The Heath Hover Mystery

by Bertram Mitford

were armed with the inevitable and razor-edged tulwar, three orfour indeed carrying rifles besides. At sight of the Europeans theyhalted, and their looks were not friendly. In point of fact theseexpressed distinct suspiciousness, partly dashed with a restrainedcombination of fanatical and racial hatred. But the whole group wassplendidly in keeping with the stern wildness of its background.

  "Now how the devil are we going to pass each other, and who's going togive way?" mused Varne Coates in an undertone. Helston said nothing.His mind was absorbed entirely with taking in and thoroughlyappreciating the effect of the picture.

  "Salaam, brothers," began Coates, speaking Hindustani: "This _tangi_ isover narrow for two parties to pass each other. Is it not wider alittle back, the way you have come?"

  The look of hostility on the dark faces seemed to deepen ever soslightly. To Helston's acute observation it deepened more thanslightly.

  "Or the way _you_ have come," came the answer from more than one voice.But the man on the camel said nothing, perhaps because he did notunderstand--or as a freeborn mountaineer, did not choose to understand--the language of servants--of slaves. But he did not look friendly.Things were at a decided deadlock.

  There was just barely room to pass, but only then by floundering up themost rugged part of the dry watercourse. But Varne Coates, Commissionerof Baghnagar, and temporarily quartered on leave at the frontier stationof Mazaran for the purposes chiefly of markhor stalking, wastemperamentally a peppery man, and traditionally entirely opposed to theidea of giving way to natives whoever they might be. And it lookeduncommonly as though he would have to do so now.

  "Here, Gholam Ali," he called back over his shoulder to the syce. "Youtalk to these people. They don't seem to understand _me_."

  The man came forward, and Helston was not slow to notice that his tones,as he talked, were respectful, not to say deferential. The face of thecamel rider the while was that of a mask. He uttered a few laconicwords in a deep toned voice, and in Pushtu.

  "_Hazur_, it is a sirdar of the Gularzai," translated the syce, "Hisname Allah-din Khan. He does not know the _Hazur_, and this is hiscountry. _Hazur_, he says, does not belong to the _Sirkar_ here [theGovernment, or administration], but is a stranger. Further down the_tangi_ is a wide space where all can pass one another. `Let those whocome _up_ then make way for those who come _down_.' Those are the wordsof the sirdar."

  Here was an _impasse_. Helston Varne noticed on his kinsman's face asort of apoplectic tendency to grow purple. He realised that thesituation was critical--very. He noticed likewise that the expressionon the faces of the opposite party was one of scowling determination,but he further noticed that there was nothing insolent or provocative init. This seemed to save the situation. His keen brain saw a way out.It was rather a funny one, but it might answer.

  "See now, Gholam Ali," he said, in Hindustani, of which he had athorough knowledge. "When we sportsmen have a difference we throw up acoin, and decide according to choice whether the King's head isuppermost or not. The Gularzai are sportsmen like ourselves. So we cantoss up for who shall give way."

  He produced a rupee, and watched the face of the chief while this wasput to him. The latter gave a slight nod, and said a word or two to hisfollowers. They crowded forward.

  "What does the sirdar say?" went on Helston. "The King's head or theother side?"

  "The King's head," was the answer.

  "Good. Let one of them throw up the rupee," said Helston, handing itover.

  A tall, hook-nosed barbarian came forward, and taking the coin, sent itspinning high in the air. It came down with a clink, rebounded, andsettled. The King's head was undermost.

  "`Tails.' We've won," said Helston, looking up. "But if they'd liketwo out of three, we can call again."

  But the sirdar shook his head.

  "It is child's play," he said. "Still--a test is a test--and a game agame. We keep to it."

  And to the intense relief of at any rate two of them, he turned hiscamel round, and retraced his way up the _tangi_, followed by hisretinue.

  "Well I'm damned!" was all that Coates could muster.

