by John Masters
There was nothing else. William wrapped the rupee in a handkerchief, put it in his pocket, and led the way back to the path.
He was suddenly very tired, and overborne by silent, insistent voices muttering, ‘I am dead. Who am I? Where am I? You killed me.’ A lowering gloomy heat oppressed the shadows. He flopped down on the ground and jabbed the point of the pick-axe with aimless anger into the path.
‘A spot of blood. Sugar and silver. This!’ He jerked the handle of the pick. A clod of earth came up and crumbled where it lay. A bright yellow thread shone in the hole. The three stared down.
Ganesha said stolidly, ‘The thakur’s coat.’
Mary whispered, ‘Right in the path—under the feet of every traveller. Oh, William, these are the most evil, cruel people in the world.’
Up and down the winding path footmarks and hoof-marks overlapped in profusion. No one would think to dig here. William himself had not dug; he had stuck in the point of a pick-axe and found a saffron thread. Hussein had told him to note and remember every detail of the thakur’s dress. Otherwise it would have been only a thread in the path. He picked it out and put it in his pocket.
He said to the policemen, ‘You two stay here. Let no one pass. Hold any who come. The memsahib and I will ride to Chikhli and bring men.’
‘Achchi bat!’
William climbed into the saddle and, with Mary following, galloped south.
Late in the evening, his body aching and his head swimming, he could have sworn that this was the grove by Kahari, that time went backward. Here were the same flares and lamps, the same doubting, patient peasant faces, the same flash of pick blades in the light, the thuds as they struck the earth. Two late travellers tried to pass and were brought to him. He stared dully into their faces, made the shy woman draw back her veil. He had not seen them before. He waved his hand wearily, ‘You may go.’ This road was little used.
Ganesha supervised the digging. The trooper-policeman lay snoring in the path. The lamps shone on the sweating backs of the diggers. Of a sudden their heads came up, and their faces were not doubting now but incredulous and fearful. They dragged out: a foreshortened brown body, crying aloud with sharp exclamations of compassion and horror.
William was sitting a little way back with Mary, but not far from the digging men. The forest that had been his friend for so many years was not friendly these days.
All seven of the thakur’s party lay under the path. Ganesha came at last and asked him respectfully to come and look. The bodies lay in a row beside the lamps.
The thakur he thought he recognized; he had learned so much about the man. The beautiful coat was stained and torn; the empty saddlebags had been under the corpse and now lay beside it. In another’s bloodstained second-hand clothes he saw written, ‘Poor relation’; and the expression on that face had remained obsequious even in the frozen amazement of dying. Here were the marks of the servants of Kali—a weak round every throat, the broken joints, the great wounds in chest and stomach. In these newly-killed victims the bellies gaped open, and the entrails, bursting out, were heavy with loose dirt and slimy with mucus. Cut stakes, the points sharp and bloody, had been there in the pit with them, and a log and a club. The thakur’s necklace was there, round his neck, and the charm on it. ‘Fourth-grade stones,’ William muttered to himself. They knew.
He was turning away when a digger at the end of the trench cried out, ‘Another!’
William stammered, ‘Th-there were only seven. What—what do you mean?’
The man held up a whitened skull.
William’s knees had no strength in them. He covered his face. ‘Dig.’
The bodies coming up now had been dead a long time. None of them had any flesh on the bones. Soon, as the minutes crawled by, twelve skeletons lay beside the seven bodies. William’s mind baulked at the scope of the horrors. He did not hear Ganesha at his side. Mary shook his elbow gently, and Ganesha repeated his message.
‘That is all, sahib, we think.’
Mary jumped to her feet. ‘William, we must go to Mr. Angelsmith at Khapa at once. Don’t you realize that this is in his district? We passed the boundary near Taradehi, you told me. We can find out at Chikhli who did cross the ferry. We can catch them if they’re still together.’
He thought it over. He was glad Mary had made him think. He said, ‘There are other ferries down river—Kerpani, Barmhan. These murderers might have used one of them after they did—this.’
