Guns of the Gods

T >> Talbot Mundy >> Guns of the Gods

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Tom made no answer. The next move was Gungadhura's. There was
silence while a gold clock on the wall ticked off eighty seconds.

"You are an idiot!" Gungadhura broke out at last. "You have missed
a golden opportunity! But if you will hold your tongue--absolutely--you
shall draw your pension in a month or two from now, with ten thousand
rupees in gold into the bargain!"

"Yes, Your Highness." (A native of the country would have begun to
try to bargain there and then. But there are more differences than one
between the ranks of East and West; more degrees than one of
dissimulation. Tom gravely doubted Gungadhura's prospect of being
in position to grant him a pension, or any other favor, a month or two
from then. A native of the country would have bargained nevertheless.

"Keep that guard confined for the present. You have my leave to go."

Tom saluted and withdrew. He was minded to spit on the palace steps,
but refrained because the guard would surely have reported what he
did to Gungadhura, who would have understood the act in its exact significance.

As he left the palace yard he passed a curtained two-wheeled cart
drawn by small humped bulls, and turned his head in time to see the
high priest of Jinendra heave his bulk out from behind the curtains and
wheezily ascend the palace steps.

"A little ghostly consolation for the maharajah's sins!" he muttered, as
he headed toward his own quarters for another stiff glass of brandy
and some sleep. He felt he needed both--or all three!

"If it's true there's no hell, then I'm on velvet!" he muttered. "But I'm
a liar! A liar by imputation--by suggestion--by allegation--by collusion--
and in fact! Now, if I was one o' them Hindus I could hire a priest to
sing a hymn and start me clean again from the beginning. Trouble is,
I'm a complacent liar! I'll do it again, and I know it! Brandy's the right
oracle for me!"

But there was no consolation, ghostly or otherwise, being brought to
Gungadhura. Jinendra's fat high priest, short-winded from his effort
on the stairs, with aching hams and knees that trembled from exertion,
was ushered into a chamber some way removed from that in which
Tom Tripe had had his interview. The maharajah lay now with his head
on the lap of Patali, his favorite dancing girl, in a room all scent and
cushions and contrivances. (That was how Yasmini learned about
it afterward.)

It was against all the canons of caste and decency to accord an interview
to any one in that flagrant state of impropriety--to a high priest especially.
But it amused Gungadhura to outrage the priest's alleged asceticism,
and to show him discourtesy (without in the least affecting his own
superstitious scruples in the matter of religion.) Besides, his head ached,
and he liked to have Patali's resourcefulness and wit to reenforce his
own tired intuition.

The priest sat for several minutes recovering breath and equipoise.
Then, when the pain had left his thighs and he felt comfortable, he
began with a bomb.

"Mukhum Dass the money-lender has been to me to give thanks, and
to make a meager offering for the recovery of his lost title-deed! He
has it back!"

Gungadhura swore so savagely that Patali screamed.

"How did he find it? Where?"

Mukhum Dass had told the exact truth, as it happened, but the priest
had drawn his own conclusions from the fact that it was Samson's babu
who returned the document. He was less than ever sure of Gungadhura's
prospects, suspecting, especially since his own night-interview with
the commissioner, that some new dark plot was being hatched on the
English side of the river. Having no least objection to see Gungadhura
in the toils, he did not propose to tell him more than would frighten and
worry him.

"He said that a hand gave him the paper in the dark. It was the work
of Jinendra doubtless."

"Pah! Thy god functions without thee, then! That is a wondrous bellyful
of brains of thine! Do you know that the princess has fled the palace?"

Jinendra's priest feigned surprise.

"Is it not as clear as the stupidity on thy fat face that the ten-times casteless
hussy is behind this? Bag of wind and widows' tenths! Now I must buy
the house on the hill from Mukhum Dass and pay the brute his price for it!"

"Borrowing the money from him first?" the priest suggested with a fat smirk.
None guessed better than he how low debauch had brought the maharajah's
private treasury.

"Go and pray!" growled Gungadhura. "Are thy temple offices of no
more use than to bring thee here twitting me with poverty? Go and lay
that belly on the flags, and beat thy stupid brains out on the altar step!
Jinendra will be glad to see thy dark soul on its way to Yum (the judge
of the dead) and maybe will reward me afterward! Go! Get out here!
Leave me alone to think!"

