by Harold Lamb
Wearied by his sickness, his senses sharpened by edged nerves, Malcolm felt that hostile forces were gathering around him. He knew that he was cut off from his kind—the chit bearer who had been gone ten days had not returned. Worst of all, he wondered whether he could feel certain of Rawul Singh.
Through the opening in his tent he could see the moonlight on the roofs of Bhir village, could glimpse a torch passing down the bazaar front or a turbaned group of men moving quietly across the central square.
These groups merged together, and lights danced across his eyes that persisted in closing with the lengthening of the night. It seemed to him as if the beasts of the jungle had halted in their tracks and were crouching, their eyes shining in the darkness as they looked toward him.
A cold wind blew into his face and he seemed to be lifted into the starlit air. A high voice shrilled down the wind, laughter sounded in mocking words of a tongue he did not know.
It was strange, he thought dully, that the voice in the night air should laugh. It was very cold among the stars and their light hurt his eyes.…
Malcolm awoke to find himself stiff from the chill of dawn and a gray light filling the tent.
Rawul Singh was standing beside him, looking curiously at the pistol still grasped in his master’s cramped hand.
“Sahib,” he said, “while thou didst sleep I heard some one call from the tower. I know not what it was, for the words were neither Hindustani, nor Turki nor English. So, as thou didst, I ran into the castle to the tower stairs. Yet when I came to the window that looks out on the terrace I bethought me that this might be a trick to separate us, and I stayed at the window, watching and listening.
“Sahib, it was only a moment before I heard a man breathing very near. It was not behind me but in front of me. So I looked out, very carefully. And my face was within a foot of the face of the demon, who crouched below the window with his feet on the vines and his fingers on the stone ledge of the opening. I struck quickly with my sword, but he was more swift and dropped to the terrace. The window was too small for me to climb through and by the time I reached the terrace by way of the castle door he was gone. Verily is he a thing of the night.”
Malcolm read in the man’s eyes that he was telling the truth. He saw now how the visitor had eluded them on the previous night, waiting probably crouched against the tower wall in the shadow until they had left the terrace, when he had slid down easily, breaking the vine in the process.
“So,” he thought, “my friend the demon is very small in body, is quite fearless, has a sense of humor and—speaks Portuguese.”
“Sahib,” concluded Rawul Singh gravely, “from this hour thou and I must keep together and one of us must always watch. I am afraid that the demon overheard our speech of the thugs.”
IV
Ali Khan was as heavy as a buffalo and as light on his feet as a panther. He was of Afghan blood and his father had been a rokurrea—a professional carrier of money. His grandfather had been a Said, so good Moslem blood ran in the veins of Ali Khan.
A square jet-black beard was his pride, with a brace of silver-chased Turkish pistols and a Persian sword that curved nearly to his heels. Ali Khan was a bold man and boastful, likewise crafty.
It was for these reasons that Rawul Singh had picked the Afghan ten days before they heard the voice in the jungle for the chit-bearer, to go to Cunningham sahib. Being an Afghan, the soldier was not one of the men of Bhir; being son of a hereditary messenger, Ali Khan was reasonably faithful to a trust—when he swore on the Koran, as he had done in the rear of a wineshop in the Bhir bazaar before Rawul Singh.
“Send a child, Rajput,” the Afghan had gibed. “The task is not worthy of me.”
“Thou wilt not think so when I tell thee there will be thugs behind thee and perhaps before.”
“Ho!” Ali Khan had fingered his beard. “Aho-ho-o. Well, I will go, and to Jehanum with all thugs, dacoits and slayers.”
“Hss!” Rawul Singh’s sibilant warning had cut him short. “There be thugs about us now. Do not join company with any on the road; travel by day, and if thou dost esteem thy bull-neck dismount not from thy horse on the road; sleep in the jungle at night and then only after crossing the river—”
So had Rawul Singh spoken, as quietly as he might, but sharp ears had heard the boast of Ali Khan and before the big Afghan flung his weight upon his horse a rider had slipped out of the bazaar and passed up the Jumna highway toward Agra.
