“I could have told you that,” Forrester replied. “Have you any other information?”
“Not right now; but there’s not much doubt Milsted was murdered. What sticks in my craw, though, is who did it, and why, and why the devil didn’t anyone hear a second shot? D’ye reckon both parties could have fired at once, so the two reports sounded like one?”
“Um; that’s possible,” Forrester agreed, “but you’ll remember that five of the six witnesses to the tragedy fail to recall seeing anything resembling a man at the window when Milsted died, and they’d not have been apt to miss seeing a pistol flash. No, I don’t think—here, wait a minute! How long can you postpone the inquest?”
“Well, there’s no limit prescribed by law, but the jury has to be sworn super visum corporis—on viewing the body, you know—and we can’t keep poor old Milsted above ground indefinitely, waiting to swear in the jury. Tell you what I’ll do, if you say. I’ll impanel a jury, swear ’em in over the body, and then continue the inquest subject to call. I can get away with that, all right. What were you going to suggest?”
“Take that bullet you found in the brain down to Roach’s sporting goods store and have one of their arms experts look at it. I noticed an English air-pistol on display in their window the other day, and it strikes me an air-gun might be the explanation to the whole affair. If the murder had been committed with one of those weapons we’d have about the same amount of mystery we have here, for the thing would probably shoot with practically no sound and would make no flash. These guns are comparatively new in this country, but I daresay they’re fairly well known in the British possessions.”
“You think the murderer was an Englishman, then?”
“Not exactly that, but I’ve got what you’d probably call a ‘hunch,’ Nesbit.”
“Good enough. We’ll play it through. I’ll see what Roach’s man has to say and report later. We can hold the inquest up a week or so if necessary, while we gumshoe around for more dope.”
“I don’t think we’ll need wait that long,” the Professor told him, as he hung up the phone and resumed marking a pile of examination papers.
*****
“Missie like buy ve’y pretty fancy work?” a round-faced young man with somnolent eyes, clad in a threadbare overcoat and rather decrepit fez, demanded the following afternoon, when Rosalie answered the ringing of the front doorbell.
“No, I—” the Professor’s pretty ward began, then checked her refusal, half spoken, as her large, topaz eyes suddenly narrowed the tiniest fraction of an inch. “Come in,” she invited. “I won’t promise to buy anything; but I’ll look.”
“Missie like my t’ings ve’y much,” the peddler announced confidently, as he followed her down the hall and into the living room. “See—” he opened an imitation alligator-hide suitcase and displayed the usual stock in trade of the itinerant Armenian huckster—“ve’y pretty, ve’y cheap, Missie. I t’ink you like buy some, mebbe so.”
Attracted by the voices, Professor Forrester put down his book and strolled into the living room, leaving the study door open behind him.
“Shopping again?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
Rosalie had spent almost a year in occidental freedom since the Professor rescued her from the entourage of a certain villainous half-caste from Singapore, and the avidity with which she conformed to the Western custom of permitting women to buy their own finery had caused the Professor more than a little amusement.
“Yes, Uncle Harvey,” she returned, throwing him a radiant smile. “This gentleman says he’s from Armenia, and he has some of the loveliest things.”
Forrester looked with astonishment from the girl to the mass of miscellaneous horrors spread on the floor. Even a layman could see these alleged Madeira and Normandy scarves and Egyptian table covers were of the home-brewed variety, the sort which are stamped out, thousands at a time, by machinery in New Jersey, and foisted on a credulous public by smooth-spoken knaves from the Levant.
The Professor, who knew the home industries of every people in the world as well as he understood their dialects, could recognize the counterfeits with one eye closed, and Rosalie, who had spent ten years of her life in the heart of the East should certainly have been the last one to be deceived by such crude forgeries. Yet there she stood, apparently enraptured, and begged the vendor to display more of his atrocities.
“This ve’y ni-ce piece work,” that worthy commended, throwing a cotton cloth thickly encrusted with machine embroidery over his right arm so that it swathed him from shoulder to wrist. “This made ’specially for ladies who like ni-ce t’ings.”
