to you?" sheurged. "There now, you have been trying to keep me up; now I must tryand keep you up. Surely they won't harm you--us--if they expect to bepaid for letting us go?"
"Yes. That's right, little one. They won't harm--us," he answered."Still, it's best to be on the safe side. Once you get to the Nawabyou're safe. He's a straight and square man, but unfortunately, thesesub-tribal chiefs are virtually almost independent of the head, or it'scertain we should not be here."
"I'll remember," she answered. "But,"--as though a sudden andilluminating idea had struck her. "Why don't _you_ appeal to him--now,before we go any further. Why leave it to what--isn't going to happen--and me?"
Here was a question which it was impossible for him to answer, though toall appearances, nothing could have been more pertinent. He could nottell her that in his case the head sirdar of the Gularzai would be everywhit as merciless as would Allah-din Khan and his followers. But hercase was different. And that ghastly plan which he had overheard hadresolved him to an even more hazardous course on her behalf--hazardousbecause one of sheer sink or swim.
"`Why?'" he repeated. "`Why?' Always a woman's query--Why?" And helooked at her with a very loving but very sad smile. "I can only tellyou this, child, that you must leave that part of it to me, and doexactly as I tell you I _know_--and you don't. That must be sufficient.This is the dim, mysterious East, remember, and I've spent the bestyears of my life in it."
The sun was drooping now to the craggy, serrated ridge beyond thevalley, flaming in red gold upon the cliffs beneath which they wereriding. The figures of the wild, turbaned horsemen were picked out inthe clear glow--the strange, fierce East indeed. Melian thought it wasa picture that would remain stamped in her memory until her dying day.There were signs too, that the said figures showed an inclination toabandon their straggling order and to close up. Mervyn saw this--and atthe same time came the thought that this was the last sun whose settinghe would ever see.
"Quick, now, Melian," he said. "Take this, but carefully. Watch yourchance. No one must see. When you have it, hide it upon you. Don'teven look at it again. If you do, it must be at the very lastextremity. You are more than ordinarily quick witted, and will be ableto follow. If anything happens to me--no, don't interrupt--and after areasonable time has gone, say a month, and you are not restored, andespecially if Allah-din Khan should attempt to pass you on tostrangers--then produce it. Do you follow?"
"Yes--but--what--where--is _it_?" said the girl, her wide open, seriouseyes upon his face.
"Take my pouch and pipe, and fill it, as they have often seen you do,"and he handed it to her. Wondering, she obeyed. Then as he reachedforth his hand to take it, he slipped something into hers. One look atthis, and she almost let it fall, but refrained, just in time.
For what she held in her hand was a tiny facsimile of the strange,star-shaped disc, which she had picked up on the sluice path at HeathHover that lovely cloudless June morning, and the sight of which, in hergrasp, had struck her uncle with such a terror of trepidation.
And he knew that she was possessed of that which upon production wouldentail upon her two alternatives--restoration, to liberty or death--thelatter, swift, painless, unconscious. But the other ghastly fate, towhich he had overheard allusion made, could now never be hers.
"Only in the very last extremity," he reminded her, in an earnestundertone, for the band was now closing up around them. And she benther head in grave, silent comprehension, and assent.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.
THE VAULT OF DOOM.
The red fires shot up against shining rock reflection, throwing outexaggerations or silhouettes of the shaggy figures moving about. Wild,fantastic, as the surrounding crags were, thus thrown out into fitfullight, yet the place was an ideal one for a snug and sheltered camp,where the keen mountain air struck chill at night, for it was shelteredon three sides by rock and cliff, while the fourth gave out on a steepdrop into the valley beneath. To one, at any rate, the topographicalsituation did not fail in significance. Not by sheer accident, not formere purposes of shelter had the situation been chosen.
