Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “You suggest I should go home?”

  “Try. If you like, I will help you try. You have my leave to go, as the Indians say. I don’t ask your help. I will try not to see you again. See — I wash my hands of you.” She went through the motions. “Much good that will do you, if you are the man I think you are, and if you have the character I think you have. But try it.”

  Something that Joe knew was filthy — a whiff of the complaisance with which he had too often viewed his mother’s cruelties stole over him.

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll take you at your word. I’ll try it.”

  Hawkes entered the room, grinning. “All right, ladies. I found a messenger. Some o’ the Indian troopers’ll be down in half a jiffy to lick the stuffing out of Poonch-Terai’s detail.”

  CHAPTER XIV. “Better watch my step!”

  Hawkes went in search of a native gharry but it was a long time before he found one. Meanwhile, Joe went to the roof to look for what Hawkes had called the Maharajah’s “detail.” He saw a shuttered carriage standing by the corner of a side-street, its two fine horses stamping fretfully; there were two men on the box, two footmen lolling on the platform at the rear, and several men who looked like loafers near at hand. He had not watched long when a Ford car stopped two streets away and disgorged five Indian troopers, one of whom strolled casually to the intersection of the streets, hardly glancing at the two-horsed carriage, and returned to his friends who hitched themselves a little but appeared to hold no conference, although they stood in an idle-looking group. There might be something wrong with the ramshackle car; with an air of boredom they watched the native driver peer beneath the hood.

  Presently a one-horsed, two-wheeled vehicle known as an ekka arrived with four more troopers, who joined the first party, straightening their tunics but not seeming to have anything to say. The driver of the ekka left his sweating horse to peer, too, under the hood of the motor. Presently, one more man came on a motorcycle, the echo of its exhaust spattering off blind house-walls like the noise of gun-fire. He leaned his cycle against the stone pillar to which the ekka horse was hitched and joined the others. Still there was no conference; they appeared to act now like automatons guided by one impulse. They formed up two and two and marched with jingling spurs toward the side-street where the two-horsed carriage and its attendant loafers waited.

  The ensuing development was sudden. The driver whipped his horses savagely. He departed thence like a field-gun going into action, starting with such a jerk that he left the platform-footmen sprawling in the gutter, where they were pounced on by four of the troopers and kicked until no more consciousness was left than enough to drag them, bruised and bleeding, out of sight. Meanwhile, the loafers sought safety in flight, but fortune appeared not to favor them and strategy was lacking. They all ran in one direction in pursuit of the two-horsed carriage; but eight more troopers, hitherto invisible to Joe, came marching down that street toward them, so they turned back — headlong into the arms of the original ten.

  It was hardly a fight that followed, and it was not exactly massacre, since nobody was slain. It was premeditated mayhem and as close to being murder as was safe considering the awkward nature of the evidence of dead men’s bodies. Not one of the troopers used a weapon of any sort except his hands and feet, but those were swift and horribly efficient. Their victims made the gross mistake of drawing knives, thus loosing lawful indignation.

  Then Hawkes arrived at the intersection, seated on the back seat of the gharry he had hired. He stopped as if to interfere in some way, but suddenly ordered the driver to whip up his horses and vanished out of Joe’s sight. After about sixty seconds, the Maharajah of Poonch-Terai arrived on horseback with two mounted attendants; he drew rein and watched, until the beaten and tortured corner loafers recognized him and cried to him for help. He turned his back and cantered out of sight then. The troopers laughed but left off punishing their victims — let them limp away — even stopped a passing bullock-cart and made its driver carry away the worst injured. Then they straightened their tunics, returned to their own vehicles and departed by the way they first came. The whole proceeding had occupied, perhaps, ten minutes.

  Joe turned toward the wooden stair-head, not wishing to keep Hawkes and the hired gharry waiting. He found himself almost face to face with Amal, who had apparently been watching from the other side of some bed-linen hung on a clothes-line. He noticed that her dingy black sari was made of excellent material and that, though she used the outward gestures of respect, her stare was defiant. There was nothing timid or obsequious about her. Recalling Annie Weems account, he thought her eyes looked more than normally intelligent; but there was a suggestion in them of the baffled anger of a savage. He decided to speak to her:

  “Why do you follow me wherever I go?”

