Guns of the Gods

T >> Talbot Mundy >> Guns of the Gods

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

"Will you come outside and talk with me?" Samson shouted, amid the
din of pick and shovel work.

"Sure."

Dick's poker face was in perfect working order by the time they reached
the light. But he stood with his back to the sun and let Samson have
the worst of the position.

"You're wasting time and money, Blaine. I've come to tell you so."

"Now--that's good of you."

"Your contract with Gungadhura is not worth the paper it's written on."

"How so?"

"He will not be maharajah after noon today!"

"You don't mean it!"

"That information is confidential, but the news will be out by tomorrow.
The British Administration intends to take over all the land on this side of
the river. That's confidential too. Between you and me, our government
would never recognize a contract between you and Gungadhura. I warned
you once, and your wife a second time."

"Sure, she told me."

"Well. You and I have been friends, Blaine. I'd like you to regard this
as not personal. But--"

"Oh, I get you. I'm to call the men off? That it?"

"You've only until tomorrow in any case."

"And Gungadhura, broke, to look to for the pay-roll! Well--as you say,
what's the use?"

"I'd pay your men off altogether, if I were you."

"They're a good gang."

"No doubt. We've all admired your ability to make men work. But there'll
be a new maharajah in a day or two, and, strictly between you and me,
as one friend to another, there'll be a very slight chance indeed of your
getting a contract from the incoming man to carry on your mining in the hills.
I'd like to save you trouble and expense."

"Real good of you."

"Er--found anything down there?" Samson nodded over his shoulder
toward the tunnel mouth.

"Not yet."

"Any signs of anything?"

"Not yet."

Samson looked relieved.

"By the way. You mentioned the other day something about evidence
relating to the murder of Mukhum Dass."

"I did."

"Was it anything important?"

"Maybe. Looked so to me."

"Would you mind giving me an outline of it?"

"You said that day you knew who murdered Mukhum Dass?"

"Yes. When I got in this morning there was a note on my desk from
Norwood, the superintendent of police, to say that they've arrested your
butler and cook, and the murderer of Mukhum Dass all hiding together
near a railway station. The murderer has squealed, as you Americans say.
They often do when they're caught. He has told who put him up to it."

"Guess I'll give you this, then. It's the map out of the silver tube that
Mukhum Dass burgled from my cellar. Gungadhura gave it to me with
instructions to dig here. You'll note there's blood on it."

Samson's eyes looked hardly interested as he took it. Then he looked,
and they blazed. He put it in his inner pocket hurriedly.

"Too bad, Blaine!" he laughed. "So you even had a map of the treasure, eh?
Another day or two and you'd have forestalled us! I suppose you'd
a contract with Gungadhura for a share of it?"

"You bet!"

"Well--it wasn't registered. I doubt if you could have enforced it.
Gungadhura is an awful rascal."

"Gee!" lied Dick. "I never thought of that! I had my other contract
registered all right--in your office--you remember?"

"Yes. I warned you at the time about Gungadhura."

"You did. I remember now. You did. Well, I suppose the wife and I'll
be heading for the U. S. A. soon, richer by the experience. Still--I reckon
I'll wait around and see the new maharajah in the saddle, and watch
what comes of it."

"You've no chance, Blaine, believe me!"

"All right, I'll think it over. Meanwhile, I'll whistle off these men."

The next man Samson interviewed was Willoughby de Wing.

"Let me have a commissioner's escort, please," he demanded. "I'm
going to see Gungadhura now! You'd better follow up with a troop to r
eplace the maharajah's guards around his palace. We can't put him
under arrest without impeaching him; but--make it pretty plain to the
guard they're there to protect a man who has abdicated; that no one's
to be allowed in, and nobody out unless he can explain his business.
Then, can you spare some guards for another job? I want about twenty
men on the River Palace at once. Caution them carefully. Nobody's
to go inside the grounds. Order the maharajah's guards away! It's a
little previous. His officers will try to make trouble of course. But an
apology at the proper time will cover that."

"What's the new excitement?" asked the colonel. "More murders?
More princesses out at night?"

"This is between you and me. Not a word to a living soul, De Wing!"
Samson paused, then whispered: "The treasure of Sialpore!"

"What--in the palace?"

"In the grounds! There's a tunnel already half-dug, leading toward it
from inside the palace wall. I've proof of the location in my pocket!"