His stock patter swept rapidly on, detailing the manifold perfections of the luncheon cloth, but his sleepy eyes traveled round the room, glanced through the open door of the study, and rested on a tiny brass paper weight which stood on the Professor’s desk. The knick-knack was an inexpensive piece of Japanese work, executed in polished brass, and represented a diminutive monkey in the act of holding his paws before his mouth—one of the familiar “speak no evil” symbols to be found in every curio store. Just then it glittered in a ray of the afternoon sun as though it were burnished gold instead of hammered brass. The young man’s eyes shone with a sudden fierce light of jubilation as they encountered the toy, and he moved a step nearer the study door.
“Ye-es, this ve’y ni-ce cover for ni-ce lady’s table—” he drawled, fumbling in the side pocket of his overcoat beneath the cotton cloth which still draped his arm.
“Darwaza bundo!” Rosalie exclaimed shrilly.
The peddler started as though stung by a yellow-jacket, his right arm writhing under the covering of the sheet of embroidery like a snake beneath a blanket.
With a furious movement he whipped the cloth from his shoulder, wrenched something from his pocket and wheeled, backing toward the study with long, cautious steps.
“Look out, Uncle Harvey!” Rosalie’s warning came sharply. Next instant she launched herself across the room like a fury, rushing between the Armenian and the astonished Professor.
“Dog, son of filth, unworthy offspring of a he-goat and a bad smell!” she spat at the hawker in a torrent of Hindustani, her amber eyes glowing balefully, her lovely mouth distended like that of an angry cat.
There was a flash of steel in the afternoon sunlight, something like a flickering flame leaped to life in the girl’s right hand and swept forward and down like a cracking whiplash. The peddler screamed with amazement and pain and dropped the object he had half drawn from his pocket.
Rosalie’s slim, silk-and-satin-shod foot shot out, kicking the thing out of reach as she menaced the wounded huckster with a ten-inch, wavy-bladed Malay kris.
“Tie him up, Uncle Harvey,” she bade, thrusting her knife forward to within an inch of the Armenian’s belt buckle, then, to the peddler, “Stand still, grandson of a toad, or by the Three Holy Ones, I shall slit your unclean throat and pour forth your vile blood as an offering to Kali!” The peddler followed her advice to the letter, though his frightened glance turned this way and that, any direction but toward the girl’s fierce eyes and the glittering, razor-sharp blade of her dagger.
Seizing a length of lace from the open suitcase, Forrester hastily twisted it into a rope and trussed the huckster’s elbows behind him—a far more effective manner of binding than strapping the wrists together—then tore a length from one of the cotton embroideries and bandaged the fellow’s wounded wrist.
“Sit down,” he ordered curtly, motioning the captive to a chair; then to Rosalie: “I hope you know what you’re about, young woman. If you’ve run amuck, we’re in for a tidy little lawsuit, if not for a criminal prosecution.”
“Hou!” Rosalie laughed, lapsing into oriental vernacular, which she still did under the stress of excitement. “Behold, my lord, what your slave has discovered.” With a quick fillip, she removed the fez from the peddler’s head, displaying a small device in red painted on his forehead near the ha
irline.
It was a small crescent which nearly enclosed a tiny disc within its horns, and Forrester started at the sight. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “Why, it’s the caste mark of a follower of Siva!”
“Yes, my lord, it is nothing less,” the girl replied with a triumphant smile. “When this base-born descendant of a hyena and a mangy female monkey appeared at my master’s house, wishing to show me his detestable wares, I was about to send him on his way, but the day is warm for winter and he put up his hand to wipe his brow, so that I did behold the caste mark for an instant as he put back his cap. Many an Armenian have I seen—we had hundreds of them in Singapore—but never have I beheld one who wore the sign of Siva.
“Then I did remember, master of my life, how the villainous Chandra Roi (may the vultures devour his eyeballs!) sometimes hired these Siva fellows to do his filthy work when even the Chinamen would not, and I knew this one came to my master’s house for no good.
