Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “He is not worth five rupees,” remarked Chullunder Ghose.

  The bargaining went on interminably and the yellow horse, looking meek enough to take a money-lender on his rounds, was led to and fro at the end of a halter by a child whose uniform consisted of a shoe-string. It was hours before Chullunder Ghose let even a hint escape him of the real purpose of his visit to that disreputable pilgrim’s market-place.

  “My sahib will need many horses,” he remarked at last.

  “Let him buy one to begin with!”

  “He will buy many, from the dealer whom I indicate, he being wise in this, that he entrusts his purchases to me.”

  “Then buy my golden beauty, Shah Jehan!”

  “He would even buy that yellow jackal-meat if I should say it. But there is no haste. A clever dealer would have time to scour the countryside and find the best to bring to him. Do brains hide anywhere behind that face of yours, O son of ugliness!”

  “Lump of melting butter, it is not beauty that makes brains, or you would have bought my golden Shah Jehan for your ‘Melikin sahib.”

  “You boast like the hot wind, but are you really clever?” asked Chullunder Ghose. “If I thought you were clever I might trust you with a little mission. Having thus proved you are clever, I might buy many horses from you and give you another little task, that might prove profitable.”

  “Mountain of ooze, there is none in Rajasthan as smart as I am! Do I not travel from village to village? Am I not known from Kashmir to Baroda? Do men not tell their secrets to me, knowing I know other secrets and can fit one to another as the key fits in the lock, thus straightening out difficulties at a profit to myself without ever telling one man’s secret to another?”

  “But you have never heard of Ullagaddi Hiralal,” Chullunder Ghose said down-rightly, as if that ended the discussion.

  “Never heard of him? Hah! I sold a horse to Abercrombie sahib, and that son of immorality Ullagaddi Hiralal was interpreter, pocketing twenty-five percent — may buths disturb his peace! A tiger slew Abercrombie sahib. Before the news had time to spread, Ullagaddi Hiralal resold the horse to me at half-price, pocketing it all, nor could I make him take an anna less. Has he cheated your Honor?”

  “He has,” said Chullunder Ghose.

  “Then with a good will will I search for him and — what shall I do? Shall the kites feed?”

  Chullunder Ghose scratched his stomach meditatively.

  “This time Garudi must wait.”

  He referred to the god of the birds, to whom a corpse left where the birds can reach it is a sacrifice, according to some pious theologists.

  “What then?” asked Anup, puzzled.

  “He has crossed the Kali Pani,” said Chullunder Ghose. “He told the ‘Melikins he is a swami. They will believe anything. Therefore they locked him into the strongest prison where they keep the thugs and chappar-bands, telling him to make a miracle and get out if he could. So there he stays and they feed him cowmeat and the flesh of swine; and from thence he writes letters.”

  “Hari bol! Preserve us from his letters!” exclaimed Anup. “That which is spoken is already bad enough. That which is written — who shall guess the meaning of it or foretell the end?”

  “He has a friend,” remarked Chullunder Ghose.

  “Not he! As a jackal among jackals was he. No man trusted him. They say his mother died of bamboo-fiber in her food, and that he never paid the barber who performed her last rites.”

  “He has a friend,” Chullunder Ghose repeated. “If your ear is one tenth as awake as your beauty is asleep you will discover that a friend of his has been to Bombay recently. You will find that he is a man of good enough appearance, so that he could gain admission to a good hotel on some excuse or other. He can read the language of the gora-log and he can pick locks craftily. There can not be more than one man who could be reckoned a friend of Ullagaddi Hiralal, who would fit that description. If he has returned from Bombay you can find him as you search the countryside for horses. But you will not say for whom you wish the horses. If you are wise, and if you wish to sell many horses at a profitable price, you will make haste.”

  “Does your Honor wish proof of his death?” asked Anup.

  “I desire a proof that you have found him.”

  “Then shall I bring him? It might be managed. Should he resist he might be gagged and bound and brought by night.”

