by Talbot Mundy
Chapter III
Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin. Steal from a thief, for that is easy. Set a trap for a trickster, and catch him at the first attempt. But beware of the man who has no axe to grind. --Eastern Proverb
It was a musty smelling entrance, so dark that to see was scarcelypossible after the hot glare outside. Dimly King made out Rewa Gungamounting stairs to the left and followed him. The stairs wound backwardand forward on themselves four times, growing scarcely any lighter asthey ascended, until, when he guessed himself two stories at least aboveroad level, there was a sudden blaze of reflected light and he blinkedat more mirrors than he could count. They had been swung on hingessuddenly to throw the light full in his face.
There were curtains reflected in each mirror, and little glowing lamps,so cunningly arranged that it was not possible to guess which werereal and which were not. Rewa Gunga offered no explanation, but stoodwatching with quiet amusement. He seemed to expect King to take a chanceand go forward, but if he did he reckoned without his guest. King stoodstill.
Then suddenly, as if she had done it a thousand times before andsurprised a thousand people, a little nut-brown maid parted the middlepair of curtains and said "Salaam!" smiling with teeth that were aswhite as porcelain. All the other curtains parted too, so that thewhereabouts of the door might still have been in doubt had she notspoken and so distinguished herself from her reflections. King lookedscarcely interested and not at all disturbed.
Balked of his amusement, Rewa Gunga hurried past him, thrusting thelittle maid aside, and led the way. King followed him into a long room,whose walls were hung with richer silks than any he remembered to haveseen. In a great wide window to one side some twenty, women began atonce to make flute music.
Silken punkahs swung from chains, wafting back and forth a cloud ofsandalwood smoke that veiled the whole scene in mysterious, scentedmist. Through the open window came the splash of a fountain and thechattering of birds, and the branch of a feathery tree drooped near by.It seemed that the long white wall below was that of Yasmini's garden.
"Be welcome!" laughed Rewa Gunga; "I am to do the honors, since she isnot here. Be seated, sahib."
King chose a divan at the room's farthest end, near tall curtains thatled into rooms beyond. He turned his back toward the reason for hischoice. On a little ivory-inlaid ebony table about ten feet away lay aknife, that was almost the exact duplicate of the one inside his shirt.Bronze knives of ancient date, with golden handles carved to represent awoman dancing, are rare. The ability to seem not to notice incriminatingevidence is rarer still--rarest of all when under the eyes of a nativeof India, for cats and hawks are dullards by comparison to them. ButKing saw the knife, yet did not seem to see it.
There was nothing there calculated to set an Englishman at ease. Inspite of the Rangar's casual manner, Yasmini's reception room feltlike the antechamber to another world, where mystery is atmosphere andordinary air to breathe is not at all. He could sense hushed expectancyon every side--could feel the eyes of many women fixed on him--and beganto draw on his guard as a fighting man draws on armor. There and then hedeliberately set himself to resist mesmerism, which is the East's chiefweapon.
Rewa Gunga, perfectly at home, sprawled leisurely, along a cushionedcouch with a grace that the West has not learned yet; but King did notmake the mistake of trusting him any better for his easy manners, andhis eyes sought swiftly for some unrhythmic, unplanned thing on which torest, that he might save himself by a sort of mental leverage.
Glancing along the wall that faced the big window, he noticed for thefirst time a huge Afridi, who sat on a stool and leaned back against thesilken hangings with arms folded.
"Who is that man?" he asked.
"He? Oh, he is a savage--just a big savage," said Rewa Gunga, lookingvaguely annoyed.
"Why is he here?"
He did not dare let go of this chance side-issue. He knew that RewaGunga wished him to talk of Yasmini and to ask questions about her, andthat if he succumbed to that temptation all his self-control would becunningly sapped away from him until his secrets, and his very senses,belonged to some one else.
"What is he doing here?" he insisted.
"He? Oh, he does nothing. He waits," purred the Rangar. "He is to beyour body-servant on your journey to the North. He is nothing--nobody atall!--except that he is to be trusted utterly because he loves Yasmini.He is Obedience! A big obedient fool! Let him be!"
"No," said King. "If he's to be my man I'll speak to him!"
