The Harold Lamb Megapack

by Harold Lamb

  One day the Rajput absented himself and returned with a lean, dirty native, naked except for a loin cloth and turban. It was an old man, watery of eye, who trembled in the presence of the English officer.

  “This is Cheetoo, the bheestie,” explained Rawul Singh. “And he will eat of the food we share and sleep without thy door. Thus if thou hast a plague, we will know of it, because either he will catch it or he will confess what is the evil that attacks thee. If he refuses I shall cut out his liver.”

  Cheetoo’s trembling increased and he looked around fearfully.

  “O Sun of Benevolence,” he cried, “do not make me sleep within the castle.”

  “There is nothing here to harm thee,” said Malcolm impatiently. He was irritated by his own indisposition.

  Cheetoo glanced at the ruins and renewed his pleading.

  “Peace!” muttered the Rajput, aside. “Twenty silver rupees wilt thou have, son of a pig, if the sahib gets well. If he dies, thy liver will be fed to the jackals as I promised. Do not think to escape, for thou knowest I will hunt thee down-—”

  In this manner Malcolm’s party increased to three. The bheestie, torn between fear of the castle and dread of Rawul Singh—coveting the unexampled wealth of silver rupees and tormented by visions of what might happen to his own organs—Cheetoo went so far as to urge Malcolm to pitch his tent outside the walls and to shun the interior of the ruins.

  The Scot took this as an attempt to get him to give up his quarters in the home of the rajas and lose dignity thereby. Rawul Singh whetted his sword and looked meaningly at the native’s bare limbs.

  “In the village bazaar,” chattered the bheestie mournfully, “it is said that the sahib’s breath is in his nostrils. He will soon be dead.”

  Malcolm had noticed how the natives stared at him and whispered behind his back. He had expected resistance when he collected the revenues from the land-holders and the wealthier merchants; no one in this hostile province withstood him, but the eyes that looked into his were covertly mocking.

  It got on his nerves—which few things did. He had expected to find an antagonist in the castle; he found no one. In the first week of his stay he had nearly been slain by a clever’ trick of his invisible foes. And now the sickness was gaining on him. His head throbbed and his sight was blurred. It was harder than ever to sleep.

  III

  One night he wakened at a slight sound near his head. Sleeping lightly as he did, he was fully conscious on the instant. Soft, regular breathing mingled with a rasping snore from the open doorway of his chamber assured him that Rawul Singh and Cheetoo were dreaming away as usual, just outside.

  Malcolm reached for a pistol quietly and lay passive. The only other opening in the walls of his room was the broken aperture of a round window from which many stones had fallen away. Through this he could see clearly the panoply of stars over the blur of the jungle. On this opening he focused his attention, for the sound had come from that quarter.

  Several of the stars were blotted out. Malcolm sat up silently and raised his pistol. He waited, scarcely breathing, for what seemed many moments; and then the faint light from the round window was darkened further.

  Malcolm was puzzled. He had expected that the object, whatever it might be, that had come into the opening would continue its progress within his room. Instead, another object had appeared in the window.

  Resolved to investigate, the Scot slipped from his bed and moved to the door in his stocking feet. At once Rawul Singh’s heavy breathing ceased and the white man was aware of the Rajput standing beside him in the dark.

  “Some one is outside,” whispered Malcolm. “Come.”

  He felt that the Rajput accompanied him along the hall, to the gate of the castle—the way being familiar to both. Stepping cautiously out on the terrace, they examined the wall without result until Rawul Singh drew a quick breath and grasped the arm of the white man.

  “Above, sahib,” he breathed; “look at the tower.”

  Twenty feet overhead a figure stood on the summit of the square tower, outlined against the stars in the faint light of a new moon. Malcolm saw arms raised to the sky and the arms were knitted to the body like those of a bat. The head appeared very small compared to the grotesque body.

  Malcolm shivered, believing for the moment that he was looking at a man in the form of a bat. Tales of werewolves that he had heard in his youth in Scotland flitted into his mind; he thought of the Witches’ Sabbath and the night when evil spirits cast themselves into the air from a great height.

