Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “You attacked the dog. The priests so ordered it.”

  “Sahib, we—”

  “To the devil with your lies now! Answer me! This is the priests’ doing?”

  “The heaven-born knows too much,” admitted one of them.

  “You fools were pretending blasphemously that my hound is one of your gods incarnate. The priests heard of it and threatened you unless you stole the animal and drowned her. Now you have failed, will the priests admit they gave those orders to you?”

  They grinned. They knew from much experience how the priests would handle that predicament.

  “The priests will leave you to be punished for attempted theft of a sahib’s dog — for being drunk — for hurling a knife at me—”

  “Sahib, the heaven-born’s honor heard this man confess it was a slip of the hand that—”

  “And for violence to a memsahib! For decoying her and shutting her inside a stinking room for God knows what evil purpose!”

  “Sahib, sahib, that is untrue! She—”

  He checked them again with a gesture. They were sobering, and the lees of arrack fumes no longer were enough to keep too much truth from escaping unless he acted censor.

  “Yet you are good boatmen. You rowed well on the journey.”

  That was art — immodest, opportune — applied, as all art is, to the occasion, using truth to point men’s thought a fraction higher, prostituting pride of honest oarsmanship in this case to the ends of forestry. There is no pride like the boatman’s in his skill.

  “The priests did this,” said Ommony.

  He counted on the knowledge that all simple folk who live beneath the heel of priests and their religion, hating the one and drawing comfort from the other, tolerate the official for the sake of glimpses of divinity that they discern beyond him. It is easy to arouse antagonism to a priesthood — very hard to slay men’s faith in what priests represent.

  “They are always mischief-makers,” said a boatman darkly, with an air of having heard more than he cared to tell.

  The others nodded. Ommony felt the intuitive thrill that told him he was winning.

  “Disaster comes of interference without knowledge,” he assured them; and the East loves proverbs as the West loves beef and bread.

  They nodded sagely. He was talking heart to heart, and had praised their oarsmanship. They understood him, at least.

  To your boats, O watermen!”

  “Shall the priests not finish what they started?” he demanded. “Will ye bear blame for their devices?”

  “Nay, nay! What have we done?”

  “Truly, ye have only sought to steal my dog, and that is an issue between you and me,” he answered.

  “Will the heaven-born not protect us?” asked a boatman, taking heart of grace.

  “Ye are ingrates,” answered Ommony.

  “Na, sahib, we are boatmen, sons of boatmen. We be men whose hearts are in us.”

  “Ye are drunkards,” he insisted.

  “Nay! A little arrack—”

  “To help the priests play tricks on you!”

  “The stuff is all gone.”

  “Bring out the bottle then.”

  One went in and carried out an old glass flagon still about a third full of the forbidden, pungent stuff. He tried, but was not in time to prevent Ommony from seeing it.

  “Ye are liars.”

  “Nay, we thought it was all finished.”

  “Give me the flagon.”

  The man yielded it, and Ommony poured out the poison on the ground before their eyes.

  “Now it is finished. Buy no more of it.”

  “We did not buy that, sahib. One came saying it was a gift from the diwan sahib because we had rowed swiftly on the journey.”

  “It was the priests who sent it,” said Ommony; and whether that was true or not they took his word for it, he seemed informed about so many things.

  He was itching to get away, for he knew the priests were busy with their own solution of affairs. Having given them time in which to make mistakes, and a show of mysterious activity to force their band, it was of utmost importance now to find out what the priests were doing.

  But he did not dare give these simpletons a hint of his impatience. The easiest way to fail in India is to let her sons know your affair is urgent.

  “Listen now to me,” he said, with an air of having all eternity to lecture in — an air disarming all suspicion, opposite to the customary way of sahibs, which by haste stirs opposition. “If ye should speak, the priests will turn your words against ye.”

  They nodded. They knew that.

  “So say nothing. Watch. Be silent. Keep the memsahib within there.

