by Harold Lamb
“He died under torture, lord and Celestial Master,” gibbered Iba Kabash, pointing. “For he would not tell of the queenly Berca, or the coming of the noble Tatars.”
Kiragai Khan said nothing, passing to the next body, and pressing the hand of Berca when the girl cried out. This one was Rashideddin, his gray robe stained with red, and his lean face convulsed. His arms hung wide, and sightless, leering eyes staring upward through the opening to the stars, the astrologer had died in the grip of anger. Berca, leaning over him, watched vainly for a breath to stir the gray cloak. Seated beside Rashideddin she saw Khlit, wiping his sword calmly with a corner of the dead man’s cloak.
“Have you seen Halen ibn Shaddah?” demanded Iba Kabash officiously. “The noble Kiragai Khan has missed you, since he came into the entrance of Alamut. Was it you that killed Rashideddin?”
“Aye,” answered Khlit, looking up indifferently. “Have the Kallmarks or the Refik the upper hand? I have seen Halen ibn Shaddah.”
“The battle is over, Khlit,” exclaimed Berca pressing forward, but keeping the hand of the Tatar leader. Her eyes were shining, and she held her head proudly. “The doom of Alamut has come, as I swore it would. It was my will that it should, mine and my lord’s. For I came to him without a gift and was ashamed. Yet did he marry me in spite of that. And I swore to him that if he would avenge my father such a gift should be his as no other bride could bring. Alamut would be his, with the treasure of the Refik. And now he has seen that the gift is rich. All that Halen ibn Shaddah had.”
Khlit’s glance sought that of the Tatar leader, and they measured each other silently.
“The way is long from Tatary,” went on Berca, tossing her head, “but I am very beautiful in the sight of my lord, and he consented to my plan—to come to open the gate to him—saying only that Toctamish should come. I picked you, Cossack, as my father of battles. Yet I am grieved. You swore that you would slay for me Halen ibn Shaddah—”
“Have you seen,” broke in Kiragai Khan gruffly, “the one who is called Master of Alamut?”
“Aye, he was here.”
“Which way did he go? Speak.”
“He did not go.”
The khan looked around the chamber. It was empty except for the two bodies. A sudden blast of air from the opening overhead made the flame of the torches whirl, and cast a gleam on the face of Rashideddin as if the dead man had moved. Berca drew back with a smothered cry.
“The man who was called Halen ibn Shaddah,” said Khlit, “was a eunuch of great size. The real Master of Alamut was another. He concealed his identity to avoid the daggers of those who would slay him. Yet is he slain. And I have kept my oath, Berca, princess.”
The eyes of the others strayed to the body of Rashideddin, and rested on the red stains that garnished the gray cloak with the red ribbons of death. The blind eyes of Halen ibn Shaddah were fixed on the stars visible through the opening in the ceiling. And Khlit, seeing this, knew that he would be very glad to turn his horse again toward the steppe and away from Alamut.
YELLOW ELEPHANTS (1919)
CHAPTER I
A Young Man in a Hurry
The watch of Andrew Hollis told him that he had sixteen minutes to catch his train. His memory told him he had forgotten something. Instinctively he slowed his steps and ransacked his mind for the missing item.
His bag? No, he had that well stocked with traveling kit and necessary clothing. Pullman reservation—money? His tickets were in his coat-pocket, likewise an unopened week’s pay-envelope. Had he left anything at the office?
Andrew Hollis was a methodical young man, and he was sure that he had closed and locked his desk in the Wall Street office of the News’ financial page upon nothing that did not belong there when he left that afternoon bound for New England and Aunt Emma!
“Aunt Emma!” he thought swiftly. “Great guns—I haven’t any present for her!”
For seven years, ever since his start in business in New York, Andrew Hollis had been accustomed to pay a three-days’ visit to Aunt Emma Hollis, his nearest living relative. And he had never neglected to bring some gift, as it was Mrs. Hollis’s birthday.
