by Talbot Mundy
A quarter of a mile away, the English officer who had approached the clump of bushes was waving his arm and shouting to the others.
“What is he shouting?” asked Deborah.
“Tiger!” said Rundhia Singh off-handedly. “There were two within fifty yards of us. That was why the ponies bolted.”
“Let’s go and see!” she exclaimed. “We can catch the ponies afterward.”
“Tigers don’t wait to be looked at, or shot,” he answered. “They’re already a mile away. There go the ponies. Let’s gallop.”
He spurred, and without much caring what she did she followed until he reined to a walk at the beginning of a bridle-path with a deep ravine on one hand and a steep cliff on the other. It led toward Deulwara. Sacred monkeys swarmed on the cliff, which was much too steep for ponies to find footing; and the side of the ravine was almost sheer, with no path leading downward. In the distance up the bridle-path the ponies they were after nibbled at low bushes.
“Now if we don’t scare them we can overtake them,” said Rundhia Singh. “Ride slowly and pretend to take no notice, as if we meant to pass them by.”
So side by side again they dawdled up the path toward where the sun shone white on temple roofs amid a solitude of green and granite splendor.
“You remarked those are not your friends,” said Rundhia Singh. “Nor are they mine, although I have to treat them civilly. You, who can choose your friends, why don’t you act sensibly and learn something about Rajputana in the only way it can be done? None tries to cultivate our friendship, though I don’t know why not.”
“You are said to be so unapproachable,” said Deborah.
“Try. Try me, for instance — you and your father,” he added. “There is nothing in Rajputana that I can’t show you, from sport to mischief, from entertainment to — opportunity.”
At the word opportunity he looked sharply at her and their glances met.
“Why are you here?” he asked suddenly.
She began to tell him of her father’s slavery to business and her own determination to pry him loose from it, but checked herself, discovering she was wasting words. The prince was not interested; his expression almost resembled her father’s listening to a salesman from whom he had decided not to buy.
“Is it any of your affair?” she asked. “You Indians don’t like it if we pry into your zenanas. I know, because I tried it at Ahmednuggar. Yet you ask the most impudent questions and expect us to answer politely.”
“You can lie as well as we can,” he retorted. “I will tell you why I asked. There is a man named John Duncannon, an American—”
He stopped because he saw he had surprised her. She was visibly rattled, and annoyed because she could not conceal it. She wanted to know where John Duncannon was, yet bit her lip to keep herself from asking. There was a long pause, while she tried to appear interested in the sacred monkeys that sat scratching themselves on ledges, peering down at them.
“John Duncannon has engaged the services of a notoriously disreputable Bengali babu, who will swindle him until he yells for help,” said Rundhia Singh.
Deborah smiled at that. The imaginary spectacle of John Duncannon squealing tickled her sense of humor even more than it disturbed her to learn that he was in India.
“He can probably look out for himself,” she answered.
“He is looking out for something,” said the prince. “He forced his way into a temple recently, after shooting a sacred tiger. He had the good fortune to offend an individual who, on principle, refrains from taking life.”
“Just like his luck!” remarked Deborah. Then she wished she had not said it.
“Oh, you know him?” The prince’s eyes were aglow again with a look of sulky mystery. “Well, he is looking for oil.” He watched Deborah’s face narrowly, paused, and went on: “What is more, he is on the track of it.”
She could control her facial expression perfectly when men made love to her, but she was not yet old enough to have learned the trick of hiding business emotions. Rundhia Singh smiled to himself and raised his hand, pretending to conceal the smile, compelling her attention to it.
“You had better warn your father he will be forestalled, unless—”
“You leave my father out of it!” she answered. “This is my wild goose chase. If Dad knew John Duncannon was — But how did you learn? What made you think we are interested in oil?”
“I have ways of learning things,” said Rundhia Singh.
“Oh, I know. Of course. You overheard what I said at lunch to Mr. Galloway. My fault. I shouldn’t have talked so loud. Well, I admit it. What then? Any of your business?”
