“Let’s remember that,” he argued. “He wants to go. Let him go! If he can hide Carruthers and his wife and his few people for twenty-four hours — why, they are saved altogether and the frontier spared a costly and murderous war.”
There was no one present with Adare’s knowledge, Adare’s right to speak: and there was no other possibility of bridging the hours between the night of Muharram and the arrival of relief at Tokot. He had his way.
“I can provide you with a mule and rations for your journey,” he said to Shuja-ul-Mulk. “When can you start?”
“To-night,” said the boy. He turned to Lieutenant-Colonel Marsh. “I have two men, very honest and loyal, whom you can rely upon as good guides to Tokot,” and he told him where Wafadar and Rajab were to be found.
The Governor held out his hand:
“If you succeed, we shall hold ourselves deeply in your debt. And in any case we shall honour you for the goodwill of your House and this fine proof of your friendship.”
Shuja-ul-Mulk was very much inclined to say “Shakeapaw,” but he doubted whether in this distinguished company it would be received as “Oxford Dictionary.” He left the Residency with Adare. The Governor gave his attention to Marsh.
“You have some busy hours in front of you, Colonel. I will not keep you. The expedition is in your hands, not mine. But I take a good deal of comfort from Adare’s confidence. He knows a great deal more about the Hindu Khush than any of us. Indeed, I believe that in any reincarnation he would be a Pathan who would give us more trouble than all the Khans and their Wasirs and their Mullahs rolled up into one.”
The aide-de-camp attended Lieutenant-Colonel Marsh to his car.
“We shall none of us get much sleep to-night, I reckon,” said Marsh.
“Not much, Sir. There will be telegrams to Simla. Good-night.”
The aide-de-camp returned to the library, however, to find the Governor drawing all sorts of ridiculous caricatures of animals with a pencil on a blank sheet of paper. The aide-de-camp knew that trick of Sir Arthur Brooke’s. He might go on with it for a minute. He might go on with it for half an hour.
“You know, Campbell, that boy’s the real thing,” and he drew a quite admirable whale spouting a fountain of water from his nostrils. “It would have paid him to say nothing at all, to let the Carruthers family be wiped out. For we should certainly have marched up over the passes, kicked Nizam out and put Shuja-ul-Mulk in his place.”
“I see that, Sir,” said Campbell, after due consideration.
“A little pension won’t do now, Campbell.”
Campbell had not the remotest idea which of them was to have had the little pension — whether Shuja-ul-Mulk, or Nizam the Khan, or the Colonel of Gurkhas who in a reincarnation was to give them endless trouble, or Marsh who was to command the Expeditionary Force, or himself who was going undoubtedly to sit up all night coding telegrams to the Viceroy at Simla. But he answered dutifully:
“No, Sir, it won’t do.”
“By the way,” said the Governor. He had just drawn Jonah in the belly of the whale, Jonah seated at a deal table and writing his admirable book. “By the way, Campbell, did that boy have a drum with him?”
Campbell was a little taken aback.
“Why, yes, Sir, he did. He left it in the passage outside the Library when he came in and he took it away with him when he went out.”
Sir Arthur Brooke now sketched in a lighted tallow candle with the grease running down the sides, set in a bedroom candlestick on the deal table at which Jonah was working.
“Now that’s very interesting, Campbell. That’s the Yudeni drum. He means to put it back on the roof of the tower if he can.”
“No doubt, Sir,” said Campbell the aide-camp, who was now quite lost in the nimble diversions of the Governor’s mind. But this had happened to him on so many occasions before that he had ceased to be distressed by it.
The Governor pushed his sketch away from him.
“We had better get busy, I think, on a telegram to the Viceroy at Simla.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Campbell. He was at last upon familiar ground. He drew up a chair to the table. But before he began his work, the Governor, so like are the great men to the small, repeated with an indrawing of the breath the words of Lieutenant-Colonel Marsh and Bill Holder the drummer-boy.
“You know, Campbell, if that lad has let us in, I’m for it and so, I expect, are you.”