He glanced hurriedly around. He was in the thick of the crowd at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Third Street. Beside him a shop window caught his eye, with its sign:
WONG LI
Oriental Art
The window contained a costly Samurai vase and an elaborate silken mandarin’s robe. Rather high-priced stuff, he thought, but Aunt Emma was fond of collecting Chinese trinkets.
Thus Hollis reasoned, and thereby exposed himself for three minutes to a whim of fate involving other lives.
He pushed hastily through the door. A Chinaman in a businesslike black suit bowed, with the courtesy of the Oriental salesman. Hollis sighted two ivory elephants standing on the counter beside an array of elaborate fans. They were grotesque beasts, a faded yellow in color, perhaps ten inches high, and resting on ebony stands. He picked up the nearest one.
“How much for this?’’ he asked hastily.
“Fourteen dollars and a half,” stated the Oriental concisely.
The other elephant seemed to Hollis to be more faded in color; moreover, it was undeniably scratched. It might be cheaper, he reasoned.
“That one is very rare,” the Chinaman responded to his question with a shake of the head, “it is fine ivory. It is old Ming work. A customer left it here to be sold. The price is four hundred dollars. The other is inferior ivory—”
“It’s good enough for me,” announced Hollis hastily. He set the Ming quadruped back on the counter and extracted his pay-envelope. From the bills inside it he took three five-dollar bills. Throwing the crumpled envelope on the floor, he handed the Chinaman the money, indicating the elephant he had first looked at. “Aunt Emma knows something about ivories, but she won’t know that I know the difference—so it’s a good risk.”
The shopkeeper glanced shrewdly from Hollis to the animals and departed rearwards for the change, leaving the elephants on the counter. Absently, Hollis noted that he joined one of his countrymen, talking in a curtained recess at the back of the store. His customer jerked out his watch. The sixteen minutes had been reduced to seven. And it was a little more than two blocks to the Grand Central.
Hollis, by instinct and professional training, was accustomed to act expeditiously. Within ten seconds he had snapped open his suitcase, dropped into it the yellow elephant and ebony stand and gained the door. As he did so he heard an exclamation in the rear of the store and hurried steps coming toward him.
“Keep the change, John!” he cried, and was out in the street. He had a vague impression of loud voices issuing after him. Then he darted into the crowd.
The traffic at Forty-Second held him up for a precious minute. Dodging a bus and sliding past the traffic cop, he made the other side of Fifth Avenue with a precarious margin of safety. Seven years of financial statistics had not served to eradicate his New England country vigor, and a serviceable pair of legs, aided by a keen eye, enabled him to gain the upper level of the Grand Central and the vestibule of the Boston sleeper just before the porters hopped aboard the moving train. As it was, he was the last person but one to make the train.
Seating himself in his section with the gratification of the man who has bought his tickets in advance and defeated the combination of time-table and clock by a matter of seconds, Hollis stowed his overcoat and bag on the seat beside him. He noticed that the car was filled.
Not until then did it occur to him that he had thrust his new purchase hastily into the bag, and that it might be well to pack it securely against danger of breakage. He lifted the suitcase to his knees, picked up the curio, oblivious of the inquisitive glances cast his way by fellow travelers, and inserted it neatly between some clothing in the bag. Years of handling stock and bond quotations had bred exactitude of habit in Hollis, until even his New England aunt admitted that he was “careful with his things.”
Satisfied, he push
ed the suitcase under the seat, begging the pardon of a rather striking-looking blond lady for disturbing her as he did so. It struck him that Mrs. Hollis had written him a note which he had only time to glance at hastily that day owing to the pressing need of clearing his desk before leaving the office. He took it out now and ran over it leisurely.
As usual, his aunt informed him that she would meet him with the car—said the snow was two feet deep—and that she had killed a choice turkey in honor of his coming.
In the postscript, the most important part of a woman’s letter, she added that a cousin of his was visiting the farm. Ruth Carruthers had come from New Orleans, he read, a charming girl. She knew that he would like her.
