by Talbot Mundy
“All right. Come up to the verandah.”
“And spill beans! Sahib, I can say no in seven languages. Will one suffice?”
Ommony glanced sideways, but Jeff had already taken the hint; he strolled to the verandah to keep Strange occupied.
He suspected this man might be of the secret service, that employs the unlikeliest individual. But there was no signal. The babu, having ascertained by peering around the flower-bed on hands and knees that they actually could not be overheard, made ready to enjoy himself. Eyes, gesture, attitude betokened mystery.
“Mellidrum Strange—” he whispered.
“What of him?”
“Is here?”
“What of that?”
“She is there!” said the babu, gesturing, thumb over shoulder.
Ommony looked startled, and corrected that too late to spoil the babu’s exquisite satisfaction. However, he made an effort to seem ignorant.
“Who is she?”
“Most glorious of feminines! Amazing woman! Oh! Ah! Wonderful! This enraptured babu brings compliments of memsahib Zelmira Poulakis to Ommony sahib, who is therefore enviable.”
Ommony turned his back for a moment to consider. The East can read thought fairly accurately if allowed to watch the thinker’s eyes and face, and it seldom pays to betray concern.
“Is she at the station?” he demanded, turning again suddenly. He had not quite mastered irritation; Zelmira’s move appeared ill-considered, and she a shallow-minded female after all.
The babu almost chuckled, but refrained from prudence. Ommony’s toe was too near, and the dog was just behind him.
“Self am strategist.”
“I asked, where is she?”
“Not so. The sahib asked, is she at the station? She arrived at a station, let us hope. This babu, not having seen his goddess since Sissoo Junction at hour of midnight, train being belated, can only surmise her ladyship’s present whereabouts. Will hazard guess subject to modification by feminine caprice.”
“Where is she?” Ommony demanded sternly.
“This babu, having changed trains at Sissoo Junction, hazards guess her ladyship may now be at Chota Pegu — in direction as thumb points — across forest — guestess of three-gun rajah of same ilk.”
Ommony’s face resumed its normal cheerful He had fought the Rajah of Chota Pegu to a conclusion long ago, over grazing rights and forest boundary, as victor using his influence afterwards to increase the royal revenue by getting an anachronistic tribute payable by the rajah to central government abolished. In consequence rajah had added an elephant to three that formed the tripod of royal dignity, and the men were now as close to being friends as fox might be with badger — mutually tolerant, at least.
“Am intimate in counsels of Rajah of Chota Pegu,” said the babu. His air was less of than of possession. Ommony instantly suspected blackmail.
“How did Madame Poulakis come by your services?” he demanded.
“Fortunately!” said the babu. “Self was, as Yankees say, up against it, perambulating Delhi in vain search of occupation for support of wife and numerous dependents. Was shabbiness personified, approaching hotels by back way only, much ashamed. Like Romeo, beholding vision of radiant love on hotel upper-floor balcony by moonlight — tourist presumably — too well dressed in view of income-tax for wife of British officer — sought means of approach to offer services as guide, same gainful, generally. Was spurned forth from back-entrance by officious Punjabi dippity-steward with soul for sale. Returned and purchased same for one rupee eight annas, thus obtaining access to upper landing, whence to glorious creature’s balcony was one step. Climbed over and sat down in deep shadow of potted palm tree, to meditate.”
“You mean to listen?”
“Same thing, sahib. Recent arrival addressed as Charley, picturesquely indignant at unknown personage named Melidrum Isstrange, held forth, she protesting with much amusement. In vino veritas; in anger indiscretion, which is better. This babu ascertained much that otherwise finding lodgment among thorns or stones, as in Christian parable, might have been unreproductive. Summoning courage to approach expensive suite of rooms by door in corridor, knocked and offered to tell fortunes. Sahiba — glorious sahiba — fell, as Yankees have it. Secret of successful fortune-telling is to tell what customer intensely desires to hear. Was omniscient in that respect.”
“I suppose you told her she would marry Mr. Meldrum Strange,” said Ommony, grinning.
“Nay, sahib. I said he will have unmerited but enviable destiny to marry her, thus disarming indignation of Charley sahib and encouraging her ladyship in one breath, wisdom being two-faced, looking both ways.”