  “Ye shall see priests come presently and carry her away. Say nothing to them, nor let them see ye. Simply watch. Then afterward if any ask, and if ye would escape from the nets the priests are laying, answer simply what ye saw, explaining nothing, not excusing nor accusing. Say, ‘The priests did this.’

  “Ye understand?”

  They did. He was advising them to use habitual taciturnity when confronted with whatever they could hardly comprehend. Easy! They nodded.

  “Obey, and ye shall find me your friend. If ye disobey my warning, take the consequences!”

  “The heaven-born truly will protect us?”

  “Yes, unless ye drink again and let loose babbling tongues.”

  “On the word of boatmen, we obey!”

  He gave the knife back, haft forward, to the boatman who had thrown it, and there isn’t an emotion under heaven more enduring than that act of grace aroused. The knife was worth a rupee.

  The boatman’s pride, his dungaree jacket, a dirty turban and a loin-cloth were pretty nearly all he had. Pride outweighed everything, and the man salaamed, as once the rank and file saluted Caesar. There was manhood and a great emotion expressed in the uplifted hands.

  “Warn the others,” said Ommony and strode away, not guessing — knowing.

  He had turned that trick.

  The dog-boy followed him unbidden. He took no notice until they turned a corner into another alley.

  “Go back,” he said then. “Keep the dog quiet. Where the dog goes, follow. Leave a trail my messenger can pick up.”

  The dog-boy dropped astern like a mark thrown overboard. Ommony began to show speed. He had left a horse tethered at the gateway leading to the tower, and he surprised the fat, palace-trenched beast into a gallop with a bamboo cane broken from a hedge. Spluttered-up street dust stung the eyes of watchers who passed the word along. Before he regained the guest-house Parumpadpa in a temple cloister knew the line he had taken.

  But his thoughts were his own, and he found the diwan waiting for him, fidgeting in the veranda arm-chair, so all the priests gained was anxiety.

  “What have they done?” demanded Ommony, pretending unembarrassment for the diwan’s benefit.

  “My friend, they have done the worst!”

  “That is always the best thing. It provides excuse for miracles,” said Ommony, producing a cigar. “Tell me. There’s loads of time.”

  The diwan laughed, but with an effort.

  “Fail with your miracles,” he answered, “and some of us won’t live to see tomorrow!”

  “As bad as that?”

  Ommony threw the cigar away and chose another, so he might have been referring to tobacco, but the diwan recognized the nervousness that had forced the question.

  “I dare not go near my office. They have besieged it — emissaries of the priests. They hope to force me to take action or to make a statement that will compromise me.”

  “The officer who went to — ah — to escort Mrs. Craig to — ah — a safe place — he had no orders to arrest, you understand — the terms were vague — he might interpret them as he saw fit without committing me — has galloped back to say she can’t be found. I learned that five minutes ago by telephone. The idiot must have talked, for the priests are saying I have hidden her.”

  “T
heir men are stirring up the mob with a tale of my being in missionary pay. They say the missionaries stampeded the elephants. The missionaries are answerable for the resulting death and injury.”

  “I, they say, am sheltering the woman and being influenced by her behind the scenes. They say my ultimate purpose is to rob the temple revenues in order to get money to plant trees—”

  “Well, isn’t it?” asked Ommony.

  “Trees that will occupy the grazing grounds and impoverish—”

  “The priests! Yes, go on.”

  “Impoverish the people, they say. They blame Mrs. Craig and her husband for the increase in the cost of fuel. And Craig is making matters worse! He has gone to my office — forced his way in — and is waiting there until I come. The crowd outside is saying I befriend him!”

  “Good!” exclaimed Ommony. “Couldn’t be better! Don’t you befriend him? Hasn’t he your protection? Won’t it be excellent afterward to be able to say that even the hostile crowd accused you of steadfastly protecting missionaries?”

  “Afterward, my friend? The priests think it is time for a swift uprising. Who shall prophesy of afterward? There is a crisis now. They think the British will do anything to avoid despatching troops.”

  “That’s almost true,” said Ommony.

  “They hope to drive all missionaries out, get rid of me and dictate politics in the future. They believe they have me and the missionaries compromised.”