  No answer. She raised a corner of her sari and hid the lower half of her face with it.

  “I know you can speak English. I won’t hurt you. Why do you follow me?”

  But she acted as if she could not understand a word of English.

  “Well,” he said, “I’ve heard of your kind being hanged.”

  He wondered why he had said that. Something in the woman’s expression, or mood, he supposed had suggested it to him. Had he seen her aura, as Rita would call it? What did that mean? Vaguely, and yet in a way distinctly, he was conscious of a murky red sensation; but when he stared again at Amal there was not a trace of red anywhere about her.

  No use talking to the fool since she refused to answer. He turned away. It was dark in the upper stairway, although not too dark to see the steps; all the way down to the upper floor he saw that same dull murky red; but the peculiar part of that was that he also saw the steps and the stairway walls in their proper color. There was no red anywhere; the woodwork was black with age and the stairs were covered with a strip of dark-blue carpet. He was seeing in some way double — one way with his eyes, entirely normally — another way that seemed entirely independent of his eyes. Perhaps he had hurt his head that morning more than he supposed. But he felt all right; he had not even a trace of a headache now.

  At the foot of that flight of stairs he turned and looked back. At the top stood Amal staring down at him, dingy as ever, sharply outlined against the sky behind her, but too far within the stairhead casement to be bathed in sunlight. He saw her as she was, but also as he had never seen another human being in his life. She was outlined in that murky red, although the outline was no part of her and he could see her proper outline, too, etched by the sunlight. The dull-red waxed and waned like the light of embers blown on by an intermittent draught. He shut his eyes, to test them, and found that with them closed he could still see dull-red, although it began at once to take different shapes, condensing into long lines that were barbed where they pointed toward him.

  “Better have Muldoon examine my eyes,” he remarked to himself. But the thought of Doctor Muldoon brought to mind his mother, who undoubtedly had suborned him to destroy two women’s reputation. Suddenly the ayah laughed. She pointed at him mockingly, then checked herself and turned toward the roof.

  “Is she seeing things, too?” Joe wondered.

  He descended to the lower floor, where Hawkes was already waiting. He heard him say to Annie Weems:

  “That’s probably the end of that, Miss. Next time he’ll try some other strategy. Look out he doesn’t burn the mission and catch Rita as she pops out one fine afternoon.”

  Nice state of affairs. Two more or less helpless women up against a nineteen-gun Maharajah. What had Government to say about it? Joe decided there and then to find out. He would mention it to Cummings. The effete fool might resent it, but he would mention it nevertheless. He looked for Rita, but she had vanished.

  “She went,” said Annie Weems, “back to the temple two minutes ago.”

  “She’d make a slap-up shock-troop brigadier,” said Hawkes. “Poonch-Terai’s men took a licking in the street ten minutes back. I saw some of it. I came an
d told her. Rita popped through the hole in the line like General Byng at Vimy — through and gone before the enemy can think up a new idea.”

  “Alone?” Joe asked.

  “She’s safer alone than with a platoon,” said Hawkes.

  “She would not admit she is alone,” said Annie Weems.

  Joe objected. “Hawkes, you’d better follow her. I saw that rough stuff from the roof. I should say she’s as safe as a canary in a cageful of cats.”

  “I’d follow her,” said Hawkes, “but she said not to. Sir, it may sound comical to you, but there’s more than two or three of us who obey her absolute.”

  “All right,” said Joe, “I’ll go myself.” He thought that Annie Weems eyes smiled a little as he said that, but there was no accounting for the moods of women. Possibly she was grateful and not amused at all; he had begun to doubt his own eyes since he saw the ayah’s aura — if it was an aura — he was not all sure what an aura is. “You found a gharry? I suppose the driver can’t understand a word of English? Come out and tell him for me where I want to be driven — to the temple. Make him understand, if you can, that I want to follow Amrita to the temple.”