  "No you're not. We've got round that hobble," answered his kinsmanplacidly. "It was rather a funny situation though, wasn't it. Fancytossing for priority of way, bang, so to speak, in the heart of theearth. Well, Allah-din Khan is a sportsman anyhow."

  "Is he? Wait a bit. We haven't _passed_ him yet." And the answercarried a potential suggestiveness, which, under the circumstances, wasunpleasant.

  However, such was not borne out by events. A few hundred yards higherup, the _tangi_ widened out considerably, and here they found the sirdarand his following awaiting them. Helston said a few pleasant andcourteous words as they passed, which were gravely but not sullenly,received. But the hostile stare on the faces of the chief's following,there was no mistaking.

  "That's what comes of sending the escort on ahead," said Varne Coates."If they'd been along we needn't have stood any nonsense from MrAllah-din Khan. It would have been man for man then, or very nearly,and a good deal more than rifle for rifle."

  "Don't know it isn't a good thing that we did," answered the other withsome conviction. "The evenness of numbers would probably have broughton a row. And I'm perfectly certain any one of those chaps is equal toany two of ours, if not three."

  "But the rifles?"

  "Even then, they wouldn't have given us time to use them. No. I thinkwe're well out of that racket, Coates."

  "All right. I shall be glad to see camp anyhow. I'm yearning for along, stiff, cool peg. Wrangling and getting into a wax is very drywork. Well, we're not far off now, thank the Lord."

  The _tangi_ was widening out considerably. The cliffs no longer rosesheer and facing each other, but had changed into tumbling crags andpinnacles, and terraced ledges, while beyond lay a glimpse of more opencountry. But on one hand the mouth of the pass was dominated by a huge,magnificent cliff wall.

  "Look there," cried Coates, glancing at a point halfway up this wheresome objects were moving. "Markhor--three of them! But they are wild.At that height they ought to be standing calmly staring at us, andthey're off already as if the devil was after them."

  And as the words left his mouth, the answer--the explanation--came,startlingly, unpleasantly.

  For an echoing roar broke from the cliff front just below the point theyhad been scanning, and something heavy and vicious and convincingthudded hard with a "klopf" against a boulder just to the right ofHelston. The rock face was marked as with the splatter of blue lead.

  "We're being sniped, by God?" exclaimed Coates, reining in. The sycehad instinctively drawn behind the nearest boulder, and had dismounted.

  Again came the crash, together with a score of bellowing reverberationsas the echoes tossed from crag to crag. This time the missile shavedthe neck of Helston's horse so close as to set that noble animalsnorting and curvetting in such wise that the rider was put to sometrouble to keep his seat.

  "This is damn silly," growled Coates. "Well, there's nothing for it butto take cover and think it out. If we could only get a glimpse of the_soor_."

  There were many loose boulders at the entrance to the chasm, and only inthe nick of time did they get behind two of these. For a third bullethummed over the very spot, now in empty air, a fraction of a second agooccupied by Helston and his horse.

  "He's getting our range now, and no mistake," went on Coates. "Now wemust try and get his. Just about halfway up the _khud_ there, belowwhere we sighted the markhor."

  For some minutes there was no further sign. The sniper seeing nownothing to snipe at, did not snipe. Meanwhile he was enjoying the funof keeping two of the ruling race crouching behind rocks for theirlives. He had the best part of the day before him to enjoy it in, forit was quite early afternoon, and his time was all his own. When theycame out into the open, as sooner or later they would be sure to do--forthey were but scantily endowed with the saving grace of patience, thes
einfidels--then he would have them; the whole three, with good fortune;only he would spare the syce perhaps, because he was a believer.

  "This is a nice cheerful country, Coates, and a fairly eventful day ofit," remarked Helston. "First, we as nearly as possible have a hand tohand scrap for the right to pass an exceedingly cut-throat looking gangof ruffians, then no sooner are we clear of that than we have to slinkbehind stones like scared rabbits, because some sportsman unknown takesit into his head that we make very good moving targets at a givendistance. And I don't quite see the way out, that's the worst of it.Do you?"