Obedient to his instructions, Ali Khan rode swiftly until dusk the first day; then he swam his horse across the river, picketed it in a mango grove and snored peacefully until dawn.
Regaining the highway, he pressed on, the letter of Captain Malcolm concealed in a fold of his turban. Passage through the jungle bypaths from village to village was more dangerous than the main road where merchant caravans, parties of soldiers and peasants were usually within sight. A group of a dozen poverty-stricken Hindus besought the protection of the Afghan on their journey.
Ali Khan grinned and bade them be off, saying that the smell of a Hindu irked him.
Toward evening that day when he was hot and thirsty a party of Moslem cloth traders bound for Agra overtook him and invited him to camp with them that night and share their fire.
“Bismillah!” Ali Khan eyed them sharply; they seemed wealthy and peaceable; there was nothing about them to suggest assassins. “I would like to, but it is forbidden. Allah be with you. I go my own way.”
They persisted in urging him to dismount and pressed around him. The Afghan’s beard bristled and he touched spurs to his tired horse. When he had gone on a way he looked back and found the merchant cavalcade staring after him.
“Ya Allah!” muttered the khan. “They were thugs.”
He shared the knowledge, common among natives of India, of the secret slayers of the highway. He knew that they followed their trade only when unwatched; that they slew only when the omens vouchsafed by Kali were propitious, and that they killed by strangling.
Very rarely did they use other weapons; moreover they were accustomed to choose certain spots for the assassination and travel with the victim until the appointed place was reached, where they could bury their victims at once.
More than one courier from Bhir, he knew, lay under the grass by the Jumna highway and he suspected that the body of a sahib-magistrate of Bhir had been cast into the Jumna after the Englishman had imprudently joined company with a party of mild-appearing merchants.
So that evening Ali Khan said his prayers devoutly, alone. The next day brought no signs of thugs and he knew that he was no longer followed. Throughout the night he rode, resting his horse at intervals.
Dawn brought the sight of Agra’s towers, and relief to the heart of the chit-bearer. A few hours more would bring him to the cantonment of Cunningham sahib, where he could sleep, eat and boast his fill.
“Ya Allah,” he muttered, satisfied. “I am out of the snake’s nest. At the dawn prayer I will give thanks-—”
He reined in beside a group of mournful-looking Moslem soldiers who were burying one of their companions in a grave by the road. The body was cleanly robed in white cloth, but the survivors stood disconsolately by, a Koran in their hands.
Seeing Ali Khan dismount and wash at a brook by the grave and prepare his carpet for prayer, one of them approached him and asked if he could read from the Koran.
“May I strangle if I can’t read like a mullah,” responded the Afghan.
He understood that they could not read, nor repeat the burial formula over the body of their mate. They asked him if he would do so. “I would be a dog if I did not, and my beard would be defamed,” acknowledged the big warrior frankly. “Besides, I owe such a kindness, for my life has been miraculously spared.”
He cleansed his hands anew, took the Koran and knelt on the cloth by the body and the grave. As custom prescribed he laid aside his weapons, and two of the party knelt beside him.
In a sonorous voice Ali Khan
began to repeat the burial service. In a moment a sash was passed about his neck from behind, the two men at his side grasped his arms and he was strangled silently.
Then his big body was tumbled into the grave; the man who had taken the part of the dead Moslem rose. A caravan of traders came into sight from Agra at that instant and the thugs, perceiving it, began to complete the burial service over Ali Khan.
Before the last camel of the caravan had passed the erstwhile soldiers had filled in the grave and Malcolm’s messenger had passed from the sight of men. Only when the thugs took a folded paper from his turban did the act excite interest on the part of the passers-by on the caravan.
“Why do you take aught from the dead?” some one on the caravan asked.
“It is a message to his people—his last message,” explained the young thug who had impersonated the body and who possessed a sense of humor.
