by Talbot Mundy
“How long have you been sleeping, Hawkesey?”
Hawkes sat up, gripping his rifle. Seconds passed before he recognized Chullunder Ghose. The babu sat six paces off, facing the temple but camouflaged by tree-stumps and a bunch of tall grass. Hawkes yawned.
“Thought you’d gone and lost yourself,” he answered. “It’s a pity you didn’t. Things look enough like hell to pay, without your adding to ’em!”
“Tell me.”
“The Rajah’s drunk. He was afraid to cross the river, though he’s generally bull-rash when the liquor’s in him. Damned if I think he’d ha’ crossed if he weren’t so bent on shooting you. He hates you worse than he does his cousin. I’m next. I’d ha’ betted a hundred dibs he’d try to shoot me when I told him what you said to tell him.”
“Where is he?”
“Yonder by the elephants. There’s seven servants with him, not including the mahouts. It takes two of ’em to keep the champagne iced and ready for His Highness; and at that he never offered me a drink, the stinker — not even when I took an elephant and three men, crossed the river to the village, stole a rope and made a raft o’ goatskins, sent that over on the elephant, and towed him across — in the dark, mind! He’s as drunk as two coots. Killing drunk. His eyes ‘ud burn a hole in sheet-iron. I came over here to be out o’ harm’s way. I don’t want to have to shoot him — not even in self-defense. I’d sooner hook it.”
“Stand by, Hawkesey!” said the babu. “I am needing all the courage I can beg or borrow!”
“What’s up?”
“I have brought the Rajah’s cousin! I have also brought the doctor from Madras who has been poisoning the Prince! I have him tied into a howdah, between Doctor Copeland—”
“Who’s he?”
“U.S.A. You saw him and you drank his whisky. He is pukka. Between Doctor Copeland and a servant who would give both eyes for leave to torture him to death; but I have other uses for the doctor from Madras.”
“You’d better use him quick,” said Hawkes. “It’s getting daylight, and the Rajah’s up to dirt o’ some sort. Give him about one more quart o’ champagne and then watch him!”
“Is the woman in the temple?”
“Lord knows.”
“Have you seen F.9?”
“No.”
“He has seen us,” said the babu. “He has set a signal.”
“Which? Where is it?”
The babu pointed to a red rag hanging from the limb of a tree amid the temple ruins. “That means he has seen us and that the tiger is in there.”
“There are two of ’em,” Hawkes answered. “One’s a female. She’s behind bars.”
“No, she isn’t,” said the babu. “F.9 had his orders. If there was a way of letting out that tigress he has done it.”
“How did you know about a tigress?” Hawkes asked sulkily. “You sent me to discover how they—”
“I could not imagine any other way of getting a loose tiger to return home after killing somebody, Hawkesey. So I told F.9 to look for one, and, if she happened to be caged, to loose her.”
“Why? Which are you — drunk or off your nut, you fat fool?”
“Listen, Hawkesey. I have done a good job. It is too long to explain in detail, but by choosing a critical moment to spring a surprise, and by dint of impudence and luck and argument as forceful as a ton of T.N.T., I have convinced a pious and perfectly harmless Prince that it is up to him to assert himself. And Doctor Copeland has inserted ginger into him in little capsules. He must act, however, before lethargy sets in again, or he will think he has an ulcer in the stomach and must lie down.”
“What’s the program?” Hawkes asked.
“I have told him he must shoot that tiger, since the Rajah has refused to do it. He is ritually clean, and therefore he can go into the temple without involving himself in a charge of sacrilege. And after he has seen what he has seen, he will be able to compel the priests of Kali to behave, for fear of an exposure of their goings-on. And the Rajah will follow him into the temple. I will be there. And the doctor from Madras will be there. F.9, F.15 and F.11 will be there also. That’s all.”
“Don’t you kid yourself!” Hawkes answered. “That’s not half of it! There’s Major Eustace Smith across the river, boils and all! There’s him and Ram Dass. Ram Dass hired an elephant and brought him, and they’re both afraid to cross the river. So they’re setting there, top o’ the elephant, afraid to wet their feet and cracking on like two old cronies. Smith’s as mad as a man with corns in tight boots. No doubt Ram Dass likes to see him that way.”
