4. Envelope, post-mark undecipherable, bearing a Victorian stamp, addressed to ‘Miss Mon—’ (rest illegible) —‘ham’ — ‘nt.’
5. Imitation crocodile-skin notebook with pencil. First forty-five pages blank; four and a half illegible; fifteen others filled with private memoranda relating chiefly to three persons – a Mrs L. Singleton, abbreviated several times to ‘Lot Single’or ‘Mrs S. May’ and ‘Garmison,’ referred to in places as ‘Jerry’or ‘Jack.’
6. Handle of small-sized hunting knife. Blade snapped short. Buck’s horn, diamond cut, with swivel and ring on the butt; fragment of cotton cord attached.
It must not be supposed that I inventoried all these things on the spot as fully as I have here written them down. The notebook first attracted my attention, and I put it in my pocket with a view to studying it later on. The rest of the articles I conveyed to my burrow for safety’s sake, and there, being a methodical man, I inventoried them. I then returned to the corpse and ordered Gunga Dass, to help me to carry it out to the riverfront. While we were engaged in this, the exploded shell of an old brown cartridge dropped out of one of the pockets and rolled at my feet. Gunga Dass had not seen it; and I fell to thinking that a man does not carry exploded cartridge-cases, especially ‘browns’ which will not bear loading twice, about with him when shooting. In other words, that cartridge-case had been fired inside the crater. Consequently, there must be a gun somewhere. I was on the verge of asking Gunga Dass, but checked myself, knowing that he would lie. We laid the body down on the edge of the quicksand by the tussocks. It was my intention to push it out and let it beswallowed up – the only possible mode of burial that I could think of. I ordered Gunga Dass to go away.
Then I gingerly put the corpse out on the quicksand. In doing so, it was lying face downward, I tore the frail and rotten shooting-coat open, disclosing a hideous cavity in the back. I have already told you that the dry sand had, as it were, mummified the body. A moment’s glance showed that the gaping hole had been caused by a gun-shot wound: the gun must have been fired with the muzzle almost touching the back. The shooting-coat, being intact, had been drawn over the body after death which must have been instantaneous. The secret of the poor wretch’s death was plain to me in a flash. Some one of the crater, presumably Gunga Dass, must have shot him with his own gun – the gun that fitted the brown cartridges. He had never attempted to escape in the face of the rifle fire from the boat.
I pushed the corpse out hastily, and saw it sink from sight literally in a few seconds. I shuddered as I watched. In a dazed, half-conscious way I turned to peruse the notebook. A stained and discoloured slip of paper had been inserted between the binding and the back, and dropped out as I opened the pages. This is what it contained: – ‘Four out from crow-clump; three left; nine out; two right; three back; two left; fourteen out; two left; seven out; one left, nine back; two right; six back; four right; seven back.’The paper had been burnt and charred at the edges. What it meant I could not understand. I sat down on the dried bents turning it over and over between my fingers, until I was aware of Gunga Dass standing immediately behind me with glowing eyes and outstretched hands.
‘Have you got it?’ he panted. ‘Will you not let me look at it also? I swear that I will return it.’
‘Got what? Return what?’ I asked.
‘That which you have in your hands. It will help us both.’ He stretched out his long, bird-like talons, trembling with eagerness.
‘I could never find it,’ he continued. ‘He had secreted it about his person. Therefore I shot him, but nevertheless I was unable to obtain it.’
Gunga Dass had quite forgotten his little fiction about the rifle-bullet. I received the information perfectly calmly. Morality is blunted by consorting with the Dead who are alive.
‘What on earth are you raving about? What is it you want me to give you?’
‘The piece of paper in the notebook. It will help us both. Oh, you fool! You fool! Can you not see what it will do for us? We shall escape!’
‘His voice rose almost to a scream, and he danced with excitement before me. I own I was moved at the chance of getting away.
‘Don’t skip! Explain yourself. Do you mean to say that this slip of paper will help us? What does it mean?’
‘Read it aloud! Read it aloud! I beg and I pray to you to read it aloud.’
I did so. Gunga Dass listened delightedly, and drew an irregular line in the sand with his fingers.