8
AT TOKOT THE secret had been well kept. Carruthers had received no news from Peshawur during the week, but that was nothing out of the common. A telegraph line, temporarily installed in a country where the Passes rose to ten thousand feet, was not a very reliable means of communication; and though he had a portable wireless set, it had been shaken into uselessness on the back of a mule. Instructions and information came by a primitive postal service and took ten days from the day of postage to the day of arrival. The system was on the whole welcome to Carruthers. He was let alone. There was a vast work in front of him. Nizam was to be persuaded into the making of roads, the establishment of dispensaries in the villages, the proper protection of the rich caravans which came from Kashgar and Yarkand. Friendly relations were to be cultivated with the neighbouring States. And the bad customs of raiding and selling into slavery were to be gradually discouraged. It was all work which depended on the personal factor, and the least interference from the centres of Government was desirable. The man on the spot must stand or fall by his own character.
It is probable that had Carruthers been able to retain his old orderly of the 20th Punjab, he might have learnt a little sooner of the plot against his life. But Zarulla had returned to his regiment; and so it was not until the afternoon of the feast of Muharram that he got even an inkling of the danger which beset Marjorie and himself. But on that afternoon the Agency House was deserted by its servants. Marjorie Carruthers was the first to discover it. She rang her hand-bell at tea-time and no one came. She went along to the kitchen. It was empty. She went out towards the servants’ quarters. That busy place was undisturbed by any sound or movement. A little disquieted, she sought out her husband in his office.
“Frank, all the servants have left.”
Frank Carruthers got up from his chair. For a moment neither of them spoke. On another day Carruthers himself might have been less uneasy. But this was Muharram, when the passions of Islam would be aroused and fanatics have their way.
“Did none ask for permission to go?”
Marjorie shook her head.
“None!”
“I’ll go down and enquire.”
He opened a drawer in his writing-table, turning his back upon his wife. He took something from the drawer quickly and slipped it into his pocket. But not so quickly that Marjorie was left in any doubt as to what it was. It was a Colt automatic pistol.
“Perhaps after all you had better come with me,” he said.
“Yes,” she answered with a little gasp. Her face had grown white.
“They may all have gone down to the village, to see the bonfires,” he suggested.
“Yes,” she answered with the same sharp note of suspense which she had used before.
Carruthers took her by the arm and went out with her to the gate. One of his seven levies stood on sentry duty and brought up his rifle to the salute.
Carruthers spoke to him in a language which Marjorie did not understand. Neither did she understand the sentry’s replies. But she asked no questions.
“I think we might find the sergeant and hear what he has to say,” said Carruthers. He was neither over-casual nor over-anxious in his speech.
“Yes,” said Marjorie.
A line of outhouses against the wall of the enclosure had been converted into barracks during Carruthers’ last visit to Tokot. Carruthers found the sergeant in the yard and once more talked in a strange dialect. Now, however, it was clear to Marjorie that the sergeant had news to tell. Carruthers’ face became graver. He stood for a moment in
thought and then gave an order.
“We’ll go back to the house, I think.”
In the upper living-room Carruthers turned to his wife.
“Three of our levies have gone. They were taking their rifles with them. The sergeant stopped them. I have told the sergeant to bring his men and all arms into the house. There may be danger here to-night. I am sorry, Marjorie.”
Marjorie called up a trembling phantom of a smile to her lips. Neither of them had a taste for heroics. She shook his arm and gave it a pat.
“It’s for me to cook some dinner,” she said, and she went off to the kitchen.
Who shall say what thoughts passed through her mind? A vision perhaps of the cricket-ground where she had first met Carruthers; or of the Yorkshire moor where he had asked her to marry him. She looked out of the window. The light was fading. Already here and there in the villages below a bonfire was alight. In half an hour it would be dark. Marjorie shivered. The loneliness of the house suddenly terrified her. She and Frank were just counters to these — the wild hillmen of the Hindu Khush — but they were counters which could suffer horribly. But she must show nothing of her fear. She could hear the tramp of the four men who were left resounding through the house and the clatter of their arms. Shutters were being closed over the windows, and loopholes cut in the shutters. Mechanically she lit a lamp and went on with her cooking. Her husband came into the room and closed the shutters over this window too.