He felt himself winning. Already the spell of the room was lifting, andhe no longer felt the cloud of sandalwood smoke like a veil across hisbrain.
"Won't you tell him to come here to me?"
Rewa Gunga laughed, resting his silk turban against the wall hangingsand clasping both hands about his knee. It was as a man might laugh whohas been touched in a bout with foils.
"Oh!--Ismail!" he called, with a voice like a bell, that made Kingstare.
The Afridi seemed to come out of a deep sleep and looked bewildered,rubbing his eyes and feeling whether his turban was on straight. Hecombed his beard with nervous fingers as he gazed about him and caughtRewa Gunga's eye. Then he sprang to his feet.
"Come!" ordered Rewa Gunga.
The man obeyed.
"Did you see?" Rewa Gunga chuckled. "He rose from his place like abuffalo, rump first and then shoulder after shoulder! Such men are safe!Such men have no guile beyond what will help them to obey! Such menthink too slowly to invent deceit for its own sake!"
The Afridi came and towered above them, standing with gnarled handsknotted into clubs.
"What is thy name?" King asked him.
"Ismail!" he boomed.
"Thou art to be my servant?"
"Aye! So said she. I am her man. I obey!"
"When did she say so?" King asked him blandly, asking unexpectedquestions being half the art of Secret Service, although the other halfis harder to achieve.
The Hillman stroked his great beard and stood considering the question.One could almost imagine the click of slow machinery revolving in hismind, although King entertained a shrewd suspicion that he was not sostupid as he chose to seem. His eyes were too hawk-bright to be a stupidman's.
"Before she went away," he answered at last.
"When did she go away?"
He thought again, then "Yesterday," he said.
"Why did you wait before you answered?"
The Afridi's eyes furtively sought Rewa Gunga's and found no aid there.Watching the Rangar less furtively, but even less obviously, King wasaware that his eyes were nearly closed, as if they were not interested.The fingers that clasped his knee drummed on it indifferently, seeingwhich King allowed himself to smile.
"Never mind," he told Ismail. "It is no matter. It is ever well to thinktwice before speaking once, for thus mistakes die stillborn. Only themonkey-folk thrive on quick answers--is it not so? Thou art a man ofmany inches--of thew and sinew--Hey, but thou art a man! If the heartwithin those great ribs of thine is true as thine arms are strong Ishall be fortunate to have thee for a servant!"
"Aye!" said the Afridi. "But what are words? She has said I am thyservant, and to hear her is to obey!"
"Then from now thou art my servant?"
"Nay, but from yesterday when she gave the order!"
"Good!" said King.
"Aye, good for thee! May Allah do more to me if I fail!"
"Then, take me a telegram!" said King.
He began to write at once on a half-sheet of paper that he tore from aletter he had in his pocket, setting down a row of figures at the topand transposing into cypher as he went along.
"Yasmini has gone North. Is there any reason at your end why I shouldnot follow her at once?"
He addressed it in plain English to his friend the general at Peshawur,taking great care lest the Rangar read it through those sleepy,half-closed eyes of his. Then he tore the cypher from the top, strucka match and burned the strip
of paper and handed the code telegram toIsmail, directing him carefully to a government office where the cyphersignature would be recognized and the telegram given precedence.
Ismail stalked off with it, striding like Moses down fromSinai--hook-nose--hawk-eye--flowing beard--dignity and all, and Kingsettled down to guard himself against the next attempt on his sovereignself-command.
Now he chose to notice the knife on the ebony table as if he had notseen it before. He got up and reached for it and brought it back,turning it over and over in his hand.
"A strange knife," he said.
"Yes,--from Khinjan," said Rewa Gunga, and King eyed him as one wolfeyes another.
"What makes you say it is from Khinjan?"
"She brought it from Khinjan Caves herself! There is another knife thatmatches it, but that is not here. That bracelet you now wear, sahib, isfrom Khinjan Caves too! She has the secret of the Caves!"
"I have heard that the 'Heart of the Hills' is there," King answered."Is the 'Heart of the Hills' a treasure house?"
Rewa Gunga laughed.
"Ask her, sahib! Perhaps she will tell you! Perhaps she will let yousee! Who knows? She is a woman of resource and unexpectedness--Let herwomen dance for you a while."