The priest went through the form of blessing him, taking more than the
usual time about the ceremony for sake of the annoyance that it gave.
Gungadhura was too superstitious to dare interrupt him.

"Better tell that Mukhum Dass to sell me the house cheap," said the
maharajah as a sort of afterthought. Patali had been whispering to him.
"Tell him the gods would take it as an act of merit."

"Cheap?" said the priest over his shoulder as he reached the door.
"I proposed it to him." (That was not exactly true. He had proposed
that Mukhum Dass should give the title to the temple as an act of grace.)
"He answered that what the gods have returned to him must be doubly
precious and certainly entrusted to his keeping; therefore he would
count it a deadly sin to part with the title now on any terms!"

"Go!" growled Gungadhura. "Get out of here!"

After the priest had gone he talked matters over with Patali, while she
stroked his aching head. Whoever knows the mind of the Indian dancing
girl could reason out the calculus of treason. They are capable of
treachery and loyalty to several sides at once; of sale of their affections
to the highest bidder, and of death beside the buyer in his last extremity,
having sold his life to a rival whom they loathe. They are the very
priestesses of subterfuge--idolators of intrigue--past--mistresses of
sedition and seduction. Yet even Patali did not know the real reason
why Gungadhura lusted for possession of that small house on the hill.
She believed it was for a house of pleasure for herself.

"Persuade the American gold-digger to transfer the lease of it," she
suggested. "He is thy servant. He dare not refuse."

But Gungadhura had already enough experience of Richard Blaine to
suspect the American of limitless powers of refusal. He was superstitious
enough to believe in the alleged vision of Jinendra's priest, that the
clue to the treasure of Sialpore would be found in the cellar of that house,
where Jengal Singh had placed it; impious enough to double-cross
the priest, and to use any means whatever, foul preferred, to get
possession of the clue. But he was sensible enough to know that
Dick Blaine could not be put out of his house by less than legal process.
Patali, watching the expression of his eyes, mercurially changed her tactics.

"Today the court is closed," she said. "Tomorrow Mukhum Dass will
go to file his paper and defeat the suit of Dhulap Singh. He will ride
by way of the ghat between the temple of Siva and the place where
the dead Afghan kept his camels. He must ride that way, for his home
is on the edge of town."

But Gungadhura shook his head. He hardly dared seize Mukhum Dass
or have him robbed, because the money-lender was registered as a
British subject, which gave him full right to be extortionate in any state
he pleased, with protection in case of interference. He could rob
Dick Blaine with better prospect of impunity. Suddenly he decided to
throw caution to the winds. Patali ceased from stroking his head, for
she recognized in his eyes the blaze of determination, and it put all
her instincts on the defensive.

"Pen, ink and paper!" he ordered.

Patali brought them, and he addressed the envelope first, practising
the spelling and the none too easily accomplished English.

"Why to him?" she asked, watching beside his shoulder. "If you send
him a letter he will think himself important. Word of mouth--"

"Silence, fool! He would not come without a letter."

"Better to meet him, then, as if by accident and--"

"There is no time! That cursed daughter of my uncle is up to mischief.
She has fled. Would that Yum had her! She went to Samson days ago.
The English harass me. She has made a bargain with the English to
get the treasure first and ruin me. I need what I need swiftly!"

"Then the house is not for me?"

"No!"

He wrote the letter, scratching it laboriously in a narrow Italian hand;
then sealed and sent it by a messenger. But Patali, sure in her own
mind that her second thoughts had been best and determined to have
the house for her own, went out to set spies to keep a very careful eye
on Mukhum Dass and to report the money-lender's movements to her
hour by hour.

In less than an hour Dick Blaine arrived by dog-cart in answer to the
note, and Patali did her best to listen through a keyhole to the interview.
But she was caught in the act by Gungadhura's much neglected queen,
and sent to another part of the palace with a string of unedifying titles
ringing in her ears.

There was not a great deal to hear. Dick Blaine was perfectly satisfied
to let the maharajah search his cellar. He was almost suspiciously
complaisant, making no objection whatever to surrendering the key
and explaining at considerable length just how it would be easiest to
draw the nails. He would be away from home all day, but Chamu the
butler would undoubtedly admit the maharajah and his men. For the
rest, he hoped they would find what they were looking for, whatever
that might be; and he sincerely hoped that the maharajah had not hurt
his head seriously.

Asked why he had nailed the cellar door down, he replied that he
objected to unauthorized people nosing about in there.

