quite understand his emotion, but the shock of not having run over me
seems to have upset the poor fellow.”
“I was asking you whether you were doing anything to-day,” said
Carrados. “Can you come back with me to Richmond?”
“I’m not doing anything as far as that goes,” admitted Tulloch. “In
fact,” he added ruefully, “that’s the plague of it. I’m waiting to hear
from a man who’s waiting to hear from another man, and _he’s_ depending
on something that may or mayn’t, you understand.”
“Then you can come along now anyway. Get in.”
“If it’s dinner you mean, I can’t come straight away, you know,”
protested Tulloch. “Look at me togs”--he stood back to display a
serviceable Norfolk suit--“all right for the six-thirty sharp of a
Bloomsbury boarding-house, but--eh, what?”
“Don’t be an ass, Jim,” said the blind man amiably. “I can’t see your
silly togs.”
“No ladies or any of your tony friends?”
“Not a soul.”
“The fact is,” confided Tulloch, taking his place in the car, “I’ve been
out of things for a bit, Wynn, and I’m finding civilisation a shade
cast-iron now. I’ve been down in the wilds since you were with me.”
“I wondered where you were. I wrote to you about six months ago and the
letter came back.”
“Did it actually? Now that must have been almighty careless of someone,
Wynn. I’m sorry; I’m a bit of a rolling stone, I suppose. When Darrish
came back to Netherhempsfield my job was done there. I felt uncommonly
restless. I hadn’t much chance of buying a practice or dropping into a
partnership worth having and I jibbed at setting up in some God-forsaken
backwater and slipping into middle age ‘building up a connection.’ Lord,
lord, Carrados, the tragic monotony of your elderly professional
nonentity! I’ve known men who’ve whispered to me between the pulls at
confidential pipes that they’ve come to hate the streets and the houses
and the same old everlasting silly faces that they met day after day
until they began to think very queer thoughts of how they might get away
from it all.”
“Yes,” said Carrados.
“Anyway, ‘Not yet,’ I promised myself, and when I got the chance of a
temporary thing on a Red Cable liner I took it like a shot. That was
something. If there was a mighty sameness about it after a bit, it
wasn’t the sameness I’d been accustomed to. Then, as luck of one sort or
another would have it, I got laid out with a broken ankle on a Bombay
quay.”
Carrados voiced commiseration.
“But you made a very good mend of it,” he said. “It’s the left, of
course. I don’t suppose anyone ever notices it.”
“I took care of that,” replied Tulloch. “But it was a slow business and
threw all my plans out. I was on a very loose end when one day, outside
the Secretariat, as they call it, I ran up against a man called Fraser
whom I’d known building a viaduct or something of that sort in the Black
Country.
“‘What on earth are _you_ doing here?’ we naturally both said at once,
and he was the first to reply.
“‘I’m just off to repair an irrigation “bund” a thousand miles more or
less away, and I’m looking for a doctor who can speak six words of
Hindustani, and doesn’t mind things as they are, to physic the camp.
What are you doing?’
“‘Good lord! old man,’ I said, ‘I was looking for you!’”
It only required an occasional word to keep Tulloch going, and Carrados
supplied it. He heard much that did not interest him--of the journey
inland, of the face of the country, the surprising weather, the great
work of irrigation and the other impressive wonders of man and nature.
These things could be got from books, but among the weightier cargo
Tulloch now and again touched off some inimitable phase of life or told
an uninventable anecdote of native character that lived.
Yet the buoyant doctor had something on his mind, for several times he
stopped abruptly on the edge of a reminiscence, as though he was
doubtful, if not of the matter, at least of the manner in which he
should begin. These indications were not lost on his friend, but
Carrados made no attempt to press him, being very well assured that
sooner or later the ingenuous Jim would find himself beyond retreat. The
occasion came with the cigarettes after dinner. There had been a
reference to the language.
“I often wished that I was a better stick at it,” said Tulloch. “I’d
picked up a bit in Bombay and of course I threw myself into it when
Fraser got me the post. I managed pretty well with the coolies in the
camp, but when I tried to have a word with the ryots living
round--little twopenny ha’penny farmers, you know--I could make no show
of it. A lot of queer fish you come across out there, in one way or
another, you take my word. You never know whether a man’s a professional
saint of extreme holiness or a hereditary body-snatcher whose shadow
would make a begging leper consider himself unclean until he had walked
seventy miles to drink a cupful of filthy water out of a stinking pond
that a pock-marked ascetic had been sitting in for three years in order
to contemplate quietly.”
