. But there is a regiment of cavalry that served abroad. The men lost caste by crossing the ocean, and the priests have refused to reinstate them without great expenditure of money, which the men, most of whom have wives and families, cannot afford. That regiment would be entirely dependable.”
“I’d like to speak with their commanding officer,” said Molyneux. “They’re all Hindus, eh? Not afraid to march into a temple?”
“They would enter if so ordered. But, Sir William, I should warn you: none but a Hindu has ever set foot inside the temple of Siva. There are sacred mysteries. The intrusion of an Englishman, however distinguished, would be considered sacrilege. An appeal by the priests to the mob—”
“I’ll let you know when I’m afraid,” said Molyneux. “Are the boatmen next?”
It was then that Ommony excused himself. He was not afraid of anything the boatmen might admit. Their tale would involve the priests undoubtedly, and the worst they could say of himself was that he had advised them to obey the priests in the matter of Elsa Craig’s clothes. He yawned.
“Up all night,” he explained.
“Take a nap,” advised Molyneux.
But the diwan’s eyes met Ommony’s and twinkled.
“I think I’ll ride it off.”
“Good! Guts!” said Molyneux.
“May I have a horse? The one you lent me is all in.”
“You shall have the best horse in His Highness’s stable.”
The diwan rang the desk bell.
“Now what — in blazes — Well — I said I’d trust you—”
Molyneux laid his iron jaw on a fist like a club, watching Ommony’s broad back as he walked out.
CHAPTER 13. “Good dog, Di!”
Ommony rode furiously, but it was two hours after noon before he reached Elsa’s hiding-place and tied his sweating horse under the arch.
“Have you fed him?” he demanded.
“Nay, sahib.”
“Good. A fed priest folds hands on his lap and dreams all’s well. Unfed, he worries. Worry does the wrong thing. Lord send I say the right one!”
Diana, dog-weary, flopped and fell asleep under the ancient arch, but Ommony walked to the tool-house and interrupted Jannath’s meditations.
“Things look rotten for you priests!” he began. “Sir William Molyneux has come. At six o’clock he intends to demand Memsahib Craig alive and unhurt, and if she isn’t forthcoming he’ll search the temple.
“Parumpadpa is in panic. He committed all of you to a statement that she’s dead, and now the other priests begin to see the unwisdom of that. They’re about ready to turn on Parumpadpa. If you’ll overlook my having handled you roughly last night, I’ll give you a chance to produce Mrs. Craig and save the situation.”
Jannath nodded. Promises not actually spoken are easier to repudiate. His eyes betrayed no intention of forgetting or forgiving anything, but a great, new hope.
“You understand,” said Ommony, “if she isn’t forthcoming by six, Brass- Face will search from dome to crypt. The mob can’t stop him; he has troops. The only way to stop him is to produce her. If Parumpadpa can’t produce her, and you do; if Parumpadpa swears she isn’t there, and you demonstrate she is, producing her in the nick of time to save the temple from desecration — you win! Parumpadpa will be down and out — napoo — finish! Understand me?”
None knew that better than Jannath. He even smiled; but whether from long habit his facial muscles naturally bent that way, or whether there was new treachery awakening, would have been hard to guess.
“You’ll have to be careful. If Parumpadpa’s men catch sight of her they’ll take her away from you, of course, and you’ll have to bear the whole responsibility. They won’t stick at sacrificing you to save their own skins. Do you know a secret way into the temple?”
Again Jannath nodded. He knew half a dozen secret entrances. He also knew things of which none but Siva’s priesthood have an inkling, and what scandal there would be if any foreigner should be known to have penetrated the temple crypts.
Ommony was aware that there were subtle overturnings going on behind the inscrutable mask, but he had no time to spare, nor any means of guessing what the treachery, if that it was, might be. If he could have seen four hours ahead and could have known what desperate, dumb seconds were to hold the balance, he would have flinched. But men win mains by never knowing too much. All the truth at once would scare the wits out of the bravest.
“Will you take food?” Ommony asked him.
But Jannath had gone his limit in accepting defilement at Ommony’s hands, and proposed to die rather than take food from him. He snarled a rebuke. So Ommony left him locked in, and went in search of Elsa Craig.
He found her ready, resolute, and less inclined to feel friendly than he hoped. She seemed to have slipped back into her earlier suspicion of him. However, she raised no objections, and walked beside him draped in the cashmere shawl over a silken Hindu costume that was once the diwan’s wife’s.
“You look wonderful,” he said; but that only offended her.
She did not thaw in the slightest until she saw the dog under the arch; but endearments lavished on Diana then perhaps decided the outcome of the next few hours. Diana, like most hounds, would accept all the petting offered from a friend.
They harnessed up the ekka, its driver backing the corn-fed dun between the shafts while Elsa held them up, and Omm
ony wrote a short note to Molyneux on a leaf of his memorandum-book. Then he brought Jannath and motioned him into the ekka first.
“You’ll have to ride with him,” he said to Elsa. “Would you like my pistol?”
“It would only be bluff. I wouldn’t use it.”
“Um-m-m! Do you care if I put the dog in with you? She’s tired and has a sore foot where a thorn went in.”
That was the last thing to which Elsa would object. First aid to man or beast was instinctive with her. She would even have rearranged the bandage on Jannath’s wrist if he had let her touch him.
Then with passengers inside, the ekka bumped down the brick steps, and the gate of the Home of Peace clanged shut behind them. A hot wind seared the landscape and Jannath, peering through the curtain in front, had to half-close his eyes.
“Put your head in!” Ommony commanded. “When we reach the city then tell the driver where to go without showing yourself. Now, drive like the devil!”
So the dun ate whip, and Ommony cantered alongside hoping the motion would not upset Elsa’s stomach, or her nerves, which would be worse. It was touch and go whether they could reach the goal in time.
He did not dare to slacken speed, nor even to stop and ask her how she felt; for what could he have done about it? It was forward, and hard through the fords at risk of broken wheels, with the more mud and dust the merrier because that would help make them inconspicuous. And tough Scots ancestry in Elsa Craig held her immune from sea-sickness.
The ekka creaked and groaned. Its wheels shrieked torture. Time and again the dun pitched forward on weak knees, and once had to be unharnessed and pulled up again.
The sun wore down into a crimsoning sky. Long before they reached the city they could hear the tumult of a demonstration staged at Parumpadpa’s order; for the high priest was unwise enough to think danger would make Brass-Face rescind a threat! They could hear drums reverberating like the roll of thunder, and Jannath, who knew how easily the mob could be worked to that pitch, smiled to himself complacently.
They had twenty minutes to spare when the dun staggered into the city, and Jannath, peering between the curtains, began to direct the driver right and left. For a while he seemed to be making for Siva’s temple; but within a hundred yards of it, three dinning crowded streets away, he suddenly ordered a turn about, and they plunged into a narrow lane in the opposite direction. It was nearly blind on both sides — nothing but walls with barred doors at intervals and, here and there, the irregular outline of a roof against the sunset.