Produced by Chris Curnow, Michael, Mary Meehan and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE THREE SAPPHIRES
BY W. A. FRASER
AUTHOR OF "FOOL'S GOLD," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
ARTHUR HEMING
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
_Copyright, 1918,
By George H. Doran Company_
_Copyright, 1918, by Street & Smith Corporation_
_Printed in the United States of America_
[Illustration: THERE WAS A COUGHING ROAR AND A LEOPARD, TURNED BY THE
SHOT, BOUNDED INTO THE JUNGLE.]
ILLUSTRATIONS
THERE WAS A COUGHING ROAR AND A LEOPARD, TURNED BY THE SHOT, BOUNDED
INTO THE JUNGLE
PUNDIT BAGH SHOT INTO THE AIR A QUIVERING MASS OF GOLD AND BRONZE IN THE
SUNLIGHT
GREAT AS WAS THE ELEPHANT'S STRENGTH, SHE COULD NOT BREAK THE PYTHON'S
DEADLY CLASP
THE GRAY STALLION'S THUNDERING GALLOP ALL BUT DROWNING THE BLASPHEMOUS
REPROACH
THE THREE SAPPHIRES
PART ONE
Chapter I
From where they were on the marble terrace that reached from the palace
to a little lake--the Lake of the Golden Coin--Lord Victor Gilfain and
Captain Swinton could see the intricate maze of Darpore City's lights
down on the plain, six miles away.
Over the feather-topped sal forest behind the palace a gorgeous moon was
flooding the earth with light, turning to ribbons of gold the circling
ripples on the jade lake, where mahseer and burbel splashed in play.
Rajah Darpore was leaning lazily against the fretwork marble balustrade
just where the ghat steps dipped down under the water. He was really
Prince Ananda, the _shazada_, for down in the city of glittering lights
still lived his father, the maharajah; but it had become customary to
address the prince as rajah.
A servant came and took their empty sherry glasses.
Prince Ananda was saying in his soft Oriental voice that the Oxford
training had set to truer rhythm: "After that gallop up in the tonga I
always find it restful to come out here and have my sherry and bitters
before dinner."
"It's ripping; I mean that." And Lord Victor Gilfain stretched his slim
arm toward the blinking lights of Darpore.
"I hope you're comfortable in the bungalow," the prince said
solicitously. "I hadn't time when you arrived this morning to see just
how you were placed. I haven't any bungalows up here, either; they're
all in the cantonments."
"We're fitted up regal," Lord Victor answered; "horses,
servants--everything."
"Well, I'm very glad you came," Ananda said. "At Oxford we often talked
about the shooting you were to have here, didn't we?"
"Rather."
"But I never thought Earl Craig would let you come. Having lived in
India in his younger days, I fancied he'd be gun-shy of the country."
Lord Victor laughed. "I got marching orders from the gov'nor."
The prince tapped a cigarette on the marble rail, lighted it from the
fireball a watchful servant glided into range with, blew a puff of smoke
out toward the little lake, and, with a smile, murmured dreamily: "I
wonder if I knew the girl?"
"You didn't, old chap; though you've pipped the gov'nor's idea all
right. Swinton here is my keeper; he's supposed to be immune."
"Well, you're safe at Darpore. There's absolutely nobody here just now.
Everybody's in Calcutta."
"I fancy the gov'nor cabled out to ask about that before he packed me
off." And Gilfain chuckled, a tribute to his reputation for gallantry.
"I should say you're in good hands, too." Ananda's white teeth showed in
a smile that irritated Swinton. When Prince Ananda had met them at the
train Swinton had seen his black eyes narrow in a hard look. He had been
wondering if the prince knew his real position--that he was Captain
Herbert, of the secret service. But that was impossible. Probably the
prince was mistrustful of all Europeans.
Then Ananda resumed, in an introspective way: "That's England all over;
they're as much afraid of breaking caste by marrying lower down as we
are here. In fact"--Darpore raised his hand and pointed to the distant
city--"the maharajah is sitting yonder, probably in his glass prayer
room, listening to some wandering troubadour singing the amorous love
songs of 'Krishna and the Milkmaids,' and his mind is quite at rest,
knowing that the Brahman caste is so strong that it protects itself in
the way of misalliance."
"But you?" Lord Victor blurted out boyishly. "Damn it, prince, you put
your caste under the pillow at Oxford!"
