by Talbot Mundy
Pepul Das turned away grumbling and Rahman led on. There was no door in the first wall; they passed through a gap, where they stumbled on broken débris. But in an inner wall there was a door made something like a hurdle covered with sheepskin, and within that there were more than a dozen curtains hanging in a narrow passage. Behind each alternate curtain stood a man with a candle-lantern, armed to the teeth with northern steel, but there were no firearms visible, although McLeod thought he heard a breech-lock click when he passed by a gap in the masonry.
At the end of the passage was another door of hide and wickerwork, and there a tall Pathan stood with a tulwar at his waist — a great, black-bearded savage with a genial grin which showed that half his yellow teeth were missing.
“Does she sleep?” asked Rahman.
“Allah! She never sleeps when there is anything else that devils can invent for her to do. God pity us, who serve a woman! Is this the Redhead? Allah! But he stands well! Bring him forward to the light where I may see him.”
“Open!” commanded Rahman. “Art thou a dog at a door, to keep a guest at bay?”
Gup smelled scent now — musky, exotic stuff suggesting warmth and luxury. But it also suggested danger of the sort that lends itself to no classification in advance but merely makes the spine feel creepy and the will weak. However, anything that made McLeod feel less than master of himself just then was an irritant that spurred him forward. He feared to yield to indecision more than he dreaded any other danger.
“What are we waiting for?” he demanded.
The guardian of the door struck iron with the flat of his naked tulwar blade — a harsh, clanging signal that was answered from within by a woman’s voice. The door opened, awkwardly on leather hinges. A parchment-covered lantern shed red light, and in the midst stood a girl not more than twenty years of age, dressed in an Indian sari that was white, but the red light changed it to shimmering crimson. She had a jade stud in her nostril, dark skin, dark hair and a smile that included all life within the scope of one amused irreverence.
“Enter,” she said in English.
Now Gup hesitated. On that stallion beneath the stars his thoughts had been of chivalry. Heredity had surged up, picturing in his imagination days gone by when men rode seeking for the Holy Grail, and days again when they rode with Richard of the Lion’s Heart against the Paynim for the sake of an ideal. An idealist at all times, he was never less in a mood to meet abominable women. Judging by the woman’s silken trousers, she was Moslem; she should be ashamed to show her face before men. But he glanced at Rahman, who appeared uncomfortable, and the Pathan had turned his back. Those two were nervous because she was respectable, yet unveiled. So Gup strode in, surprised to discover that Rahman did not follow.
The girl closed the door and fastened it with leather thongs. She was still laughing, silently, to herself. Her amusement suggested a surprise in reserve, which put Gup’s nervousness on edge again and made him wish he had a weapon. He had heard all sorts of extravagant tales about men being trapped into harems and then slain because a jealous Moslem had caught his favorite peering with too much admiration through slatted blinds. However, he had no weapon and must make the best of it, so he followed the girl down a passage that turned to the right.
And now he knew he was within an ancient fort. The masonry had been cleaned and smeared with ocher. There were rugs strewn underfoot. On the walls were curtains — nothing wonderful, but good enough to lend the place an atmosphere of comfort. He noticed there was nothing there, except the color on the walls, that could not be removed at a moment’s notice. The roof, for a wonder, seemed to be in excellent repair, but it looked as if it might be the floor of a long-ago demolished upper story. Probably there was a mound of grass-grown débris overhead; all India is full of mounds that overlie old ruins, and to explore them all would be a task beyond even a government’s power or authority, since if only one body has been buried on the mound within the memory of man the place takes rank as a cemetery, which is sacred and may not be touched with pick and shovel. Consequently, thieves, who have no reverence for such things, find hiding a simple matter. Thus far, door, rug, attendants, hangings, all might belong to a gang of border-robbers, although this girl who led him with such amused assurance seemed hardly to fit into that category.
