Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Lousy.”

  “Verb sap. Flit is indicated.”

  “Flit my eye. You listen to me. Goddesses are heathen and agin religion, but a god’s a heap worse. Strikes me, I’m as near to being branded to a wrong herd as if I took out Chinee papers, or became a Christian Scientist. You get yourself another Gunga sahib. I’m no god, no matter if this here elephant did take a shine to me and act up legendary. I’m a plain man, and I’m acting plain and sensible from now on. Do you get that?”

  “Got you!” said the babu. “What else?”

  “Me and tigers ain’t amusing one another worth a goddamn.”

  “Truth,” said the babu, “will out, won’t it!”

  “Meaning?” Quorn struck the bowl of his pipe on the heel of his boot. “Were you insinuating anything?”

  “No. Sweet sahiba has insinuated,” said the babu. “Shall I let cat out of bag? I said cat, not tiger. Don’t be nervous. Tiger might be easier to manage, but the cat is more fun.”

  “Talk English.”

  “She flat,” said the babu. “She has flitted. Moses, it is safe to draw near!”

  Moses came forth from a shadow looking, even in the darkness, melancholy. He walked as if he were late for church and interrupting prayers.

  “How long have you been here?” Quorn asked him.

  “Sir, this babu recommended me to wait until your honor should awake and not be veree acrimonious. A ghastlee difficultee has arisen.”

  “At the mission?”

  “Yes, sir. What to do about it?”

  “Tell what happened.”

  “Sir, the Princess came and has ensconced herself with six or seven ladees in the main building, and—”

  “What the hell did you let her in for?”

  “Sir, I told her to go away. But they were manee women. They had a key. What could I do? She said to me, if I am puneeshed she will mollify me with indemnitees. But I am veree upset. So I came to noteefy your honor.”

  “Flit was indicated,” said the babu. “She has flitted from the palace. Any more shots, Gunga sahib?”

  Quorn stuck his pipe in his pocket. Not knowing what to do, he stood up. Moses backed away from him, but there was nothing criminal about Quorn’s temper. It was himself he criticized.

  “Dammit!” he grumbled. “I’ve only me to blame. If I’d been where I belong at the gate-house—”

  “Being you, you would have told a lady in distress to go to hell,” the babu interrupted. “I can see you sending her to Bughouse Bill for charitable favors! Am mysogynistically stoical, but simply sentimental in comparison to such an iron moralist as you are. Kick her out then. Why not?”

  “Damn you, did you tip her off to go there?”

  “Up against it! Any port in typhoon. Her audacity set pace and stung this elderly babu to ratiocination. Simple little matter to declare herself semi-divine and set the palace sizzling. But what then? My ball, wasn’t it? This babu must hit a hot one. Can I leave her to be eunuched? Belladonna — sand-bag — upstairs window — pillows — snake-bite — many ways of dying opportunely. Bughouse Bill is busy; don’t forget that. What was indicated?”

  “Don’t ask — tell me! What did you do?”

  “Sent a letter to her, naturally, saying, in the mission she is difficult to kill but very easy to exaggerate.”

  “They’ll raid the mission!” Quorn exploded.

  “Bughouse Bill will recommend that,” said the babu. “But the Maharajah is a party to a contract that prohibits him from interfering with the mission. On the contrary, it obligates him to preserve same from trespass.”

  “He’s a drunkard. He’ll forget that.”

  “Possibly. But populace is superstitious very. Suitably exaggerated rumor — demonstration. Demonstration — riot. Rioting is not so good for rulers. Same inevitably lose out any time they send for sahibs to assist them. That is verb sap point of statesmanship, the same as sending for marines in Nicaragua, or borrowing from bankers.”

  “Hell, he’s on the job already, I’ll bet,” Quorn said dismally.

  “You don’t know him,” said the babu. “If he is, though, he will see it is a bad job. Do you take me for a tortoise? I am fat, but as fast in a pinch as a pig into sausage in U.S.A. Am propagandist in excelsis — expert! It was this babu who propaganded Gunga sahib story. So then — should the Maharajah swoop upon the mission, he will find a crowd of six or seven thousand very superstitious and fanatical believers in the Gunga story, advocating hands off.”