Ananda laughed. "Personally it is still under the pillow. You see, when
I crossed the 'black water' I broke my caste. When the time comes that
it is necessary for the welfare of Darpore state that I take it on
again--well, I may. To tell you the truth, the maharajah is not a
Brahman at all; he's something very much greater, if he'd only think so;
he's a rajput of the Kshatri caste, the warrior caste."
Swinton, sitting back in his chair, had closed his eyes, experiencing a
curious pantomimic effect in listening to the English voice leisurely
drawling these curiously startling sentiments; then when he opened them
suddenly there was the lithe figure of the Oriental, the Indian prince.
It didn't ring true; there was a disturbing something about it that kept
his nerves tingling. Perhaps it was that he had come to delicately
investigate.
"And this," Ananda continued, indicating the palace and the sal forest
beyond. "I mean my desire for this and not that"--and the ruby point of
his cigarette enveloped with a sweeping gesture the city in the
plain--"is because of a Raj Gond cross away back. They were primitive
nature worshippers--tiger gods and all that. Listen!" He held up a
finger, his eyes tense, as from high up on the hills, deep in the
forest, came the hoarse, grating call of a leopard. Immediately from
just behind the palace the call was taken up and answered by another
leopard.
"By Jove!" Gilfain sprang to his feet.
The prince laughed. "That's one of my captives; I've got quite a
menagerie. We'll see them in the day, first time you're out. That's the
Raj Gond taint. I couldn't stand it down there, so the maharajah let me
build this bungalow up here. This whole plateau we're on contains a
buried city. Who built it or who lived in it nobody knows. The marble
you see in the palace was all taken from the buildings beneath the roots
of these sal trees. I'll show you something; we've got time before the
others arrive for dinner."
He led the two men down wide, marble steps to the water's edge, and
indicated a cable, the end of which, coming up out of the lake, crept
into the bank beneath a large marble slab.
"What's it attached to?" Lord Victor asked.
"This lake is artificial. If it were daylight, and we were up on the
bank, we could see seven of them. The story of this cable runs that when
the king of this city that is buried was dying he commanded that all his
jewels and weapons and his body be placed in a golden boat and sunk in
the centre of this lake. They say the boat is attached to the other end
of this cable; I don't know."
"Has anybody ever tried to pull it up?" Swinton asked, still feeling
that he was helping on the pantomime.
"Yes; once an avaricious nawab got together several elephants and many
men, and, fastening to the cable, started to pull the boat up. It came
easily at first, but just when they all got very careless and were
starting to rush it the magic thing slipped back, pulling them in, and
they were all drowned. There's a legend that if a holy man stands here
at midnight of a full moon when the mhowa tree is in bloom, with the
three sacred sapphires of our mythology in his hand, the king will rise
in his golden boat if the holy man has been ordained of the gods to be a
leader of his people."
Back on the terrace, Prince Ananda asked: "Were you in the service out
here, captain?" Very inconsequential was the tone of this query that was
so pointed in reality.
"I was on the Bombay side for a time; my health petered out, and I had
to go back to Belati."
"I see the lights of Major Finnerty's dogcart coming up the hill,"
Ananda announced.
"Coming to dinner with us--any ladies, prince?" Lord Victor queried.
"No; this is what I call a _pilkana_ or play dinner. After we've dined
I'm going to show you some Indian _tamasha_. I asked Finnerty because
he's great on these jungle friends of mine--should be able to find you
some tiger; I don't shoot."
The moon showed an apologetic smile curving the lips clear of his
brilliant white teeth as Ananda, turning to Swinton, added: "I never
kill any of them myself; I'm a Buddhist in that way."
"Do you believe in reincarnation, prince?" Gilfain questioned.
"I'm afraid I don't believe in anything that's not demonstrable; but I
do know that it is a good thing to not take life. Finnerty is the
government keddah sahib here, and I'm going to ask his help in giving
you some sport, Gilfain. My private archæologist, Doctor Boelke, is
coming for dinner also. The trouble about him is the more he drinks the
more Teutonically sombre he becomes."
The prince excused himself, saying: "I think they're pretty well coming
together."
The two men could hear a heavy tonga clatter up, followed by the light,
whirring grind of dogcart wheels and a medley of voices. As a group came
through the palace, Swinton could hear the heavy guttural of a German's
"_Ach, Gott!_" about something unpleasing.