  “Ha-ha!”

  “They even speak of His Highness abdicating in favor of a minor.”

  “Idiots! Have you ten men whom you would dare trust with knowledge that you had stolen public funds?”

  “Two score. But I do not steal.”

  “Ten is plenty. Do they look like priests?”

  “Some could. There are the eight who usually watch the priests for me. They are in my house now. I can telephone.”

  “Do that. Have them rigged like Parumpadpa’s men and send them here to me, ek dum. Tell ’em it’s a life-or-death call.”

  There were servants in the hallway, much too obviously busy to be innocent, so the diwan used the extension in Ommony’s bedroom. Even so, although he had his own man on the old-fashioned central switchboard, there was desperate risk of leakage.

  But there is a risk in every ruse men undertake. Contrivances succeed because of other men’s omissions more often than from perfection.

  “They will be here in thirty minutes,” he said, sitting down again in the arm-chair facing Ommony on the veranda after discovering the gardener too near and sending him to chase crows away from the distant flower-beds.

  “Thirty minutes?” said Ommony. “That means an hour. Shall we waste it worrying ourselves, or use it worrying the priests?”

  “If only I knew where Mrs. Craig is! Shall we not search—”

  “And learn too much!”

  The diwan looked relieved.

  “I see you know.”

  “I haven’t seen her since she disappeared,” said Ommony, and the diwan nodded.

  He began to regret less that he had trusted the solution into this man’s hands.

  “I vote we go,” said Ommony.

  “Where now?”

  “To the Residency.”

  The diwan assented meekly. This was all new experience for him; his method, subtler perhaps, and much less active on the surface, resembling more those sub-sea currents that deflect a keel unknown to the eyes aloft. Storming along, tacking against the head-winds of sedition, reduced him to obedient bewilderment.

  “I am like the dog’s tail. I wag at your pleasure,” he admitted, and Ommony chuckled over that confession all the way to the Residency, through crowded streets where men avoided wheels and cantering hoofs as by a miracle, assisted to it by the coachman’s whip and objurgation that would have started riots in the West.

  The Residency stood alone in sixteen acres of flowering shrubs and immemorial trees, surrounded by a low stone wall — a palace set aloof, an extraterritorial embassy, assigned to an individual whose mission is to watch the nearly independent ruler of a native State and act as communicating link with the British Raj.

  There are States where the Resident is kept keyed up until he dies of too much physical and mental strain, collapsing like an overloaded fuse, and is replaced by a new one on less salary. And there are States, as this one, where a man goes for reward, or to be shelved because of inefficiency too vague to be punished by retirement home.

  A few reports, occasional telegrams, a visit now and then to the central government to satisfy the lords of pigeon-holes that all is as it should be in the outer marches; that, quail-shooting — and a lot of morphia between-while was Gould’s routine. And in his friend the doctor’s absence he was prone to overdose himself, fearing abscess and loathing loneliness more than the poison’s aftermath.

  Gould was a flaw in the machinery, overlooked by the most alert bureaucracy on earth because no strain had hitherto arisen to test his weakness. Now the strain had come he was hors de combat — useless — worse, an obstruction in the way.

  Ommony stormed at the chuprassi on the porch, swearing it was rank indecency to keep a diwan at the door. The menial admitted it; but the burra sahib was ill; orders were to admit nobody and to accept no messages. The door was not locked; Ommony noticed that. He returned to the carriage, helped the diwan out, and, shoving the chuprassi to one side, strode in.

  “But this is an offense,” the diwan objected.

  All his innate sense of courtesy was aroused with a new and not vague fear of consequences.

  “Come on!” Ommony answered, and the diwan came forward in the wake of swift decision.

  Servants interposed themselves on the stairs, but Ommony, with the diwan leaning on his arm, strode on up, thrusting them aside, offering no explanation. They would not tell him which Gould’s bedroom was, but he found it by opening door after door until he came on a locked one and kicked that in.

