Two legs of the mental triangle somewhat folded together as it dribbled
down the forest path, Finnerty and Swinton riding in the lead and Lord
Victor, with the depressing conviction that he had muddled things,
behind.
"It's pretty well cleared up," Swinton remarked in a tone that just
reached Finnerty.
"And looks rather bad for us being able to handle the situation without
telegraphing headquarters," the major answered despondently.
"Small chance for that," and Swinton laughed in bitterness. "Our new
Nana Sahib, Ananda, will have the wires cut or the operator under
control; we'll get no word out of here until the thing has happened."
Finnerty also realised how completely they had been blanked. "By
heavens, we've got to spike the guns ourselves! We'd better be killed in
the attempt than be censured by government," he declared.
"I think so. They've left it to us so far, and the blame is really on
our shoulders, old man."
"We'll never get the paper," Finnerty said with conviction.
"I agree with you in that, but we've got to get the machine guns and
their ammunition; without them they'd be an unarmed rabble, and no great
harm could be done before a regiment from Dumdum or Lucknow could be
thrown in here. It's a crazy scheme of Ananda's, anyway, but the Mad
Mullah in the Sudan cost many a British life because he was held too
lightly at first and got guns."
Finnerty had been restlessly eyeing the trail they travelled. Now he
worded the reason, which he had carried unplaced in words before: "Going
and coming I've been looking for tracks left by that party of gun
runners the Banjara told about, but I've seen none. This path that the
girl followed is not the main trail leading up through Safed Jan Pass,
and those accursed Huns, with their usual German thoroughness, built
that drawbridge at the old temple so that Foley could slip in without a
chance of being met. The whole thing is as clear as mud; he was to wait
there till the girl came for the document. When we get lower down we'll
cut across the jungle to the regular trail--it's an old elephant
highway--and check up."
"We've got to get into that underground fort," Swinton said with solemn
determination in his voice. "Jadoo Cave has got something to do with the
entrance."
A disconcerting thought struck Finnerty. "The minute we show up we'll be
surrounded by spies. They're in my bungalow all the time; we'll not get
a chance."
There was a warning cough from behind, and then Lord Victor, urging his
horse closer, said: "Don't bar me, you fellows, from anything that's on;
I don't want to be 'sent to Coventry.' If it's a question of fight, for
God's sake give me a gun. I'd rather have you damn me like a bargee than
be left out. I can't bally well plan anything--I'm not up to it--but I'm
an Englishman."
"My dear boy," Finnerty answered, "we know that. If we'd taken you in at
the start we'd have given you a better chance, but we all make
blunders."
It was about four o'clock when Finnerty, halting, said: "I know where
I'm at now; the other trail lies due west, and if we keep our faces full
on Old Sol we'll make it."
Through the jungle without a path their progress was slow. At times they
were turned into big detours by interlaced walls of running elephant
creeper and vast hedges of the _sahbar kirao_, the "have-patience plant"
that, with its hooked spikes, was like a fence of barbed wire. Their
minds, tortured by the impending calamity, were oblivious to the clamour
of the jungle. A bear that had climbed a dead tree inhabited by bees
scuttled down to the ground, an animated beehive, his face glued with
honey, his paws dripping with it, and his thick fur palpitating with the
beat of a million tiny wings. He humped away in a shuffling lope,
unmolested; not even a laugh followed his grotesque form.
It was five o'clock when they struck the Safed Jan Trail and swung
southward, Finnerty's eyes taking up the reading of its page. "Ah!" he
cried suddenly, and, pulling his horse to a standstill, he dropped to
the ground.
In the new partnership he turned rather to Lord Victor, saying: "We've
been told that machine guns and ammunition have been run into Darpore
over the same Chittagong route we think Mad Foley used, only they've
come along this trail from the pass." He dipped his thumb into one of
the numerous deep heel prints, adding: "See! The carriers were heavy
loaded and there were many."
From the varied weathering of the tracks it was apparent that carriers
had passed at different intervals of time.