There was a brief introduction and an immediate departure to the dining
room.
After dinner, as they sat at little tables on the moonlit terrace over
their coffee and cheroots, Major Finnerty, taking from his pocket an
oval stone the size of a hen's egg, said: "I've got a curiosity, prince;
I wonder if you can read the inscription on it."
"What is it, major?" Darpore asked as he held it toward an electric lamp
on the table.
"It's a very fine sapphire in the rough. Where the end has been cut it
is of the deepest pigeon blue."
"I can't read the characters because they are Persian, and I only know
the Devanagari, but Professor Boelke can," and Ananda passed it to the
German.
"Yes, it is Persian," Doctor Boelke said. With a pencil he wrote on a
piece of paper some strange-looking characters. "It means _Rikaz_, and
is nothing of mystery."
Swinton, who was watching the German's eyes, felt that they were passing
some hidden meaning to the prince.
"_Rikaz_ means a mine," Doctor Boelke continued; "a place vhere stones
or metal are found; dot's all."
Swinton intercepted the stone on its way back, and after examining it
passed it on.
"Dot is a big sapphire, major," Boelke said; "vhere did you get it? And
for vat is der hole on der other end from der inscription?"
"It's a curious story," Finnerty answered. "A jungle _hethni_--female
elephant--came down out of the forest and walked right in on us, by
Jove! I'll describe Burra Moti; that's what we call her, the Big Pearl.
She's a female with large tusks; she has four toes on each hind foot,
and I haven't another elephant that has more than three. She's different
in other ways; has two fingers on the end of her trunk instead of one;
she has immense ears and a hollow back; she never lies down."
Doctor Boelke leaned forward, adjusted his big glasses, and said: "My
friend, you haf described an African elephant."
"Yes," the major answered; "that's what Burra Moti is."
"I admit it's some mystery," Finnerty said slowly; "it has bothered me.
All I know is that Burra Moti, who is undoubtedly an African, came down
out of the jungle to the keddah because she was going to calve. What
taught her that she'd be safe with her calf in the keddah I don't know;
where she came from I don't know. Around her neck was a strap of sambur
skin to which was attached a bell, and morning and evening, at a certain
hour, Burra Moti would reach up with her trunk and ring the bell. Last
evening the mahout didn't hear it at the usual hour--eight o'clock--so
he went down to where Burra Moti stood under a big tamarind tree and
found a native--looked to be a hillman--crushed flat where she had put
her big foot on him. Beside him lay the bell, and the strap had been cut
with a sharp knife. The bell was flattened out of shape, Moti in her
rage evidently having stepped on it. The clapper of that bell was this
sapphire, hung by the little hole in the end."
"By Jove!" Lord Victor ejaculated. "My gov'nor would give a few sovs for
that Sapphire; he's entirely daffy on the subject of Indian curios."
"If it's for sale I'll give a thousand rupees for it, major," the prince
added.
"I've got to fix that bell up again for Burra Moti," Finnerty answered;
"she's been in a towering rage all day--keeps slipping her trunk up to
her neck like a woman looking for a necklace she has lost."
"Oh, I say!" Gilfain expostulated. "Rather tallish order, old chap,
don't you think? Almost too deuced human, what?"
Major Finnerty turned in his leisurely way to Gilfain: "If a chap spends
several years with elephants he'll come devilish near believing in
reincarnation, my young friend." Then, addressing Darpore more
particularly, he added: "I want to tell you one extraordinary thing
Burra Moti did when her calf was born. The little one was as though it
were dead, not breathing. With her front foot the mother pressed the
calf's chest in and out gently--artificial respiration if you like,
gentlemen--and kept it up until the calf breathed naturally. But I'm
sorry to say the little one died next day."
Swinton waited for some comment on the sapphire-clappered bell. He now
asked: "Do you suppose, major, it was just a bell that the thief
wanted?"
"No; that native had never been seen around the lines before. It's not
likely he would slip into a strange place and take chances of being
killed for a thing of not much value--a bell."
"Perhaps it's one of those bally sacred things," Lord Victor
interjected.
Swinton saw Ananda's eyes send a swift glance to the German's face.
"Well," Finnerty said meditatively, "I think the thief knew of the
sapphire stone in that bell, and it may have belonged to some temple; I
mean Burra Moti may have been a sacred elephant."
"If that were the case," Darpore objected, "they'd come and claim the
elephant."