  “Siva namashkar! Why should I waste eyesight on a friend of Ullagaddi Hiralal? I desire a proof that you have found him, and there is but one proof that will satisfy me.”

  “Name it, sahib.”

  “A man’s garment might be another’s, and his shoes might be another’s, and a turban might be bought in the bazaar. Moreover, witnesses are liars, and a horse-thief such as thou art, is a liar beyond possibility of detection until Yama checks up the account. But the things that are written do not lie, at least in some respects.”

  “Hari bol!” said Anup piously.

  “So you will bring me all the letters that you find in possession of this friend of Ullagaddi Hiralal. You understand me? All of them, retaining none!”

  “Gampati! What if he has none?”

  “Then I shall know you have not found him, and I will buy no horses; but I will recall to mind a little matter of a horse-theft that I used to know about and I will give my information to the jemadar at the thana who will go in search of you, he being a new paragon of virtue who believes promotion and preferment come to those who make the most arrests — which, though he is wrong in his belief, will not prevent you, Anup, from weaving coir mats in the prison and being very humble when the kotwal thumps you with a club for staring through your grating at the stars.”

  “Hari bol!” said Anup. “I will find this man and I will bring the papers to your Honor.”

  Chullunder Ghose scratched at his stomach for at least a minute without speaking. Then:

  “I am thinking,” he said, “that men will wonder why you wander in the plains in the hot weather at a time when the stealing and selling of horses can be best conducted in the hills. No man will believe you are about your proper business unless you have a likely tale for them.”

  “I can say I pursue my enemy,” said Anup.

  “Yes, but then every one who has ever sold a horse to you, or has done you any other ill turn, will suppose himself to be the enemy; and one of them will surely go to the police with a bribe and persuade the police to arrest you.”

  “Give me some money. I also can bribe the police,” suggested Anup.

  “Why should my good money fatten the police?” Chullunder Ghose retorted. “Do the rogues not have their salaries, while you and I pay takkus? Nay, but you shall say this: ‘He who stays the servant settles with his sahib? They will ask you then, who is your sahib? You will say Galloway sahib, being careful to add no word to that by way of explanation, because if Galloway sahib should hear of it he might be very angry.”

  A gleam of cunning shone in Anup’s eyes, which Chullunder Ghose instantly and accurately read.

  “Have a care!” he remarked. “Do you see that cobra with its head out of the basket?”

  “Tsshyah! Its fangs are drawn,” said Anup.

  “Maybe, and maybe not. That is the Burman’s business. But none has drawn Galloway sahib’s fangs; and if he should learn that you have used his name for purposes of buying horses cheaper than the market price or frightenting the peasantry, you will find he can strike like a she-cobra whose eggs lie hatching! There are sahibs who think they know much, but know little; and there are sahibs who know much, but spend all their time thinking. Galloway sahib, who is paghl and can hardly think at all, knows everything and strikes more swiftly than a snake at the beginning of the rains! So use his name as you would ride a vicious horse that you wish to sell to a money-lender, with a great display of confidence but no unnecessary showing off, and with alertness lest a false touch on the rein start the horse kicking all four ways at once and spoil the bargain.”
/>   CHAPTER V. Tiger

  Now “Gnani” means Knower. He on whom that most respectful title is conferred by the mysteriously operating and unanimous consent of an unlettered public that knows nothing of and cares still less for university degrees is not a person to be treated with contempt by any one.

  The eyes of Justice are usually represented as being bandaged, lest she should see too much and be bewildered by the sheer complexity of human problems. But Contempt never had any eyes, nor ever saw a fraction of an inch beneath a surface. India, that does not despise a Gnani, is likelier to understand him than are India’s critics, most of whom would be afraid to take a full-grown tiger by the tail, for instance.