“Trust a widowed aunt,” he thought disgustedly, “to assemble all the family chickens in the coop. I’ve never seen this Carruthers girl, and I don’t want to. Ten to one she wants to know all about the big city, how many fish are in the aquarium, who built the Washington Arch, and why the Woolworth Building doesn’t fall into the subway—”
Hollis ran a slim hand through his sandy hair with something like a groan. A darky waiter, pursuing his swaying course through the car, reminded him that the diner was open; and the hasty movement of passengers after the waiter recalled the fact that he would have to hurry, if he expected to get a seat.
Thrusting the letter into the pocket of his overcoat, Hollis picked up his cap and sought the diner.
CHAPTER II
Something for Nothing
Dinner and a pipe in the smoking-compartment did not wholly relieve Hollis’s irritation at the news contained in his aunt’s note. Aunt Emma, he told himself, was a good sport who kept a supply of his favorite brand of tobacco waiting for him, and who cooked absolutely the best mince pies and buckwheat cakes in the State of New Hampshire. Why did she have to go and spoil his three-days’ vacation by inviting a woman cousin, whom he would be expected to amuse, or, worse, might expect to amuse him?
Southerners, as he remembered them, were addicted to telling continuous jokes, at which he was bound to laugh. A confirmed bachelor, Andrew Hollis disliked women generally, particularly young girls, who, he assured himself, were always either trying to make a slave of him or use him to make other slaves jealous.
He skipped through his evening paper disconsolately, glancing at the story of a two-days’ old jewel robbery at the Charity Ball and his own column of Wall Street news. He glanced up with a scowl as the porter thrust his head through the curtains of the compartment.
“Which of you gentlemen,” inquired the factotum of the Pullman, “has lower eight?”
“I have,” Hollis’s scowl deepened. “What’s the idea?”
“Well,” informed the porter apologetically, “I reckon you ain’t got it now, boss.”
Hollis snorted and reached for his wallet. “I’d like to know why not. I have the ticket here.”
“Look here, boss. This is whut happened. I made up lower eight like you told me. Soon as it was made up a lady done got into it. I told her it was your berth, but she said to tell you she hadn’t any herself, an’ the cyar was full. There ain’t an empty berth in the train. So if you don’t mind sleepin’ here—she’s trying to open her big suitcase on lower eight this minute, boss—”
“I do mind!” grunted the newspaperman. “Ask the lady if she won’t take the upper. Maybe the man who has the upper will bunk in with me.”
The porter scratched his head.
“The puhson in upper eight is another lady, sir. And the one in your berth ain’t the kind you can ask. She said to tell you thank you for the berth, but she cain’t sleep in the smoker and you can.”
Hollis sheltered himself behind his paper from the ironical glances of his companions in the compartment.
“All right.” He gave in. “Bring my bag and overcoat in here.”
Immersed in his heavy coat, with the bag stowed under the leather settee, Hollis prepared to make the best of his quarters. The other men had retired to their sections, with the exception of a Jap, who was studiously reading a guide-book at the other corner of the seat.
Hollis had guessed the man to be a student at one of the eastern colleges—the country was full of them—whether a Jap or a Chinaman, he could not judge. In the absence of a pigtail, one looked like the other to him. And the man on the other side of the bench was neatly clad in very modern garments.
The rocking of the train and the gloom of the compartment—he had switched off the main lights—soon drew Hollis’s thoughts into a sleepy haze. He lapsed into the dreamless half-sleep of the Pullman traveler.
Cold and the renewed clicking of rails speeding underfoot aroused him slightly. His stiff body and numb hands told him that he had been asleep some hours, and he was about to change to a more comfortable position when his eyes flew wide open. The settee was in gloom, but in a gleam of light coming through the curtains from the passageway without he saw his companion squatted on the floor.
The Oriental was bending over an object on the floor of the compartment. The object was Hollis’s suitcase, and as he watched the man snapped back the catch and opened it.
The newspaperman did not move, but his glance searched the other keenly. The Chinaman seemed to be studying something among the articles in the bag, and so far as Hollis could judge, his expression was one of keen satisfaction.
