Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Jeff Ramsden, I’ve heard of you. I think you’ve heard of me. Tell me all about this!” she demanded suddenly. “Is my brother Cottswold mad?”

  She had Ommony’s face, with the firmness but not the pugnacity — sweetness in the place of subtlety — and all her brother’s honesty of purpose shining out of young grey eyes that made the silver in her hair look almost comical by contrast. Jeff almost forgot his unseemly apparel and bare feet, in admiration of her.

  “My difficulty is,” he said, “I seem to be in everybody’s confidence. The less I say the better.”

  “Except to me. I’m trusted with secrets of State,” she answered; and Jeff believed her. She was that kind. However, he hesitated. Deep answers deep by doing as deep does, observing confidences. She respected that, and nodded.

  “Very well. Let me see Meldrum Strange.”

  “He’s in pyjamas too.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “He will!”

  “Does that matter?”

  “The gate’s not locked,” Jeff answered. “I’ll hold the horse.”

  She smiled and walked in through the gate, closing it behind her. Jeff led the horse away to where some trees provided shade, for he had no helmet; and thither Charley followed, to sit in the dust with him again, and yawn, and swear at flies, and wish there were tobacco, and behave in general as two men do who like each other well enough, but disapprove each other’s attitude.

  Not even Chullunder Ghose knew what transpired on that occasion inside the Panch Mahal. He came out looking like a man rebuked, and in answer to Jeff’s questions said that Ommony was bad enough, but his sister was the devil.

  “Did she know you?” Jeff asked him.

  “She knows too much!” he answered.

  “How did Strange like her appearance on the scene?”

  “He ran upstairs and shouted at her from upper window. She sat on side of fountain, saying she has seen many people in pyjamas, Viceroys included; will therefore wait until he shall feel brave enough to interview her in riding-suit. He came down, and they talked, this babu listening unsuccessfully. Drew closer without ostentation, and received rebuke — extremely acrid — very! Two minds with but a single thought, same being that babu is dirty person devoid of self-respect. Came forth accordingly.”

  There was no sign of Ommony. It seemed that Zelmira and Molyneux had found him, for they did not come back. Jeff, Charley, and the babu sat there flapping flies until the shadow shortened to announce approaching noon, and still no sign of anyone. Charley fell asleep. The babu dozed at intervals.

  At high noon Jeff got up and strolled toward the gate, wondering whether he ought not to investigate. Those priests might be up to more deuce. There might have been an accident. He should at least peer in through the gate and ascertain that all was well. However, the gate was locked, which rather scared him. He beat on it, imagining a thousand things.

  To his astonishment, not Strange but Miss Ommony opened it at last, and she was laughing. There was more unmixed amusement in her eyes than he remembered to have seen in anyone’s. Nor did she apologize for having kept him so long waiting. But that was deep to deep again. Her air, he thought, was rather of camaraderie — a sort of ‘you’ll know soon enough’ attitude — as if she understood his position fully, and would explain her own at the proper time.

  “Would you mind sending the babu here?” she asked him.

  So he walked back, wondering, knowing he liked her amazing well, and feeling confident she would not do anything to make the situation worse, whatever happened. He was sore with Strange, as who would not be? But loyalty to an employer or a partner (Strange was actually both) was almost the breath Jeff breathed. He felt comfortable now Miss Ommony had come, yet wondered why.

  “She wouldn’t go against her brother,” he reflected. “She’s notoriously hand-and-glove with him.”

  Puzzled, yet not so irritated as he had been, he sent the babu hurrying, and sat down for another hour, sleeping at last beside Charley. It was the babu who wakened them both at two o’clock. The horse was gone. There was still no sign of Ommony, or Molyneux, or Zelmira. The babu sat in the dust in front of them, all his dissatisfaction evaporated and a look of sanctified immodesty projecting almost a halo into the air around him. Sunlight heightened the effect.

  “Well? What?” Jeff asked him.

  “Tobacco. Cigars likewise!”

  Chullunder Ghose set them down in the dust — produced matches — struck one — passed it.