“Two nights ago when Milsted Sahib spoke of the loss of his image of Hanuman, the others knew not what he referred to, but you and I, my lord, knew that Hanuman is the Monkey God of the people of Hind, and though in this land the monkey dances to the music of hand organs, in India he is a very sacred beast.
“I knew, too, that Milsted Sahib was killed by someone, for did I not behold him shooting at a thing which perched in his window-place, as though Hanuman himself had come to claim his image? And was he not himself shot down? Men do not die from bullets from their own guns when those guns are pointed away from them.
“Also I knew that you went outside the house after the murder, and, though the others saw nothing when you returned, Mumtaz Banjjan dwells in the shadow of her lord’s bounty, and his every mood is as plain to her as print upon a book’s page. She could see he was excited, and also pleased by something he had found, and there was no further mention of the stolen god. Therefore Mumtaz Banjjan placed herself near the door while her master and the Doctor Sahib talked in the library, and overheard much which passed between them. She knew he had found the god and given it to the young Nesbit, and she heard of the marks of some other person’s search for that same idol in the snow. All these things Mumtaz treasured in her memory, and when she beheld the mark of Siva upon this accursed one’s brow she bethought her that he must have seen her master pick up the god and take it into the house with him. Therefore, she thought, this one had come here to steal the god back, perhaps to murder her master as he also murdered Milsted Sahib. So she did invite him into the house with fair words that she might watch him, and she saw his unholy eyes light upon the little monkey of brass in the room where my lord reads from great books and writes on paper, which he, being but a pig and an ignorant fellow, doubtless mistook for the very god he stole from Milsted Sahib. And when she saw him reach into his pocket beneath the cloth he held upon his arm she knew he sought some weapon.
“So Mumtaz cried out ‘Darwaza bundo’ which, as my lord knows, means only ‘shut the door,’ in Hindustani; but it was enough. The lowborn one recognized the words, and betrayed himself, and Mumtaz cut his wicked hand before he could do injury to the master who holds both her body and her soul as lightly in his hand as a child holds a rattle.”
“Um; so I see,” Forrester commented, “and a very neat piece of work you did, too, my dear. But you might have been shot.”
“Forrester Sahib is Mumtaz Banjjan’s master, and Mumtaz Banjjan is his slave,” the girl replied, lowering her head humbly. “He is the light of her eyes and the breath of her nostrils and the blood of her heart. What does it matter if the slave dies, so the master lives?”
“Never mind the compliments,” Professor Forrester waved his hand wearily. He had long since given up trying to convince Rosalie that she must not call herself his slave. “Just at present I require information. How is it you had that kris so handy?”
Rosalie’s—or Mumtaz Banjjan’s—face lit with a smile. “I belong to my lord, the mighty Forrester Sahib,” she announced primly, “if he chooses not to salute my lips I shall go to my grave unkissed; but there are certain young men who think not so. In Singapore I learned that the kris is a sharp tongue which argues well; therefore, when the young men urge me to do what they call ‘pet,’ if I cannot rebuff them with my laughter or my hands, I wear that which will convince them. The American clothes are clumsy for such a purpose—I cannot wear the knife at my belt—therefore I conceal it in the back of my dress, between my shoulders.”
“You little savage!” Professor Forrester chuckled, as he stooped to recover the pistol she had kicked into the corner of the room. Whimsically, he remembered that certain desperadoes of the early Wild West were wont to conceal their Bowie knives in the collars of their coats, and wondered what effect Rosalie’s sudden production of a murderous Malay short sword would have at some afternoon tea.
He held the captured pistol to the light and examined it closely. It was a heavy, blue steel weapon with a thick barrel upon which a smaller calibered tube was set. By breaking the stock, after the manner of a revolver, a plunger was withdrawn from the larger barrel, and when the stock was jammed back in place the plunger was thrust into the tube again, compressing sufficient air in the chamber to drive a light bullet with a velocity equal to that of a black-powder pistol. Across the stock was engraved the word Lübeck.