  “A couple o’ cops could move ’em on,” Quorn an- swered. He had not seen a passive resistance swarm opposing elasticity to force. “He’ll haul her out — and that’s the end of her — and of my job too, I reckon.”

  There was a warning of dawn in the air. The sky paled. To the westward there was faint false morning, and the babu looked exactly like a bloated ghost set fluttering by the wind that ushers in the day,

  “Supposing he could do it,” he retorted, “supposing he dared and were drunk enough, would he do it for love of Bughouse Bill? Or why else? Such a diplomat as you are! You should show the League of Nations how to put the Japanese in China!”

  “Shut up! I’m sick of you,” Quorn retorted. “What with listening to you, I’ve lost my job. I may as well start for the States this minute.”

  The babu sighed. “You have a goat’s eyes and a moralist’s imagination! Yesterday you wonder how to keep two jobs and do your duty by them both, you duty maniac! Today I show you, and you blow up! Idiot! Answer! Does your contract order you to caretake? Is she your friend or your enemy? Is she likely to protect the mission or to wreck it? Can’t you say you gave her sanctuary? Isn’t that a good ground for the British to support you, should a slip-up happen, using the excuse that otherwise the U.S.A. United States might make a diplomatic faux pas such as asking for the interest on fifty billion or so? But why suggest a slip-up? Why not use imagination? Will the Maharajah do a thing that might afford the British an excuse to interfere? Or will he do a thing to build up Bughouse Bill’s authority? If he should sack you, there is still the mission. Can he sack you from the mission? Is he likelier to try to make you his friend or his enemy? Which? Don’t argue with me. Answer!”

  “He’ll make me the goat, that’s what,” Quorn answered. “He don’t love me any.”

  “Love you? Does he love his daughter? Does he love me, or the British, or Bughouse Bill? He loves nobody but Number One, I tell you. He is tickled silly to employ you in a plot to slap religion for a home run. Later, he will slap you, if, as, when and how we let him do it. Do we let him do it? Do I look like a shopkeeper that loves to be kicked by a duke for the social prestige? Are we smart enough to double-cross and do in Bughouse Bill, but too besotted in our wits to make a Maharajah overreach himself? And what then? Should his only daughter become Maharanee, are you probably a pauper? Put your bet down! Is she probably an ingrate? — Oh, hell! Go to the United States! I never knew a white man yet who had the guts to back a long shot!”

  “Eh? The hell you didn’t!”

  “U.S.A. Americans are all afraid of women. I will tell her you funked it.”

  Quorn lifted a heel and struck his pipe on it:

  “See here! See that elephant? Asoka, she and me can see this to a finish. You go find a tack to sit on. Hey, you, Moses — go and get word to the Princess that I’ll be around to see her as soon as this elephant’s fed.”

  “Am I mistaken?” said the babu. “But you are afraid of tigers.”

  “ ‘Fraid o’ nothing when a woman’s in a bad fix.”

  “Shame humiliates me,” said the babu. “For the first time, I mistook caution for cowardice.”

  “I’m maybe slow,” said Quorn, “but hell can’t shift me, when I’ve made my mind up.”

  “Henceforth,” said the babu, “I will take advice from you before I venture. May I be forgiven?”

  “Shucks. You ain’t a bad guy. All you need is easy manners. What d’ye say we wash and get a bite to eat bef
ore we hustle around and see her?”

  XIV

  “Here Goes Anyhow. I Got To Trust Him.

  Ain’t No Other Way Out.”

  The babu went off alone to see the Princess after all. He swaggered away beneath his little black umbrella as if there were nothing to worry about in all the universe. Quorn had to call on the Maharajah. He was sent for very shortly after daybreak, almost before Asoka’s meal was finished; and he went on the elephant, knowing that, if he went on foot or in a gharri, he would feel inferior. He did not dare for half a second to forget what digging graves had taught him, that the same shovel buries us all.

  “I’ll treat him civil, even if he treats me supercilious. But that’s my limit.”

  He was sorry he had spoken rather roughly to the babu. Otherwise he might have had the advantage of more last minute advice. But the babu had been very off-handed:

  “Listen to him. Tell him nothing. Then he will think you are stupid. Princes are only afraid of clever people. Clever people never are afraid of princes.”