  “A bat,” he whispered.

  Checking the momentary play of imagination, due to his weakened condition, he ordered Rawul Singh to stand watch on the terrace while he went into the tower. It was built, as was generally the case in fifteenth century structures in Rajputana, against the corner of the castle and a postern door opened into it from within the front passage of the main building.

  There was but the one door and through a window Malcolm could see the tall form of Rawul Singh watching from the terrace below. Up the stairs he went, pistol in hand, his heart beating heavily.

  The circular stairs were narrow and Malcolm was sure no one could have passed him. Yet when he stood on the tower summit it was vacant and there was no sign of the visitor of the night.

  “If it was a bat,” growled Rawul Singh, “it flew away, sahib, as you climbed up. It vanished into the air.”

  Disturbed, the Scot did not sleep again that night, and with the first light of dawn he inspected the tower anew. He was convinced that nothing could have got by him on the steep stairs, nor was there any opening in the wall by which the apparition might have leaped to the terrace unheard—if that had been possible—by the Rajput.

  One thing attracted his attention, and that was a portion of vine displaced from its hold on the stone upon the side of the tower away from where Rawul Singh had stood—the side of the tower that had been in deep shadow the night before.

  The Rajput tested the strength of the vines and found that they broke under his light weight.

  “It was not thus, sahib,” he shook his head, “that the demon came down.”

  “Yet he must have come down,” pointed out Malcolm irritably. “How long had he been gone from the tower top before I reached it?”

  Rawul Singh considered.

  “The space of time that a man might hold his breath without pain. That I know well, for I held mine until I saw thee. Nevertheless the time would not suffice for the bat”—so the old man chose to think of the visitor of the night before—“to escape out of the tower through the door within the castle before thy coming.”

  “So, you saw me look out of the window half-way up the stair?”

  “Nay, how could I see through the shadow that was like a cloak?”

  The explanation of the Rajput worked logically enough in its own bent. Since the bird-like visitor of the night had been seen at the tower top and had not been seen on the ground below, it must have vanished between tower and earth and hence its appearance had partaken of the supernatural.

  But Malcolm, frowning, reasoned that since the bat-man had not come down the stairs and had not climbed down the vines, he must have done, logically, just one thing.

  He had run down the stairs, on seeing Rawul Singh appear on the terrace, as far as the window. Hearing Malcolm coming up from below, the man had climbed through the window, working down into the vines which had broken under his grasp, and had thus fallen to the terrace beside Rawul Singh.

  If this were true—and Malcolm could not believe otherwise—Rawul Singh had held back information again, just as before when he had failed to admit that he knew the slayers of the highway to be servants of Kali.

  Cheetoo gave it as his opinion that the ghost of the castle had been on the tower and had flown away on the back of a ghil—an invisible spirit of the air.

  * * * *

  But Malcolm, inspecting the window that opened into his chamber, was certain that two large stones h
ad been added to the ruins of the wall within the opening. It had been these stones, he reasoned, that he noticed against the starlight. Some one had pushed them into the window as noiselessly as possible.

  Taking pen and paper, the Scot wrote to Cunningham as follows:

  To the Honourable Sir A. Cunningham, Resident of Jumna:

  SIR:

  As regards the occupant of the Castle, formerly alluded to by yourself as the Ghost, I have to report that he has visited the tower wearing his long cloak which creates a resemblance to a bat.

  This personage has means of entering and leaving the aforesaid Castle unseen. He is endeavouring to wall me up in the Castle, or at least to close the openings of our quarters so far as possible without being perceived. That is a curious matter. Owing to a distemper that has attacked me, I beg that you will send at once a detail of soldiers to convey the revenues to Agra in safety, as I am bedridden.

  Yr. most obed’t. servant,

  MALCOLM.

  This message Rawul Singh sent off by a chit bearer.

  “Dog and son of a dog,” said Rawul Singh to Cheetoo, “soon thou wilt dig thy grave, for the illness of the sahib gains upon him.”

  In spite of the Rajput’s care and his own fight against the poison that was entering his system, Malcolm had been forced to take to his cot.

