Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Norwood dismounted near the horse-line, issued sharply detailed orders about the care of his horse and strode toward the tent:

  “I will send for you when I want you, Stoddart. Come here, O’Leary.”

  Norwood’s servant removed his riding boots and produced whiskey and soda. Norwood drank. O’Leary watched him drink. Norwood lighted a cigarette, smoked half of it, and then spoke to O’Leary:

  “Now then. Sit down on that box and begin. Omit the introduction. Tell the news.”

  “‘T’s bad, not good, news,” said O’Leary. “Might have got some good news if I’d had more money. Good news comes expensive oftener than not. What I’m tellin’ you now, I’d tell to Father Manoel, on bended knees, and none but him and Saint Antonio to hear me. So get it first time. If I have to say it twice over, I might get muddled. I’m drunk, on account of having had to drink cheap liquor. Seeing it was your responsibility, and none o’ mine, me being under your orders, I went gambling. Cock-fights. I lost a little money to a man who don’t know cock-fighting from puss-in-the-corner. But he’s runner for the layers of odds who’d bet you you don’t know your own name. And they’d make money doing it. But there weren’t much news there.

  “So pretty soon him and me went to a fortune-teller, who gets a rake-off from the odds layers for telling the mugs which way to bet. He knew plenty. I showed him a couple o’ tricks, and I told him some lies about you, so him and me got chummy. Then all three of us went to a house where the women can guess from way up street how much money a man has. You can’t get through the door o’ that house unless you’ve money in your pocket. But the fortune-teller had some money. It weren’t his fortunate afternoon. He paid for three. And the liquor was vile. One way and another, I learned what’s going on, and it’s that bad, I’ve betted on it.”

  “Never mind the details of your bet. Tell your story.”

  “I betted five rupees. The insiders are offering five to one that the Maharajah won’t five the week out. I betted he will.”

  “Why?”

  “If me and you weren’t on the job, I’d hedge. It was a woman told me why the odds are five to one he’ll die within a week. She was as drunk as a Bombay crow, and she told me who’s taking the five to one, same as I did, only for a different reason. I asked her, and she laughed like a hyena—”

  “Never mind what she did. What did she tell you?”

  “She didn’t tell me nothin’. She asked questions. If the Maharajah should die, who would come to the throne? Who owes a lakh of rupees and has promised to pay when he comes to the throne? Whose creditors have threatened to appeal to the British Resident? Whose aunt, being angry with him, this very day refused him money with which to pay off his creditors?”

  “That sounds like palace gossip,” said Norwood.

  “I could tell you more than that, that’s happened in the palace,” said O’Leary.

  Norwood threw his cigarette away.

  “Stick to your story,” he ordered sharply.

  “The woman,” said O’Leary, “and mind, I’m telling you, she was drunk, was teasing the fortune-teller about him being the man who sells the stuff that people die of. He hit her. They had to pull him off her. He’d ha’ killed her if they hadn’t. On our way to that house, the fortune-teller’d told me that he’d laid a nice sized bet, at even money, that the Maharajah will be dead by midnight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Before daybreak. Claimed he’d cast a horoscope that proved it. Father Manoel would strafe me fifty paternosters and a fine, if I believed a horoscope. So I betted the opposite way.”

  Norwood’s right hand went into his tunic pocket for a cigarette. He pulled out something that he had forgotten — buttered toast, wrapped in paper, that he had taken that morning from Mrs. Harding’s breakfast tray. He unwrapped it, sniffed it, turned it over and over between his fingers, without apparently giving it any thought whatever.

  “What’s that?” O’Leary asked.

  “Go on with your story.”

  “It’s a string o’ questions, not a story. When they tell you a thing in plain words, ‘tain’t true — ever. Here’s a question: if the heir to a throne should owe you money, and you’d get paid if he comes to the throne along o’ someone dying; and the odds was five to one that the someone would die within a week; wouldn’t you bet heavy against his dying, so that if he didn’t die, you’d get some money anyhow? That’s what Rundhia’s creditors are doing. If the Maharajah dies, and Rundhia comes to the throne, they’ll get paid. And if the Maharajah doesn’t die, they’ll win their bet. You get that?”