  A Gnani may be ignorant of Einstein’s theory and may not have read Darwin on The Origin of The Species; he almost certainly does not know how to build a rheostat, has probably not ridden in a Ford car or seen a motion picture. Yet to say that because of these peculiarities and because he wears his hair long and not many clothes, and because he dislikes daylight and the gaping crowd, the Gnani is ignorant is to talk stark nonsense that affects the Gnani not at all.

  A gentleman who lugs a bag of clubs around a golf-course for amusement has a point of view that differs from a Gnani’s, but that may not be said to be superior without investigation. Gnanis are not easy to investigate.

  A Gnani who prefers to move at night, accompanied by tigers who discourage interviews, may not resemble, except vaguely, the intelligentsia who walk in daylight with their dogs. That he is ignorant, or that he knows less, or less important things, than have been taught to college graduates, is easy to assert but much more difficult to prove. For instance, he can manage tigers, which neither Professor Einstein, nor Darwin, nor the Archbishop of Canterbury nor Mr. Henry Ford has ever pretended to be able to do.

  And if without beating them or putting them in cages, he can manage tigers, which is said to be impossible, and can keep the secret of how to do it, which must be even more difficult in this age of persistent inquiry, then surely nobody can pretend to say exactly where his knowledge leaves off or begins; and it might be that he knows too much for it to be safe to tamper with him or to trespass upon his preserves.

  So, at any rate, thinks Rajputana, which contains a proud race who were civilized when Britons were fighting the wars of the Roses and burning witches at the stake. Rajputana nowadays is quite familiar with electricity and Lewis guns. It has the gramophone and movie, likes them, understands them — and continues to respect the Gnani.

  Nor is Rajputana singular. The longer the well-educated sahib has resided in the country, the less inclined he is to talk about Gnanis, except in private, after making sure his confidant will not repeat the conversation at the club or to the missionaries or the people who tour India and write all about it in a book. Familiarity may breed contempt, but no Gnani has ever grown familiar with any white man; and there are those — twenty years in the service, for instance — who believe, and assert in rare moments of expansiveness, that Gnanis not only “know something,” as their title suggests, but know as much more than most of the rest of us as we know more, or think we know more, than the Hottentot.

  So although in the dew-softened mud of the tennis-courts belonging to Mount Abu Club there were the foot-prints of two tigers in the early morning, no plans were laid to go a hunting, not even by the railway engineers on long vacation, who take a godless joy in getting the best of all the sport in sight because it annoys their white-skinned superiors.

  It was reported by the aged individual who rolls the tennis-courts at dawn that between the tiger’s spoor there were the footprints of a man who had walked bare-footed and so close to both tigers that he might have had a hand resting on each. He furthermore said, and the fact was confirmed by two rajahs, nine princes, and eight-and-twenty polo-playing hangers-on, one British colonel, the club secretary, eight British soldiers from the hospital and all the club servants, including the assistant cook, that the footprints, both tiger’s and man’s, were directed toward the Deulwara Temples, which are about five miles away along a winding bridle-path overlooked by hordes of sacred monkeys.

  Now the Deulwara Temples are of white marble and more beautiful than swans at rest on azure lakes. They may be visited by those provided with a permit from the magistrate, and the Hindu priests who take charge of the visitor are too polite to stand very close to their guests or to watch them too intrusively. They make no show of secrecy whatever and require the permit merely as a safe-guard against vandalism and the quest for souvenirs. Yet nobody except the veriest guide-book gulper thinks he has seen all that might be shown when he has made the round of fifty-five cells, each containing images with jeweled eyes, and has peered into the gloom of the inner shrine, where sits the gigantic figure of the god Parswanath.

  To the temples at Deulwara there go maharajahs to whom obedient millions bow. Within the shrine they listen meekly; but to what they listen, and what they see there, none knows except those who see and listen. It is certain that no spies have ever crept into the shrine, and not a drunkard in his cups has ever told what takes place when the great door shuts and faint, fantastic music comes vibrating through the marble to the rows of white-clad priests who stand in the cloistered court. But it may be that the Gnani knows what happens in there.