"The stone being in the rough, there must be a mine near where the
elephant was equipped with the bell," Swinton suggested.
"I had an idea," Finnerty said, "that if I rode Burra Moti off into the
jungle and let her drift she might go back to where she came from; I
might find the mine that way."
As Finnerty ceased speaking the high-pitched voice of a woman singing
floated down to them from higher up on the hill. Ananda clapped his
hands; a servant slipped from a door in the palace, and, salaaming
deeply, listened to an order from the prince. When he re-entered the
palace the row of lights that had illumined the terrace went out,
leaving the sitters in the full glamour of a glorious moon.
Ananda made a gesture toward the hill from which the weird chant came.
"That is the Afghan love song," he explained. "The girl represents a
princess who was in love with a common soldier. After a great battle she
went out on the plain, searching for him among the wounded and slain; so
now this girl will come down in her singing search."
The listeners could now make out the weird music of the many-stringed
fiddle that a companion played as accompaniment to the girl's voice. The
prince swept his hand toward the great disk of silver that had lifted
above the sal trees, saying: "My people believe that luminous, dead
planet up there is the soul, _purusha_, of Brahm the Creator; fitting
light for the path of a princess who is singing out of the desolation of
her soul."
Nearer and nearer came the wailing plaint of the girl looking for her
dead soldier. Once its vibrant tone stirred the leopard in his cage, and
he called: "Wough-wa, wough-wa, wah!"
"That's 'Pard's' mating call," the prince explained. "Even he, jungle
devil, feels something in that love song--in the sorrowing voice that
does not anger him."
A peacock, wakened from his sleep by the leopard, sent out a warning
call to jungle dwellers that a killer was afoot. "Meough, meough,
meough!" he cried in shrill discordancy.
The song of love-search drifted in from the sal trees, through the mango
tope beyond the palace, along the banks of the Lake of the Golden Coin,
and up the ghat steps to the terrace.
In the moonlight the girl's face, as she came slowly up the steps, was
beautiful; her grace of movement was exquisite. Followed by the
musician, she passed along the terrace with no notice of the prince or
his guests. At the far end, she dropped to her knees beside a figure
that had lain there--her slain soldier lover. She lifted his head into
her lap, and the song rose in an intensity of lament; then it died down
to a croon; the desolate woman's head drooped until her luxuriant hair
shrouded the soldier's face. Suddenly the crooning chant was stilled;
the girl's face thrust up through its veil of hair, and the eyes,
showing a gleam of madness in the moonlight, swept the vault above.
"She has become crazed by the death of her lover," the prince explained
softly. As the girl commenced a low chant he added: "She now asks of the
gods what she must do to receive back his life. She thinks, in her
madness, they answer that if she dances so that it pleases Krishna the
soldier will be restored to life."
Tenderly the girl laid the head of her lover down, kissing him on the
staring eyes, and then commenced a slow, sinuous dance, the violin, with
its myriad wire strings, pulsating with sobs. The soft, enveloping moon
shimmer lent a mystic touch of unreality to the elfin form that seemed
to float in rhythmic waves against the dark background of the sal
forest. Faster and faster grew the dance, more and more weird the wail
of the violin, and the plaint from the girl for her lover's life became
a frenzied cry. Now she had failed; her strength was gone; death still
held in its cold fingers the heart of her lover; she reeled in exhausted
delirium, but, as she would have fallen, the lover rose from death and
caught her to his breast.
But the gift of the gods--his life--had been but transitional--a bitter
mockery--for the princess lay dead against his pulsing heart. Smothering
the unresponsive eyes and lips with kisses, he gently placed the girl
upon the ground, and, standing erect, defied the gods--called them to
combat.
Prince Ananda interpreted the words and gestures of the gladiator as the
moonlight painted in gold and copper his bronze form.
In answer to his challenge a sinister form glided from the shadow of the
wall.
"Bhairava, the evil black god, who rides abroad at night," Ananda
explained, adding, as the combat began: "They are two Punjabi wrestlers.
The lover is Balwant Singh, which means 'Strong Lion;' Bhairava, whom
you see is so grotesquely painted black, is Jai Singh, 'Lion of
Victory.'"
