CHAPTER I_Caves of Terror

E-text prepared by David Clarke, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg

Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this

file which includes the original illustrations.

See 18970-h.htm or 18970-h.zip:

(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/9/7/18970/18970-h/18970-h.htm)

(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/9/7/18970/18970-h.zip)

CAVES OF TERROR

TALBOT MUNDY

Garden City New York

Garden City Publishing Co., Inc

1924

Doubleday, Page & Company

Printed in the United States

at the Country Life Press, Garden City, N. Y.

CONTENTS

I. The Gray Mahatma

II. The Palace of Yasmini

III. Fear is Death

IV. The Pool of Terrors

V. Far Cities

VI. The Fire Bathers

VII. Magic

VIII. The River of Death

IX. The Earthquake Elephant

X. A Date With Doom

XI. "Kill! Kill!"

XII. The Cave of Bones

CAVES OF TERROR

CHAPTER I

THE GRAY MAHATMA

Meldrum Strange has "a way" with him. You need all your tact to get him

past the quarreling point; but once that point is left behind there

isn't a finer business boss in the universe. He likes to put his ringer

on a desk-bell and feel somebody jump in Tibet or Wei-hei-wei or

Honolulu. That's Meldrum Strange.

When he sent me from San Francisco, where I was enjoying a vacation, to

New York, where he was enjoying business, I took the first train.

"You've been a long time on the way," he remarked, as I walked into his

office twenty minutes after the Chicago flyer reached Grand Central

Station. "Look at this!" he growled, shoving into my hand a clipping

from a Western newspaper.

"What about it?" I asked when I had finished reading.

"While you were wasting time on the West Coast this office has been

busy," he snorted, looking more like General Grant than ever as he

pulled out a cigar and started chewing it. "We've taken this matter up

with the British Government, and we've been retained to look into it."

"You want me to go to Washington, I suppose."

"You've got to go to India at once."

"That clipping is two months old," I answered. "Why didn't you wire me

when I was in Egypt to go on from there?"

"Look at this!" he answered, and shoved a letter across the desk.

It bore the address of a club in Simla.

Meldrum Strange, Esq.,

Messrs. Grim, Ramsden and Ross,

New York.

Dear Sir,

Having recently resigned my commission in the British Indian army I

am free to offer my services to your firm, provided you have a

sufficiently responsible position here in India to offer me. My

qualifications and record are known to the British Embassy in

Washington, D. C., to whom I am permitted to refer you, and it is

at the suggestion of ---- ---- (he gave the name of a British

Cabinet Minister who is known the wide world over) that I am making

this proposal; he was good enough to promise his endorsement to any

application I might care to make. If this should interest you,

please send me a cablegram, on receipt of which I will hold my

services at your disposal until your letter has time to reach

Simla, when, if your terms are satisfactory, I will cable my

acceptance without further delay.

Yours faithfully,

Athelstan King, V. C., D. S. O., etc.

"Do you know who he is?" demanded Strange. "That's the fellow who went

to Khinjan Caves--the best secret service officer the British ever had.

I cabled him, of course. Here's his contract. You take it to him. Here's

the whole dope about this propaganda. Take the quickest route to India,

you are worth. That's all."

My passport being unexpired, I could make the _Mauretania_ and did.

Moreover I was merciless to the expense account. An aeroplane took me

from Liverpool to London, another from London to Paris.

I don't care how often you arrive in Bombay, the thrill increases. You

steam in at dawn by Gharipuri just as the gun announces sunrise, and the

dreamy bay glimmers like a prophet's vision--temples, domes, minarets,

palm-trees, roofs, towers, and masts.

Almost before the anchor had splashed into the spawn-skeined water off

the Apollo Bunder a native boat drew alongside and a very well-dressed

native climbed up the companion-ladder in quest of me. I had sent King a

wireless, but his messenger was away in advance of even the bankers'

agents, who flock on board to tout for customs business.

He handed me a letter which simply said that the bearer, Gulab Lal

Singh, would look after me and my belongings. So I paid attention to the

man. He was a strapping fellow, handsome as the deuce, with a Roman

nose, and the eye of a gentleman unafraid.

He said that Major King was in Bombay, but detained by urgent business.

However, he invited me to Major King's quarters for breakfast, so

instead of waiting for the regular launch I got into the native sailboat

with him. And he seemed to have some sort of talisman for charming

officials, for on the quay an officer motioned us through without even

examining my passport.

We drew up finally in front of a neat little bungalow in a long street

of similar buildings intended for British officials. Gulab Lal Singh

took me straight into the dining room and carried in breakfast with his

own hands, standing behind my chair in silence while I ate.

Without much effort I could see his face in the mirror to my right, and

when I thought he wasn't noticing I studied him carefully.

"Is there anything further that the _sahib_ would care for?" he asked

when the meal was finished.

"Yes," I said, pulling out an envelope. "Here's your contract, Major

King. If you're agreeable we may as well get that signed and mailed to

New York."