* * * *
The thug who had secured the chit stripped Ali Khan’s horse of its silver saddle—trappings and mounted, forcing the nearly exhausted beast to gallop back along the Jumna trail. His companions remained behind, to light a fire—now that the caravan was out of the way—on the grave, thus obliterating the traces of a burial. The weapons of Ali Khan they divided among themselves.
It was nightfall of the second day when the thug messenger—Hossein, by name, a bhutote—strangler—of the Bhundulkhand clan of Jumna—arrived at the outskirts of Bhir. Instead of entering the village, Hossein slowed down to a walk and took a cattle path away from the highway.
After following this a short distance up in the direction of the castle, he dismounted, tethered his horse and slipped into the jungle mesh. Passing silently through a bamboo thicket—no easy feat—he parted a dense mass of junipers and stepped out into a cleared space that seemed to have for its center a square black hole.
Here Hossein was very careful to give the cry of an owl, repeating it after an interval of silence. Advancing with more assurance, he stepped out upon what appeared to be the square cavity. Here a flight of steps led down and Hossein disappeared from view.
The hole was, in fact, an empty tank, or well, built after the fashion of Hindustan with stone platforms a little way down and recesses opening into the platforms. Here the wives and daughters and servants of a raja aforetime had cooled themselves during the stress of a hot season. But the sandstone walls of the tank were now dry and overgrown with weeds. A snake crawled away unseen by the boy.
Coming upon the lower platform, he turned into a recess. Here a ray of light flashed into his face and a man peered at him. Hossein passed the sentinel and advanced along a stone corridor into a small chamber lighted by a single lantern set with red and green bull’s-eyes of glass.
“Tala,” he whispered almost noiselessly.
“Peace be with thee, Hossein,” a low voice answered.
The youth stooped to peer at the form of a girl upon a divan against the wall. Costly Persian rugs and silk brocade covered the stone floor under the divan. A tabouret containing fruit and fresh water stood by it.
The lantern hanging from the ceiling was so arranged as to cast its glow on the passage way rather than the curtained recess where the woman rested. But Hossein’s sharp glance distinguished a pallid brow, circled by heavy, black hair, and black eyes that returned his stare dully.
There was something languid and indolent in the aspect of Tala stretched on the silks of the divan; there was indifference and lack of purpose in the slow movements of her eyes.
Her face, under the kohl and crimson stain, was lax. Yet it was young and wistful.
“Allah be good to thee,” whispered the youth fervently, glancing anxiously over his shoulder as he spoke. “Thy beauty is like the moon and thy lips are flower petals. Happy the man who owns them!”
Tala stirred as if trying to arouse herself to consciousness of something forgotten.
“Why am I kept waiting? When will I go forth from here, Hossein?”
“Soon, soon.”
“Sometimes I walk on the bottom of the tank and see the stars, Hossein.”
“Thine eyes outshine the stars, Tala, little flower—delight of my life.”
She put out her thin hand and touched his tunic and the heart of the thug swelled within his chest.
“Once, Hossein, I thought I heard my father speak—far above. He was crying pardon to Nag for killing a snake that had come out of the tank. Why are there snakes here, and why does not my father, Rawul Singh, come down? He is a brave man.”
Hossein moved uneasily, dragging his eyes from the girl’s face.
“No one comes where the snakes are, Tala. Soon, inshallah, you will go up to your father. But do not talk of that to him”—Hossein motioned along the passage—“who is yonder.”
Lightly he touched the girl’s hand and was gone. But at the curtain at the end of the passage his swagger left him and he hesitated, feeling the chit that he grasped in his hand.
“Enter, Hossein,” came a voice from behind the curtain.
The youth stepped into a poorly lighted chamber in which the air was very stale and cool. This was of more recent construction than the tank or the recess that was Tala’s abode. Sun-dried brick formed the walls, which were bare. A pallet and table occupied one corner and by the table squatted a hunched figure of a man who smoked a hookah.
Into the mobile, handsome face of Hossein came a look of great respect. The man on the rug lifted a hairless face the color of old ivory. His mouth was a slit, and his eyes were very large and prominent.