  Nevertheless, Quorn felt afraid because he did feel stupid; at the back of his mind he knew that was why he was rehearsing independent views, to stiffen resolution, as he rode Asoka through the city. Even at that early hour the streets were thronged. There was excitement. Evidently the news was out that the Princess had left the palace. But there was no disposition to swarm around the elephant. He was given a clear course, made way for like an entrant in a great event, watched, stared at, now and then applauded, but only by small groups. One incident did more to steady Quorn’s nerves than almost anything else could have done, by arousing his belligerency. Some one, either from a roof or from a window down one of the winding alleys, threw a tile. It missed Quorn’s head by the breadth of a flicker of wind. And there was mocking laughter.

  Evidently something less than all Narada believed the Gunga sahib story. That was bad enough; it made Quorn feel like an exposed charlatan. But the laughter accomplished more than the missile, since it hit its target. To be laughed at always did make Quorn more bellicose than a punch in the nose could. Punched, he would still have sense enough to weigh his strength against his adversary’s. Laughed at he was neither patient nor forgiving.

  “I’ll show ’em!” He was in a fine pig-headed mood by the time he reached the palace gate and shouted to the man in charge to open it. He stared at the sentries, who ostentatiously did not salute him — stared them out of countenance. He was in a mood to enjoy the effect of his agate eyes on superstitious people.

  “Maybe I don’t rate a subaltern’s salute. But maybe courtesy ‘ud cost ’em nothing. Seems I pack a whallop. No use packing what you don’t get comfort of.”

  It made him angry to be told to wait at the audience lodge; not that there was anything wrong with waiting, he had almost always had to wait for people all his life. Some people are even late for their own funerals. It was the insolence of the servant who told him to wait that stirred his anger. He had begun, without knowing it, to experience the irritation that almost always ruins whites who accept employment under Indians; it is exactly the same irritation that enrages educated Indians who accept employment under whites. Its immediate effect on Quorn was to make him scornful of everything in sight — the palace and its grounds — the methods of the patient, pottering, lethargic gardeners — the fierce light — the heat — and the flies that hit him on the lips and made him spit.

  “Bring on your Maharajah,” summed up his emotion. And the Maharajah came at last, in Jodhpur riding breeches and a pair of slippers with silken tassels on their upturned toes that aroused Quorn’s prejudices. “Sissy!” he muttered. He had dismounted. He was standing beside Asoka, restraining the restless trunk, at frequent intervals, from breaking twigs off near-by shrubbery. The Maharajah stared, and Quorn’s eyes met his unblinking.

  “You are supposed to salute me,” said the Maharajah. There were puffy pouches beneath his eyes. He looked sulky and yet determined, and his blood-red turban hinted violence. He licked his lips. He evidently did not in the least like what he had decided he would do.

  “Uh-huh. That’s okay with me, if it’s in the contract,” Quorn answered. “How do you have it? Army fashion?”

  “Somebody shall show you. Have you seen that babu?”

  “Yes, I seen him.”

  “Did he tell you anything to say to me?”

  “He did not.”

  “Do you know who is at the mission?”

  “I know who was there.”

  “Do you mean she has gone?”

  “No.”

  “What the devil do you mean?”

  “There’s no knowing what that party might do, almost any minute. I weren’t there. I slept along o’ this here elephant, on account of his being restless.”

  “Did you invite her to go to the mission?”

  “I did not.”

  “Did you expect her?”

  “I did not.”

  “I am told you spoke to her.”

  “Who said it?”

  “An informant. I was told it.”

  “Some folks’ll believe what anybody tells ’em.”

  Quorn knew he should not have said that. It was un- civil, not to say disrespectful; if he could, he would have withdrawn the words. He fully expected to be dismissed on the spot, and he would have considered it served him right if that had happened. He knew instantly what he would do in that event; he would accept dismissal, and then apologize, as one man to another. Meantime, having said it, he stood to his guns, so to speak, and stared, until it dawned on him that the Maharajah did not really know that he had spoken with the Princess. Probably the gateman had kept silence. The Maharajah had lied, to elicit information. No apology was needed. Okay.