“Naturally, since the oil is in my country. It is in the territory over which I shall be ruler very soon.”
“Oh! You know where it is?”
The prince did not answer that. She repeated the question. He evaded it with another:
“You say if your father knew John Duncannon is on the same trail — what then?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“He would pull out.”
“Why?” the prince asked her, looking puzzled.
“I don’t see what it has to do with you,” she answered, “but I’ll tell you, if only to prove to you that it isn’t only white people who are too inquisitive! John Duncannon wants to marry me. Dad thinks John is a wonder. If he knew John was on the same trail as we are, he would pull out and leave him a clear field, just to prove what a winner John is.”
“But if John Duncannon failed?”
“Dad wouldn’t care. You can’t prove anything to Dad by argument unless the argument agrees with his. If John pulled it off, Dad would say, ‘Told you so, told you so! The sun of a gun can do things!’ And if he failed he’d say, ‘Never you mind; you watch him. He didn’t have a fair chance that time.’ Dad plays hunches. If he likes a man he goes the limit.”
Rundhia Singh appeared to turn that information over in his mind. For several minutes the only noticeable sounds were the ponies’ footfalls, the occasional sharp cry of birds, the drone of insects, and the chattering of sacred monkeys on the cliff-side.
“I suppose now you’re thinking of helping John Duncannon,” Deborah said at last, in a voice of disgust. “You know where the oil is and you’ll tip him off to it. Is that right?”
Rundhia Singh smiled.
“No. They say he hasn’t any money. Neither have I; I am kept poor by the British Government.”
“You mean they won’t let you tax the peasantry to death,” suggested Deborah.
“When my father dies — soon — I shall inherit all his debts,” said Rundhia Singh. “But I also have inherited ambition and a brain that seems to have skipped his generation. The existence of oil is a secret. What if I know the secret? What would your father say to that?”
“He’d say, ‘Show me!’ What did you suppose he’d say?”
Rundhia Singh drew rein. They were very near the runaways, which were nibbling shoots and watching them, apparently inclined to let themselves be caught. But he appeared not to be considering the ponies; he was staring into vacancy. Deborah, halting beside him, followed the direction of his gaze, trying to make out what might have arrested his attention and, seeing nothing, looked around her. There was nothing specially interesting, except the walls of the Deulwara Temples, still too far away ahead for detailed study.
Nearby, perhaps a hundred feet away, an old man squatted on a rock. She was rather surprised he did not come and beg. He looked just like a beggar — long, straggling white hair and beard, naked to the waist, and below that only a dirty sort of apron; lightly and yet muscularly built and not so dark-skinned as the ordinary run of natives thereabouts. She decided after the third or fourth glance at him that he was probably a temple pilgrim meditating on the totally uninteresting subject of how to attain virtue by doing nothing.
She could not imagine a man wanting not to do things. Action, life, accomplishment were three words that for her had almost identical
meaning. But she felt a sudden wave of compassion for the old man, half-imagined him a widower who possibly had seen a life’s work crumble into ruin or a home sold over his head by a money-lender. No doubt he had excuse for hopelessness in this world, and a contemplative curiosity about the next.
“But it makes me mad that they won’t do anything!” she told herself. “They could raise hell for the British and be independent if they’d only wake up! Now if that old bird had sense he’d go and drive the ponies down the path toward us—”
The thought had hardly crossed her mind before the ponies came, of their own accord apparently. Certainly that old man had not moved. They came confidently and stood still to be caught, she taking charge of one and Rundhia Singh the other; and when Deborah had finished knotting up a broken rein and they turned to ride back by the way they had come, the old pilgrim had vanished. She intended to wave her hand at him and to toss him a coin if he had ventured near enough, but he seemed to have dissolved. Had she imagined him?
The prince’s voice startled her out of a reverie. Her quiet mood was caused, she supposed, by her having had no breakfast yet.
“There are ways of discouraging John Duncannon,” he said abruptly.
Deborah glanced at him. The expression on his face was nothing to arouse Western admiration. It was cunning and cock-sure, with a decided hint of malice.