"Gad's teeth!" barked Willoughby de Wing. "All right, I'll have your
escort in a jiffy. Have a whisky and soda, my boy, to stiffen you before
the talk with Gungadhura!"

A little less than half an hour later Samson drove across the bridge in
the official landau, followed by an officer, a jemadar, a naik and eight
troopers of De Wing's Sikh cavalry. Willoughby de Wing drove in the
carriage with him as a witness. They entered the palace together, and
were kept waiting so long that Samson sent the major-domo to the
maharajah a second time with a veiled threat to repeat, said slowly:

"Say the business is urgent and that I shall not be held responsible
for consequences if he doesn't see me at once!"

"Gad!" swore De Wing, screwing in his monocle. "I'd like a second
whisky and soda! I suppose there's none here. I hate to see a man
broke--even a blackguard!"

Gungadhura received them at last, seated, in the official durbar room.
The bandages were gone from his face, but a strip of flesh-colored
court-plaster from eye to lip gave him an almost comical look of dejection,
and he lolled in the throne-chair with his back curved and head hung
forward, scowling as a man does not who looks forward to the interview.

Samson cleared his throat, and read what be had to say, holding the
paper straight in front of him.

"I have a disagreeable task of informing Your Highness that your
correspondence with the Mahsudi tribe is known to His Majesty's Government."

Gungadhura scowled more deeply, but made no answer.

"Amounting as it does to treason, at a time when His Majesty's Government
are embarrassed by internal unrest, your act can not be overlooked."

Gungadhura made a motion as if to interrupt, but thought better of it.

"In the circumstances I have the honor to advise Your Highness that
the wisest course, and the only course that will avoid impeachment,
is abdication."

Gungadhura shook his head violently.

"I can explain," he said. "I have proofs."

Samson turned the paper over--paused a moment--and began to read
the second sheet.

"It is known who murdered Mukhum Dass. The assassin has been
caught, and has confessed."

Gungadhura's eyes that had been dull, and almost listless hitherto,
began to glare like an animal's.

"I have here--" Samson reached in his pocket, "a certain piece of parchment--
a map in fact--that was stolen from the body of Mukhum Dass. Perhaps
Your Highness will recognize it. Look!"

Gungadhura looked, and started like a man stung. Samson returned
the map to his pocket, for the maharajah almost looked like trying to
snatch it; but instead he collapsed in his chair again.

"If I abdicate?" he asked, as if his throat and lips could hardly form the words.

"That would be sufficient. The assassin would then be allowed to plead
guilty to another charge there is against him, and the matter would be dropped."

"I abdicate!"

"On behalf of His Majesty's Government I accept the abdication. Sign
this, please."

Samson laid a formal written act of abdication on the table by the throne.
Gungadhura signed it. Willoughby de Wing wrote his signature as witness.
Samson took it back and folded it away.

"Arrangements will be made for Your Highness to leave Sialpore tomorrow
morning, with a sufficient escort for your protection. Provision will be
made in due course for your private residence elsewhere. Be good
enough to hold yourself and your family in readiness tomorrow morning."

"But my son!" exclaimed Gungadhura. "I abdicate in favor of my son!"

"In case of abdication by a reigning prince, or deposition of a reigning
prince," said Samson, "the Government of India reserves the right to
appoint his successor, from among eligible members of his family if
there be any, but to appoint his successor in any case. There is
ample precedent."

"And my son?"

"Will certainly not be considered."

Gungadhura glanced about him like a frenzied man, and then lay back
in a state of near-collapse. Samson and De Wing both bowed, and
left the room.

"Poor devil!" said De Wing, "I'm sorry for him."

"Would you be a good fellow," said Samson, "and send off this wire
for me? There--I've added the exact time of the abdication. I've got
to go now and summon a durbar of Gungadhura's state officers, and
tell them in confidence what's happened. I shall hint pretty broadly that
Utirupa is our man, and then ask them which prince they'd like to
have succeed."

"Good!" said De Wing. "Nothing like tact! Why not meet me at the
club for a whisky and soda afterward?"

Inside the durbar hall Gungadhura sat alone for just so long as it took
the sound of the closing door to die away. Then another door, close
behind the throne chair opened, and Patali entered. She looked at him
with pity on her face, and curiosity.

"That American sold you," she said after a minute.

"Eh?"

"I say, that American sold you! He sold you, and the map, and the
treasure to the English!"

"I know it! I know it!"

"If I were a man--"

She waited, but he gave no sign of manhood.