“If I can lend you anything,” observed Hollis amiably, “say so. If not—”
Abruptly the Oriental closed the bag, and slid it hastily to its former position under the settee. He rose, with a quick glance at the man on the seat. Standing in the light the Oriental was clearly exposed to Hollis’s gaze. Without attempting to reply, he ducked out of the compartment.
Hollis waited until the other’s footsteps had died away in the direction of the vestibule. Then he switched on one of the lights and drew out his suitcase. Opening it, he ran his hand swiftly over its contents. When he had made a hasty, but thorough, inventory of what the bag contained, he sat back with a puzzled frown.
Apparently the Oriental person had been moved by predatory motives; certainly there could be no confusing Hollis’s bag with the other’s small satchel. Yet, so far as he could see, nothing had been disturbed.
True, he had not seen the other take anything from the suitcase. But why anyone should go to so much trouble, even risk, to look at a few shirts or pajamas and a toilet kit, was more than Hollis could fathom. There was the yellow elephant, of course—
He took out the animal in question and surveyed it speculatively. As has been said, Hollis had a keen sense of property ownership. The attempted burglary of the Oriental, if it was that, annoyed him. The unlucky incident of the woman appropriating his berth had been responsible for it, he told himself.
Hollis gave a thoughtful whistle as he replaced the elephant. He remembered that the porter had said the lady had been trying to open the big suitcase on lower eight. Now, he recalled quite clearly that his own piece of baggage had lain in that section while he was in the diner. It was one of Hollis’s pet axioms that nothing happens without a cause. Could the lady of lower eight have been anxious to see the inside of the bag, as well as the Oriental?
He pressed the button at the side of the settee, and the sleepy porter poked his head through the curtains, shoe-brush in hand.
“Look here, Jonathan,” interrogated Hollis amiably, “what kind of a lady was the one who grabbed my berth?”
The slave of the sleeper cast a shrewd eye at his questioner and decided that he meant well.
“Well, sir,” he meditated, “she wuz a powuhful strong-minded lady. She had blond hair and black eyes. But I cain’t find her shoes, nohow.”
Hollis thought of the handsome and rather dressy woman who had shared his seat early in the evening when he had inspected his purchase. He exhibited a silver dollar.
“Some of the people are getting up, Jonathan,” he observed. “Suppose you look once more for the blond lady’s shoes, and see if she is in the berth. I may have le
ft something there, and I would like to look around without disturbing her—if she happens to be out of the berth.”
Such occurrences are part of the routine of a Pullman. The Negro led Hollis to lower eight and felt through the curtains discreetly. His expression changed, and he opened the hangings. Peering over his shoulder, the newspaperman saw that the berth was empty. It had not been slept in, but the bedclothes were rumpled, as if someone had been sitting on them.
“She certainly did get into lower eight, sir,” the darky mused.
“Well, she’s not here now,” Hollis pointed out. “Any chance of her leaving the train?”
The porter grinned suddenly.
“I know how it was now, sir. She must have been the lady what wuz taken off the train at New Haven. Yes, sir. That wuz it.”
“Sick?”
“I reckon you didn’t hear her when she wuz taken off. Two plain-clothes gentlemen from New York headquarters held the train while they went through it. They pinched a lady in this cyar, I saw them assist her out the vestibule. Yes, sir. She done yell out they weren’t no gentlemen to pull her off the train without a warrant. But one of the plain-clothes cops, he said, he reckoned there’d be warrant enough for her in New York.”
“Did you hear her name? Also, what kind of a bag did she have with her?”
“They called her Gladys, I think, sir. A small hand-satchel, boss.”
Hollis returned to the smoking-room, washed and shaved, and resumed his place on the settee. Within him stirred the righteous indignation of the man who has had his belongings tampered with. The porter had seen the blond lady of lower eight and police notoriety carry a small satchel from the train. But she had tried to unlock his own suitcase, just before the porter had restored it to him in the smoking compartment. A mistake? Hardly. His belongings, he reflected, had become suddenly of interest to his fellow-travelers.