Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “By gad, I can’t watch that!” swore Stapleton.

  “Shall I — ?”

  “No. Don’t touch her. Yasmini!”

  She stopped, and looked up. Then she rose and glared at both of them. They stepped forward, but she threw down the knife and stood with her bloody hands beside her, so they both stepped back again.

  “Dogs! Devils! Rob me, would you, of revenge? You might have taken jewels — money — clothes — I would have laughed! Revenge was all I asked, or sought or lived for! Officers! Lords of India: Mouthers about honor! You have taken my honor from me. What is left?”

  She was silent for a minute, fighting back her sobs; but if ever dumb eyes swore, hers blazed blasphemy.

  “See — robbers of a woman’s honor! — I will show you.”

  Drawing a key from her bosom, she went to another door, opened it, and motioned them to come and look. So they stood beside her and peered in, feeling like men about to pry on some one’s sacred secrets.

  “I had that ready for him — for tonight! Until midnight my maids were to have watched, lest the police should get on his trail and interfere. I had no fear of soldiers — only the police. Had they come, I had another plan all ready — another place to lure him to. You fools — you honor-robbers — were but meant to allay police suspicions; they have watched this house from time to time of late. See! See what you have saved that murderer by slaying him!”

  There was little in the stone-floored room except an iron chair, but the purpose of that was evident. It had twisted wire straps made fast to it; a man could have been bound in the chair with their aid so that he could not move. Beside the chair were braziers, heaped with charcoal; and by them pincers, and little rods of steel, and tiny awls, and lengths of wire, and needles — a complete assortment of instruments of torture!

  “He would have lived three days, or more, under my hand!” hissed Yasmini between set teeth.

  “But why? What had you got against the man?” Colonel Stapleton was more bewildered now than ever.

  “I? Because that pig of pigs, that one-eyed plunderer of offal heaps, that carrion, slew my lover, my Prince, my Maharaja, the one love of my life! He ran! The rat-louse ran! He made suspicion fall on me. But I followed — I, with only a dozen maids to help me. I tricked him. I trapped him. I had a bone to pick with Gopi Lall! I would have picked it, but for you!”

  “But how did you get him here?”

  “The mad, conceited swine imagined that I loved him — as certain other dogs have done!”

  She looked a little too hard at Boileau, when she said that, for his peace of mind.

  “Sahib!” called a voice. “Huzoor! Colonel sahib!”

  Stapleton walked over to the window and leaned out.

  “Is that you, Dost Mohammed?”

  “Aye. Have you found him, sahib?”

  “Yes. He’s here. He’s dead.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “Captain Boileau.”

  “Present my compliments to Captain Boileau sahib. Tell him that his hands will be undefiled when they are washed.”

  “You’d better send two troopers up here, Dost Mohammed, to take charge of the body and watch until morning. Come up with them. Have you seen anything of the maidservants?”

  “They are here, sahib, all here; they were watching in the jungle. We came on them before they could give the alarm.”

  “Let them come up, then, to wait on their mistress.”

  Twenty minutes later Colonel Stapleton and Boileau started campward side by side.

  “Let this be a lesson to you, Boileau my boy! How did you come to be up there?”

  “Saw a rope, sir, and climbed up through a window.”

  “A bally ungentlemanly thing to do!”

  “It put an end to another gentleman’s career, sir!”

  “Yes. And for that, and another reason, I won’t refer to it again. But, as I said, let this be a lesson to you. If ever you get to be the Colonel of a regiment, don’t — don’t ever — on any grounds at all — insist on helping the police!”

  “I’ll try to remember it, sir.”

  “I feel as if I’d robbed that woman though that’s absurd of course. If anybody’d told me that once — ever in my life — I would lay hands on a woman, even in self- defense, I would have thought him mad. And here I’ve actually fought a woman. I had thought, and I have said repeatedly, that there are no circumstances under which a soldier can not be a gentleman. I retract it. There is one. When engaged on police duty he runs a very serious risk!”

  CHAPTER XI.

  (Which has no verse or title to head it, but which leaves the reader

  with a feeling that he would like to read some more of Yasmini.)

  THE Tail-Twisters rode back to Balibhum after another week had passed, and left the police behind them to gnash their teeth and curse their luck. There were five thousand good rupees not in police pockets that a grudging Government had paid by way of blood reward for Gopi Lall.

  What made the police so angry was not so much the fact that the Regiment had “wiped their eye” for them, for the native Indian policeman has neither shame nor sportsmanship nor anything but criminal ideas. Nor was it so much that they did not get the money. It was who did get it that annoyed them.

  There were something like a thousand native gentlemen and sixteen officers entitled to a share in that reward. Dost Mohammed had the lion’s claim, but he had sworn to touch no copper piece of it. Therefore there were in the neighborhood of five rupees a head to be divided up among the host. And, five rupees is, say, a dollar and two thirds.

  The British officers, of course, declined their share, and the native officers all followed suit in Dost Mohammed’s wake. It was down to the troopers, then, to make fair division of the spoil; and they took a vote on it.

