Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “The Heavenborn knows best,” the babu answered. “Is not trouble also better still-born? This babu knows many ways of aborting trouble. As for time — perhaps your Highness can delay that?”

  “Curse you,” said the Maharajah.

  “I am cursed into oblivion, if wisdom says so.”

  “Get hence!”

  So the babu bowed himself away and turned Asoka by the trunk toward the main gate. But he walked extremely slowly. It was the easiest thing in the world for anyone to overtake him. A hurrying servant, to whom the Maharajah whispered, and who escaped from the lodge by a back door, reached a clump of cannas by a winding path and hid himself behind the blazing flowers more than sixty seconds before Asoka drew abreast. He only said one word, and no one answered him; but the babu took Asoka by the trunk again and led him along a by-path that circled S-wise toward splendid trees, and a stone wall, and a graveled roadway. They entered a little compound, where there was hay to keep Asoka interested, and a rope to keep him anchored. There was also the head mahout’s chore-boy in charge of his master’s slippers. Quorn tossed him a quarter-rupee and ordered him to mind the elephant. The babu led on, through a high door in a wall, so rapidly that Quorn could hardly keep pace. He had no chance to ask questions. Dignity warned him not to run, and he was almost breathless from walking so fast, when at last he overtook the babu in a little private garden at the back of the audience lodge.

  “What’s your hurry?” he grumbled.

  “Horoscopically speaking, we are seven seconds early,” said the babu, glancing at a wrist-watch. “Talking, however, in terms of physics, I prefer to see him first, before he sees me. You act naturally. I act supernaturally. Never mind me. Nature, if permitted to direct my actions, might make horrible mistakes. I see him coming. Stand still.”

  Chullunder Ghose disappeared behind a clump of bougainvillæa. Quorn awaited the Maharajah, who strode along whacking an English riding-boot with a whip of rhinoceros-hide.

  “You’re a bully,” thought Quorn to himself. “But you can’t bully me. I’ll take no dirt from any man.” However, he remembered manners. He stepped to one side of the path in case the Maharajah should have it in mind to keep on walking. That gave the Maharajah opportunity to play a favorite trick. He drew abreast as if he were hardly aware of Quorn’s existence. Then, as if expecting to be murdered, he suddenly turned and faced him, half-raising the hand that held the riding-whip.

  “Well?” he demanded. “What do you want?”

  “Plain talk,” said Quorn, unflinching.

  “You shall have it!” The Maharajah beckoned. Solemnly, savagely, sneering and stealthy as hell, the head mahout came out of hiding from behind the statue of a dancing goddess. He began to speak so rapidly that Quorn understood hardly a word. But he gestured, he spat, he accused, he pointed, he glared with bloodshot eyes, and there was no doubt he was not exactly praising Quorn for anything.

  “You understand him?” asked the Maharajah.

  “Yep, I dessay. Is he asking for a loan of a punch on the nose, or something?”

  “He says, yesterday you purposely caused that elephant to scare my horse, and that you tried to make him trample me. He says you made the elephant do all the damage possible; and that now you have stolen the elephant, for mysterious reasons.”

  “Do you believe him?” Quorn asked.

  “He has been my servant for eleven years. Why shouldn’t I believe him?” asked the Maharajah.

  Quorn looked him straight in the eyes. “Perhaps you do,” he answered. “You don’t look to me such a damned fool as that. I’d give you credit for more sense.”

  The Maharajah hesitated, showing his teeth between a smile and a snarl. “Where is that rotten rogue, Chul- lunder Ghose?” he demanded.

  The babu stepped out from behind the bushes, speaking English: “Seize your opportunity and sack that scoundrel, Heavenborn! Five times I have caught him selling stores. I tell you, listen to me! Don’t waste time. I know what I am urging. I accept responsibility. You sack him now and trust me to explain it to you afterwards!”

  The Maharajah flicked his front teeth with a thumb- nail. Suddenly he shrugged his shoulders, turned toward the head mahout and struck him savagely, raising a welt on his neck with the riding-whip. He cursed him and called to his servants to kick the man out of the grounds.

