Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  A little rail had been built in front of his platform, on which he could rest the barrel of his rifle. His foresight was covered with luminous paint. He would allow the tiger to come well out into the open. He judged the distance which he would give him. There was a darker patch of grass, about half-way between the white stump and his tree.

  “There!” he said to himself, “when he reaches that dark patch. Then!”

  And in the far distance he heard a movement in the undergrowth, a snapping of twigs, a sound of bushes whipping back.

  The jungle-cat heard the sounds, too. For it ceased from its meal and its snarling was silenced. Then it uttered one sharp squeal and flashed across the glade. Its master was near. By the mouth of that cavern something moved. There was suddenly a great rending of the jungle, and out into the moonlight leapt a man.

  He was dressed in the shoes, the stockings rolled below the bare knees, and the shorts usually worn by the English in these parts. His shirt torn at the shoulders revealed a powerful throat; his sleeves were turned back above the elbow and he carried in his hand a great bludgeon which he handled as though it was a dandy’s cane. Strickland’s first impression of him, after his shock of surprise, was of enormous power, the power of an animal. For he moved ever so lightly on his feet. He was tall, above the ordinary, with broad shoulders and a deep chest, but he was lean beyond description, lean of flank and leg and belly — as though for many years he had starved — lean enough to arouse pity.

  Strickland, indeed, out of pity, would have called to him from his hiding-place. But the man turned his face, and Strickland remained silent. For the face he saw was not merely haggard and lined, but to Strickland’s strained fancies, horribly evil, evil to the point of majesty. Strickland had never given much credit to those who discerned auras of red and blue about the heads of people. Yet evil seemed to flow from this man, so savage, so furtive he looked, such a mixture of cunning and cruelty was stamped upon his features. Yet he had had real beauty once. The broad forehead, the straight nose with the thin nostrils, the oval of the chin showed it still. He stood out in the open, his eyeballs glistening in the moonlight, the sweat shining on his face; and he moved his head slowly from side to side like a great cobra before he strikes. There was something bestial, something subtle. Strickland actually shuddered in his retreat. Thus, he thought, must Lucifer have looked on the morrow of his fall.

  The man gazed up to the skies, seeking his direction. Then he was gone. Strickland would have believed that he had been the victim of an hallucination, had he not heard the man breaking his way through the jungle in the direction of the road...

  No other tiger passed that way that night.

  IV. MYSTERY

  STRICKLAND RELATED HIS experience to Captain Thorne as he sat at his breakfast after his return to the bungalow. He was well aware that Thorne listened with a stoical incredulity, but he went on with it to the end.

  “Yes, yes,” said Thorne soothingly. He might have been speaking to a patient whom the doctor had bidden him to humour. Strickland was not annoyed.

  “You think that I grew fanciful and saw visions,” he said with a smile. “Sitting here in the sunlight, I could almost believe it myself. But then I should believe that I had slept in this bungalow all night, that I never went out into the jungle at all.”

  “You certainly did that,” Thorne assured him, with a look of curiosity upon his face. For the tone of doubt in which Strickland had spoken did suggest that he was not altogether sure.

  “Well, then I saw the man, too,” said Strickland doggedly, and he strove once more to paint in words the vivid picture in his memory. “He was ferocious with the ferocity of men who have been hungry for years.”

  Thorne repeated his “Yes, yes,” and rose quietly to his feet. He was still apparently in a sick-room, and must needs tread softly lest the invalid should be exasperated. Strickland, however, only laughed, but he said with every intention of carrying out the threat:

  “If you say ‘yes, yes,’ to me again, Thorne I’ll throw a plate at your head.”

  Thorne edged a little nearer to the veranda steps.

  “I should deserve that for quite another reason,” he replied; “I have heard this morning that one of the Forest Officers will be here in a couple of days, so that, after all, I need not have troubled you as I have done.”