The major remounted, and they had ridden half an hour when his horse
pricked his ears and the muscles of his neck quivered in an action of
discovery. Finnerty slipped his 10-bore from its holding straps, passed
his bridle rein to Swinton, and, dropping to the ground, went stealthily
around a bend in the path. He saw nothing--no entrapping armed
natives--but a voice came to him from its unseen owner, saying softly:
"Salaam! I am the herdsman, and am here for speech with the sahib."
"All right. Come forth!" the major answered.
From a thick screen of brush the Banjara stepped out, saying: "My
brother is beyond on the trail, and from his perch in a tree he has
given the call of a bird that I might know it was the keddah sahib that
passed; he will soon be here."
Finnerty called, and Swinton and Lord Victor came forward. Presently the
fellow arrived, and, at a word from the herdsman, said: "Nawab Darna
Singh sends salaams to the keddah sahib."
Finnerty stared in amazement. "Why should he have sent you, knowing that
a Banjara does not kiss the hand that has beaten him like a dog?"
"Because of that, huzoor. Darna Singh is also treated like a dog, for he
is put in a cage, and those who are beaten join together against the
whip."
"Why is Darna Singh caged?"
The man cast an uneasy glance toward Lord Victor and hesitated. Sensing
the reason for this, Finnerty said: "Speak the truth and fear not."
"We of this country know that the sahibs are quick to anger if the
mem-sahibs are spoken of, but it is because of the young mem-sahib that
Darna Singh suffers. There is to be war, and Darna Singh came to
know--though it may be a lie--that the mem-sahib would be made
maharani--perhaps not a _gudi maharani_--and his sister would be taken
with a fever and die. And it may be that in a passion over this he
sought to end the matter with a thrust of a knife, but I have heard that
Rajah Ananda received but a slight cut."
"I'm damned sorry for that, for the nawab has a strong arm."
"Darna Singh was indeed unlucky, sahib, for Rajah Ananda had been taught
in Belati to strike with the hand and that saved him."
"Where is the Nawab caged?"
"Below; where the guns are."
Finnerty caught a quick flash of the eye from Swinton.
"And if that is the truth, that you come from him must be a lie, for a
jailer does not give entrance to friends of the prisoner."
"True, sahib; but the rani is not caged, and she fears for the life of
her brother, and knowing I had been beaten by the rajah and knowing that
a Banjara does not forgive, for our tribe is many in her father's state,
she sent by a handmaid, who is also of our tribe, a ring of keys that
were Darna Singh's, and the woman was taught to say, 'Give these to the
keddah sahib and tell him that war comes to the sircar; that these keys
open the way where are many guns and where now is Darna Singh.'"
The man took from the folds of his turban a ring upon which were three
keys. Finnerty received them in astonishment; then he asked: "Where are
the doors?"
"The black leopard came out from his cage through Jadoo Cave, and it may
be that Darna Singh opened a door of the cave with one of these keys."
"Damn it!" Swinton ejaculated. "That's the whole thing." But Finnerty
objected: "We searched that cave, and there was no door."
"True, there is no door, but there is a passage high up in the gloom,
and beyond that is a cave that was made by the foreigners, and in that
is the door. And also it opens to the trail that we are now on." The
native messenger was explicit.
"By Jove!" Finnerty exclaimed. "That's how the leopard slipped away."
The herdsman said: "I did not know of this, and perhaps wrongly accused
that monkey-faced shikari of sleeping over his task."
The messenger now said deprecatingly: "A watchman knows the many manners
of acquiring to the inside of a bungalow without being seen, and one way
is to wait for darkness. Also they will watch the sahib's bungalow for
his return."
"Very well," Finnerty said; "if I am able to see to it, my faithful
fellow, when this is over the sircar will give to you and your brother a
village that you may collect the tithes from and have a home."
"Sahib, I have received my pay in advance from the rajah; I am but
serving in the manner of the pay."
"Sit you then," Finnerty commanded, "while we talk in plans."
