by Talbot Mundy
The man from Poonch spoke then, rather gutturally, in a strong voice that suggested self-imposed, calm, rising slowly to his feet and revealing contempt with unexaggerated gesture:
“I have heard women who talked more manfully.” He took a stride toward the door. “Whoever craves a fight with me may have it.” He met each gaze in turn. None flinched. His eyes lingered on Yussuf Aroun’s, and he touched his knife-hilt, but not even Yussuf Aroun made an answering move. With a sideways jerk of his head he indicated the moon-lit crag that glistened over the ravine. “I will sit yonder and think thoughts while ye belch fears.”
He opened the door slowly, stood framed in the glow from within — a rather tall man with the loose-limbed stance and insolently careless poise of. an experienced fighter — and then stepped suddenly into the passage, shut the door firmly, and listened, with his hand on the latch.
Not a man on the balcony spoke, but he felt pressure on the latch. He removed his hand. As the latch yielded he kicked the door. It slammed in Daldeen Lai’s face, hurling him backward. The teeth of the other men gleamed in the sudden light like wolves’ fangs, but no word was spoken. The man from Poonch shut the door again and strode along the lamp-lit passage, tossing two pice slipper- money to the lame Kashmiri at the outer door.
Outside in the garden he listened again, but no sound followed him. There were dense streams of blown mist, but the moonlight shone in broken streams of silver that revealed the pathway leading from the ramshackle house. He followed it through a gate amid shadowy trees, and where it forked toward the road that leads to Simla he took the right-hand track and squatted, in the full light of the moon, on the wet crag that overhung the ravine.
Torn shreds of fluffy mist blew past him, but he could see and be seen from Daldeen Lai’s balcony; and he could see the shadowy road to Simla, where it curved to avoid the rising ground, some fifty feet away, and a shadowy man with an upturned bicycle appeared to be examining a punctured tire. The man with the bicycle called to him in Hindustanee:
“Oh you! Where can I borrow a pump to put air in my leaking tire?”
“I don’t know,” said the man from Poonch.
“Also my lamp has gone out. Where can I get oil and matches?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you,watch my bicycle, if I leave it while I go to find a pump?”
“No.”
“I would come back quickly.”
He from Poonch turned away and stared at the ravine, not answering. So the man with the bicycle set his machine upright and began pushing it along the road toward Simla. But very soon the sound of his footsteps ceased. He appeared to be riding the thing. His bell, rang — one, two — one, two, three — one, two, as if it might be a signal. The- man from Poonch appeared not to notice that. He sat still, staring downward at the mist that flowed like frosted cotton through the tops of deodars, until at last the lame Kashmiri came from the house and said hoarsely that Daldeen Lai would like to speak to him.
“Tell him I sicken of too much speech,” he answered.
Ten minutes later Daldeen Lai, in a thick shawl and a belted khaki overcoat, came, carefully avoiding moonlight, and stood waist-deep in mist in the shadow beneath the crag between it and the road.
“Is it true then that all the men from Poonch are mules?” he demanded. “Pray be reasonable. Who would admit you to such a secret as ours without proof of your trustworthiness? They are ready to kill you now unless you give proof, since you already know too much. Had it not been for me, Yussuf Aroun would already have shot you as you sit here. You offended him. His finger itches for the trigger.”
The man from Poonch smiled. “It is I who lack proof,” he retorted. “A life is not much. But shall I risk mine for perched hens who scratch lice and cackle?”
“Tell me truly who you are,” said Daldeen Lai. “If you will give me references—”
“God knows who I am. God knows who you are. And that is enough.”
“If I thought you were a spy,” said Daldeen Lai, “there would already be no flesh on your bones. Your skeleton would be rotting among rats in a dark hole.”
The man from Poonch answered with an air of indifference: “I am a spy. I spy for deeds, and a chance to do them. Therefore I will get hence. When I die, it shall not be of too much talking.”
“It is true,” said Daldeen Lai, “that speech is sometimes valueless. And you impress me as a man of strong resolution. But I have to convince those others. They will not consent to telling you our secret unless you first give a pledge.”
“I have nothing.”