‘Perhaps. But let’s try Chikhli first. And—oh, William, it’s dreadful to be relieved about anything now, but don’t you see this means that the murderers are working in other districts as well as yours? That Hussein was speaking the truth?’ Her eyes were blazing.
‘I suppose so.’ He rose to his feet. He’d have to get George’s help. He’d have to cross-examine the ferryman at Chikhli more closely, follow his nose, and see where it led him. It was no good trying to explain to George about the ‘servants of Kali’ yet. George would not believe him. He’d have to treat it as plain murder until Hussein came back and explained further—if Hussein ever did come back.
He said, ‘Ganesha, leave the trooper here on guard, tell him to see that no one touches the—great God, he’s still asleep! You come on with us.’
They galloped down the path under heavy clouds, the branches whipping their faces.
Chapter Ten
The chuprassi squatting in the shade of a tree outside George’s courthouse rose uncertainly to his feet when he saw them riding up. It was about ten o’clock in the morning. At last, recognizing William for an Englishman, he ran into the building. A minute later George Angelsmith strode out through the waiting crowd of pleaders and litigants. Hurrying without seeming to hurry, he ran down the steps to seize Mary’s bridle and helped her to the ground.
‘What in heaven’s happened?’ He looked from one to the other. They had crossed the river and ridden twenty miles through the last of the night and the first of the day, and they were tired and very dirty, ‘Is—is there an uprising?’
William stretched his aching thighs. ‘No. Murder. Same people. More of them.’
They were walking up the steps through the standing, inquisitive-faced crowd. George slowed his pace and stared at William. ‘Murder? The same people? But what——’
He cut short the query, and Mary said, ‘It’s in your district this time, Mr. Angelsmith.’
Only then did William suspect that George had been going to ask what concern the murders were of his. George said, ‘Oh!’ and pushed through the door into his courtroom.
‘Court adjourned till tomorrow. Get out, everybody,’ he snapped curtly. The pleaders adjusted their steel-rimmed spectacles, bowed, gathered up their quills and ink bottles and files, and straggled out of the courtroom. They peered curiously at William and Mary as they went.
In a high-ceilinged chamber behind the courtroom George pulled up a chair for Mary and sent a chuprassi to fetch brandy and food from his bungalow nearby. His nostrils seemed a little pinched, and there was a tiny tremor and tightening at the corner of his mouth.
William hurried through his story, glossing over how he came to be following the thakur, and at the end sprang out of his chair and limped stiffly across the room. ‘George, the ferrymen at Chikhli gave us fairly good information about the people who crossed the day before yesterday. There were twenty or so in all——’
‘Any horses?’
‘No. I don’t know what the murderers did with them; sent them round by Kerpani or Barmhan with their own horsemen, I suppose, or back along the north bank toward Sagthali. But the men at Chikhli remembered four of the travellers very well, for one reason or another.’
‘But we don’t know any of the four were in the murdering gang, do we?’
‘Some of them must have been! And we have nothing else to go on, so we must follow this. Mary and I were only a day behind the thakur when he was murdered. We’ve lost another day searching and digging. That means the gang is no m
ore than forty-eight hours’ march from here. Within fifty miles, say, at the outside. That’s all in your district, isn’t it?’
‘Practically.’
‘We’ve been talking it over on the way here. Our plan is this: send gallopers out with the descriptions of the four men; have the roads scoured, at once, by the Lancers. They’re not out on manoeuvres, are they?’
‘No, they’re here.’
William saw a fire of impatience glowing behind Mary’s eyes. He said, ‘Get the whole regiment out, George, every man! Put parties on every main trail in the district, twenty or so each, galloping to the district boundaries——’
‘Farther, if necessary!’ Mary snapped.
George looked at her in amazement. He seemed to be speaking to himself. ‘Ye-e-es. There’s a chance there. But, William, it’s not a military responsibility. We’re not encouraged to call on the army in a criminal case of this sort. You know that.’
‘What does that matter?’ Mary broke out. ‘Any decent officer would send his men out when he heard the story.’
