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Charles Willing Beale - "The Ghost of Guir House"

William Nowlin - "The Bark Covered House"

Samuel Pepys - "Diary of Samuel Pepys, April/May 1664"

Georg Ebers - "Arachne, Volume 5."

Guns of the Gods

T >> Talbot Mundy >> Guns of the Gods




"Is there any one else who'd be dangerous if he possessed the secret?"

"Anybody would be, except myself. Anybody else would begin playing
for political control with it, and there'd be no more peace on this side
of India for years. And now, this is what I want to say: The most dangerous
individual who could possibly get that treasure would be the Princess
Yasmini. The difficulty of dealing with her is that she's not above hiding
behind purdah (the veil), where no male man can reach her. There
are several women here whom I might interest in keeping an eye on her--
Tatum's wife, and Miss Bent, and Miss O'Hara, and the Goole sisters--
lots of 'em. But they'd all talk. And they'd all try to get influence for
their male connections on the strength of being in the know. But somehow,
Theresa, you're different."

"Mrs. Blaine, please."

"I know Tom Tripe thinks the world of you. I want you to find out for
me from him everything he knows about this treasure intrigue and
whatever's behind it."

"You think he'd tell me?"

"Yes. And I want you to make the acquaintance of the Princess Yasmini,
and find out from her if you can what the letters are that she writes to
Utirupa. You'll find the acquaintance interesting."

Tess crumpled a folded letter in her left hand.

"If you could give me an introduction to the princess--they say she's
difficult to see--some sort of letter that would get me past the maharajah's
guards," she answered.

"I can. I will. The girl's a minor. I've the right to appoint some one to
visit her and make all proper inquiries. I appoint you."

"Give me a letter now and I'll go tonight."

He stopped as they turned at the end of the path, and wrote on a leaf
of his pocket-book. Behind his back Tess waved her secret letter to
attract Tom Tripe's notice, and nodded.

"There." said Samson. "That's preliminary. I'll confirm it later by letter
on official paper. But nobody will dare question that. If any one does,
let me know immediately."

"Thank you."

"And now, Theresa--"

"You forget."

"I forget nothing. I never forget! You'll be wondering what you are to
get out of all this--"

"I wonder if you're capable of believing that nothing was further from
my thoughts!"

"Don't think I want all for nothing! Don't imagine my happiness--my
success could be complete without--"

"Without a whisky and soda. Come and have one. I see my husband
coming at last."

"Damn!" muttered Samson under his breath.

She had expected her husband by the big gate, but he came through
the little one, and she caught sight of him at once because through the
corner of her eye she was watching some one else--Umra the beggar.
Umra departed through the little gate thirty seconds before her husband
entered it.

Blaine was so jubilant over a sample of crushed quartz he had brought
home with him that there was no concealing his high spirits. He was
even cordial to Samson, whom he detested, and so full of the milk of
human kindness toward everybody else that they all wanted to stay and
be amused by him. But Tess got rid of them at last by begging Samson
to go first ostentatiously and set them an example, which he did after
extracting a promise from her to see him tete-a-tete again at the
earliest opportunity.

Then Tess showed her husband the letter that Tom's dog had thrust
into her hand.

"You dine alone tonight, Dick, unless you prefer the club. I'm going at
once. Read this."

It was written in a fine Italic hand on expensive paper, with corrections
here and there as if the writer had obeyed inspiration first and consulted
a dictionary afterward--a neat letter, even neat in its mistakes.

"Most precious friend," it ran, "please visit me. It is necessary that
you find some way of avoi--elu--tricking the guards, because there
are orders not to admit any one and not to let me out. Please bring
with you food from your house, because I am hungry. A cat and
two birds and a monkey have died from the food cooked for me.
I am also thirsty. My mother taught me to drink wine, but the wine is
finished, and I like water the best. Tom Tripe will try to help you past
the guards, but he has no brains, so you must give him orders.
He is very faithful. Please come soon, and bring a very large
quantity of water. Yours with love, YASMINI."

He read the letter and passed it back.

"D'you think it's on the level, Tess?"

"I know it is! Imagine that poor child, Dick, cooped up in a palace,
starving and parching herself for fear of poison!"

"But how are you going to get to her? You can't bowl over Gungadhura's
guards with a sunshade."

"Samson wrote this for me."

Dick Blaine scowled.

