Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “His-s-s-t !” he remarked then to attract attention. And a second later his skin crawled like a sloughing snake’s all up his spine and then down again.

  The man in the pool of light took no notice, but another had leaned out of the darkness almost within arm’s reach and, flashing a little electric torch, grinned straight into his face.

  “You should go to him — go to him — he beckons, does he not? Go to him then!” he whispered.

  The whisper was the worst part of it. If he had spoken out loud Habibullah would have tried a little bombast to reassure himself. As it was, the creepy sensation increased; nor was there any knowing how many other men there might be grinning at him from the darkness — grinning at him who had no knife! He could see one of his brothers — just a shadow motionless among the shadows of the minaret, and the sight made him lonelier than ever.

  “Why wait for the handkerchief?” suggested the voice beside him; and that settled it; Habibullah leaped down on to the roof like a young bear, making all the noise he naturally could.

  But the noise did not startle the man in yellow, who sat in the midst of the pool of light. It did not as much as annoy him. He smiled — a beastly, bronze, arrogant smile that chilled the blood of Habibullah worse than the other man’s whisper had done.

  “You beckoned?” said Habibullah, forgetting that he who speaks first most often has the worst of it.

  The other shifted himself out of the patch of light suddenly, and left Habibullah standing there.

  “Did I beckon a fool for the police to shoot at?” he asked from behind a chimney. “Their nets are laid. The order is to seize all strangers from Sikunderam. You and your brothers are as sure of death as the fat sheep in the butcher’s hands, unless — step this way out of the light, fool!”

  Habibullah obeyed, and was sorry he obeyed, on general principles.

  “Who are you ?” he asked. He tried to make his voice sound truculent, but it was only desperate. He wished he had not come.

  “You left the jail without asking who I am. Why ask now? Better obey me.”

  “In what respect?”

  “In all respects!”

  Obedience is a hard pill to force down the throat of a Hillman. The fact that he thought himself helpless did not sweeten the dose for Habibullah. The other was a Hindu, which made it worse. So he said nothing, as the only way he knew of nursing his disgust, and perhaps the man in yellow believed that silence signified assent (although perhaps not. He was wise in some ways.) Nevertheless, he proceeded to display his ignorance.

  “There are two men dressed like me in that minaret.”

  “Two men?” said Ali, looking hard at him.

  “Two !” he answered positively. “One is injured. One is whole. The whole one is at fault and the injured one has failed. Both die to-night. It is your business to admit three of us into the minaret.”

  “Mine?”

  “Yours and your brothers’.”

  “But — Bah! By Allah, what you ask is impossible! We are not alone there. There is a Sikh—”

  “True. And a babu. Do they not sleep?”

  “But there are others, who keep watch outside by the door in the wall.”

  “Aye, and they sleep, or how didst thou escape unseen? Kill them, too, and earn merit!”

  Habibullah withdrew again into the silence, for emotion choked him. He could contemplate killing Narayan Singh and Chullunder Ghose with comparative calm, even while doubting that three of them could master the turbulent Sikh. But to murder in cold blood, without warning, Ali ben Ali of Sikunderam, sire, tutor, patron, paymaster, hero, bully and belligerent accomplice, was something that not even sons of the Hills could consider, say nothing of do. Hardly believing his ears he bridled speech, the slow, dour cunning of the mountains coming to his aid at last. The limit of amazement being reached — fear having worked its worst — he rose above both like a swimmer coming up for air.

  “How much will you pay?” he demanded.

  The man in yellow laughed — a conquering laugh all full of scorn and understanding.

  “Rupees, a thousand!” he answered.

  “Show me! Pay now!”

  Habibullah stooped and held his hand out — mocking. He did not believe that man in yellow had a thousand rupees, certainly not that he would part with them. But the other produced a roll and counted the money out in hundreds:

  “ — eight, nine, ten!” he said, placing the lot in the Hillman’s extended hand. “Blood-money! These are witnesses!”

  He made a sound exactly like the hum of a bronze bell struck with a muted hammer. Instantly two faces, thrust forward into the light like disembodied phantoms, grinned at him.

