by Talbot Mundy
“The old man’s cooking something,” Jeff said, as soon as they heard the bedroom door slam.
“Did he overhear me speaking to the babu?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t care what he cooks. He’ll choke on it!”
“Pity I didn’t choke him yesterday!” Jeff grumbled. “Strange is no fool when it comes to business. All the way home this morning, after we slot the tiger, he was telling me what a magnificent property this forest is. He has made up his mind to have it. That beastly babu has told him how to get it. All he’s wondering now is how to meet the Rajah of Chota Pegu without arousing your suspicion.”
“That’s all arranged,” said Ommony. “If I know Chota Pegu he’ll be here soon after breakfast with his best horse foundered under him. I shan’t be here. This is the order of the day: Chullunder Ghose rides away before it’s light. In all likelihood he’ll meet the rajah and have word with him. I leave an hour later. If I chance to meet the rajah I’ll have word with him too. You see him next, and leave him alone with Meldrum Strange. They’ll cook up something or other between them; and there’s nothing we can do until we find out what that is. There’s only one point to be careful on: are you sure the babu didn’t tell Strange about Madame Poulakis?”
“Pretty sure. Strange would have blown up if he had told.”
“If the rajah says anything to you about her — I expect he won’t — just warn him that’s a dangerous subject. If Strange once learns she’s near—”
“He’ll run! He’ll run like the wind!” said Ramsden.
“Why is he so afraid of her?”
“He’s afraid of himself. He likes her too well. He’s afraid of the papers. If he should marry her, they’d dig up the scandal about her first husband in Egypt — scareheads, and a full page in the Sunday supplement. He’s afraid the scandal might be made to stick to him. If she wins, Ommony, I’ll stick to Strange; he’ll be worth it, with her to take the brute out of him. He has imagination, brains, and a kind of courage. She’ll give him a heart.”
Ommony turned in and lay awake until after midnight, tossing and retossing the problem over in his mind. He was aware of Strange doing the same thing in the next room — brain against brain, greed against conservation, selfishness against a life devoted to the trees. But the odds were in favour of Ommony, and he fell asleep first. Fate’s dice, he felt, were loaded against the millionaire.
He was awakened long before dawn by Strange calling to Jeff Ramsden. Jeff came from his tent in pyjamas to sit on Strange’s bed, and for a while there was only audible an irregular jumble of explosions from Strange and Jeff’s deep mono-syllabic answers. But once he caught words:
“Why don’t you go straight to headquarters and have it out with the Government, if you want the forest?” Jeff insisted.
“Don’t be an ass! They’d listen to him, not me. Whatever I offered, they’d think they might get more. Odds are, they’d call in competition. Parcel it out in the end to coolie contractors. This has got to be done quietly — jockey ’em into a false position — crowd ’em to the rails, and walk away with it. Ommony’s a fanatic. You can’t buy or bulldose his sort. Nothing to do but beat ’em to it.”
“Well: I’ve told you what I think,” Jeff answered.
“You think with your biceps! You’ve a head that ‘ud make first class wienerwurst!”
Ommony fell asleep again. But he was up before dawn, helping Chullunder Ghose to mount the red horse, charging two junglis to deliver the babu safely at Chota Pegu, and seeing to it that they started off by the back way, behind the house, out of sight from Strange’s bedroom window. He breakfasted alone, and was on the way himself less than an hour later, leaving only one horse in the stable, and no chance for Destiny to missfire, because that one horse was so sore-backed from carrying Jeff’s weight that none could ride him. Strange, who disliked walking, would have to stay near the house that morning. Ommony, too, took the trail for Chota Pegu, but in no hurry. He had all the dogs with him — a sure sign he was out on no forty-mile journey. At the foot of the look-out rock he tethered the horse, with a couple of junglis close at hand to watch for leopards, then climbed the obelisk-like rock, and waited, turning a pair of field-glasses at intervals on the face of a bare hill, over whose rock-strewn summit the track to Chota Pegu zigzagged not many miles away.