The struggle was Homeric, as Balwant Singh, the muscles on his back
rising in ridges, strove to conquer the black god. In vain his strength,
for the god, sinuous as a serpent, slipped from the lover's grasp with
ease. At last Jai Singh's black arm lay across the lover's throat,
anchored to the shoulder by a hand grip; there was a quick twist to the
arm, a choking gasp from Balwant Singh, and, with startling suddenness,
he was on his back, both shoulders pinned to the mat.
The tragic drama was at an end. The lover, slain by the gods he had
defied, lay beside his dead princess.
"Ripping!" Lord Victor cried. "In Drury Lane that would cause no end of
a sensation as a pantomime. Hello! By Jove! I say!"
For even as the young man cackled, some heavy shadow, some mystic trick
of the Orient, had faded from their eyes the three figures of the drama.
Prince Ananda, with a soft laugh at Gilfain's astonishment, said:
"Bharitava, the evil god, has spirited the lover and the princess away."
"My friends, dot to me brings of importance a question," Doctor Boelke
commented. "How is it dot a few Englishmen rule hundreds of millions,
and we see dot der Hindus are stronger as der white man; no Englishman
could wrestle those men."
"I fancy it's hardly a question of what we call brute force where
England governs," Swinton claimed.
"Oh, of course!" And Doctor Boelke laughed. "England alvays ruling
people because of philanthropy. Ah, yes, I hear dot!"
"Do you mean to say, sir"--and Lord Victor's voice was pitched to a high
treble of indignation--"that we have no wrestlers at home as good as
these Hindu chaps? Damn it, sir, it's rot! A man like Fitzalban, who was
at Oxford in my last year, would simply disjoint these chaps like wooden
dolls."
The doctor puffed his billowy cheeks in disdain, and Finnerty
contributed: "Don't underrate these Punjabi wrestlers, my young friend;
there are devilish few professionals even who can take a fall out of
them."
"The major should know," and Darpore nodded pleasantly; "he has grappled
with the best that come out of the Punjab."
Gilfain, his spirit still ruffled by the Prussian's sneer at England,
declared peevishly: "I wish there was a chance to test the bally thing;
I'd bet a hundred pounds on the Englishman, even if I'd never seen him
wrestle."
Boelke, with a sibilant smack of his lips, retorted: "You are quite
safe, my young frient, with your hundred pounds, because, you see, there
is no Englishman here to put der poor Hindu on his back."
"I'm not quite so sure about that, Herr Doctor."
Boelke turned in his chair at the deliberate, challenging tone of
Finnerty's voice. He looked at the major, then gave vent to an
unpleasant laugh.
"There is one thing a Britisher does not allow to pass--a sneer at
England by a German." Finnerty hung over the word "German."
"Vell," the doctor asked innocently, "you vil prove I am wrong by
wrestling der Punjabi, or are we to fight a duel?" And again came the
disagreeable laugh.
"If the prince has no objection, I don't know why I shouldn't take a
fall out of one of these chaps. It's a game I'm very fond of."
"And, Herr Doctor, I'll have you on for the hundred," Lord Victor cried
eagerly.
"Just as you like, major," the prince said. "There'll be no loss of
caste, especially if we sit on our sporting friend over there and curb
his betting propensities."
"Right you are, rajah," Finnerty concurred. "We wrestle just to prove
that Britain is not the poor old effete thing the Herr Doctor thinks she
is."
Prince Ananda sent for his secretary, Baboo Chunder Sen, and when the
baboo came said: "Ask Jai Singh if he would like to try a fall with the
major sahib."
Balwant Singh came back with the baboo when he had delivered this
message. Salaaming, he said: "Huzoor, the keddah sahib has his name in
our land, the Land of the Five Rivers. We who call men of strength
brothers say that he is one of us. No one from my land has come back
boasting that he has conquered the sahib. Jai Singh, in the favor of the
gods, has achieved to victory over me, so Jai Singh will meet with the
sahib."
"Fine!" Finnerty commented. "I'll need wrestling togs, prince."
"The baboo will take you to my room and get a suit for you."
Finnerty put the sapphire in a silver cigarette box that was on the
table, saying: "I'll leave this here," and followed Chunder Sen into the
palace.
"Devilish sporting, I call it; Finnerty is Irish, but he's a Britisher,"
Gilfain proclaimed. "He'll jolly well play rugby with your friend, Herr
Boelke."
"In my country ve do not shout until der victory is obtained; ve vill
see," and the doctor puffed noisily at his cheroot.