“He can be made to go away,” he added, staring straight ahead along the path.
Deborah bridled at that. John Duncannon was her countryman.
“I’ll bet you can’t make John do anything he doesn’t want to,” she retorted.
“He can be made to want to go away, or else to regret not wanting to,” said Rundhia Singh. “He can be made to go before your father learns he has ever been here.”
“Here?” she asked. “Here in Mount Abu? Is he here now?”
Rundhia Singh nodded.
“Damn!” said Deborah.
As they trotted around a bend in the path, with the captured ponies crowding them, they were greeted from a quarter mile off by the group of British officers who had obtained remounts and were cantering to join in the round-up. Rundhia Singh swore under his breath.
“Now we shall no longer be able to talk secrets,” he said, drawing rein to gain time. “You must tell your father I will show him oil and he must make an agreement with me. You may depend on me to get rid of John Duncannon—”
“Get rid of him?” asked Deborah.
“Yes, get rid of him! He’s in the way! You tell your father I will call. And above all say nothing to Galloway.”
Deborah did not answer. She resented the tone of voice he used and did not like the hint of danger to Duncannon. She supposed this heir to an ancient throne would hardly dare to use violence, and yet — She glanced at him again keenly.
“Remember not to say a word to Galloway!” he insisted between his teeth, lips hardly moving, as the officers cantered up, all pleasant voices, laughter and good-natured chaff about the captured ponies.
“Tigers!” they said. “Two big ones! Stood there looking at us — scared us worse than they did the ponies! Can’t get a tracker to follow them. Natives all say they belong to the Gnani of Erinpura. Pity the old boy can’t keep his cats at home — he’ll lose them one of these fine mornings!”
CHAPTER VI. The Grounds of the Kaiser-i-Hind Hotel
Moonlight shimmered on a spectral mountain. From a pond came the resounding chorus of innumerable frogs. Bats flitted silently, and in the distance a night-watchman cried, “Siva Namashkar, tisra gentra mara!” On a hill-top loomed the squat, two-storied central building of the Kaiser-i-Hind Hotel, and below it, by the side of a ravine, were the shadowy shapes of the bungalows connected with it by winding paths. There were voices, laughter and the strains of music coming through the lamp-lit hotel windows, and the shadowy shapes of turbaned servants moved at intervals along the wide veranda.
By the hotel gate there stood a pony, with a sais squatting patiently under his nose. Not far within the wall, where a granite rock cast its shadow toward a clump of trees, Chullunder Ghose sat squatting like a great fat image of the Buddha, scratching his stomach now and then, but with his attention fixed on Deborah, in boots and riding-breeches, seated on a low projection of the rock, her back against it and both hands clasped around her knee.
“Yes, Missy sahib,” said the babu with a fat sigh that appeared to well up from the deeps of his stomach, “according to English poet no man is good enough to be another’s master; yet am nevertheless not independent; have accepted service under John Duncannon sahib. Must eat. Must support wife and family, Almighty God having enough to do to feed fakirs with abstract and, I think, indigestible spirituality. Verb. sap.”
“Can you hold your tongue?” asked Deborah.
“Missy sahib, am adherent of Napoleonic heresy, maintaining that every man has his specific price, same varying in proportion to voracity and services required. For nothing much, a very high price. For dangerous act of consequential self-sacrifice, extremely low price. Can do anything for which am paid.”
“You know my name?”
“Yes, Missy sahib. Also renowned name of tr-r-rillionaire papa, at mere mention of whose opulence this babu trembles.”
“You are not to tell Mr. Duncannon you have seen me or have spoken to me. Do you understand?”
“At suitable remuneration, each per understanding, yes,” agreed Chullunder Ghose.
“How much does Mr. John Duncannon pay you?”
“Stupendously — in dreams. Such dreams as most material emotions mock! Like fifty-fifty shyster lawyer on contingency impossible to win, this babu looks to chance emolument to offset sadness of inevitable anticlimax. All is grist to this mill, Missy sahib.”