“Possibly he really was unclean--in consequence or otherwise,” suggested
Carrados.
“Help!” exclaimed Tulloch tragically. “There are things that have to be
seen. But then so was the sanctified image, so that there’s nothing for
an outsider to go by. And then all the different little lots with their
own particular little heavens and their own one exclusive way of getting
there, and their social frills and furbelows--Jats and Jains and Thugs
and Mairs and Gonds and Bhills and Toms, Dicks and Harrys--suburban
society is nothing to it, Wynn, nothing at all. There was a strange old
joker I’ve had in mind to tell you about, though it was no joke for him
in the end. God alone knows where he came from, but he was in the camp
one evening juggling for stray coppers in a bowl. Pretty good juggling
too it seemed to be, of the usual Indian kind--growing a plant out of a
pumpkin seed, turning a stick into a live snake, and the old sword and
basket trick that every Eastern conjurer keeps up his sleeve; but all
done out in the open, with people squatting round and a simplicity of
appliance that would have taken all the curl out of one of your
music-hall magicians. With him he had a boy, his son, a misshapen,
monkey-like anatomy of about ten, but there was no doubt that the man
was desperately fond of his unattractive offspring.
“That night this ungainly urchin, taking a cooler in one of the big
irrigation canals, got laid hold of by an alligator and raised the most
unearthly screech anything human--if he really was human--ever got out.
I seemed to have had something prominent to do with the damp job of
getting as much of him away from the creature as we could, and old
Calico--that’s what we anglicised the juggler’s name into--had some sort
of idea of being grateful in consequence. Although I don’t doubt that
he’d have put much more faith in a local wizard if one had been
available, he let us take the boy into the hospital tent and do what we
could for him. It wasn’t much, and I told my assistant to break it to
poor old Calico that he must be prepared for the worst. A handy man,
that assistant, Wynn. He was a half-bred ‘Portugoose,’ as they say in
Bombay, with the name of Vasque d’Almeydo, and I understood that he’d
had some training. When we got out there he said that it was all the
same to him, but he admitted quite blandly that he was really a cook and
nothing more. What about his excellent testimonials? I asked him, and he
replied with cheerful impenitence that he had hired them in the open
market for one rupee eight, adding feelingly that he would willingly
have given twice as much to qualify for my honorable service. In the end
he did pretty much as he liked, and as he could speak five languages and
scramble through seven dialects I was glad to have him about on any
terms. I don’t quite know how he broke it, but when I saw him later he
said that Calico was a ‘great dam fool.’ He was a conjurer and knew how
tricks were done and yet he had set out at once for some place thirty
miles away--to procure a charm of some sort, the Portuguese would swear
from a hint he had got. Vasque--of course by this time he’d become
Valasquez to us--laughed pleasantly as he commented on native credulity.
He was a Roman Catholic himself, so that he could afford it. The next
day the boy died and an hour later poor Calico came reeling in. He’d got
a nasty cut over the eye and a map of the route drawn over him in thorns
and blisters and sand-burns, but he’d got something wrapped away in a
bit of rag carried in the left armpit, and I felt for the poor old
heathen. When he understood, he borrowed a spade and, taking up the
child just as he was, he went off into the pagan solitude to bury him.
I’d got used to these simple ways by that time.
“I thought that I’d seen the end of the incident, but late that night I
heard the sentry outside challenge someone--we’d had so many tools and
things looted by ‘friendlies’ that they’d lent us half a company of
Sikhs from Kharikhas--and a moment later Calico was salaaming at the
tent door. As it happened, Valasquez was away at a thing they called a
village trafficking for some ducks, and I had to grapple with the
conversation as best I could--no joke, I may tell you, for the juggler’s
grasp on conventional Urdu was about as slender as my own. And the first
thing he did was to put his paws on to my astonished feet, then up to
his forehead, and to prostrate himself to the ground.
“‘Sahib,’ he protested earnestly, ‘I am thy slave and docile elephant
for that which thou hast done for the man-child of my house.’
“Now you know, Carrados, I simply can’t stand that sort of thing. It
makes me feel such a colossal ass. So I tried, ungraciously enough I
dare swear, to cut him short. But it couldn’t be done. Poor old Calico
had come to discharge what weighed on him as a formidable obligation and
my ‘Don’t mention it, old chap,’ style was quite out of the picture.
