I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over to the Club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality, was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much care for his house and its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end, and then smiled very wearily, but without contempt, for he is a man who understands things. ‘Stay on,’ he said, ‘and see what this thing means. All you have talked about I have known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait. Tietjens has left me. Are you going too?’
I had seen him through one little affair, connected with a heathen idol, that had brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had no desire to help him through further experiences. He was a man to whom unpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.
Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely, and would be happy to see him in the daytime; but that I did not care to sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone out to lie in the verandah.
‘ ’Pon my soul, I don’t wonder,’ said Strickland, with his eyes on the ceiling-cloth. ‘Look at that!’
The tails of two brown snakes were hanging between the cloth and the cornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in the lamplight.
‘If you are afraid of snakes of course – ‘ said Strickland.
I hate and fear snakes, because if you look into the eyes of any snake you will see that it knows all and more of the mystery of man’s fall, and that it feels all the contempt that the Devil felt when Adam was evicted from Eden. Besides which its bite is generally fatal, and it twists up trouser legs.
‘You ought to get your thatch overhauled,’ I said.
‘Give me a mahseer-rod, and we’ll poke ‘em down.’
‘They’ll hide among the roof-beams,’ said Strickland. ‘I can’t stand snakes overhead. I’m going up into the roof. If I shake ‘em down, stand by with a cleaning-rod and break their backs.’
I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, but I took the cleaning-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland brought a gardener’s ladder from the verandah, and set it against the side of the room.
The snake-tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear the dry rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy ceiling-cloth. Strickland took a lamp with him, while I tried to make clear to him the danger of hunting roof-snakes between a ceiling-cloth and a thatch, apart from the deterioration of property caused by ripping out ceiling-cloths.
‘Nonsense!’ said Strickland. ‘They’re sure to hide near the walls by the cloth. The bricks are too cold for ‘em, and the heat of the room is just what they like.’ He put his hand to the corner of the stuff and ripped it from the cornice. It gave with a great sound of tearing, and Strickland put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle of the roof-beams. I set my teeth and lifted the rod, for I had not the least knowledge of what might descend.
‘H’m!’ said Strickland, and his voice rolled and rumbled in the roof. ‘There’s room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove, someone is occupying ’em!’
‘Snakes?’ I said from below.
‘No. It’s a buffalo. Hand me up the two last joints of a mahseer-rod, and I’ll prod it. It’s lying on the main roof-beam.’
I handed up the rod.
‘What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here,’ said Strickland, climbing farther into the roof. I could see his elbow thrusting with the rod. ‘Come out of that, whoever you are! Heads below there! It’s falling.’
I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a shape that was pressing it downwards and downwards towards the lighted lamp on the table. I snatched the lamp out of danger and stood back. Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot down upon the table something that I dared not look at, till Strickland had slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.
He did not say much, being a man of few words; but he picked up the loose end of the tablecloth and threw it over the remnants on the table.
‘It strikes me,’ said he, putting down the lamp, ‘our friend Imray has come back. Oh! you would, would you?’
There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out, to be back-broken by the butt of the mahseer-rod. I was sufficiently sick to make no remarks worth recording.
Strickland meditated, and helped himself to drinks. The arrangement under the cloth made no more signs of life.
‘Is it Imray?’ I said.
Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment, and looked.
‘It is Imray,’ he said; ‘and his throat is cut from ear to ear.’
Then we spoke, both together and to ourselves: ‘That’s why he whispered about the house.’
Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her great nose heaved open the dining-room door.
She sniffed and was still. The tattered ceiling-cloth hung down almost to the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away from the discovery.
Tietjens came in and sat down; her teeth bared under her lip and her forepaws planted. She looked at Strickland.
‘It’s a bad business, old lady,’ said he. ‘Men don’t climb up into the roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don’t fasten up the ceiling cloth behind ’em. Let’s think it out.’
‘Let’s think it out somewhere else,’ I said.
‘Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We’ll get into my room.’
I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland’s room first, and allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me, and we lit tobacco and thought. Strickland thought. I smoked furiously, because I was afraid.
‘Imray is back,’ said Strickland. ‘The question is – who killed Imray? Don’t talk, I’ve a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I took over most of Imray’s servants. Imray was guileless and inoffensive, wasn’t he?’