‘See now! It was the length of his gun-barrels without the stock. I have those barrels. Four gun-barrels out from the place where I caught crows. Straight out; do you follow me? Then three left— Ah! I remember when that man worked it out night after night. Then nine out, and so on. Out is always straight before you cross the quicksand. He told me so before I killed him.’
‘But if you knew all this why didn’t you get out before?’
‘I did not know it. He told me that he was working it out a year and-a-half ago, and how he was working it out night after night when the boat had gone away, and he could get out near the quicksand safely. Then he said that we would get away together. But I was afraid that he would leave me behind one night when he had worked it all out, and so I shot him. Besides, it is not advisable that the men who once get in here should escape. Only I, and I am a Brahmin.’
The prospect of escape had brought Gunga Dass’s caste back to him. He stood up, walked about and gesticulated violently. Eventually I managed to make him talk soberly, and he told me how this Englishman had spent six months night after night, in exploring, inch by inch, the passage across thequicksand; how he had declared it to be simplicity itself up to within about twenty yards of the river bank after turning the flank of the left horn of the horseshoe.
In my frenzy of delight at the possibilities of escape I recollect shaking hands effusively with Gunga Dass, after we had decided that we were to make an attempt to get away that very night. It was weary work waiting throughout the afternoon.
About ten o’clock, as far as I could judge, when the Moon had just risen above the lip of the crater, Gunga Dass made a move for his burrow to bring out the gun-barrels whereby to measure our path.All the other wretched inhabitants had retired to their lairs long ago. The guardian boat had drifted downstream some hours before, and we were utterly alone by the crow-clump. Gunga Dass, while carrying the gun-barrels, let slip the piece of paper which was to be our guide. I stooped down hastily to recover it, and as I did so, I was aware that he was aiming a violent blow at the back of my head with the gun-barrels. It was too late to turn round. I must have received the blow somewhere on the nape of my neck. A hundred thousand fiery stars danced before my eyes, and I fell forward senseless at the edge of the quicksand.
When I recovered consciousness, the Moon was going down, and I was sensible of intolerable pain in the back of my head. Gunga Dass had disappeared and my mouth was full of blood. I lay down again and prayed that I might die without more ado. Then the unreasoning fury which I have before mentioned laid hold upon me, and I staggered inland towards the walls of the crater. It seemed that some one was calling to me in a whisper, ‘Sahib! Sahib! Sahib!’exactly as my bearer used to call me in the morning. I fancied that I was delirious until a handful of sand fell at my feet. Then I looked up and saw a head peering down into the amphitheatre – the head of Dunnoo, my dog-boy, who attended to my collies. As soon as he had attracted my attention, he held up his hand and showed a rope. I motioned, staggering to and fro the while, that he should throw it down. It was a couple of leather punkah-ropes knotted together, with a loop at one end. I slipped the loopover my head and under my arms; heard Dunnoo urge something forward; was conscious that I was being dragged, face downward, up the steep sand slope, and the next instant found myself choked and half fainting on the sand hills overlooking the crater. Dunnoo, with his face ashy grey in the moonlight, implored me not to stay but to get back to my tent at once.
It seems that he had tracked Pornic’s hooves fourte
en miles across the sands to the crater; had returned and told my servants, who flatly refused to meddle with any one, white or black, once fallen into the hideous Village of the Dead; whereupon Dunnoo had taken one of my ponies and a couple of punkah ropes, returned to the crater, and hauled me out as I have described.
To cut a long story short, Dunnoo is now my personal servant on a gold mohur a month – a sum which I still think far too little for the services he has rendered. Nothing on earth will induce me to go near that devilish spot again or to reveal its whereabouts more clearly than I have done. Of Gunga Dass I have never found a trace, nor do I wish to do. My sole motive in giving this to be published is the hope that someone may possibly identify, from the details and the inventory which I have given above, the corpse of the man in the olive-green hunting-suit.
