‘What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here,’
said Strickland, climbing farther into the roof. I could see his elbow
thrusting with the rod. ‘Come out of that, whoever you are! Heads below
there! It’s falling.’
I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a
shape that was pressing it downwards and downwards towards the lighted
lamp on the table. I snatched the lamp out of danger and stood back.
Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot
down upon the table something that I dared not look at, till Strickland
had slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.
He did not say much, being a man of few words; but he picked up the
loose end of the tablecloth and threw it over the remnants on the table.
‘It strikes me,’ said he, putting down the lamp, ‘our friend Imray has
come back. Oh! you would, would you?’
There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out,
to be back-broken by the butt of the mahseer-rod. I was sufficiently
sick to make no remarks worth recording.
Strickland meditated, and helped himself to drinks. The arrangement
under the cloth made no more signs of life.
‘Is it Imray?’ I said.
Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment, and looked.
‘It is Imray,’ he said; ‘and his throat is cut from ear to ear.’
Then we spoke, both together and to ourselves: ‘That’s why he whispered
about the house.’
Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her
great nose heaved open the dining-room door.
She sniffed and was still. The tattered ceiling-cloth hung down almost
to the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away from
the discovery.
Tietjens came in and sat down; her teeth bared under her lip and her
forepaws planted. She looked at Strickland.
‘It’s a bad business, old lady,’ said he. ‘Men don’t climb up into the
roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don’t fasten up the ceiling
cloth behind ‘em. Let’s think it out.’
‘Let’s think it out somewhere else,’ I said.
‘Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We’ll get into my room.’
I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland’s room first,
and allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me, and we lit
tobacco and thought. Strickland thought. I smoked furiously, because I
was afraid.
‘Imray is back,’ said Strickland. ‘The question is---who killed Imray?
Don’t talk, I’ve a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I took
over most of Imray’s servants. Imray was guileless and inoffensive,
wasn’t he?’
I agreed; though the heap under the cloth had looked neither one thing
nor the other.
‘If I call in all the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie
like Aryans. What do you suggest?’
‘Call ‘em in one by one,’ I said.
‘They’ll run away and give the news to all their fellows,’ said
Strickland. ‘We must segregate ‘em. Do you suppose your servant knows
anything about it?’
‘He may, for aught I know; but I don’t think it’s likely. He has only
been here two or three days,’ I answered. ‘What’s your notion?’
‘I can’t quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of
the ceiling-cloth?’
There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland’s bedroom door. This
showed that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked from sleep and
wished to put Strickland to bed.
‘Come in,’ said Strickland. ‘It’s a very warm night, isn’t it?’
Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mahomedan, said that it
was a very warm night; but that there was more rain pending, which, by
his Honour’s favour, would bring relief to the country.
‘It will be so, if God pleases,’ said Strickland, tugging off his boots.
‘It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly
for many days---ever since that time when thou first earnest into my
service. What time was that?’
‘Has the Heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretly
to Europe without warning given; and I-even I-came into the honoured
service of the protector of the poor.’
‘And Imray Sahib went to Europe?’
‘It is so said among those who were his servants.’
‘And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?’
‘Assuredly, Sahib. He was a good master, and cherished his dependants.’
‘That is true. I am very tired, but I go buck-shooting to-morrow. Give
me the little sharp rifle that I use for black-buck; it is in the case
yonder.’
The man stooped over the case; handed barrels, stock, and fore-end to
Strickland, who fitted all together, yawning dolefully. Then he reached
down to the gun-case, took a solid-drawn cartridge, and slipped it into
the breech of the ‘360 Express.
‘And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly! That is very strange,
Bahadur Khan, is it not?’
‘What do I know of the ways of the white man. Heaven-born?’
‘Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more anon. It has reached me
that Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that
even now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.’
‘Sahib!’
The lamplight slid along the barrels of the rifle as they levelled
themselves at Bahadur Khan’s broad breast.
‘Go and look!’ said Strickland. ‘Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he
waits thee. Go!’
The man picked up a lamp, and went into the dining-room, Strickland
following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He
looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth; at the
writhing snake under foot; and last, a gray glaze settling on his face,
at the thing under the tablecloth.
‘Hast thou seen?’ said Strickland after a pause.
‘I have seen. I am clay in the white man’s hands. What does the Presence
do?’
‘Hang thee within the month. What else?’
‘For killing him? Nay, Sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants,
he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he
bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever--my child!’
‘What said Imray Sahib?’
‘He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore
my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he
had come back from office, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up
into the roof-beams and made all fast behind him. The Heaven-born knows
all things. I am the servant of the Heaven-born.’
Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular,
‘Thou art witness to this saying? He has killed.’
Bahadur Khan stood ashen gray in the light of the one lamp. The need for
justification came upon him very swiftly. ‘I am trapped,’ he said, ‘but
the offence was that man’s. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I
killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,’ he glared at
Tietjens, couched stolidly before him, ‘only such could know what I
did.’
‘It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a
rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!’
A drowsy policeman answered Strickland’s call. He was followed by
another, and Tietjens sat wondrous still.
‘Take him to the police-station,’ said Strickland. ‘There is a case
toward.’
‘Do I hang, then?’ said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape, and
keeping his eyes on the ground.
‘If the sun shines or the water runs--yes!’ said Strickland.
Bahadur Khan stepped back one long pace, quivered, and stood still. The
two policemen waited further orders.
‘Go!’ said Strickland.
‘Nay; but I go very swiftly,’ said Bahadur Khan. ‘Look! I am even now a
dead man.’
He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the
half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.
‘I come of land-holding stock,’ said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he
stood. ‘It were a disgrace to me to go to the public scaffold: therefore
I take this way. Be it remembered that the Sahib’s shirts are correctly
enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his washbasin.
My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to
slay me with the rope? My honour is saved, and--and--I die.’
At the end of an hour he died, as they die who are bitten by the
little brown karait, and the policemen bore him and the thing under the
tablecloth to their appointed places. All were needed to make clear the
disappearance of Imray.
‘This,’ said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, ‘is called
the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?’
‘I heard,’ I answered. ‘Imray made a mistake.’
‘Simply and solely through not knowing the nature of the Oriental, and
the coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan had been with
him for four years.’
I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of
time. When I went over to my own room I found my man waiting, impassive
as the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.
‘What has befallen Bahadur Khan?’ said I.
‘He was bitten by a snake and died. The rest the Sahib knows,’ was the
answer.
‘And how much of this matter hast thou known?’
‘As much as might be gathered from One coming in in the twilight to seek
satisfaction. Gently, Sahib. Let me pull off those boots.’
I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland
shouting from his side of the house--
‘Tietjens has come back to her place!’
And so she had. The great deerhound was couched statelily on her own
bedstead on her own blanket, while, in the next room, the idle, empty,
ceiling-cloth waggled as it trailed on the table.