by Harold Lamb
Dom Gion held the mastery of Bhir in his hand; he took toll of the wealth of its merchants, yet he gave wealth of merchandise to them—merchandise that was the spoil of the thugs’ bands upon the highway.
And the countryside held him in fear as being a demon incarnate. This was because Dom Gion, who took pains not to let them see him face to face, talked to himself in a tongue that they did not know, and because the snakes of the ruins were friendly to him. Likewise his wisdom was more than theirs.
“Come, come,” snarled the old man. “Indeed you are my servant and the bonds of thuggi hold you. The vengeance of Kali would blast you and bar you from paradise did you lift hand against me, or the thugs, your comrades. Go, and bring report to me when the revenues are complete. Think not of Tala. She is not for you.”
Hossein departed, outwardly humble, yet as he went he cast a sidelong glance at the form of the girl sleeping upon the divan.
And, sleepless himself, he paced the jungle paths for many hours that night, his desire hot in his veins and his brain in a tumult. Hossein had taken from life what he coveted, and now he longed to possess Tala, who was ordained for other things by the master of the thugs.
* * * *
While Hossein walked the jungle Dom Gion retired to his closet behind his bed. There, it was said by the thugs who waited on him, he prayed to his image of Kali and after praying he often came forth in the form of a snake to glide among their feet and listen to what they said. And as proof of this they pointed out that Dom Gion, the jemadar, had no fear of snakes, nor had the cobras any dread of him.
But there was no image in the closet. Layer upon layer were placed squares of gold bullion and boxes of silver. Jade statuettes—spoil from itinerant Chinese caravans in Kashmir—jeweled rings and gems taken from inlaid weapons—for Dom Gion wore no weapon himself—strings of pearl that had been on the throats of women of Rajasthan before they were strangled to death—all in all the treasure of Dom Gion was a goodly store. And with the treasure were many dusty lease deeds made out on his behalf.
He knew every item of it. Although the closet in the rock was almost dark, he lifted necklaces of pearls and touched the shimmering balls gently with his finger-tips. For Dom Gion was a miser.
Long residence in the half-light of underground had accustomed his eyes to the dark. In large measure he had the ability of animals of the cat family to see in the night.
Because of this, and knowing the plan of the castle as he did, it was possible for him to stalk the two occupants, Malcolm and Rawul Singh, without being cornered.
Dom Gion had not slain them with his own hands because there were two of them and he feared both and they were always together.
On the wall of the closet was a painting done by an Indian artist of a harsh-featured Portuguese merchant. It was clad in the fashion of a century ago. It was, in fact, the grandfather of Dom Gion, who had taken the daughter of the village potail to wife.
And in one of the chests was a firman or deed made out to his grandfather to trade in the district of Bhir. Dom Gion—as he was called, after his father—glanced at the parchment and smiled.
V
“Thou seest, Rawul Singh,” said John Malcolm, “that all signs point to our friend the demon being a half-caste. I think he is more native than white even though he wears a cloak that has the seeming of a priest’s garb.”
“The gods know.”
“A man of mixed blood always bears in his heart a grievance against the white man. And in the tale of the khitmatgar of Cunningham sahib it was related that the demon of Bhir was akin to the daughter of the village potail. In Agra I made inquiries among the traders of the bazaar and they knew of a Portuguese who owned the district of Bhir during the last war with the English, three generations ago. So this man of Bhir, knowing that his authority over the district is not lawful and nursing his own enmity against my countrymen—he is the one we have to deal with. And I believe that the thugs serve him.”
Malcolm frowned into the fire. It was full moonlight without the castle and the wind was damp with the passing of a heavy rain. The two sat close to the embers, muskets at their sides. The collection of the revenues had been completed that day and Malcolm had hidden the money in the wall not three feet away, having removed a stone on the inside to make a niche for it.
It was a sorry treasury, he reflected, and, harassed and spied upon, he was a sorry figure of a king’s magistrate. Nevertheless the money was there, the surveys and census completed and—he and Rawul Singh still held the castle.