He held out his hand. Hossein placed in it the letter that had been written by Malcolm.
Although the light from the single candle was dim, the man on the rug seemed to have no difficulty in reading the message. His face did not change as he laid it aside.
“You had no trouble?” he asked in Turki.
“No, jemadar, not at all. Warning reached us from Bhir of the approach of the big buffalo with the message. So we went out from Agra to meet him and persuaded him to read the Koran to us. That was because I played the part of a dead man, and I—”
“Enough of yourself.” The man on the rug had a very shrill voice. “What are they doing in Agra?”
“They are talking together and holding council like a lot of old wives at a dewan, jemadar. They have sent couriers to Bhir—the thugs in the village cared for them, of course—and they are worried at the sahib’s silence. Cunningham sahib is getting together a detachment of red-coated feringhi—”
“When will he come?”
Hossein smiled.
“In a week. Master, your servant took care to learn all that before we left Agra to intercept the messenger from Bhir. Aye, we of the Bhundulkhand band accompanied the khitmatgar of Cunningham sahib into the native bazaar by the jumna bank. We buried him in the mud. But first we put a sack of hot ashes over his head and beat it until his throat was seared and his lungs were half-full-—”
“Enough of your deviltries! I care not to hear of them.”
“Cunningham sahib comes in a week—as soon as the passage of the rains and the decline of the river make the road fit for his feringhi devils. We promised the khitmatgar that we would leave him in peace if he told us. And so we did leave him—under the mud of the river.”
“How many soldiers will come?”
“Ten score of sepoys—may their beards be defiled—and two score feringhi troopers. Is it true, jemadar, that they breathe fire when they are angry and put a charm on their bullets?”
“Peace, parakeet!” The yellow man rose and Hossein saw that his dingy black cloak hung down to his ankles. The man was very lean, and his bones were small as a child’s. Yet the wrinkles in his brown skin proclaimed him old. “You are very shrewd, Hossein, but you have not yet killed a dozen men and you know naught of the English. When they come they must find the castle of Bhir empty, without a trace of the sahib and his Rajput.”
“Is the sahib-magistrate still alive?” Hossein was surprised.
“Ah.” The man in the cloak smiled wryly. “It is strange that he is. He survived his first encounter with the idiot of a Rajput who was meant to slay him, and he was warned of the poison in the air of the castle.”
“So, the sahib who took your place was not to be frightened away?”
The yellow man frowned, as if he could not understand that fact, and in his frown was something wild and vacant. A gleam of supreme cunning flashed into his dark eyes.
“It is better so. The higher powers, the wisdom of Kali Bhwani, has ordained that the feringhi usurper will not die until the revenues he has collected from the district and the countryside beyond Bhir—until all that store of silver and gold is at the castle. Thus will we be rewarded for slaying the man.”
Hossein bowed. He was thinking that it would be good booty.
“Within four days will Malcolm sahib have completed the toll and gathered the revenues together,” he assented. Then, in an altered voice, “But what of Tala?”
“She will have her part to play when we strike against the sahib.”
The man had answered with complete indifference, and Hossein’s eyes widened.
“Tala, the Rajput flower, must not be placed in peril! Dom Gion, I will give—”
The breath of the yellow man hissed in the face of the boy. His thin hands clutched at the other’s throat and fear leaped into the eyes of Hossein.
“That name!” Dom Gion’s voice trembled with rage. “You dare to speak it? Have I not said to you that I am jemadar of the jumna thugs, and master of Bhir—no more?”
The boy’s sturdy strength easily pried loose the lean fingers of his assailant, and at this evidence of his own power Hossein’s fear was displaced by a veiled cunning. He watched the old man as a dog will eye a snake about to strike.
“To no one else have I said your name,” he responded smoothly. “Am I not your servant?”
Under the mask of complaisance he was measuring the old man’s intelligence and craft as a strong young wolf of the pack will study the strength of the old leader. Dom Gion was jemadar—chief—of the Jumna band of half a thousand thugs; Hossein was the most youthful of the bhutotes—stranglers.