THE UNLIMITED DRAW OF TICK BOILEAU
He came to us from Naogong, somewhere in Central India; and as soon as we saw him we all voted him a Beast. That was in the Mess of the 45th Bengal Cavalry, stationed at Pindi; and everything I’m going to write about happened this season. I’ve told you he was an awful Beast – old even for a subaltern; but then he’d joined the Army late, and had knocked about the world a good deal. We didn’t know that at first. I wish we had. It would have saved the honour of the Mess. He was called ‘Tick’ in Naogong, because he was never out of debt; but that didn’t make us think him a beast. Quite the other way, for most of us were pretty well clipped ourselves. No, what we hated about the fellow was his ‘dark-horsiness’. I can’t express it any better than that; and, besides, it’s an awful nuisance having to write at all. But all the other fellows in the Mess say I’m the only man who can handle a pen decently; and that I must, for their credit, tell the world exactly how it came about. Everyone is chaffing us so beastly now.
Well, I was saying that we didn’t like Tick Boileau’s ‘dark-horsiness.’ I mean by that you never knew what the fellow could do and what he could not; and he was always coming out, with that beastly conceited grin on his face, in a new line – ’specially before women – and making the other man, who had tried to do the same thing, feel awfully small and humble. That was his strong point – simpering and cutting a fellow out when he was doing his hardest at something or other. Same with billiards; same with riding; same with the banjo; he could really make the banjo talk – better even than Banjo Browne at Kasauli you know; same with tennis. And to make everything more beastly, he used to pretend at first he couldn’t doanything. We found him out in the end; but we’d have found him out sooner if we’d listened to what old Harkness the Riding-Master said the day after Tick had been handed over to him to make into a decent ‘Hornet.’ That’s what the bye-name of our regiment is. Harkness told me when I came into Riding School, and laughed at Tick clinging on to the neck of his old crock as if he had never seen a horse before. Harkness was cursing like – a riding-master. He said: – ‘You mark my words, Mr Mactavish, he’s been kidding me, and he’d kid you. He can ride. Wish some of you other gentleman could ride as well. He is playing the dark horse – that’s what he’s doing, and be d – – d to him!’ Well, Tick was as innocent as a baby when he rolled off on to the tan. I noticed that he fell somehow as if he knew the hang of the trick; and Harkness passed him out of Riding School on the strength of that fall. He sat square enough on parade, and pretended to be awfully astonished. Well, we didn’t think anything of that till he came out one night in the billiard line at Black Pool, and scooped the whole Mess. Then we began to mistrust him, but he swore it was all by a fluke. We used to chaff him fearfully; and draw him about four nights out of the seven. Once we drugged his chargers with opium overnight; and Tick found ’em asleep and snoring when he wanted to go on parade.
He was a trifle wrathy over this; and the Colonel didn’t soothe him by giving him the rough edge of his tongue for allowing his horses to go to sleep at unauthorised hours. We didn’t mean to do more than make the chargers a bit bobbery next morning; but something must have gone wrong with the opium. To give the Beast his due, he took everything very well indeed; and never minded how often we pulled his leg and made things lively for him. We never liked him, though. Can’t like a man who always does everything with a little bit up his sleeve. It’s not fair.
Well, one day in July Tick took three months’ leave and cleared out somewhere or other – to Cashmere I think. He didn’t tell us where, and we weren’t very keen on knowing.
We missed him at first, for there was no one to draw. Our regiment don’t take kindly to that sort of thing. We are mostof ushardas nails;and we respect eachother’slittle weaknesses.
About October, Tick turned up with a lot of heads and horns and skins – for it seemed that the beggar could shoot as well as he did most things – and the Mess began to sit up at the prospect of having some more fun out of him. But Tick was an altered man. Never saw anyone so changed. Hadn’t an ounce of bukh or bounce left about him; never betted; knocked off what little liquor he used to take; got rid of his ponies, and went mooning about like an old ghost. Stranger still, he seemed to lay himself out in a quiet sort of way to be a popular man; and, in about three weeks’ time we began to think we had misjudged him, and that he wasn’t half such a bad fellow after all. The Colonel began the movement in his favour. Said that Tick was awfully cut up about something or other, and that we really ought to make his life more pleasant for him. He didn’t say all that much at once. Don’t believe he could if he tried for a week, but he made us understand it. And in a quiet sort of way – Tick was very quiet in everything he did just then – he tumbled to the new bandobust more than ever, and we nearly all took to him. I say nearly all, because I was an exception. He had a little bit up his sleeve in this matter, too.