  It was near the tiger’s footprints, very early in the morning after having lunched with Galloway, that Deborah met Prince Rundhia Singh for the second time. She had watched him playing polo after lunch, and had formed a rather different opinion of him from her first one when she saw him staring at her in the dining-room. She had decided he was a horseman beyond praise, and consequently not without excuse for living.

  “Would you like to see the animals that made those marks?” he asked, riding up and dismounting to stand beside her where she stooped to examine the tracks on soft dirt fifty yards beyond the tennis-court. Her own pony, borrowed from Galloway, was nibbling the bushes near-by.

  As she stood up straight to answer Rundhia Singh her pony snorted, reared away from a smell that terrified him, broke the branch of the low bush over which she had thrown the reins and galloped off in the direction of Deulwara. Laughing, Rundhia Singh mounted and rode in pursuit. A group of British officers who saw the incident rode up to make themselves agreeable and when the prince returned leading the runaway Deborah was in the midst of them.

  “Shall we resume our ride?” the prince asked casually, after a much more casual stare at the officers, who, having introduced themselves, were in no mood to give way to him. They grew suddenly silent, adepts to a man in the art of erecting social barriers without committing themselves; it was as obvious to Deborah as if they had pulled out a printed code and shown it to her that she should not go riding with an Indian prince alone.

  “He was going to show me the tigers,” she suggested, half-inclined to accept the prince’s invitation out of sheer delight in scandalizing men who proposed to impose their code on her.

  Her young, irreverent lips were framing merry impudence when suddenly every pony in the circle with the exception of Rundhia Singh’s and her own, which were being held by a sais who had followed the prince on foot, shied, snorted, plunged and broke away, scattering in all directions.

  The prince’s eyes were on a clump of bushes, fifty yards away, that half-concealed a gap between two granite boulders. The expression on his face was sullenly mysterious, but he made no comment other than to send the sais running for other men to help round up the ponies. One of the officers walked toward the clump of bushes, very deliberate in his movements, saying nothing. Another asked for the loan of Deborah’s pony on which to ride after his own, but Deborah chose to have that fun for herself and swung into the saddle, taking the reins from Rundhia Singh. They cantered away together to get beyond two of the runaways that had already come to a standstill and were trembling, waiting to be caught.

  “What did you mean,” asked Deborah, “by talking about resuming our ride? I started out alone.”
/>   “You shouldn’t!” said Rundhia Singh.

  “I shall do as I please! Who are you to make laws? I don’t belong to this kindergarten.”

  She usually tested men by being rude to them to bring out their peculiarities and, if she failed to draw sparks in return wasted no more curiosity. Rundhia Singh checked his pony and turned to stare at her, his dark eyes smouldering.

  “Now kick!” she said, mocking him. “I hate a man who can’t hit back.”

  Instead, he spurred the pony, then checked again with a peculiarly savage jerk at the bridle-rein.

  “The religion of you American women is independence,” he said calmly, but she was aware of a volcano underneath the surface. So was his pony. “You are as narrow and violent in that religion of yours as we Hindus are broad and peaceful. We make up our religion as we go along. You make a law of yours and never change it. The result is that you, for instance, can come to India, shut your eyes to everything worth noticing and go away as ignorant as when you came.”

  “You, I suppose, are omniscient?” she suggested.

  “At least,” he said, “I know why those ponies bolted. I notice there is only one of your English friends who even suspects the reason.”

  “They are not my friends,” she answered. “I never met them until this morning.”

  They were within fifty yards now of the two nearest runaways, so they drew rein to see whether they would not come up to be caught. But one of them kicked and bolted and the other cantered after him.

  “Your fault!” said Deborah. “You scared them purposely. I saw you.”

  She turned to consider the group she had left. They were decent Englishmen, who could be trusted to be nothing worse than sentimental with a dash of vanity thrown in. This Rajput was an unknown quantity, who obviously had some reason for wishing to be alone with her. However, she was not in the least afraid of him.