“It is the part of wisdom to study thy enemy, Rawul Singh,” he nodded, puffing at his long clay pipe. “Now,” he went on in English, “I’m not liking this quiet. We are watched. I don’t think my chit-bearer got through.”
“Sahib,” observed the Rajput suddenly, “it is in my mind that Tala is near us. Last night my ears heard her song, not so far away. Yet her voice was altered and I could not be sure—fearing a trick I dared not leave thee.”
The Scot’s eyes grew moody.
“That’s a score we must settle,” he thought. “This poor chap is waiting for me to give his daughter back to him and I’m blessed if I can see any way to it. We’ve learned that she is not in the village, nor in the farming districts. God grant she isn’t dead.”
“If it was a trick,” the Rajput pursued the tenor of his thoughts, “it means that our enemies are girding themselves for fight. Aye, it was a warning, perchance. They will only attack us openly when all other ways are proved useless. Aye, they fear that the noise of our muskets and the sight of fighting in the castle—which can be seen plainly from across the Jumna—would bring down retribution from the feringhis on their heads.”
Malcolm nodded.
“So,” he added, “they will try to get rid of us secretly. Aye, we will not be fools enough to leave our fortress. We have food and we will wait until they come, or Cunningham sahib comes.”
“As the gods will—it may be that Tala will come, for she is near.”
Rawul Singh glanced at the jungle. Malcolm sahib, he thought, might have escaped weeks ago from Bhir. But the feringhi was a man without fear. Now it was too late; the net had closed around them, the wiles of the demon of Bhir would be loosed on them secretly so that no word would spread around the countryside that the men of Bhir had slain a sahib. It would be done inevitably as Powell sahib had been disposed of, and the other.
And now, leaning forward the better to listen to the noises of the night, he touched Malcolm on the arm.
“Danger is at hand,” he whispered, “for men are coming up the path from the village.
Soon Malcolm noticed what Rawul Singh had observed—a muffled clamor on the highway beneath them. And presently he made out torches advancing up the trail to the castle. The patter of naked feet sounded in the jungle.
He leaned forward to light his pipe with an ember from the fire.
VI
That night the chief of the village had announced that there would be a tamasha at Bhir castle.
Word had been passed about the bazaar and the outlying districts by the chief’s servants that the tamasha would be a very fine one—in celebration of the good harvest that had been gathered in. The leading men of the village, the visitors in Bhir, and the merchants would see a delightful buffoonery.
There would be fiddles and comedy-men and—the devout Muhammadans said it under their breath—a beautiful katchani, a dancing-girl.
All this would be for the pleasure of Malcolm sahib. So said the servants of the village chief. Yet he sent no word to Malcolm. Above all he was insistent that none of his friends should carry weapons, except perhaps knives that could not be seen.
Whereupon the men of Bhir began to gather in the bazaar and with them were the visitor traders, many of them acquaintances, it seemed, of Hossein, for they spoke with him in the alleys and nodded understandingly.
Another order of the chief was that none of their women should accompany them. This, in a Moslem comm
unity, was deemed quite fitting. When the slaves and the merchants of Bhir were in motion toward the castle Hossein vanished from the cavalcade.
The young thug slipped aside into a cattle path and ran swiftly up the slope to the castle, picking his way easily in the bright moonlight. Avoiding the bulk of the castle, he threaded the jungle to the side of the old tank that peered up at him from its malevolent shadow.
Here Hossein went more cautiously, keeping an eye out for the giant cobras that lived in the ruin. He did not meet any, however, nor did a sentinel of Dom Gion challenge him. Somewhat surprised, he felt his way into the corridor, calling softly:
“Tala, Tala! It is I, Hossein. I am come as I promised.”
Finding that only silence answered him, he knelt, striking steel upon flint and kindling tinder taken from his girdle. Lighting a candle, he surveyed the chamber that had been the prison of the Rajput girl for the past two months.
It was empty.