"Who has been in the cellar?" asked Gungadhura.

"Only Tom Tripe."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite. Until that very evening I always kept the cellar padlocked. It's
a Yale lock. There's nobody in this man's town could pick it."

"Well--thank you for the permission."

"Don't mention it. I hope your head don't hurt you much. Good morning."

Dick little suspected, as he drove the dog-cart across the bridge toward
the club, chuckling over the quick success of Yasmini's ruse, that he
himself had set the stage for tragedy.

Chapter Fifteen

He who sets a tiger-trap
(Hush! and watch! and wait!)
Can't afford a little nap
Hidden where the twigs enwrap
Lest--it has occurred--mayhap
A jackal take the bait.
So stay awake, my sportsman bold,
And peel your anxious eye,
There's more than tigers, so I'm told,
To test your cunning by!

"Me for the princess!"

It is not always an entirely simple matter in India to dismiss domestic
servants. To begin with it was Sunday; the ordinary means of cashing
checks were therefore unavailable, and Dick Blaine had overlooked
the fact that he had no money of small denominations in the house.
It was hardly reasonable to expect Chamu and the cook to leave without
their wages.

Then again, Sita Ram had not yet sent new servants to replace the
potential poisoners; and Chamu had put up a piteous bleating, using
every argument, from his being an orphan and the father of a son, down
to the less appealing one that Gungadhura would be angry. In vain
Dick reassured him that he and cook and maharajah might all go to hell
together with his, Dick Blaine's, express permission. In vain he advised
him to put the son to work, and be supported for a while in idleness.
Chamu lamented noisily. Finally Dick compromised by letting both
servants remain for one more day, reflecting that they could not very
well tamper with boiled eggs; lunch and dinner he would get at the
English club across the river; for breakfast on Monday he would content
himself again with boiled eggs, and biscuits out of an imported tin,
after which he would cash a check and send both the rascals packing.

So the toast that Chamu brought him he broke up and threw into the
garden, where the crows devoured it without apparent ill-effect; he
went without tea, and spent an hour or so after breakfast with a good
cigar and a copy of a month-old Nevada newspaper. That religious
rite performed, he shaved twice over, it being Sunday, and strolled out
to look at the horses and potter about the garden that was beginning
to shrivel up already at the commencement of the hot weather.

"If I knew who would be maharajah of this state from one week to the
next," he told himself, "I'd get a contract from him to pipe water all over
the place from the hills behind."

He was sitting in the shade, chewing an unlit cigar, day-dreaming about
water-pressure and dams and gallons-per-hour, when Gungadhura's
note came and he ordered the dog-cart at once, rather glad of something
to keep him occupied. As he drove away he did not see Mukhum Dass
lurking near the small gate, as it was not intended that he should.
Mukhum Dass, for his part, did not see Pinga, the one-eyed beggar
with his vertical smile, who watched him from behind a rock, for that
was not intended either. Pinga himself was noticed closely by another man.

The minute Dick was out of sight Mukhum Dass entered the small gate
in the wall, and called out for Chamu brazenly. Chamu received him
at the bottom
of the house-steps, but Mukhum Dass walked up them uninvited.

"The cellar," he said. "I have come to see the cellar. There is a complaint
regarding the foundations. I must see."

"But, sahib, the door is locked."

"Unlock it."

"I have no key."

"Then break the lock!"

"The cellar door is nailed down!"

"Draw the nails!"

"I dare not! I don't know how! By what right should I do this thing?"

"It is my house. I order it!"

"But, sahib, only yesterday Blaine sahib dismissed me in great anger
because I permitted another one as much as to look into the cellar!"

If the tale Yasmini told him on the morning of her first visit to Tess
had not been enough to determine Mukhum Dass, now, with the lost
title-deed recovered, the conviction that Gungadhura wanted the place
for secret reasons, and Chamu's objections to confirm the whole wild
story, he became as set on his course and determined to wring the
last anna out of the mystery as only a money-lender can be.

"With what money did you repay to me the loan that your son obtained
by false pretenses?" he demanded.

"I? What? I repaid the loan. I have the receipt. That is enough."

"On the receipt stands written the number of the bank-note. I have kept
the bank-note. It was stolen from the Princess Yasmini. Do you wish
to go to jail? Then open that cellar door!"

"Sahib, I never stole the note!" wept Chamu. "It was thrust into my
cummerbund from behind!"

