Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “So that’s that,” said the babu. “Where is Hawkesey? Damn you, where is Hawkesey? There is nothing else I want to know, so shut up and say where he is!” Then he remembered he was talking English. He repeated the question, using the vernacular, bringing the car to a standstill by the narrow sidewalk. “Where did you leave Hawkesey?”

  Copeland got out, carrying his handbag. He could see the elephant embattled with the goddess Kali; he was tusking at her float and overturning it, while mortally indignant priests engaged him with their sharp sticks and the sacred oxen milled in only half-awakened panic. Heroism had the priesthood by the shoulders that day; they stood up to the elephant, prodded him and beat him on the trunk. And heroism, as it usually does, caught on, assuming curious disguises. Someone on the sidewalk brilliantly, instantly, decided the mahout was guilty. Fury lent him strength. He tore up a cobblestone, flung it and hit the mahout. It brained him. The mahout fell down beneath his charge’s feet; and, having nobody to interfere with natural behavior then, the elephant screamed a last defiance — and departed up-street, scattering the sacred oxen. There were lots of cobblestones. Innumerable heroes tore them up and buried the mahout, a broken mess of blood and bones, beneath a mid-street cairn.

  “The Rajah’s elephant” yelled someone.

  No priest offering to stop that dangerous assertion of a plain truth, tumult took it up and tossed it to the roofs, where women yelled it to and fro until a quarter of a city knew the Rajah had deliberately sent an elephant to wreck the chariot of Kali. The remainder of the city, pardonably swift to magnify a rumor, took to cover and put up shutters, shouting that machine-guns, manned by the Rajah’s sepoys, had begun a massacre. And Copeland, with his coat off, set a leg or two and bound up bruises that miraculously were the only irreligious damage that the elephant had done. (They were covering Kali’s fallen image with a huge sheet, to await the privacy of darkness.)

  In the Ford car, on the front seat, fat babu and slender villager engaged in argument.

  “But you said you could use me. Therefore do it. I will tell you nothing,” said the villager, “until your honor guarantees employment. I will prove to you then what a father and mother of brains your servant is. I am a good one. Write me on the roll and pay me.”

  “I will kick you in the teeth unless you answer!”

  “Nay, I have a new knife. See it. I remember now that Hawkesey said I am to have his overcoat. But that is in the howdah, and the elephant is spilling things, so probably the priests will take it.”

  “I will take you to the kana,” said the babu.

  “Nay, nay! That is where the constabeels are. I have had enough of that tribe.”

  “Very well then, tell me, where is Hawkesey?”

  “How, do I know? Am I God that I should know it? All I know is that a constabeel accused him on the way of having slain that other plainclothes constabeel, who tried to slay your honor when I saved your honor in the darkness. Lo, they had the body with them and they would have taken Hawkesey to the kana; but I told them priests had done it, so they let us continue our journey. And Hawkesey promised me the overcoat.”

  “And then what?”

  “Why, later we came to the river. But the elephant would not swim the river, though I took him by the trunk and tried to make him do it.”

  “Did you push him?” asked the babu.

  “Certainly I did. I pushed him in. But out he came again, the coward. And then Hawkesey rode off looking for a bridge, although I warned him that the jungle gods would not approve of it.”

  “Did you ride with him?” asked the babu.

  “Nay, not I! I went and did a little puja to the gods, to keep the devils from deviling Hawkesey. I made a little image of an elephant, of mud. It took a long time, because I wanted no mistake about it; it must not be like a cow, or like a horse, or like a common elephant. It must resemble that one. As I say, it took a long time. So the devils got Hawkesey.”

  “How so?”

  “It was the fault of the mud. It was too wet. I had finished the elephant and set a little fire in front of him. And I had finished the mahout and set him on the beast’s neck. So both of them were all right. But when I started the image of Hawkesey, gun and all, the wet mud would not stick together. And before I knew it, back they came, the elephant and the mahout, with no less than a thousand devils chasing them — although they had no need to fear the devils, because that part of the puja was attended to.”