George’s eyes widened. He drummed his fingers on the side of his chair. ‘Yes. And of course we will get the credit still—I mean, the departmental credit. I suppose you’re sure the new murders actually took place in my district?’
‘Yes. At the foot of the hill below Taradehi, less than four miles from Chikhli.’
‘But they might have been killed in your district, and—well, carried into mine.’
Mary whipped out a tiny handkerchief and blew her nose with extraordinary violence.
William said, ‘Well, I suppose it’s possible, but——’
George stood up, flushing. ‘It doesn’t really matter. The point is that we have discovered the new murders within twenty-four hours of their being committed, and the old ones date back to before I—we—came here.’
He sat down at a small table and scribbled a note. ‘Chuprassi! Take this to the cavalry lines. It is for the colonel or the adjutant, in person. Run quickly.’
While they waited they ate and drank. Through the window William saw that Daffadar Ganesha had bought a bowl of rice from somewhere and was leaning against the courtyard wall, eating fast.
After half an hour a lieutenant-colonel of Bombay Lancers, followed by a lieutenant, rode up in a shower of flying mud and clots and strode into the room.
‘Damn my bloody old eyes, what’s it all about, Angelsmith?’ the colonel bellowed. ‘Oh, good morning, ma’am, beg pardon. Well, what is it? The regiment’s standing to.’
George began to explain. The colonel, a large man with yellow whites to his eyes, studied the wall map and breathed stertorously. The lieutenant fingered his curling ginger moustache, listened, and looked at Mary from the corner of his eye.
‘Good. That’s all clear,’ the colonel shouted at last. ‘Now, what if my lads recognize one of these cutthroats?’
‘They are to arrest the whole party and escort it back here for interrogation.’
‘A soldier has no powers of arrest! There’ll be lawsuits, damages, claims of assault and battery, God knows what! I know. I locked up a thieving bastard of a groom—sorry, ma’am, beg pardon—locked him up in my stables for three days, and he sued me! Ate the mare’s goddam oats too!’
George paused and looked thoughtful. ‘Of course, that’s true, Colonel. Any officer or regular soldier acting in this case might be sued for unlawful constraint. I would get a departmental wigging, perhaps worse. You are the senior civil official present, William. What do you think?’ He began writing absently on a piece of paper.
Official displeasure was to William a physical, human thing, an old man in a ribboned coat who settled on his back and weighted him down and shouted ‘Careful!’ so loudly that he could not think. As George spoke he found himself muttering, ‘Yes. Yes. I hadn’t thought of that. We’ll have to be careful.’
He met Mary’s eye. She was not angry with him. A current of force lifted him above his doubts, and swept away the old man with the purple ribbon. He heard his own voice. ‘The department can go to hell. I’ll grant temporary powers of arrest to everyone engaged, on my own authority.’
‘You might put that in writing, would you, old boy? Ultimately it is still my responsibility in this district, but it would help if you agreed that—oh, something like this: “Apprehending an immediate danger to life and property, I direct that etcetera, etcetera.” Here, old boy, I’ve written it out. You just sign it.’
William seized the quill and scrawled his name at the foot of the paper. After signing, he read it. The paper gave the necessary authority in two lines at the end, following a longer preamble which stated that Mr. Angelsmith, Collector of the Khapa District, was acting on the urgent advice of Captain Savage, Collector of the Madhya District, in a matter of which he, Mr. Angelsmith, had no direct knowledge.
‘That’s good!’ George tucked the paper away in a drawer. ‘Now, let’s start. Split up your officers among the various roads in any manner you think suitable, please Colonel.’
The two soldiers clanked out of the room. William stood up. ‘George, we think that the bulk of this party is likely to be on the road through Singhpur, Harrai, and Tamia, heading for Betul and the south-west. Either that, or they’ll have branched off at Harrai for Chhindwara and Nagpur. I’m going with the lancers allotted to the Harrai road. Who are you going with?’
George began to cut a cigar. He took a long time over it, doing the job with none of his customary fluent ease. Mary watched him closely until he answered, speaking through the blue cloud of tobacco smoke.
