Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  But there is no pleasing some people.

  “First trip East?” he asked her.

  He expected her to make some cliché comment on the mystery of India or on the disillusioning lack of it. He was ready with appropriate banalities to counter with. But she surprised him.

  “No. I have stayed twice with an aunt in Ahmednaggar. She runs a hospital for women — great fun.”

  “Missionary!” thought Galloway. “Good God!”

  Aloud, he said —

  “You don’t look old enough to enjoy that sort of thing!”

  “I can even enjoy curry — and Dad’s punishment!” she answered. “He is paying for having broken rules for forty years. He ate fried eggs and pie at quick lunch counters, when he could easily afford to be sensible.”

  “Aren’t you hard-hearted?” asked Galloway.

  “Dreadfully. I hate bunk. You can’t hate properly and compromise.”

  Galloway decided he disliked her, although her looks were in her favor. She was rather small, with quantities of bronze hair, dark-gray eyes and an agreeable voice that he thought was too well cultivated. He supposed that if he talked chiefly to the father he would be just about able to endure her company through lunch.

  But the father appeared cautious about making conversation, ignoring the food served to him, refusing drink and feeding himself on tablets from a bottle in his waistcoat pocket. He encouraged his daughter to do the talking.

  “Deb’s amusing,” he said. “Make her work. I’m only a dry old money-maker. Besides, I’m not feeling well.

  “With a name like Deborah — Deborah Pennyweather — think of it! — I couldn’t take life lying down, now could I?” she asked, looking straight at Galloway. “It made me fighting mad to have to live with such a tag tied to me.”

  “You’ll be changing it before long,” Galloway suggested. “What do you expect to do in India?”

  “Provide Dad with healthy excitement. He has done nothing for nearly forty years but go to the office six days a week and read market reports all day Sunday. Since Mother died home doesn’t mean a thing to him. He doesn’t even know how many gardeners we keep. The only visitors he sees are doctors. Bunk, bunk, bunk! I’m educating him — making him study something else than the clock on the library mantelpiece and the ticker at the office. Am I, or am I not, a holy terror when I once get started, Dad?”

  “She was born at full speed and won’t run down,” said Pennyweather mildly. “She’s been expelled from two schools.”

  “They tried to teach me bunk!” said Deborah. “You can’t lead any one except a zany by the nose unless you explain why and where and what it’s all about. Dad isn’t a zany. And if you prod him hard enough he kicks. I had to think up something sensible for him to do and invent a cast-iron reason for it. I knew it wasn’t any use telling him to take up literature or golf or go fishing. And nobody worth thinking of would marry him; he has too much money and too little imagination what to do with it. I had to invent a business reason or he’d never have understood. And it had to hold water or he wouldn’t play.”

  “You call this play?” asked Pennyweather, glancing at the curry in the dish.

  “Never mind, Daddy, you’ll eat crow before I’ve done with you!” said Deborah. “I met a swami. Know what they are?”

  “Rather! There are several varieties,” said Galloway.

  “Well, this one was the other kind. He had no use for a dollar bill. He wanted billions. He was full of Sanskrit phrases done into journalese, but he knew how to talk turkey, and just now he’s in prison, due to talking turkey raw. He didn’t know I’d been to India, but he did know Dad has money, so he cut short the beatitudes and made a proposition. He asked for twenty-five-seventy-five, and I beat him down to ten-ninety before I even showed the thing to Dad, and not a cent down, mind you. Dad knocked off an extra five, allowing him five per cent of the gross; and if we pull it off he’ll be on easy street when they let him out of Sing Sing.”

  “What was his name?” asked Galloway.

  “Swami Ullagaddi Hiralal.”

  Galloway’s face reddened visibly. He set his knife and fork down, staring, ready to explode.

  “I’ll bite. What is it?” asked Deborah.

  “A lean man with an ascetic looking face — hole in the lobe of one ear — one front tooth missing from the upper jaw?”

  She nodded.

