The Harold Lamb Megapack

by Harold Lamb

  A moment later his keen glance picked out a white blotch in the dull glimmer of the road. It was his daughter’s shawl, worn threadbare.

  The Rajput looked quickly about, marking the place where the shawl had lain.

  Within the village men turned away from Rawul Singh, and yet stared after him when his broad back was toward them. No one could tell him anything of his children until a water-carrier in a dark comer of the bazaar muttered that the boy and girl had been in the village that afternoon, to ask after Rawul Singh. The boy had stood guard over the cattle outside the wall while Tala made her inquiries. They had started back a good hour before twilight.

  “Didst thou see, bheestie,” asked Rawul Singh, “this shawl upon the girl?”

  “Aye.” The carrier of water bent over his goatskin. “Her face is like the moon, good sir. She smiled at me and her eyes were like dark stars. Perhaps another looked upon her beauty. Beware of the man of Bhir castle who wears a cloak.”

  With a hiss of rage the soldier clutched at the beggar, to learn more. But the bheestie and his goatskin had vanished into the shadows of an alley. Rawul Singh remembered that more than once he had given silver to the man.

  At the house of the potail—village chief—a servant looked long into the Rajput’s dark face and shivered.

  “Ai, Rawul Singh,” he whispered, “the heart of the honorable potail has turned to water at news of thy grief. He can not give aid, and knows naught of the fate of thy children—except this. There is a feringhi in the castle who has seen the face of thy daughter and lusted after her. When the sun had changed (in the afternoon) this day, he waited for her and the boy outside the village gate—”

  “And the boy?” interrupted Rawul Singh, speaking very slowly and distinctly.

  “He defended her, and he was killed by the feringhi.”

  “Who buried him? Where?”

  But the servant, looking into the stricken face that was thrust near his eyes, turned and fled.

  Rawul Singh loosened the folds of his turban and drew them down over his brow so that no prying eyes should behold his grief. Sitting very erect in the saddle, he rode back to his home, pausing only once when he came to the place where he had sighted the scarf, to glance up at the ray of candlelight that winked from the castle.

  He could make out a break in the jungle mesh where a path ran from the road in the direction of Bhir castle. A hot wind was blowing the dust of the road into his face and the treetops were threshing under the approach of a storm.

  “By Ram and Vishnu, by the sun-born gods and Siva,” breathed the Rajput, “may I be avenged for this day!”

  Dismounting before his home, he took the shawl of Tala and wrapped within it the two gifts he had brought for his children. The bundle he laid at his feet and squatted on the earth floor.

  He was praying that the gods would bring the body of his enemy within reach of his sword. On the morrow he would seek out the body of his boy and show it to the murderer.

  Outside the hut lightning flashed and a rush of rain swept over the jungle. With the rain came the sound of horses’ hoofs. A man pushed open the closed door of the hut and entered.

  Apparently he had not perceived the occupant of the place, for he busied himself with a lantern, striking steel on flint until he had it lighted. Captain Malcolm faced Rawul Singh.

  “I am the sahib from the castle,” said the Scot. “The storm has driven me under thy roof. What is thy name, Rajput?”

  He spoke Hindustani fluently. Rawul Singh did not rise as Malcolm expected. Instead he sat on his heels, his black eves boring into the gray eyes of the visitor. The Rajput had fasted for two days, except for the stimulant of bhang that he had chewed as he rode. The influence of the drug had left his nerves frayed.

  “Thou art welcome,” he said quietly. “I will tell thee my name.”

  Silently he watched Malcolm tether his horse under the eaves of the hut, beside the Rajput’s steed.

  “Sahib,” observed Rawul Singh between his teeth, “the gods have brought thee hither, out of the castle in the storm. It is as I prayed.”

  “Nay,” answered Malcolm carelessly., “I was riding by the river on my way to the castle when the storm made the path impossible.”

  “Hast thou many servants, my sahib?”

  “Not one.”