  "Not unless we can get a sight on the _budmash_," was the reply. "I'veput mine at four hundred yards."

  "Yes. That would do it," agreed Helston. "Stop. I've got an idea--give me a leg up to the top of this boulder. There are several loosestones there that I can get behind, and use as sort of loopholes."

  "Better not. He'll have you there to a dead cert," warned the other.

  "I'll chance that. So. That's it."

  Whether the sniper had seen this move, or whether he himself was tiredof inaction, another bullet now pinged hard and viciously against theboulder itself. This just suited Helston Varne. He was able in thatmoment's flash to locate the lurking place of their enemy, and himself,lying flat, was able to get his piece forward, and cover it. With theaid of a loophole-like formation of the stones he felt that he could notmiss.

  "Work the dummy trick, Coates," he called back, in a low voice. "Drawhis fire somehow. I've got the spot exactly covered, and--I think weshall soon be on our road again."

  "All right," came back the answer. "I'll give a cough when I'm allready to show the lure."

  It was a strange drama this duel between hidden foes, and for itssetting one of the wildest scenes of wild Nature. The mountain sideopposite, rising in huge terraced cliffs, the ledges affording sparsehold for a scanty growth of pistachio shrub. Beneath, the stones andboulders of the now dry watercourse, and behind, the craggy entrance tothe great _tangi_. No vegetation either, save coarse dry grass, no signof life, unless a cloud of kites, wheeling in circles high overhead,against the blue. And, facing each other, unseen, two units of humanitylay there, each bent on relieving the human race of one. Then VarneCoates coughed.

  But simultaneously, with the echoing roar from the cliff face, Helstonpressed trigger. The sound from opposite was not that of a missilestriking a hard substance.

  "Got him," he said, quietly. "Yes. He's done. I could see it plainly.He got it just under the chin, as he was watching the effect of hispull-off."

  "The effect of his pull-off," said Coates, "is that he's got the rangeplumb by now, and if anything had been inside the boot I stuck out, itsowner would have gone very lame for life. Look hereat it." And he heldit up showing a hole neatly drilled just above the ankle. "Sure you'vegot him though?"

  "So sure that--Well, look."

  Helston had slid down from his coign of vantage, and now deliberatelywalked forth into the open. Here he stood for a few moments, gazing upat the cliff.

  "That's practical faith at any rate," said Coates, grimly. "Yes, youcertainly must have `got him,' or he'd have got you by this. Still,it's risky. There might have been two of them."

  "There might, but there weren't."

  "How the deuce could you tell that?"

  "By the systematic way the _one_ was getting the range."

  "Oh, good old Sherlock Holmes again!" laughed Coates. "Now we can headfor that `peg' I was yearning for just now, and in dry fact--devilish_dry_--have been ever since."

  "What are we going to do about--that?" said Helston, with a nod in thedirection of their late menace.

  "Do? Why, not say a damn thing about it to anybody. Gholam Ali won'tfor his own sake. He's half a Pathan himself and knows better than toadvertise trouble. Yes, as you were saying--it's a nice cheerfulcountry this, not dull by any means."

  The other laughed significantly.

  "No," he said. "But this time it's a case of the sniper sniped."

  And then they both laughed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

  CAMP--AND A CONVERSATION.

  The camp was pitched in open ground, and had the drawback of that--forthere were no shading trees or sheltering heights, as to which VarneCoates remarked that it didn't matter a curse about shading trees ifonly that any moment a swarm of locusts might happen along and feed offall the "shade" within half an hour or so, leaving them as bare as HydePark in January; while as for the sheltering heights, well they had justseen what those could "shelter"--and it was better to be out of range ofsuch.