I agreed; though the heap under the cloth had looked neither one thing nor the other.
‘If I call in all the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie like Aryans. What do you suggest?’
‘Call ‘em in one by one,’ I said.
‘They’ll run away and give the news to all their fellows,’ said Strickland. ‘We must segregate ‘em. Do you suppose your servant knows anything about it?’
‘He may, for aught I know; but I don’t think it’s likely. He has only been here two or three days,’ I answered. ‘What’s your notion?’
‘I can’t quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of the ceiling-cloth?’
There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland’s bedroom door. This showed that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked from sleep and wished to put Strickland to bed.
‘Come in,’ said Strickland. ‘It’s a very warm night, isn’t it?’
Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mahomedan, said that it was a very warm night; but that there was more rain pending, which, by his Honour’s favour, would bring relief to the country.
‘It will be so, if God pleases,’ said Strickland, tugging off his boots. ‘It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly for many days – ever since that time when thou first earnest into my service. What time was that?’
‘Has the Heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretly to Europe without warning given; and I – even I – came into the honoured service of the protector of the poor.’
‘And Imray Sahib went to Europe?’
‘It is so said among those who were his servants.’
‘And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?’
‘Assuredly, Sahib. He was a good master, and cherished his dependants.’
‘That is true. I am very tired, but I go buck-shooting tomorrow. Give me the little sharp rifle that I use for black-buck; it is in the case yonder.’
The man stooped over the case; handed barrels, stock, and fore-end to St
rickland, who fitted all together, yawning dolefully. Then he reached down to the gun-case, took a solid-drawn cartridge, and slipped it into the breech of the 360 Express.
‘And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly! That is very strange, Bahadur Khan, is it not?’
‘What do I know of the ways of the white man. Heaven-born?’
‘Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more anon. It has reached me that Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that even now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.’
‘Sahib!’
The lamplight slid along the barrels of the rifle as they levelled themselves at Bahadur Khan’s broad breast.
‘Go and look!’ said Strickland. ‘Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he waits thee. Go!’
The man picked up a lamp, and went into the dining-room, Strickland following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth; at the writhing snake under foot; and last, a grey glaze settling on his face, at the thing under the tablecloth.
‘Hast thou seen?’ said Strickland after a pause.
‘I have seen. I am clay in the white man’s hands. What does the Presence do?’
‘Hang thee within the month. What else?’
‘For killing him? Nay, Sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants, he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever – my child!’
‘What said Imray Sahib?’
‘He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he had come back from office, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up into the roof-beams and made all fast behind him. The Heaven-born knows all things. I am the servant of the Heaven-born.’
Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular, ‘Thou art witness to this saying? He has killed.’
Bahadur Khan stood ashen grey in the light of the one lamp. The need for justification came upon him very swiftly. ‘I am trapped,’ he said, ‘but the offence was that man’s. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,’ he glared at Tietjens, couched stolidly before him, ‘only such could know what I did.’
‘It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!’
A drowsy policeman answered Strickland’s call. He was followed by another, and Tietjens sat wondrous still.
‘Take him to the police-station,’ said Strickland. ‘There is a case toward.’
‘Do I hang, then?’ said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape, and keeping his eyes on the ground.
‘If the sun shines or the water runs – yes!’ said Strickland.
Bahadur Khan stepped back one long pace, quivered, and stood still. The two policemen waited further orders.
‘Go!’ said Strickland.
‘Nay; but I go very swiftly,’ said Bahadur Khan. ‘Look! I am even now a dead man.’
He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.
‘I come of land-holding stock,’ said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he stood. ‘It were a disgrace to me to go to the public scaffold: therefore I take this way. Be it remembered that the Sahib’s shirts are correctly enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his washbasin. My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to slay me with the rope? My honour is saved, and – and – I die.’
At the end of an hour he died, as they die who are bitten by the little brown karait, and the policemen bore him and the thing under the tablecloth to their appointed places. All were needed to make clear the disappearance of Imray.
‘This,’ said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, ‘is called the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?’
‘I heard,’ I answered. ‘Imray made a mistake.’
‘Simply and solely through not knowing the nature of the Oriental, and the coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan had been with him for four years.’
I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of time. When I went over to my own room I found my man waiting, impassive as the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.