“Your life—”
“It is worth nothing.”
“Put it then into our hands, and we will tell you our secret. We will not trust you otherwise. At the moment, Yussuf Aroun has you covered with his rifle, and if I should signal to him—”
The man from Poonch dropped as if shot, and as he fell near Daldeen Lai’s feet, there came the sharp, dead smack of a rifle in mist. A bullet whizzed overhead, but there was so much spacious silence that the sound died swallowed in a moment. The man from Poonch stood up with his back to the rock and spoke calmly:
“I saw you make that signal. Now I will kill you as well as Yussuf Aroun! Or will you tell me your secret?”
“In the others’ presence I will tell it.” Daldeen Lai turned up the path to the house in a hurry, plainly disliking that talk about death. The man from Poonch removed an iron bracelet from his wrist and tossed it to the road. It fell in dust in moonlight.
The man on a bicycle, pedalling back from the direction of Simla, got off his machine and called out:
“Have you seen my spanner? I believe I dropped it where. I tried to mend a puncture just now. Ah! Ah! I see it!” He picked up something, mounted and returned by the way he had come.
“May your luck be as flat as your tire, you voice out of a sepulchre!” Daldeen Lai called after him, hurrying toward the dim lamplight at the front door.
The man from Poonch followed him into the house and through it, out on to the balcony, where he met the gaze of Yussuf Aroun.
“If you can’t shoot any straighter than that,” remarked the man from Poonch, “your women must be anybody’s. Or are they too ill-favored to tempt your betters?”
“I will eat your liver,” Yussuf Aroun answered, showing splendid yellow teeth.
“No spy would dare to speak as he does,” said Daldeen Lai. “Would a spy return here, after being, shot at? I intend to tell him our secret in the presence of you all. But you are not to trust him. Mind that. Two of you — better yet, three must watch him day and night, one sleeping and two waking.”
“Let him give us his knife,” said Yussuf Aroun.
The man from Poonch looked calmly at him. “You may have it in your belly,” he answered.
“Allah!” Yussuf Aroun’s hand went to his own knife.
“Peace!” exclaimed Daldeen Lai. “Of what use would a coward be to us? He is good. Shall I tell him now?”
The. man from Poonch laughed curtly: “I will say what I know already. There is haste, and you need an airman, but there is none, unless you accept me. You are afraid. And now what?”
“That proves it. He has spied on us,” said Yussuf Aroun.
The man from Poonch looked sideways at him: “I mistook this,” he said, “for a women’s jirga, not believing men could be such chatterers. Allah! Who needs more than one eye to read fear on a Pathan’s face?”
“Tell him,” said Yussuf Aroun. “Let him learn what fear is. If he fails us or betrays us, I will answer for it. He shall hot be out of my sight until all is finished. And then he and I, insh’allah, will decide the matter of our honor!”
The man from Poonch went and sat beside Yussuf Aroun insolently. Hands on knives, they eyed each other sideways. Daldeen Lai shifted the lantern and sat with his back to the mountains. He cleared his throat importantly.
“This is no hysterical conspiracy of students,” he began. “We intend, to break the English this time,
all or nothing. A major calamity at this opportune moment ought to stagger them and stiffen revolutionists of all types. But it must be astonishing — staggering. It must be the impossible thing, that nevertheless happens. Otherwise the English will rally as usual and in some way survive it because of their organization. We must destroy the English system, as the Bolsheviki first destroyed the system of the Czar. And in the anarchy that follows we will reap our harvest.”
“There will be loot,” said Yussuf Aroun. “Wallahi!”
A cloud of mist shut down on them, so dense that it shut off the moonlight and blanketed sound. It was like being at sea on a swaying deck. The lantern in the midst only made a dim blur. Daldeen Lai coughed’ and raised his voice:
“The viceroy and all the members of his council are to meet at Delhi, three days from now. The governors of five provinces will be there, along with eleven ruling princes, to say nothing of innumerable subordinates. A bomb—”
“A poison-gas bomb!” Yussuf Aroun interrupted “Allah!”
“Such a bomb,” said Daldeen Lai, “a s will infallibly kill all of them!”