  “What else did you hear?”

  “I told you. It’s all over the bloody bazaar that the priests have bought you. They’re betting about that, too. They’re betting you’ll be broke out o’ the Army within three months, because Rundhia wants that diamond mine, and he figures breaking you will help him to get it. I took two to one, to two rupees. That’s all the money I had left.”

  “You mean, you betted I’ll be broke out of the Army?”

  “Take a look! Look good! Do I look like Moses Lafayette O’Leary? You recognize me? Drunk, yes. But crazy? I wish someone ‘ud lay me the odds that you won’t be a major inside of a year!”

  “Well, what else did you hear?”

  O’Leary stepped outside the tent. “You ain’t goin’ to like this one!”

  “Come back, you fool. Sit down. Now, tell it.”

  “Naming no names. There’s some say Rundhia has put it over on her. Some say he tried, and got left at the post. Everybody says he stopped a wallop on the snout that kept the doctor busy for a half hour. That’s all. I didn’t hear nothing else whatever. Not enough money. I spent what I had like a paymaster-general. What’s that you have in your hand?”

  “Get me a dog and we’ll find out.”

  “There ain’t no dog in camp, barring that cur of Stoddart’s. Stoddart keeps him tied up, on account o’ his having bit the cook. Stoddart don’t favor the cook, he ain’t that stupid. But if the cook gets hydrophobia, we’ll all be biting one another and—”

  “Bring the brute here.”

  “You mean the cook or Stoddart?”

  “The dog.”

  Norwood sat smoking and frowning until O’Leary came towing the dog, at the end of a length of insulated wire. It was a mean-looking brute with pale blue eyes, a vagabond slink in its gait, and an insatiable void in its belly. The sight of any kind of food excited the animal. He pricked his ears. Norwood tossed him the piece of toast. He gulped it.

  “Hold him,” said Norwood.

  The dog sat there seeming to expect Norwood to go on feeding him. Neither Norwood nor O’Leary spoke until the dog’s attention wandered and he began to strain at the leash.

  “That will do. Let him go.”

  The dog took six strides. Then he stopped, and the toast came forth like Jonah from the belly of the whale.

  “Meaning?” asked O’Leary.

  “Somebody wasn’t intended to die,” said Norwood. “Merely intended to feel too ill to interfere with someone. Can you sober up? Or shall I—”

  “I’m sober. Forget your medicine chest! Once was enough o’ that stuff! What do you want done? I’ll do it!”

  “Do you know Rundhia’s Bengali doctor?”

  “Don’t I! I know the names o’ three women who—”

  “Never mind that. I don’t want hearsay. I want first-hand information, in a hurry, about what he’s doing.”

  “So I needn’t be too particular?”

  “You will be on your absolutely best behavior.”

  “What you want is a miracle.”

  “Yes. And to produce one, if you must, you may admit that it was I who sent you to make enquiries. Get busy.”

  Chapter Twenty

  PRINCE RUNDHIA returned from his interview with the Resident charged with that mysterious sensation that can lead a genius to startling victory. He had tasted success. He had made a British Resident squirm. Rundhia had cross
ed his Rubicon. He had started something. He felt like a genius, and he looked the part now as he stepped out of his Rolls-Royce at the palace front door.

  Not even Rundhia, possessed by a rage against everything old-fashioned that stood in the way of his modern notions, would have dared to invade the women’s quarter of the palace. He did not even dare to invade the Maharanee’s boudoir. He had to sit, biting his fingernails, in an apartment that had been redecorated for Rundhia’s special use. It was at the opposite end of the corridor from the Maharanee’s apartment. Between him and the women’s reservation was a substantial gate of highly polished brass, of which the ceremonial, merely theoretically necessary key, was in the hands of a seventy-year-old servant who was nearly blind.

  The Maharanee came fussing into Lynn’s bedroom:

  “Lynn darling, Rundhia wishes to see you.”