Suddenly the babu beat his head and breast and struck clenched fists together.
“Dammit, Hawkesey! Why did I up-shoot Ganesha? Listen! Bear me witness. I will give the god Ganesha, for his temple in Benares, rupees fifty to convert this into good luck! Does the Rajah know about this?”
“Not he. You remember sending me a note about a villager you wanted me to take home on the elephant? I took him, but it seems he returned to Kutchdullub, on the same elephant, after its damned mahout rode off and left me. He fell foul of the police in some way; they arrested him and gave him hell. But he escaped ’em somehow and ran to the Residency, where he found Ram Dass and told him a long yarn about you being gone on an elephant to find me and look for treasure in this here temple. Can you beat it? Smith was furious and fetched the villager along, so’s to be able to prove to the Rajah that you and I are behaving without any orders from him. And Ram Dass came along to make sure Smith pays for the elephant.”
“Who told you, Hawkesey?”
“He — the villager himself. He swam the river, and he found me. He’s as proud of what he told ’em as a dog with two tails. Now he’s in the temple.”
“Did he say why?”
“Yes. It’s you he’s looking for. He says he knows you’re in there.”
“Did he say why he wants me?”
“Yes. He said he’d saved your life a time or two, and if he saves it again, perhaps you’ll hire him permanent.”
Chullunder Ghose sighed. “Oh, well, there are always difficulties! This was too good to last. I should have known that villager would get into the wheels and ditch the train!”
“Tiger may kill him,” said Hawkes.
“I hope so! Oh, I hope so! Hawkesey, the Rajah is not so very drunk. I see him.”
“He is so drunk that he’s icy-sober,” Hawkes insisted. “See him? He walks like a man in a dream. And he’s alone; he’s left his servants! Know what? I believe he thinks the Prince is in there, and he wants no witnesses! He’s killing-crazy, that’s what he is!”
“And he has no rifle with him,” said the babu.
“Automatics — two of ’em — in holsters,” Hawkes answered. “He knows he’s no good with a rifle.”
“How does he know the way in, Hawkesey?”
“Hell, I told him! I got sick of lying, so I told him good and plain I’d been inside. He made me tell him ten times how to find the hole that I went in by. You can see it from here; you can see where my smoke blackened up the stonework. Can he see your elephants?”
“He isn’t looking,” said the babu. “Hawkesey, do you know another entrance? Which way does the tiger take?”
“Do you mistake me for a blinkin’ lunatic?” Hawkes asked him. “Do you think I asked the tiger? There’s a tunnel that he uses; Smarty F.9 maybe took a chance and—”
“Blocked it!” said a thin voice, so near in the knee-high grass that Hawkes turned two shades paler. He looked haggard, anyhow, unshaven and with dark rings under his eyes. But the babu sat unmoved. He did not even turn his head when F.9’s spectacles appeared through parted grass.
“I have been waiting for you,” he said. “You are almost too late.”
“Time enough,” said F.9. “I have blocked the tunnel to keep that tiger in. And I have loosed the tigress; it was possible to raise a stone bar from above by climbing carefully along a cornice. Now they are both in the pit in the midst, and th
ey are raging thirsty. The tunnel mouth is only blocked with stones and branches, so they may escape unless you set a gun there.”
“Any other way in?” asked the babu.
“Yes; the way that I came.”
“Where are F.15 and F.11?”
“Shadowing the Rajah. Acting holy. Waiting to betray to him the passages — in silence. They are supposed to be under a vow of silence.”
“Safe stuff, silence, always,” said the babu. “Let us hope he doesn’t shoot them for it! There he goes now. He has gone in. Quick, come with me! Come on, Hawkesey!”
Several minutes later Hawkes and the babu posted Copeland on a big rock that commanded, at a range of less than fifty yards, a tunnel entrance on the far side of the temple from the hole that Hawkes knew. It was partly choked by fallen masonry, and the remaining space was jammed with branches.
“It’s a bad light,” Hawkes said, “and a tiger comes quick as a punch in the eye. So don’t wait. Plug him if you see a tuft o’ hair between those sticks. He’ll bust through there as sure as Christmas. Five shots to your magazine? Good. Give him all of ’em, and then reload quick — same as if you was seeing a girl home in Chicago and the bandits asking for your small change.”