"We've a chance, major, now that we can get in," Swinton declared. "I
have my cordite rifle, you have your 10-bore, and if we can but get
command of their ammunition we'll blow the damn thing up, even if we go
with it."
Finnerty felt that there was no question about the captain's sincerity;
the flat blue eyes transmitted nothing but fixed purpose.
"Oh, I say, am I in the discard?" Lord Victor asked plaintively, for the
messenger's information had been translated in a condensed form,
Finnerty rather emphasising the important part Marie played as the
future maharani.
"I thought of that," Swinton answered; "you will be a 'reserve
battalion.' I don't mind being pipped in the way of duty--rather expect
it some day--but I should rather like my family to know that I pegged
out playing the game, and I shouldn't wonder if we're bagged in that
cubby-hole, that it would never be known just how we had disappeared."
"Besides, youngster," Finnerty added, "if you can work yourself into
communication with the government we want you to let them know what is
trump." The major spoke to the Banjara; then he returned to Lord Victor:
"This chap will smuggle you out, he says, and I think he can do it. His
brother will bring you word if we get out, and even if he knows we've
been captured he will come to tell you; at any rate, if we're not
reported safe before morning you had better take the horses and get
away--the Banjara can stick on one, he says."
"Don't worry over us, Gilfain," Swinton added; "just get word out as
soon as you can."
Then the watchman said: "The sahib sent back out of the jungle the
elephant with the bell, and it is a sacred elephant for such as worship
the god that sits in sleep."
"It is a sacred elephant to those who worship Buddha," Finnerty
answered.
"The woman who came from the maharani said that Rajah Ananda has taken
the sacred elephant in his hand, for to-night is a night of omen at the
Lake of the Golden Coin."
"By gad!" Finnerty cried. "That swine has got the three sapphires
together now. Nothing will stop him; he'll be fanatically insane."
A sibilant whistle from Swinton was his only comment. The thought was
paralysing.
"Well"--Finnerty sighed the words--"we'll just sit here till it's dark,
and then play our last card." He pulled his belt, in which was a hunting
knife, a hole tighter, as if girding his loins for the fray.
The Banjara now said: "Rajah Ananda will send out men to look for you on
the trail, sahib, but if you will go east through the jungle to where
there is a small path--one the sahib no doubt knows--my brother and I
will lead the horses back up over this broad trail to a nala with a
stony bed, and then through the jungle and back to where you wait, so
that those who come forth will say: 'The keddah sahib and his friends
came down and then went back again to the hills, perhaps to follow a
bison.'"
"Splendid!" Finnerty commented, and added in commendation: "'To a strong
man a wrong done is more power.'"
Then Finnerty and his companion cut across through the jungle. It was a
good ruse, for the rajah's men, thinking the sahibs were up in the
jungle, would not guard every approach.
The sun was now sinking on the horizon, and with its usual bird clamour
of eventide the day was passing. Once, as they waited, Lord Victor said:
"I don't believe that girl would join herself to a native."
"That's because you're in the full moon of faith, my young friend. At
your age I believed in fairies, too," Finnerty said.
"Just the sort of faith," Swinton contributed, "that gives such women
their power for mischief; a Prussian spy must do as she is told, and if
she were allotted to Ananda, to Ananda she goes."
A shrill note that might have been from a boatswain's silver whistle or
a red-breasted teal came floating up from where they had left the Safed
Jan Trail. It was answered from on toward the palace hill.
"Ananda's men have found where the horses have turned to go back up into
the hills," Finnerty chuckled.
"Deucedly clever work of that Banjara," Lord Victor declared; "sorry I
shot the old infidel's dog."
A little later the whistling note, repeated three times, came from
higher up, where the Safed Jan Trail lay.
The forest was dark from the drop of night's curtain when the Banjara
and his brother came so softly along the scarce discernible trail that
they were almost upon the sahibs before they were heard.
