Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  What brought him back was nothing more concrete than one of those changes of mind, like the action of a ship in irons in a light wind; in India they call them disembodied spirits that govern men in their extremity. He had vacillated — thought of another acquaintance, who might be less difficult to pin to than the first. Noticing the constable he chose the other sidewalk, naturally. And with both eyes on the law’s hired man from under the sheltering brim of his soft felt hat he just as naturally stepped by accident on the skirts of the sheepskin coat of one of Ali’s sons.

  The men of Sikunderam don’t fancy being stepped on. It is even likely they would choose a Goanese last if obliged to name the individual to be permitted some such liberty. Nevertheless, the act was obviously unintentional and nothing more than a mild curse would have followed if Diomed had not, tripping and trying to recover, kicked the hilt of a yard-long northern knife. And that is sacrilege. A Hillman would not kick his own knife.

  So the curse that leaped from the lips of one of Ali’s sons was like the hissing and explosion when you plunge a hot iron into oil. Diomed sprang back as if a snake had bitten him, and even the constable across street awoke out of speculative meditation, for it looked as if the gods had come to life to solve his problem for him. It is good to be alert and on hand when the gods arrange the play.

  And as he sprang back Diomed knew the face of his antagonist for one that had cursed him previously — on the roof before the fight and the fire began. He recognized him as a man who had been held back by the others lest he use steel prematurely. And thought in the mind of a Goanese confronted by predicament is as swift and spiteful as an asp’s. It recoils automatically on the person who aroused it.

  Now he could surrender to advantage! Now he need not go empty-handed to the mills of the police that grind so small, and so impartially, so be that they get their grist! This came of confessing his sins to Father Cyprian! Now bail was unimportant. There were dozens who would hurry to his aid if it were known he had scapegoats, locked up in the next cell, ready to be sacrificed.

  All of that passed through his mind with the speed of starlight, in between the opening and closing of the Hillman’s angry teeth. He beckoned the constable, who came, standing warily a good yard from the sidewalk, not enamored of the chances yet, for they were six to one and the gods not finished shuffling. It is the privilege of the gods to make things easy for a man.

  “Arrest all these!” commanded Diomed, in English for the sake of extra emphasis. “They are the villains who set fire to my hotel! I warn you they are dangerous! Arrest them instantlee!”

  The constable could recognize the danger without help. He was perfectly aware of six long knives — not yet free of their scabbards, but poised between earth and air like Mohammed’s coffin. Moreover, the fire was news to him.

  “Brothers, I said that constabeel designed an inconvenience to us! Stand back-to-back!”

  The “brothers” stood so, around the tree-trunk, inoffensive as a third rail.

  “In case you reefuse to arrest them I will reeport you! This is a highlee important case — veree!” said Diomed, pulling out a pencil to write down the constable’s number. “I saw these men set fire to my hotel!” he added.

  But the constable, preferring life to an eulogium in the Gazette, demurred.

  “Where are your witnesses?” he countered, grinning.

  Diomed flew into a rage immediately. He knew the law, or said he did, and threatened to invoke the whole of it, including dark and lawless influence, on the constable’s unrighteous head. He named names. He cited instances. He mentioned the policeman’s ancestry. Raising his voice indignantly he summoned all the neighborhood to witness cowardice — corruption — a policeman in receipt of bribes refusing to arrest six murderers!

  The neighborhood had no will to associate itself with outside scandal, having plenty of its own, and the few who had been in the street departed — all but one. A man in an orange-yellow smock, with a big, red caste-mark in the middle of his forehead, a twisted orange-yellow turban, and no other visible garment, property or distinction, stood where another great tree marked a narrow cross-street and beckoned, holding his forefinger close up to his eye as if in some way that lent long range to the invitation.

  And the constable by now was more enraged than Diomed, with this addition, that his rage was based on absolute injustice; for the things that Diomed had said of his female relatives were not to be borne by a man of spirit and some authority. They had reached the stage of snapping fingers, and Diomed’s two arms were waving like semaphores as he leaned forward, showing simian teeth, to spit denunciation in the constable’s indignant face.