  “And Hawkesey?”

  “The mahout said that a tiger got him.”

  “Do you think he was telling the truth?” the babu asked.

  “No. All mahouts are liars. That one lies dead yonder, doubtless because of the lies he told.”

  “Why don’t you think he was telling the truth?”

  “Because he waited at the ford for Hawkesey. He pretended that his elephant was weary. But I know, by the way he sat all night and watched, that he expected Hawkesey to come any minute. What I think is that the devils tempted Hawkesey far into the jungle, and that is the last you will ever hear of him. They could not tempt the elephant and the mahout, because I had finished their part of the puja. However, Hawkesey had promised me the overcoat. Undoubtedly that elephant has run back to the lines, so I had better go now and claim the overcoat before some rascal steals it.”

  “I will find it for you,” said the babu. “Get into the back seat.” Then he shouted in English to Copeland: “Doctor sahib! Do you stop a forest fire by putting out the match that lighted it? You are a reincarnation of Nero — you are setting legs while Rome burns! Incidentally you rob the local leeches of a fat fee! You will hear from the Union!”

  But Copeland was already face to face with that. He had been violently shoved away from one case. Two good splints that he had improvised with commandeered umbrellas had been pulled off and the bandages, made from the victim’s turban, had been thrown into the gutter. Men of the victim’s own sub- caste had carried him away for treatment by a ritually clean incompetent; and other victims, not yet carried off, were calling to their friends to come and rescue them before the foreigner could touch them with pollution.

  “Oh, to hell with them!” said Copeland. “How can you help such fools?” He climbed into the front seat, pitched his bag beside the villager and reached into his pocket for tobacco. “Where now? Who’s your new friend?”

  “To the palace,” the babu answered. “And the son of untruth on the back seat is the guide who is to lead you into mischief. Luckily you can’t talk to each other; there will be trouble enough without that!”

  He began to drive as furiously as the flat tires let him, taking short cuts through the crowded, winding streets towards the central rectangular part of the city. There was mob-rule in the making — leaderless as yet, but ominous enough to terrify the police, who were conspicuous by their absence; they had concentrated on the kana, where they awaited orders from the palace. Popular resentment at the outrage to the image of the goddess took its customary way of raging against anything foreign and anything modern. Cobblestones and vegetables pursued the Ford, shattered the lamps and windshield, struck the occupants; but Copeland’s helmet and the babu’s turban saved their heads from injury, and nobody was hurt except the villager — and he not badly; he bled at the nose and wiped it on the blanket with an air of having suffered far worse inconvenience without the compensating fun of being driven, gratis, by a babu in a rich man’s chariot. It was not until Copeland forced him, that he lay down on the car floor and protected himself with Copeland’s bedding-roll and suitcase.

  But the worst came in the great square, where the palace sepoys, hurriedly reinforced from the barracks had been lined up two deep to protect the gilded iron railing and the great gate. Their commanding officer looked fierce enough to eat his own revolver, and the bearded sepoys — bayonets already fixed — were in the nervous state that leads to massacre or rout, whichever accident determines, or whichever the leader’s nerves may set in motion. Swarming in the sq
uare, the hoarse crowd yelled and imprecated, fearful of the bayonets and perfectly aware that one word might direct a volley into them, but urged on from the rear, where bullets were less likely to reach loud- lunged agitators and the streets offered ready escape. Copeland advised discretion:

  “Isn’t there a back door to the palace, if you feel you have to go there?”

  But the babu glanced up at the lowering sky and shouted back, between the honkings of his horn: “There is a time for meekness and a time for being insolent. I think, too, that the gods will save these imbeciles!”

  He honked into the crowd. It made way. At the top of his lungs he shouted: “From the Residency! Let pass someone from the Residency!”