"The moon will appear in two hours, sahib, and its light would betray
you," the herdsman advised, "so it is well that we take the horses down
this path which no one travels at night, and when we have come close to
Jadoo Nala I will remain with the horses and you will go with my brother
into the cave."
When they had come to a proper place to leave their horses in the
jungle, Lord Victor said: "The strategy of you two Johnnies isn't what
I'd call first chop. I'll be a dub at this sortie game, for I don't know
the language."
"The Banjara does," Finnerty said shortly.
"There's another thing," the youth resumed; "either of you chaps are
sort of serviceable to the king, probably cost him a thousand pounds up
to date for your training, and I'm--as our delightful friend Foley
phrased it--a waster. Sabe, my dear major?"
"My dear boy, you're in training for the future earlship. A thoroughbred
colt isn't much benefit to the realm, but he generally develops into
something worth while--sabe?"
"Thanks, old top! Rather think I'll stow that away as a good tip. But to
return: I'd feel rather thankful to take a chance inside to--well, come
back."
"You mean about the girl? We just forgot all that, and are now trying to
do the best we can for what's to come, and your place is just where
you've been stationed; that is, unless you're in command."
Lord Victor sprang to his feet, clicked his heels together, very erect
and soldierly, for he had been at Sandhurst, and saluted. With a laugh
Finnerty said: "Fall out!" The discussion ceased.
From where they were they could hear, at times, curious, muffled noises
disturbing the evening quiet, coming from the palace hill. Finnerty now
gave some final advice:
"It is now eight o'clock. If we do not come back for the horses or get
you word before morning, make for the outside. Have you any money?"
"Not much," Lord Victor answered.
Finnerty and Swinton gave him the money they had, the former saying: "If
we get caught in that cave we won't need these rupees to pay board for
long, I fancy." He held out his hand, and the youth took it, saying:
"I'll remember about the thoroughbred colt."
Swinton shook hands with him, saying: "Duty is the best tutor, Lord
Victor; it's a steadier, eh?"
"Sorry about--well, the--that silly break of mine about secret service,
you know."
The Banjara, noting this completion of detail, said: "And the matter of
a village, huzoor--does the young Lord Sahib understand that he is to
tell the sircar that me and my brother have been true to their salt?"
"I will tell him to not forget, my friend, for you will well deserve
it," the major answered.
When he had impressed this matter upon Gilfain, Finnerty held out his
hand to the Banjara: "Brother, you are a man."
"We Banjaras are taught by our mothers that we are to become men," the
herdsman answered with simple dignity.
Like the sealing of a solemn compact between the members of a
brotherhood was this exchange of handclasps, Swinton also taking the
Banjara's hand in a grasp of admiration.
As Finnerty and Swinton melted down the gloomed path with the Banjara's
brother, the herdsman stood watching their going, repeating a tribal
saying: "In the kingdom of men there are no boundaries."
When the two sahibs came out to where the Safed Jan Trail wound along
the bed of a nala approaching the palace plateau, their guide said:
"Just beyond is the new cave. I will go forward to see that no one keeps
the door, for they will not think it strange that I should be about. If
the sahibs hear the small cry of a tree cricket they may come forward."
In five minutes the hissing pipe of a cicada came back to their ears,
and, slipping from the jungle to the nala trail, they noiselessly crept
to the dark portal that yawned to the right of their way. From the
contour of the hill, outlined against an afterglow sky, Finnerty knew
that they were on the reverse side of the jutting point that held Jadoo
Cave. As they entered a gloom so intense they saw nothing, a whisper
reassured them, and the native's hand grasped Finnerty's fingers. The
major, understanding, reached back the stock of his 10-bore to Swinton,
and they went forward into the blackness. Soon the watchman stopped and
whispered: "Put out your hand, sahib, and feel the spot that is here."
By a grasp on his wrist Finnerty's hand was placed upon a stone wall,
and his fingers, moving up and down and across, detected a thin crack so
truly perpendicular that it suggested mechanics.
The native whispered: "One of the keys on the ring will unlock this that
is a door." Then he fumbled the wall with his fingers, and presently
found a square block of stone, saying: "The keyhole is within."