  “Go! Kill! And when you have killed set a lantern on the gallery of the minaret!”

  Habibullah glanced down at the ten bank-notes that his fingers closed on, and all the Hillman’s yearning for the hardest bargain ever driven surged in his ambitious breast.

  “How shall we slay without weapons?” he demanded. “The police had our tulwars—”

  The man in yellow interrupted him by passing hilt-first the tulwar that he had used to signal with. It was not Habibullah’s own. He raised it — possibly to glory in its balance as it quivered like something golden in the window-light — yet even so perhaps not; for the North is quick to use the unsheathed argument.

  He was aware of the click of an old-fashioned pistol in the dark not far behind him, so he lowered the tulwar again and thumbed the edge of it. Concession had bred appetite:

  “We are three,” he said. “We had three weapons — two more such as this.”

  “Aye,” came the instant answer. “Thine and another’s. That is not thine. That will be claimed by its owner. Thine and the other may be had for service rendered.”

  It was shrewd. No knight of the Middle Ages set a value on golden spurs one atom greater than the Hillman’s superstitious reverence for his knife. With it he reckons himself a man; without it, something less, and so is reckoned.

  Nevertheless, the greater the weight on one side of a bargain, the more determined should the haggling be. That is scripture. Habibullah cast about for an alternative and landed a good one at the first attempt.

  “You say two yonder must die? My brothers and I might kill those, saving trouble with the Sikh, who is a man of mighty wrath, to kill whom would offend his masters. Better bind him while he sleeps, and tell him afterwards that others did it. Then kill the babu, who is useless and has the tongues of ten women. Whereafter slay — we three could slay — the two men you say are due to die to-night.”

  That was a long speech for Habibullah. It produced a profound impression and he struck an attitude while the two disembodied faces appeared in the shaft of light again and conversed with number one. They spoke a language he knew nothing of, and displayed skill in the use of light and shade that was beyond his understanding, for although he screwed his eyes, and dodged, he failed to see anything but faces; and in the end he began to be afraid again, more than half-believing number one was speaking with spirits of the air.

  “Only the spirits don’t use pistols,” he argued to himself. And twice he heard the click of a pistol hammer as if someone in the dark were testing it, not nervously but as a warning. “I would like to lay this blade just once where the neck of that face should be!” he thought.

  And someone seemed to read his thought, for a pistol in a hand unconnected with any evident body emerged into the light and warned him pointblank.

  “We should have to see bodies of the slain,” said number one at last in plain Punjabi; and the two faces vanished.

  “All Delhi may see them for ought I care!” Habibullab answered, forgetting for the moment that there was only one prisoner in the cellar.

  “So we should have to enter the minaret.”

  “Lo, I make you a gift of the minaret!” laughed Habibullah, growing bolder as he realized his point was gained. These were not such dangerous people after all. How his brothers
would wonder when he regaled them with the account of his skilful bargaining!

  “You will need to arrange for us to enter,” said the man in yellow.

  Habibullah was silent, scratching his young beard, pondering what that proviso meant.

  “The guard at the gate must be slain,” his interlocutor went on. And Habibullah’s beard continued to be scratched, a row of milk-white teeth appearing in a gap in the black hair as his lower lip descended thoughtfully.

  Strange arguments appeal to savage minds. The rock on which Habibullah’s wit was chafing itself keen just then was not the stipulation to kill Ali of Sikunderam (for that was excluded — imponderable — abstract — not to be reckoned with, and having no weight) — but the puzzling, protruding, concrete circumstance that he in yellow did not dream of entering the minaret by any other way than the front door.

  Could he not climb? Was he lazy, or afraid, or proud? What was the matter with him? No man, having murder in his mind and able to command the very captain of the jail, was worth taking seriously if he only thought in terms of front-doors! Habibullah knew exactly what to do now.

  “There is no other way than to kill those who guard the gate,” said he in yellow.

  “No other way,” Habibullah agreed. “I will do it.”