  “One beckons,” said a voice beside the tree.

  “And you are corrupt — corrupt — everybodee knows it — son of an evil mother — you accept bribes from all and sundree and—”

  “He wears a yellow garment, brothers, such as the sadhus * wear, but yellower. He is only one. We could beat him if he lied to us. He beckons, and he signals silence—”

  “All together — run, then!”

  They were gone like leopards flushed from cover, down-street, each with a hand on the hilt of a Khyber knife, as good to stand in way of as the torrents of Sikunderam in spate. They swooped on the man in yellow as if he were foe, not friend, meaning to seize him and whirl him along between them; but he knew the...

  ...he had evoked, and he stepped down...had vanished when they reached the...lasted half a minute casting this and...of hounds before one of them saw...and the six went full-pelt at a...course, hardly thinking now, but...and three purposes: to outrun the con...to overtake the man in yellow, to keep together.

  “There!” exclaimed Diomed, pausing in a torrent of abuse. “Now all thee world can see how you let criminals escape!”

  And the abuse had got its work in. There is poison in the stuff, that breeds miscalculation. It is like a smoke-screen thrown off by a human skunk to mortify whoever has weak sensibilities. The constable was angry and aware of duty to be done — someone to be arrested. Six criminals, accused of arson, had escaped under cover of the seventh’s volleys of abuse, and so the seventh must be guiltier than all! He raised his truncheon — actually to hammer out a signal on the side-walk — but, in Diomed’s excited imagination, to attack. And Diomed struck him — twice, in the face, with the flat of his hand, hysterically — struck an officer of the law in execution of his duty!

  So the truncheon went to work in earnest, and poor Diomed was beaten over collar-bone and forearm until he wouldn’t have dared move them for the agony. Then he was handcuffed ignominiously, swearing, beseeching, praying, and marched away, followed by inevitable small boys as free from the vials of compassion as the monkeys are that some say are their ancestors. They said things that excited Diomed to wilder imprecations yet.

  And among the boys there was a dwarf — a man in orange-yellow, taller by half a head than the tallest youngster, and as stocky as two of them, but gifted with the same free movement, so that he passed in the crowd unnoticed. He edged his way closer and closer to the constable, who glanced about him nervously, aware that in these “higher education days” the riots and the rescuing are done by school boys while their elders do the propaganding in the rear. He hurried, driving his prisoner in front of him with thumps from the truncheon on the backbone just above the trousers-band. It was several minutes before the dwarf could edge close enough to speak low and yet be heard.

  “You are fortunate!” he said at last. “Surely you have promotion in your grasp! You have taken the infamous Braganza, who is charged with burning his hotel and murdering a hundred guests!”

  “I knew it! Come and give your evidence!” the constable retorted, for the East lies glibly or not at all. He tried to seize the dwarf as a material witness, but missed him in the crowd, and had to hurry on for fear of losing Diomed, whom he charged presently with arson and with employing six Afridis to preserve him from arrest. “I fought them all, and they fled before me
,” he asserted.

  Meanwhile, there was a strange assortment of individuals in more or less pursuit of Ali’s sons, with Ali in the lead, of course, since the “sons” were his valuable property, and with Chullunder Ghose as naturally in the rear, as utterly indifferent to the sons’ fate as the noon is to the netting of fish at ebb tide, but on the job and anxious notwithtstanding.

  “For if an earthquake had emptied Bedlam, releasing affinities of swine of Gadarenes, and if government officials plus editors of daily press were in charge of whole proceedings, that would be diamond-edged sanity compared to this! This is worse than acting on advice of experts! This is — oh, my aunt!”

  He was not far wide of the mark; for as he waddled, wiping sweat from his fat face, he could see the whole long-drawn line extending down-street, each in his own way calling curious attention. Jeremy, for instance, reveling in being taken for an Arab, looking ready to go mad and do a whirling dervish dance at the first excuse, with the long, loose sleeves of his black coat spread like wings, in full flight after Ali.

