Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “We’ve five-and-twenty minutes, maybe,• if we’re lucky,” said Quorn, whose imagination reveled in no such flights at awkward moments. On their left hand, in the darkness of the street that passed beneath the bridge, already loomed the Kali temple wall. It was like the wall of a prison, sheer for twenty feet, of massive masonry. Above that, vaguely luminous in starlight and in places silvered by the moon, there was crowded ornament, with images of gods and goddesses and their attendants staring into vacancy. But beneath, there was solemn gloom, and the silence and stench of unknowable things. A great gate, ponderous with iron fastenings, its timbers carved with legendary themes of life and death, stood grim and uninviting in the shadow of an arch that could admit two elephants abreast. There was a small door in the gate, but no grille — no bell — no knocker.

  “It is better that we leave the bodies here,” said Moses trying to conceal his terror with an air of judicial wisdom. But the babu ignored him. He seemed to have changed his personality again. He was alert, undreamy, impudent — a realist with a plan. He picked up a stone and hammered on the gate until the echoes thundered; and at last some one called down to him angrily through a hole near the top of the arch. The babu answered scornfully at no great length and resumed his hammering.

  “To the front gate?” he remarked to Quorn, who stood beside him. “Not I! Self am diplomatically much too modest.” Quorn was nervously eyeing the shadowy figures that filled the street behind them. Those at the rear were pressing forward but were being held back for the moment by the cautious ones in front. The weird telepathy that summons crowds was functioning; already, from beneath the bridge down-street a swarm of men and women was running uphill.

  “We’re cut off, both ends now,” said Quorn. “The next thing, cops’ll turn up. Then what?”

  But the babu kept on hammering, and presently the small gate in the big one opened about two inches on a chain that some one rattled carefully to make its presence known. The babu talked through the opening, low voiced but with violent emphasis. The only words that Quorn overheard were “Gunpat Rao.” Apparently the babu was invited to enter alone. He refused, and there followed a long pause, presumably for consultation inside. Then another argument. And at last the great gate opened gingerly, then suddenly swung wide. Ten or a dozen men in yellow robes poured into the street and stood to keep the crowd from entering. The babu waved to the soldier who held the pony’s head to lead the ekka. He, Moses, Quorn and the other soldier followed, almost chased in by the men in yellow. Then the great gate shut with a thud and the bolts went home.

  “That’s good-by to the U.S.A.!” Quorn muttered, sniffing. There was an acrid stench, and there were figures moving amid shadows. He could see great columns ris- ing upward into darkness. In a corner, on his right hand, moonlight and a little lamplight fell on a flight of steps that seemed to lead toward the bridge that crossed the street. Somewhere ahead in the gloom a man was carrying a lantern; he appeared to have entered a tunnel. There were perhaps a dozen tiny ghee-lamps stuck on brackets amid carving on surrounding walls. The sky looked like a purple-black roof sprayed with jewels. But the babu seemed to care for none of that. He was unimpressed — arrogant — swift in his movements.

  The pony suddenly grew frantic and the babu sprang to its head. He ordered the shafts loosed from the harness, and he kicked the hesitating soldier. He could kick like a battery mule and the shock reduced the man to mechanical, dumb obedience. The babu ordered him to hold the shafts; then he let the pony go, and the terrified beast went galloping away amid echoing empty spaces, sending up sparks from paving stones, until he vanished somewhere. Then the babu ordered the ekka turned around, and he himself cut the cords that tied the prisoner to the hoops. When a lantern was seen coming, and then four more lanterns, along a passage directly ahead, across the courtyard, the babu took hold of the ekka shafts and held them level. In that darkness the passage down which the lanterns came looked as if it might lead to the midst of the world.