  “You and I must have an understanding,” said the Maharajah.

  Quorn waited.

  “I have sent an officer and twenty of my soldiers to the mission to protect the place. They are to let no one in and no one out.”

  “If they should shoot me,” Quorn said, “that ‘ud cause a frackass. I’m in duty bound to—”

  “You may enter. I ordered it.”

  “Okay. If they should shoot the babu—”

  “He, too, is allowed to enter. Now then, tell me what your plan is.”

  “I don’t know of any plan, your Highness.” Quorn got off the words “your Highness” competently. He was proud of having done it without a trace of insolence. He was feeling almost sorry for the Maharajah. It had never occurred to him before that an autocrat might be in ignorance of what was going on around him, or might be unable to control even his own domestic circle.

  “There is a tiger,” said the Maharajah.

  “Yeah — I” — (Quorn almost said “I seen him,” but he changed it in time) “seems I heard something o’ that.”

  “I understand you are quite reliable with animals. In fact, that’s evident. You and the babu seem to me quite competent to — ah — work out all the details. Did he say how much money you get?”

  “He did not.”

  “I will settle with him. You look to him for payment.”

  “How about my contract?” Quorn asked.

  “You will need no contract. You will be on your way in a week from now. There are twelve days, but I think it better you should go as soon as possible. Otherwise, you might meet the British Resident on his way from railhead. He might ask unnecessary questions. So whatever you do, must be done in a week.”

  “I don’t know yet what I’m supposed to do,” Quorn answered, and the Maharajah scowled.

  “The babu will undoubtedly explain that to you at the right time. You, the babu, and the priests, between you, one or all of you, get the full blame for whatever happens. If the priests get it, so much the better for you and the worse for them. I don’t interfere with religion or religious practices; and I shall deny having ever spoken to you about it.”

  “Sounds like taking some one for a ride,” said Quorn, scratching his forehead. “I�
�m—” Then he hesitated. Knowing himself to be very stupid in some ways, he knew nevertheless that it is almost as dangerous to be in a murderer’s confidence as it is to be the intended victim. He had often wondered, when he dug graves, how many people died because they knew more than was comfortable for their confidants. It seemed best to shut up.

  “There are more ways of dying than living,” said the Maharajah, as if he could read Quorn’s thoughts. “A human life is cheap in India. Remember: eight days from today it will be unsafe here for either you or the babu. The first train, and the first boat after that. You understand me?”

  “Sort of.”

  “I shall not need any elephants for eight days. You are in full charge of the elephants and make your own dispositions. The official understanding is that I have engaged you on probation. You are subject to dismissal at the end of eight days, or to a permanent appointment at the end of eight days if your services are satisfactory, which of course they won’t be.”

  Quorn nodded, no longer trusting himself to speak. The difference between reading about criminals, and being treated as a criminal by one who evidently meant to double-cross him, so astonished him that he could hardly feel indignant. Anger, for the moment, crouched under a protective camouflage of cunning. It was better to look stupid. The babu was right. This prince, who was afraid of his own family and of Bughouse Bill, and of a British Resident, would murder anyone he feared, if he could get away with it, with as little compunction as a Philadelphia or New York gangster. Better to play with a tiger than to argue with that man.

  “Good enough,” said Quorn. “I guess I get you.”

  He escaped from further conversation by mounting and riding away, not looking backward. He would not have dared to speak again, for fear of not appearing much more stupid than he actually felt. He felt he was beginning to wake up.

  “Damn his eyes, he thinks I don’t see through him.” One thought at a time took shape in words in Quorn’s brain in time to the sway of the elephant’s head. “Maybe I don’t. Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe it isn’t his plan to have me do his dirty work, and have me run, and have me scuppered as I run. It’s seventy miles to rail-head — forty mile o’ jungle-room for fifty of me to be et by jackals, kites and what not. And a few dead bones don’t say much, even if a Resident should see ’em. What’s a Resident? If he’s as stupid as the sort o’ sap they keep at Washington D.C. to drink embassy liquor, he’ll believe what he’s told anyhow, and ‘twon’t be much they’ll tell him. How about that babu?”