He rubbed the palms of his hands together.
“As infallibly, by God, as I will kill you if you fail!” said Yussuf Aroun. All the other men on the balcony moved like vultures on a ledge that smell blood on the wind. Daldeen Lai’s face, as he leaned forward, glowed in the lantern-light. His breath steamed like a devil’s in a Tibetan painting.
“Cruelty,” he said, “is waste of energy, and it is too unfortunate we could not make a poison-gas to kill them instantly. The ingredients for that were not obtainable. We had to use a gas of the corrosive type that burns the membrane. It is so potent, that one part of it to ten thousand parts of air produce death; and so corrosive, that we dare not mix it in readiness. There are three principal ingredients. For the sake of secrecy those have been produced in places very far apart, by experts trained in European laboratories. Each ingredient is sealed in a gas-tight but fragile container; and the three containers are enclosed in one bomb. When the bomb falls, it will smash the containers. The resulting mixture will escape, assisted by a little nitroglycerine to crack the casing. And whoever breathes any of that — however little of it — will be dead within ten or fifteen minutes — I regret to add, painfully.”
“Pain,” said Yussuf Aroun, “is all that kaffirs will ever know of Allah’s mercy!”
The man from Poonch rolled a cigarette and licked the paper thoughtfully.
“Fire!” he demanded. Yussuf Aroun, startled, struck a match for him and grinned spitefully across the flame that they sheltered together between cupped hands. The man from Poonch blew out the match. “You stink,” he remarked. “Keep your distance.”
“You must believe in your lucky star,” said Yussuf Aroun.
The chill of the mist was penetrating. Daldeen Lai shuddered as he cleared his throat again.
“The essential thing,” he said, “is timing — to drop the bomb in the right place at the proper moment. The difficulty is, to do that in spite of a cordon of troops and scores of special policemen. You see, there have been so many acts of terrorism lately that the viceroy and his council will be guarded like golden money. We foresaw that. That is why you were selected and encouraged to approach us.”
A bearded face beneath a gunnysack thrust itself into the lamp-light.
“Bismillah! Hear the fool boast! It was I — I tell you, I who lay under the air-bombs when Bulteel sahib brought his ‘planes across the Indus and wrecked our village, slaying eighteen including my son — it was I, Mahommed Sayyid, I who thought of it. I said, by Allah, said I—”
“Thou art like a cock that has laid an egg,” remarked Yussuf Aroun. “It were better to slit thy throat than listen to the crowing.”
Daldeen Lai resumed his discourse:
“We are not suspected. The C.I.D. doesn’t know us. None of us has ever been connected with a crime. Our finger-prints are unrecorded — unless yours are?” He stared hard at the man from Poonch, but drew no answer.
He continued: “Even so, however, it would be impossible, even for us, who are not suspected, to carry a bomb weighing over a thousand pounds, through the crowd and through the viceroy’s, guard — although we did think of dressing the bomb to resemble a man bleeding to death in an ambulance. But if that had succeeded, its explosion would have meant our own death;” He paused dramatically. “But an airplane—”
The man from Poonch extinguished the butt of his, cigarette against the damp floor-board. Daldeen Lai continued:
“One of us — no matter who — owns a repair shop — buys second-hand automobiles — is a good mechanic — studied aeronautics in Germany — possesses copies of all the airplane specifications that are constantly published by various governments. He has had two years in which to build a monoplane, secretly, using four second-hand automobile engines, which he adapted. We needed speed, not radius. The plane can rise easily and swiftly with the weight of the bomb and one man. It carries fuel for only fifty miles, but that is plenty. In minutest detail the machine is theoretically perfect for its task. There is a secret and perfectly level runway of two hundred yards between high walls. The machine can be in the air in a moment, and in Delhi in another moment. There will be havoc — panic — death.”
“And after that?” the man from Poonch asked.
“We of the North will have our innings then,” said Yussuf Aroun. “By Allah, we will sweep India as a storm sweeps orchards!”
Daldeen Lai smiled in the glow of the lantern. “At first, there will be a little anarchy,” he conceded. “That is perhaps not a bad thing, to make men welcome a new government. A little slaughter — a little frightfulness — and then peace.”