  Certainly Captain Thorne was not remarkable for tact. For having clearly shown that he disbelieved Strickland’s story, he now emphasised the point that the Colonel had not succeeded in doing the job which he had undertaken. Strickland, however, was at this moment impervious to such pricks. He was utterly engrossed in an endeavour to convince this singularly thick-headed Policeman that he was speaking the truth.

  “The man gave me the impression that he had been twisted and disfigured out of his setting,” he persisted. “Like some fine portrait which has been blackened and mutilated by fire. Yes, that was it! That was what struck me so vividly. Years of sordid horror, after years of established comfort. He had fallen out of Heaven, like the Archangel, into tortures incredible and had escaped seething with wrath.”

  Thorne was on the point of saying “Yes, yes,” as he turned back, but he saw Strickland’s hand reaching out towards a plate and he hurriedly revised his formula.

  “Quite so,” he said. “Now I’ll tell you, sir, what we might do. You want to buy a ruby, don’t you?”

  Colonel Strickland made a sudden movement, he drew in his breath with a little gasp as though something of extreme importance had for the moment slipped from his memory.

  “Indeed, I do,” he said fervently.

  “Very well. I’ll walk with you to the offices of the mines and on the way we’ll stop and ask a question of Maung H’la.”

  “Who in the world’s Maung H’la?” asked Strickland.

  “The greatest scoundrel unhanged,” Thorne replied calmly. “But he’s also a native of that village which the tiger has been besieging, and keeps in touch with his people. So if any remarkable stranger has been seen in that neighbourhood, he will be likely to know.”

  “Let us go,” said Strickland, and he shouted to his servant for his stick and his topee.

  Thorne stopped before a house facing an open space of abandoned excavations. In the garden a stout, perspiring man was spraying his rose bushes. At the sight of him Thorne whistled in surprise. For this stout, perspiring man was the most indefatigable and amongst the most important of the servants of the company. And here he was at eleven o’clock of the morning tending his flowers.

  “Where’s your gardener, Mr. Dodge?” Thorne called out.

  “Maung H’la?” said Mr. Dodge. He wiped his streaming forehead, replaced his topee and leaned over the gate. “Damn the fellow, he has bolted.”

  Captain Thorne’s shoulders stiffened. He introduced Strickland, gave Mr. Dodge a brief epitome of his history and explained the object of his visit to Mogok; but this little speech was, in spite of its exactitude, absent in manner. Captain Thorne’s speculations were chasing the man who had bolted.

  “When did he go?” he asked.

  Mr. Dodge lit a cigar.

  “Two days ago, in the afternoon.”

  “Why?”

  “Sheer terror.”

  “Who frightened him?

  “I haven’t one idea,” Mr. Dodge grumbled. “I wish I had, for Maung H’la was a first-class gardener. I wasn’t on the spot at the time. But the servants told me about it.”

  “Yes?” Thorne asked. “What did they tell you?”

  “Why, it sounded like a fairy story, or rather it would anywhere else,” said Mr. Dodge with a smile at Strickland. “But in the East the fairy stories are the only things which are really true. About four o’clock two days ago Maung H’la was working here, or more probably leaning over this gate smoking one of my cheroots, when a big, lean fellow came swinging down the road from the bazaar. At the sight of him Maung H’la scuttered round to the back of the house like a rabbit. They had got to hi
de him somewhere quick, for someone worse than all the devils rolled into one was after him. Maung H’la was shaking and jabbering like a man with the ague. They hid him away, all right, but they had hardly finished before the door at the back was quietly pushed open and there was the stranger asking for Maung H’la.”

  “Did your people describe him to you?” Thorne interrupted.

  “Did they not!” replied Mr. Dodge. “I got the impression of a Greek god gone wrong,” and Captain Thorne glanced swiftly towards Strickland.

  “Of course he got no information from the servants,” Mr. Dodge continued. “No one had ever heard of Maung H’la. It didn’t seem possible that a Maung H’la could exist and they not hear of him. On the whole the gentleman might take it for granted that there was no Maung H’la — and the gentleman departed with a most unpleasant grin upon his face. They gave him ten minutes and then unlocked the outhouse in which they had stored away Maung H’la. But Maung H’la had climbed out of the window, curse the fellow, and no one has ever seen him since.”