  The point on which the camp was pitched could certainly boast no charmof picturesqueness. It stared out upon open plains destitute offoliage, and rendered here and there even more ugly by low humps ofhill, whose mud coloured domes were relieved here and there by whitestreaks of gypsum. Bounding it on both sides, but at some littledistance, rose craggy mountain ridges, good stalking ground for_markhor_ and _gadh_, and, from another side of the operation, the same,as we have seen, for the Gularzai sniper. But the big living tent wasroomy, and as replete with such travelling comfort as onlycomfort-loving India somehow, seemed ever able to run to: and thesleeping tents, too, were not wanting in that much to be appreciatedadvantage. These, and the tents of the various servants, the khansamahtent, and those of the Levy sowars who formed the escort, made up quitea respectable sized nomad village.

  "Wonder if Ford'll turn up to-morrow," remarked Coates, as they satsmoking their after-dinner cheroots under the stars in front of the bigtent. Ford was the Conservator of Forests for the district of Mazaran--incidentally there were no "forests" worthy of the name in the saiddistrict, but Ford was Forest Officer nevertheless, and drew his pay assuch all the same.

  "Ford? Oh, yes, of course," answered Helston, shooting out a big trailof smoke and pulling himself out of a big meditation in which he hadbeen wrapped. "Yes. He'll do. He's all right."

  "Yes. And on this infernal frontier it's not a bad thing to haveanother hard man around who can shoot straight. These _soors_ don'tlove us any too well--as you've seen to-day."

  It might be asked under the circumstances why the devil two men shouldbe such fools as to go putting their heads into the lion's mouth, bycamping around here and there right in the heart of a wild countrypeopled by hostile and fanatical barbarians, just for the sake ofshooting a few wild goats. But--there you are. They were Englishmen,and this, we suppose, is an all sufficing answer.

  "What a rum thing it is, Helston," went on Coates, jumping to anothersubject, "that you should have run into my old pal Seward Mervyn. I'veoften thought about it, do you know?"

  "Yes, but the world's very small. Yet, I'm not sure that England, thatlittle bit of an island on the map, isn't the largest section of it--asfar as running into people goes."

  "Why it must be some years since I saw him. He must be ageing."

  "I should say not. He struck me as a remarkably wiry and energetic sortof man."

  "Energetic? Yes. He was too much that," said the other. "He wasalways wanting to know everything. In point of fact, strictly betweenourselves--he got to know too much."

  "Did he? In what direction?"

  The tone was even, languid; the tone, in short, of a man who is enjoyinghis after-dinner smoke in the open air after a day of hard healthfulexercise. But in reality the speaker suddenly found himself allathrill.

  "Oh, he wanted to find out everything about the people--and there areabout fifty different sorts and phases of people on the Northern borderalone. Not content with getting behind their different character andmanners and customs--and this is between ourselves, mind," and thespeaker instinctively lowered his voice--"he got himself mixed up intheir secret societies."

  "The deuce he did!"

  "Yes. Said he wanted to know the whole thing thoroughly, and everythingabout it, and that was the only way of getting to do so. But he endedby biting off rather more than he could chew."r />
  "How?"

  "How? Well now you're getting rather beyond me, old chap. I can onlytell you that he retired suddenly, but not a day too soon. The climateof India became no longer healthy for him, you understand."

  There was no misunderstanding the significance of the speaker's tone.Helston Varne was becoming more and more vividly interested.

  "So? Did he turn the knowledge he'd gained to official account then?"he said. "Go back on them, for instance?"

  "There again I can't tell you anything definite. But some of us--veryfew of us--know that he didn't retire a day too soon."

  "H'm," and Helston Varne selected another cheroot from the box andlighted it slowly and deliberately. "But I thought these secretsocieties were far reaching, indeed world-wide reaching. Would he bemuch safer--or any safer at all--anywhere he went?"

  "That too, is more than I can say. But you saw something of him athome. Did he seem all right there? You say he's buried in some out ofthe way country place. Well, did it strike you he might be--what shallwe say--sort of in hiding?"