“Such is the way of God,” said some one, looming through the mist near Yussuf Aroun.
“After the bomb is dropped, then what next?” the man from Poonch demanded.
Daldeen Lai stared “Come to earth and escape, of course. There will be such panic and confusion that escape should be simple enough. But burn the plane, if possible, because of finger-marks.”
“And has this plane been flown yet?” asked the man from Poonch.
“No. Of course not. How could it be? It is a great enough marvel to have built it undetected. It is tuned, as I think they call it. It has taxied along the runway once quite recently, but that made too much noise to be risked a second time. It has never been up in the air, but it is theoretically—”
“It is written that it shall not fail,” said Yussuf Aroun. “It is also written, thou from Poonch, that thou art to fly the thing. Thereafter, if all goes well, I will take back all I said about our honor and we shall be good friends. But fail, and thy lucky star will have set forever, as a star that falls dead in the sky.”
“All of us will trust you afterwards, when the great deed is done,” said Daldeen Lai. “He has a knife,” he added.
Yussuf Aroun drove a sudden elbow against the jaw of the man from Poonch, forcing his head back with a jerk; He snatched the knife, laughing with a sort of high-pitched yelp of triumph as he sent it spinning, into the mist. “Now sit still, or I will gut thee ere thy time comes!”
So the man from Poonch sat glaring but extremely still while the Pathan’s hands searched him for hidden weapons. After that, three of the other Hillmen tied him hand and foot. They threw a blanket over him. They left him. Daldeen Lai lingered and whispered:
“Trust me and never mind them! Do your part well. After that, if you wish, you shall die of drink and women! Don’t fear that dog of a Pathan.”
There was no answer. The man from Poonch lay still beneath the blanket. “Perhaps you would like some friend to know where you are?” Daldeen Lai asked. “Tell me his name. I will send the message. That will give you greater confidence in me.”
But there was no answer — no movement. The creak of the balcony, wind and the splash of water down in the ravine were the only sounds.
“There will be five thousand rupees fo
r you afterwards,” said Daldeen Lai. “Suppose you crash? If you are killed, who is to have your money?”
Suddenly he screamed. He smothered the scream in his shawl, but it was too late; a Hillman hurried out through the door with a lantern.
“He bit me! He bit me! Krishna!”
Daldeen Lai wrung his right hand and kicked at the blanket savagely, but the man from Poonch ducked his head and sat upright, snarling, his eyes like embers in the darkness:
“Curse your black soul and your money!” he said deliberately. “May the one eat the other and corrupt you into worms in the belly of endless time!”
He lay down again. The Hillman re-spread the blanket, nodding:
“He is good. He will make us no trouble at all. His kind have the courage of Allah in them.” He grinned at the blood on Daldeen Lai’s finger and then led the way into the house.
For a long time after that the man from Poonch lay very still beneath the blanket, while within the house there was a conference, extremely difficult to overhear because of the creaking of wood in the wind and the hollow noises that came upward out of the ravine.
Yussuf Aroun, followed by two other men, came out at last. He kicked the blanket.
“Awake! By Allah, now we test thy star and thy honor! Loose him, brothers. If he craves my knife-edge, let him tempt me!”
But the man from Poonch seemed dazed, or perhaps indifferent. He let himself be raised to his feet, offering no protest when Yussuf Aroun and another man put arms behind his back and held hands. They pressed him close, pinning his arms to his sides; and the third man followed, almost equally close.
“There is no escape,” said Yussuf Aroun. “Fail, and the devil gets thee! Do well, and I am thy friend forever! Hey-yeh! As a mother-bird teaches the fledgling, thou shalt teach me to fly — afterwards — afterwards — me! But Allah is Lord of Afterwards!”
Out into the darkness, then, Daldeen Lai and the rest of the group following at cautious intervals, one at a time.
Across the shadowy road, then downward into a sea of dark tree-tops, in which the mist hung like snow and, when they reached it, changed into wet gems twinkling in moonlight. Ferns and their smell. The feel of the floor of a forest spread with moss, pine-trash, rotting twigs.