In hanging clusters the stars shone brightly in the clear sky, but therewas no moon. The two Europeans, seated in their own camp a littleapart, had finished their evening meal--Mervyn incidentally, had beenallowed to go out, under escort, and shoot a few _chikor_ [the largered-legged hill partridge], early that morning, so they had fared betterthan heretofore. Now he had lighted a pipe, and was striving to conjureup all the stoicism of the dim mysterious East to his aid, the whilekeeping up the conversation with Melian, and doing so in such wise as toconvey no apprehension to her mind. And the keeping up of ordinaryconversation within an hour or so of one's own death is not an easyundertaking; but then, John Seward Mervyn was not quite an ordinary man.
A few months ago, he would not greatly have concerned himself over thissituation. But within that time, life had changed and brightened forhim. It was more valuable up to date than it had been then. He turnedthe talk on to Heath Hover and their time together there, and for alittle, the girl forgot their precarious and now depressing situationand surroundings, and was responsive, brightening up with this and thathomely touch.
"Why, the heather must be flaming out in perfectly gorgeous crimson upabove the Plane woods," she said, "and we are not getting the benefit ofit this time. And that bit, down below Chiltingford, where we tookViolet the day before she left--that must be too ripping for anything.And the jolly old battered mill, standing out on the open--I wish wewere there again, don't you, dear? Say you do."
The eager, retrospective tone had lapsed into seriousness. There was nodifficulty in replying as she wanted, and that with perfect truth andcandour. Mervyn, looking back on those fair scenes, spent with thischild; marking and treasuring all her golden joyousness and appreciationof every sound and sight around her; thought that for a repetition ofjust that time alone he would have faced the fate in front of him ahundred times over. It was little enough of such sweet wholesomehappiness he had known in the course of a hard, rugged, bizarre life,and that time about comprised it all.
Two wolves howled at responsive intervals away down in the valleybeneath, and the red glow of the camp fires played upon the bronzed,hook-nosed faces, and fierce eyes, of the wild marauders of the desert,squatted around, smoking their hookahs, and conversing in a deeprumbling undertone. The owls would be softly hooting in the woods whichdipped their edges into Plane Pond at this moment, and the bell-likeplash of rising fish ring out on its starlit surface. Contrast indeed!Here in this savage wilderness death was to be his at any hour, at anymoment. And now and thus, for the first time in his life, death seemedhard to face.
"You have--what I gave you--safe, child?" he broke in, as though movedby a sudden impulse. "Recollect, it is only to be produced in the verylast extremity, if the appeal to Shere Dil Khan should fail."
"Don't," she answered, startled by the solemnly spoken irrelevance ofthe remark, and thrusting a hand into his. "You must really shake offthese dismal forebodings, dear--and yet, how can I undertake to lectureyou--_you_--on things that this weird country may hold out?"
And then, as if to give point to her words, a tall figure seemed to growout of the earth beside them. A murmured sentence or two, and as inresponse to it he rose.
"Sit still, darling, and wait for me," he said. "I have to go and talkwith some of them, and it will be wearisome--especially as it interruptsour talk about good old times." He rested one hand lovingly upon thegold-crowned head, and then passed out with the man who had come tosummon him. He would not even take a real, long farewell of her, ifonly that it might prove the reverse of advantageous to her, for he muststill keep up the pretence of ignorance, and yet it was the last time heshould behold her in this world, and he had but a shadowy belief in anyother. For John Seward Mervyn knew as well as did the man he wasaccompanying that he was going to his doom.
--------------------------------------------------------
----------------
It was a strange place, that in which he found himself but two or threeminutes later--a cavernous hall, yet walled around by solid rock, and ofsome vastness. And yet, it seemed somehow as though it were notentirely the work of Nature, even here, where Nature ran riot in theproduction of wild freaks of her own masonry. It bore a look as thoughages and ages of gradual working had wrought it to such a pitch ofsymmetry. In the centre a fire burned, the smoke escaping upwardssomehow and somewhere, for the atmosphere of the place was quite clearof it.
Seated about this were some half dozen figures. Only one did Mervynrecognise as that of Allah-din Khan. The others all looked strangers tohim. Stay. Only one? No, there was another; for in the one seated onthe right
The Heath Hover Mystery Page 39