It was an hour and a half before he saw a horseman hurrying along like an insect, downward among the distant rocks. Then it occurred to him there was another trail available to a man in a great hurry who knew the forest well. He called down to the junglis, and one of them started away through the trees like a phantom, followed by Diana and the other dogs. (Hereditary junglis are as dirt beneath the feet of an hereditary prince; but a white man’s dogs are not to be despised.) In course he heard barking — Diana’s echoing bell, and the yap-yap of the others. Then Diana came streaking down the lane with filtered sunlight poured on her between the trees, so that she looked like a golden god-thing. She climbed in a hundred leaps, and lay down panting, making no remark. There was nothing untoward. But the yap-yap of the other two continued, coming nearer, with now and then an angry shout from someone who, perhaps would rather not have his exact location known. Ommony pulled tobacco out, and lit his pipe. The gradually closing view of Destiny contented him.
Two dogs, belligerent and pausing every now and then to yelp another challenge, galloped into sight, climbed the rock, and lay down gasping beside Diana. The drumming of hoofs pursued them. In a minute more the Rajah of Chota Pegu reined in a sweating stallion, whose legs were trembling, glanced at Ommony’s tied horse, looked up, and nodded angrily.
“Keep your dogs chained!” he shouted. “Why don’t you thrash your junglis oftener? I’ll kill the next beast that gets in my way! Damn them! They drove me like a buffalo at milking-time! Get some decent dogs, why can’t you!”
“Come up, and rest your horse,” called Ommony. “Why blame the dogs for good luck? We might have missed each other.”
Soft answers turn away wrath sometimes. They usually turn violence into vehemence. Occasionally they take all the wind out of a man’s sails, suddenly.
“Were you expecting me?” the rajah asked; and his voice betrayed him. He had hoped to get in touch with Strange before Ommony could forewarn or prevent. Now he was wondering how Ommony could possibly have divined his purpose. He was bewildered. He felt like one who sees the rum of his calculations.
“I’m merely delighted to see you,” Ommony answered. “Come on up.”
So the rajah hitched his horse beside Ommony’s, and climbed slowly, turning matters over in his mind. He had to make some excuse for being there, at that early hour, on a horse so obviously foundered, some excuse that could not compromise him.
“Have a seat,” suggested Ommony; and the rajah produced a cigarette, after one enquiring glance into Ommony’s eyes, East studying West and learning nothing.
“What’s your rush?” Ommony asked, knocking his pipe on the rock and refilling it.
The rajah hesitated. How much had Ommony guessed? He had to answer something.
“Madame Poulakis told me of an American millionaire staying at your place,” he said at last. “She heard of him yesterday from you. I’ve never seen one of the breed, and I’m curious.”
“Almost eager,” ventured Ommony.
“Yes. I propose to invite him to call on me before she goes away. She can help entertain him.”
He knew how lame his excuse had sounded, and waited for Ommony to provide him a better cue, but Ommony was leading, not following suit.
“Did you meet anyone on the way?” he asked, with eyes averted. (If he had wanted the rajah to lie he would have looked straight at him and forced the pace.)
The rajah thought rapidly, and saw no sense in an evasion. “Only a babu, bringing back the horse I lent you yesterday.”
“Have word with him?”
The rajah thought again. He thought so long that the answer to the question beca
me obvious.
“We spoke. He’s a man I have trusted on occasion. Is he in your confidence?”
“God forbid!” said Ommony, grinning.
The rajah looked relieved, but it did not last long. Elbows on knees, pointing the stem of his pipe at him, Ommony cleared the issue and clouded it in one breath.
“See here,” he said quietly, Dutch-uncle fashion. “If you want to meet Meldrum Strange there’s no objection. He’s a free man; you’re a rajah. But — if you propose to do business with him — anything along the lines you hinted to me yesterday — count me against you. Understand? I don’t want Strange owning any of this forest — don’t want him owning even a doubtful claim to a reversionary interest. Are we clear as to that?”