  They had many or them lounged, and smoked, and listened up at Yasmini’s.

  They had all eye-worshipped her, and some had heard her sing. Some, even, had seen her dance. The rest all wished that they had done these things, and some pretended that they had.

  The vote, then, was unanimous. They took the lot to her, in hundred-rupee Bank of India notes, on a salver carried on crossed sabers. And she danced for them in the middle of the courtyard, while they sat their horses in appreciative silence.

  And, when the police came a few days later to make trouble, and to order Yasmini away, and (perhaps) receive a little blackmail, Yasmini was gone.

  For years after that it was the fashion among subalterns, and civilians, and others who were stony broke but visionary and believing, to ask for leave and travel to Rajahbatkhowa where the Panch Mahal and the hidden jungle city is. There they would hunt for the fabled hidden treasure that was said to have brought Yasmini so far.

  They never found a trace of it, though the architectural societies and antiquarians had reason to be thankful — which goes to show how practical the gods who make men mad can be.

  But, many years later, long after the sporadic search for hidden treasure had died a natural death and the jungle had covered up again the traces of it, there was a woman up at Delhi who would tell strange stories in the evening, when the fancy seized her, and there were listeners enough. She had once been maid to Yasmini.

  She told the story with a thousand varying details — for who wants to listen to the same plain tale twice over? — of the outlaw’s death, and of the officer who killed him with his hands, and of the Colonel sahib who fought with Yasmini and got the worst of it. But she added other things that at the time the story happened would have been of most absorbing interest to the police. They had been among the greediest hunters for the fabled hidden treasure; but they had hunted too, and far more thoroughly, for something else.

  Where had the outlaw’s loot gone? It was commonly computed at a lakh of silver coin, and though a tenth of that would have been quite a considerable sum for an outlaw to amass in such a district, still the estimate increased as years rolled on, and every one beli
eved it. Surely it was hidden somewhere!

  But the former maid of Yasmini’s would tell how, night after night for three nights, Gopi Lall would come beneath the window of the Panch Mahal, and how she and Yasmini would lower down a rope, and draw up heavy burdens, close-wrapped in cloth. She had no notion what was in the packages, nor yet had anyone — but Yasmini.

  And Yasmini, who wove herself most diligently into the inner history of India, never seemed to lack for capital, nor sense to hold her tongue.

  THE END

  THE WINDS OF THE WORLD

  First published in Britain by Cassell in 1915, although it had previously been serialised in Adventure magazine, this novel was later published in 1917 by Bobs-Merril in America. The title of the story comes from a remark made by Yasmini, the stunningly beautiful yet rather deadly young woman introduced in previous stories (including A Soldier and a Gentleman) who makes a second appearance here; it refers to the many sources of intelligence and information that converge at Yasmini’s home, almost like a clearing house of underground political information, brought in from all over by “the winds of the world”. Most of the chapters also contain a poem or song, some apparently penned by Yasmini.

  As well as revisiting the lovely Yasmini with this novel, Mundy also returns to another favourite theme – the British army in India and the relationship – often one of close comradeship – between Indian and British soldiers. The story is set in the days around the start of the Great War in 1914, with German spies offering to help the Sepoys (an Indian soldier serving under British or other European orders) rebel against British rule when war breaks out in Europe. The other storylines in the novel concern Colonel Kirby, Ranjoor Singh and the cavalry squadron known as Outram’s Own.

  Major Ranjoor Singh and Yasmini do not see eye to eye: “Yasmini represents the spirit of the Old East, sweeter than a rose and twice as tempting — with a poisoned thorn inside. And here was the New East, in the shape of a middle-aged Sikh officer taught by Young England”. They meet at her home on the same evening as Yasmini receives some German visitors who talk of the war that must soon break out in Europe, as (they claim) the German people can no longer be contained. Singh’s commanding officer is Colonel Kirby, a typical Mundy hero, who is quiet, honest, upright and a superb soldier and commanding officer; he also has the utmost respect and regard for his Indian soldiers, in particular Singh who he says is good enough to command a regiment. In return his soldiers offer him devotion and see Kirby as the very embodiment of all that they stand for.

  In the first part of the narrative, Singh sets off in pursuit of a man who has murdered one of his soldiers in a bazaar. For some time it is not known if Singh is alive or dead and we see the concern of Colonel Kirby in the middle part of the story as he tries to find out what has happened to his best officer. He and another soldier call on Yasmini to try to obtain information; Colonel Kirby has absolute belief in Singh, much to the amazement of Yasmini, who cannot understand how he would lower himself to show such esteem to a native; her response goes beyond this however and results in a humiliating experience for Kirby and his fellow officer. The reader eventually rejoins Singh on his adventures in chapter ten, as we follow him in his quest for justice. Will he succeed in his quest and then achieve his aim of fighting for Britain in the war that is about to break over Europe?