  “How did you come by these?” Jeff demanded, exhaling imported smoke.

  “This babu, beholding state of mind of sahibs, contemplating same, prayed to diverse gods for tobacco, lest ill-temper of deprivees later on make Job unendurable. Gods were very generous — I think.”

  “Where did you find ’em?” asked Jeff.

  “Outside gate of Panch Mahal — in dust. All but trod on same, emerging.”

  “What went on in there?”

  “Miss Ommony sahib went off — on horseback, this babu inducing horse to walk from here to gate. Very gentle creature — fortunately!”

  “What happened inside?”

  “Inside horse? He ate nothing. She rode outside, this babu assisting her to mount.”

  “Inside the Panch Mahal, you ass!”

  “Oh!” The babu tried to look as if he had not understood the first time. “Nothing,” he answered, more blandly innocent than ever.

  “Then why did they send for you?”

  “Perhaps to prove that nothing happened, sahib. Am exquisitely discreet witness.”

  “Strange has bought you, eh?”

  “Am poor babu, but unpurchasable.”

  “Where’s Mr. Ommony?”

  “Not knowing, can’t say.”

  Jeff hove himself erect, left Charley smoking, and walked back to the Panch Mahal, where Strange admitted him. Strange grabbed a cigar.

  “Seen Ommony?” he demanded.

  “No!”

  “Where did you find tobacco?”

  “Ommony seems to have left it outside the gate.”

  “Huh! His sister was here.”

  “I admitted her.”

  “The devil you did! She didn’t say that. Have any talk with her?”

  “Nothing to mention.”

  “See her ride off?”

  “No.”

  “Talk with the babu?”

  “Questioned him. He told me nothing.”

  Strange seemed satisfied to know that. There was a new atmosphere about him, hardly less assertive, but more pleasant. He was plainly well pleased with something.

  “What’s eating you?” Jeff demanded.

  Strange smiled aggravatingly, eyed Jeff as one appraises, say, a horse, and kept his own counsel.

  “I like to put one over on Johnny Bull,” he answered cryptically.

  “You’re the goat all right, this trip,” Jeff answered. “Don’t be a fool, Strange! Pull out of this before they make you look ridiculous. I won’t tell what I know, but I warn you. Pull out!”

  “I’d stay and watch, if I were you.”

  “It won’t amuse me to see a man of your age and dignity made the goat by a lot of Hindu priests,” Jeff retorted.

  “Take my tip and watch!”

  Strange, even in pyjamas, looked almost as he used to in New York when he paced the office floor tossing triumphant orders to a corps of clerks. He threw a chest. He clasped both hands behind him, and even kicked the fountain at the end of a to-and-fro patrol just as he used to kick the office wainscot, sitting down at once to curse and fondle his bare toe — but even so, not rabid in his rage as formerly. The pain brought water to his eyes, but he found grace to laugh at himself.

  “Why don’t you marry Zelmira?” Jeff asked him suddenly, judging that a favourable moment to surprise the underlying truth.

  Strange set his toe down and stopped swaying. He glanced up, seeming to think deeply for a minute. He looked half-astonished, as if the notion were
a new one.

  “You think she would?” he demanded.

  Jeff laughed. “Save lots of trouble,” he said.

  “She’s a nice girl.”

  “Yes, she’s nice — confounded nice! But d’you think she could endure a crabbed old fossil like me?”

  “I suspect she’s game to have a crack at it.”

  Jeff folded herculean arms across his chest and laughed aloud. If he had had clothes and shoes — or even a horse, without those — he would have started off that minute to find Zelmira and bring her there and offer the two his blessing.

  “How long before Ommony sends our trunks?” he wondered. “An elephant might make the journey and return in—”

  “Never mind,” Strange answered. “I’ve had a long talk with — er — Miss Ommony. Don’t care whether we get the clothes or not. They’ll up with doodads for the ceremony; you’ll look fine in silk and ostrich feathers!”