  “He was in jail at Baroda for stealing,” said Galloway. “When he came out of jail Professor Abercrombie of the Glasgow Archeological Foundation took him on as interpreter for a tour through Rajputana examining ruins. A tiger killed Abercrombie and only bits of his body were found. I myself shot the tiger a week afterward. Most of the servants ran away and Ullagaddi Hiralal along with them. ‘Ullagaddi’ means ‘little onion,’ but he left no scent that any one could follow, and I always supposed it was he who took Abercrombie’s papers.”

  “It certainly was,” said Deborah. “There was a map and a full report of an enormous oil-deposit, all in Abercrombie’s handwriting.

  “Those fellows can forge anything,” said Galloway. “I’ve seen—”

  “Put up your money! Do you think I’d take that swami’s word for anything? Or that Dad would leave the ticker without checking up? We — I went to the publisher of Abercrombie’s book on ‘Traces of Hittite Occupations near the Dead Sea,’ and they let me look at the manuscript. I swiped a page to show to Dad and he called in an expert. We had it photographed and made slides and projected a word from the manuscript on top of a word from the map, and then another word from the report. They fitted. Then Dad looked up Abercrombie’s rep, bought copies of all his books, decided he was the sort of man who would say ‘if today is Monday, as seems to be approximately accurate within several places of decimals, and allowing for the changes in the calendar made by Julius Caesar on the advice of Sosistrates, then the inference is that tomorrow almost certainly will be Tuesday!’”

  “Yes, he talked and wrote like that,” said Galloway.

  “Well, his report on the oil was in words of two syllables. He had seen, smelt, tasted, analyzed and measured up. Besides that, Dad found out that Abercrombie was the man who found oil somewhere up in Assam and never made a cent out of it — simply gave the secret away.”

  “Yes, he did that. Yes,” said Galloway. “Go on. Where’s the report and the map? I’d like to see ’em.”

  “So would I!” said Deborah. “I’m in Dutch — dragged Dad all this way and let him lose the papers! Can you beat it? Had them all right when we left the ship. Dad would have taken the next ship back, only it was he who lost them; and I’ll say this much for him: he plays fair. They were in his trunk at the hotel. We went out to see the Elephanta Caves and when we came back they were gone. Lock picked. Nothing else missing.”

  “Whom had you talked to?” asked Galloway.

  “Nobody. The only one who could have spilt the beans is Swami Ullagaddi Hiralal. They let ’em write letters from prison, you know. He might have written to a friend in Bombay. Maybe he talked things over in Sing Sing with some of our more experienced get-rich-quicksters. They’d be sore with him for only sticking out for five per cent; they’re mostly in, you know, for promising five per cent a week to ministers and honest farmers; and they’re all of them worse suckers than the people who buy their blue-sky bond issues, or they wouldn’t be in Sing Sing. Ullagaddi Hiralal may have formed a syndicate. He only got a year and a day, I think it was. If he’s caged up with some of our choicest native sons they may have coaxed him to write to an accomplice over here to steal the working plans.”

  “Well? What do you propose to do?” asked Galloway.

  “See life!” she answered. “Dad can quote you market fluctuations since the year before the panic. I learned Tennyson’s ‘Princess’ by heart. We’ve both got memories. We’ve pored over the report and stared at the map until it’s not exactly easy to forget. It was like Treasure Island. Dad felt almost young. We’re off after buried treasure!”


  “There are formalities,” said Galloway.

  “Red tape? Oh, shucks! Let’s talk horse! Colonel Falmouth, who came to New York with the polo team, told us you are the inside works of the Indian Government, and that anything you O.K. gets rubber-stamped. No use your denying it; we had the low-down on you before ever we left home.”

  “I’m simply the assistant to the Secretary for—”

  “Bunk, bunk, bunk!” said Deborah. “I despise it! Why not say you won’t, the way Dad did when I started in on him?”

  “You’ll have to pardon me, but what I meant was this—” said Galloway— “suppose I let you wander anywhere you please, and you get hurt? You know, this isn’t the United States.”

  “You bet! They murder ’em one a minute in Chicago. This show’s tame. How many murders have you had in Rajputana since the year of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee? How many young girls disappeared?”

  “Tigers, you know,” said Galloway.