King nodded. Then he got up and laid the knife back on the little table.A minute or so later he noticed that at a sign from Rewa Gunga a womanleft the great window place and spirited the knife away.
"May I have a sheet of paper?" he asked, for he knew that another fightfor his self-command was due.
Rewa Gunga gave an order, and a maid brought him scented paper on asilver tray. He drew out his own fountain pen then and made ready.
In spite of the great silken punkah that swung rhythmically across thefull breadth of the room the beat was so great that the pen slippedround and round between his fingers. Yet he contrived to write, andsince his one object was to give his brain employment, he wrote downa list of the names he had memorized in the train on the journey fromPeshawur, not thinking of a use for the list until he had finished.Then, though, a real use occurred to him.
While he began to write more than a dozen dancing women swept into theroom from behind the silk hangings in a concerted movement that was alllithe slumberous grace. Wood-wind music called to them from the greatdeep window as snakes are summoned from their holes, and as cobrasanswer the charmer's call the women glided to the center and stoodpoised beneath the punkah.
There they began to chant, still dreamily, and with the chant the dancebegan, in and out, round and round, lazily, ever so lazily, wreathed inbuoyant gossamer that was scarcely more solid than the sandalwood smokethey wafted into rings.
King watched them and listened to their chant until he began torecognize the strain on the eye-muscles that precedes the mesmericspell. Then he wrote and read what he had written and wrote again. Andafter that, for the sake of mental exercise, he switched his thoughtsinto another channel altogether. He reverted to Delhi railway station.
"The Turks can spy as well as anybody.--They know those men are going toKerachi to be ready for them.--Therefore, having cut his eye-teeth B.C.several hundred, the Unspeakable Turk will take care not to misbehaveUNTIL he's ready. And I suppose our government, being ours and we beingus, will let him do it! All of which will take time.--And that againmeans no trouble in the Hills--probably--until the Turks really do feelready to begin. They'll preach a holy war just ahead of the date. Thetribes will keep quiet because an army at Kerachi might be meant fortheir benefit. Oh, yes, I'm quite sure they were entraining for Kerachiin readiness to move on Basra.
"Trucks ready for camels--and camel drivers--and food for camels--andEresby, who's just come from taking a special camel course. Not a doubtof it!--And then, Corrigan--Elwright--Doby--Gould--all on the platformin a bunch, and all down on the Army List as Turkish interpreters! Not adoubt left!"
"What have you written?" asked a quiet voice at his ear; and he turnedto look straight in the eyes of Rewa Gunga, who had leaned forward toread over his shoulder. Just for one second he hovered on the brink ofquick defeat. Having escaped the Scylla of the dancing women, Charybdiswaited for him in the shape of eyes that were pools of hot mystery. Itwas the sound of his own voice that brought him back to the world againand saved his will for him unbound.
"Read it, won't you?" he laughed. "If you know, take this pen and markthe names of whichever of those men are still in Delhi."
Rewa Gunga took pen and paper and set a mark against some thirty of thenames, for King had a manner that disarmed refusal.
"Where are the others?" he asked him, after a glance at it.
"In jail, or else over the border."
"Already?"
The Rangar nodded. "Trust Yasmini! She saw to that jolly well before sheleft Delhi! She would have stayed had there been anything more to do!"
King began to watch the dance again, for it did not feel safe to looktoo long into the Rangar's eyes. It was not wise just then to look toolong at anything, or to think too long on any one subject.
"Ismail is slow about returning," said the Rangar.
"I wrote at the foot of the tar," said King, "that they are to detainhim there until the answer comes."
The Rangar's eyes blazed for a second and then grew cold again (as Kingdid not fail to observe). He knew as well as the Rangar that not manymen would have kept their will so unfettered in that room as to be ableto give independent orders. He recognized resignation, temporary atleast, in the Rangar's attitude of leaning back again to watch fromunder lowered eyelids. It was like being watched by a cat.
All this while the women danced on, in time to wailing flute-music,until, it seemed from nowhere, a lovelier woman than any of themappeared in their midst, sitting cross-legged with a flat basket at herknees. She sat with arms raised and swayed from the waist as if in adelirium. Her arms moved in narrowing circles, higher and higher abovethe basket lid, and the lid began to rise. Nobody touched it, nor wasthere any string, but as it rose it swayed with sickening monotony.