  “I’ll kill the man who tries to haze me!” Jeff retorted. “So Miss Ommony has been encouraging you, has she?”

  “I found her quite encouraging.”

  Strange smiled exasperatingly.

  “I’m surprised at her,” Jeff growled back. “It’s natural, I suppose, that she should take her brother’s part, but—”

  “Yes, I’m surprised at her too.”

  “I liked her. I thought she was—”

  “Yes, I like her, too, first rate.”

  “You’ll not like anyone — yourself least — before long!” Jeff assured him. “Strange, you’re off your head!”

  “Maybe, maybe. We’ve all a right to go mad if we want to.”

  “Yes!” exploded Jeff, “and take the consequences!”

  “Um-huh! Consequences. Take ’em. That’s not half-bad. Who eats crow, eh? Wait and see.”

  Jeff could get no more out of him. Strange avoided further talk by rearranging the overturned cot in the assembly hall and settling down to make up for lost sleep. In fifteen minutes he was snoring, seemingly without a worry on his mind. Jeff explored the building for a while, then wearied of that; cleaned the shotgun and rifles with a fragment of Strange’s shirt; wished there were something to read, and, wish producing nothing, rearranged the other cot and presently slept too. Their snores rose and fell like the chorus of a busy lumber-mill.

  XII.— “IS EVERYTHING READY?”

  The next few days were in some respects the most remarkable in Ommony’s adventurous career, although at the time he was too occupied to realize it. He fretted for the future of his forest like a woman with one child, and, being a man of action, it occurred to him that the only way to prevent one of those unforeseen slips that send men’s plans agley was to keep everyone else busy.

  He had to keep good-tempered and apparently serene, which in itself was difficult enough; to think in two languages, which was easy; to divine the thought of Hindu priests and a Bengali babu, in which practice had made him proficient; to foresee chance, which is impossible; and to be everywhere at once, which is mainly metaphysics. And he accomplished marvels; but all men have their limitations.

  His opinion of Strange by that time was much lower than any man may safely entertain about any other man. The trunk arrived by elephant, and he sent it to the Panch Mahal. Then, fearing that Strange might walk abroad and stumble over facts too plain to be misinterpreted, he begged his sister to see as much of the millionaire as possible and use her tact to the utmost to persuade him to stay indoors. She consented. She had always been sisterly and loyal; many a difficult negotiation Ommony had pulled off with her devoted aid. But she disgusted Jeff Ramsden by so obviously aiding in a plot that he thought outrageous.

  “Women are all cut from the same piece!” Jeff grumbled to himself, and left them as much as possible alone, strolling off for exercise whenever she put in an appearance.

  The rajah was another difficulty. Ommony managed him by harping on the Ville Lumiere string. He persuaded the rajah to get busy packing, not, however, encouraging him to leave Chota Pegu yet, for fear he might meet some high official in Bombay or elsewhere and let the cat out of the bag — a thing he would delight in doing.

  Then Zelmira Poulakis needed wisely counselling. He insisted to her that the danger was Molyneux, who might at any moment fly of the peg and stop the whole proceedings with a high hand.

  “Brass-face is a hard nut for his own sex; but he’s putty in a woman’s hands,” he told her. “He’s another of these convinced bachelors who’d rather flirt than feather a nest. Go riding with him. Use the rajah’s horses. Keep Brass-face off the lot as much as possible.”

  She was nothing if not a good sport; and a good sport, of either sex, was the one thing under heaven Molyneux admired. So Molyneux attached himself to her court as mounted baronet in — waiting, and the two rode all about the countryside with a Hindu sais behind them, who entertained the other saises in the stables afterwards with imitations of the Brass-face sahib’s Hah-hah-hah. But he could not describe Zelmira’s answering music; she laughs like Titania, which is over the head of an Indian groom’s histrionics.

