by Harold Lamb
The Daktar Sahib was meditating on the strange turn of events. An hour since, secure among the police troopers of Rawal Pindi, an influential political officer had laughed at a Pathan’s chit.
Now this same officer was hastening—in a gnawing rage and armed, but nevertheless hastening—to obey the summons of the Pathan.
* * * *
Jehan Khan’s name signified the Lord of the World. A pretentious title, considering that Jehan Khan’s domain consisted of as much hillside as he had been able to wrest from the neighboring tribes who were his foes—and the Tower.
That was the secret of Jehan Khan’s power. Jehan Khan had won it in a hand-to-hand scrimmage with another chief who had been tumbled headlong to his death in the Panjkora. The Tower was ideally situated for an execution, and was inaccessible except to his own men, impregnable, and invisible.
You see, Jehan Khan was a philosopher. In the small Koran that hung from his bull neck he had written two prayers—that he would never miss his aim, and that he would never allow a wrong to go unpunished.
Gerald, who had met the Pathan chief, considered that the Lord of the World had two redeeming traits. He reverenced his aged father; he kept his word. He was of course a most gifted liar, but when he made a promise he kept it. Witness, the coming of Arthur Kent to the Tower.
* * * *
When the shadow of the Panjkora gorge closed in on them their Pathan guides made known that the two sahibs must dismount and send back their two horses.
Kent demurred, but Gerald dismounted and set the example of cutting his mount with a blow of the riding-crop. When the horses had disappeared, galloping homeward, the Pathans produced from somewhere two shaggy, miniature ponies and the white men mounted and carried on.
“You would better,” suggested Gerald, who had been pondering the episode of the ponies versus their own mounts—nothing that a Pathan did would be without good reason—“rid yourself of that revolver. It might make more trouble for us.”
“Not much,” growled the burly political agent. “I may use it, and if I do it would be trouble for Jehan Khan, not for us.”
Gerald said no more. He wished mildly to point out that the Pathan held Ethel Kent, beyond a doubt, and that the safety of Ethel Kent must be gained by mutual terms, not by weapon-play. And the safety of the woman was the one thing that mattered.
For this reason Gerald had discarded his own revolver. But Kent had a perfect right to keep his side-arms.
The political agent had the knack of shooting from the hip. He could, in this fashion, perhaps shoot more quickly than could Jehan Khan. But not more accurately.
Their ponies were threading up along a cliff path as broad as the extended arms of a man at the widest point. Afoot, or on plains-bred horse-flesh, they might slip on the damp stones and fall a thousand feet or so into the Panjkora in flood.
It was useless, Gerald found, to try to piece out the turns and twists of the way. The rain had ceased, but the cloud banks shrouded the moon, and the brisk wind that whipped at them seemed to come from every quarter of the compass.
They ascended, in time, beyond the timber line. The clouds enveloped them as their horses edged over a crescent-shaped rock bridge that gave the illusion of swaying above a limitless abyss. A stone was detached from the bridge and Gerald listened for its impact below in vain.
Gerald remembered that he had seen Ethel Kent once in the lower valley—a trim figure, hatless, her gray eyes intent on the hills that rose over the ravine like the buttresses of heaven itself. A flush under her eyes had told Gerald that she had been crying. He would have given an arm to have spared her that.
This love he had guarded rigorously from Ethel’s eyes and the eyes of the world. She was another man’s wife.
He wondered why she had come back to the spot. They had exchanged only a few words. She had smiled, wistfully as a child.
Here Gerald struck viciously at his boot and his horse shivered.
“Sahib,” growled a voice, “for the love of God, take care. Not a year ago a man fell to his death from here, a holy man.”
As the voice of the Pathan reached him there was a glimmer of veiled lightning and Gerald caught a glimpse of a mazar, a nativi shrine, close to the path on the near side. It was nothing but a heap of rocks ornamented with rags stuck on sticks planted in the rocks. On an outcropping of rock it overlooked the path, where, on the off-side, was a sheer drop.
