Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Yes, I know,” said the Chief Commissioner.

  The Moslem member of his council, whom he liked but dreaded because of his gimlet-like ability to bore through screens of platitudes to the underlying, unformed judgment, sat beside him on the Government House verandah where, over a breakfast table, in view of the everlasting hills, the conversation usually shaped the ultimate decisions of a council.

  “This mean’s God’s own trouble,” said the Moslem. “He has thrashed an officer in the presence of witnesses, and the news has leaked out.”

  “Glint took care it did,” said the Commissioner. “And he has run away. Is he mad?”

  “I hope so. That would be such an easy solution. Send him home and let him cool off.”

  “But if he is mad, and if he escapes death, he may join the Amir. You have sent police after him? You had better send for a hundred thousand men to defend the border. I don’t believe you realize the risk of an invasion by the Amir.”

  The Commissioner shrugged his shoulders, suggesting indifference in order to hide sensitive concern. He knew what the Moslem member did not, that almost all the available troops were needed to overawe India itself and prevent simultaneous rebellion in three provinces.

  “The police are Pathans — Moslems. Surely you don’t want him shot by a policeman? In my opinion — perhaps I am prejudiced — it would be a very bad thing, tending to destroy discipline, if an officer — even an exofficer of your race — should be shot by a Pathan policeman. The news would be all over Peshawar in a moment. Human life is too cheap as it is. It would become cheaper. Perhaps I understand the Moslem psychology better than you do. It is a good thing that the person of the British officer is regarded as something almost sacred. Reduce or remove that restraint, and you will have every uncivilized and half-civilized savage who thinks he owes a grudge taking the law into his own hands. Those of us who are civilized and educated recognize that. As long as British rule lasts here, it must be rule, not riot-law. The persons of your countrymen must be inviolable.”

  “What do you suggest?” asked the Commissioner.

  “I would suggest this. He has probably ridden up one of the passes leading northward. In other words, he is beyond the border. I would send some one to pass the word quietly among the Hillmen that if he should be shot beyond the border there would be no questions asked and no reprisals.”

  “Can you imagine me doing that?”

  “Disagreeable, of course, but duty wisely carried out is not often amusing to a man of honorable motive like yourself. You know very well that if he should be shot beyond the border it would be hushed up in any event. There might be questions asked, and threats made. But reprisals? You know there would not be any — not in the circumstances. And now let me try to make my opinion clear to you. If he should be shot beyond the border, without word having gone forth that he may be shot with impunity, that would be a bad thing. But if word should be secretly sent that he may be shot with impunity, the psychology would be altogether different and it might be a very good thing. McLeod looks like an important person, even if he is not. It might be the spark in the powder-barrel. It might cause them to throw in their lot with the Amir. And if he invades India — you know — they reason like children. They are marvelous fighting men, and to them murder is sport, but they are much more simple in their thought processes than they are sometimes given credit for. If the Amir of Afghanistan could count on the allegiance of the Tribes he would invade India to-morrow.”

  A bullet-headed, gray-haired man of fifty was announced, greeted with something approaching astonishment and offered breakfast, which he accepted. It took him an appreciable time to suppress irritation but he was carefully, and even more than carefully polite to the Moslem member of the council.

  “‘Morning, Habib’ullah — glad to see you looking bright-eyed. Not so worried about the Amir as you were, eh? Legal affairs keep you busy? Snow you under, some day! Same as a bridge will fall on me and bust my reputation. But I always did thank God my job is public works. No money in it, but you need no brains.”

  “How did you get here, Trowbridge?” the Commissioner asked.

  “Plane. And by the way, there should be something done about it. These damned idiotic orders against civilians getting a lift will lead to serious trouble. Some day there’s going to be a crisis, and nothing done about it because some squirt of a pilot quotes his orders and tells a civilian to keep his trotters in the mud. God-dammit! Know what I did? I told that young brass-faced whippersnapper about Admiral Nelson — telescope to his blind eye and all that blather! What you bet me they don’t break him for having brought me here?”

  The eggs came. With his spoon he smashed the top off one of them as if it were a flight commander’s head.