  “And now what?” he demanded. “Justify it, or you get the same dose.” But Chullunder Ghose seemed unperturbed. There was a slightly perceptible change in the Maharajah’s eyes as he watched the babu’s face. If not afraid of him, he was at least not free from premonition. “What is your news?”

  “That there are thirteen days before the Resident will be here!”

  “Idiot! I knew that.”

  “There are thirteen days in which to break the power of the priests, and be the real instead of the nominal ruler of Narada!”

  “What are you driving at, damn you?”

  “Thirteen days before a Resident arrives to frown on all political activity! Thirteen days for a bid for power!”

  It was surely not the same babu whom Quorn had doubted and defied! He was vibrant. He was passionate. If roguery was in him, it was overrun by vehement and iron-willed courage. He was stirring to watch. Enthusiasm bristled from him and excited a response.

  “Are you a man?” he asked the Maharajah.

  “Are you capable of advising me?” came the answer, slow, doubt-laden. “Is your plan safe?”

  “Safety?” said the babu. “Oh my faith in princes! Listen to me. Twice in all your life your Highness has been spoken to as I speak!” He lined himself up by Quorn. “This man spoke as I do. He was unafraid, as I am also. I, who have doubled your Highness’ income by reducing theft and bribery, am I less to be trusted than the priests who hunger for your money? Or than the ministers who betray your secrets to the priests and to the British Resident?”

  The Maharajah stroked his chin and studied the babu’s face beneath lowered eyelids.

  “It was you,” he said, “who were the cause of yesterday’s abominable outrage.”

  Up went the babu’s hands. His blazing eyes grew round with indignant protest. “By whatever is that’s holy, I declare I never dreamed of it,” he answered. “It was all an accident. But did I take advantage of it? Did I, or did I not commit the priests to a mistake? Didn’t they call this man the Gunga sahib? Didn’t this man play his part? If you are fit to be a Maharajah, he and I are fit to fool those priests a little farther and to make them kiss feet! Is it pleasant to be tamed and sneeringly humiliated by shaven ecclesiastics?”

  Hatred glinted in the Maharajah’s eyes at mention of the priests. But he bit at his knuckles, hesitating. “You have raised up my Calamity against me,” he said, sucking at his teeth. Custom forbade him to mention the sex or the name of his child in the presence of men.

  The babu bore him down by vehemence and weight of will. “Do you believe,” he asked, “that you can conquer that by crushing it? Can’t it appeal to the Resident when he gets here?”

  The Maharajah bit his fingernails and swore beneath his breath. “Then you suggest what?”

  “There are thirteen days in which to trap the priests into a public and disastrous error. Should that individual of whom we speak ridiculously blunder into one trap with the priests, is that a thought that shocks your Highness?”

  “I have no son,” said the Maharajah.

  “May your Highness live to have a hundred,” said the babu, bowing.

  “Why this curiously fervent zeal for my cause?” the Maharajah demanded. “You want what?”

  “Your Highness’ happiness, prosperity and ever-increasing influence!” the babu answered, bowing again. “As chief of your Highness’ ministers of state, it would be less a duty than a priceless privilege to work unceasingly to that end.”

  “I might try you, if you prove you’re worth it,” said the Maharajah, “but I suspect you of treachery.”

  “How could that benefit me?” the ba
bu asked him, and the Maharajah nodded.

  “Get me into trouble and you’ll know what trouble is,” he said darkly. “What do you suggest that I should do now?”

  “Play for safety,” said the babu. “Your Highness may remember that a rather recent ancestor was slain by a frenzied elephant. The head mahout is discharged. Respectfully I recommend this person for the post of master of the royal elephants.”

  The Maharajah stared at Quorn. “Do you want the job?”

  Quorn nodded. He was too excited to trust his voice.

  “Since that will be defiance of the priests, I beg your Highness,” said the babu, “not to weaken when they protest, but to count on public sentiment.”

  Quorn trusted his voice at last. “I’ll need a contract,” he interrupted.

  “So I suppose,” said the Maharajah. “What else?”