The passage was nearly a hundred feet long, dimly lighted by small oil-lamps and with openings in the wall on either side that had been closed up with the same arrangement of hides stretched on wickerwork as served for a door at the entrance. But at the end it turned and brought up abruptly at a wooden door that offered the first real suggestion of wealth and splendor. Surely it never belonged to that fort; it had been brought from elsewhere recently, and it looked older than the fort itself; it was made of teak and deeply carved with pantheistic Hindu symbols — a strange door with which to bar the way to Moslem secrets.
A cord passed through a small hole in the door-post; the girl pulled it, ringing a deep-sounding gong. The door opened and again there was a flood of red light. This time there were two women, one on each side of the door, but Gup hardly noticed them. Facing him, on a magnificent teak chair that resembled a throne, with her bare feet on a tiger-skin rug and a naked sword across her knees, sat a woman less than thirty years of age, fair-haired, wearing silken Moslem trousers and a robe of gold and crimson like a Moslem emperor’s. Her turban was crimson and gold with a diamond brooch. Her other jewelry looked priceless but there was not too much of it — one ring on each hand, one bracelet on each wrist, a chain of diamonds and gold beads on her neck. Her eyes were sky-blue, something like McLeod’s own, and they were exactly wide enough apart, and deep and big enough to fix attention on them, and to stare without seeming to stare.
The door closed and Gup bowed without speaking. For a moment his eyes appraised the splendor of the square room. He was conscious of a vague perfume that he had never before smelled. Then his eyes met hers again and he watched the slow smile of her lips that stirred in him alternate waves of wonder and resentment. Hers was not exactly a possessive smile, but it was loaded with daring and self-reliance that outweighed the suggestion of generosity. Her mouth he had seen on ancient Egyptian sculpture — proud and yet promising unfathomable wealth of favors to whoever could pass the scrutiny of the wisdom-laden eyes. She was no Indian woman, that was certain; her nose was almost Greek in its classical outline, and her skin was more softly fair than a rain-kissed Irish girl’s.
“So you are he whom Rahman recommended,” she said presently, in a strong low voice that hinted honey without offering it. “I won’t ask your pardon for this interruption to your plans, because I think you came of your free will, didn’t you? I am the Ranee of Jull-under.”
“I never heard of you,” Gup answered, chivalry in one part of his brain, suspicion in the other.
She laughed, toying with the bare sword on her knees. “You shall hear now, if you will have patience. Won’t you be seated?”
There were several women in the room, none veiled, all dressed as Moslems in embroidered silk, although two of them looked like Europeans; one of those placed a heavy chair where Gup McLeod might sit and face his hostess. The other watched him. He accepted the chair and sat drumming with his finger-nails on carved teak.
“May I offer you whisky and soda? Wine? You are not hungry?”
He shook his head and there was a minute’s silence.
“What would you do,” she asked suddenly, “if you were deprived of all your rights without legal process, and without any reason except some one’s hatred of you?”
The question was so unexpected that he hesitated. However, he saw no harm in it.
“I would fight,” he answered.
“How would you fight?”
“I don’t know. But I would fight as long as I had breath. And I would invent resources if I hadn’t any.”
“Then you will sympathize with me.”
“Not necessarily.” He drew on caution. “There are things that I
wouldn’t do, which perhaps you might do.”
“Does this sword suggest that I am blood-thirsty? It was my father’s. He was an Irishman. He fought at Kandahar under Roberts and at Omdurman under Hector Macdonald. He, too, was deprived of his rights. He was shot in Dublin for resenting the behavior of Black-and-Tans.”
“There were probably two sides to that,” Gup retorted. He had been in the mess in Dublin — knew what difficulties governments must face on the spur of an awkward moment.
He was studying her intently, puzzled by her evident at least superficial knowledge of his own reactions to arbitrary authority. It was clear to him that she was planning her questions deliberately to stir his readiest emotion. Her next words whether they were true or not, were cunning:
“I hold this sword to remind me that come what may, and no matter what injustice I suffer, I must always fight fairly. That is not invariably easy for a woman to remember. Some of the rules that men call fair are so ridiculous. But as long as the best men obey them, I will do that too.”