But the fish eyes of the professor were conveying to Prince Ananda
malevolent messages, Swinton fancied. The whole thing had left a
disturbing impression on his mind; Boelke's manner suggested a
pre-arrangement with the prince.
The doctor's unpleasing physical contour would have furnished strong
evidence against him on any charge of moral obliquity. He sat on the
chair like a large-paunched gorilla, his round head topping the fatty
mound like a coconut. His heavy-jowled face held a pair of cold, fishy
eyes; coarse hair rose in an aggressive hedge from the seamed, low
forehead, and white patches showed through the iron-grey thatch where
little nicks had been made in the scalp by duelling swords at
Heidelberg. He was a large man, but the suggestion of physical strength
was destroyed by a depressing obeseness.
A tall, fine-looking rajput came across the terrace toward Darpore.
"Ah, Darna Singh," the prince greeted, rising; "you are just in time to
see a _kushti_ that will delight your warrior heart. This is my
brother-in-law, Nawab Darna Singh," he continued, turning to Swinton and
Gilfain and repeating their entitled names.
The rajput salaamed with grave dignity, saying the honour pleased him.
"Have a seat," Ananda proffered.
"I have intruded, rajah," Darna Singh explained, "because there is
trouble at the temple. The mahanta is at the gate----"
"Show him in, Darna. I can't see him privately just now; the keddah
sahib and Jai Singh are going to make _kushti_."
While the rajput went to the gate for the mahanta, Prince Ananda said
apologetically: "Even a prince must show deference to the keeper of the
temple."
Darna Singh returned, accompanied by an animated skeleton of mummy hue.
Draping the skin-covered bones was a loin cloth and a thread that hung
diagonally from one shoulder to the waist.
With a deep salaam, the mahanta, trembling with indignation, panted:
"Dharama comes in the morning with his Buddhistic devils to desecrate
the temple by placing in it that brass Buddha--accursed image!--he has
brought from the land of Japan."
"Ah!" The exclamation was from Lord Victor as Finnerty appeared.
"Here, Darna," Ananda cried, "hold the mahanta till this is over; I
don't want to miss it."
Darna Singh led the Brahmin beyond the table at which the sahibs were
grouped, explaining that Prince Ananda would speak to him presently.
Now Finnerty, coming into the light, slipped a robe from his shoulders
and stood beside Jai Singh, looking like a sculptured form of ivory.
Swinton caught his breath in a gasp of admiration; he had never seen
such a superb being. Jai Singh, that a moment before had seemed of
matchless mould, now suffered by comparison. Each move of the Irishman
was like the shifting of a supple gladiator. The shoulders, the loins,
the overlapping muscles of his arms were like those of Hercules.
Lord Victor was muttering: "My word! Poor old decadent England--what!"
Several times as he sat there Swinton had felt vibrant thrills, as if
eyes that blazed with intensity were on him, and always as he had turned
in answer to the unseen influence he had instinctively looked to a
jalousied balcony above them. Now he caught the glint of white fingers
between the leaves of the lattice as if a hand vibrated them. He could
have sworn Finnerty's erect head had drooped in recognition.
From the first grapple there was evident savagery on the part of Jai
Singh. He had toyed leisurely with Balwant; now he bore in like a savage
beast.
"By gad!" Lord Victor growled once, "that Hindu bounder is fighting
foul!"
Finnerty had gone to his hands and knees in defence. The Punjabi, lying
along the arched back, thrust his right hand under the major's armpit as
if seeking for a half-Nelson; but his hand, creeping up to the neck,
straightened out to thrust two fingers into Finnerty's nostrils, the big
thumb wedged against the latter's windpipe. In a flash the white man was
in a vise, for Jai Singh had gripped the wrist of his fouling arm with
his left hand, and was pressing the forearm upon the back of his
opponent's neck.
In his foul endeavour Jai Singh had lost defence. A hand took him by the
left wrist, a corkscrew twist broke his hold, and he commenced to go
over forward in tortured slowness, drawn by the wracking pain of his
twisted joints. One of his shoulder blades lay against the mat when, by
a mighty wrench, he freed his wrist and pirouetted on his round bullet
head clear of Finnerty's clutch.
Again, as they stood hand to shoulder, making a feint as if to grapple,
Jai Singh tried a foul. The heel of Finnerty's palm, thrust with dynamic
force upward, caught him under the chin with such power that he all but
turned a complete somersault backward.