“H’m,” the Professor commented, trying the weapon’s mechanism, “German make, eh? I might have known they’d have a model on the market as soon as the British perfected one. Well, I think we’ve about all the evidence necessary for Nesbit’s inquest.
“Rosalie,” he turned to the girl, “just stand watch over our prisoner while I telephone the police, will you?”
As he retired to the study to notify the authorities he heard the extraordinary young woman informing her captive that a single false move on his part would result in instant and complete disembowelment.
“Now,” the Professor bent a stern gaze on the peddler, “why did you come here?”
The pseudo-Armenian shrugged his shoulders, or came as near doing it as was possible while his elbows were bound behind him, and tightly lashed to the rungs of a chair-back.
“I am a follower of Hanuman,” he replied in perfect English. “The grandfather of the man I put to death stole the image of our god from its temple in India almost a hundred years ago and kept it in his house for sacrilegious fools to gape at. Copies of the god’s image may be bought in the bazaars throughout India, and this we cannot prevent, but to have our sacred relics ravished from our temples—suppose we should come to your land and take from off your altars the images of your plaster saints, or the little pieces of bread which you worship, how would you feel about it? Other Englay have stolen other statues of the god from us, and we have hunted them down, one at a time, taken back our own and—their lives. The Milsted whom I killed—thieving son of a thieving grandsire that he was!—was the last. Others of our company had accounted for the rest; Milsted was mine.”
“Um?” Forrester nodded thoughtfully. “How did you get into the house?”
The Hindu smiled sardonically. “That was not hard to one of my calling,” he answered. “There was a great company of fools assembled at the place, and I bribed one of the servants to tell me the location of the room where Hanuman was kept. While all were at dinner I climbed through the library window and entered the museum. The god was not in any of the glass cases, but I found him in the safe, for it was an old-fashioned one and the lock was easy to pick. When I heard anyone near I hid in a steel case which happened to be empty. When I had taken the statue from the safe, but before I could get away, Milsted came to the museum and discovered his loss. I would have shot him then, but there was someone in the next room, and I feared he would raise the alarm. When Milsted found the god was gone he ran out and called more people, and I thought they were coming to take me, but before any could enter the room where I hid the lights went out and I ran through the dark to the window which I had left unlocked,
and was preparing to jump to the ground when Milsted saw me and tried to kill me.
“I shot him with the gun which makes no sound and dropped to the ground, but slipped on the snow and lost the image. There was no time to stay and search for it, for the house was roused, so I ran to the barn and hid, watching the spot where I had dropped Hanuman. After a time I saw someone looking about the ground beneath the window, and saw him pick something up and put it in his pocket. By the light from the window I recognized you, Forrester Sahib, and followed you here to take back that which was mine, and kill you, too, if I could, for you have profaned Hanuman by your touch.”
“Why, you didn’t think I’d keep the thing, did you?” the Professor asked in amazement.
The Indian shrugged again. “You are an Englay,” he answered. “Whether the Englay steal from each other I do not know, but that they steal from us I know very well. Also I have heard that you are one of those who despoil even the tombs of the dead in the name of science. How should I know whether you would keep that which you found when you thought no one watched?”
“Uncle Harvey,” Rosalie interrupted, “this man is a liar. He says he is a follower of Hanuman, but we have seen the sign of Siva on him, and know him for a Dakait—one whose trade and religion is murder and robbery. His talk of recovering the god for his temple is a lie. He would sell it, if he could get it; maybe to the priests of the temple from which it was stolen, but certainly he would sell it.”
She turned to the pinioned Indian and hurled a torrent of fluent, though none too polite, Hindustani at him. “Dishonorable son of a shameless mother,” she exclaimed, “confess that you came not to return Hanuman to his home, but to steal him for yourself. I know your kind. You are a brother to the weasel and blood-brother to the snake. In the night you creep into the houses of honest men and they die and you possess their goods. Say, is it not for the honor of Kali, goddess of thieves, that you have done this thing?”
Adventure Tales, Volume 4 Page 3