"I imagine Samson's favors are paid for sooner or later."

"So are mine, Dick! The beast has called me Theresa three times this
afternoon, and has had the impudence to suggest that his preferment
and my future happiness may bear some relation to each other."

"See here, Tess, maybe I'd better beat him and have done with it."

"No. He can't corrupt me, but he might easily do you an injury. Let him
alone, Dick, and be as civil as you can. You did splendidly this evening--"

"Before I knew what he'd said to you!"

"Now you've all the more reason to be civil. I must keep in touch with
that young girl in the palace, and Samson is the only influence I can
count on. Do as I say, Dick, and be civil to him. Pretend you're not
even suspicious."

"But say, that guy's suggestions aggregate an ounce or two! First, I'm
to draw Gungadhura's money while I hunt for buried treasure; but I'm
to tip off Samson first. Second, I'm to look on while he makes his
political fortune with my wife's help. And third--what's the third thing, Tess?"

She kissed him. "The third is that you're going to seem to be fooled
by him, for the present at all events. Let's know what's at the bottom
of all this, and help the princess and Tom Tripe if it's possible. Are
you tired?"

"Yes. Why?"

"If you weren't tired I was going to ask you to put a turban on as soon
as it's dark, and dress up like a sais and drive me to Yasmini's palace,
with a revolver in each pocket in case of accidents, and eyes and ears
skinned until I come out again."

"Oh, I'm not too tired for that."

"Come along then. I'll put up a hamper with my own hands. You get
wine from the cellar, and make sure the corks have not been pulled
and replaced. Then get the dog-cart to the door. I'll keep it waiting
there while you run up-stairs and change. Hurry, Dick, hurry--it's growing dark!
I'll put some sandwiches under the seat for you to eat while you're waiting
in the dark for me."





Chapter Six




An Audit by the Gods

(2)

Loud laughed the gods (and their irony was pestilence;
Pain was in their mockery, affliction in their scorn.
The ryotwari cried
On a stricken countryside,
For the scab fell on the sheepfold and the mildew on the corn).

"Write, Chitragupta!* Enter up your reckoning!
Yum** awaits in anger the assessment of the dead!
We left a law of kindness,
But they bowed themselves in blindness
To a cruelty consummate and a mystery instead!

"'Write, Chitragupta! Once we sang and danced with them.
Now in gloomy temples they lay foreheads in the dust!
To us they looked for pleasure
And we never spared the measure
Till they set their priests between us and we left them in disgust.

"Fun and mirth we made for them (write it, Chitragupta!
Set it down in symbols for the awful eye of Yum!)
But they traded fun for fashion
And their innocence for passion,
Till they murmur in their wallow now the consequences come!

"Look! Look and wonder how the simple folk are out of it!
Empirics are the teachers and the liars leading men!
We were generous and free -
Aye, a social lot were we,
But they took to priests instead of us, and trouble started then!"

[* In Hindu mythology Yum is the judge of the dead and Chitragupta
writes the record for him.]


"Peace, Maharajah sahib! Out of anger came no wise counsel yet!"

Tom Tripp had done exactly what Yasmini ordered him. Like his dog
Trotters, whom he had schooled to perfection, and as he would have
liked to have the maharajah's guards behave, he always fell back on
sheer obedience whenever facts bewildered him or circumstances
seemed too strong.

Yasmini had ordered him to report to the maharajah a chance encounter
with an individual named Gunga Singh. Accordingly he did. Asked
who Gunga Singh was, he replied he did not know. She had told him
to say that Gunga Singh said the Princess Yasmini was at the commissioner's
house; so he told the maharajah that and nothing further. Gungadhura
sent two men immediately to make inquiries. One drew the commissioner's
house blank, bribing a servant to let him search the place in Samson's
absence; the other met the commissioner himself, and demanded of
him point-blank what he had been doing with the princess. The question
was so bluntly put and the man's attitude so impudent that Samson lost
his temper and couched his denial in blunt bellicose bad language.
The vehemence convinced the questioner that he was lying, as the
maharajah was shortly informed. So the fact became established beyond
the possibility of refutation that Yasmini had been closeted with Samson
for several hours that morning.

Remained, of course, to consider why she had gone to him and what
might result from her visit; and up to a certain point, and in certain cases
accurate guessing is easier than might be expected for either side to
a political conundrum, in India, ample provision having been made for
it by all concerned.

