When Captain Swinton and Major Finnerty arrived at the bungalow a note
was sent to Lord Victor asking him to come up on horseback, as they were
going off into the jungle.
Knowing that servants' ears were animate dictaphones, the two sahibs ate
breakfast in comparative silence, the strenuous morning after the black
leopard having braced their appetites.
Later, at restful ease in big chairs, the major said: "In this accursed
land of spies one must find a place where his eyes reach farther than
his voice. That, by the way, was a trick of a clever tiger I killed, the
Gharwalla man-eater, through discovering that when he had made a kill he
would drag the body to a certain bare hilltop from which he could watch
for danger. He'd been driven up to a gun so often that he was shy of
secret places. There was something grewsome about that tiger's fiendish
cunning. His favourite trick was to crouch in cover that overhung a
roadway, and as a bullock cart came along pick off the driver with a
flying leap and carry him to this hilltop for a leisurely meal. There
was a pool close by, and, after eating, he would take a drink, roll in
the sand, and then go quite a mile to thick cover for a sleep. I potted
him when he was having one of his sand baths. You've seen a dog roll on
a rug in the ecstasy of a full stomach, but with this chap there was
something wondrously beautiful--if one could forget the horribleness of
it--in the play of those terrible muscles and the undulating curves of
the striped body as he rolled in luxurious ease, paws fanning the air
and his ivory-studded jaws showing in an after dinner yawn. I watched
him for ten minutes, fascinated by the charm of subtle movement combined
with strength, for I was well hidden in a thick growth of rose bramble,
its mottled colouring of pink and grey and green deceiving his quick
eye. I was lying flat, my 10-bore covering him. When I gave a low
whistle the big head faced me, and the eyes, hardened to a yellow-green
murder look, were straight on. But just below the jaw was a spot with no
hard skull to deflect the heavy, soft-lead ball, and behind that
feathered curl of white hair was the motor of that powerful machine--the
heart. He never knew what struck him. The whole cavity was just
pulp--heart and lungs--when we skinned him."
A native who had come in from the jungle now came to the verandah.
"Huzoor," he began, "we knew that Burra Moti was near in the night, for
Raj Bahadar was restless, cocking his ears and making soft speech
through his trunk to the cunning old lady; but maybe on account of the
camp fire, which we had lighted to show her that it was but a party of
men who would eat and had sweet cakes for elephants who approached in a
friendly spirit, she came not in. We could hear the bell tinkle, tinkle,
tinkle----"
"You fool! Why do you mix lies in your report; the elephant had no
bell."
Undismayed, the man answered: "The mahout maintained as much, sahib, but
we all heard the bell, and Moti was in a sweet temper, for she laughed,
as elephants do when they are pleased."
"It was a bird you heard--the sweet-singing shama, or a chakwa calling
to his mate across a stream. Did you see her?"
"It was still dark, but we could hear Moti sigh as though her heart was
troubled because she could not come to partake of the cakes we burned so
that they would be known in her nostrils."
"Couldn't come! She was free."
"As to a chain, it is true; but the sahib knows that evil attaches to
things that are sacred of a temple when they have fallen into the hands
of others."
"Speak!" Finnerty commanded, as the native hesitated.
"It is said--perhaps it is but a rumour of the bazaar--that Moti was of
a temple up in the hills, and that in the bell was a sacred sapphire."
"But how came Moti to my place? Know you that, sage one?"
The native dismissed the sarcasm with a salaam, answering: "It is said
that the temple was looted of jewels that were buried beneath a pillar."
With a start, Finnerty asked: "And the stone pillar--was it taken?" And
he laughed as if in derision.
"I have heard that the pillar is in a new place, sahib."
"Is it in the prince's grounds?" And Finnerty swept an arm toward the
palace hill.
"There is a stone standing there that did not grow with the roses," the
native answered enigmatically.
"Just another move in our deranged friend's plot," Finnerty commented.
He turned to the native: "Was the lama of the temple killed?"
"Men who are dead do not come to the market place to complain, and as
the priest has not spoken it may be that he is dead."
"Here comes our friend in perpetuity, the Banjara!" Finnerty exclaimed.
He rose, and, going into the bungalow, returned to drop a rupee in the
native's hand, saying: "Go back to Raj Bahadar and tell the mahout I
will be along shortly." He turned to the captain.
"Swinton, all one's servants may know the thing a man is risking his
life to discover and he be none the wiser till some one babbles it like
a child."
"As in the mutiny," Swinton suggested. "Our officials saw cow dung
plastered on the trees--some few heard what they called 'silly
whispers,' but all native India knew, and all India remained hushed till
the dead silence was shattered by the tornado."
"Exactly. And while we say Ananda is insane, and all these things are
child's play, think of the trifling things that were used as factors to
breed that holocaust of hate. The Mussulmans told that the British Raj
had greased the cartridges they had to bite with pig's fat to defile
their religion; that suttee had been abolished to break the Hindu faith
by filling the land with widow prostitutes; that water the Hindu sepoys
drank had come in contact with leather valves made from the skin of a
cow. There were other trivial things lied into mountains of sins. Ananda
knows all that; he has the cunning of a serpent and the viciousness of a
black leopard."
The Banjara had arrived, and Finnerty counted out five rupees; then,
with a touch of Irish humour, he added another, saying, with a smile:
"This for your disappointment in not having a dog killed."
"If the monkey man, Mahadua, had been true to his caste, which is to
watch and not talk, there would have been profit for both sides--the
sahib would have obtained a kill."