  Mr. Dodge turned to Strickland.

  “You are going along to the office now, are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. I’ll follow you in ten minutes and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

  Mr. Dodge retired into his house. Captain Thorne stared at Strickland in a perplexity.

  “It’s quite true what Dodge said,” he reflected aloud. “The fairy stories are real here. Things fantastic to you and me are just the order of the day. Yes, yes.”

  He was silent, with his forehead creased and his mouth pursed up. Then he attacked his problem from a new angle.

  “A Greek god gone wrong,” he repeated. “Practically your description, Colonel Strickland.”

  “Better than mine,” Strickland answered. “Fewer words.”

  “No doubt,” Thorne agreed, following out his own thoughts. “It’s evident, then, that you did see the man you talked about in the forest. Do you know that I hardly believed you?”

  “You quite did not believe me,” returned Strickland.

  “It’s evident, too, that he made for that village in the jungle after Maung H’la.”

  Captain Thorne remained sunk in gloom.

  “I don’t like it,” he said, and with an abrupt movement he started off along a winding road between the excavations. “This is our road.”

  Strickland fell in beside him and for a little part of the way they walked in silence; Thorne every now and then glancing at his companion and opening his mouth to make a statement and then catching the words back again before they were uttered. His responsibilities were pressing upon him, transforming him into a pedant of formalities and precautions. They had covered half the distance to the medley of buildings which formed the offices of the company before he could bring himself to the point of speech. And even then his speech was nothing but a disappointment to Strickland, so hedged it was with reservations and secrecies.

  “Maung H’la as a boy was employed in the mines sifting the gravel through a sieve. He learnt some English, travelled to Rangoon, and became a bearer — . ran about with tourists, you know. This went on for some years. But in the end he was taken on as a permanent servant by one — well — family, shall we say? He travelled with them to many parts of the world. Finally, he went with them to England.”

  At this point Captain Thorne was in so much difficulty to make his narrative colourless that he had to stop. Strickland, however, was still in the grip of the premonition which yesterday had beset him. In the open space here between the town and the company’s offices, with the white road under his feet and the high, steep, jungle-covered slopes all about him, a glowing green under the cloudless blue of the sky, the premonition was weaker. It stood further aloof. But it waited only for the shadows. At the fall of night it would be back with him, a living conviction that he had seen the beginning of some tremendous battle in which his every energy would be engaged. He looked for clues in vain so far.

  “You said Maung H’la was the greatest scoundrel unhanged,” he reminded Thorne.

  “Did I? I had no right to say it. For what I know, I know in the strictest confidence. Publicly, there is nothing against Maung H’la. If he was elected to a position of responsibility, no one would have the right to protest. But — no doubt something happened in England — yes, yes — something occurred. And it was thought better that Maung H’la should return to his own country.” Thorne turned in a sudden alarm lest he should have said more than his duty allowed. “There was no deportation, you understand. No, no, not an idea of it. Just a notion of certain authorities that he would be more valuable to the community in his own country than in England. And he returned quite willingly.”

  “Glad to get out of England scot-free.” Thus Colonel Strickland bluntly interpreted all this prolixity.

  “I couldn’t say that for a moment,” Thorne rejoined earnestly.

  “When did he return?” Colonel Strickland asked.

  Captain Thorne reflected.

  “Yes, I can answer that. Nearly two years ago.”

  Strickland had another question to ask and was at pains to approach it warily.

  “Two years is a long time. Certainly it wouldn’t be right to hold a suspicion against a man for two years. But, I suppose, a little trouble is taken to make sure that he doesn’t get taken on by tourists as a servant again.”

  Thorne swung round with a look of surprise upon his face. For the first time he seemed to recognise signs of intelligence in his companion.

  “Well, I never expected you to ask me that question,” he declared, and in his surprise he answered it without a single circumlocution. “Mating H’la is not any longer on the books of any of the agencies.”