  “I’ll bet you fifty dollars to a tooth-pick,” Deborah retorted, “that the autos kill more people on our main streets in one week than the tigers of the whole of India kill in a year! We’ll be careful and not jay-walk when we see a tiger coming!”

  “Snakes.”

  “Throw in your snakes. I’ll bet the U.S.A. can beat your sudden death roll! Add Amritsar and I’ll throw in Herrin! You’ll have to think up a better excuse than the speed of the tiger-traffic!”

  Galloway grinned. He liked it. He began to change his mind about her.

  “Well, we mentioned red tape,” he remarked. “There’s lots of it. I might be able to get permission for you to go wandering through Rajputana. Mind you, I say ‘might.’ But suppose you should find oil, what then? Do you think you would own it? Let me tell you, every inch of land in Rajputana has been owned for generations; either it belongs to individuals, who cling to it like leeches from one generation to the next, or it belongs to temples and religious institutions that can’t sell if they would; or it belongs in entail to one of the ruling princes, who lease it to life-tenants, who would never let you stick a shovel into it on any terms at all.”

  “Bunk!” Deborah retorted. “I’ve seen the statistics. There are gold-mines, coal-mines, salt-mines, diamond-mines, oil in Assam — you English want to keep it to yourselves. I know you! Listen: do you suppose Dad and I took the trouble to find out who is the one man in India who can pull plugs, without intending to—”

  She hesitated. Her eyes had caught those of an Indian prince who was seated at a near-by table toying with a glass of sherry and bitters.

  “Who’s that shiek in lizard-colored silk?” she asked.

  “Prince Rundhia Kanishka Singh. But please don’t talk so loud. You were just going to offer to bribe me, weren’t you? Please don’t. It gets monotonous. You’d be the second this morning and—”

  “Shucks!” exclaimed Deborah. “If I could buy you I’d have known it long ago and you’d be bought already. But they don’t stay bought when they can be had that easy. Do they, Dad? But we know what you’re up against. You want to irrigate about a third of Rajputana and you can’t borrow the money in Europe? Am I right? Well, here’s Dad with an automatic calculator in his head, bored stiff; he’s so itching to talk business that he can’t sleep. Explain your irrigation project to him, put one over on him if you can, and get your money for the water. Turn me loose to look for oil, with a water-tight concession guaranteed if I can find it.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Galloway. “I have nothing to do with irrigation projects. That’s a different department.”

  Deborah stared at him open-eyed.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” she said, “that you don’t realise what’s being fed to you out of a spoon? Dad had to fire a secretary for taking thousand-dollar bribes just to bring bond offerings to his notice! Your Indian Government could no more get to him in New York than Debs could get the Presidency! Here he sits — wide open! All you’ve got to do is steer your scheme to him. He’ll snap it, if it’s good.

  Prince Rundhia Kanishka Singh interrupted, strolling over from the other table to force introduction.

  “Did you send that pony?” he asked in his pleasant voice. “I’ll practise him before the game this afternoon.”

  He knew quite well that the pony had not yet come, but in the circumstances Galloway could hardly snub him for intruding. He had to be introduced, and Pennyweather felt the first vague thrill he had experienced in India; he was actually interested.

  “One of the neighbouring kings?” he asked, standing and shaking hands with that peculiarly slow withdrawing movement.

  “Not yet,” the prince answered, “but they tell me you are a real one — one of the American money kings! Our little principalities will look to you like comic opera. Come and see one at close quarters. We will try to make it entertaining.” Then, with a sly sidewise glance at Galloway: “You will see for yourself what might be done if it weren’t for the restrictions. Come to Tonkaipur. We have some very interesting ruins in a desert that once blossomed like the rose but nowadays needs irrigation.”

  “There comes my pony,” said Galloway pointedly, frowning through the window, and Rundhia Singh accepted the hint, but with a thin smile on his handsome face.

  “Interesting, very!” remarked Pennyweather, glancing at his daughter when the prince had gone sauntering out of earshot.

  “One of our least interesting and least reputable sons of reigning rajahs,” said Galloway. “He’ll be a nuisance if you let him.”