It was minutes before the bodies of two great king-cobras could bemade out, moving against the woman's spangled dress. The basket lid wasresting on their heads, and as the music and the chanting rose to a wildweird shriek the lid rose too, until suddenly the woman snatched thelid away and the snakes were revealed, with hoods raised, hissing thecobra's hate-song that is prelude to the poison-death.
They struck at the woman, one after the other, and she leaped out oftheir range, swift and as supple as they. Instantly then she joinedin the dance, with the snakes striking right and left at her. Leftand right she swayed to avoid them, far more gracefully than a matadoravoids the bull and courting a deadlier peril than he--poisonous, two tohis one. As she danced she whirled both arms above her head and cried asthe were-wolves are said to do on stormy nights.
Some unseen hand drew a blind over the great window and an eeriegreen-and-golden light began to play from one end of the room, throwingthe dancers into half-relief and deepening the mystery.
Sweet strange scents were wafted in from under the silken hangings.The room grew cooler by unguessed means. Every sense was treacherouslywooed. And ever, in the middle of the moving light among the languorousdancers, the snakes pursued the woman!
"Do you do this often?" wondered King, in a calm aside to Rewa Gunga,turning half toward him and taking his eyes off the dance without any,very, great effort.
Rewa Gunga clapped his hands and the dance ceased. The woman spiritedher snakes away. The blind was drawn upward and in a moment all wasnormal again with the punkah swinging slowly overhead, except that theseductive smell remained, that was like the early-morning breath of allthe different flowers of India.
"If she were here," said the Rangar, a little grimly--with a trace ofdisappointment in his tone--"you would not snatch your eyes awaylike that! You would have been jolly well transfixed, my friend!These--she--that woman--they are but clumsy amateurs! If she were here,to dance with her snakes for you, you would have been jolly well danc
ingwith her, if she had wished it! Perhaps you shall see her dance someday! Ah,--here is Ismail," he added in an altered tone of voice. Heseemed relieved at sight of the Afridi.
Bursting through the glass-bead curtains at the door, the great savagestrode down the room, holding out a telegram. Rewa Gunga looked as ifhe would have snatched it, but King's hand was held out first and Ismailgave it to him. With a murmur of conventional apology King tore theenvelope and in a second his eyes were ablaze with something more thanwonder. A mystery, added to a mystery, stirred all the zeal in him. Butin a second he had sweated his excitement down.
"Read that, will you?" he said, passing it to Rewa Gunga. It was not incypher, but in plain everyday English.
"She has not gone North," it ran. "She is still in Delhi. Suit your ownmovements to your plans."
"Can you explain?" asked King in a level voice. He was watching theRangar narrowly, yet he could not detect the slightest symptom ofemotion.
"Explain?" said the Rangar. "Who can explain foolishness? It means thatanother fat general has made another fat mistake!"
"What makes you so certain she went North?" King asked.
Instead of answering, Rewa Gunga beckoned Ismail, who had stepped backout of hearing. The giant came and loomed over them like the Spirit ofthe Lamp of the Arabian Nights.
"Whither went she?" asked the Rangar.
"To the North!" he boomed.
"How knowest thou?"
"I saw her go!"
"When went she?"
"Yesterday, when a telegram came."
The word "came" was the only clue to his meaning, for in the language heused "yesterday" and "to-morrow" are the same word; such is the East'sestimate of time.
"By what route did she go?" asked Rewa Gunga.
"By the terrain from the station."
"How knowest thou that?"
"I was there, bearing her box of jewels."
"Didst thou see her buy the tikkut?"
"Nay, I bought it, for she ordered me."
"For what destination was the tikkut?"
"Peshawur!" said Ismail, filling his mouth with the word as if he lovedit.
"Yet"--it was King who spoke now, pointing an accusing finger at him--"aburra sahib sends a tar to me--this is it!--to say she is in Delhistill! Who told thee to answer those questions with those words?"
"She!" the big man answered.
"Yasmini?"
"Aye! May Allah cover her with blessings!"
"Ah!" said King. "You have my leave to depart out of earshot."
Then he turned on Rewa Gunga.
"Whatever the truth of all this," he said quietly, "I suppose it meansshe has done what there was to do in Delhi?"