‘What has befallen Bahadur Khan?’ said I.
‘He was bitten by a snake and died. The rest the Sahib knows,’ was the answer.
‘And how much of this matter hast thou known?’
‘As much as might be gathered from One coming in in the twilight to seek satisfaction. Gently, Sahib. Let me pull off those boots.’
I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland shouting from his side of the house – ‘Tietjens has come back to her place!’
And so she had. The great deerhound was couched statelily on her own bedstead on her own blanket, while, in the next room, the idle, empty, ceiling-cloth waggled as it trailed on the table.
The Phantom Rickshaw
May no ill dreams disturb my rest,
Nor Powers of Darkness me molest.
Evening Hymn
One of the few advantages that India has over England is a great Knowability. After five years’ service a man is directly or indirectly acquainted with the two or three hundred Civilians in his Province, all the Messes of ten or twelve Regiments and Batteries, and some fifteen hundred other people of the non-official caste. In ten years his knowledge should be doubled, and at the end of twenty he knows, or knows something about, every Englishman in the Empire, and may travel anywhere and everywhere without paying hotel-bills.
Globe-trotters who expect entertainment as a right, have, even within my memory, blunted this open-heartedness, but none the less today, if you belong to the Inner Circle and are neither a Bear nor a Black Sheep, all houses are open to you, and our small world is very, very kind and helpful.
Rickett of Kamartha stayed with Polder of Kumaon some fifteen years ago. He meant to stay two nights, but was knocked down by rheumatic fever, and for six weeks disorganized Polder’s establishment, stopped Polder’s work, and nearly died in Polder’s bedroom. Polder behaves as though he had been placed under eternal obligation by Rickett, and yearly sends the little Ricketts a box of presents and toys. It is the same everywhere. The men who do not take the trouble to conceal from you their opinion that you are an incompetent ass, and the women who blacken your character and misunderstand your wife’s amusements, will work themselves to the bone in your behalf if you fall sick or into serious trouble.
Heatherlegh, the Doctor, kept, in addition to his regular practice, a hospital on his private account – an arrangement of loose boxes for Incurables, his friend called it – but it was really a sort of fitting-up shed for craft that had been damaged by stress of weather. The weather in India is often sultry, and since the tale of bricks is always a fixed quantity, and the only liberty allowed is permission to work overtime and get no thanks, men occasionally break down and become as mixed as the metaphors in this sentence.
Heatherlegh is the dearest doctor that ever was, and his invariable prescription to all his patients is, ‘lie low, go slow, and keep cool.’ He says that more men are killed by overwork than the importance of this world justifies. He maintains that overwork slew Pansay, who died under his hands about three years ago. He has, of course, the right to speak authoritatively, and he laughs at my theory that there was a crack in Pansay’s head and a little bit of the Dark World came through and pressed him to death. ‘Pansay went off the handle,’ says Heatherlegh, ‘after the stimulus of long leave at Home. He may or he may not have behaved like a blackguard to Mrs Keith-Wessington. My notion is that the work of the Katabundi Settlement ran him off his legs, and that he took to brooding and making much of an ordinary P. & O. flirtation. He certainly was engaged to Miss Mannering, and she certainly bro
ke off the engagement. Then he took a feverish chill and all that nonsense about ghosts developed. Overwork started his illness, kept it alight, and killed him poor devil. Write him off to the System – one man to take the work of two and a half men.’
I do not believe this. I used to sit up with Pansay sometimes when Heatherlegh was called out to patients, and I happened to be within claim. The man would make me most unhappy by describing in a low, even voice, the procession that was always passing at the bottom of his bed. He had a sick man’s command of language. When he recovered I suggested that he should write out the whole affair from beginning to end, knowing that ink might assist him to ease his mind. When little boys have learned a new bad word they are never happy till they have chalked it up on a door. And this also is Literature.
He was in a high fever while he was writing, and the blood-and-thunder Magazine diction he adopted did not calm him. Two months afterward he was reported fit for duty, but, in spite of the fact that he was urgently needed to help an undermanned Commission stagger through a deficit, he preferred to die; vowing at the last that he was hag-ridden. I got his manuscript before he died, and this is his version of the affair, dated 1885.
* * *
Strange Tales (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) Page 4