‘You know, I don’t think I’d better go out at all. Someone must hold the fort here, be ready to direct reserves, question prisoners brought in, and so on. And who is going to look after Mrs. Savage?’
William started. Without thinking, he had supposed that Mary would be at his side. But there might be some danger ahead, and husbands were supposed to be keen to keep their wives out of danger. He did not feel that at all. He wanted Mary to be with him, always. He said, ‘I think——’
Mary interrupted, ‘Yes, darling, I am tired. You must go though, alone.’ She looked at him with an unfathomable expression. ‘You can do it, alone. Mr. Angelsmith and I can look after each other. I can help him write his report to Daddy in Sagthali.’
George glanced quickly at her and away again. William swore at himself. He was a selfish cad to have forgotten the baby; but, looking at her, he could have thought she had too. This was nothing to do with the baby.
Trumpets screamed from the cavalry lines to the west. William jammed his shako on his head. ‘I must go. Er—good-bye, Mary.’
He ran down the courthouse steps, calling to Ganesha, and together they mounted and trotted down the narrow street. They caught up with the lancers in a walled lane on the southern outskirts of town. Forty troopers rode jingling southward, led by a young cornet. A somewhat mystified eagerness animated the soldiers’ faces. The cornet was too young to hide his excitement, as a proper officer of cavalry should. He saluted. ‘Mr.—Captain Savage? I have a fresh horse for you.’
‘And one for my daffadar here, Mr.——?’
‘Harrison, sir. Yes.’
‘Good. South, Mr. Harrison, please. We will split our forces at Harrai.’
At Harrai in the burning afternoon they divided up. Mr. Harrison took Ganesha and twenty lancers and rode on south toward Chhindwara. The other half accompanied William south-westward on the rocky trail toward Tamia. In direct command of William’s group was a middle-aged Lance-Daffadar Rikirao, a slight man with high cheekbones and a tight mouth. At midnight William rested his group for four hours. Then he pressed on, and in the dawn reached the top of the escarpment at Tamia. This was the southern boundary of the Khapa District. One step more, and the protests would come flying in from Sir Richard Jenkins, Resident at Nagpur, on behalf of the outraged Bhonsla sovereignty.
William rode past the boundary cairn, and the lancers followed—only ten of them now: two horses had
foundered; the rest of the men William had dispatched in pairs along important trails branching off to right and left. He had seen or heard nothing of the band of murderers, or of any member of it. He wondered if the others had had better luck.
With the dawn a hill storm broke and drove rain in their faces. The dust on them turned to mud. Mud flying from the horses’ hoofs spattered the blue uniforms and obliterated the gold facings. By ten in the morning they were not to be recognized as soldiers of the Company, or as any kind of soldier.
At a corner below Tamia, where the road fell away in winding curves and the angle gave a long view, William saw movement far ahead. With his hand he sheltered his eyes against the rain. It was a big party, moving well closed up together. His stiffness vanished, he shouted, ‘Gallop!’ and swept down the road at the head of the wetly flapping lance pennons.
Ten minutes later he rode out on to a plateau and saw the big party close to. A man at the back of it turned as he watched, and stared, and ran forward shouting. The travellers became agitated, like ants in a disturbed nest, and scurried back and forth. A black puff of smoke rose and the sound of the report followed. Three hundred yards—no ball could cover that distance. William stretched his fingers on the reins and smiled in relief. This must be his quarry. Why should anyone else attack Company’s cavalry?
The travellers, now in a loose circle, each man facing outwards, edged back from the road toward the broken ground of a water-course and thick scrub jungle on the right. William surveyed the discipline of the movement and was confirmed in his hopes. The lancers, in a formation no better than a mob, unslung their lances, burst forward without orders, and rode across the ploughed field at the travellers. More smoke puffed out, balls sang in the air. A lancer slid quietly over his horse’s tail to lie face down in the mud. Tiger grass and thorn bushes and the twisted gullies of the water-course swallowed the travellers. The lancers eddied about and yelled to one another and waved their useless lances. Rikirao hit one of them in the face, shouted a single bitten-off order, and herded them back to safety under a desultory fire.