  “That’s not Bughouse Bill,” said Quorn — deliberately. He was disappointed. He felt like facing Bughouse Bill and fighting him to soothe his nerves. He was conscious of a small-boy impulse to throw stones and jeer. Had he not interviewed a Maharajah and a Princess? Priests, however solemn or exclusive, held no social terrors for him. But the priests, if priests they were, came forward unbelligerently, almost humbly. Darkness masked the pride that their assumed humility could only make more evident in daylight. They were weirdly beautiful, with lantern light on naked arms and on one side of their faces; they suggested an Old Master’s painting of Apostles attending a midnight conference. However, the babu denied them any dignity whatever.

  “See that!” he shouted as they neared him. At the word he raised the ekka shafts until the prisoner and the corpse, still bound together, rolled on the paving stones and almost touched the feet of the leading priest, who recoiled in horror. All the priests stood transfixed, staring, scandalized. They were trained men, thoroughly familiar with death and taught to cover even great astonishment with poise and silence. But that was too much. Their silence gave the babu opportunity, and his baritone voice made the utmost use of it. He made a speech, with rounded periods and studied vehemence of gesture, that suggested a fat Mark Antony addressing the conspirators who murdered Caesar.

  “What is he saying?” Quorn asked. Moses almost struck him to keep him silent and listened until the babu finished. Then:

  “He speaks defiantlee. Accusinglee he challenges them most contemptuouslee. He demands that they shall come with him before the Maharajah, now, this minute, and in public, before all men, make denial of responsibilitee for this obscenitee.”

  “And what do they say?” Quorn asked.

  Moses listened. Some one came and took the note from the prisoner’s breast, then cut the turban that bound the prisoner and corpse together, but even so he could not writhe free unaided. The babu forbade helping him. He made some jibe about the note, and the man hurried away with it into the darkness.

  “They ask,” said Moses, “that the babu shall accompanee themselves into the temple and speak more privatelee of this and other things.”

  Quorn stepped closer to the babu. “Don’t you go, you idiot! They’ll scrag you!” He took the babu by the arm, but the babu whispered to him:

  “The miscarried plans of guilty opportunists are less dangerous to this babu than horse-feathers in a mare’s nest. Verb sap.”

  There were terrible, stealthy sounds not far away, and although Quorn could not see into the darkness on his left hand, he knew now what the stench meant and what had terrified the pony. There was a lot of noise, too, in the street, and it seemed to irritate the priests. The babu pointed to the moonlit steps.

  “He says,” said Moses, whispering, “that he will go up there and speak to anyone, where all the world can see him from the street.”

  “He’s crazy,” Quorn answered. “Hell, they’ll shove him off the parapet.”

  Moses agreed: “It is the end of us. They will play a trick on us. I am not confeedent — and this is all veree sinful.”

  “What’s that babu saying now?” Quorn demanded.

  “He is saying that the murderer has spoken to us all in presence of each other, and that there are manee witnesses of what happened; but that they may have both murderer and victim for their purposes. They say they will not have them, but he tells them they must have them. They are veree angree, but he is satisfactorilee complacent.”

  One of the priests gave a command in a loud voice. Some one came forward out of the darkness and untied the murderer, who struggled stiffly to his feet and glowered at the babu. The soldiers closed in on the babu to protect him. But a priest spoke to the murderer, and he sulkily walked away into the gloom that had swallowed the pony. Nobody offered to touch the corpse; it lay twisted gruesomely, with the knife sticking out between the shoulder-blades. One of the priests set a lantern down beside it.

  “He will pray,” said Moses. But he did no
t. He examined the dead man’s face, stooping over it, his own face in the lantern light looking sour and contemptuous; then he backed away and left the lantern standing where it was. Two of the priests then turned toward the stairway and the babu followed them. Quorn, the two soldiers and Moses crowded close to one another, trying to look unconcerned but shuddering when they touched each other because the gloom felt full of knife-blades. They watched the babu — pompous — senatorial. Revealed alternately by moonlight and lantern light, he swaggered up the steps behind the priests, until they saw him silhouetted against the sky, above the street. There he squatted. But the priests stood, and they seemed to be arguing.

  “Grab me that lantern,” said Quorn. But Moses feared to do it. So he ordered a soldier to bring it, but the soldier pretended not to understand him.