“And she engaged you as guide?”
“Nay, sahib; as philosopher and friend, same drawing more emolument. Who can treat friend with parsimony, or philosopher with mistrust? Being deep in confidence of Rajah of Chota Pegu, knowing your honour’s reputation — and aware by meditative process aforesaid of your honour’s intention to save this forest from hoppers of western industry — natural gift for strategy overwhelmed this babu with agenda, naturally. No sleep that night. Self-made reservations on morning train. Self-sent cryptically worded telegram to Rajah of Chota Pegu, giving also letter to sahiba, same flattering him deeply and explaining nothing. Now am here, awaiting your honour’s good will and cogitation.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Not having one, can’t say. Put cat and dog in bag and agitate same. Fight ensues. Pour chemicals together. There is combination. Place parties to problem at strategic intervals. Game begins. It plays itself, with subventitious assistance from all and sundry. Desire, thou seed of Karma, what amusement thou providest for the gods!”
“Where’s Mr. Charley Wear now?” Ommony, demanded.
“Escort to her loveliness. Amazing individual! He likes; he loves her not; whereas this babu loves her, and exceedingly dislikes her restlessness, most discommoding to person of portly configuration. Krishna! You should see them dance together in station waiting-room when trains are late! She carries phonograph as baggage.”
“Any message for me?”
“As aforesaid, sahib-compliments.”
“Nothing else?”
“Sahib, compliments are all-embracing. Charley sahib, having sung your honour’s praises, sahiba — sits and waits.”
“Um-m-m! Was there nothing about a promise?”
“Much! Am promised old-age competency if affair of heart succeeds.”
Ommony’s face clouded. Long familiarity had made him alert to the Indian trick of obliging the questioner, by strictly defining what he wants to know, to admit the questioned into confidence. Thereafter follows blackmail, subtle or crude as the case may be, but as inevitable as the day that follows night.
“This is unsatisfactory to me,” said Ommony.
Chullunder Ghose, too wise a strategist to fool himself, conceded a reverse.
“There were words this babu did not understand. Incomprehension being cause of mystification of principles — choosing, therefore, discretion as better part of—”
“Out with it! You don’t have to understand a message to deliver it.”
“Sahiba said: ‘Say this: I will be as Esther with Akazuerus!’”
“Good!” remarked Ommony, and grinned again. He has a baffling kind of grin. “Get your gossip over with the servants,” he added’ sarcastically, “They’ll be curious to know all about this.”
“Sahib, in propria persona am dumb discretion, absolutely!”
“Well: if they learn anything I shall know who has told them. Barring that, make yourself at home.”
“Sahib, after light refreshment would prefer to rejoin Fountain of Astonishment at Chota Pegu—”
Ommony’s laugh cut the argument short.
“There’s too much at stake for your personal preferences and mine to have any weight at all, babu. Stay here, and confer with me on my return. You understand me?”
“Sadly!”
“Disobey’and deal with me!”
“Sahib, with what reluctance would I do the first! To deal with your honour is a privilege.”
“A privilege that hurts at times!” said Ommony. “All right, stay here and entertain yourself.”
Without pausing to consider what the babu might regard as entertainment, he returned to the verandah. “Sorry. Urgent business on the other side of the forest. Can you and Jeff amuse yourselves?” he asked Strange. And Strange, with a second tiger to his bag in mind, made departure easy.
So Ommony set off on his lean grey pony at a canter, with the staghound careering in advance and the inevitable jungli, rag in teeth to keep the flies out, racing like a black phantom on foot behind. It was part of the honour of those naked forest men never to let out of sight the one white man who understood them, and whom in part — at times — they thought they understood too.