This was too much for Lord Victor. With a cry of "Well bowled, old top!"
he sprang to his feet, in his excitement careening his glass of whisky
and soda, the liquid splashing across the fat legs of Doctor Boelke.
Like a hippopotamus emerging from a pool, Boelke reared upward; the
table, at a thrust from his hand, reeled groggily on its frail legs and
then volplaned, shooting its contents over the marble floor.
"Never mind," Prince Ananda admonished; "leave it to the servants."
Finnerty was wrestling with caution--waiting for the inevitable careless
chance that would give him victory.
Jai Singh's foul tactics confirmed Swinton's suspicion that the bout was
a prearranged plot; the Punjabi was acting under orders. The captain had
served in the Punjab and knew that native wrestlers were not given to
such practices. He watched Prince Ananda, but the latter's immobile face
gave no sign of disapproval.
A startled gasp from Lord Victor caused him to look at the wrestlers. He
had seen enough of wrestling to know what had happened. Jai Singh's
weight rested on one leg he had crooked behind Finnerty's knee joint,
and he was pulling up against this wedge the major's foot by a hold on
the big toe. It was a barred hold in amateur wrestling; a chance to
administer pain, instead of an exhibition of strength or agility. The
captain felt, with a sense of defeat, that Finnerty must yield to the
pain or have his leg broken.
There was a hideous grin of triumph on the face of Jai Singh. Then,
almost before Swinton's brain could register these startling things, the
leer of victory vanished; the Punjabi's lips framed some startled cry;
his hands fell to his side; his torso drooped forward, and he collapsed
as though his legs were paralysed.
Finnerty half rose and turned the Punjabi over on his back, pressing his
shoulders to the mat; then he took the black nose between finger and
thumb and tweaked it.
"Topping! Ripping!" Gilfain shouted the words. "It was coming to the
cad!"
The others sat numbed to silence by the extraordinary suddenness of the
collapse. Each one understood the debasing retribution the keddah sahib
had meted out to his foul-fighting opponent.
Swinton, watching, saw consternation pall the heavy-jowled face of the
Prussian. The debonair air had fallen away from the prince. To hide his
chagrin he called Darna Singh to bring the mahanta to him. He spoke
rapidly in a low voice to the priest, and when he had finished, the
latter departed, accompanied by Darna Singh.
When Finnerty came back to them Prince Ananda had regained his
sangfroid; he smiled a greeting, holding out his hand, and said: "You
deserve to win."
"I should say so!" Gilfain added. "That rotter would have been mobbed at
a bout in London."
Boelke mumbled: "You are very strong, major."
Finnerty, peeping into the silver box that had been replaced by the
servants on the table, asked: "Any of you chaps got that bell clapper? I
left it here."
Nobody had; nobody knew anything about it. Instinctively each one felt
his pockets to be sure that, in the excitement of the struggle, he
hadn't put it away; then each one remembered that he hadn't seen it
since the major deposited it in the silver box.
"The table was upset," Swinton said. "Look on the floor."
Even Prince Ananda joined in the search. Then the servants were
questioned. They knew nothing of its whereabouts; all denied that they
had seen the keddah sahib put it in the box.
A little constraint crept into the search. Prince Ananda's
brother-in-law and the temple priest had been there and had departed;
the prince's servants had been going and coming.
"It may have rolled off the terrace into the water," Prince Ananda
suggested. "In the morning I'll have the lake searched at this point."
"It doesn't matter," Finnerty declared.
"It does, my dear major," Ananda objected. "I'll put pressure on the
servants, for I'm very much afraid one of them has stolen it. At any
rate, you've been looted in my house, and if I don't find your sapphire
you shall have the finest jewel Hamilton Company can send up from
Calcutta."
"My young friend was too enthusiastic," Doctor Boelke said with a
mirthless grin; "he has also soaked my legs."
The savage wrestling bout and the mysterious loss of the sapphire
brought a depressing vacuity of speech. The guests were soon waiting in
the courtyard for the tonga.
Swinton stepped over to where Finnerty waited in his dogcart while a
servant lighted the lamps, saying: "Prince Ananda has arranged that we
are to call on the maharajah at ten o'clock to-morrow, and I'd like to
ride over to see your elephants later on."
"Come for tiffin," the major invited.
As the tonga carrying Lord Victor and Swinton was starting, Ananda said:
"I've told the driver to show you the Maha Bodhi Temple and a pagoda on
your way; it is there that Prince Sakya Singha attained to the Buddha.