"Sahib,--trust her! Does a tigress hunt where no watercourses are, andwhere no game goes to drink? She follows the sambur!"
"You are positive she has started for the North?"
"Sahib, when she speaks it is best to believe! She told me she will go.Therefore I am ready to lead King sahib up the Khyber to her!"
"Are you certain you can find her?"
"Aye, sahib,--in the dark!"
"There's a train leaves for the North to-night," said King.
The Rangar nodded.
"You'll want a pass up the line. How many servants? Three--four--howmany?"
"One," said the Rangar, and King was instantly suspicious of the modestyof that allowance; however he wrote out a pass for Rewa Gunga and oneservant and gave it to him.
"Be there on time and see about your own reservation," he said. "I'llattend to Ismail's pass myself."
He folded the list of names that the Rangar had marked and wrotesomething on the back. Then he begged an envelope, and Rewa Gunga hadone brought to him. He sealed the list in the envelope, addressed it andbeckoned Ismail again.
"Take this to Saunders sahib!" he ordered. "Go first to the telegraphoffice, where you were before, and the babu there will tell you whereSaunders sahib may be found. Having found him, deliver the letter tohim. Then come and find me at the Star of India Hotel and help me tobathe and change my clothes."
"To hear is to obey!" boomed Ismail, bowing; but his last glance wasfor Rewa Gunga, and he did not turn to go until he had met the Rangar'seyes.
When Ismail had gone striding down the room, with no glance to sparefor the whispering women in the window, and with dignity like an auraexuding from him, King looked into the Rangar's eyes with that engagingfrankness of his that disarms so many people.
"Then you'll be on the train to-night?" he asked.
"To hear is to obey! With pleasure, sahib!"
"Then good-by until this evening."
King bowed very civilly and walked out, rather unsteadily because hishead ached. Probably nobody else, except the Rangar, could have guessedwhat an ordeal he had passed through or how near he had been to losingself-command.
But as he felt his way down the stairs, that were dimly lighted now, heknew he had all his senses with him, for he "spotted" and admired thelurking places that had been designed for undoing of the unwary, or eventhe overwary. Yasmini's Delhi nest was like a hundred traps in one.
"Almost like a pool table," he reflected. "Pocket 'em at both ends andthe middle!"
In the street he found a gharry after a while and drove to his hotel.And before Ismail came he took a stroll through a bazaar, where he madea few strange purchases. In the hotel lobby he invested in a leather bagwith a good lock, in which to put them. Later on Ismail came and provedhimself an efficient body-servant.
That evening Ismail carried the leather bag and found his place on thetrain, and that was not so difficult, because the trains running Northwere nearly empty, although the platforms were all crowded. As he stoodat the carriage door with Ismail near him, a man named Saunders slippedthrough the crowd and sought him out.
"Arrested 'em all!" he grinned.
"Good."
"Seen anything of her? I recognized Yasmini's scent on your envelope.It's peculiar to her--one of her monopolies!"
"No. I'm told she went North yesterday."
"Not by train, she didn't! It's my business to know that!"
King did not answer; nor did he look surprised. He was watching RewaGunga, followed by a servant, hurrying to a reserved compartment at thefront end of the train. The Rangar waved to him and he waved back.
"I'd know her in a million!" vowed Saunders. "I can take oath she hasn'tgone anywhere by train! Unless she has walked, or taken a carriage,she's in Delhi!"
The engine gave a preliminary shriek and the giant Ismail nudged King'selbow in impatient warning. There was no more sign of Rewa Gunga, whohad evidently settled down in his compartment for the night.
"Get my bag out again!" King ordered, and Ismail stared.
"Get out my bag, I said!"
"To hear is to obey!" Ismail grumbled, reaching with his long armthrough the window.
The engine shrieked again, somebody whistled, and the train began tomove.
"You've missed it!" said Saunders, amused at Ismail's franticdisappointment. The giant was tugging at his beard. "How about yourtrunk? Better wire ahead and have it spotted for you."
"No," said King; "it's still in the baggage room a theother station. I didn't intend to go by this train. Came down hereto see another fellow off, that's all! Have a cigar and then let's gotogether and look those prisoners over!"
Chapter IV