  That bluff worked for half a minute. A lane widened. But the sweaty faces glowered. Teeth flashed. Eyes glared. And then someone shouted Bande Mataram! — Hail Motherland! — the war-cry of the self- determinists who want an end in India of all things British, influence in Native States included. Someone with a long stick struck at Copeland’s helmet and the officer on horseback at the great gate saw it. He shouted. He drew his saber. He turned in the saddle to bark a command at his men. The babu gave the engine all the gas he dared, and above the din of that — above the mob- yell — sudden as a thunder-clap — a volley from a hundred rifles ripped into the air above the crowd’s heads. Then the gods got busy.

  “Thought so!” said the babu.

  Down came the rain. It was as if the bullets had shattered a firmament. A deluge, driven by a gusty wind, smote slanting in the faces of the crowd and scattered them as if their angry gods had opened on them with artillery. The lightning sizzled through the rain. It thundered. And in sixty seconds one whole company of drenched, but relieved and scornful sepoys stared across a streaming pavement at a solitary, flat-tired, battered Ford that skidded crazily towards them, honking for the gate to open.

  “Quick! Am I a fish?” Chullunder Ghose asked.

  The commanding officer, proud on his high horse, but peevish because the rain was pouring down his neck and chilling his spinal column, rammed his saber back into the scabbard and motioned the babu away with the flat of his hand. He ignored Copeland. To explain about that volley would be trouble enough without adding to it by an altercation with a foreigner.

  “I bring a doctor for His Highness,” said the babu.

  “I know nothing of an illness.”

  “Does the Rajah have to ask you for permission to be sick?” Chullunder Ghose retorted. “Do you think your haughty ignorance will save him from a death- bed?”

  “Go away, I tell you.”

  “Very well then, stick that saber into me and take the consequences! Or command a volley! One more like the last one should improve the Rajah’s headache! It should sweeten His Highness’ temper!”

  “Where is your authority?”

  “Where yours is — under a wet towel in the Rajah’s bedroom! And the towel will catch fire unless they change it very frequently! Already I am late. But I would rather be me than you when I have told who kept me waiting!”

  The commanding officer decided, ungraciously, on a middle course. He faced about and ordered two men to mount the running-boards and go with the Ford to the front door.

  “Then, if they are not admitted, bring them back to me and I will show them the guard-room door from the inside.”

  The gate swung open and Chullunder Ghose drove honking round the drive to the pretentious portico, where insolent retainers lolled in heavy overcoats and scowled at such an insult as a Ford car.

  “Tradesmen to the back door!”

  The sepoy escort took their cue and ordered the babu to drive on. But he stopped the engine and was out on the palace steps too quickly for them.

  “Idiots! Did you hear that shooting? I am from the Residency. Go and tell His Highness that unless he sees me instantly a telegram will be sent to British-India for troops to quell the insurrection!”

  Even palace flunkies understood the dire significance of that threat. The arrival of a single company of British infantry would mean political extinction as a State — and that would mean the end of perquisites. Another differently sordid crew of bureaucratic thieves would govern. So a man fled up- steps and the babu followed, placidly ignoring the command to wait. He followed through the front door; he was too heavy and powerful for the attendant to slam it shut in his face.

  “You forgot me!” he said with a grin. “I am the broker, not the moneylender! Kiss yourself on both cheeks with the compliments of Mother Kali!”

  But the impetus of impudence was almost spent by that time, and they kept him waiting in the hall. He gave his name to the attendant. Three inhospitable looking stalwarts stood and glowered at him, while another vanished to inform the Rajah who it was that dared to crave an audience. Their ominous scowling made the babu nervous; he was suffering reaction from his own enthusiasm, and the longer he waited the worse he became — until the chimes of a grandfather clock nearly startled him out of his skin. It was high noon. He compared the time by his wrist-watch — set the wrist-watch.

  “Mid-day — mid-monsoon — in media res — we lay our bets — fortuna insolente ludit — God proposes, man forgets — and then calamitas intrudit! — I forget my Latin. What the devil else have I forgotten? Oh yes — that the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb — let us hope so. Let us hope, too, that the scissors shear well!”