  “Hell, I’m scared,” he said to Moses, “but I’m curious, and standing still don’t suit my type, so here goes!”

  He walked forward as nonchalantly as he could and took the lantern. Then he turned to the left in the direction whence the stealthy noises and the stench came. No one offered to prevent him, but Moses and the soldiers followed for the sake of company, and the priests walked away toward the foot of the steps up which Ghose had gone.

  “Oh God!” Moses exclaimed, and his teeth began chattering.

  Twenty or thirty feet ahead a pair of eyes shone in the dark, about breast high. Quorn went nearer and the lantern light revealed an iron cage, set on a masonry platform, filling the mouth of what appeared to be an ancient wide-arched doorway. The cage was about fifteen feet wide and as many deep, and there were bars back and front, but the sides were of stone blocks solidly cemented to the walls of the arch; and between the top of the cage and the arch the whole space had been filled in with some sort of masonry, plastered over. An enormous tiger crouched behind the bars and, as Quorn drew nearer, rushed at him, making almost no sound but displaying his tawny belly as he reared upright and tried to strike through the bars of the cage. The swaying lantern light exaggerated size and horror. The brute appeared to be mad — slunk away to the rear of the cage and rushed again, hurling himself against the bars and wrenching at them, snarling now.

  “He is a cannibal,” said Moses. “Come away, sir. It is not safe to be near him. Those bars easily might open.”

  Quorn examined the bars by lantern light that shone on wrath in motion — stealthy, swift, terrific, striped, enormous — impotent. The bars held. They were set in one iron frame, and the whole frame was hinged to the masonry at the bottom. At the top, an iron bolt was so arranged that if one pulled it downward the whole front of the cage would fall forward. It was a clumsy arrangement. The only way they could have got the tiger in there was by using a net to keep him in until the front of the cage was raised and locked in place. Apparently the rear of the cage was built in the same way, although it was impossible to see distinctly. The cage was not properly cleaned and the stench was almost unendurable.

  “It looks to me,” said Moses, “as if back there is a passage.”

  “Try and go in,” Quorn suggested. Nervousness had made him irritable. He felt savage — glanced up at the parapet and saw the babu silhouetted there against the purple sky — cursed him, and decided on the instant, right or wrong, to go up there and interrupt his endless chatter. As he started across the courtyard, robed men wheeled away the ekka.

  “Why?” he wondered. “What now?” The corpse still lay there. He and Moses avoided it. So did the soldiers, although they lagged in the rear, apparently afraid of what Quorn might do next; they were even more afraid of the priests than Moses was. Moses spoke thickly, terrified but trying gamely to be brave about it:

  “I beelieve they will feed our ponee to that tiger presentlee — perhaps the corpse, too — and then afterwards. us also!”

  “Do you reckon he’s all that hungry?” Quorn asked. “Half a dozen of him couldn’t eat our babu! Quit your belly-aching.”

  “But sir, it is veree dangerous to trespass. It is also sinful. I advise we wait here.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Quorn and walked on. Moses followed, and the soldiers followed Moses. But the soldiers remained at the foot of the steps, paused there for a moment, and then marched away toward the gate. They marched as if they had a corporal behind them. Moses hurried up the steps to overtake Quorn, glancing to left and right and then behind him. He was so afraid of the priests in yellow robes near the foot of the steps, who had drawn aside to let Quorn pass, that he took two steps at a time and stumbled. With his solar topee that he wore at all hours because it signified western ancestry, he looked absurdly like a tourist. Out of breath, he begged Quorn to return to the courtyard, but Quorn went forward, ignoring him. It was a long climb — fine, wide polished stone steps, very ancient, and with narrow treads — hardly room for a man’s foot, worn on the surface by the naked feet of centuries — a handsome balustrade — and at last the parapet, not less than ten feet wide, a veritable causeway leading all around the temple.

  Quorn stood staring down into the street, where almost utter darkness swarmed with human life that one could not see. He sensed it — felt it, knew that it was human, but the sound resembled water rushing downhill. He supposed they were all talking at once. Moses was afraid to look over the edge; he touched Quorn’s sleeve and pointed to the babu, who was sitting so close to the edge, not thirty feet away from where they stood, that a kick or a shove would have toppled him over.