When he had tucked away his money, the Banjara said: "My brother is not
now keeper at the tiger garden."
"Why? For whose sin does he suffer?"
"Darna Singh let the black leopard out to meet Rajah Ananda at Jadoo
Pool."
"The rajah wasn't there," Finnerty declared in a drawling way.
"No; there was some talk that was either a lie or a mistake; it was
another at the pool."
"Who?"
"The horse of the young sahib was found on the hill, and the mem-sahib
was seen between the pool and her bungalow."
"A ghost story, Banjara, and it's all finished."
"A bullock that is dead is dead, but a herdsman watches that the other
bullocks do not also die from the same thing."
"I trust you, Banjara," Finnerty said, seemingly at an irrelevant angle.
"The mem-sahib rides every day up into the hills, and the roads are not
good for pleasure. Packets of cotton that have stomachs come down over
the road; cotton grows here."
"What has cotton to do with the one who rides?"
"Perhaps the mem-sahib rides to meet the one who comes behind the
packets. My brother, who was the son of a Banjara priest, one who had
visions that all the tribe believed, has also had a vision. Perhaps the
beating caused a fever, for visions come thus."
"What saw he?" Finnerty asked, knowing that the herdsman had something
of moment to tell in this way.
"There was a full moon in the sky, and by its light he saw a rajah, and
the rajah had many guns and soldiers--even sahibs as soldiers--and he
was driving out the English. And the guns were hidden behind bales of
cotton."
"Is that all?" Finnerty asked, for the herdsman had stopped.
"My brother woke at that point, huzoor, and his eyes fell upon a mhowa
tree in full bloom."
"Which means that the mhowa is in bloom now?"
"Of the interpreting of visions I know nothing, but it might be that
way."
The Banjara now departed, and Swinton said: "Do you remember Prince
Ananda saying that if a holy man stood by the Lake of the Golden Coin in
the full of the moon, when the mhowa was in bloom, having the three
sacred sapphires, he would see the dead king rise in his golden boat?"
"Yes, and this cowherd's chatter means an uprising soon. I hear hoofs;
that will be Lord Victor. Are we going to accuse him of being at the
pool?"
"I think not. We know as much now as we shall if we question him. But
we'll keep him with us; a young ass like that isn't safe without a
keeper--he's no match for as clever a traitor as this girl."
Finnerty's chair groaned as though it had received a twist from his big
frame, but his voice was devoid of protest: "I can't make the girl out.
My mind is in a psychological state, and I suppose I'm influenced by the
apparent candour in her eyes. They seem to express trouble, too, as if
she were searching for a moral finger post, for a way out of darkness."
Then the major expressed an apologetic phrase: "I'm afraid I'm a bit
awkward at psychology; jungle dwellers are more in my line."
Swinton put his hand on the big man's shoulder. "My dear major, I wish
I'd had a brother like you. My family was baked in the crucible of
government service for generations; we're executive automatons."
"I understand; you're an Englishman--Damn it! I mean, in youth you never
roamed the hills like shaggy-haired colts as we do in Ireland."
"If I had I wouldn't have made a good Raj policeman. But to hark back.
The German machine, more soulless than our own, knows the value of Mona
Lisa eyes, and Marie was probably picked for this delicate mission for
the very quality that has won your sympathy--her appealing womanhood."
"And yet my perhaps sympathy for the girl was birthed by accident, not
design on her part."
"What is an attractive girl doing here so close to Prince Ananda? Why is
she here with a Prussian who is an enemy of the British Raj? Why is she
averse to being approached? What is she searching for in the hills? It's
the road to China, and guns have already arrived, according to our
Banjara."
"I haven't an answer for any one of your queries, captain, but we must
investigate those packets."
Lord Victor arrived now, and as he had not yet seen the skin of Pundit
Bagh he was taken to where it was pegged out on the ground and being
rubbed with ashes and alum. This kill of a tiger was probably the first
incident in his life calculated to raise elation in the hearts of his
friends.
"Something to tack to, eh?" he cried joyfully. "Fancy I hear the chaps
in fluffy old London saying as I pass, 'That's the man that shot a big
man-eater on foot.' No swank to that, major, for I did. You know that
dicky little chapel dedicated to the tiger god?"
"Yes; the one down in the plain."
"It's simply buried under devotee bric-a-brac this morning. They should
have a sign up 'Wet Paint,' for it's gory blood red. When I came along a
fat black man, rolled in white muslin, cursed me--absolutely bowled at
my wicket with a ball of brimstone. Now what do you make of that, major?
It wasn't about the cow dog, for the bounder had one English word,
'tiger,' which he simply sprayed his lingo with."
Mahadua had come to accompany the party, and, somewhat perplexed,
Finnerty turned to the shikari for an explanation.
"Yes, sahib," Mahadua said, "Pundit Bagh was a jungle god, and they are
making prayer to the shrine so that the spirit may return again as a
tiger to protect them from such as the black leopard."
Finnerty interpreted: "They feel that you have slain one who defended
them against leopards and pig and deer that ate their crops."
"Oh, I say! Sort of a gentleman burglar who did not murder his victims."
The shikari explained that the man who had visited verbal wrath upon
Lord Victor was a money lender who lent money at a high rate to the
farmers to buy bullocks when the tiger had killed their plough beasts,
so he was angry at this loss of revenue. He also said that some one was
telling the natives that the sahibs were trying to destroy their
religion by killing their jungle gods.
"Who tells them this?" Finnerty asked.
The shikari answered evasively: "This is not my country, so they do not
tell me what is in the hidden room."