  "N-no. I can't say it did, exactly. He told me he'd lost a lot of dibsover some damn silly invention he'd thought to make a pot over, and wasglad to live in a shack which he got for nothing because it was supposedto be haunted."

  Outwardly cool, the speaker was conscious of a stirring awakening. Hebegan to see light--vivid light, but he was not going to give thingsaway. His kinsman clearly had never heard of the Heath Hover mystery,and now to him, Helston Varne, the Heath Hover mystery began to take onan interest which had been dropping of late to expiring point.

  It is strange how a long sought solution will suddenly come as in aflash. The Heath Hover mystery had so far baffled this man to whom theunravelling of mysteries was as the breath of life, baffled him becausethere had been absolutely nothing to go upon. Once he had thought therewas, and that was the day he had been an unwilling prisoner in the HeathHover cellar. But that had evaded him, and since then he had ownedhimself puzzled. And now just a few casual conversational remarks letfall by his kinsman, here, away on the Indian frontier, seemed to let awhole flood of light in upon it. At that moment indeed he was verynearly piecing together the whole puzzle. His said kinsman's voicebroke the absorption of his thoughts.

  "Hand the cheroot box across, Helston--Thanks--By the way you weresaying, if I remember right, that Mervyn had got a niece stopping withhim. What's she like?"

  "Lovely."

  The other whistled.

  "Fact. I don't often wax superlative, Coates, but nothing short ofsuperlative will define her appearance."

  "Oh-h!" said Coates, significantly. But Helston took absolutely nonotice.

  "And the strange part is that she doesn't even know it," he went on,"which constitutes not the least part of the charm."

  "Doesn't she? That's rather a tall story to swallow, Helston."

  "I agree. But it happens to be true."

  "What's her name?"

  "Seward. She's his sister's child. But she might just as well be hisown as far as their relationship goes. In fact there are precious fewto whom their own children are as much."

  "Yes, I remember. Mervyn used to talk of that affair. He alwaysobjected to his brother-in-law, said he was a cross between a waster anda jackass, but mostly jackass. He objected too, on the ground of nearrelationship, for I believe they were first or second cousins."

  "Well I can tell you, Miss Seward forms a very complete exception to thegenerally received opinion on that subject. She's all there, and nomistake."

  His kinsman was relighting his cheroot, which was burning badly, and inthe flare of the vesta Helston could see the significant grin which waswreathing his lined, bronzed features; understood its burden too. Buthe said nothing--except:

  "What sort of man was Mervyn when he was over here, Coates?"

  "Sort? Oh he was a man of--bouts, for want of a definition. He had hisequable bouts, and his gloomy bouts, his peppery bouts and his gustybouts, and sometimes downright nasty and cynical bouts. They didn'toverlap either, but were as hard and fast apart by rule and line as thewatertight compartments of a ship. Still, all round, he was all right.I could stick him better than most people, and we were very `pal-ly' heand I. He was a fine sportsman too."

  "Didn't he ever marry?"

  "Now you ask, he did make--that mistake. But it didn't last long--notmore than a year or two. Bad egg you know. Did a bunk--I forgetwhether it was a Police wallah or a civilian. They didn't get farthough, for they were both lost in the _Tara_, when she foundered withnearly all on board going home, you'll remember. Mervyn was ratherrelieved, as it saved him the bother and expense and scandal of takingproceedings. But he didn't repeat the mistake. Well, now--that'sMervyn."

  "Yes. That's Mervyn," repeated Helston. "It seems to form a wholeepitome of him."

  His mind reverted to Heath Hover, and his mind's eye seemed to form apicture--of the lonely, self-contained man--dry, gruff in manner andbiting in conversation--that of course before the arrival of Melian, forhe was judge enough to deduce that Mervyn had sloughed a great deal ofthose characteristics since that sunny presence had been there toirradiate the solitary and secluded habitation, and to melt the sourhardness of an atrophied life.