Finally, from some obscure fold of his outfit, he produced a little
screw of cloth and began to unwrap it.
“‘Take it, O sahib, and treasure it as you would a cup of water in the
desert, for it has great virtue of the hidden kind. Condescend to accept
it, for it is all I have worthy of so great a burden.’
“‘I couldn’t think of it, Khaligar,’ I said, trying to give his name a
romantic twist, for the other sounded like guying him. ‘I’ve done
nothing, you know, and in any case this is much more likely to work with
you than with me--an unbeliever. What is it, anyway?’
“‘It is the sacred tooth of the ape-god Hanuman and it protects from
harm,’ he replied, reverently displaying what looked to me like an old
rusty nail. ‘Had I but been able to touch so much as the hem of the
garment of my manlet with it before the hour of his outgoing he would
assuredly have recovered.’
“‘Then keep it for your own protection,’ I urged. ‘I expect that you run
more risks than I do.’
“‘When the flame has been extinguished from a candle the smoke lingers
but a moment before it also fades away,’ he replied. ‘Thy mean servant
has no wish to live now that the light of his eyes has gone out, nor
does he seek to avert by magic that which is written on his forehead.’
“‘Then it is witchcraft?’ I said, pointing to the amulet.
“‘I know not, my lord,’ he answered; ‘but if it be witchcraft it is of
the honourable sort and not the goety of Sahitan. For this cause it is
only of avail to one who acquires it without treachery or guile. Take
it, sahib, but do not suffer it to become known even to those of your
own table.’
“‘Why not?’ I asked.
“‘Who should boast of pearls in a camp of armed bandits?’ he replied
evasively. ‘A word spoken in a locked closet becomes a beacon on the
hill-top for men to see. Yet have no fear; harm cannot come to you, for
your hand is free from complicity.’
“I hadn’t wanted the thing before, but that settled me. I very much
doubted how the conjurer had got possession of it and I had no wish to
be mixed up in an affair of any sort. I told him definitely that while I
appreciated his motives I shouldn’t deprive him of so great a treasure.
He seemed really concerned, and Fraser told me afterwards that for one
of that tribe to be under what he regarded as an unrequited obligation
was a dishonour. I should probably have had some trouble to get him off,
only just then we heard Valasquez returning. Calico hastily wrapped up
the relic, stowed it away among his wardrobe and, with his most
ceremonious salaam, disappeared.
“‘Do you know anything about the tooth of the ape-god Hanuman,
Valasquez?’ I asked him some time later. The ‘Portugoose’ seemed to know
a little about everything and in consequence of my dependence on him he
strayed into a rather more free and easy manner than might have passed
under other conditions. But I’m not ceremonious, you know, Wynn.”
And Carrados laughed and agreed.
“‘The sacred tooth of Sira Hanuman, sir?’ said Valasquez. ‘Oh, that’s
all great tom dam foolery. There are a hundred million of them. The most
notable one was worshipped at the Mountain of Adam in Ceylon until it
was captured by my ancestor, the illustrious Admiral d’Almeydo, who sent
it with much pomp and circumstance to Goa. Then the Princes of Malabar
offered a ransom of rupees, forty lakhs, for it, which the Bishop of Goa
refused, like a dam great fool!’
“‘What became of it?’ I asked, but Valasquez didn’t know. He was
somewhat of a liar, in fact, and I dare say that he’d made it all up to
show off his knowledge.”
“No,” objected Carrados; “I think that Baldæus, the Dutch historian, has
a similar tale. What happened to Calico?”
“That was the worst of it. Some of our men found his body lying among
the tamarisk scrub two days later. There was no doubt that he’d been
murdered, and not content with that, the ghouls had mutilated him
shamefully afterwards. Even his cheeks were slashed open. So, you see,
the tooth of Hanuman had not protected him.”
“No,” assented Carrados, “it had certainly not protected him. Was
anything done--anyone arrested?”
“I don’t think so. You know what the natives are in a case like that: no
one knows anything, even if they have been looking on at the time. I
suppose a report would be sent up, but I never heard anything more. I
always had a suspicion that Calico, with his blend of simple faith and
gipsy blood, had violated a temple, or looted a shrine, to save his
son’s life, and that the guardians of the relic tracked him and revenged
the outrage. Anyway, I was glad that I hadn’t accepted it after that,
for I had enough excitement without.”
“What was that, Jim?”