  Hawkes interpreted, although what he said to the gharry driver was beyond Joe’s comprehension. The man had no nose; he looked like a caricature of death, his whip a scythe, his dismal horses skeletons; he thrashed them mercilessly and the wheels began to rumble over paving stones that were cut from the debris of ancient splendor. Joe sat back and wondered what possessed him that he should feel so disturbed about a girl who had no logical claim on him whatever.

  “Am I in love?” he asked himself. “I don’t believe it.” Nevertheless, he had begun to believe it.

  He glanced backward and saw Amal following at the patient dog-trot that would have made her resemble a man — almost — if it were not for her garments.

  “Can’t see her aura now,” he reflected, screwing up his eyes to study her. “Must have been the toss I took this morning — may have busted a small blood-vessel.” But his eyes were painless and he noticed he was seeing now as well as ever. “Damn the fool, I’ll have this out with her.”

  He stopped the carriage — waited for the ayah — beckoned to her ordered her to get in and sit on the dickey-seat facing him. She obeyed without any noticeable hesitation. “Cheloh!” he commanded, and sat back to stare at the woman as the iron-tired wheels resumed their jolting to the clicking obbligato of a loose shoe. He could see no aura, but he sensed antagonism.

  “Dammit, she knows English. How shall I make her talk? Money?” He recalled her strange indifference to money when he had given her some in the Yogi’s presence. “Threats?” She would know he had no real intention of carrying them out. Anyhow, she looked like the sort who would take a whipping in stoic silence. And besides, he rather liked her — admired her determination. “You know which way Rita has gone,” he said at last. “Tell the driver. Tell him to overtake her.”

  No answer. She did not even trouble herself to grin uncomprehendingly. She met his eyes unflinching.

  “Where’s the man with the snakes?” he demanded.

  Again no answer, and no trace of embarrassment. He turned his head to see whether Chandri Lal was following, but there was no sign of him. He turned again swiftly, intuition warning him of danger; but the ayah had not moved — or, at any rate, he did not see her move. He could have sworn he almost felt a knife-point touch him. It made his skin creep.

  “Do as I tell you,” he said, “or out you get. Tell that gharry-wallah where to find Amrita.”

  She sat still for a moment, then decided suddenly to understand him — faced about, knelt on the seat and spoke to the driver hurriedly in low tones, apparently repeating some direction again and again. Joe noticed the shape of what might be a long knife underneath her sari. At last the driver made a gesture with his whip as if he understood, and the ayah resumed her former position, staring at Joe as if he were some kind of curiosity.

  “What’s the knife for?” he demanded; but she seemed not to hear, or at any rate not to understand him.

  They began to drive through crisscross streets, in which there was scarcely room to pass another vehicle and wheel-hubs scraped the wall on one side while the driver screamed obscenities at calm indifferent owners of bullock-carts, who leisurely twisted the tails of more leisurely oxen. They threaded a tortuous course between tented street-booths and piles of smelly merchandise. They crossed an ancient bridge, beneath which was no water but a most amazing smell. Joe, watching the crowds and the narrow side-streets for a glimpse of Rita, presently lost sense of direction; but when they passed the jail he recognized it, and it seemed to him then that the driver almost exactly reversed his course as they turned again into the city, straight toward the declining sun. He glanced at his watch and was surprised to discover how late it was.

  He noticed presently that their course intersected a street down which they had come three-quarters of an hour ago. He understood then.

  “I get you,” he said, laughing at himself. “Your turn now to get me. Out with you — and walk home, damn you!” He laughed again; it was the first time in his life that he had ever taken a woman for a drive and made her walk back. He supposed he should kick her out into the street, but he felt strangely unresentful — amused at his own stupidity and rather admiring the ayah for getting away with the trick. “Here, wait a minute — tell that gharry-wallah to drive me straight to the hotel.”