“But why did you wish to speak to me?” Gup asked. “Because information led me to believe you are a man of courage and strong opinions, in search of an occupation that you can follow without losing self-respect.”
“And the source of your information?”
“It would take too long to tell you that now, but I have spies spread all through India. And spies in London. And spies in New York — Paris — many places.”
“What is the occupation you suggest?”
“That of commander-in-chief.”
“Of what army?”
“Mine.”
“You mean in Jullunder?”
She laughed again; it was throatily musical, stirring, unforced, genuine. She laughed because she really had known despair and overcome it. “Did I say I am the Ranee of Jullunder? Habit! I was the Ranee of Jullunder. The Rajah, my husband, died and in his will, with the consent of the diwan and council, he appointed me his sole heiress and successor to the throne, as he had the right to do. Many a previous Rajah of Jullunder had done that. Some of the best rulers of Jullunder have been women. But the Indian Government would not permit me to rule — I suppose because I am partly Irish and partly South-African English-Dutch. They put one of the late Rajah’s distant relatives on the throne — a drunken idiot, who spends most of his time in Paris when he isn’t trying to recover his squandered health in a sanitarium.”
“Do you propose that I should help you to retake Jullunder?” Gup asked, as much amused by the absurdity of the suggestion as by any one’s supposing he would lend himself to political violence.
She laughed again, and Gup could not help liking her. A laugh is more revealing than a thousand words when it comes unguarded.
“If you are the man I think you are, why should I wish to destroy you by sending you on such a foolish venture?” she retorted. “Do you realize to what extent I am proposing to trust you? To obtain your services I must tell my story. Having revealed my plans, should I not be at your mercy? Could you not betray me to the Indian Government?”
“I could,” said Gup. “And I will if that should seem to me the decent thing to do.”
“How wonderful, that you should say decent and not proper. You mean, you will do what is becoming — to a gentleman of independent character and fearless decision?”
“I won’t commit myself to anything in advance,” he answered. “You must use your own judgment. Trust me or not, as you see fit.”
“No, that is not fair. What I propose to discuss with you is treasonable in the opinion of the Indian Government. It is as treasonable as George Washington’s plans were, or as Cromwell’s or Napoleon’s. It is as treasonable as the Irish struggle for a free state — as lawless as Lafayette’s adventure in America — as dangerous as Bolivar’s uprising against Spain. One word said too soon, to the wrong man, and I shall end my days in prison, unless hanged or shot.”
“Then why not keep silent?” he suggested.
“Because, like any other leader, I need lieutenants. “I am nobody’s lieutenant,” Gup retorted. “I have seen through all that foolishness of sheep being led by sheep, to be fleeced and then slaughtered without a day of dignity or even a vestige of humor.”
“Somebody must lead.”
“Lead whom? Nobody shall lead me. I have seen through it. Nowadays a crowd is told that it votes and is therefore responsible for anything that happens. But things haven’t changed. Somebody yells a lot of platitudes and one good catchword. Corruption — carnage — loot — the inevitable sequence. I go it alone.”
“Exactly.” She pounced on his last four words, but there was nothing catlike about it. And he noticed she was being studiously careful not to stir in him the slightest recognition of her charms; wherein she was wise; she could have found no swifter means than sex-appeal of turning against her the full tide of his combativeness. “You go it alone. I know you do. Rahman saw that. So did a dozen others. So you are not a spy for any government — not a tale-bearer — not a sneak. You can listen to me without a sense of obligation to tell the Indian Government what I tell you. You can decently promise to tell no one. You can keep my secret whether you agree with me or not.”
“Yes,” he said. “But I don’t agree to be your lieutenant or to help you in any way whatever.”