  “God-dammit!” he said, “I’ll have to save that youngster somehow. They’ll break him as sure as tape’s red. I wonder why they can’t make decent coffee anywhere except in the United States? Yours not any worse than other people’s. You mind oaring in? The youngster’s name is Percy — Percy Simkins — wouldn’t you know he’d have a name like that? But he’s a nice boy. He deserves to be saved for a crash later on. Mind speaking for him?”

  “I can probably drop the right word. But why your hurry?”

  A second egg was decapitated with a sudden sideswipe of the spoon.

  “That ass McLeod, of course. The man’s an idiot, but he’s worth as many Glints as there are hairs on a hog’s back. Glint tried to get us to P. S. A. him at Dera Ismail Khan. Personal malice all over the proposal — Glint at his usual game of working off a grudge. I knifed it with a nod to Curtis, who could hardly sit at his desk he was so rotten with malaria.

  Glint got a magistrate’s summons against McLeod for assault on a spy who was eavesdropping under the fly of McLeod’s tent. I don’t believe Gup did it. What does he care who spies on him? Anyhow, some one flogged the spy, and Glint swears he saw it happen. Glint, as usual, produces corroborative native testimony. Glint goes out to serve the summons — meets Gup — an exchange of compliments — Gup thrashes Glint — unfortunately doesn’t give him half what any one of us would like to hand him — and there’s your story — all of it.”

  The Commissioner looked uncomfortable. “No,” he said, “unfortunately not all.”

  Trowbridge snapped his teeth into a piece of toast and munched savagely. He wiped his mustache. It bristled.

  “The Jullunder woman? You believe in that mare’s nest?”

  “Have to. Can’t avoid it. Information received.”

  “Shoot. Why not, and save time? I’m on the docket — so is Habib’ullah. She put it over on Gup McLeod? I’d sooner believe he’d joined the Amir! He may have turned Bolshevist. He may believe the Soviets are the new dispensation and that the Amir is the arm of destiny. Some Scotsmen do that kind of thing. But Gup and an adventuress? Never!”

  “You can look at the files in my office after breakfast. No, I have no information that she actually roped him. But she passed over the border with a string of mules and camels late last night, and information is that Gup McLeod’s horses and tents were in the string. I don’t know yet where he is — not actually.”

  “Police after him?”

  “Yes, but they haven’t an earthly chance. The hell of it is that Glint was right. I know of nothing in the world more maddening than to have the predictions of a person of Glint’s caliber come true. If any one but he had told us the Jullunder woman was cooking mischief we would have paid more attention to it, and incidentally to her. But we were busy in other directions. She has slipped out of reach. It’s one of those damned things that happen. And what is almost worse, we’ll be saddled with Glint for years to come — no shaking him — he’ll get the credit, and he’ll make it hot for everybody. You know he has powerful friends in London? He may even force my resignation if the whole story comes out.”

  “You don’t understand how to deal with Glint. Give him his head and he’ll hang himself. Flatter him instead of ge
tting in his way. Flattery poisons ’em; they go crazy and come a cropper. However, meanwhile what? You’d better send me up to survey a road from here to the Karakorum Mountains. I know Gup. He knows me. If I find him he will listen.”

  “Might do worse, Trowbridge, and might do better. But you’re—”

  “Fat-headed and full-gutted, yes, I get you.”

  “You’re a valuable man and badly needed here.”

  “Well, where is Tom O’Hara?”

  “He should be here now. I sent for him at sunrise. He’s a difficult devil to find when you want to lay your finger on him, but the Air-Force knew where he was. They sent a plane.”

  “He’s here then. I saw the plane coming. It was on the sky-line when I landed.”

  “Right you are, here’s Tom O’Hara.”

  “‘Morning, sir. Thank you, had breakfast.”