“I have kept my promise,” said the babu. “I have given you a chance at tiger, Doctor sahib. It is up to you to kill him! Come on, Hawkesey, let us put our Prince into a hat and see what comes out! Too bad there is not an audience. I love an audience when tricks click!”
“Cheese it! Take me for a clown like you are?” Hawkes retorted. “Me, I’m out o’ bounds and acting foolish. What’s more, I can’t keep my eyes open, let alone shoot! If we come out o’ this alive — oh, hell — come on, let’s get it over with!”
CHAPTER 24. “Simple! Since they wished it, why not?”
F.9 led. Hawkes followed him, for no especial reason except that he might get a chance to retaliate for F.9’s cheek, as he regarded it. Next came the Prince’s servant, on the watch for snakes and fussily suspicious of the entire proceedings. Then the Prince, with a repeating rifle that he fingered with an air of knowing how to use it; but he looked as if he felt the effort was beneath his dignity, and he walked as if he felt too fragile to exert himself much. Chullunder Ghose came next, unarmed, untidy, corpulent, unshaven, weary- looking, but sturdily strutting his weight on huge thighs. He was wearing his loin-cloth tucked up, workmanlike. And he was talkative, perhaps to keep himself awake, but every word was aimed directly at the Prince’s lethargy or at the pale mood of the doctor from Madras, who walked beside him. The Madrasi spoke once:
“If I should run, and were shot as I run, would that not save trouble for us all?”
“I am not your executioner,” the babu answered. “I am not your judge, and I am not the jury. I arrange the pieces for the gods to play with. I have set there quite a puzzle, and I think I know the answer. But it may end by your being Rajah of Kutchdullub! Who knows?”
“Bargain with me. I will give you evidence against the Rajah.”
“Bargain with the gods,” the babu answered. “Priests will tell you the price.”
To the Prince he was a calculating irritant. He lectured him as if they were a small boy and a master of a sternly managed truant school.
“The modern state of mass-intelligence does call for figureheads on thrones, no doubt of it. But a king is a king, and dignity is not attained by being hypnotized into a death-bed. What is the use of morals, if you let a drunken blackguard get away with murder? You are like a rabbit that waits for a weasel to bleed it to death because it knows a weasel does that sort of thing. You can’t help having royal blood in you, but you can make the best of it.”
The Prince kept silence, although his eyes glowed with anger. He showed no nervousness when F.9 led them into what had formerly been cloistered passages and now were trash-encumbered channels leading between broken walls. There was a practicable footpath, winding amid roots and debris — only room for single file, and the babu made the Madrasi walk ahead of him. There began to be broken arches — sections of unfallen roof — until at last F.9 pulled out a lighted lantern from behind a fallen statue. Then he scrambled, almost like a hairless monkey, up a pile of fallen masonry into a dark hole in a thick wall. There Prince Jihangupta hesitated and his servant tried to make him turn back, but the babu mocked and Hawkes said, “Maybe he’s forgotten his galoshes.” So the Prince found unsuspected energy and went up like a front-rank man into a breached fort.
Then there were interminable passages, and no one spoke because the echo of their footsteps was a solemn, horrifying noise that made the blood run cold. It sounded like the voices of the shadows put to flight by F.9’s lantern. And the bats were like dead men’s memories of evil, wakened for a moment’s panic by a light that broke on peaceless dreams. There was an acrid stench of bat-dirt and then, presently, pervading it and blending with it, the appalling reek of rotting bones and tigers’ ordure. But at last a row of clean cells, doorless, in a carved wall representing Kali’s orgies of annihilation; and another lantern; and the saffron smocks of F.15 and F.11 dimly looming in a broken archway at the far end of the passage.
F.9 spoke to them in whispers that went murmuring away into the silence like the rumble of muffled wheels. Then he beckoned. Chullunder Ghose shoved the Madrasi in front of him, pushed past the other three and joined the conference. The sweat of fear was dripping from him, but he governed his voice and himself, not trembling. The Madrasi, too, was either proof against hysteria or else beyond it, numb-brave as a gallows-passenger to unknown regions, on his last march.