“Oh, I don’t know, but I always seemed to be running up against
something about that time. Twice my tent was turned inside out in my
absence, once my clothes were spirited away while I was bathing, and the
night before we broke up the camp I was within an ace of being
murdered.”
“You bear a charmed life,” said Carrados suggestively, but Tulloch did
not rise to the suggestion.
“It was a bit of luck. Those dacoits are as quiet as death, but for some
reason I woke suddenly with the idea that devilment was brewing. I
slipped on the first few things that came to hand and went to
reconnoitre. As I passed through the canvas I came face to face with a
native, and two others were only a few yards behind. Without any
ceremony the near man let drive at my throat with one of those beastly
wavy daggers they go in for. I suppose I managed to dodge in the
fraction of a second, for he missed me. I gave a yell for assistance,
landed the leader one in the eye and backed into my tent for a weapon.
By the time I was out again our fellows were running up, but the
precious trio had disappeared.”
“That was the last you saw of them?” asked Carrados tentatively.
“No, queerly enough. The day I sailed I encountered the one whose eye I
had touched up. It was down by the water--the Apollo Bander--at Bombay,
and I was so taken aback, never thinking but that the fellow was
hundreds of miles away that I did nothing but stare. But I promised
myself that in the unlikely event of ever seeing him again I would
follow him up pretty sharply.”
“Not under the wheels of a London General again, I hope!”
Tulloch’s brown fist came down upon the table with a crash.
“The devil, Carrados!” he exclaimed. “How did you know?”
“Parkinson was just describing to me a rather exotic figure. Then the
rest followed.”
“Well you were right. There was the man in Holborn, and of all the
fantastic things in the world for a bloodthirsty thug from the back
wilds of Hindustan, I believe that he was selling picture post cards!”
“Possibly a very natural thing to be doing in the circumstances.”
“What circumstances, Wynn?”
“Those you are telling me of. Go on.”
“That’s about all there is. When I saw the man I was so excited, I
suppose, that I started to dash across without another thought. You know
the result. Of course he had vanished by the time I could look round.”
“You are quite sure he is the same?”
“There’s always the possibility of a mistake, I admit,” considered
Tulloch, “but, speaking in ordinary terms, I should say that it’s a
moral certainty. On the first occasion it was bright moonlight and the
sensational attack left a very vivid photograph on my mind. In Bombay I
had no suspicion of doubt about the man, and he was still carrying
traces of my fist. Here, it is true, I had less chance of observing him,
but recognition was equally instantaneous and complete. Then consider
that each time he has slipped away at once. No, I am not mistaken. What
is he after, Carrados?”
“I am very much afraid that he is after you, my friend,” replied
Carrados, with some concern lurking behind the half-amused level of his
voice.
“After me!” exclaimed Tulloch with righteous indignation. “Why, confound
his nerve, Wynn, it ought to be the other way about. What’s he after me
for?”
“India is a conservative land. The gods do not change. A relic that was
apprised at seven hundred thousand ducats in the days of Queen Elizabeth
is worth following up to-day--apart, of course, from the merit thereby
acquired by a devotee.”
“You mean that Calico’s charm was the real original thing that Valasquez
spoke of?”
“It is quite possible; or it may be claimed for it even if it is not.
Goa has passed through many vicissitudes; its churches and palaces are
now in ruins. What is more credible----”
“But in any case I haven’t got the thing. Surely the old ass needn’t
murder me to find out that.”
The face he appealed to betrayed nothing of the thoughts behind it. But
Carrados’s mind was busy with every detail of the story he had heard,
and the more he looked into it the less he felt at ease for his
impetuous friend’s safety.
“On the contrary,” he replied, “from the pious believer’s point of view,
the simplest and most effective way of ascertaining it was to try to
murder you, and your providential escape has only convinced them that
you are now the holder of the charm.”
“The deuce!” said Tulloch ruefully. “Then I have dropped into an
imbroglio after all. What’s to be done?”
“I wonder,” mused the blind man speculatively, “I wonder what really
became of the thing.”
“You mean after Calico’s death?”
“No, before that. I don’t imagine that your entertaining friend had it
at the end. He had nothing to look forward to, you remember; he did not
wish to live. His assassins were those who were concerned in the
recovery of the relic, for why else was he mutilated but in order to
discover whether he had concealed it with more than superficial
craft--perhaps even swallowed it? They found nothing or you would not
have engaged their attention. As it was, they were baffled and had to
investigate further. Then they doubtless learned that you had put this
man under an undying obligation, possibly they even knew that he had
visited you the last thing before he left the camp. The rest has been
the natural sequence.”