  Then there was the babu. Something had bitten him. He was getting uppish. He had altogether too much to say — too many notions — too much independence altogether. He did not even clamour for emolument. The wine of the conspiracy had gone into his head. He talked of “we, ourselves, and us,” as if Ommony and he were partners, and he senior. When ordered to do one thing he frequently did another; ordered to say one thing, he sometimes said the opposite. Abused and threatened for it, he tried to look chastened, but failed, and could be heard chuckling the instant Ommony’s back was turned. Yet Ommony dared not get rid of him at that stage of proceedings. The babu knew too much.

  Besides, Chullunder Ghose would have to serve as go-between; almost as master of ceremonies. Someone who knew English and could interpret the priests’ requirements would have to be in attendance, and none except the babu was available. Ommony himself could hardly but in an appearance. He intended to witness the initiation, but from hiding, along with Charley Wear; and it was likely anyhow that Strange would object to having any white man, except his own friend Jeff, to witness rites that he felt sure Strange hoped would be outrageous.

  And that thought brought another in its wake. He knew Molyneux. He dared bet on what Molyneux would do in any given set of circumstances. Nothing less than fatal injury would restrain Molyneux from witnessing the ceremony — a certainty that presented advantages, but an obstacle as well. Objections raised by the priests themselves would weigh nothing in Molyneux’s estimate, who would present himself at the front gate, demand admittance, and obtain it. That might stop the whole proceedings.

  “Tell you what,” he said to Molyneux. “You don’t want to appear in this officially, I suppose?”

  “Dammy, sir, by Gad, no!”

  “Strange might jib at that too. He’d hate to be made a fool of in front of a uniformed British official.”

  “I don’t blame him.”

  “The rajah won’t be there, of course. The priests and he don’t hit it off. Why don’t you borrow an outfit from the rajah? You’ll look splendid in it, and Strange won’t know you’re not an Indian prince. He doesn’t care in the least what Indians think of him.”

  “Hah-hah-hah!” The monocle went into place. “Gad, Ommony By dammy, that’ud be a good joke, wouldn’t it? Think the rajah’s finery would fit me? Eh?”

  Ommony took heart of grace. As a machinegun man will test the mechanism that he knows is perfect on the eve of action; as a hunter tests a trap-fall; as a doctor feels a convalescing patient’s pulse, he could not keep himself from testing what seemed to him the one uncertain link.

  “You’ve no objection then to going through with it?”

  “By Gad, no!”

  “No fear of your calling it off at the last minute?”

  “None in the world.”

  Ommony sighed silently, relieved beyond expression, and went off for another interview with the priests, who he kn
ew might not be trusted, but whom he felt he could manage nevertheless. Molyneux was dynamite. If he exploded, nothing invented could contain or hold him. The priests were mercury, elusive and dangerous, but liable to flow downhill along the lines of least resistance.

  On the way he met Charley Wear, and stepped aside behind a garden wall to talk with him.

  “Is everything ready?” he asked.

  “Sure bet. I got the camera in place while Strange was showing your sister the inner courtyard. But it’s my belief Strange don’t care a hoot. He saw me once, and I think he recognized me. He avoids that room upstairs as if he knows my things are in there and don’t want to seem to know. The doors locked, but he’s never once tried to open it.”

  “That’s just fortunate coincidence.”

  “Well: he’s looked everywhere else. I asked Jeff what he ‘thought about it, and Jeff just snorted. He’s not fit to speak to — wanders off on his own like a bear with a sore head.”

  “Last minute nerves, that’s all,” said Ommony. “Over the top to-morrow, and all’s well.”

  “Yes. I guess it’s nerves all right. I’ve a hunch a peg loose. However, you’re running it.”

  “Everything’s in first-class shape,” said Ommony, and laughed and left him.

  Then the priests: another matter altogether. They were aloof and alone in a quiet temple that had seen its better days, perhaps, but still exuded an atmosphere of changelessness and influence. Its outer court was hidden among sar trees and surrounded by a wall on which the legends of the gods were carved with no mean skill. The centuries had smoothed and subdued all harshness, and a bell that tolled frequently suggested in mellow overtones that there was comfort in austerity — a thought improved on by the doves, that cooed all day long in an endless hymn of mother-magic.