  At this Cheetoo moaned and tore at his scrawny beard. Conflicting fears reflected themselves in his emaciated face, and the fear of the Rajput’s steel overmastered his dread of the Scot’s enemies.

  “Ai,” he whispered shrilly, “the poison that is killing the feringhi is in the air of the castle. Know you not, O blind buffalo, that a man can not live where fire will not burn?”

  Rawul Singh was perplexed by this. Air, to him, was the same everywhere, and the idea that their enemies might have poisoned it was absurd. As for fire, it was true that they did their cooking on the terrace, yet they carried their lantern’s about the castle.

  He went to Malcolm with the message, and the Scot pondered it. They had both noticed the dank, vitiated odor of the place but had accepted it as natural.

  “Light one of the lanterns, Rawul Singh,” ordered the officer. “Bear it first out upon the dahlan, then into this chamber, then down to the lowest cellars. Observe carefully whether the flame diminishes or not.”

  The soldier obeyed and came back more puzzled than before.

  “Sahib,” he reported, “this is a strange thing. On the dahlan the flame was big and strong. Here, it is not so strong. In the lowest prisons it dies down to a hair.”

  Malcolm stared from the lantern to his friend and whistled reflectively. He had not observed this peculiarity of the light as he had not visited the prison. He remembered that Cunningham’s servant had said that passing natives forced by chance to quarter in the castle overnight always made openings in the walls. And this circumstance joined itself in his mind with the fact that the bat-like visitor had been trying to close the opening in his chamber.

  Moreover the natives lighted fires and rushed about, clamoring and waving their weapons to scare off the deadly spirits of the place. This would be a very effectual way of displacing the vitiated air—the dank, curious-smelling element of the place.

  Displacing the air—that would only be necessary in case it was heavier than ordinary air.

  “Carbonic acid gas!” he exclaimed. “Comes from the stagnant water and decayed vegetation and the general decomposition of this old ruin. It hangs low of course and it’s little better than rank poison.”

  “My friend the demon,” thought Malcolm, “was not satisfied with the rate of my demise; he wanted me to get the full benefit of the bad air by walling me in. Especially as he wanted the revenues, which would have gone to his own lease deeds. No wonder the doctors couldn’t find out what was the matter with poor Powell.”

  Whereupon he ordered Rawul Singh to pitch on the terrace against the castle wall the tent he had brought with him to use in hunting expeditions. Then, aided by Cheetoo, he took up his new quarters. That night and the next he slept well for the first time in weeks. Rawul Singh kept watch on the terrace.

  On the third evening the Rajput, well pleased, went to where Cheetoo was lying at the other end of the terrace by the fire.

  “The sahib gains strength,” he growled. “He will live. So, thou also wilt live.”

  Cheetoo did not answer and Rawul Singh, looking a second time, saw that he was dead, a cloth girdle wrapped around his twisted throat and his belly slit open by two slashes in the shape of a cross.

  Unwinding the girdle, the Rajput brought it to Malcolm, who observed that it was such a thing as was used by a Moslem for a waist sash.

  “God receive his soul,” he said moodily. Fingering the stout sash, he observed to himself: “A rumal, or strangling-cord of the slayers who are thugs—worshipers of Kali. Did Cheetoo die because he warned me, or was his death to be a warning?”

  They buried the bheestie without delay at the edge of the jungle and as Malcolm helped Rawul Singh roll the stones on the grave—he could do little more, being still weak—he turned to his companion thoughtfully.

  “Are the two slashes of a knife across the stomach of the bheestie similar to the mark of a knife that thou sawest upon the body of thy son?”

  “Aye.”

  “Dost thou know, Rawul Singh, that when a certain band of murderers calling themselves thugs slay a victim they slash open the body in this manner before burial? They do this so that the gas contained within the human body will not swell the corpse, thus disclosing the place to jackals or dogs that might dig up the body and so reveal the traces of the crime.”

  Rawul Singh hesitated.

  “Aye,” he admitted, “that was known to me.”