  Suddenly and very rudely he was beckoned to the Rajah’s presence by a man whose servile nature parroted his master’s mood. He even parroted the silence — imitated the sneer and the nod of the autocratic head that had assented to the babu being haled into the presence. Down a corridor as gloomy as a morgue, with mildewed tapestry, the babu followed the attendant to a room that the Rajah described as his office. It was very plainly furnished and reserved for visitors whose social standing was of much less note than their importance. On the wall that faced the plain oak desk there was a portrait of Queen Victoria, bearing her autograph. It had been made in one of her less amiable moments, and a small crown, at a saucy angle, indicated that she knew her onions, although she might have been offended at the phrase.

  “You swag-bellied scoundrel! What do you want of me?” the Rajah asked.

  “Magnificence, I need an elephant.” With his hands to his forehead, the babu bowed as meekly as a tradesman asking ten times what a jewel for the last new favorite was worth.

  The Rajah struck the desk. “May devils with a set of jaws at both ends bite you in the liver,” he exploded. “If I had a thousand elephants, you shouldn’t have one.”

  “But the thousand-and-first? I beg the Presence to begin to count at that end.”

  “I will gladly count a dozen that shall tread you into food for rats, if you will only go and lie down in the mud where you belong!”

  “But if the priests should let me have an elephant—”

  “Pah! Try them!”

  “I should need to persuade them, no doubt, by informing them of what I know.”

  “Eh? What? You rotten spy! And what do you propose to tell them?”

  “It would need to be something serious,” said the babu, “since they know so much already. All I need is just one elephant, for one week—”

  “Week? You raging imbecile! I tell you, not for one hour!”

  The Rajah opened the middle drawer of the desk. He drew out a revolver, a little beauty, all mother-of-pearl and nickel-plate. Then he rested his elbow on the desk and covered the babu, glaring at him.

  “Now them Tell me why you’re here, and what you think you know, or go out down the main drain!”

  “Did the main drain swallow Syed-Suraj? I am sure Your Highness would have shot me first thing, if it were not risky. Did the main drain swallow all Your Highness’ slightly rash remarks about the British? It is said that others than the priests have overheard them. It is said, too, that Your Highness’ cousin’s health is—”

  With the butt of the revolver on the desk the Rajah dinned him into silen
ce.

  “They accuse me, do they? And is that what brought you to Kutchdullub? You abominable traitor, are, you sent to inform against me, and to find an excuse for getting rid of me in order to enthrone my cousin?”

  “Is the Presence dreaming?” asked the babu.

  “Tell me why you want that elephant.”

  “To save your Honor’s honor!”

  “What the devil — ?”

  “If the Presence will believe a desperately hurried babu, I am sent to do the diametrically opposite of what the Presence honors me by hinting that I might be trusted to attempt! A little meditation might convince Your Highness that the British Raj, if it should wish to bring about your abdication, would hardly entrust that task to such a person as myself.”

  “You lie, you fat hog!”

  “If I should reveal a secret, will the Presence not betray me?”

  “I will blow your brains out, unless you tell me all you know, you viper!”

  “Then I must tell. You are murdering your cousin. You have murdered Syed- Suraj. By refusing to destroy a tiger you have murdered many of your subjects, for the sake of making a dilemma for the priests. I am afraid that you have sent my good friend Hawkesey to his death. And you have tried to murder me. But I am sent to save a scandal.”

  The Rajah grinned. “And you propose to do it? How?” He tapped the desk with the revolver.

  “I intend to send a doctor to your cousin. That is why I need an elephant.”

  “And — ?”

  “As Your Highness shrewdly said, I am a viper. I forgive the attempt to have me murdered—”

  “Do you? You slew one of my men!” said the Rajah. “It was no doubt you who told a villager to say a priest had done it. You shall hang for that as surely as I sit here!”

  “But unless you promise me,” the babu went on, pointing an accusing finger, “and unless you keep the promise, to attempt to save the life of my friend Hawkesey—”