  The two men were close now to the offices of the ruby mines. Behind them, Mr. Dodge was hurrying along to catch them up. Captain Thorne looked backwards and forwards with relief. There was no longer any time for questions to tempt him into improper revelations; and in this little reaction he himself was spurred to put a question. He found himself putting it with an energy which surprised him.

  “That man in the forest — your tiger-man — are you sure that you had never seen him before? I would like you to think very carefully. Are you quite sure?”

  Strickland searched amongst his memories, reviewed groups of people, at country houses, in dining-rooms, at race meetings and theatres, at clubs and restaurants.

  “I am quite sure that I never saw him before,” he said; and he had not a doubt but that he spoke the truth.

  Thorne nodded his head. He had expected no other answer.

  “Of course it was absurd,” he said, and he referred to a curious and rather alarming idea which had suddenly sprung up in his mind.

  V. LADY ARIADNE’S RUBY

  THERE IS NOTHING more universal, as there are few things more intelligible, than a love of precious stones. So much of beauty and so much of treasure lie packed in so small and shining a receptacle. Thus even the correct and punctilious Thorne lingered from his duties whilst sapphires and rubies and spinels were spread out before Strickland on a table in the great veranda.

  Strickland, however, was in a most fastidious mood. He did not want a stone as long as a torpedo, nor, on the other hand, as round as a plate. Crosses of Destiny he pushed aside. He wanted a stone clear as glass and deep — well, as deep as a certain pair of eyes which for some two years now he had been sedulously recollecting. A sapphire would do very well, but it must be unquestionably blue as a tropical sea under a summer sky. Or a ruby. He was not, he said, particular. But the ruby, if ruby it was to be, must burn with the deep glow of a sunset and the sparkle of a dawn.

  “Even a lady spending a pleasant morning in Bond Street without meaning to buy anything at all, couldn’t be more particular than you, sir,” said Thorne with a small ray of humour. Remembering his duties, he edged towards the gate in the waist-high railing which enclosed the veranda. Mr. Dodge ran his fingers through his thin locks and s
aid dubiously:

  “Of course there’s a ruby...A dealer from Bombay is considering it, because he hopes that he can sell it to the Rajah of Chitapur. But no sale has been concluded. We are free to sell...Only it’s costly.”

  “I should like to see it,” Strickland replied. “You see, I naturally want rather a good stone because—” He hesitated. Of the authority which a day ago had so astonished Captain Thorne there was not now a trace. Colonel Strickland was as shy as a schoolgirl, and he knew — and the knowledge made him shyer still — that the blood was burning in his cheeks and on his forehead. But it would be good policy to name the prospective owner of the jewel. He would surely carry with him a finer stone if he used the magic of her name than if he relied upon that of an obscure retired Lieutenant-Colonel of the Guards. So out the name came— “Because it’s meant for Lady Ariadne Ferne.”

  He dropped the name delicately in front of that group of officials as though it were the most precious of their jewels; and at once every one of them stood to attention. Strickland had certainly been right. Smiles ran from face to face. There was a stir of admiration. Even Thorne again deferred those overwhelming duties of his and drifted back to the group about the table.

  “Is Lady Ariadne Ferne a friend of yours?” he asked with a peculiar intentness which Strickland was quick to notice and no less quick to resent.

  “She is,” he replied; “and what of it?”

  “Nothing, except that I envy you.”

  Strickland was reminded suddenly of an old major whose constant advice to the junior officers in their relationship to their men was to keep something up their sleeves. Captain Thorne must have drunk deep of that old major’s wisdom. For he kept things up his sleeve all day. Here, for instance, he was once more concealing some knowledge which he possessed. For a moment the sunshine died off that open veranda. Strickland felt the chill of an icy wind. Was it in that quarter that the expected battle was to be fought? Then, indeed, every ounce of his energy would be engaged. Yet between those three persons, the man of the jungle, Maung H’la and Lady Ariadne Ferne, set so far apart in space and circumstance, what link could there be?