A long-stemmed key on the ring fitted the keyhole, but before Finnerty
could shoot the bolt the native whispered: "Not yet, sahib." He produced
two candles and a box of matches. "Remember, sahib, that no man owns the
light of a fire; here is an eye that makes no betraying light." And he
placed in Finnerty's fingers a slim male-bamboo rod.
At a twist from Finnerty's hand a heavy bolt in the lock glided back
with noiseless ease; a pull caused the stone-faced door to swing forward
in the same frictionless quiet, and beyond was a gloom as deep as that
of the cave.
"I will watch, sahib," the guide whispered, "and if it is known that
evil has fallen upon you I will warn the Lord Sahib; if it please the
gods that you come forth I will also carry to him that good tale."
Closing the door behind them, the two adventurers stood in a void so
opaque, so devoid of sound, that it produced a feeling of floating in
blackened space with the earth obliterated. Finnerty's big hand groped
till it found the captain's shoulder, where it rested for a second in
heavy assurance; then he gave Swinton a candle, saying: "If we get
separated----"
They moved forward, Finnerty feeling the path with the bamboo rod. He
hugged the wall on his right, knowing that the passage, skirting the
hill edge, must lead to beneath the palace. Suddenly, shoulder high, the
gloom was broken by a square opening, and through it Finnerty saw the
handle of the Dipper in its sweep toward the horizon. Beneath this port
was a ledge to support a machine gun, as the major surmised. Every
twenty feet were openings of different shapes; some narrow, vertical
slits for rifle fire. Once Finnerty's rod touched a pillar in the centre
of the passage. His fingers read grotesque figures carved upon its
sides, and he knew they were in one of the old Hindu rajah's semisacred
excavated chambers. Twice, on his right, his hand slipped into space as
he felt his way--open doorways from which dipped stone steps to lower
exits.
Suddenly his bamboo rod came dead against an obstructing wall in front.
Set in this was a flat steel door, with a keyhole which admitted one of
the other keys. Finnerty closed the door, not locking it, but when he
had taken two steps he caught a clicking sound behind. Turning in
apprehension, he pushed upon the door, but it refused to give. He
inserted the key; the bolt was where he had left it, shot back, but the
door was immovable. A shiver twitched his scalp. Had he himself touched
something that automatically locked the door, or had its swing carried a
warning to some one who had electrically shot the bolts? The door itself
was massive enough to hold any sort of mechanism; it was like the
bulkhead of a battleship.
Twice Finnerty found a closed door in the wall on his right; no doubt
within the chamber beyond were cannon that commanded some road of
approach to the hill. Next his hand swept across a four-foot space, and
against the farther wall of this stood open a heavy teakwood door; from
the passage beyond drifted a nauseating, carrion smell, such as hovers
over a tiger's cage.
Twenty yards beyond, Swinton touched the major's shoulders and
whispered: "I heard something behind; I feel that we are being
followed."
The major shivered; not through personal fear, but if they were trapped,
if they failed, what bloodshed and foolish revolt would follow. To turn
back and search was useless; they must keep on. They must be close to
the many chambers beneath the palace where the ammunition and guns, no
doubt, were kept. It was ominous, this utter absence of everything but
darkness.
With a gasping breath, Finnerty stood still. A slipping noise in front
had caught his ear, but now, in their own silence, they both heard the
slip of velvet feet on the stone floor behind, and in their nostrils
struck full the carrion smell.
"Tiger!" Finnerty whispered, and the pulled-back hammers of his gun
clicked alarmingly loud on the death air.
In ten paces Finnerty's gun barrel clicked against iron; it was a door.
They were trapped. Behind, the thing crept closer.
"Light a candle and hold it above my head; I must settle that brute," he
said, in his mind also a thought that perhaps the light would frighten
away the animal that trailed them.