  “Should they kill him, sir, then—”

  Quorn approached the babu, whose back was toward him. Moses’ suggestion had made his blood run cold. It was worse than cold; it curdled. He couldn’t imagine what he could do without the babu. Now he knew, too, that he liked him — liked him first rate. Danger was the main thought; but a curiously strong wave of affection urged him too — an impulse that he would have denied furiously if taxed with it.

  “He’s loco — and he’s logey for lack o’ sleep. God damn his eyes, he might fall off!”

  Two priests stood before the babu. They were talking to him, but they were not near enough to him to do much mischief without warning. However, Quorn conceived the notion of getting behind the priests, believing they would hardly dare to attack the babu with an enemy at their rear. It was no use trying to listen to the conversation; he could not understand a word of it. But he might be able to spy out the situation. There was a great stone image of the temple goddess — one of many that stared down over the parapet at intervals. It was only about fifteen feet beyond the priests. There might be somebody behind it. He would find out.

  Moses did not pass the babu but stayed near enough to listen to the conversation. Both priests tried to intercept Quorn, but the babu was speaking to them and they seemed not to wish to miss what he said, so that their effort was distracted and a trifle too late. Another voice arrested them; it seemed to come from the huge image, or else from behind it. Quorn decided there was certainly an enemy in ambush, so he quickened his pace, expecting at each step to be hurled to the street or else knifed. He could not have claimed that his blood was up. It was a desperate manœuver, born of panic and that sudden feeling that he must protect the babu. His pace slackened again as he reached the shadow of the image. He came almost to a standstill and then, holding the lantern in his left hand at a level with his shoulder, approached cautiously. He came to a sudden halt, with his mouth wide open and his heart thumping against his ribs.

  The image was hollow. There was a door in its back that opened inward. Inside, in utter darkness, Bughouse Bill stood staring at him. The lantern shone full in the high priest’s face, lighting it slightly from beneath, throwing strange shadows that exaggerated the look of proud malevolence. More than anything else it suggested the face of an evil spirit lurking in a tomb — a monstrous, mean, sadistic devil. Quorn tried to speak; he wanted to insult the man. But not a word would come forth; the muscles of his throat felt paralyzed and his dry tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He held the lantern still and stared,
his agate eyes not flinching as he met the priest’s that observed him with a cold gaze like an alligator’s from beneath their wrinkled, lashless lids. There was no gesture of recognition. Quorn was being looked at like an insect on a pin, perhaps with curiosity but not with anything remotely like fear or respect or excitement. It humiliated and enraged him. He felt like spitting at the face, or punching it, but he could not move.

  Then the door slammed suddenly, and through a hole in the side of the image a voice that had a harp-string note spoke to the priests who faced the babu. The priests spoke in turn, and the babu stood up then as if the interview was over. But Quorn could not yet face reality. He doubted whether he could yet find speech. He discovered he was still holding the lantern shoulder high — still staring at a hateful face that would not vanish from the mirror of his consciousness. Turn how he would, the face was there in front of him — dispassionate, mean, vivid. It was not cruel, because it had no sympathies. It was hateful — awful — and it would not vanish.

  To drive the image from his mind Quorn studied his surroundings. He noticed that the parapet led to the bridge that crossed the street toward the other temple. It became the floor of the bridge, but the bridge was blocked at both ends. However, the bridge also had wide parapets, with images that leaned outward and looked downward to the street. The parapets were as broad as ordinary footpaths — or so it seemed in the dim light. But as he stared at the bridge, that face was there. When he looked down at the stone he stood on, the face stared up at him. It made him feel hysterical. He tried to brush it away with his right hand. It did not even vanish when the babu called out: “This way, Gunga sahib!” The priests stood aside to let him pass them. Then, almost before he knew it, the babu had him by the arm in a grip that almost tore his muscles.