  “How will you let us know when the work is done and the gate is unlocked?” the other demanded.

  “We will light a lantern and carry it thrice in a circle around the gallery. Then come swiftly, for we will open the door and wait for you; and we will tell the Sikh afterwards that it was you who bound him,” said Habibullah.

  He was not sure yet what he meant to do. But he was sure he would outwit the man in yellow, whom he thoroughly despised now, not fearing him even a little, so mercurial, albeit simple are the workings of the Hillman intellect. He had the man’s money. Why should he fear him? Who feared fools? Not Habibullah! Father Ali should have reason to boast of one son this night!

  Something of his thought exuded — emanated — some vague aureole of ignorant conceit emerging under the cloak of pretended assent.

  “Remember!” warned the man in yellow. “This is a part of the price to Kali, payable for your release from jail! There will be more to pay another time. And he who fails to pay Her the least particle of Her demand — is less to be envied than a woman dying as she bears a dead child!”

  Habibullah shuddered, and recovered. He was not a woman, praise be Allah!

  “It is time I go,” he said abruptly, and in a moment he had swung himself down into the street along which he could see the “constabeel” vainly pursuing imaginary footsteps. He kept behind the “constabeel” and gained the minaret without accident. He was minded to beat on the door in the wall and swagger in triumphantly with all that story to relate and a thousand rupees to confirm it with. Only the suspicion that the man in yellow possibly could see him from the roof prevented.

  He still did not know how the Hindu should be tricked. He knew that pocketing the money for a murder he had not the remotest intention of committing was only part of the business. They must be fooled to the full taste of Sikunderam, and none — no man on Allah’s footstool — could do that half as well as Ali, father Ali, who was sleeping by his brother at the gate — father Ali, wiliness incarnate!

  So he climbed the outer-wall like a bear in the hills, making much less noise than he normally did on level ground. And he dropped so lightly into shadow on the other side that Ali did not wake until the hot breath rustled in his ear.

  “Look, father Ali! Look!”

  He held the money — all that money! — most incautiously in the rays of the hooded candle that bode in a crevice of the wall against emergency. Ali — waking — seized the money — naturally — even before he rubbed his eyes. It was in the hidden pocket under two shirts, and with a sheepskin jacket double-buttoned over all, before poor Habibullah could protest.

  And then, in the righteous wrath of an outraged sire, Ali ben Ali rose and cursed his son for daring to absent himself from post without permission!

  “Allah! Do I live — and see such sons? The dung a pigeon drops on a ledge will stay there! Yet you leave! O less than ullage! Less than the stink of a debauch — for that clings! Son of all uncleanliness, get to thy perch again!”

  So Habibullah went, for there was no gainsaying father Ali. He who had slain in seven duels the husbands of the mothers who had borne the sons he claimed, was not to be withstood by one son single-handed in the hour of rising wrath. The necessary element was speed, and Habibullah used it, shuddering as a new curse hounded his retreat.

  Nor did he enter the minaret, for that would have been to awaken the babu and the Sikh too soon, before he — Habibullah — should have time to think. He climbed by the broken masonry again like a steeplejack, and swung himself up on the gallery between his wondering brothers.

  “Mine!” said one of them, pouncing on the tulwar .

  “You shall have it in exchange for mine!” said Habibullah, snatching it away. “Peace! Listen!” He had done his thinking. “Father Ali bade me say this: He will beat whichever of you leaves the gallery! He gave me other work to do.”

  Which untruth being loosed, and therefore off his conscience, Habibullah entered the minaret through the gallery door and descended the creaking stairs, after carefully fastening the door behind him lest his brothers overhear and make a hash of what should be a neat, nice piece of strategy.

  He was angry with father Ali — not to the point of rebellion yet, but full of indignation and desirous of revenge. He was minded to take his information to a man who, all his faults considered, was a generous soldier of mettle and resource. The money was gone; but the chance for a creditable deed remained; and if his own brains were insufficient for the task, he knew where to find sufficient ones.