But Mukhum Dass set his face like a flint, and the wretched Chamu
knew nothing about the law against compounding felonies. Wishing
he had had curiosity enough himself to search the cellar thoroughly
before the door was nailed down, he finally yielded to the money-lender's
threats and between them, with much sweating and grunting, they pushed
and pulled the safe from off the trap. Then came the much more difficult
task of drawing nails without an instrument designed for it. Dick Blaine
kept all his tools locked up.

"There is an outside door to the cellar, behind the house," said Chamu.

"But that is of iron, idiot! and bolts on the inside with a great bar resting
in the stonework. Are there no tools in the garden?"

Chamu did not know, and the money-lender went himself to see. There
Pinga with the vertical smile saw him choose a small crow-bar and return
into the house with it. Pinga passed the word along to another man,
who told it to a third, who ran with it hot-foot to Gungadhura's palace.

Once inside the house again Mukhum Dass lost no time, arguing to
himself most likely that with the secret of the treasure of Sialpore in
his possession it would not much matter what damage he had done.
He would be able to settle for it. He broke the hasp of the door, and
levered up the trap, splintering it badly and breaking both hinges in the
process, while Chamu watched him, growing green with fear.

Then he ordered a lamp and went alone into the cellar, while Chamu,
deciding that a desperate situation called for desperate remedies, went
up-stairs on business of his own. It took Mukhum Dass about two minutes
to discover the loose stone--less than two more to raise it--and about
ten seconds to see and pounce on the silver tube. He was too bent
on business to notice the man with the vertical smile peering down at
him through the trap. Pinga escaped from the house after seeing the
money-lender hide the tube inside his clothes, and less than a minute
later a lean man ran like the wind to Gungadhura's palace to confirm
the first's report.

With a wry face at the splintered trap-door, and a shrug of his shoulders
of the kind he used when clients begged in tears for extra time in which
to pay, Mukhum Dass looked about for Chamu with a sort of half-notion
of giving him a small bribe. But Chamu was not to be seen. So he
left the house by the way he had come, mounted his mule where he
had left it in a hollow down the road, and rode off smiling.

Ten minutes later Chamu and the cook both left by the same exit.
Chamu had with him, besides his own bundle of belongings, a revolver
belonging to Dick Blaine, two bracelets belonging to Tess, a fountain-pen
that he had long had his heart on, plenty of note-paper on which to have
a writer forge new references, a half-dozen of Dick's silk handkerchiefs
and a turquoise tie-pin. The revolver alone, in that country in those days,
would sell for enough to take him to Bombay, where new jobs with newly
arrived sahibs are plentiful. The cook, not having enjoyed the run of
the house, had only a few knives and a pound of cocoa. They quarreled
all the way down-hill as to why Chamu should and should not defray
the cook's traveling expenses.

A little later, in the ghat between Siva's temple and the building, where
the dead Afghan used to keep his camels, Mukhum Dass, smiling as
he rode, was struck down by a knife-blow from behind and pitched
off his mule head-foremost. The mule ran away. The money-lender's
body was left lying in a pool of blood, with the clothing torn from it;
and it was considered by those who found the body several hours
afterward and drove away the pariah dogs and kites, that the fact of
his money having been taken deprived the murder of any unusual interest.

Late that evening Dick Blaine, returning from a desultory dinner at the
club across the river, very nearly fell into the trap-door, for the hamal
had run away too, thinking he would surely be accused of all the mischief,
and no lamps were lit.

"Well!" he remarked, striking a match to look about him, "dad-blame
me if that isn't a regular small town yegg's trick! You'd think after I gave
Gungadhura the key and all, he'd have the courtesy to use it and draw
the nails! His head can't ache enough to suit me! Me for the princess!
If I'd any scruples, believe me, bo, they're vanished--gone--Vamoosed!
That young woman's going to win against the whole darned outfit, English,
Indian and all! Me for her! Chamu! Where's Chamu? Why aren't the
lamps lit?"

He wandered through the house in the dark in search of servants, and
finally lit a lamp himself, locked all the doors and went to bed.