  “Oh, I met lots of them at Abednugar,” Deborah retorted. “Usually when they’re called disreputable it only means they’re kickers. Believe me, they’re the only ones that have any pep. You don’t want ’em to have pep, for fear they’ll kick over the traces. What are we going to do now? Watch the polo game?”

  CHAPTER IV. Anup

  At the rear of the club, out of sight of the polo ground, there was a marquee, under which maharajah’s ponies were installed, protected from the flies and too much heat. Behind the marquee was a row of tents for saises, who, being much less valuable than ponies and much easier to replace, had to put up with very inferior accommodation. Behind the saises’ tents were booths of dry boughs roughly thatched with grass, under whose shelter tradesmen dispensed sticky sweet-meats and amazing stuff to drink, told fortunes, sold forged testimonials of character, lent small sums of money at enormous interest and swapped the gossip of all Rajputana.

  Those booths were not commonly there; the usual regulations had been suspended on account of a septennial pilgrimage by Jains, Shrawaks and Banians to a cavern on top of Mount Abu, in which is a block of granite impressed with the footprints of Data-Bhrigu, an incarnation of Vishnu. The pilgrims had hardly yet begun to gather from the faraway villages, but trade does not follow religion; it makes straight the path ahead of it, and the parasites of piety were ready in advance of time.

  Behind the booths, in the sun, because no maharajah owned them, there were animals in all the stages of decrepitude. Having four legs, they were described by courtesy as horses, to distinguish them from the sheep and goats, which were also caricatures of the animals whose names they bore. They were all for sale, as were the up-ended two-wheeled carts which the miserable brutes had dragged up the fourteen miles of zigzag high road from the baking plains.

  Beyond those, under a gnarled tree that had a bald hawk perched on its topmost dead branch, was a small tent in which a Burmese gentleman sold charms to the relations of unfortunates who had been taken to the European hospital. He boasted that the charms were so terrifically potent that, if enough of them were smuggled to the patient’s bedside, the concerted efforts of the most experienced English doctors would fail of their purpose and the patient would get well. He did a steady business and was regarded as a public benefactor.

  Behind his tent, protected by the shadow of the tree from much too much sunshine, and by the tent from the view of the one patroling Rajput “constabeel,” Chullunder Gho
se sat, comfortably chewing pan and keeping one eye on his troupe of performing Burmese wizards, who were permitting themselves to be bitten by cobras for the edification of a dozen children, three tired women and some city-born sahibs’ servants — who would presently pay for the entertainment.

  Squatted facing the babu was a gentleman from Bikanir, whose virtues were not illustrated on his face. He had narrow eyes, a retreating chin, a long nose with a wart near the end of it, high cheek-bones and skin of a sort of neutral tint midway between raw liver and wood-ash. His beauty was under discussion.

  “Anup, your horses might be sold to a green sahib,” said Chullunder Ghose. “Not all sahibs know a bad horse. But you yourself could not sell them, because if you had been born out of a mangy camel you could not look more like a buth than you do.”

  “That is my misfortune, O Mountain of Fatness,” said Anup, “but if you had not inherited dishonesty from your female relatives, you would admit that my desert-bred charges are fit for a king’s wedding.”

  “Yes, to be fed to the jackals, since a king with any reputation to uphold invites all creatures to make merry with him when he marries,” said Chulluder Ghose. “The point is, Anup, that if the sahib who is honored by my discriminating service should see your ugly face, he would not buy your horses but would call for the police. Moreover, he would mistrust me for having regarded you with such favor as to have let you approach within three miles of him. Mine is a Melikin sahib, who uses gunpowder for snuff.”

  “Then he will like my horse,” said Anup, “since the devils are in league with devils. That yellow one — nay, golden, one! — that your Honor says looks as if a mule begat him from a tiger is of just such a heart of your ‘Melikin sahib. No such devil of a biting, kicking savage can be found this side of Bikanir. Hardly a rope will hold him, and when he gets loose he is so fleet of foot and so cunning that it takes a week to catch him. He has killed three men. He kicked the head of Kalyan’s buffalo to pieces. True, he is nothing to look at, but let your sahib only ride him and—”