  “And didst not reveal to me thy knowledge that we were dealing with thugs? Is this thy loyalty to thy master?”

  The Rajput folded his arms and bent his head, his lean features working under strong emotion.

  “Perhaps thou didst think,” Malcolm accused, “that if I knew there were thugs in Bhir I would have fled and deprived thee of my aid in seeking revenge?”

  “Nay.” The other’s head jerked up quickly. “I have watched thee, sahib, and I know thee for—a brave man.”

  “Words.” As Rawul Singh was stubbornly silent, the officer hazarded another guess. “Thy daughter—the thugs hold her and have threatened her with harm if thou didst disclose their secret?”

  “Nay. That may well be, yet no word of it has come to me.”

  “What, then?” The Scot was frankly puzzled by the demeanor of his follower.

  There was no doubting the menace of Bhir, if there was—as he believed—a thuggi band in the village. Throughout the central provinces of India it was becoming known to the English officials that these slayers, who at first were supposed to be merely dacoits, infested the main villages and highways. The native officials were often bribed and more often powerless to interfere with them.

  The thugs formed a fraternity made up of every caste and profession. By day they appeared as reputable merchants or craftsmen; by night they assembled in bands to seek out victims carefully selected, and—as they believed—fore-ordained to their hands. The cult was handed down from father to son, and its existence was just becoming known to the English officials.

  So much Malcolm knew. Cunningham’s story had led him to suspect there were thugs in Bhir. What puzzled him was that, until now, the native slayers had not ventured to number an Englishman among their victims.

  Moreover there was the peculiar individual known as the ghost to be accounted for.

  “What, then?” he repeated grimly.

  The reply of the Rajput came like a flood when a dam is loosed. Malcolm’s accusation had stirred his sense of honor, which was very high indeed.

  “Sahib, it is true that thou couldst aid me in my revenge, and that these words—if they are overheard—may mean the death of Tala. I have sworn to serve thee. Judge whether I am faithful to my oath. Two
sahibs that were here before thee were slain. Thou art a brave man. Thou wouldst not go from this place until the revenues were collected. As it is, the thugs seek only to drive thee away, or to harm thee secretly. Once they suspect that thou knowest their secret, thy fate is sealed. Thou wilt lie beside my son.”

  He pointed quietly to the grave of Cheetoo.

  “Thus! But there is still a chance for thee to escape. I say—go.

  “Sahib, thou art well enough to travel. Mount, then, this night for Agra and ride fast. If there are thugs in Bhir, they have marked thee for slaying. Know, sahib, that secrecy is the veil that shields the servants of Kali; my son they buried, but Cheetoo they left under our eyes. That means that they have determined thou shalt not leave Bhir, to report their presence. Otherwise they would have dragged away the body before slashing it and we would have thought that a tiger had struck him down.”

  “Yes,” acknowledged Malcolm, “I thought of thugs when I first heard the tale of the servant of Cunningham sahib. But what of the man who visits the castle and who is my enemy?”

  “I know not. But consider this.” Rawul Singh pointed at the fresh mound of stones. “They know now that thou wilt not die by the poisoned air, nor by my sword. So they may attack thee at once.”

  “Yes,” said the Scot dryly.

  “I will stay, sahib, and search for Tala alone. But you must go at once.”

  “No.”

  That night two men watched on the terrace where the moonlight threw a jagged shadow from the walls of the ruins. Under the tower where his outline blended with the wall Rawul Singh squatted, his drawn sword across his knees.

  Lying on his cot in the tent, Malcolm watched, pistol in hand, the play of light and shadow over the cotton roof. He was wondering whether Rawul Singh was not an ally of the man in the cloak—who took upon himself the resemblance of a demon—Rawul Singh, who might have slain the unfortunate Cheetoo, and who was now urging him to fly from Bhir, which was the thing his enemies wished.

  Tossing on his cot in the hot hours of early night, Malcolm could hear the sounds of the nearby jungle, a buffalo crashing down to water somewhere at the edge of the rice fields—an owl hooting—the slipping passage of a leopard—the snarl of a jackal.