  “Then hast thou lied. For a light was in the towers a short space ago. No one dwells there except thee, Malcolm sahib. Where is Tala?” He rose lightly. “Thou dost not know that I am Rawul Singh whose home thou hast made a desolate place. Verily, the gods brought Malcolm sahib to my door.”

  The Scot’s searching glance sought the wild features of the native, and his feverish eyes.

  “Drunk or mad,” he reflected, “and armed to boot.” Not otherwise would a native have interrupted an Englishman or threatened him. Aloud he said—

  “Stand back!”

  But Rawul Singh leaped, his short sword flashing out as he did so. Crazed by his grief and his mind inflamed by the drug, Rawul Singh struck at the white man. A Ghurka or Maharatta would have knifed Malcolm from behind.

  The Scot had barely time to draw his sword, a sturdy weapon of the hanger type. The two blades clashed, parried and clashed again. Rawul Singh was the better swordsman but was handicapped by his blind rage.

  Repeatedly be threw himself upon the Scot, his breath hissing between his teeth. Once his blade slit Malcolm’s coat. The white man retreated slowly around the lantern that rested on the earth beside them. He had no chance to speak, or to do anything but keep the flashing curve of the other’s weapon from his throat. And then Rawul Singh dashed out the light with a kick of his heel.

  “-—!” said Malcolm heartily.

  He heard the Rajput laugh and the laugh came nearer. Quite easily Malcolm might have thrust his sword into the reckless native, but he shrank from doing that and stepped aside softly. The swish of a steel blade sounded at the spot where he had stood.

  “Aha, my sahib, thou dost not stand thy ground—as a man should. Yet thou didst slay my son who was the light of my eyes and the meat of my liver—”

  Rawul Singh fell silent, listening and the Scot tried to stifle his panting breath. The native was between him and the door.

  A second time Rawul Singh leaped, as noiselessly as a cat leaps. At the same instant a flicker of lightning revealed him to Malcolm, against the opening of the door.

  The white man dropped to his knees, let slip his sword, and clutched his foe by the waist. The impetus of the Rajput’s rush carried both to the earth where they rolled, crashing against the table.

  Malcolm felt the sweat of the other’s body strike his face as he gripped the snake-like sword-arm. The greater weight and muscle of the white man told on the other and in another moment they lay quiet, Rawul Singh pinioned in the Scot’s arms.

  * * * *

  Catching a fold of the native’s turban in his teeth, Malcolm shook it loose, and taking care not to relax his hold, with one hand bound the man s wrists and ankles behind him. It was well for the white man that Rawul Singh was exhausted by his efforts.

  Then the Scot lighted the lantern and sat down on the low table to recover his breath. To the average English officer Rawul Singh would have appeared merely insane; but Malcolm was puzzled.

  “I’m thinking,” he muttered, wiping the sweat from his hands, “that there’s a method in his madness.” Aloud he added: “Tell me the story of thy grievance, Rawul Singh. I am the new kotwal (magistrate) of Bhir.”

  “Pani sara kyun?” (Why does pure water wax putrid?) snarled the other.

  But fearlessly, as was his nature, he unfolded the nature of his wrong, believing that whatever happened he would die.

  Malcolm listened to the grieving story as stonily as Rawul Singh spoke.

  “A forked arrow, Rajput,” he said at length, “can strike down two birds at one cast, and a forked tongue is a serpent’s tongue.”

  “Nevertheless, the bheestie spoke truly; my heart told me
he did not lie.”

  Malcolm nodded impatiently.

  “He said naught of me, Rajput; he said to beware of the man of Bhir castle who wears a black cloak. Nay, Rawul Singh, where is thy wisdom? Many men must have made away with thy children and cattle, if they were not to be seen when thou didst ride to the village. Alone, I could not have driven away so many head of cattle in so short a space of time. Also would I have come thus, like a blind pig to thy house? Nay, throughout this afternoon I was engaged in marking the boundaries of the fields beyond the village. A score of men will tell thee so.”

  Rawul Singh looked at the white man and was silent. Hot-headed as he was, he could understand when a man was speaking the truth.