The rajah nodded angrily.
“They are my personal private rights,” he retorted.
“Exactly,” said Ommony. “Then you do as you personally, privately jolly well please with them. But count me out. I refuse my official backing.”
“Ah! Hah! I understand. Unofficially—”
“Unofficially I give you this advice. If you let Meldrum Strange know Madame Poulakis is at your place he’ll stay away.”
“Thanks. You saved me then from a mistake. Aha! Downy old dodger! I see through you! Officially unbending, eh? Unofficially hoping, isn’t that it?” He slapped Ommony on the thigh in the well-known fashion of the hale and hearty West (as per instruction book of Western manners).
“Tell me: what kind of man is this Strange to deal with?”
“Hard,” said Ommony.
“Subtle?”
“No. Crushes like a python.”
“Slow?”
“Quick, I should say, when he makes his mind up.”
“Greedy?”
“Absolutely.”
“Cautious?”
“Yes.”
“What is his weakness?”
“Dread of publicity.”
“Ah!”
There was silence for about a minute, in which Ommony would have given a year’s pay for the gift of reading what was in the rajah’s mind. At the end of it the rajah stood up, straightened himself, and salaamed to the dogs with both hands.
“I apologize!” he said, with a big grin. “You saved a faux pas. You brought me to the fount of wisdom. When you visit me there shall be sheep’s bones — and no strychnine!”
He waved his hand jauntily, and started down the rock, awkwardly because of long spurs. Half-way down he turned and called back:
“Downy old dodger! After this you will retire, of course! I will meet you in Paris!”
Ommony ignored the innuendo. In India a man grows used to misinterpretation of his motives. Even if he could have proved, black on white, that Strange had not bribed him, the rajah would have continued unconvinced.
“Don’t take my horse,” he warned. “That bay’s an old friend.”
“A very old one — yet fresher than mine!”
“I won’t have him ill-treated.”
“Pooh! Use him for tiger-bait! That is all he is fit for!”
Ten minutes earlier the rajah would have deemed it dangerous to jest in that strain. Now he judged himself a sharer of Ommony’s guilty secret, with privileges accordingly. But Ommony relit his pipe and watched him canter away without letting that disturb him. Nothing need disturb a man, except his enemy find out the truth; the more lies for the enemy to lose himself among the better.
Presently he came down off the rock and rode his rounds as if the day’s work in the forest were his sole concern. There was a new fire-lane a-cutting; and he superintended that, contriving to let the hours slip by without any underlings observing that le was simply squandering time. It was high noon before he headed homeward, and met Jeff Ramsden waiting for him at the lane end, near the house.
“They’ve put you on ice;” said Jeff. “The rajah has been here all morning, and the poor fool thinks he can outwit Strange.”
“I think he can, too! grinned Ommony.
“He has offered to sell Strange his rights in the forest.”
“Has money changed hands?”
“No, but the rajah has suggested you’re corruptible!”
“I am!”
Jeff’s ponderous shape encloses an unsubtle mind that detests even the suggestion of dishonesty.
“I could have smashed the brute for hinting it!”
“What did the rajah say, for instance?”
“Nothing definite. When Strange suggested that you might have objections, the brute answered by moving his hand like this, and smiling.”
“And Strange?”
“Saw a great light suddenly! It dawned on him the cheque-book was the key to your position.”
“So it is!”
“I’m an at sea,” said Jeff. “Are you joking?”
“No. I intend to raid Strange’s bank account as surely as he means to raid my forest. Old fellow, I have sold my soul for a promise by Zelmira Poulakis,” said Ommony, grinning. “The forests must redeem me. Out of corruption shall come forth trees—”
“This is over my head,” Jeff grumbled.
“So shall the trees be in time!”
“Ommony, I warn you: Strange has teeth! Take his money on his terms, and he’ll grind you to the ground. Many a man has rued the day he took a—”
Jeff hesitated. Ommony filled in the word.
“ — a bribe from him? I’ll take blood-money. He and the rajah—”
“They’re thick as thieves,” said Jeff.