“It is best that we should show no lights,” he said. “It may be that we shall be forgotten.”
Neither he nor Marjorie had the slightest belief in any such possibility. What he meant was that it was better to die like a rat than a mouse, and die fighting.
“Shall I help you?” he added, and she replied:
“No, but you can watch whilst I wash. There’s no reason, if we are both going to be killed to-night, why we should dine together for the last time thinking how remarkably unattractive the other one is.”
She put her arms about his neck, gave him a kiss and a hug, ended it all with a sob and bolted out of the room. When she came back with her hair smoothed and her face freshened, and all of her desirable — oh, much more desirable than on the day when he had seen her at Lord’s or on the day when he had proposed to her in a shooting-butt on the Yorkshire moors — and saw his heart leap into his eyes at the sight of her, she said:
“Now you go and do likewise!”
They dined together, talking at the first of simple, trivial things.
“If I had known that you could cook like this!” he cried, with a look of admiration.
Marjorie choked. She had been on the point of saying: “You would have made me cook for you, like the tyrants all men are, before this last time that we dine together.” But they had both to keep away from such rejoinders.
“It was a fluke,” she said.
“Well, you’re a genius at it,” he replied.
The conversation between them became very flat, very difficult. Neither of them could say “I want this or that message to be delivered,” since they were both going to die together. She couldn’t use the conventional old melodramatic phrase “You’ll keep the last cartridge in your revolver for me, won’t you?” because both knew already that he was going to do it. Carruthers changed the plates and she set out the new dish, both with their ears to the window. For though the shutters were closed, the windows were open, and through the interstices of the shutters distant murmurs were growing into a distant roar.
Suddenly Marjorie said:
“I know what you’re thinking, Frank, but you mustn’t think it.”
Frank Carruthers laughed a little too boisterously for his laughter to sound natural.
“As if you could know, my dear girl, the wonderful thoughts that swarm in the brains of the Political Department.”
“You’re blaming yourself,” said Marjorie, and Carruthers’ laughter stopped, as though a knife had sheared it through. “You are blaming yourself for marrying me, for taking me away from cricket matches and grouse-moors. But I’d like you to know now that I have trodden down the stars since we have been together.”
She spoke the words with so much simplicity that they were robbed of all extravagance.
“Marjorie!” he said quietly and all his heart was in his voice. The next moment he rose from his chair, as a louder and nearer outburst broke upon his ears.
“I think they are coming,” he said, and he leaned forward and turned out the lamp. He heard her voice close to him and felt her arm slip through his.
“Yes.”
She drew him towards the window. To both of them the strain of imprisonment had become intolerable. Carruthers swung one of the shutters outwards; and both drew in a breath of the night air. About the village the smoke and the flames of bonfires flung upwards a shifting canopy of red that wavered into brown, and brown that again glared like scarlet. The cries and shouts were louder. Frank Carruthers pointed to the line of the road still some distance from them where torches and the lighted branches of trees tossed and fell. For a second both of them watched:
“They are nearer,” said Marjorie.
Her voice shook ever so little; and suddenly she was aware that Frank Carruthers stiffened at her side. He drew her back quickly from the window into the darkness of the room.
“There’s someone already in the garden.”
“You are sure?”
“There’s not a breath of wind. Yet a bush rustled. Why?”
And suddenly from the foot of the wall beneath the window, he heard the tapping of a drum — very faintly, very secretly. Two sharp staccato strokes, then the roll of thunder so distant that it came from beyond the horizon’s edge, then a pause, then the postman’s rat-tat and that again.
Where had he heard just that combination of sounds? And while he tried to remember the call came again but more urgently. Before they had finished, Carruthers uttered a low cry.