  "What do you think will be the end of Mervyn?" he went on, after apause. The other started.

  "The end of--Eh--what? The end of Mervyn? Good Lord! I hadn't givenit a thought. But why? What on earth should have put that into yourhead, Helston?"

  "Perhaps it's been in my head for some time--almost from the moment Ifirst saw the man. He's remarkably outside the ordinary, and I'm alwaysgenuinely interested in such."

  "Quite sure you're not `genuinely interested' in some one else, oldchap?" said Coates, slily.

  "I'm quite sure that I am--and that very much so," came the perfectlyunperturbed reply. "But to come back to Mervyn, you haven't answered myquestion."

  "Well, how the blazes can I? I've never given it a thought I tell you."

  "Well, I have. Do you think for instance, he'll ever come out hereagain?"

  "Not if he's wise," came the decided answer.

  "I should say he was that--from what I saw of him. Still I have anidea--and a strong one--that he will come out here again."

  "Did he talk about doing so, then?"

  "Never. But, don't be surprised if ever he does."

  "I'll try not. But--look here, old Sherlock Holmes. What are yougetting at? Eh?"

  "Nothing wonderful. Only I'm interested in--Mervyn."

  The other stared--then began to put two and two together. His kinsmanhad been "superlative" on the subject of the girl--not effusively so,but quietly, and therefore all the more forcibly so, and beingsuperlative on the subject of anybody spelt a great deal as coming fromHelston Varne. Could it be that Mervyn was in opposition and he wouldgladly see Mervyn removed? Yet that hardly seemed to hang, for hegathered that the two men were on the friendliest of terms.

  "If he comes out here again," he now answered, "I'm afraid the end ofhim won't be far off. It may not be lingering, but it'll be sudden."

  "That'd be a pity. Yet--do you know. I have it somewhere down,Coates--somewhere down--that it mightn't be the worst thing for him--forMervyn--to come out here again. I can't tell you where I have it, butit's there."

  Varne Coates began to feel really interested. He had an immense respectfor the acumen of his younger relative, and for the almost superhumanjudgment and skill wherewith the latter had probed some of the mostdelicate and baffling mysteries whose enlightenment had ever startledthe world--no less than for the intrepidity and dash which had securedhis individual safety in perilous crises involved in such. Be itremembered that he knew nothing of the connexion of Mervyn with any suchmystery as the one in question, yet now for the first time he began toscent something of the kind. He also began to scent underlying romance.

  "Well I give it up, old chap," he answered with a laugh. "Give it
upclean. You've always got something mysterious up your sleeve, but Isuppose it'll all come out in God's good time--and yours. Though ifMervyn did come out I'd be jolly glad to see him, and have a cheery old_bukh_ together again--and a little _shikar. Kwai-hai_!"

  The bearer padded up in answer to the resounding call, and salaamed.

  "_Peg lao_, Bolaki Ram," said his master, and in obedience a bottle anda syphon and two tall tumblers were set out on the camp table beforethem.

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  Helston Varne, lying on his charpoy in his sleeping tent, felt very farremoved indeed from going to sleep. To begin with, his relative'sinformation with regard to Mervyn had given him abundant food forthought. It had pieced together a great deal that had been wanting, andit had also carried him back largely to Heath Hover and that which HeathHover contained. Strong-headed as strong framed, this man in the veryzenith of his prime, had found out his weak spot--and, why should henot--so he now told himself? Nothing--nobody--within the ordinary hadever touched him. Now he had found something--somebody--outside theordinary--clean outside the ordinary. He recalled vividly that lastmeeting at the head of Plane Pond, under the sprouting green leafage ofearly spring in the Plane woods. He had decided it should not be thelast, and when Helston Varne decided anything, it was strange if thatcontingency should fail to befall. He remembered vividly those trustfulblue eyes, so clear and straight, and withal appealing in their glance.And now he was effecting the substance of their appeal, for he had notcome to this wild and turbulent end of the earth, either by accident orfor