Good night."
Halfway down the tonga stopped, and their eyes picked up, off to the
right, a ravishing sight. A gloomed hill, rising like a plinth of black
marble, held on its top a fairy-lined structure. Like a gossamer web or
a proportioned fern, a wooden temple lay against the moonlit sky; beside
it, towering high to a slender spire, was the pagoda, its gold-leafed
wall softened to burnished silver by the gentling moon. A breeze stirred
a thousand bells that hung in a golden umbrella above the spire, and the
soft tinkle-tinkle-tinkle of their many tongues was like the song of
falling waters on a pebbled bed till hushed by a giant gong that sent
its booming notes reverberating across the hills as some temple priest
beat with muffled club its bronzed side.
"Devilish serene sort of thing, don't you think?" Lord Victor managed to
put his poetic emotions into that much prose banality.
The driver, not understanding the English words, said in Hindustani:
"There will be much war there to-morrow when they fight over their
gods."
As if his forecast had wakened evil genii of strife up in the hills, the
fierce blare of a conch shell, joined in clamour by clanging temple
bells, came across the valley, shattering its holy calm.
"My aunt! What a beastly din!" Lord Victor exclaimed.
"War," the driver announced indifferently.
Human voices pitched to the acute scale of contending demons now sat
astride the sound waves.
"Gad! Dharama has stolen a march on the mahanta and is sneaking in his
Buddha by moonlight," Swinton declared.
The tumult grew in intensity; torches flashed and dimmed in and out
about the temple like evil eyes.
"Shall we take a peep, old top?" Lord Victor asked, eagerness in his
voice.
Swinton spoke to the driver, asking about the road, and learned that,
turning off to the right at that point, it wound down the mountainside
and up the other hill to the temple.
Just at that instant there came from down the road the clatter of
galloping hoofs and the whirling bang of reckless wheels. In seconds the
keddah sahib's dogcart swirled into view; he reined up, throwing his
horse almost on his haunches.
"That mongrel Buddhist, Dharama, is up to his deviltry; I've got to stop
him!"
He was gone.
At a sharp order from Swinton the tonga followed, the driver, eager to
see the fray, carrying them along at perilous speed. At each sharp turn,
with its sheer drop of a hundred feet or more on the outside, the tonga
swung around, careening to one of its two wheels, the other spinning
idly in the air. The little ruby eyes in the back of the dogcart's lamps
twinkling ahead seemed to inspire their driver with reckless rivalry.
When they arrived at the temple the battle had reached its climax. The
brass Buddha, its yellow face with the sightless eyes of meditation
staring up in oblivious quietude to the skies, was lying all alone just
within the temple gate. Without, Dharama and his Buddhists battled the
smaller force of the mahanta, who led it with fanatical fervour.
They saw the keddah sahib towering above the fighting mob, his spread
arms raised as if exhorting them to desist from strife. The combatants
broke against his body like stormy waves, his words were drowned by the
tumult of the passion cries.
Swinton and Lord Victor dropped from the tonga, and as they ran toward
the riot something happened. A native close to Dharama struck at
Finnerty with a long fighting staff, the blow falling on an arm the
Irishman thrust forward as guard. Like an enraged bull bison, the keddah
sahib charged. Dharama and the man who had struck were caught by the
throats and their heads knocked together as though they were puppets;
then Dharama was twisted about, and the foot of the big Irishman lifted
him with a sweeping kick. He catapulted out of the fray. Then the keddah
sahib's fists smote here and there, until, discouraged by the fate of
their leader and the new re-enforcements--for Lord Victor and Captain
Swinton were now busy--the Buddhists broke and fled.
"Faith, it's a busy night, captain!" Finnerty exclaimed as he wiped
perspiration from his forehead. He turned to the mahanta, and, pointing
to the yellow god, said: "Roll that thing down the hill!"
In a frenzy of delight the temple adherents laid hands upon the brass
Buddha. It took their united strength to drag and roll it to the edge of
the sloping hillside a hundred feet away. The sahibs stood on the brink,
watching the image that glinted in the moonlight as it tumbled
grotesquely over and over down the declivity till it plunged into the
muddy waters of Gupti Nala.
"There'll be no more trouble over installing that idol in the temple for
some time," Finnerty chuckled.
Then they climbed into tonga and dogcart, and sped homeward.