  There is some effective conflict of character in the novel – Ranjoor Singh is honest and straightforward in his dealings with people, whereas Yasmini is mercurial and devious – necessarily so, as she is effectively working for the British as a spy. Singh eventually realises that he must also learn subterfuge if he is to achieve his aims and learns to go underground and to spread misinformation in the name of a noble cause – he must appear to be disloyal to the British and to his own squadron, “Outram’s Own”. As is often the case with adventure novels of this vintage, there are some stereotypical characters, in particular the Germans, but it is best to regard these as an historical curiosity rather than to waste too much intellectual energy worrying about it.

  The 1917 edition

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 1

  Ever the Winds of the World fare forth

  (Oh, listen ye! Ah, listen ye!),

  East and West, and South and North,

  Shuttles weaving back and forth

  Amid the warp! (Oh, listen ye!)

  Can sightless touch — can vision keen

  Hunt where the Winds of the World have been

  And searching, learn what rumors mean?

  (Nay, ye who are wise! Nay, listen ye!)

  When tracks are crossed and scent is stale,

  ’Tis fools who shout — the fast who fail!

  But wise men harken — Listen ye!

  — from Yasmini’s Song.

  A WATERY July sun was hurrying toward a Punjab sky-line, as if weary of squandering his strength on men who did not mind, and resentful of the unexplainable — a rainy-weather field-day. The cold steel and khaki of native Indian cavalry at attention gleamed motionless between British infantry and two batteries of horse artillery. The only noticeable sound was the voice of a general officer, that rose and fell explaining and asserting pride in his command, but saying nothing as to the why of exercises in the mud. Nor did he mention why the censorship was in full force. He did not say a word of Germany, or Belgium.

  In front of the third squadron from the right, Risaldar-Major Ranjoor Singh sat his charger like a big bronze statue. He would have stooped to see his right spur better, that shone in spite of mud, for though he has been a man these five-and-twenty years, Ranjoor Singh has neither lost his boyhood love of such things, nor intends to; he has been accused of wearing solid silver spurs in bed. But it hurt him to bend much, after a day’s hard exercise on a horse such as he rode.

  Once — in a rock-strewn gully where the whistling Himalayan wind was Acting Antiseptic-of-the-Day — a young surgeon had taken hurried stitches over Ranjoor Singh’s ribs without probing deep enough for an Afghan bullet; that bullet burned after a long day in the saddle. And Bagh was — as the big brute’s name implied — a tiger of a horse, unweakened even by monsoon weather, and his habit was to spring with terrific suddenness when his rider moved on him.

  So Ranjoor Singh sat still. He was willing to eat agony at any time for the squadron’s sake — for a squadron of Outram’s Own is a unity to marvel at, or envy; and its leader a man to be forgiven spurs a half-inch longer than the regulation. As a soldier, however, he was careful of himself when occasion offered.

  Sikh-soldier-wise, he preferred Bagh to all other horses in the world, because it had needed persuasion, much stroking of a black beard — to hide anxiety — and many a secret night-ride — to sweat the brute’s savagery — before the colonel-sahib could be made to see his virtues as a charger and accept him into the regiment. Sikh-wise, he loved all things that expressed in any way his own unconquerable fire. Most of all, however, he loved the squadron; there was no woman, nor anything between him and D Squadron; but Bagh came next.

  Spurs were not needed when the general ceased speaking, and the British colonel of Outram’s Own shouted an order. Bagh, brute energy beneath hand- polished hair and plastered dirt, sprang like a loosed Hell-tantrum, and his rider’s lips drew tight over clenched teeth as he mastered self, agony and horse in one man’s effort. Fight how he would, heel, tooth and eye all flashing, Bagh was forced to hold his rightful place in front of the squadron, precisely the right distance behind the last supernumerary of the squadron next in front.

  Line after rippling line, all Sikhs of the true Sikh baptism except for the eight of their of
ficers who were European, Outram’s Own swept down a living avenue of British troops; and neither gunners nor infantry could see one flaw in them, although picking flaws in native regiments is almost part of the British army officer’s religion.

  To the blare of military music, through a bog of their own mixing, the Sikhs trotted for a mile, then drew into a walk, to bring the horses into barracks cool enough for watering.

  They reached stables as the sun dipped under the near-by acacia trees, and while the black-bearded troopers scraped and rubbed the mud from weary horses, Ranjoor Singh went through a task whose form at least was part of his very life. He could imagine nothing less than death or active service that could keep him from inspecting every horse in the squadron before he ate or drank, or as much as washed himself.

  But, although the day had been a hard one and the strain on the horses more than ordinary, his examination now was so perfunctory that the squadron gaped; the troopers signaled with their eyes as he passed, little more than glancing at each horse. Almost before his back had vanished at the stable entrance, wonderment burst into words.

  “For the third time he does thus!”

  “See! My beast overreached, and he passed without detecting it! Does the sun set the same way still?”

  “I have noticed that he does thus each time after a field-day. What is the connection? A field-day in the rains — a general officer talking to us afterward about the Salt, as if a Sikh does not understand the Salt better than a British general knows English — and our risaldar-major neglecting the horses — is there a connection?”

  “Aye. What is all this? We worked no harder in the war against the Chitralis. There is something in my bones that speaks of war, when I listen for a while!”