  “Have him shown in.” Lynn glanced instinctively around the beautiful bedroom-verandah to make sure that the place was tidy. Then, before the Maharanee could speak: “Oh, I forgot. This is India, isn’t it. Well, I think I’d better not see him alone. Will you come with me?”

  “Lynn darling, I have told him I will never speak to him again until he has your complete forgiveness.”

  Lynn laughed: “All right. Come and hear me forgive him. It seems to me you’re more afraid of Rundhia than I am. Read this first: it’s a note from Aunty. Isn’t it perfect? Aunty is one of those people who never use more than ten words in a telegram.”

  The Maharanee read the note aloud:

  Refuse the Maharanee’s invitation, pack your things and come away. Deborah Harding.”

  “You will obey her?”

  “No,” Lynn answered. “I have obeyed her for the last time. May I say I have accepted your invitation?”

  “Please, Lynn. Please accept it.”

  “Very well, let’s keep Rundhia waiting, while I write her a note.”

  So Lynn wrote a note to her aunt, but she did not show it to the Maharanee:

  “Maharanee dear, I haven’t been very polite to her, so I don’t think you should see it. It wouldn’t be quite decent, would it? I mean, after all, it’s personal between her and me. Besides, I think I’ll think it over before I send it. I won’t seal the envelope yet. Let’s go and see Rundhia.”

  Lynn and the Maharanee emerged through the big brass gate and became modern women. The seventy-year-old servant with the key preceded them and announced them, but they walked into Rundhia’s den as if it were a New York apartment, which it rather resembled.

  Rundhia instantly left off chewing his fingernails. He became the man of action, handsomely sure of himself and cunningly aware that he must rise to an occasion. He did. He offered them chairs in silence and remained standing until the Maharanee spoke:

  “Rundhia, that you should have dared to ask permission to speak to Miss Lynn Harding, makes me hope you are ashamed and that you wish very humbly to beg her pardon.”

  Rundhia was perfect. He didn’t even make any contrite gestures. He looked straight at Lynn as if he and she hadn’t even an excuse for a misunderstanding.

  “I am not in the least ashamed,” he answered. “A man who wouldn’t have behaved as I did would have been an incongruous monstrosity without blood in his veins, or a heart, or a human emotion. My humility, such as it is, is solely due to my failure to make Lynn love me as I love her. I live in hope. I won’t do anything like that again. Lynn, I admire your independent spirit just as much as I adore your charm. I propose to marry you, and I don’t in the least regret having learned that you respect yourself.”

  “Good for you,” Lynn answered. “Now Maharanee dear, you can talk to him again, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” said the Maharanee, “if you are so magnanimous as to accept that speech for an apology. But I will not pay Rundhia’s debts until I see how he behaves! I have heard plenty of Rundhia’s promises.”

  Rundhia smiled at his aunt: “You dear old despot, you could make me promise anything!” He glanced at Lynn. “Have you heard from Norwood?”

  Something froze in Lynn’s medley of emotions. All the other emotions, even her sense of humor, remained exactly as they were. But she changed her position and lighted a cigarette. A vague un easiness, that escaped explanation, asserted itself.

  “What about him?” she answered.

  Rundhia’s eyes watched hers with masked triumph.

  “There is more than a rumor,” he said. “There is proof. To the hilt. Norwood has accepted a bribe. Norwood’s number is up.”

  The Maharanee gasped. She looked shocked, and Lynn noticed it. Lynn said nothing.

  “Rundhia, what have you been doing?” asked the Maharanee.

  “The Resident phoned, asking me to come and see him,” Rundhia answered. “He has heard about Norwood carrying diamonds in his pocket.”

  Lynn laid down her cigarette. It didn’t taste good. “Rundhia,” she said, “who told the Resident?”

  Rundhia shrugged his shoulders. “How should I know?”

  “But I think you do know,” said the Maharanee. “Rundhia,” she repeated, “what have you been doing?”

  Rundhia smiled. Lynn watched him with an entirely new fascination. It wasn’t pleasant, but it held her attention like something dreadful, that one can’t look away from.

  “The important thing,” said Rundhia, in a judicial voice, “is: what has Norwood been doing?”