Gerald saw, at the same time, the dark face of Kent peering at him. Then they passed around a bend in the cliff and halted. Gerald wondered whether his horse had been startled by the blow of the whip or whether there was an aspect of the supernatural about the spot.
He wondered, because he himself had had a distinct prescience of death at that moment, and Gerald’s imagination was not usually sensitive to such impressions.
On foot again, they were led up a stony incline, passed by a sentry who challenged them in the darkness, and lifted to the shoulders of their guides. Ascending through what seemed to be a dense tamarisk thicket, they were hoisted into the aperture of a black structure that loomed abruptly out of the clouds.
“Long life to my guests!” said the Lord of the World, and he laughed as he said it. “Hast thou no fear?”
A torch revealed him to Gerald, a man broad of girth, his shoulders too big for his soiled coat. Yet the face under the gray turban was lean and hawk-like, and the fine, dark eyes were eloquent and unreadable as an animal’s eyes.
What Kent noticed especially was the bandolier of cartridges over the bandit’s shoulder, the heavy revolver in his belt.
“Where is thy father?” he responded in fluent Turki, scanning the array of bearded faces that clustered in the shadows of the castle hall behind the Lord of the World, “And where is the memsahib, my wife?”
Although the Pathan still smiled, his thin nostrils quivered.
“My venerable father,” he explained, “is dead of the bite of a mad dog. The woman is here!” He motioned the two toward a room opening into the stone-flagged hall. “The meiman khanwn, my guest room.”
It was a place that Jehan Khan had, or fancied he had, fitted up in the manner of Europeans. Three-legged chairs stood about in the most inconvenient places imaginable; a photograph of Colonel Younghusband, a bullet hole marking one eye, hung against the cheap print paper.
From the sofa under the portrait Ethel Kent rose, and her beauty was like a flower in the hideousness of the room.
“Captain Gerald!” she cried. She was tucking a strand of the bronze hair into place, and she smiled at the two men. Ethel must have expected her husband’s coming, and the arrival of the Daktar Sahib surprised her.
He had noticed that she limped, and he kneeled to touch the stockinged ankle from which the riding boot had been removed.
“Not a bad sprain,” she answered his unspoken question. “I merely wrenched my ankle when my horse threw me; I was riding near the mouth of the Panjkora ravine. But I could not walk and Jimmy, my horse, was lame too, poor fellow. The Pathans rode up then and made me come up here on one of their ponies.”
“Didn’t you offer them money to bring you back to our lines?” Kent demanded.
“They wouldn’t. I can only speak a few words of Hindustani, and when I said that you would be angry and the policemen would punish them they only laughed.”
Gerald, who had assured himself that the woman’s hurt was no more serious than she had stated, turned in time to check the outburst that Kent was ready to launch upon their host. The taciturn Daktar Sahib had been thinking.
The messages from Jehan Khan had reached the club at Rawal Pindi in less than two hours after the seizure of Mrs. Kent. It was not accident that had brought the Pathan and his men on the scene. They must have been watching from one of the lookouts on the mountain slopes. Jehan Khan had prepared the messages before he had shown himself to Ethel Kent.
“Is this thy hospitality?” he rated the Pathan soundly. “A cold room for thy guests and no food o
ffered?”
Jehan Khan seemed abashed. Under his directions a supper of cold mutton and chuppaties was brought, and a smoking blaze ignited in the brazier by the sofa. This done, Gerald asked him to order his followers from the room.
“Wilt thou share with us, Jehan Khan,” he inquired, “the chota hazri?” (the little breakfast).
With a glance at Kent, the Pathan shook his head, his fingers playing with the thick mesh of his beard the while.
“Nay, my Daktar Sahib, the honor is too great.”
At this Kent scowled and burst into long pent-up speech. “Dog and thief, dare ye hold the memsahib captive? Release us at once, and provide horses. Then come to the Sirkar to beg forgiveness for thy crimes, or thou wilt be thrown from the Tower to the vultures.”
The Pathan’s face darkened at the insult. It is not well to call a Moslem of rank a dog. His smile vanished in a trice and his eyes became hot coals. “I dare, Sahib!” Then he made a gesture as if putting aside an unpleasant thought. “Are any crimes written under my name in the book of the Sirkar? Nay. As for the memsahib, I knew not her speech and did but carry her to shelter for the night. Is that a crime?”