Chapter Sixteen

The buildings rear immense, horizons fade
And thought forgets old gages in the ecstasy of view.
The standards go by which the steps were made.
On which we trod from former levels to the new.
No time for backward glance, no pause for breath,
Since impulse like a bowstring loosed us in full flight
And in delirium of speed none aim considereth
Nor in the blaze of burning codes can think of night.
The whirring of sped wheels and horn remind
That speed, more speed is best and peace is waste!
They rank unfortunate who tag behind
And only they seem wise who urge, and haste and haste.
New comforts multiply (for there is need!)
Each ballot adds assent to law that crowds the days.
None pause. None clamor but for speed--more speed!
And yet--there was a sweetness in the olden ways.

"And since, my Lords, in olden days--"

Trotters, fed on chopped raw meat by advice of Tess, and brushed
by Bimbu for an hour to get the stiffness out of him, was sent off in the
noon heat with a double message for his master, one addressed to
Samson, one to Dick Blaine, and both wrapped in the same chewed
leather cover, that the dog might understand. The mongrel in him made
him more immune to heat than a thoroughbred would have been. In
any case, he showed nothing but eagerness to get back to Tom Tripe,
and, settling the package comfortably in his jaws, was off without ceremony
at a steady canter.

"If all my friends were like that one," said Yasmini, "I would be empress
of the earth, not queen of a little part of Rajputana! However, one thing
at a time!"

It was hardly more than a village that Tess could see through the jalousies
of her bedroom windows. The room was at a corner, so that she had
a wide view in two directions from either deep window-seat. There
were all the signs of Indian village life about her--low, thatched houses
in compounds fenced with thorn and prickly pear,--temples in between
them,--trades and handicrafts plied in the shade of ancient trees,--squalor
and beauty, leisure, wealth, poverty and lordliness all hand in hand.
She could see the backs of elephants standing in a compound under
trees, and there were peacocks swaggering everywhere, eating the
same offal, though, as the unpretentious chickens in the streets. Over
in the distance, beyond the elephants, was the tiled roof of a great
house glinting in strong sunlight between the green of enormous pipal
trees; and there were other houses, strong to look at but not so great,
jumbled together in one quarter where a stream passed through the village.

Yasmini came and sat beside her in the window-seat, as simply dressed
in white as on the night before, with her gold hair braided up loosely
and an air of reveling in the luxury of peace and rest.

"That great house," she said, peering through the jalousies, "is where
the ceremony is to be tonight. My father's father built it. This is not
our state, but he owned the land."

"Doesn't it belong to Gungadhura now?" Tess asked.

"No. It was part of my legacy. This house, too, that we are in. Look,
some of them have come on elephants to do me honor. Many of the
nobles of the land are poor in these days; one, they tell me, came on
foot, walking by night lest the ill-bred laugh at him. He has a horse now.
He shall have ten when I am maharanee!"

"Won't the English get to hear of this?" Tess asked.

Yasmini laughed.

"Their spies are everywhere. But there has been great talk of a polo
tournament to be held on the English side of the river at Sialpore. The
English encourage games, thinking they keep us Rajputs out of mischief--
as indeed is true. This, then, is a conference to decide which of our
young bloods shall take part in the tournament, and who shall contribute
ponies. The English lend one another ponies; why not we? The spies
will report great interest in the polo tournament, and the English will
smile complacently."

"But suppose a spy gets in to see the ceremony?" Tess suggested.

Yasmini's blue eyes looked into hers and there was a Viking glare
behind them, suggestive of the wintry fjords whence one of her royal
ancestresses came.

"Let him!" she said. "It would be the last of him!"

Tess considered a while in silence.

"When is the tournament to be?" she asked presently. "Won't the English
think it strange that the conference about men and ponies should be
put off until so late?"

"They might have," Yasmini answered. "They are suspicious of all
gatherings. But a month ago we worked up a dispute entirely for their
benefit. This is supposed to be a last-hour effort to bring cohesion
out of jealousy. The English like to see Rajputs quarrel among themselves,
because of their ancient saw that says 'Divide and govern!' I do not
understand the English altogether--yet; but in some ways they are like
an open book. They will let us quarrel over polo to our heart's content."

There is something very close to luxury in following the thread of an
intrigue, sitting on soft cushions with the sunlight sending layers of
golden shafts through jalousies into a cool room; so little of the strain
and danger of it; so much of its engagement. Tess was enjoying herself
to the top of her bent.

"But when the ceremony is over," she said, "and you yourself have
proclaimed Prince Utirupa king of Sialpore, there will still remain the
problem of how to make the English recognize him. There is Gungadhura,
for instance, to get out of the way; and Gungadhura's sons--how many
has he?"

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