“Soonya?” asked the babu, making almost no sound; but the echo of it multiplied itself in hollow darkness and an underworld said “Soony-oony-oony,” as if secret messengers were calling her from her forgotten tomb.
“Soonya saw him—”
“Saw him, saw him,” said the echo.
“ — and she ran and summoned all her holy candidates for death. They tried to terrify him, but we hid him in the chamber where we hid Hawkes. And he is hokeema mut; the liquor crazes him and he is unafraid. He seeks his cousin. He will slay his cousin. He will throw him to the tigers.”
Chullunder Ghose lost patience. “Never mind that. Tell me what happened.”
“Came the noises you made, and they echo like tramping of armies all converging on a center. There is no guessing whence a sound comes. Soonya cried out that the Rajah’s men are here to stop the sacrifice and make an end of Kali’s mercy, and she summoned them to bring their little lamps while there is yet time. Then the Rajah threatened us with pistols, so we let him go forth. He is wandering in darkness.”
“Hurry! Lead us to Soonya’s charnel-house!” the babu ordered.
They were swift, and the noise of their feet was a tumult as loud as the quarreling roar of a torrent that vanishes into a mountain. Shadows fled before them in enormous frog-leaps, until, rosy-red on masonry, a torch-flare lit the darkness as they turned an angle. In a moment then they pressed on one another’s heels into a stinging tiger-stench and stood grouped on a platform whence the broken gallery projected over one-third of the circumference of Soonya’s dreadful pit.
There was a row of little lamps along the gallery. A row of ghosts — ghouls — vultures — sat between them. Perched on her pillar of marble, Soonya stood brandishing a flaring torch and shaking sparks into the pit, where four eyes glittered opal-colored in the coal-hole darkness. Soonya screamed. The row of little lamps went out as suddenly as if her scream had switched them, and she flung her torch into the pit. It spiraled, blazing red and yellow, and she followed it, spread like a home-coming Harpy embracing a spirit of hell in her shadowy arms.
Then, one by one, as frogs seek water when a footstep startles them, the owners of the clay lamps sprang into the dark pit. There was one scream — then a sound of struggle amid dry bones and the snarl of tigers. The Madrasi said the first word: “Simple! Since they wished it, why not?”
Hawkes clicked his pocket
flashlight, swearing: “Just my cursed luck! It’s played out, dammit!” F.9 swung a lantern over darkness, but it made no depth of light; it seemed to set a yellow halo swimming on a sea of black pitch; and beneath that there was growling horror.
Suddenly F.15 and F.9 raised their lanterns and a pale light framed the broken entrance-gap. It shone on an English shooting-jacket — and a pair of nickel-plated automatics held in lean hands — and on the dark eyes and the self-admiring, sly smile of the Rajah of Kutchdullub.
“Caught you!” he remarked. His eyes were on the babu and he aimed both pistols at him. “Dog of a meddlesome Bengal rice-rat!”
“My turn!” said the babu. “Oh, well.”
F.15 and F.11 drew away their lanterns. F.9 smothered his in something. But there was light enough still. The Rajah lingered on his aim, enjoying the amazement on the babu’s face, not guessing why the babu stood so still and breathless. Suddenly a slim black shadow flicked out from the darkness at the Rajah’s back. It bunted him off balance, snatched both pistols from his hands and sent them spinning down into the dark pit. Naked — grinning — confident — the villager, a broken handcuff on his right wrist, stepped up and saluted the babu like impudence addressing dignity.
“So now I am your honor’s friend again!”
Chullunder Ghose thrust him aside; he had no time for pleasantries. The Rajah’s cousin was in shadow behind Hawkes and F.9; now the villager’s black body added one more to the protecting screen. The Rajah tried to step back through the opening, but F.15 and F.11 stepped behind him and prevented. He made rather a brave figure of a man, at bay with folded arms. The babu pushed the doctor from Madras towards him.
“Your turn!”
“Well, well!” said the Rajah.
The Madrasi seemed as unemotional as ice. His attitude was almost casual, his voice as calm as if he passed a good check through a banker’s window.
“We are found out.”