Hossein muttered under his breath and ran into the quarters of the Portuguese half-caste. He knew that if Tala was absent Dom Gion must be gone from his room. The jemadar had not loved Tala as Hossein loved her. Rather, Dom Gion had cherished her as he might a favorite snake, as if he were keeping her for some object other than his own desire. Hossein had made sure of this by jealous watching.
Moreover, that afternoon he had found opportunity to whisper to the girl that while the thugs and the men of Bhir were at the castle and the tamasha was in progress he would take her away, on his horse, from Bhir to Agra where she would have comfortable quarters and jewels and rich silk garments.
It was a risk, but the thug did not weigh that against possession of Tala.
Hossein had mustered up courage to do this. Had he not strangled the boy that had been Tala’s brother with his own hand by order of Dom Gion, unknown to her? Had his men not driven away the cattle and sold them in another village? And slain Cheetoo?
This, according to the strict laws of the thugs, gave him a claim upon the woman that Dom Gion had taken for himself. Desire to possess the girl had decided him at last to risk flight from Bhir. Was he not strong and young? True, it was only when under the influence of the bhang that Dom Gion plied her with, that Tala spoke kindly to Hossein. But he fancied that the use of the drug had dulled her memory of her father, and that if he took her from Bhir, she would turn to him.
As for the Rajput, Hossein had no apprehension. Dom Gion would take care of Rawul Singh and Malcolm sahib as well.
But now the nest was empty and the bird had flown. Hossein’s dark face twisted with the hot anger of the young Moslem whose desires are his fulfillment of life and whose enmities are his religion. He strode into the chamber of Dom Gion, peering about vindictively, and fearing that the half-caste had harmed the girl.
But the room with the cot was empty. Hossein’s eye fell on the curtain that veiled the closet and temptation surged into his breast. No one other than the jemadar knew what was within there. He would look within and see the god to which Dom Gion prayed—a god that was all-powerful, since its servant was all-powerful in Bhir.
Very cautiously he parted the curtain, fearing the snakes that Dom Gion said were there. He saw no snake nor any image of Kali. Instead, Hossein glimpsed vast loot. He had not known that his master, who assumed the aspect of poverty, had treasured so much of the spoils of thuggi.
It did not occur to Hossein to rob his master as he might easily have done. It is one of the ethics of thuggi that the spoils of each member of the clan are inviolate.
But Hossein’s heart swelled at the knowledge that Dom Gion had no god. There was no divinity that gave him power, not Kali the deity of the thugs—and Hossein was a devout servant of the woman-god.
“Ohai,” he muttered. “So, my master sought to keep the eyes of men from his treasure by fear. Well, I fear him no longer.”
The thought of Tala returned swiftly to his a agitated mind and the boy turned to run out of the chamber in the rock and up into the jungle. Dom Gion, he knew, had gone to the castle and where he was the Rajput girl must be.
Slipping noiselessly from the undergrowth, Hossein climbed the debris of the crumbling rampart until he could see upon the terrace where a score of torches flickered in the hot wind of the night, adding their glow to the pallid radiance of the moon.
In a serried half-circle sat the men of Bhir, with the visiting merchants. They passed the hookah stem from one to another. Behind them stood their young male children, gazing wide-eyed at three or four buffoons who, dressed as women and native dignitaries, danced about and sang to the sound of fiddle and drum.
The little boys laughed, with a great show of white teeth, for the byropees, the comic actors of the village, were very funny. They had painted their faces grotesquely and their antics as they imitated their superior lords were clever indeed.
Isolated from the gathering, Hossein could see Malcolm sahib and Rawul Singh sitting against the wall of the castle beside an open niche. The Scot was smiling, but the Rajput’s lean face was grim.
Having carried out his orders from Dom Gion in bringing the assemblage from the village to the castle, Hossein was free for the moment and he squirmed nearer until he lay in the deep shadow of the tower.
The thug was trying to discover Dom Gion and Tala. Neither was visible; yet he knew both must be within sight of the lamasha.