  “It would be fatal,” said the babu, “absolutely fatal to refuse permission to a certain person to appear unveiled in public. I assure your Highness, it is too late now to close the purdah door. That hen has flew the coop as U.S.A. United Statesian diplomatist would asseverate. The clever thing to do, is to provide an opportunity for blunders, same as Mexican police suggesting to a thief that he may go free.”

  The Maharajah nodded. “She must not be shot!” he said severely. “Anything that happens to her must be obviously accidental.”

  Chullunder Ghose beamed. “Your Highness is a statesman,” he said with an air of cordial approval.

  “Prove yourself to be one, and perhaps I may promote you,” said the Maharajah. Then he eyed Quorn critically. “How about that elephant? Can you answer for him?”

  “If I get a contract sealed and swore to, I’ll live up to it,” Quorn answered. He smelt treachery. He trusted no one.

  “If your Highness will permit it,” said the babu, “I will tell all those petitioners that they should put their claims in writing and submit the same to me as arbiter. I will reduce the claims to reasonable proportions, and then find a way to pay them that will not reduce your income.”

  Visibly gratified, the Maharajah scowled to conceal the fact. He nodded with an air of hesitancy. “What else?”

  “Pray permit me to be provocative agent of conspiracy to modernize Narada.”

  “At your own risk!”

  “I shall have to interview the principal offender.”

  “At your own risk!”

  “But I have your Highness’ leave to do it?”

  “At your own risk!”

  “Am a risqué babu. I ask leave to go now.”

  “R-r-ruksa!” said his Highness.

  IX

  “Am Using TNTmanship.”

  Chullunder Ghose mingled with the crowd in front of the audience lodge. Quorn watched him, not exactly admiring the babu’s method but admitting to himself at least that there was “something in it.” Huge though the babu was, and pompous though he could be, he was as ingratiating as a puppy when it suited his purpose.

  “Wisht I was half as affable,” said Quorn to himself, grudgingly. He watched the change in the petitioners’ psychology as the babu moved from one group to another and engaged them in conversation. “But he’s a con man. He’d sell counterfeit bills to a Revenue Dick. He’d argue Andy Mellon into buying phoney sweepstake tickets. He’s a bad egg. Less I have to do with him the better.”

  Nevertheless, Quorn waited for him. He would not have admitted it, but he felt actually friendly when the crowd began to break up and go home, and the babu rejoined him at last. It was so long since he had intimately talked with anyone, except one-eyed Moses, that his natural resistance had weakened. Common fairness, too, obliged him to admit to himself that the babu had got him a job that was better than anything he had ever dreamed of. One thought at a time was Quorn’s method, and the more important problem first; so, as he walked beside the babu, he broached his subject without preliminaries.

  “How’ll I get around my mission contract? Can’t exit and leave nobody there to caretake. I’m on oath to observe that agreement faithful.”

  “Contracts are same as religion,” said the babu. “They have many meanings. Let me see yours. Oaths are like the Constitution of the U.S.A. United States; interpretation normally depends on kind of coffee oathees had for breakfast. I will criticize your contract, same as colored person studying amendment giving him a vote and taking away liquor — maybe. That is easy. We will first do something difficult.”

  Quorn jibbed. “Hey, you paddle your own canoe. I’m no conspirator. Politics ain’t in my line.”

  “If you were a politician,” the babu answered, “I would impolitely pay your fare to hell as soon as possible. Politics are hellish but present no difficulties. A conspirator is a fool with a Freudian inferiority complex that obliges him to act like Guy Fawkes on a powder barrel. Difficulties are the food of daring, and daring is TNT. I only know of three real difficulties. One is, to restrain intelligence from being too smart. Another is, to use stupidity and not be tangled by it. And the third is to manage a woman who is intelligent enough to know she is ignorant but stupid enough to be honest. Do you remember Cinquevalli? He could juggle a cannon-ball, an open umbrella and a half-sheet of crumpled paper at one and same time while he grinned at audience. Am Cinquevallian exponent of a metaphysical conception of the same trick. Am a G. B. Shavian diplomatist with easy morals and a Rabelaisian delight in truth, whoever tells it. Truth is only palatable to intelligence, so don’t you meddle with it. Always lie about me. I prefer that. My obliquity is such that I am happy unless some one knows the truth about me. My mendacity is most ingenious when hiding from myself my own opinion of me. You understand that? No? Well, watch this.”