The forest is long and wide, butt Chota Pegu lies on a promontory, as it where, projecting far into an ocean of trees. From Ommony’s bungalow to the rajah’s palace is hardly forty miles, although by train, including the wait at Sissoo Junction, the journey would take a day and a night. So it was only a little after one that afternoon when the sweating pony steadied to a walk between low houses built from the debris of ancient cities, Diana flopped panting in the shade of a high wall, the jungli followed suit, and Ommony, dismounting, hammered with the butt of his riding-whip on a gate so old that the iron studs had rusted themselves loose and shook as the struck wood quivered. There was a long pause. Then a bell rang, as it does in temples to announce the presence and the service — one clear note and overtones ascending all the way to heaven. A voice, in which a million years of melancholy seemed to find expression, gave an order and the flower of the rajah’s bodyguard — four men in crimson and yellow uniform — opened the gate with dignity.
Followed interchange of royal courtesy. Ommony, official tyrant and accommodating friend, stood while the army of four presented arms and a bare-legged man with a bugle blew a fanfare, cracked, but creditable since he did his best. Ommony’s right hand went to his helmet-rim in the clean, curt fashion of the West, and then came the rigorously conventional question and reply between him and the turbaned officer, as to health, the crops, the city’s peace, and the probable date of the next monsoon.
It would be ascertained whether His Highness was at home and could give audience. Ommony was offered an ancient stool in the shade of a much more ancient tree, while half the army went to find out what all already knew. Compliments were presented — more salutes; Ommony mounted the indignant grey, who had earned a respite, and rode behind the army up a long drive between old sar trees, preceded in defiance of all convention by Diana. But the jungli remained in the street; as the descendant of a race that once ruled half the earth, such trumpery was not for him. He was afraid of it. Perhaps the racial memory had made him wise, as it makes wolves wise, with instinct. Then the palace door, wide open; but ceremony to be gone through first. A great umbrella trimmed with glass was raised over Ommony’s head while he dismounted. Two menials removed his riding-boots and gave him embroidered slippers in their place — a great concession, for custom demands bare feet across the threshold. Shabby, but important men in turbans bowed and walked backwards before him, as the pony was led away and Ommony, leaving Diana at the door, entered into the cool gloom of the palace.
Very little, but too much modern vandalism had crept into that back number of the world’s volumes of changing manners. Except for some Tottenham Court Road furniture, ridiculously set between antiquities, the place was as it had been for three centuries, low-ceilinged, stately, down at heel, and quiet — with the quietness that the noise of a phonograph emphasized. The thing was playing “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” and the racket emerged between curtains at a passage-end.
On the right was the door of the durbar-hall, and Ommony was led through that into a room about thirty feet by twenty, lined with teak and polished. There was no furniture; visitors were expected to stand in the presence; but at one end on a red-carpeted low dais was a gilt and a red silk covered chair of the Napoleonic period, that served as throne. Over that was a tasselled, square umbrella of native embroidery.
There was a pause then of at least five minutes, for sake of the conventions, Ommony waiting bolt upright in the midst directly in front of the throne, wiping the back of his neck with a handkerchief, because there was no punkah, and through the windows, that gave on to a deep verandah, very little air came in.
Then pageantry awoke. A bell rang, and through a door on the right of the throne came the rajah and his whole official family. The rajah, without seeming to notice Ommony, took his seat, bowed to by all five radiantly dressed attendants. Two of them took position, one on either hand, each armed with a jewelled fan, with which they disturbed the sultry atmosphere; but the other three were evidently of inferior rank and did not set foot on the dais. They stood in line on Ommony’s right hand.
The men with fans whispered to the rajah, as if informing him who Ommony might be. He appeared interested, and at last looked up, meeting Ommony’s gaze directly. Ommony bowed low, and the rajah nodded. He was a lean-looking, whimsically featured man in a yellowish silk suit adorned with a minor British Order (procured through Ommony’s influence). His fingers were covered with valuable rings, but his appearance was not otherwise effeminate. He looked like one who practised more or less asceticism for the profit there might be in it, and cynicism for his own amusement — both practices diluted with a liberal amount of intellectual sensuousness.
“I hope you are well. I am pleased to see you,” he said solemnly in the language of the land, and the whole court of five beamed appreciation of his tact and condescension.
Ommony replied, and for about five minutes there was rigorously regular exchange of question and answer, without one hint of human feeling or a word said that could by any possibility be construed into importance. Then:
“I am glad to have seen you,” said the rajah, and walked out, followed by the court, leaving Ommony standing; whereat he resumed the mopping with his handkerchief. He was used to the business — knew what would happen next. Some minutes later the rajah, with the jewels off and a much less ornate suit on, pushed his turbaned head through the door Ommony had entered by.