“Thick or thick-headed?” asked Ommony.
“Strange is playing with fire made of ennui, debt, and the lure of a gay city, He’ll burn his fingers, Jeff, and come to me for salve and bandages. You wait and see.”
“I know Strange, and you don’t,” Jeff answered dubiously.
VI.— “C.O. TO Z.P. Z.P. TO C.O.”
“C.O. to Z.P. Hold the fort. Let nothing persuade you to leave the palace until further advice from me. Be sick if necessary. Please feed the dog before sending her back.”
In the small, file-littered office behind his bedroom Ommony folded the slip of paper and tucked it under the leather loop inside Diana’s collar. Then he pulled out Zelmira’s handkerchief and let the hound smell the vague, unusual scent.
“Go quick!” he ordered.
The hound’s tail drooped. She detested errands so far away from Ommony, but was too well used to them to hesitate. As if she had been reproved she drew her tail tight under her and slunk out, but broke into a trot the moment she left the house, and within the minute was extended in the long, elastic canter she could hold all day.
Ommony had begun to see daylight through the words; but the rajah was in a quandary. He stayed to lunch, and used every artifice he could invent for decoying Ommony into a téte-â-téte. But that astute individual purposed neither to advise him further nor to arouse suspicion by refusing. He could not even be tempted into a corner by the sight of a new, gold-plated pistol. He was depending on Destiny, in league with the fire “made of ennui, debt, and the lure of a gay city.” Prodding at Destiny impatiently is apt to bring the importunist down under the flaming wheels, so his artifices for avoiding private conversation were better invented than the rajah’s for procuring it. Even the excuse that the stallion was unfit for the journey home availed nothing; while the beast was resting Ommony employed himself among the new plantations on his own horse, and in the end the rajah had to ride away on the stallion uncomforted by wisdom from his host.
Then Ommony took tea on the verandah, under the guns of Strange’s arrogant contempt.
“That stuff’s the undoing of the English!” Strange volunteered. “They sip tea like old women — even in the Bank of England. It’s the symbol of England’s decadence.”
“You think we’ve fallen far yet?” Ommony asked him.
Strange snorted. “You’re succumbing to the same degeneracy you’ve imposed on conquered Peoples — just as Rome did. That rajah’s a case for you. Intelligent
in a superficial way, like a monkey. I don’t doubt his ancestors were men, who could seize, administer, and keep; they’d know enough to rule. That fellow’s delighted like a child with a new toy pistol — spineless — no initiative; he’s a product of afternoon tea and English education!”
The light back of Ommony’s eyes was of a deeper amusement than the outburst seemed to warrant. But Strange by habit scorned the men he proposed to have the better of, and the strongest are blind when in that mood. It is on written record in Millsville, N.H., that Meldrum Strange at fourteen was turned out of Sunday school for insisting that, if he had been Goliath, not only would he have crushed David at long range with a big rock, but that he would have been right to do it.
“I hate to see the world stand still. Progress!” he insisted. “‘That’s the proper keynote. Progress!”
After dinner that evening he resumed the topic. He was still laying law down, lecturing Ommony on the proper use of opportunity, when Diana slunk up through the shadows to the verandah and lay down at Ommony’s feet. She was so quiet that not even Jeff observed her. The other dogs took no notice. Ommony slid his hand down to feel for a message in the loop under the collar, found what he expected, snatched it out, and shouted in Tamil:
“Boy! Bring the flashlight!”
“Care to come, Jeff?” he asked, explaining nothing, but leading the dog by the collar, away from Strange, around the corner of the verandah to where a side-door, seldom used, provided access near the bathroom. The servant brought the flashlight.
“Warm water in a hurry!” Ommony commanded.
“Blood!” said Jeff, fingering the dog’s shoulder.
“I thought at first it was a blow from a leopard,” said Ommony, “but you see, there’s a hole in here and out there. It must have left off bleeding some time ago. No serious damage. Hurts her, though.”