  So he stooped over Narayan Singh and checked him in mid-snore. The Sikh seized his wrist and let go again.

  “The foe?” he demanded. “Trespassers?” (Whoever is not friend comes into Narayan Singh’s category of “foe,” to be dealt with accordingly.)

  “Hus-s-s-sh!” warned Habibullah. “Let the babu not hear!”

  “No! Let the babu sleep!” Chullunder Ghose called up on his seat on the hatch. “There is first the thunder and then these whisperings! My God, for the gift of silence in these precincts! Oh, well, oh, very well, I come! Unfortunate babu is slave of circumstances in all things!”

  He came waddling up the stairs, and struck a match so suddenly that Habibullah cursed him.

  “Hillman’s curse is Hindu’s blessing!” said the babu piously. “Now spill the beans! Unleash the dogs of war and let speech coruscate! Give her gas!”

  So Habibullah could not help himself. He was obliged to tell his tale to both men, neither of whom believed him because he could not show the thousand rupees that he boasted of having “lifted” from the man in yellow on the roof. In fact the whole tale was too fishy, coming on top, as it did, of that other yarn about fighting a way out from the police cells.

  “That I should leave a virgin bed on a trap-door for this!” Chullunder Ghose sighed. “I lie, thou liest, he lies — what unregenerated Prussian calls die Lust zum Fabulieren ! ‘Gas!’ I said, and he delivers hot air! Oh, deliver me!”

  “If you could prove a word of it—” Narayan Singh suggested sleepily— “I might believe the next word; and if that one were true I would credit a third, and so further. As it is, if you are not back in your place on the gallery within—”

  But Habibullah was desperate, and desperation has resources of her own.

  “What if I bring the three in yellow to the front gate? Will you help me slay them?” he interrupted.

  “I would like to slay them,” said Narayan Singh. “Whoever promenades the streets in yellow with the mark of Kali on his forehead ought to be severed between skull and shoulders. Go back to the gallery and keep watch! In the morning I will tell your father Ali to discourage lying with a thick stick!”

  “Lend m
e a lantern. I will prove it to you!” said Habibullah.

  Chullunder Ghose arranged his turban sleepily.

  “Observe a symptom of in vino veritas ,” he remarked, “wine being possibly imagination in this instance. The savage believes what he says, even supposing same is untrue.”

  Narayan Singh rose with a sigh and discovered a lantern he had hidden where none else would find and adopt it. He lit it with blasphemy, burning his fingers, ordered the babu back with his fat hind-quarters on the trap-door, looked disgustedly at Habibullah, shook himself to make sure the weights were there that told of hidden weapons, and yawned.

  “Forward! Up-stairs! Prove it! If you fail to prove it, over with you!”

  Habibullah led the way. With the lantern in the skirts of his sheep-skin coat, lest the enemy catch sight of it before the stage was ready, he stepped out on the gallery, with the Sikh peering over his shoulder suspicious of tricks. Then he ordered his brothers inside, they protesting volubly, making a show of disinclination to desert the post. Narayan Singh was deeply edified.

  “Dogs on a dung-hill are as noisy and as timid!” he said pleasantly. “Better kneel in there and pray for good sense — if Allah is listening! Now, show thy proof!”

  He shoved Habibullah outward to the railing and was close behind, but Habibullah begged him to stay in the open door and watch the light streaming from a window over a roof some way in front of them; and still suspecting trickery the Sikh obliged. He could not stand upright, but bent forward with a hand on either post.

  Then Habibullah, holding the lantern in his left hand, turned to the right and made the circuit of the gallery three times, swinging the lantern constantly to call attention to it. And when he had made the third circuit, as it were of the walls of Jerico, the light streaming from the window that Narayan Singh watched went out suddenly — yet not so suddenly as when one switches off the current. Someone invisible had held an obstacle between the window and the minaret. He lowered it, and the light streamed forth again.

  “They have seen. Now they will conic to the gate to be slain!” said Habibullah. “And if you, sahib , wish to have the credit for it all, take my advice and climb down this way, not waking father Ali!”