  Gould lay in buttonless pajamas on a tousled bed beneath a punkah that had ceased to swing, unshaven, staring at the two intruders with eyes whose pupils were reduced to pin-points, conveying only mirage to the poisoned brain behind. He muttered unintelligibly.

  “Wake up!” commanded Ommony, and shook him.

  The answer was a motion like a child’s sleep resenting to be disturbed. Ommony caught the diwan’s eye.

  “Witness this,” he said.

  Then he shook Gould again. No use. The man’s intelligence was out of reach.

  He went to the cabinet on the wall, chock full of patent medicines, old hypodermics, bottles — threw half of them out impatiently — found an emetic and forced a dose of it down Gould’s throat that would have changed the routine of a mule’s inside economy. The floor beside the bed grew horrible and the diwan clucked compassion. Gould’s absent wits, recalled by violence, began to glimmer across the gulf between illusion and reality.

  “Wake up!” Ommony commanded.

  Intuitive caution came to the aid of the weakening drug and Gould affected a lapse, too dazed to understand anything except that silence possibly was safest. He moaned to awaken pity, and instead was shaken, pinched, slapped, taken by the neck and raised up — made to face reality whether he chose to or not. At last his lips mumbled some sort of question.

  “I’m Ommony of the Woods and Forests.”

  “Go ‘way, damn you!”

  “This is the diwan.”

  “Too ill t’ see him!”

  “There’s a crisis. Can you handle it? There’s—”

  “Gimme a shot, old fellow, will you? Stuff’s in that—”

  “Listen!” Ommony commanded. “Someone must wire. The Maharajah’s life — yours — mine — the very State’s in danger. Insurrection any minute. Get up and take charge!”

  “Ill, I tell you! Go ‘way! Who are you?”

  “Ommony. Shall I act?”

  “Don’t know you! Lemme’lone!”

  “I’ll let you alone if you tell me to act
for you.”

  “Go to hell!”

  Gould tried to escape again into the realm of effortless illusion. Ommony shook him until his head rolled on his shoulders like a disconnected thing.

  “Someone must act for you until the doctor comes.”

  “Doctor?”

  The word impressed him. That was a friend, who knew how to return him to the world he dreaded, by easy stages. Contrast of that memory with this unease set him vomiting again.

  “I’ll wire for the doctor if you appoint me temporary substitute. Make over to me,” coaxed Ommony.

  “All right.”

  Gould collapsed on the bed and hid his face among disheveled sheets.

  “You heard?” asked Ommony.

  “I bear witness,” said the diwan.

  “Good. Let’s leave him.”

  Ommony led the way down to a large, well-furnished office, where the official code reposed in a steel safe and a secretary was supposed to keep official hours. There was no sign of the secretary. Ommony sat down and wrote a telegram:

  Gould seriously ill. Has made over to me. Send substitute for him and a doctor. Rush. Grave unrest here due in part to kidnaping of missionary Craig’s wife and in part to fuel situation. Priests are so busy trying to establish alibi that suspicion rests on them. Troops may be necessary. Maharajah’s forces possibly insufficient. Shall use my own discretion pending arrival of Gould’s successor. Don’t answer in code.

  (Signed) Cotswold Ommony (Woods and Forests)

  The diwan read it over half a dozen times. He suggested changes. Ommony overruled them.

  “Why not in code?” asked the diwan.

  “The priests wouldn’t understand the code. Please have that sent at once over the public wire. Then order out every Maharajah’s man available to keep mobs from forming. I represent the Raj now, understand. I’m with you, diwan sahib — to a finish!”

  “And the finish?”

  The diwan looked dejected.

  “What will the finish be?”

  “A forest!” Ommony assured him. “More trees than in all the neighboring States together! Courage, mon ami! We win!”

  CHAPTER 7. “Silence, please, Memsahib!”

  Mrs. Craig’s subsequent account of these events was tinged in its early stages by resentment, and as to the end by mixed emotions. Some parts of it, as prejudiced, are not worth setting down; others, that do her credit, are withheld at her request. But the vein of actual occurrence, in so far as it served Ommony’s as yet undeeded forest, is not difficult to trace.