“Thou liest. The message written by thee proves it.” Kent’s anger beat impotently against the iron restraint of the native. “Thou hast a price; name it.”
Jehan Khan smiled again. “A price for what?”
“My—our release.”
“Has anyone said that thou and the other sahib and thy wife are not free to go?”
Kent was nonplussed. He had believed that the Pathan was holding Ethel for a heavy ransom, and had sent to Gerald and himself to arrange terms. He had come, with Gerald, because of the suspicions taking shape in his mind against the other.
“Thy message—” he repeated.
“It was to summon thee, Kent Sahib. Is the woman not thy wife? For whom should I have sent?” Jehan Khan enjoyed to the full the bewilderment of the massive white man. “Yet, since thou hast said it, I will take a small price for my pains as a make-weight.” On the last word he hesitated briefly.
“Ah.”
“A very small price: two thousand rupees.”
“How much?” The exclamation broke from Gerald, who was frankly astonished. Two thousand rupees was barely the price of three reasonably good polo ponies.
“As I have said, rupees, two thousand. It will be a make-weight.”
Jehan Khan repeated his words, and assented to Kent’s swiftly framed conditions. The three visitors—as he insisted on calling them—were to be allowed to depart from the castle the next day; horses were to be provided; they were not to be followed.
“Good!” Kent closed the bargain, and felt in his pockets. He and Gerald had both come without such a sum on their persons. “I will give thee a signed note for the money.” His bluster returned, under assurance that Jehan Khan would not dare molest them. “Well for thee, Pathan, that thou dost obey me. Otherwise, this.” He tapped the butt of his revolver.
Long and curiously the Lord of the World looked at the white man and his weapon, as if trying to read the thoughts of a child. His black eyes under heavy brows were wolfish. Clapping his hands loudly he summoned a native and ordered writing materials brought.
When the brief promissory note was written he checked Kent when the latter was about to sign.
“The Daktar Sahib,” he explained softly, “will write his name alone. Thus and not otherwise will I know the chit will be honored.”
This was his way of returning Kent’s compliment of a moment ago. A Pathan never lets an insult pass unanswered. Tucking the paper into his girdle he bowed and retired.
“His price was cheap enough,” grunted Kent, who had flushed. There were certain gambling debts for which he had signed notes at the club—notes still unhonored. “Why did you ask that scoundrel to breakfast with us?”
Receiving no answer Kent sat down and attacked the mutton cutlets vigorously. He flattered himself he had handled the situation well. To tell the truth he was rather relieved. There had been something spooky about their trip to the tower hidden among the clouds, and Jehan Khan’s eyes.… Had he seen those eyes before? Well, the beggar knew his place now.
“Is there danger?” Ethel broke the silence in which she had been studying Gerald’s grave face.
“We’re quite all right,” snapped her husband. “You’ll keep your infernal rides within our lines, I expect, after this.” It was her fault, he considered, that he would have to pay Gerald the hundred and thirty pounds when they reached Dalgai. And Ethel had had no money for some time. “What’s the matter, Gerald? You look like the skeleton at the feast I mentioned at the club. Haven’t you an appetite?”
“No, thanks.” Gerald nodded reassuringly to Ethel. “Now, you must sleep. I’ll chat a while with the Pathan.”
He was thinking that, according to the Pathan code, if Jehan Khan had shared bread and salt with them, they would have been safe in his hands. But Jehan Khan had refused. Gerald knew that danger threatened one of them.
* * * *
Somewhere a wind sprang up in the precipices of the Hindu Kush. The snow peaks changed from black to gray to blood color.
The wind added its whisper to the mutter of the Panjkora. A great bird, hovering against the blue of the morning sky, seemed to be trying to peer down into the blackness of the Panjkora ravine.
A slender girl in a tattered shawl rode an ox from the huts of the village to the spring. Dogs barked.