  Then Ramsden angrily, annoyed with Jeremy for making such a public exhibition of himself yet unable to overtake him and remonstrate, striding along like Samson who slew the Philistines.

  King next, side by side with Narayan Singh, neither of them even fractionally off-key, and therefore about as noticeable as two true notes in a flat and sharp piano scale.

  “Man that is born of a woman is like ginger-pop!” remarked Chullunder Ghose, pausing to consider. “Cut string — cork flies — and he spills himself! Step one on the path of wisdom is to be wise — ergo — by the waters of this Babylon I sit me down and weep — thus — tree, I greet you, weeping sweat, not tears! Great tree, what a world of men and women you have mocked! Mock me a while, your shade is comforting and your shafts of wit pass overhead! Now let us see — King sahib is remarkable for sanity. Ergo , he will notice me in rear. Observing emulation of Fabius Cunctator by this babu, King sahib will suppress inborn proclivities of Anglo-Saxon and pattern his thought accordingly.

  “He will follow down that street to next corner, where he will park himself broodily, sending Narayan Singh forward to repeat process. Thus, whenever I proceed as far as corner and become conspicuous, King sahib will observe me and will signal to Narayan Singh. We shall thus be in touch. And the others will behave as the sparks that fly upward, which can’t be helped. That is my guess. Being heirs of all the ages, I shall sit in shade and see the world go by. Suspicious? Very!”

  Chullunder Ghose was right. King did turn the corner in pursuit, and at the next one did sit down on the veranda of a boarding-house for Sikhs, where Narayan Singh, who kept up the pursuit along another street, could find him and whence he himself might see Chullunder Ghose if the babu should see fit to come to the corner and signal. The others, following Ali of Sikunderam, who shouted inquiries a hundred yards ahead, stuck to the pursuit like people in a motion-picture comedy.

  “Item one, a fool is very foolish,” said Chullunder Ghose to himself, leaning his fat back against the tree and flapping flies with an enormous handkerchief. “Therefore congenital deficiencies of Ali’s sons comply with formula. Verb. sap . If they had been attacked said idiots would have stood at bay by door of padre’s house, in accordance with law that nature abhors a vacuum — doubtless. Empty heads apply, at spigot of authority to be filled with instructions. They would have focussed attention on padre’s house inevitably. Quad erat — nicht wahr ? Ergo , they were not attacked.

  “What then? A woman? Much too early in the morning. And again — no fight! If six such idiots pursued a woman, or women, through the streets of Delhi, there would be bad blood spilt as certainly as there are speeches when a politician pursues office. Therefore not a woman. This time not the sex that bringeth forth in sorrow and regretteth same.

  “Then a man! The unproductive sex! At least as sorrowful but less opaque! Motives more easily discernible. The six translucent jewels of Sikunderam have been decoyed — and by a man, or men — therefore for profit! Whose? Why? I lift a stone. Why do I lift a stone? Because I need the space it sits on — or I wish to throw it — or — if he — they — needed the space on which the sons of Ali sat — or the street in which they sat — I see — I get you— ‘Steve, I get you!’ as Jimgrim says — behold, I see through mystery! Let us hope actions are not so loud as words. Thou tree — thou solid, dumb, obtruding tree, farewell!”

  There came a tikka-gharri* drawn by one horse on the way home from assisting at the Rishis* * only knew what all-night revelry. Chullunder Ghose signaled the driver, who declined a fare sleepily, without success. The babu waddled to mid-street and had climbed in before the protesting Jehu could whallop his nag to a trot.

  “Give her gas!” said Chullunder Ghose, translating slang learned from Grim into opprobrious vernacular.

  So the weary cabman whacked the wearier horse and, better to call attention to himself, the babu stood up screaming that he had a gall-stone and would die unless in hospital within the minute. He was seen, heard, contemplated.

  But he only drove two blocks, around a corner, and then paid the astonished cabman the exact fare. If he had overpaid him he would only have multiplied suspicion. Then he walked back three blocks, parallel to the street in which was Cyprian’s house, and turning the corner suddenly was just in time to see three men in orange-yellow smocks approach Cyprian’s door and ring the bell. He stood there long enough to watch them enter and see the door shut again behind them.