  The ugliest London Irishman who ever lived sat down at the Commissioner’s right hand, shoving his chair well back so that he could read three faces at the same time. He had red hair. A round, owlish face was liberally peppered with freckles of all shapes and sizes, in the midst of which a nose as predatory as an owl’s beak curved into a scrubby red mustache. A pair of very lively, windy-gray eyes seemed to look almost from the inside of his head through deep cavities spaced wide apart. He had come in haste, unshaved, so the reddish stubble argued with his red tie, and with the madder color of the flannel suit he wore. He had a large ruby ring on one finger of a hand that was almost as hairy as his head. His feet, for his height, which was hardly five feet seven, were enormous, and he was of rather heavy, stocky build without an ounce of surplus fat. He could smile at will with eyes or mouth, and at moments, when he used both, he looked hardly human because irregular wrinkles appeared and the freckles moved in waves. He offered no excuse for not wearing a uniform.

  “O’Hara, the ex-Ranee of Jullunder crossed the border last night.”

  “I knew ut, sir. I said ut. Why wouldn’t she? Eighteenth of April last year, half after four of the afternoon, I turned in details of her link-up with something like half of the chiefs this side of Kabul. I said ut then — she’ll cut loose. I wrote ut. Look ut up and see.”

  “I never saw that report,” said the Commissioner. “You turned it in at Delhi?”

  “As per orders. Took a receipt, too.”

  “Well, it’s too late to look into that now. Gup McLeod went with her — or if not with her, let us say went also. Do you see what trouble that many mean?” The owl eyes blinked twice. “Couple o’ hot ones!” His voice grew hoarse under emotion. “A woman’s pipe-dream of an independent kingdom in the Hills, plus a man in a rage at injustice! And the Amir in Kabul — ?” He whistled.

  “Suggest anything?” asked the Commissioner. “She may be intending to join the Amir. If reports are true, he thinks seriously of invading India.”

  “The Amir is married. The ex-Ranee of Jullunder is a one wife woman,” said Tom O’Hara.

  “Isn’t McLeod a possibility? Might she not be in love with him — and he with her?”

  “Hell, I said ut! She’ll have half Asia at her back in no time. What’s the use of having men like me and Jimmy Oxshot, who do our work like a nursemaid combing Katie’s hair for hen-lice, if you’re to let ’em slip through after we’ve given you the info, all in black and white? I told ’em about Gup McLeod six weeks ago. All that man needed was a job o’ work. I said ut. I said: put him in charge of a leper colony, or set him to catching dacoits. He’ll go wrong, I said. I wrote ut. I snaffled a snooty reprimand. I was told to mind my business.”

  “Too bad, but such things happen in the occasional confusion of inter-departmental business. With your present understanding of the situation, what do you suggest can be done?”

  “There’s nobbut one thing to be done. I’ll do ut. I’ll go after them.”

  “When can you start?”

  “Now — one hour.”

  “How many men will you need?”

  “None. Pick ’em up beyond the border. Take ’em from this side, they tell who you are. Provisions, tents — steal your canned stuff and they shoot you for the value of a tent. Let me draw about three thousand rupees, paper money, and I’ll just melt over the border. You won’t see me again until the job’s done. But don’t send Jimmy Oxshot after me. He’s too good. We can’t work together. We’re singletons. We spoil each other’s game.”

  “You’ll try to send word, of course?”

  “Try, hell! Soon as I’ve news I’ll send ut. And my long leave’s due, so you may bet your boots I’ll not let grass grow under mine. I’ve a date with a girl in Copenhagen and if I don’t keep ut some good-looking devil with a million pounds may wipe my eye.”

  “Then you’ll go at once?”

  “I said ut.”

  And yet — all forces and all substance and the poles

  Of Fear and Valor and the measureless degrees

  Between — aye, folly and unfaith and sunless holes

  Within the rind of rancid humor, and Regret —

  Aye, sin itself, are parts of the All-seeing. These unfold

  Life out of death, death fading from the Light within,

  False glitter falsely leading to the unguessed gold.

  There is a value even in disaster, so a use for sin.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “The Serpent’s Mouth! And by Allah, was there ever such a serpent?”

  EMOTION produces fatigue more swiftly than physical strain does. Gup McLeod did not realize he had missed a night’s sleep and had ridden more than fifty miles, until Rahman drew rein in the midst of a jumble of boulders that provided an almost perfect camp-site. There was no camp — only Pepul Das and three camels. Perhaps the natural environment suggested tents, and they in turn suggested weariness. Gup knew he was tired, all at once, to the verge of hysteria, which assumes almost as many disguises as there are individuals to suffer from it. It made him afraid of fear — afraid to yield to anything less all-conquering than death. A long sleep might have brought in its wake a calmer view of his difficulty; he might have realized he had friends, who would believe his story, or who would at any rate pretend to believe it for the sake of saving him from Glint’s notorious malice.