"If I were a man I know what I would do!"

"Peace, Patali! I am a ruined man. They will all desert me as soon
as the news is out. They are deserting now; I feel it in my bones. I
have none to send."

"Send? It is only maharajahs who must send. Men do their own work!
I know what I would do to an American or any other man, who sold me!"

Chapter Twenty-One

The king sent his army and said, "Lo, I did it. Consider my prowess
and my strategy!" But the gods laughed. --Eastern proverb

"The guns of the gods!"

Very shortly after dawn on the morning of the polo game Yasmini left
the Blaines' house on business of her own. The news of Gungadhura's
abdication was abroad already, many times multiplied by each mouth
until two batteries of guns had become an army corps. But what caused
the greatest excitement was the news, first of all whispered, then
confirmed, that Gungadhura himself was missing.

That disturbing knowledge was the factor that prevented Yasmini from
returning to her own rifled palace and making the best of it; for it would
take time to hedge the place about properly with guards. There was
simply no knowing what Gungadhura might be up to. She judged it
probable that he had seen through her whole plot in the drear light of
revelation that so often comes to stricken men, and in that case her
own life was likely in danger every second he was still at liberty. But
she sent word to Utirupa, too, to be on the alert. And she saw him
herself that morning, in her favorite disguise of a rangar zemindari,
which is a Rajput landowner turned Muhammadan. The disguise
precluded any Hindu interference, and Muhammadans on that country-side,
who might have questioned her, were scarce.

The polo did not take place until late afternoon, because of the heat,
but the grounds were crowded long before the time by a multi-colored
swarm in gala mood, whom the artillerymen, pressed into service as
line-keepers, had hard work to keep back of the line. There was a rope
around three sides of the field, but it broke repeatedly, and in the end
the gunners had to be stationed a few feet apart all down the side
opposite the grand-stand to keep the crowd from breaking through.

There were carriages in swarms, ranging from the spider-wheel gig
of a British subaltern to the four-in-hand of Rajput nobility--kept pretty
carefully apart, though. The conquerors of India don't mix with the
conquered, as a rule, except officially. And there were half a dozen
shuttered carriages that might have contained ladies, and might not;
none knew.

It was a crowd that knew polo from the inside outward, and when the
ponies were brought at last and stood in line below the grand-stand,
each in charge of his sais, there grew a great murmur of critical approval;
for the points of a horse in Rajputana are as the lines of a yacht at
Marblehead, and the marks of a dog in Yorkshire; the very urchins
know them. The Bombay side of India had been scoured pretty
thoroughly for mounts for that event. The Rajputs had on the whole
the weight of money, and perhaps the showiest ponies, but the English
team, nearly all darker in color as it happened, except for one pie-bald,
looked trained up to the last notch and bore the air of knowing just
what to expect, that is as unmistakable in horses as in men.

Tom Tripe was there with his dog. Trotters had the self-imposed and
wholly agreeable task of chasing all unattached dogs off the premises.
But Tom Tripe himself was keeping rather in the background, because
technically, as a servant of Gungadhura, he was in a delicate position.
A voice that he could swear he almost recognized whispered to him
in the crowd that the English were going to forbid the next maharajah
to have any but employees of his own race. And a laugh that he could
pick out of a million greeted his change of countenance. But though
he turned very swiftly, and had had no brandy since morning to becloud
his vision, he failed to see his tormentor.

Tess and Dick drove down in ample time, as they had imagined, and
found hard work to squeeze the dog-cart in between the phalanxes of
wheels already massed on the ground. When they went to the grand-stand
it was to find not a seat left in the rows reserved for ordinary folk; so
Samson, who arrived late too, magnificent in brand-new riding-boots,
invited them to sit next him in front.

The ground was in perfect condition--a trifle hard, because of the season,
but flat as a billiard table and as fast as even Rajputs could desire.
A committee of them had been going over it daily for a week past,
recommending touches here, suggesting something there, neglecting
not an inch, because the finer stick-work of the Rajput team would be
lost on uneven ground; and the English had been sportsmen enough
to accommodate them without a murmur.

When a little bell rang and the teams turned out for the first chukker in
deathly-silence, it was evident at once what the Rajput strategy would be.
They had brought out their fastest ponies to begin with, determined to
take the lead at the start and hold it.