  “Why did this evil come upon me?” he muttered. “Lo, it was to tend the grave of my wife who died upon the journey that I remained in this accursed nest of Mussulmans. They are not my people nor my caste—”

  “And because, Rawul Singh,” mused Malcolm, “there were evil-doers in this village, they wished to be rid of thee, even as they desired to slay me. They learned the hour of thy return; they took the cattle, Tala and thy son. Then the servant of the potail lied, and thou didst believe.” He frowned thoughtfully. “And you saw a light in the castle?” he muttered in English.

  “Yes, sahib,” agreed Rawul Singh, who understood.

  Malcolm wondered if the invisible foemen who had struck their first blow at him that night through Rawul Singh had actually taken Tala to the ruins. He thought not. But then who had made the light?

  “Rawul Singh,” he said abruptly. “If I were the murderer of thy son, would I let thee live, to be revenged upon me?”

  “Nay.”

  “Yet I will do thus. I trust the faith of a Rajput chief.”

  So saying, he undid the knots in the man’s turban cloth and picked up his own sword, sheathing it. Rawul Singh expressed no pleasure.

  “Why should I live?” he said. “My son who was the blood in my veins is no more and my daughter has come to shame. My beard is dishonored and my name is no better than a dog’s. Let the jackals tear open the grave of my wife that I and those two have tended and watered the young willows by it. Ai—it matters not.”

  Malcolm turned away from the grief of the old man, to hide his own sympathy. There was no way to console Rawul Singh nor would the Rajput have thanked the Scot for attempting it.

  The rain was still beating down and Malcolm decided to remain the night where he was. Under the circumstances he judged the hut safer than the darkened castle where the other men might be waiting for him in the storm. He slept fitfully on the low divan that had been built for Rawul Singh’s children.

  Waking, he found the sun well up and the Rajput squatted beside him. There was a new light in the eyes of the old man.

  “Sahib,” he said at once, “your servant sought the road before dawn and the place where the scarf had been. Listening, he heard jackals snarling and found them scratching at loose stones. The stones were piled upon a new grave. Sahib, I have looked upon the dead face of my son, who was strangled to death and his belly slit with a knife.”

  Malcolm rose and checked an exclamation of pity.

  “And thy daughter, Tala?”

  “Her body I did not find. The slayers of my son have taken her alive with them. It is my thought that she is kept in this neighborhood, because the slayers could not sell her, knowing what she does of their crime. Likewise, in Bhir are many hiding places on the hill slopes near the castle where they would be safe.”

  The Rajput seemed to be on the point of saying more. The sight of his son’s body had stirred him to tense excitement. But, looking at Malcolm, he was silent.

  Making a mental note that the old man knew more than he was admitting, the officer asked another question.

  “Knowest thou the slayers?”

  “If that were so, I would not be standing here, wasting words,” Rawul Singh grunted. “Sahib, natives have done this thing. Not one but many, of a powerful band. They cast dust in my eyes, so that, almost, I slew thee. That was for a purpose. So also are they keeping Tala for some other purpose.”

  It was a long speech for the Rajput to make, and Malcolm knew that his anger was aroused to fever pitch.

  “Sahib,” he concluded, “before I met thee, I made a vow. Suffer me to be thy servant for a space; then may I come upon my enemies, for the wisdom of the sahib can find them.”

  Thoughtfully Malcolm considered the matter. He had brought no attendants from Cunningham’s establishment because he had not wished to have any strange natives about him—although his dignity in Bhir suffered accordingly.

  He knew, however, the hereditary loyalty of Rawul Singh’s race and realized the value of a trained fighter who knew the terrain. It would be a happy stroke to ride into Bhir village attended by the man who had been almost tricked into murdering him.

  “Very well,” he agreed.

  Gravely the Rajput took his hand and placed it against his forehead. Then, stepping back, be said impassively:

  “The sahib’s horse is groomed and fed. Will the sahib mount now or partake of food?”

  Under his arm Rawul Singh clutched a bundle done up in a shawl that contained the bow and arrows he had meant for his son.