He paid no attention to the shrill voiced byropees, because he knew that a sterner drama, a conflict in reality, was impending. He knew that blood would be shed and the lives of the two men sitting by the wall would be attempted, yet in such a manner as to leave no suspicion of murder in the minds of the visiting merchants or the children.
* * * *
On their part Malcolm and Rawul Singh were alert and watchful, although the Scot puffed at his clay pipe tranquilly and the warrior played with the fire.
Malcolm had received the gathering from Bhir calmly and expressed his pleasure at the tamasha. He noticed that no one bore arms—at least weapons that could be seen—and that the young boys were with the Bhir men. This might well be meant to drive away suspicion.
Yet he could not understand why the men of Dom Gion, who he expected were present, would attempt violence before the bula admees—the respectable persons—among the visitors who were with them.
Only one inkling did Malcolm have of what was in store for him. A big trader made a low, mocking salaam.
“Sahib,” the man said, “it is written that he who takes usury from others shall suffer.”
Rawul Singh would have responded once and insolently—the idea of a bazaar money-changer invoking the term usury had in it something of the farcical—but Malcolm checked him.
“The revenues of the government,” the Scot said crisply, “are not a tax but a payment between friends. For what we take, we give value. Are your harvests gathered in?”
“Aye.”
“Then, for this season they have not been destroyed by native raiders from other states. And tell me this: have you been forced to pay tax on lease deeds to him who calls himself Dom Gion and master of Bhir—since my coming?”
The man was silent, and Rawul Singh noted that he glanced covertly at the shadows on the right, the shadows cast by the tower.
“The man who made himself, illegally, master of Bhir,” went on Malcolm with assurance, “will no longer tax you. He has slain wrongly and his reward will be that of a murderer—hanging, if we take him alive, but in any event, death.”
Malcolm had been thinking of the fate of his predecessors when he spoke, but the Bhir men fancied that he referred to Dom Gion’s connection with the thugs and deep silence fell for a moment.
They watched Malcolm with shifting, avid eyes. Before their eyes a contest was being waged between the feringhi and the master of the thugs who did not permit himself to be seen. In fact much of Dom Gion’s prestige lay in his concealment within the confines of the castle. Judged by his acts, he was a man of immense power.
It was a s
trange thing, thought the men of Bhir, that this sahib should show no fear of his enemy. Dom Gion had assured them through Hossein that the sahib would, in the midst of the music and shouting of the tamasha, fall to earth shrieking with fear.
So they watched eagerly, to miss no detail of what would come.
And it came so swiftly that Malcolm and Rawul Singh were unprepared. A cloak fell away from a figure squatting beside the musicians and a woman stepped through the ranks of men. In her hand was a bare scimitar.
She walked forward slowly. On her dark hair was the silver tinsel cap of a Persian dancer, and she was dressed for the sword dance. Yet she swayed uncertainly, and her glazed eyes barely moved in their sockets.
Under the rouge the woman was very pale and by this and the dark rings under her eyes the watching Moslems knew that she had been given the heavy stimulus of drugs—probably bhang and opium mixed.
“Tala!”
The girl looked at her father when he cried out, but her face did not change. She had been set on her feet to do the dance that she had often given before Dom Gion. Yet, so were her faculties numbed, she could barely lift the sword or step forward. Still, she looked long at Rawul Singh.
Hossein rose from the ground, his hand on the hilt of his sword. He had not imagined that Dom Gion would allow Rawul Singh to see his daughter; the appearance of Tala, he knew, must foreshadow the blow that Dom Gion would strike. The young thug saw Tala snatched from his arms, and blood rushed to his head. For he fancied that he heard the shrill laugh of Dom Gion near him.
The Rajput girl had stepped forward among the actors, until she was only a few feet from Rawul Singh, at whom she was still gazing in a bewildered fashion.
Sight of his daughter painted and garbed for dancing, in the possession of his enemies, was like a blow in the face to the Rajput. Her indifference to him was a lash to his fierce spirit.