One could hear the crowd breathe when the whistle blew; for in India
polo is a game to watch, not an opportunity for small talk. Instantly the
ball went clipping toward the English goal, to be checked by Topham
at full-back, who sent it out rattling to the right wing. But the Rajput left-wing
man, a young cousin of Utirupa, cut in like an arrow. The ball crossed
over to the right wing, where Utirupa took it, galloping down the line on
a chestnut mare that had the speed of wind. Topham, racing to intercept
the ball, missed badly; a second later the Rajput center thundered
past both men and scored the goal, amid a roar from the spectators,
less than a minute from the start.

"Dick!" Tess exclaimed. "You ought to be ashamed of me! I'm rooting
for the Rajputs against my own color!"

"So'm I!" he answered. "I wish to glory there was some one here to bet with!"

Samson overheard.

"Which way do you want to bet?" he asked.

"A thousand on the Rajputs."

"Thousand what?"

"Dollars. Three thousand rupees."

"Confound it, you Americans are all too rich! Never mind, I'll take you."

"A bet!" Dick answered, and both men wrote it down.

About nine words were said by the captain of the English team as they
rode back to the center of the field, and when the ball was in play again
there was no more of the scattering open play that suited the other
side, but a close, short-hitting, chop-and-follow method that tried ponies'
tempers, and a scrimmage every ten yards that made all unavailing the
Rajputs' speed and dash. Whenever a stroke of lightning wrist-work
sent the ball clipping down-field Topham returned it to the center and
the scrimmage began all over again. The first chukker ended in mid-field,
with the score 1--0.

Both sides brought out fresh ponies for the second, and the Rajputs
tried again to score with their favorite tactics of long-hitting and tremendous
speed. But the English were playing dogged-does-it, and Topham
on the pie-bald at full back was invincible. Nothing passed him. Nor
were the English slow. Three times they seized opportunity in mid-field
and rode with a burst of fiery hitting toward the Rajput goal. Three times
the gunners down the line began to yell. The English team were getting
together, and the Rajputs a little wild. But the chukker ended with the
same score, 1--0.

"How d'you feel about it now?" asked Samson, looking as calm as the
English habitually do whenever their pulse beats furiously.

"I'd like to bet too!" Tess laughed, leaning across.

"What--the same sized bet?"

"No, a hundred."

"Dollars ?"

"Rupees!" she laughed. "I'm not so rich as my husband."

"Can't refuse a lady!" Samson answered, noting the bet down. "I shall
be a rich man tonight. They play a brilliant game, those fellows, but
we always beat them in the end."

"How do you account for that?" Dick asked, suspecting what was coming.

"Oh, in a number of ways, but chiefly because they lack team-loyalty
among themselves. They're all jealous of one another, whereas our
fellows play as a unit."

As if in confirmation of Samson's words the Rajput team seemed rather
to go to pieces in the third chukker. There was the same brilliant individual
hitting, and as much speed as ever, but the genius was not there. In
vain Utirupa took the ball out of a scrimmage twice and rode away with it.
He was not backed up in the nick of time, and before the end of the
third minute the English scored.

"You'd better go and hedge those bets," laughed Samson when the
chukker ended. "There are plenty of the native gentry over yonder who'd
be delighted to gamble a fortune with you yet!"

Dick scarcely heard. He was watching Utirupa, who stood by the pony-line
where a sais was doing something to a saddle girth. A rangar came
up to the prince and spoke to him--a slim, young-looking man, a head
the shorter of the two, with a turban rather low over his eyes, and the
loose end of it, for some reason, across the lower half of his face.
Dick nudged Tess, and she nodded. After that Utirupa appeared to
speak in low tones to each member of his own team.

"I beg your pardon. What was that you said?" asked Dick.

"I say you'd better hedge those bets."

"I'll double with you, if you like!"

"Good heavens, man! I've wagered a month's pay already! Go and
bet with Willoughby de Wing or one of the gunner officers."

The rangar disappeared into the crowd before the teams rode out for
the fourth encounter, and Tess, who had made up her mind to watch
the shuttered carriages that stood in line together in a roped enclosure
of their own, became too busy with the game. Something had happened
to the Rajputs. They no longer played with the gallery-appealing
smash-and-gallop fury that won them the first goal, although their speed
held good and the stick-work was marvelous. But they seemed more
willing now to mix it in the middle of the field, and to ride off an opponent
instead of racing for the chance to shine individually. It became the
English turn to drive to the wings and try to clear the ball for a hurricane
race down-field; and they were not quite so good at those tactics as
the other side were.