“Come on, Ommony, old boy!” he called in English. “Are you so fond of ceremonial that you’ll stand there forever? Let’s sit under the punkah in the next room.”
They shook hands in the doorway, and Ommony submitted to be patted on the back.
“Opportune as ever! Always in the nick of time! I’ve a surprise for you!”
The phonograph tune now was “Everybody’s doing it;” however, Ommony made ready for astonishment. There was a sound of four feet slipping on a polished teak floor; but the wise man, like the adder in the Bible, stops his ears to sounds it isn’t time to hear yet. They went into a room in which comfortable couches and a shuttered twilight set the keynote, with lots of French novels scattered about, and some pictures on the walls that would have hardly passed the U.S. censorship.
They sat down vis-a-vis, and the rajah lit a cigarette, waving it airily.
“Ha — ha! Ommony, old boy, you were never more surprised in all your life than you’re going to be! Downy old dodger! You’re not the only man who can produce the unexpected! What do you think I’ve got here?”
“A new elephant,” suggested Ommony.
“Pooh! Think again. Everybody’s scandalized. My chamberlain is wondering whether I intend to abdicate! Now guess.”
“A motor-car.”
The rajah’s face clouded a moment.
“Not yet. Well, I’ll tell you, for you’ll never guess. A European lady of most exquisite breeding, looks, and attainments! She is teaching me to dance the two-step, and there will jolly well be a revolution in Chota Pegu if I don’t look out! And by Jove, Ommony old boy, you know, if I could afford to I jolly well would abdicate. This business of
being a petty rajah is no fun for a man of any intellect. I would like to live in Europe. Paris appeals to me.”
Ommony assumed an air of sympathy. He knew Chota Pegu’s hold on ancientry, but understood as well that moth-lure of the City of Bright Lights, Chota Pegu’s rajah was as obviously fooled as any moonstruck college freshman; out even the freshman survives the experience generally, and India has survived the worst her weaknesses can do to her. There would be reaction at the proper time.
“Paris is a great place,” he answered guardedly.
“It is, Ommony, it is! Paris is the mother-city of intellectuals. Hah! They understand there the inanity of hypocritcial convention! They see through things — live through them, Ommony! The land of Voltaire, Pascal, Rousseau — and delightful women!”
“Is your guest, then, a Parisienne?” asked Ommony.
“By birth, no. She is Greek — true offspring of a race that won at Marathon, and moulded the thinking of Rome and all Europe! She knows Paris inside out. We have been speaking of it. She is charming — exquisite! But come and see.”
Gesturing for silence, he tiptoed to a corner, where an ancient mirrored cabinet stood built into a recess in the solid wall. Searching for a key, he unlocked the central mirror, revealing a deep cupboard, whose back was nothing but the pierced carving of a wall of the room beyond. The entire room was visible, including a phonograph, with its back to a stand of ancient weapons, and Charley Wear winding it. The rajah pulled Ommony forward by the coat, and signed to him to peer though.
“Hs — s — sh!” he whispered.
Madame Zelmira Poulakis was sitting almost facing the aperture, turning over the pages of a guide-book on her lap, and talking over her shoulder.
“No, Charley, no more dancing, it’s too hot. Come and help with this. I can’t find Chota Pegu in the book; if we can’t find something about it we’ll be at the mercy of our own resources, and the fewer they are the more they’ll confuse us. Come on. Come and help me.”
Nobody had too much praised her. Ommony conceded that at first glance. The mystery remained that she was willing to devote herself to the pursuit of Meldrum Strange; but the whole world is full of the unexplainable. If she was thirty, she did not look it. If her past was wrapped in coils of Levantine intrigue, no symptom of it showed. If she was unchaste, Ommony was unobservant. Mischief sparkled an over her, as brightly as the diamonds on her left hand, but amused, not venomous. If eyes are windows of the soul, as someone says, her merry one looked out at the universe through azure panes and liked it all.