The English are fond of assuring strangers and one another that spying
is "un-English"; that it "isn't done, you know, old top"; and the surest
way of heaping public scorn and indignation on the enemies of England
is to convict them, correctly or otherwise, of spying on England secretly.
So it would be manifestly libelous, ungentlemanly and proof conclusive
of crass ignorance to assert that Samson in his capacity of commissioner
employed spies to watch Gungadhura Singh. He had no public fund
from which to pay spies. If you don't believe that, then ponder over a
copy of the Indian Estimates. Every rupee is accounted for.

The members of the maharajah's household who came to see Samson
at more or less frequent intervals were individuals of the native community
whom he encouraged to intimacy for ethnological and social reasons.
When they gave him information about Gungadhura's doings, that was
merely because they were incurably addicted to gossip; as a gentleman,
and in some sense a representative of His Majesty the King, he would
not dream, of course, of paying attention to any such stuff; but one
could not, of course, be so rude and high-handed as to stop their talking
even if it did tend toward an accurate foreknowledge of the maharajah's
doings that was hardly "cricket."

As for money, certainly none changed hands. The indisputable fact
that certain friends and relatives of certain members of the maharajah's
household enjoyed rather profitable contracts on British administered
territory was coincidence. Everybody knows how long is the arm of
coincidence. Well, then, so are its ears, and its tongue.

As for the maharajah, the rascal went the length of paying spies in British
government offices. There was never any knowing who was a spy of
his and who wasn't. People were everlastingly crossing the river from
the native state to seek employment in some government department
or other, and one could not investigate them really thoroughly. It was
so easy to forge testimonials and references and what not. One of
Samson's grooms had once been caught red-handed eavesdropping
in the dark. Samson, of course, took the law into his own hands on
that occasion and thrashed the blackguard within an inch of his treacherous
life; and in proof that the thrashing was richly deserved, some one
reported to Samson the very next day how the groom had gone straight
to the maharajah and had been solaced with silver money.

It was even said, although never proved, that the fat, short-sighted
young babu Sita Ram who typed the commissioner's official correspondence
was one of Gungadhura's spies. There was a mystery about where he
spent his evenings. But his mother's uncle was a first-class magistrate,
so one could not very well dismiss him without clear proof. Besides,
he was uncommonly painstaking and efficient.

One way and another it is easy to see that Gungadhura had a deal of
dovetailed information from which to draw conclusions as to the probable
reason of Yasmini's alleged visit to the commissioner. One false
conclusion invariably leads to another, and so Samson got the blame
for the secret bargain with the Rangar stable-owner, with whose connivance
Yasmini had contrived to keep a carriage available outside her palace
gates. Her palace gates having closed on the carriage now, the guards
would pay attention that it stayed inside, but there was no knowing how
many riding horses she might have at her beck and call in various khans
and places. Doubtless Samson had arranged for that. Gungadhura
sent men immediately to search Sialpore for horses that might be held
in waiting for her, with orders to hire or buy the animals over her head,
or in the alternative to lame them.

As for her motive in visiting the commissioner, that was not far to seek.
There was only one motive in Sialpore for anything--the treasure. No
doubt Samson lusted for it as sinfully and lustily and craftily as any one.
If, thought Gungadhura, Yasmini had a clue to its whereabouts, as she
might have, then whoever believed she was not trafficking with the
commissioner must be a simpleton. The commissioner was known
to have written more than one very secret report to Simla on the subject
of the treasure, and on the political consequences that might follow on
its discovery by natives of the country. The reports had been so secret
and important that Gungadhura had thought it worth while to have the
blotting paper from Samson's desk photographed in Paris by a special
process. Adding two and two together now by the ancient elastic process,
Gungadhura soon reached the stage of absolute conviction that Yasmini
was in league with Samson to forestall him in getting control of the
treasure of his ancestors; and Gungadhura was a dark, hot-blooded,
volcanic-tempered man, who stayed not on the order of his anger but
blew up at once habitually.

We have seen how he came careering down-street just in time to behold
Yasmini's carriage rumble into her stone-paved palace courtyard. After
ordering the guards not to let her escape again on pain of unnamed,
but no less likely because illegal punishment, he rode full pelt to the
temple of Jinendra, whence they assured him Yasmini had just come,
and his spurs rang presently on the temple floor like the footfalls of
avenging deity.