  He might have been willing to camp in that spot, had Rahman offered. But Rahman had roped and trained too many horses to be in doubt for a moment what course to take with this mere human he was handling. Doubtless he and Pepul Das were also weary, and the horses had had enough of it, but weary horses, with their girths loosened, still can follow, and men can wear down any animal that breathes — including one another.

  “Where are my tents and horses?” Gup demanded. But that was habit — Scots frugality maintaining that a man should keep strict account of his own possessions, otherwise they soon belong to some one else. He did not really care.

  Pepul Das glanced at the pupils of Gup’s eyes, then at Rahman, who nodded.

  “In a safe place, Huzoor. I will lead you to them.”

  “And my servants?”

  Rahman intervened. “Huzoor, if a servant can follow his master, he is good; he may himself become a master. If not, he is no better than a bedbug, in love with his own belly, sucking the blood of this man until the next comes along, whom he will suck more skilfully. I took the liberty of ordering those servants tested, and lo, they are not. By Allah, they are probably already buying false testimonials in Peshawar, unless Glint’s informers have arrested them. It may be they are being whipped in secret, like com on the stalk, for evidence against your Honor. Let us ride on.”

  Little things, like last straws, seem the most overwhelming. Gup had no particular affection for his “bearer” and three dissolute saises, who had to be watched to prevent them from selling the horses’ corn; he had not even intended to keep them any longer than it would take him to find better ones, and there could hardly be worse. But their loss now seemed to take away the last remaining vestige of his honor, in addition to the obvious fact that his havi
ng deserted them would add one more link to the chain of circumstantial evidence against him.

  “Did you pay them their wages?” he asked.

  “No,” Rahman answered. “For, by Allah, who are we that we should use your Honor’s money? And unless the money that was in your Honor’s trunk is there yet, Pepul Das shall learn how his flesh feels without a covering of skin.”

  Unpaid servants! What an opportunity for Glint to get in caustic asides about his not being even a gentleman! And an unpaid club bill, he remembered. They would post him at the club, he supposed, and then summon a special meeting to cancel his membership. He began to feel dirty, not realizing that he only needed a bath; the sweat and the dust from the long ride felt like moral dirt.

  “Let us go,” said Rahman.

  Gup mounted a kneeling camel. What did he care? He watched with a sort of numb detachment while Rahman overcame the stallion’s objection to the hated smell, fastening both horses by a short line to the knob on the camel’s saddle. Then away, with the velvety, rhythmical swing that eats up distances as nothing else on earth does. Those were trained Bikaniri camels — gaunt, unlovely specters grumbling at survival from the eons when there were no men to make them earn their fodder. There was nothing awkward in their awkward-looking gait; they had been trained to waste no motion and to use not one unnecessary ounce of energy. Each cushioned stride went forward, all the way, and because it is only waste that sets up inconvenience the movement was elastic and almost hypnotic. Gup slept fitfully.

  It is easier to sleep on camel than on horseback, if the camels are not baggage beasts. But such sleep, waking in starts at intervals to grab the saddle under the impression he was falling, became a series of disjointed evil dreams, not restful to the body, and a dozen times more wearing on mind than waking speculation would have been. The narrow gorge into which they passed, near sunset, resembled the pictures of Dante’s hell-gate, with nothing lacking except the legend notifying any one who entered to abandon hope. Deep gloom already filled the gorge, whose ribs of gneiss and limestone took fantastic shapes. A dark sky, bellying with low clouds, dimly reflected the sunset and made darkness visible. The formless, first beginnings of the night mist moved on the evening wind like stuff from which shivering phantoms gather veils to hide their nakedness. Suddenly, as the sun set, a splurge of angry crimson spread itself against the belly of the clouds, filling the gorge with red-hot color that, nevertheless, held no heat, only horror. And then night, full of startling mysterious sounds, and a cold wind sighing amid crags and caverns.