  It was too late to go to the temple if he hoped to be back in time to dress for dinner. Rita must have reached the temple long ago, if that was where she had really gone, and if she had not been kidnaped on the way there. Somehow or other, the thought of Poonch-Terai acquiring Rita for his harem or seraglio, or whatever the scoundrel called his collection of women, made Joe hotter under the skin than even his mother’s tyrannies had ever made him.

  One thought merged into another. He imagined himself riding to Rita’s rescue — plain Joe Beddington on horseback, making d’Artagnan look like ten cents.

  “Guess I’m younger than I thought!” He had a sense of humor anyhow; he could laugh at himself. He could even laugh at the totally strange emotion that surged in him when he thought of Rita. “Am I a stage-door Johnny? What’s come over me? Would I care to marry her?” He pondered that a long time as the comfortless gharry bounced and rumbled toward the outskirts of the city. He decided he didn’t know. It was a serious business to marry a woman.

  He might make her his mistress. That was what sensible men did — he could think of scores of them. If a woman hasn’t social position, make her your mistress and consult your lawyer at the same time. Have to look out for the Mann Act and the immigration laws. A few awkward situations now and then, no doubt, too, but what the hell — life’s full of awkward situations. Not so good for credit, either. A lot of snooping hypocrites, with rented pews in church and their souls in their pocketbooks, soon pass the word around if a man with a reputation worth attacking keeps a woman on the quiet. Swine, he’d seen ’em at it — had had the word passed to him dozens of times had seen what happened to the offender’s credit.

  “If I’d sense I’d not see her again. Get out of India. She doesn’t want to see me; if she did, she’d have had word with me again before she left the mission. Interesting girl, though — never yet liked any woman half as much. Innocent? I wonder. She spoke without shuddering at the thought of being kidnaped for a harem. Better pull out — leave her to Annie Weems and her own devices — save her from mother’s teeth and claws by clearing out and taking mother with me.”

  But he was afraid of his mother. He knew it and laughed at himself. As he neared the hotel he ordered the driver to stop, overpaid him recklessly because he did not know what the proper fare was, and walked, to avoid being seen by his mother. He wanted to get to his room and lie down for a while before dressing for dinner. Dinner at eight or eight-thirty — time for a bath and forty winks or so. However, his mother saw him — called to him through her
window. He would rather interview the devil just then. But there was no avoiding her.

  “Joe, that doctor says there’s nothing much the matter. Can’t you take that bandage off? It looks awful. Won’t court-plaster do?”

  “Who cares what it looks like?”

  “That’s not the proper way to speak to your mother. I care. I’ve ordered a special dinner in honor of Mr. Cummings; he will be here at eight o’ clock. If you’re so selfish that you can’t try to make yourself look presentable—” “Mother, I don’t feel up to facing dinner with Cummings. I can’t endure the ass; besides, my head aches.”

  “You’re a cry-baby, bemoaning a scratched face — and with no more sense of obligation to your mother than a dog has.”

  “You yell loud enough when the least thing goes wrong.”

  “I’m a woman. And besides, I put up, without a murmur, with more insolence from you than would drive some mothers into their graves. I won’t have you running out on me like that. The idea. Maharajah Poonch-Terai is coming too. I need you to help entertain him.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “If you’d swear a little less about your God, and think a little more about your mother, you might be a man, Joe.”

  “Poonch-Terai, eh?”

  “Yes, but be careful to call him Maharajah Poonch-Terai. His title is older than the King of England’s. He’s—” “I’ll be down in time for dinner.”

  He was not afraid, at any rate, of Poonch-Terai.

  CHAPTER XV. “Walls have ears in India.”

  Joe stared at himself in the pinchbeck bathroom mirror. He was doing his best to shave around the bandages. He was standing naked. Except for a bruise or two his body was in the pink of condition, with the glow of health all over his skin, well muscled — beautiful might be the right word, although it would have offended him, had he thought of it. He had a thoroughly masculine contempt for the idea of beauty in his own person. Nevertheless, he knew his naked body would have thrilled a sculptor, especially when the muscles rippled under the skin. But his eyes were —