Heedless of the cold of dawn, the Lord of the World sat cross-legged on the summit of his tower, caressing the stem of a hubble-bubble pipe. Gerald, also, paid no attention to the chill wind, save to thrust his hands instinctively into the pocket of his drill coat. He was noticing how, over the rocky eminence on which a native stood sentry, the shrine beside the trail was taking shape. It had not occurred to him before that the shrine could be seen from the tower-top, which was all but invisible from the trail.
Patiently he had been working to make the Pathan talk. His last speech had accomplished his purpose, which was to plumb the depths of hatred in the other’s soul. “Thou dost not make war upon a woman, Jehan Khan,” he had said. “Yet thou didst watch for her coming to the gorge.”
A direct question, he knew, would have been answered only by silence or an elusive lie. The Lord of the World puffed at the bubbling water-pipe and did not look up. “True,” he acknowledged finally. “For a year have I watched the comings of the memsahib, the time when I could bear her here. As thou hast said, she will suffer no hurt.”
So, Ethel was not the one. Gerald stifled a sigh of relief and waited. Silence, the patience of the white man, wrought upon Jehan Khan to give voice to the thoughts that had preyed upon him for a year.
“Hear, then, this tale, my sahib. Thou knowest I had a father who was the morsel of my life and a piece of my liver. Until misfortune came upon him and he was afflicted—aye, he was the drop of water that came to me from the river of God’s mercy.” Jehan Khan’s handsome face was reflective, even gentle. And Gerald knew that he was telling the truth.
“When he was afflicted, my father prayed often at the shrine below,” pointing to the heap of stones and the rags that lifted in the wind. “One day, for he knew well the way, he walked there alone with his staff. A rider, sahib, was coming up the trail and when my father did not run back the man struck him. An evil blow. It was only with the whip—a heavy whip—yet it caused him who was the life of my eyes to fall, and my father fell—outward.”
The Pathan waved his hand over the ravine. “My father was blind. For two years he had not been able to see the way before his feet.”
Gerald bit his lip, and waited. “Sahib, my father could not see to get out of the way of the horse. And the rider of the horse was Kent Sahib.”
No longer did Jehan Khan blow on the ashes of the hubble-bubble. His eyes were like embers blown into life by a passing gust of wind. Gerald walked to the rampart of the tower. He was thinking of the Moslem law, a l
ife for a life.
When Kent had knocked the native over the cliff, he had taken care to wheel his horse and ride back quickly to the cantonment. He had not noticed that the tower overlooked the site of the shrine. So he had not seen that he was observed, and he could not have known that the native was Jehan Khan’s father. In fact Kent had painted the episode, in his version at the club, in colors that made it seem a brave piece of work on his part.
No matter. The death of the old hillman lay at Kent’s door. Jehan Khan had taken up the pursuit of blood. Not all the gold in India would pay for the wrong. Probably Kent had not known that the old Pathan was blind. No matter.
The debt must be paid, and not with money. Jehan Khan would exact a life as payment. Gerald had no longer any doubt on whom the vengeance would fall.
“So,” he said swiftly, “thou wouldst slay the sahib, when you have taken his money for his release?”
The shadow of a smile passed over the bearded lips of the Pathan.
“Did I say that? Nay, Kent Sahib is free to ride hence.”
Gerald glanced over the plateau behind the tower, where a cluster of huts, fronting the pasture that nestled against a sheer wall of rock rising overhead a thousand feet or so. There was no way out of the domain of Jehan Khan except by the shrine and the trail up which they had come. This was guarded.
Even if they could overcome or steal by the guards they could not hope to escape, with Ethel lame. And they had no horses. Gerald perceived at once that flight was useless.
He reflected that Jehan Khan had not promised that Kent would reach the border alive. The Pathan’s acceptance of the money might mean anything—dulling Kent’s suspicions, for one. And his tale of a moment ago merely signified that he was so sure of his vengeance that he could afford to make known to the two white men the cause of it.
The vengeance would be all the sweeter, Gerald knew, if Kent was aware of its coming. No bribe could alter the Pathan’s purpose. The political agent was doomed as surely as if a Christian court had sentenced him to be hanged.