I expected to see him look surprised, but he simply sat down at the

table, read the contract over, and signed it.

Then we went out on to a veranda that was shut off from the street by

brown _kaskas tatties_.

"How long does it take you to grow a beard?" was his first, rather

surprising question.

It was not long before I learned how differently he could treat

different individuals. He had simply chosen his extraordinary way of

receiving me as the best means of getting a real line on me without much

loss of time. He did not compliment me on having seen through his

disguise, or apologize for his own failure to keep up the deception. He

sat opposite and studied me as he might the morning newspaper, and I

returned the compliment.

"You see," he said suddenly, as if a previous conversation had been

interrupted, "since the war, governments have lost their grip, so I

resigned from the army. You look to me like a kind of God-send. Is

Meldrum Strange as wealthy as they say?"

I nodded.

"Is he playing for power?"

"He's out to do the world good, but he enjoys the feel of it. He is

absolutely on the level."

"I have a letter from Strange, in which he says you've hunted and

prospected all over the world. Does that include India?"

I nodded.

"Know any of the languages?"

"Enough Hindustani to deceive a foreigner."

"Punjabi?"

I nodded.

Mind you, I was supposed to be this fellow's boss.

"I think we'll be able to work together," he said after another long

look at me.

"Are you familiar with the facts?" he asked me.

"I've the _dossier_ with me. Studied it on the ship of course."

"You understand then: The Princess Yasmini and the Gray Mahatma are the

two keys. The Government daren't arrest either, because it would inflame

mob-passion. There's too much of that already. I'm not in position to

play this game alone--can't afford to. I've joined the firm to get

backing for what I want to do; I'd like that point clear. As long as

we're in harness together I'll take you into confidence. But I expect

absolutely free rein."

"All right," I said. And for two hours he unfolded to me a sort of

panorama of Indian intrigue, including dozens of statements of sheer

fact that not one person in a million would believe if set down in cold

print.

"So you see," he said at last, "there's something needed in the way of

unobtrusive inspection if the rest of the world is to have any kind of

breathing spell. If you've no objection we'll leave Bombay to-night and

get to work."

* * * * *

Athelstan King and I arrived, after certain hot days and choking nights,

at a city in the Punjab that has had nine names in the course of

history. It lies by a winding wide river, whose floods have changed the

land-marks every year since men took to fighting for the common

heritage.

The tremendous wall, along whose base the river sucks and sweeps for

more than a third of the city's whole circumference, has to be kept

repaired by endless labor, but there are compensations. The fierce

current guards and gives privacy to a score of palaces and temples, as

well as a burning ghat.

The city has been very little altered by the vandal hand of progress.

There is a red steel railway bridge, but the same framework carries a

bullock-road.

From the bridge's northern end as far as the bazaar the main street goes

winding roughly parallel with the waterfront. Trees arch over it like a

cathedral roof, and through the huge branches the sun turns everything

beneath to gold, so that even the impious sacred monkeys achieve

vicarious beauty, and the scavenger mongrel dogs scratch, sleep, and are

miserable in an aureole.

There are modern signs, as for instance, a post office, some telegraph

wires on which birds of a thousand colors perch with an air of perpetual

surprise, and--tucked away in the city's busiest maze not four hundred

yards from the western wall--the office of the Sikh apothecary Mulji

Singh.

Mulji Singh takes life seriously, which is a laborious thing to do, and

being an apostle of simple sanitation is looked at askance by the

populace, but he persists.

King's specialty is making use of unconsidered trifles and misunderstood

babus.

* * * * *

King was attired as a native, when we sought out Mulji Singh together

and found him in a back street with a hundred-yard-long waiting list of

low-caste and altogether casteless cripples.

And of course Mulji Singh had all the gossip of the city at his fingers'

ends. When he closed his office at last, and we came inside to sit with

him, he loosed his tongue and would have told us everything he knew if

King had not steered the flow of information between channels.

"Aye, _sahib_, and this Mahatma, they say, is a very holy fellow, who

works miracles. Sometimes he sits under a tree by the burning ghat, but

at night he goes to the temple of the Tirthankers, where none dare

follow him, although they sit in crowds outside to watch him enter and

leave. The common rumor is that at night he leaves his body lifeless in

a crypt in that Tirthanker temple and flies to heaven, where he

fortifies himself with fresh magic. But I know where he goes by night.

There comes to me with boils a one-legged sweeper who cleans a black

panther's cage. The panther took his other leg. He sleeps in a cage

beside the panther's, and it is a part of his duty to turn the panther

loose on intruders. It is necessary that they warn this one-legged

fellow whenever a stranger is expected by night, who should not be torn

to pieces. Night after night he is warned. Night after night there comes

this Mahatma to spend the hours in heaven! There are places less like

heaven than _her_ palace."

"Is he your only informant?" King demanded.