You see he had given all his skins and his heads to the Mess, and they were hung in trophies all round the wall. I was seeing them put up, and I saw in one corner the Cabul Customs mark, in a sort of aniline ink stamp, that all the skins that come from Peshawar must have. Now I knew Cashmere wasn’t Peshawar, and that bears didn’t grow with Customs marks inside the hide. But I sat tight and said nothing. I want you to remember that I suspected Tick Boileau from the first. The fellows in the Mess say I was just as much taken in as the rest of ’em; but in our Mess they’d say anything. One of Tick’s new peculiarities just at this time was a funk of being left alone. He never said anything about it. He used to be always coming over to fellows’ quarters in the afternoon though, just when they were trying to put in a little snooze and he’d sit still or bukh about nothing. He was very queer altogether in that way; and some of us thought he’d had D.T.; others that he wasengaged and wanted to get out of it; and one youngster, just joined, vowed that Tick had committed a murder and was haunted by the ghost of his victim. One night we were sitting round the table smoking after dinner, and this same youngster began bukhing about a Station dance of some kind that was coming off. Asked old Tick if he wasn’t coming and made some feeble joke about ‘ticks’ and Kala Juggas. Anyhow it fetched Tick awfully.
He was lifting a glass of sherry up to his mouth and his hand shook so that he spilt it all down the front of his mess jacket. He seemed awfully white, but perhaps that was fancy; and said as if there was something in his throat choking him – ‘Go to a ball. No! I’d sooner rot as I stand!’ Well, it isn’t usual for a fellow to cut up like that when he’s asked if he’s going to a hop. I was sitting next to him and said quietly – ‘Hullo! what’s the matter old man?’ Tick was by way of being no end of a dawg before he took leave, and that made his answer all the queerer. ‘Matter!’ said Tick, and he almost screamed. ‘You’d ask what was the matter if you’d seen what I have!’ Then he turned on the youngster, ‘What the this and the that do you mean, you young this and t’other thing’ (It’s no use putting down the words he used. They weren’t pretty) ‘by asking me a question like that?’ There would have been decanters flying about on the wings of love if we hadn’t stopped the shindy at once; and when Tick came to himself again h
e began apologising all he knew, and calling himself all sorts of hard names for raising the row. And that astonished us more than anything else. Tick wasn’t given that way as a rule. Said the Colonel from his side of the table; ‘What in the name of everything lunatic, is the matter? Have you gone mad, Boileau?’ Then Tick chucked up his head like a horse when it’s going to bolt, and began to speak. Goodness knows what he said exactly; but he gave us to understand that if he wasn’t off his head, he was next thing to it, and, if we cared to listen, he’d tell us all about it. You bet we did care, for we were on needles to know the reason of the sudden change in the fellow. Tick half filled his peg-tumbler with port – it was the nearest decanter – and told us this story. I can put it down word for word as he said it, notbecause I’ve got a good memory, but because – well, I’ll tell you later. This is what Tick said in a shaky, quivery, voice, while we smoked and listened: – ‘You know I took three months’ leave the other day, don’t you? And that I went to Kashmir? You mayn’t know’ – (we didn’t) – ‘that I put in the first month of my time at Mussoorie. I kept very quiet while I was up there, for I had gone up on purpose to follow a girl that you men don’t know. She came from Pachmarri; and she was the daughter of a doctor there. I used to know her very well when I was stationed out Naogong way, and from knowing her well I got to falling in love with her.’
He pulled up half a minute at that, and glared all round the table to see how we took it. We aren’t whales exactly on falling in love with unmarried girls in our Mess. The Colonel doesn’t hold with it, and he’s quite right. But none of us moved a finger, and Tick went on.
‘She was absolutely the most perfect girl on the face of this earth; and I’d knock any beggar’s brains out who denies it’–(None of us wanted to, I give you my word) – ‘Upon my soul, I meant marrying her if she would only he’ taken me. And she did. O Heaven, she did! She has accepted me!’ Tick covered his face with his hands and went on like a lunatic. I fancied he’d got a touch of the sun, or that the peg-tumbler of port was beginning to work. Then he started off on a fresh tack, while we were staring at one another and wondering what on earth was coming next.
The Mark of the Beast and Other Fantastical Tales Page 8