“It’s Sugar-and-Milk.”
He ran down to the hall where the sergeant and one of the levies were posted. He unbarred the door, and unlocked it. A boy blackened with dust and grime tumbled through the entrance.
“Shuggy,” said Marjorie.
His tongue was so swollen in his mouth that he could not speak. Carruthers brought him a tumbler of water and he gasped out.
“The troops are on their way. . . . I know where we can hide until they come. Only we must be quick! We want food — candles — cartridges. Even if they find us, we can hold out.”
There was no time for any argument. Shuja-ul-Mulk had to be taken on trust or thrust out of the door as a traitor. But a traitor he could not be. They got together some tinned food, some bread, some water. Carruthers ran upstairs and brought down the two levies who were stationed at the topmost windows. They crept out of the house, and Carruthers locked the door behind him.
Shuja-ul-Mulk whispered.
“Follow me,” and each one, holding on to some fringe of a garment worn by the person in front of him, followed Shuja-ul-Mulk into the screen of trees to the corner of the garden above the river. The noise and uproar of the crowd upon the road were louder still. A pile of boulders was heaped in a corner.
“Here,” said Shuja-ul-Mulk and the slab was moved aside. “I’ll go first,” the boy whispered, and he slid into the dark mouth of the entrance. One by one they followed him, and when all were in the slab was fitted into its place again. Carruthers had a flashlight torch in his pocket.
“No one knows of this passage,” whispered Shuja-ul-Mulk. “A little farther down there is a corner to turn where two men could hold up an army.”
Carruthers stationed two men at the corner and going farther down came to a wide space. They made a little camp for Marjorie there and, going on, posted the other two levies at the opening into the cavern.
Shuja-ul-Mulk was fainting when they brought him back to the clear space half-way down the passage. They gave him food and water and he raised Marjorie’s hand to his forehead
with a very pretty gesture.
“Rajab brought the news that on the night of Muharram this was to happen,” he said. “The great Lord of the Province did not believe that I could get here in time, but the Colonel of the Gurkhas — you know him? — square and hard to knock against like a stone, when he stands still, and all india-rubber when he moves — —”
“Adare,” said Carruthers.
They were all squatting upon the ground with a lighted candle in the midst of them, Marjorie upon a fur cloak which she had picked up as she had followed Carruthers down the stairs.
“The Colonel Adare said I could do it. So he gave me a mule — oh, the mule of mules — and food, and I put the food and myself and my drum on the back of my mule and I come.”
Shuja-ul-Mulk had never let go of his drum. He had it now beside him and he drew it close to him as he spoke.
“To-morrow night perhaps, perhaps the morning after, the soldiers will be here. Colonel Adare — he promised me” — but even whilst he spoke his voice trailed away and his eyes closed.
“I’ll sleep down there by the cavern,” he said, rising unsteadily.
Carruthers picked him up in his arms and, guiding himself by the light of his electric torch, carried him down to the two soldiers and laid him as comfortably as he could on the ground. But Sugar-and-Milk was already fast asleep with a smile upon his face.
Meanwhile above their heads a crowd, frenzied with passion, tore through the rooms of the Agency, overturning furniture, wrenching down curtains in search of their victims. The old Mullah goaded them on.
“Seek, you dogs! Fools, rogues, bring them out!”
He lashed about him with his stick.
“They are not here. You have betrayed us!” and a gigantic man turned furiously upon him.
“In the garden, then, seek, seek!” cried the Mullah, and the Wasir Dadu trembled in a corner. They had between them promised the lives of the British Agent and his wife to the Tokotis, to Umra Beg, to all the peoples of the border. They were to be the great sacrifice on the day of Muharram, the signal which would set alight the frontier from Dir to Kashgar and Yarkand. And they were nowhere! The search spread over the garden. They were nowhere. The spirits had protected them. . . . The Tokotis fell and slept where they lay. Only the Mullah was awake, foaming in his rage, and the Wasir Dadu, trembling for his life.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 692