  “Kali!” he exclaimed then. “Let us hope Jimgrim is appreciative! Dogs of the Wife of Siva the Destroyer! Oh, my aunt!”

  He had been in time to see Ali of Sikunderam charge up the steps and plunge into the building — for the men he hurled his questions at had misdirected Ali and he had covered an unnecessary mile before learning that his precious sons were foul of the law.

  He ran like an articulated jellyfish until he reached a corner whence he could see King perched on the boarding-house veranda. There, ignoring all discretion, he pulled his rose-pink turban off and threw the thirty yards of silk in air, whirling it until King raised a hand in answer.

  Promptly King leaned out over the veranda-rail at the corner of two streets and made a gesture that Narayan Singh saw from a quarter of a mile away. And the Sikh, not optimistic, having seen too much, but understanding that the gang was wanted back at Cyprian’s, went at the double to retrieve as many of the gang as possible from a building in front of which two square lamps advertised — POLICE.

  Narayan Singh had seen Rahman follow Ali, and then Jeremy, then Ramsden. None had come back down the steps, so he was in no doubt what to do, although he did not know yet how absurdly simple the strategy of the man in orange-yellow had been, nor how simpler and more finished would be that of Jeremy.

  Like will-o’-the wisp in orange livery he had simply led those six North-country swashbucklers a dance along street after street — up the stairs of the police station — and there had accused the lot of them of theft! There was nothing whatever for the police to do but hold them.

  When Ali got there pandemonium was loose, for the six sons’ weapons had been taken and they were resisting further search as desperately as hell’s imps would object to baptism — teeth — talons — imprecation — horizontal mostly, with a couple of policemen laboring at each limb and each lot expanding and contracting soddenly in spasms. One policeman — he who had recently arrested Diomed the Goanese — went from lot to lot using a truncheon unapplauded, aiming at the heads of Afghans but oftener hitting his friends. He said nothing about recognizing them, having already claimed to have defeated them in mortal combat. The obvious solution was to stun them lest they recognize himself, but it was extremely difficult to hit their heads.

  And into that confusion Ali leaped like a firecracker, knife and all, to be brought to a stand by the officer’s revolver. The officer was in his place, in charge, behind the desk. There might have been murder done, Ali was in no mood for compliance, with
his darlings being whacked and twisted under his eyes. The fact that the police were bleeding, and his sons not more than warming up for a morning’s work, added to his zeal, and instinct warned him that the man in yellow was the “father” of the rumpus. Therefore, Ali was for springing at the man in yellow’s throat when Jeremy strode in smiling like an illustration from the Book of Ruth, with Rahman yelping like a wolf a step behind him.

  “Salaam aleikoum ! Peace! Let there be peace!” boomed Jeremy in a voice with a ventriloquial note that fills a room. He sounded, as he looked, like a man from the Old Testament. Ali detected magic in the wind and yelled a word that his sons obeyed on the instant. Even so, the police were human and eager for revenge, but Ramsden walked in.

  Baring his forearms, he offered to kill with his hands the first three constables who struck a prisoner. So there was peace as Jeremy requested, and the man in yellow took advantage of it, going close to two of Ali’s sons, who were held fast, with a policeman on each wrist. He said he wanted to identify them. Jeremy observed, and Ramsden observed Jeremy. The officer observed all three, but Jeremy’s hand is swifter than any eye.

  “They are the men who stole from me!” said the man in yellow. “I had a gold coin similar to this one in each hand. Rushing at me, they seized my wrists and took the money, which you will find on their persons. Search them!” He drew from a pocket in his smock and displayed one ancient coin that Jeremy and Ramsden identified as having belonged to the Portuguese da Gama.

  “Search them!” ordered the officer, tapping his revolver on the desk.

  “Wait! First let me also identify!” said Jeremy; and he, too, went close to the same two of Ali’s sons.

  He removed and palmed a coin that the man in yellow had secreted in the nearest man’s sash.