  Rundhia sat down. He laughed. He crossed his knees. He watched Lynn from under partly lowered eyelids. But beneath those eyelids, Lynn saw triumph. So did the Maharanee. Rundhia continued:

  “Norwood accepted a present of diamonds, from some agents of the temple authorities, to write a report in the priests’ favor, in connection with the dispute about the boundary line and the question of who owns the land that the diamonds came from. There’s your incorruptible British officer! Same old story! Good-bye Norwood! They will hold a court martial behind closed doors, of course. British dignity must be preserved, and all that twaddle. Later on, the usual little notice in the Gazette— ‘His Majesty the King having no further use for his services.’ Who gets the diamonds? They’ll turn up in London!”

  Lynn was remembering. The physical struggle with Rundhia in the treasure room was a fact through which slowly emerged something less than a fact — an impression. She remembered Rundhia’s eyes when she told him about the packet of diamonds that she had seen fall from Norwood’s pocket. She remembered her immediate regret at having mentioned Norwood and the diamonds, even though she did it to distract Rundhia’s attention from herself. Regret enlarged itself now into a kind of cold, appalling horror.

  “Rundhia,” she asked almost hoarsely, “did you mention my name in connection with this?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Did you? Would you rather I should ask the Resident?”

  “I had to tell him all I knew,” Rundhia answered. “It was confidential — off the record. I forbade him to mention your name or mine.”

  “Have they arrested Captain Norwood?”

  “Damned if I know. Norwood is a crook, who has been found out. Why should you bother about him?”

  The Maharanee interrupted: “Lynn dear, why are you so nervous? If Rundhia learned of something wrong, it was his duty—”

  Rundhia interrupted his aunt: “Duty? Norwood insulted every single one of us, including you, Lynn. I heard him. He’s a cad. Let him take the consequences.”

  Lynn returned to the main point: “Rundhia, you say that the Resident phoned you. But how did the Resident know? Wasn’t it you who phoned the Resident? If you don’t tell me, I intend to ask the Resident. There’s a phone here. Shall I use it?”

  “My advice to you is to keep out of it,” Rundhia answered. “They might make you give evidence. Do you wish to be dragged into a scandal? Norwood is guilty. Do you want to add to the poor devil’s humiliation by appearing in court against him?”

  “Rundhia, was it you who told the Resident about those diamonds in Ca
ptain Norwood’s pocket?”

  Rundhia didn’t answer. Lynn got out of her chair and went and sat beside the phone. It was on a little table near the Maharanee. She raised the phone off the bracket, but let it click down again when Rundhia opened his lips.

  “Since you insist,” said Rundhia. “Yes. I told the Resident. However, he was already suspicious of Norwood. He was glad to get my information.”

  “And you told the Resident that your information came from me?”

  “I had to. But as I have already told you, I forbade him to mention your name.”

  “Then I am in the position of having betrayed Captain Norwood?”

  “Do you call it betrayal? He’s a crook. He accepted a bribe. Not the first time either, I dare bet you.”

  Lynn spoke indignantly: “I don’t believe Captain Norwood would accept a bribe from anyone. I haven’t even the slightest suspicion of his being guilty, no matter what you, or the Resident, or anyone may think. I shouldn’t have mentioned those diamonds to you. I did it inadvertently, when I felt I had to say something and it was the first thing that came to mind. You had no right to repeat what I said.”

  Rundhia produced his cigarette case: “Well, you said it, and I told the Resident.” He appealed to the Maharanee. “What do you think? I have Kadur to consider. As the heir to the throne, could I reasonably be asked to cover up Norwood’s guilt?”

  “You should first have consulted His Highness my husband,” said the Maharanee. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because he would have done nothing, as usual,” Rundhia retorted.

  Lynn’s fingers returned to the telephone, but her eyes were on Rundhia. The threat of the telephone no longer worked. He nodded.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Phone the Resident, if you care to. I wanted to keep you out of it, but do as you please.”

  Lynn stood up. “No,” she answered. “I will write to Captain Norwood. I will ask him to come and see me. Perhaps my evidence would help him. At the very least, I can tell him how sorry I am.”