As Swinton struck a match it broke, its flickering fall glinting green
two devilish eyes in the head of a tiger that was setting himself for a
spring, ten feet away. The roar of Finnerty's 10-bore, the two shocks
almost in one, nearly burst their eardrums, and Swinton stood keyed to
rigidity by the call for steady nerve. There was no rushing charge. A
smothered cough from the tiger told that blood choked his lungs.
A man's voice came from the darkness almost at their elbow, saying:
"Sahib, I am Darna Singh--a friend!"
"Come here!" Finnerty answered. "But no treachery!" For he feared it
might be an imposter.
Darna Singh drew close, whispering: "The tiger is dead, so do not make a
light. How did the sahib get here--has he keys for the door?"
Finnerty told how the princess had sent him Darna's ring of keys.
Darna Singh explained: "I was cast in here by Ananda to be killed by the
tiger who has been let down from his cage. Perhaps they do not know that
you are here."
"Have they heard the gun?" the major asked.
"The doors are very heavy, and through the rock they would not have
heard. If they have, the key will not open the door if they wish."
Then Darna Singh told what lay beyond the door. The magazine was all
prepared for blowing up should Ananda's plan fail and there be danger of
discovery of his imported guns. Wires ran from the magazine to a room in
the palace, where a switch could bury everything in a second. The
passages were lighted by electricity, and the dynamo might have gone
wrong, causing the darkness, or it might be an entrapping scheme. There
would not be more than one or two German guards at the magazine, where
the guns were, and if the sahibs could fall upon these in the dark,
Darna Singh could win over the native guards, for they did not love
Ananda.
The door opened to a key, showing beyond no glint of light. They passed
through; this time Finnerty, finding a fragment of rock, fixed it so
that the door could not be closed behind them. Hope suggested that the
shot had not been heard, for no storm of attack broke upon them.
After a time Darna Singh checked, and, putting his lips close to
Finnerty's ear, whispered: "We are close to the gun and ammunition room.
I will go a little in advance and speak in Hindustani to the sentry; he
will think it one of their natives, and as we talk you must overpower
him."
Keeping within striking distance, Finnerty and Swinton followed. As they
crept forward, with blinding suddenness an electric glare smote their
eyes, and from beneath the reflected light a machine gun stuck forth its
ugly nose. Behind a steel shield a German-flavoured voice commanded:
"Drop your guns!"
Both men hesitated. To surrender was almost worse than death.
"Obey, or get shot!" the ugly voice called.
"We'll put them down, major," Swinton said; "dead men are no help to the
government."
As they laid down their guns two Prussians slipped into the light and
picked them up. From behind the steel shield two others appeared, and
following them loomed the gorilla form of Doctor Boelke, his face
wreathed in a leer of triumph.
At a command in German, one of the men swung open an iron-barred door,
disclosing, as he touched a button, a cell ten feet square. Boelke
turned to Finnerty: "Major, you haf intruded without der ceremony of an
invitation; I now invite you to make yourself at home in der guest
chamber."
"Your humour, like yourself, is coarse," Finnerty retorted.
"You vill enter der door, or----" Boelke waved a hand, and the bayonets
were advanced to within striking distance, while the machine gun clicked
ominously.
Finnerty realised that to resist was suicide; no doubt Boelke would
prefer to have an excuse for killing them--there was absolute murder in
the bleary animal eyes.
Swinton said in an even, hard voice: "The British government will have
you shot as a German spy."
"Perhaps _Captain Herbert_ vill be shot as an English spy to-morrow; und
now"--Boelke raised his arm--"ven I drop my hand you vill be shot for
resisting arrest."
"We won't give the hound an excuse for murder," Finnerty said, leading
the way through the door. A German followed them in, and ran his hands
over their bodies for revolvers; finding Finnerty's hunting knife, he
took it away. The door was locked, and a guard placed in front of it.
It was only now that the two noticed that Darna Singh had disappeared;
nobody seemed to have seen him; he had simply vanished. Probably the
guard, even if they saw him, took him to be one of their own
natives--not associated with the sahibs who had dropped into their
hands.