Jinendra's priest welcomed him with that mixture of deference and
patronage that priests have always known so well how to extend to
royalty, showing him respect because priestly recognition of his royalty
entitled him in logic to the outward form of it--patronage because, as
the "wisest fool in Christendom" remarked, "No bishop no king!" The
combination of sarcastic respect and contemptuous politeness produced
an insolence that none except kings would tolerate for a moment; but
Jinendra's fat high priest could guess how far he dared go, as shrewdly
as a marksman's guesses windage.

"She has betrayed us! That foreign she-bastard has betrayed us!"
shouted Gungadhura, slamming the priest's private door behind him
and ramming home the bolt as if it fitted into the breach of a rifle.

"Peace! Peace, Maharajah sahib! Out of anger came no wise counsel yet!"

"She has been to the commissioner's house!"

"I know it."

"You know it? Then she told you?"

The priest was about to lie, but Gungadhura saved him.

"I know she was here," he burst out. "My men followed her home."

"Yes, she was here. She told."

"How did you make her tell? The she-devil is more cunning than a cobra!"

Jinendra's high priest smiled complacently.

"A servant of the gods, such as I am, is not altogether without power.
I found a way. She told."

"I, too, will find a way!" muttered Gungadhura to himself. Then to the
priest: "What did she say? Why did she go to the commissioner?"

"To ask a favor."

"Of course! What favor?"

"That she may go to Europe."

"Then there is no longer any doubt whatever! By Saraswati (the goddess
of wisdom) I know that she has discovered where the treasure is!"

"My son," said the priest, "it is not manners to call on other gods by
name in this place."

"By Jinendra, then! Thou fat sedentary appetite, what a great god thine
must be, that he can choose no cleverer servant than thee to muddle
his affairs!
While you were lulling me to sleep with dreams about a clue to be found
in a cellar, she has already sucked the secret out from some cobra's
hole and has sold it to the commissioner! As soon as he has paid her
a proportion of it she will escape to Europe to avoid me--will she?"

"But the commissioner refused the desired permission," said the priest,
puffing his lips and stroking his stomach, as much as to add, "It's no
use getting impatient in Jinendra's temple. We have all the inside
information here."

"What do you make of that?" demanded Gungadhura.

The priest smiled. One does not explain everything to a mere maharajah.
But the mere maharajah was in no mood to be put off with smiles just
then. As Yasmini got the story afterward from the bald old mendicant,
whose piety had recently won him permission to bask on the comfortable
carved stones just outside the window, Gungadhura burst forth into
such explosive profanity that the high priest ran out of the room. The
mendicant vowed that he heard the door slam--and so he did; but it
was really Gungadhura, done with argument, on his way to put threat
into action.

The mildest epithet he called Yasmini was "Widyadhara," which meant
in his interpretation of the word that she was an evil spirit condemned
to roam the earth because her sins were so awful that the other evil
spirits simply could not tolerate her.

"It is plain that the commissioner fears to let her go to Europe!" swore
Gungadhura. "Therefore it is plain that she and he have a plan between
them to loot the treasure and say nothing. Neither trusts the other, as
is the way of such people! He will not let her out of sight until he can
leave India himself!"

"He has promised to send European memsahibs to call on her," said
the priest, and the maharajah gnashed his teeth and swore like a man
stung by a hornet.

"That is to prevent me from using violence on her! He will have frequent
reports as to her health! After a time, when he has his fingers in the
treasure, he will not be so anxious about her welfare!"

"There was another matter that she told me," said the priest.

"Repeat it then, Belly-of-Jinendra! Thy paunch retains a tale too long!"

"Tripe, the drill-master, is a welcome guest at the house built by Jengal Singh."

"What of it?"

"He may enter even when the sahibs are away from home. The servants
have orders to admit him."

"Well?"

The priest smiled again.

"If it should chance to be true that the princess knows the secret of
the treasure, and that she is selling it to the commissioner, Tripe could
enter that house and discover the clue. Who could rob you of the
treasure once you knew the secret of its hiding-place?"