All the rest of that game until the eighth, chukker after chukker, the
Rajputs managed to reverse the usual procedure, obliging the English
team to wear itself out in terrific efforts to break away, tiring men and
ponies in a tight scramble in which neither side could score.

"It looks like a draw after all," said Samson. "Bets off in that case, I suppose?
Disappointing game in my opinion."

"'Tisn't over yet," said Dick.

The Rajputs were coming out for the last chukker with their first and
fastest ponies that had rested through the game; and they were smiling.
Utirupa had said something that was either a good joke or else vastly
reassuring. As a matter of fact he had turned them loose at last to play
their old familiar game again, and from the second that the ball went
into play the crowd was on tiptoe, swaying this and that way with excitement.

In vain the English sought to return to the scrimmage play; it was too late.
The Rajputs had them rattled. Topham at full-back on the pie-bald was
a stone wall, swift, hard-hitting and resourceful, but in vain. Swooping
down the wings, and passing with the dextrous wrist-work and amazing
body-bends that they alone seem able to accomplish, they put the
English team on the defensive and kept them there. Once, at about
half-time, by a dash all together the English did succeed in carrying t
he ball down-field, but that was their last chance, and they missed it.
In the last two minutes the Rajputs scored two goals, the last one
driven home by Utirupa himself, racing ahead of the field with whirling
stick and the thunder of a neck-and-neck stampede behind him.

"That'll be your month's pay!" laughed Dick. "I hope you won't starve
for thirty days!"

The crowd went mad with delight, and swarmed on to the ground, shouting
and singing. Samson got up, looking as if he rather enjoyed to lose
three thousand rupees in an afternoon.

"If you'll excuse me," he said, I'll go and shake hands with Utirupa. He
deserves congratulation. It was head-work won that game."

"I wonder what she said to him at the end of the third chukker," Tess
whispered to Dick.

Samson found Utirupa giving orders to the saises, and shook hands
with him.

"Good game, Utirupa! Congratulate you. By the way: there's going
to be a meeting on important business in my office half an hour from now.
When you've had a tub and a change, I wish you'd come and join us.
We want a word with you."

"Where are the gunners going to?" asked Tess. "The men who kept
the line--look! They're all trooping off the ground in the same direction."

"Dunno," said her husband. "Let's make for the dog-cart and drive home.
If we hang around Samson'll think we're waiting for that money!"

Half an hour after that, Utirupa presented himself at Samson's office
in the usual neat Rajput dress that showed off his lithe figure and the
straightness of his stature. There was quite a party there to meet him--
Samson, Willoughby de Wing, Norwood, Sir Hookum Bannerjee, Topham
(still looking warm and rather weary after the game)--and outside on
the open ground beyond the compound wall two batteries of horse-guns
were drawn up at attention. But if Utirupa felt surprise he did not show it.

"To make a short story of a long one, Prince Utirupa," Samson began
at once, "as you know, Gungadhura abdicated yesterday. The throne
of Sialpore is vacant, and you are invited to accept it. I have here the
required authority from Simla."

Utirupa rose from his chair, and bowed.

"I am willing to accep," he answered quietly. His face showed no emotion.

"There is one stipulation, though," said Samson. "We are tired of these
foolish 'islands'--our territory in yours and yours in ours. There's a contract
here. As your first official act--there's no time like the present--we want
you to exchange the River Palace, on this side of the river, for out fort
on your side."

Utirupa said never a word.

"It's not a question of driving a bargain," Samson went on. "We don't
know what the palace may be worth, or what is in it. If there is any valuable
furniture you'd like removed, we'll waive that point; but on the terms
of the contract we exchange the fort, with the guns and whatever else
is there except the actual harness and supplies of the garrison, against
the land and palace and whatever it contains except furniture."

Utirupa smiled--perhaps because the guns in that fort were known to
date from before the Mutiny.

"Will you agree?"

"I will sign," said Utirupa. And he signed the contract there and then,
in presence of all those witnesses. Ten minutes later, as he left the
office, the waiting batteries fired him a fourteen-gun salute, that the
world might know how a new maharajah occupied the throne of Sialpore.

Meanwhile, up at the house on the hill Tess and Dick found Yasmini
already there ahead of them, lying at her ease, dressed as a woman
of women, and smoking a cigarette in the window-seat of the bedroom
Tess had surrendered to her.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20