"Aye, _sahib_, the only one on that count. But there is another, whose

foot was caught between stone and stone when they lowered a trap-door

once in that Tirthanker temple. He bade the Tirthankers heal his foot,

but instead they threw him out for having too much knowledge of matters

that they said do not concern him. And he says that the trap-door opens

into a passage that leads under the wall into a chamber from which

access is obtained by another trap-door to a building inside _her_

palace grounds within a stone-throw of that panther's cage. And he, too,

says that the Mahatma goes nightly to _her_ palace."

"Are there any stories of _her_?" King inquired.

"Thousands, _sahib_! But no two agree. It is known that she fell foul of

the _raj_ in some way, and they made her come to this place. I was here

when she came. She has a household of a hundred women--_maunds_ of

furniture--_maunds_ of it, _sahib_! She gave orders to her men-servants

to be meek and inoffensive, so when they moved in there were not more

than ten fights between them and the city-folk who thought they had as

much right to the streets. There was a yellow-fanged northern devil who

marshaled the serving-men, and it is he who keeps her palace gate. He

keeps it well. None trespass."

"What other visitors does she entertain besides the Mahatma?"

"Many, _sahib_, though few enter by the front gate. There are tales of

men being drawn up by ropes from boats in the river."

"Is there word of why they come?"

"_Sahib_, the little naked children weave stories of her doings. Each

has a different tale. They call her empress of the hidden arts. They say

that she knows all the secrets of the priests, and that there is nothing

that she cannot do, because the gods love her and the _Rakshasas_ (male

evil spirits) and _Apsaras_ (female evil spirits) do her bidding."

"What about this Tirthanker temple? Who controls it?"

"None knows that, _sahib_. It is so richly endowed that its priests

despise men's gifts. None is encouraged to worship in that place. When

those old Tirthankers stir abroad they have no dealings with folk in

this city that any man knows of."

"Are you sure they are Tirthankers?" asked King.

"I am sure of nothing, _sahib_. For aught I know they are _devils_!"

King gave him a small sum of money, and we walked away toward the

burning ghat, where there was nothing but a mean smell and a few old men

with rakes gathering up ashes. But outside the ghat, where a golden

mohur tree cast a wide shadow across the road there was a large crowd

sitting and standing in rings around an absolutely naked, ash-smeared

religious fanatic.

The fanatic appeared to have the crowd bewildered, for he cursed and

blessed on no comprehensible schedule, and gave extraordinary answers to

the simplest questions, not acknowledging a question at all unless it

suited him.

King and I had not been there a minute before some one asked him about

the Princess Yasmini.

"Aha! Who stares at the fire burns his eyes! A burned eye is of less use

than a raw one!"

Some laughed, but not many. Most of them seemed to think there was deep

wisdom in his answer to be dug for meditatively, as no doubt there was.

Then a man on the edge of the crowd a long way off from me, who wore the

air of a humorist, asked him about me.

"Does the shadow of this foreigner offend your honor's holiness?"

None glanced in my direction; that might have given the game away. It is

considered an exquisite joke to discuss a white man to his face without

his knowing it. The Gray Mahatma did not glance in my direction either.

"As a bird in the river--as a fish in the air--as a man in trouble is

the foreigner in Hind!" he answered.

Then he suddenly began, declaiming, making his voice ring as if his

throat were brass, yet without moving his body or shifting his head by a

hair's breadth.

"The universe was chaos. _He_ said, let order prevail, and order came

out of the chaos and prevailed. The universe was in darkness. _He_ said,

let there be light and let it prevail over darkness; and light came out

of the womb of darkness and prevailed. _He_ ordained the _Kali-Yug_--an

age of darkness in which all Hind should lie at the feet of foreigners.

And thus ye lie in the dust. But there is an end of night, and so there

is an end to _Kali-Yug_. Bide ye the time, and watch!"

King drew me away, and we returned up-street between old temples and new

iron-fronted stores toward Mulji Singh's quarters where he had left the

traveling bag that we shared between us.

"Is that Gray Mahatma linked up with propaganda in the U.S.A?" I asked,

wondering.

"What's more," King answered, "he's dangerous; he's sincere--the most

dangerous type of politician in the world--the honest visionary, in love

with an abstract theory, capable of offering himself for martyrdom.

Watch him now!"

The crowd was beginning to close in on the Mahatma, seeking to touch

him. Suddenly he flew into a fury, seized a long stick from some one

near him and began beating them over the head, using both hands and

laying on so savagely that ashes fell from him like pipe-clay from a

shaken bag, and several men ran away with the blood pouring down their

faces. However, they were reckoned fortunate.

"Some of those will charge money to let other fools touch them," said

King. "Come on. Let's call on _her_ now."

So we returned to Mulji Singh's stuffy little office, and King changed

into a Major's uniform.

"It isn't exactly according to Hoyle to wear this," he explained.

"However, she doesn't know I've resigned from the army."