  * * * *

  In the small stone chamber opening into the main hall of the castle—the quarters Malcolm had appropriated for himself—he found his saddle-bags, desk and portmanteau as he had left them.

  But upon the bags were several drops of a glazed white substance.

  “Candle wax,” decided Malcolm, examining it.

  Inasmuch as the Scot used lanterns in preference to candles, and as he had noticed no wax there before, he judged that a visit had been paid to his quarters during the night.

  “The ghost, it was, my faith! I’m thinking ’tis not a proper spirit if it must light its way. Well, it would find little worth among my papers.”

  Malcolm’s outfit was purposely meager and the more important papers, money and reports he always carried on his person.

  The boldness of the visitor of last evening could have only one explanation; whoever had searched his belongings had known that Malcolm was away from the village and that the Scot might be detained by Rawul Singh.

  When he first came to the spot Malcolm had made a careful examination of the castle. It was solidly built of finely shaded sandstone, much corroded; its deep moss-coated cellars were basalt, as was the great hall, where decaying vegetation covered the floor.

  All around the undergrowth was thick—junipers and thorn bushes pressing against the crumbling walls and lush grass growing thick on the daklan, the front terrace.

  The cellars were half-filled with foul water at their lowest level; openings in the thick stone walls were few and sunlight penetrated only feebly into the chambers of the dead raja. Malcolm judged that it had been unoccupied for three generations at least. Perhaps because of this, a strong odor filled the place.

  Yet he was certain that the terrace and the slender, square tower had been visited frequently. The soft ground had been trampled by feet whose outline he could not make out; moss had been broken from the tower top and the damp slime on its steps was scored in more than one place.

  “The demon,” thought Malcolm, “does not quarter himself in the castle but comes here from a nearby haunt. Very well, we will watch for him.”

  They saw nothing out of the ordinary, however, for several days. Thick mango groves covered the nullahs below the rise where the castle stood. Often jackals and leopards passed by, but the village cattle were kept at a distance by the herders and no human being approached them.

  Malcolm, going about the routine duties of his office, was struck by this isolation of the castle. He had observed that the signs pointed to its having been occupied before he came.

  This led to the conclusion that the person who had lived in or near the castle before Malcolm arrived had vacated the premises in his favor; also, that the villagers who had been in the h
abit of coming to the castle now made a point of avoiding it.

  “It looks,” he thought, “as if my neighbor demon had had friends in the village. If—as the series of murders indicates—our distinguished ghost is a servant of Kali, a goddess to whom murder is an acceptable ritual offering, his friends might well be the slayers of Rawul Singh’s son. And I think the Rajput knows they are Kali-worshipers, although for some reason he will not admit it to me.”

  When he was not in attendance on Malcolm, the Scot noticed that his follower spent hours in casting about through the jungle around the village, and that whenever Malcolm went to survey the boundary lines, Rawul Singh made a thorough search of the hillsides.

  Furthermore the Rajput reported that he had tried to find in the village the servant of the potail who had lied to him about the fate of his daughter. But the man was not to be found. And the lips of the bheestie who had warned Rawul Singh were sealed by fear.

  So no trace was found of Tala, although Rawul Singh was convinced that the girl could not have been conveyed from the district of Bhir without his knowing it.

  Taking all this into consideration, Malcolm believed that the man who called himself or was called the ghost had Tala in his keeping, and that both were very cleverly hidden in one spot that all Malcolm’s surveying and Rawul Singh’s search could not locate.

  This spot might well be a rendezvous of the worshipers of Kali, who, having enjoyed unlimited power in the rich district of Bhir, now sought the extermination of the English magistrates.

  Before many days had passed Malcolm fell sick.

  The Scot had grown pale and his eyes were heavy. He was listless at times, although he never ceased his work. His orders were to assume the duties of magistrate, and he went about the work of measuring the boundaries, taking the census and holding a criminal court.

  Malcolm’s condition puzzled himself. He had no fever; the water and air were good; Rawul Singh, who feared poison, gathered their food in the village, taking pains to select his own rice and flour and to kill his meat by hunting.