“It seems likely enough in an incredible sort of way,” admitted the
doctor. “But I don’t see why this old sport should be occupying himself
as he is in the streets of London.”
“That remains to be looked into. It may be some propitiatory form of
self-abasement that is so potent in the Oriental system. But it may
equally well be something quite different. If this man is of high
priestly authority there are hundreds of his co-religionists here at
hand whose lives he could command in such a service. He may be in
communication with some, or be contriving to make himself readily
accessible. Are there any Indians at your boarding-house?”
“I have certainly seen a couple recently.”
“Recently! Then they came after you did?”
“I don’t know about that. I haven’t had much to do with the place.”
“I don’t like it, Jim,” said Carrados, with more gravity than he was
accustomed to put into the consideration of his own risks. “I don’t like
the hang of it at all.”
“Well, for that matter, I’m not exactly pining for trouble,” replied his
friend. “But I can take care of myself anyway.”
“But you can’t,” retorted Carrados. “That’s just the danger. If you were
blind it would be all right, but your credulous, self-opinionated eyes
will land you in some mess.... To-morrow, at all events, Carlyle shall
put a watch on this enterprising Hindu and we shall at least find out
what his movements are.”
Tulloch would have declined the attention, but Carrados was insistent.
“You must let me have my way in such an emergency, Tulloch,” he
declared. “Of course you would say that it’s out of your power to
prevent me, but among friends like you and I one acquiesces to a certain
code. I say this because I may even find it necessary to put a man on
you as well. This business attracts me resistlessly. There’s something
more in it than we have got at yet, something that lies beyond the
senses and strives to communicate itself through the unknown dimension
that we have all stood just upon the threshold of, only to find that we
have lost the key. It’s more elusive than Macbeth’s dagger: ‘I have thee
not and yet I see thee still’--always just out of reach. What is it,
Jim; can’t you help us? Don’t you feel something portentous in the air,
or is it only my blind eyes that can see beyond?”
“Not a bit of it,” laughed Tulloch cheerfully. “I only feel that a
blighted old heathen is leading himself a rotten dance through his
pig-headed obstinacy. Well, Wynn, why can’t he be rounded up and have it
explained that he’s on the wrong tack? I don’t mind crying quits. I did
get in a sweet one on the eye, and he’s had a long journey for nothing.
Eh, what?”
“He would not believe.” Carrados was pacing the room in one of his rare
periods of mental tension. Instinct, judgment, experience and a subtler
prescience that enveloped reason seemed at variance in his mind. Then he
swung round and faced his visitor.
“Look here, Tulloch, stay with me for the present,” he urged. “You can
go there for your things to-morrow and I can fix you up in the meantime.
It’s safer; I feel it will be safer.”
“Safer! Good lord! what could you have safer than a stodgy second-rate
boarding-house in Hapsburg Square? The place drones respectability. Miss
Vole, the landlady, is related to an archdeacon and nearly all the
people there are on half-pay. The two Indians are tame baboos. Besides,
if I get this thing I told you of, I shall be off to South America in a
few days, and that ought to shake off this old man of the tooth.”
“Of course it won’t; nothing will shake him off if he’s made the vow.
Well, have your own way. One can’t expect a doctor of robust habit to
take any reasonable precautions, I know. How is your room situated?”
“Pretty high up. Next to the attics, I imagine. It must be, because
there is a little trap-door in the ceiling leading there.”
“A trap-door leading to the attics! Well, at all events there can’t be
an oubliette, I suppose? Nor a four-post bed with a canopy that slides
up and down, Jim; nor a revolving wardrobe before a secret passage in
the oak panels?”
“Get on with you,” retorted Tulloch. “It’s just the ordinary contrivance
that you find somewhere in every roof when the attics aren’t made into
rooms. There’s nothing in it.”
“Possibly; but there may be some time. Anyway, drive a tack in and hang
up a tin can or something that must clatter down if the door is raised
an inch. You have a weapon, I suppose?”
“Now you’re talking, Wynn. I do put some faith in that. I have a grand
little revolver in my bag and I can sleep like a feather when I want.”
“Little? What size does it take?”
“Oh, well, it’s a .320, if it comes to that. I prefer a moderate bore
myself.”