“I am looking at your jaw-bone and your lips and eyes. You would keep my secret even under torture.”
“They don’t torture people nowadays.”
“Don’t they? Wait until you have heard me. Did you ever meet a certain Major Glint? I see you did! If Major Glint should have you thrown in prison, and should heap infamies on you, and slander you so that your name was for ever blackened — and should then send to you a cunning impostor to pose as your friend with a pretended plan to ruin Major Glint by telling all the truth, thus at the same time restoring your own good name — would you tell?”
“I have said I will not tell.”
“And if Major Glint’s spies should pretend to be brigands, and should catch you and put you to torture, would you tell then?”
“I don’t think even Glint would do that.”
“His men have often done it with his knowledge. Would you tell under torture?”
“I don’t know. Nobody can answer that. I have never faced physical torture except in war, when wounded, and that was different.”
“You notice I have made no threat?”
“It hadn’t occurred to me. Why should you?”
“If I thought you were a weak man or a liar I would introduce you to the men who would avenge me in the event of betrayal. They would follow, if necessary, to the end of the world to punish a man who gave me his pledge and broke it.”
“That thought leaves me unembarrassed.”
“So it should. I have decided I will tell you. But it is morning. Will you join me at breakfast? I wish to talk to you alone, where not even my women can overhear.”
Gup McLeod stood up and faced her, hands behind him. “Yes,” he said, “I accept the Moslem thought about that. I will eat your salt, therefore I may not betray you, lest I lose my soul in hell. But remember: I have made you no promise of help of any sort whatever, stated or implied.”
He knew the reason why he made that speech. It was, that discipline, convention, common sense, tradition, sense of the proprieties and fear all warned him he should turn his back on the woman and ride away. Slight, in a sense, though it was, it was his first act of genuine rebellion.
Then dangerous new courses, to his gaze
By light of inward anger, through the lense
Projected of bewilderment, amaze
Until he wonders at his own and other men’s
Long loyalty to ruts of ready-made
Time-rotted rule. These new ways lure
Until he sees them deadly. Then afraid
He turns, so safe the old were and so sure.
CHAPTER FIVE
“How far to the northward of this place does the Ki
ng’s writ run?”
SHE led into a room that looked like an ancient armory, but the racks and hooks on the walls had been hung with Bokhara curtains and there was a probably priceless Persian rug on the flagstone floor. There was no window; fresh air entered through holes roughly pierced and covered with silk gauze to keep out insects; a smaller door led to a pantry and kitchen, and there was one woman — deaf and dumb as it transpired — who came and went like an automaton. A table had been laid for two, with marvelous linen and porcelain, flowers on the table, fruit, and such coffee as only rarely greets men’s nostrils except in company where cooking and philosophy are parts of the same thing. There were candles, and by their light as he sat down facing her, McLeod could read those blue eyes better than he had done, and interpret the curve of her full, yet not exactly sensuous lips. He decided she was not unlike himself in some respects, which was to say she would be difficult to dissuade from a chosen course. He decided, too, that she was the handsomest woman he had ever seen, but that made him all the more cautious.
“You suspect me, of course, of being the vulgarest sort of adventuress,” she began, “and if you omitted the vulgarity you would be almost right. I can’t help my heredity. In fact, I’m proud of it. We all have to live what is born in us or else waste our lives, and I detest waste more than I do cruelty. At times it seems impossible to avoid cruelty, whereas waste is simply laziness that benefits no one. In the old days I was Lottie Carstairs.”
“Oh!”
Gup suddenly remembered now the actress who in two seasons had laughed and sung her way into the hearts of London, and then had so unaccountably vanished and been forgotten. There had been nothing in the papers about her marrying a Rajah, and it must have needed something like a miracle to procure that silence. He remembered her song about “Up in the morning early,” that all England had whistled and hummed. She had started something like a craze for early rising, with the result that servants in suburban households had been harder to retain than ever, and there had even been an editorial in the Times about it.