It was at that point that the maharajah grew so exasperated at the thought
of another's knowledge of a secret that he considered rightly his own
by heritage, that his language exceeded not only the bounds of decorum
but the limits of commonplace blasphemy as well. Turning his back
on the priest he rushed from the room, slamming the door behind him.
And, being a ruminant fat mortal, the priest sat so still considering on
which side of the equation his own bread might be buttered as to cause
the impression that the room was empty; whereas only the maharajah
had left it. And a little later the babu Sita Ram came in.

Gungadhura was in no mood to be trifled with. He knew pretty well
where to find Tom Tripe during any of the hours of duty, so he cornered
him without delay and, glaring at him with eyes like an animal's at bay,
ordered him to search the Blaine's house at the first opportunity.

"Search for what?" demanded Tripe.

"For anything! For everything! Search the cellar; search the garden;
search the roof! Are You a fool? Are you fit for my employment? Then
search the house, and report to me anything unusual that you find in it! Go!"

After several stiff brandies and soda Gungadhura then conceived a plan
that might have been dangerous supposing Yasmini to have been less
alert, and supposing that she really knew the secret. He spent an evening
coaching Patali, his favorite dancing girl, and then sent her to Yasmini
with almost full powers to drive a bargain. She might offer as much as
half of the treasure to Yasmini provided Gungadhura should receive
the other half and the British should know nothing. That was the one
point on which Patali's orders permitted no discretion. The whole
transaction must be secret from the British.

Reporting the encounter afterward to her employer Patali hardly seemed
proud of her share in it. All the information she brought back was to
the effect that Yasmini denied all knowledge of the treasure, and all
desire to possess it.

"I think she knows nothing. She said very little to me. She laughed at
the idea of bargaining with Englishmen. She said you are welcome to
the treasure, maharajah sahib, and that if she should ever find its hiding-place
she will certainly tell you. She plays the part of a woman whose spirit is
already broken and who is weary of India."

Having a very extensive knowledge of dancing girls and their ways,
Gungadhura did not believe much more than two per cent. of Patali's
account of what had taken place, and he was right, except that he grossly
overestimated her truthfulness. And even with his experienced cynicism
it never entered his head to suppose that Patali was the individual who
warned Yasmini in advance of the preparations being made to poison
her by Gungadhura's orders. Yet, as it was Patali's own sister who made
the sweetmeats, and tampered with the charcoal for the filter, and put
the powdered diamonds in the chutney, it was likely enough that Patali
would know the facts; and as for motives, dancing girls don't have them.
They fear, they love, they desire, they seek to please. If Yasmini could
pluck heart-strings more cleverly than Gungadhura could break and bruise
them, so much the worse for Gungadhura's plans, that was all, as far
as Patali was concerned.

For several days after that, as Yasmini more than hinted in her letter to
Tess, repeated efforts were made to administer poison in the careful
undiscoverable ways that India has made her own since time immemorial.
But you can not easily poison any one who does not eat, and who drinks
wine that was bottled in Europe; or at any rate, to do it you must call in
experts who are expensive in the first place as well as adepts at blackmail
in the second. Yasmini enjoyed a charmed life and an increasing appetite,
Gungadhura's guards attending to it however, that she took no more
forbidden walks and rides and swims by moonlight to make the hunger
really unendurable. Supplies were allowed to pass through the palace
gate, after they had been tampered with.

Finally Gungadhura, biting his nails and drinking whisky in the intervals
between consultation with a dozen different sets of priests, made up
his mind to drastic action. It dawned on his exasperated mind that every
single priest, including Jinendra's obese incumbent, was trying to take
advantage of his predicament in order to feather a priestly nest or forward
plans diametrically opposed to his own. (Not that recognition of priestly
deception made him less superstitious, or any less dependent on the
priest; if that were the way discovery worked, all priests would have
vanished long ago. It simply made him furious, like a tiger in a net,
and spurred him to wreak damage in which the priests might have no hand.)

Whisky, drugs, reflection and the hints of twenty dancing girls convinced
him that Jinendra's priest especially was playing a double game; for
what was there in the fat man's mental ingredients that should anchor
his loyalty to an ill-tempered prince, in case a princess of wit and youth
and brilliant beauty should stake her cunning in the game? Why was
not Yasmini already ten times dead of poison? Nothing but the cunning
inspired by partnership with priests, and alertness born of secret knowledge,
could have given her the intelligence to order her maids to boil a present
of twenty pairs of French silk stockings--nor the malice to hang them
afterward with her own hands on a line across her palace roof in full
view of Gungadhura's window!

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