“Do you mean you think you won’t get paid?”
“Am sure of it! Am non-Pythagorean predeterminist, discerning neck-or-nothing end of mare’s nest. Am to be remunerated on a basis of results. Preascertainable certainty of such results being nothing, plus unprofitable clash with obsolete religious prejudices and exasperated government officials, this babu will bet. Put up your money!”
“Then why do you work for him, if you feel so sure he can’t get what he’s after?”
“Because, Missy sahib, to be or not to be is not the question. Not in this instance. Am not Hamlet. Am impoverished babu employing exquisite quintessence of discretion in performance of slack-rope balance act, starvation yawning underneath. Big belly, bad luck, wife and family, unjustified but notorious blemishes on reputation — consequent lack of what is ridiculously known as steady job, job-holder having to be steady, whereas job is insecure! Like Hagar in Biblical landscape, this homeless babu prayed for succor and beheld Daniel in the lions’ den, sahib among scorpions. Did immediate beneficence, relieving headache, constipation, bad breath, fever and high blood pressure by means of unpatented but potent remedies. Was offered there and then fiduciary standing with the firm, expenses paid. Accepted gratefully. As honorable babu am committed to meager pilferings from petty cash until disaster intervenes, as usual, to turn me loose again in search of fortune.”
“It was of disaster that I wished to speak to you,” said Deborah. “I mean, of the risk of it.”
“Spare me!” exclaimed Chullunder Ghose. “This miserable babu is too familiar with disaster, which invariably comes to him who waits! Have tried not waiting for it, with identical result! Am it! Am physical expression of disaster, personally. What can I do for you?”
“This,” said Deborah. “Take care of John Duncannnon.”
“Krishna! Who can take care of a sahib who thinks that a forbidden precinct is an opportunity? Who believes a Gnani is a kind of fakir or a side-show conjurer! Who likes horses that have what he calls ‘pep’ in them, and believes that Pittsburgh is Elysium where God lives. Who shoots tigers on foot, and alone, never previously having seen them out of cages; and who when he is told said tiger was protected for religious reasons, asks where the protection came
in! Take care of him? Lords of Destiny, preserve this babu!”
“Has he a map?” asked Deborah.
But the babu was not to be tricked into betraying information quite so easily as that.
“He has three degrees of fever,” he replied and folded both hands over his stomach.
“Well, look here,” said Deborah, “I’ll be perfectly frank with you. I’m after oil, and I know he is. I know, too, that somebody else knows he is after oil, some one who is powerful and treacherous—”
“Must be police!” remarked Chullunder Ghose.
“Somebody who might stop at nothing—”
She hesitated but the babu egged her on, well knowing that the way to make a woman tell the truth is to suggest the untruth for her to contradict. The worse nonsense the better.
“Perfect frankness!” he remarked. “Tr-r-rillionaire father sahib from New York, U.S.A.! Yes. Stop at nothing, certainly. Verb. sap.”
“Some one might poison him. Some one who might possibly try to make use of you to poison him.”
“Sahiba! This babu’s reputation rooted in dishonor stands, but even so, that is too much! You discredit my imagination! Have been in U.S.A. United States. Was parked in inconvenient and badly ventilated cell during part of time, during which read many newspapers. Am quite conversant with uncivilized, not to say barbarian and anarchistic attitude of general public. All being kings by divine right, as per constitution, are above law, having made same for the other fellow, not themselves.
“This babu does not believe that American, U.S.A., tr-r-rillionaire would try to poison John Duncannon sahib. Nay, nay, Missy sahib! Am specimen of homo sapiens — incredulous yet constant optimist, experienced in idiotic vagaries of human mind. Am very anxious to make squeeze hit and achieve fortune at this juncture, tr-r-rillionaires being harder to find than oil, though doubtless easier to squeeze if one can only find the proper method. But if tr-r-rillionaire papa should come to this babu and offer a mere million for poisoning of John Duncannon sahib, would disbelieve him flatly. Would pinch self and try to wake up!”