  They had reached a corner of the palace where a high wall enclosed a garden and entirely shut off a view of any windows that might overlook it from that ancient and uninviting wing. It resembled a prison wall. There were sharp iron spikes along it. Trees inside the wall had been so clipped and pruned that they afforded no means of invasion. There was one door, tall and narrow, studded with iron nails, but it presented not even a keyhole to suggest that it was ever opened. There was a deathly silence, emphasized by the liquid song note of a mina, somewhere in a cage beyond the wall.

  “Is this where that young lady has to live?” Quorn asked.

  “It is where she dies,” the babu answered. “Death and monotonous virtue are the same thing only more so. She has had a Swiss, a Swedish and a Cincinnati governess, but none of them could be so pure so permanently. I assure you, it is not opportunity but the absence of it that inserts the sting in chastity. A visitor or two, politely reprehensible but self-restrained, to make the governesses happy, might have saved our Sankyamuni from the solitude that frets her to such rebellion. Ah me! The Maharajah, too, was just a little tactless. Had he insulted them with money — who knows? But he honored them with offers of gratuitous amours. The governesses went away. Oh solitude, what crimes are born within thy cruel womb! She sees no one — no one!”

  “Well, he told us you could see her.”

  “Same as keeper telling us to enter cage and pet some tigers! You suppose a Maharajah is a master in his own house? He is more like a man in delirium tremens swatting rats that won’t obey him. Were you ever photographed? You stand still and watch for the birdie. Don’t move. When you see the shutter open, keep on looking straight in front of you, and don’t watch me.”

  He chose a good-sized lump of broken stone and used it on the door as if he meant to break his way in. He made a thunderous, scandalous noise. He kept it up for two or three minutes, then listened, threw the stone away and stepped aside, crowding himself against the wall. Quorn, straight in front of the door, stood as directed, arguing to himself that serious trouble could hardly come of standing still and doing nothing. But the truth was, he felt so curious that his spine tingled. He couldn’t hear himself breathe.

  There was a sound of creaky bolts at last. The door opened gingerly. A surly, angry voice demanded “Koi hai?”
No answer. Then the door opened wide. A man stood framed in it who held an ancient sword which quivered in his right hand. His broken teeth, beneath a black moustache, were like the fangs of malice. He stared at Quorn, muttered, then swore aloud at him. Probably Quorn looked frightened, and perhaps he even took a half-step backwards. Either that, or else his own chained-watch-dog disposition, tempted the man to swagger forward to where he could swing the sword more easily. He fell — as sudden and as silent as a pole-axed beef — stunned by a blow on the back of the neck from the babu’s left fist, that he used as Firpo once used his to club Jack Dempsey.

  “Come on,” said the babu calmly, “Bring the sword and lock the door.”

  He gathered up the fallen warrior as easily as if he had knocked out weight as well as consciousness. Inside the door there was a roofed passage, closed by another door at the far end. To the right was a small room containing a bench, a table, a water-jar and a roll of shabby bedding. Chullunder Ghose laid his victim on the table. He trussed him to it skilfully with the cord from the bedding roll and with the man’s own turban that contained not less than thirty yards of thin, hand-woven silk. Then he locked the door on him and dropped the key out through a tiny iron-barred window high up in the passage wall.

  “Are you afraid?” he asked Quorn.

  “Me? Hell. What of? No. Why?”

  “Liar ,” said the babu. Then he opened the door at the far end and, as casually as if he owned the place, led the way into the loveliest garden Quorn had ever seen. It was a blaze of color, and so silent that he felt like walking on tiptoe. The way the babu walked seemed sacrilegious, swaggering along a path between glorious roses, actually humming to himself and swinging his right arm like a senator rehearsing his speech on his way to the Capitol. Quorn followed, doubtful whether he had better keep his distance for safety’s sake, or keep close to the babu for the same reason. He felt sure of nothing, except that he was going into danger. Self-respect did not permit him to desert the babu, no matter what might happen. But he was making a fool of himself; he knew that. It was not reassuring knowledge.