“Come, then!” said the High Priest.
Mahommed Khan threw open the outer door and bowed sardonically.
“Precedence for priests!” he sneered, tapping at his sword-hilt. “Thou
goest first! Next come I, and last Suliman with the memsahib! Thus can I
reach thee with my sword, O priest, and also protect her if need be!”
“Thou art trusting as a little child!” exclaimed the priest, passing out
ahead of him.
“A priest and a liar and a thief--all three are one!” hummed the
Risaldar. “Bear her gently, Suliman! Have a care, now, as you turn on
the winding stairs!”
“Ha, sahib!” said the half-brother, carrying Ruth as easily as though
she had been a little child.
At the foot of the stairway, in the blackness that seemed alive with
phantom shadows, the High Priest paused and listened, stretching out
his left hand against the wall to keep the other two behind him. From
somewhere beyond the courtyard came the din of hurrying sandaled feet,
scudding over cobblestones in one direction. The noise was incessant and
not unlike the murmur of a rapid stream. Occasionally a voice was raised
in some command or other, but the stream of sound continued, hurrying,
hurrying, shuffling along to the southward.
“This way and watch a while,” whispered the priest.
“I have heard rats run that way!” growled the Risaldar.
They climbed up a narrow stairway leading to a sort of battlement and
peered over the top, Suliman laying Ruth Bellairs down in the darkest
shadow he could find. She was beginning to recover consciousness, and
apparently Mahommed Khan judged it best to take no notice of her.
Down below them they could see the city gate, wide open, with a blazing
torch on either side of it, and through the gate, swarming like
ants before the rains, there poured an endless stream of humans that
marched--and marched--and marched; four, ten, fifteen abreast; all
heights and sizes, jumbled in and out among one another, anyhow, without
formation, but armed, every one of them, and all intent on marching
to the southward, where Jundhra and Doonha lay. Some muttered to one
another and some laughed, but the greater number marched in silence.
“That for thy English!” grinned the priest. “Can the English troops
overcome that horde?”
“Hey-ee! For a troop or two of Rajputs!” sighed the Risaldar. “Or
English Lancers! They would ride through that as an ax does through the
brush-wood!”
“Bah!” said the priest. “All soldiers boast! There will be a houghing
shortly after dawn. The days of thy English are now numbered.”
“By those--there?”
“Ay, by those, there! Come!”
They climbed down the steps again, the Rajput humming to himself and
smiling grimly into his mustache.
“Ay! There will be a houghing shortly after dawn!” he muttered. “Would
only that I were there to see!... Where are the sepoys?” he demanded.
“I know not. How should I know, who have been thy guest these hours
past? This march is none of my ordering.”
The priest pressed hard on a stone knob that seemed to be part of the
carving on a wall, then he leaned his weight against the wall and a huge
stone swung inward, while a fetid breath of air wafted outward in their
faces.
“None know this road but I!” exclaimed the priest.
“None need to!” said the Risaldar. “Pass on, snake, into thy hole. We
follow.”
“Steps!” said the priest, and began descending.
“Curses!” said the Risaldar, stumbling and falling down on top of him.
“Have a care, Suliman! The stone is wet and slippery.”
Down, down they climbed, one behind the other, Suliman grunting beneath
his burden and the Risaldar keeping up a running fire of oaths. Each
time that he slipped, and that was often, he cursed the priest and
cautioned Suliman. But the priest only laughed, and apparently Suliman
was sure-footed, for he never stumbled once. They seemed to be diving
down into the bowels of the earth. They were in pitch-black darkness,
for the stone had swung to behind them of its own accord. The wall on
either side of them was wet with slime and the stink of decaying ages
rose and almost stifled them. But the priest kept on descending, so fast
that the other two had trouble to keep up with him, and he hummed to
himself as though he knew the road and liked it.
“The bottom!” he called back suddenly. “From now the going is easy,
until we rise again. We pass now under the city-wall.”
But they could see nothing and hear nothing except their own footfalls
swishing in the ooze beneath them. Even the priest's words seemed to
be lost at once, as though he spoke into a blanket, for the air they
breathed was thicker than a mist and just as damp. They walked on, along
a level, wet, stone passage for at least five minutes, feeling their way
with one band on the wall.
“Steps, now!” said the priest. “Have a care, now, for the lower ones are
slippery.”
Ruth was regaining consciousness. She began to move and tried once or
twice to speak.
“Here, thou!” growled the Risaldar. “Thou art a younger man than I--come
back here. Help with the memsahib.”
The priest came back a step or two, but Suliman declined his aid,
snarling vile insults at him.
“I can manage!” he growled. “Get thou behind me, Mahommed Khan, in case
I slip!”
So Mahommed Khan came last, and they slipped and grunted upward, round
and round a spiral staircase that was hewn out of solid rock. No light
came through from anywhere to help them, but the priest climbed on, as
though he were accustomed to the stair and knew the way from constant
use. After five minutes of steady climbing the stone grew gradually dry.
The steps became smaller, too, and deeper, and not so hard to climb.
Suddenly the priest reached out his arm and pulled at something or other
that hung down in the darkness. A stone in the wall rolled open. A flood
of light burst in and nearly blinded them.
“We are below Kharvani's temple!” announced the priest. He led them
through the opening into a four-square room hewn from the rock below the
foundations of the temple some time in the dawn of history. The light
that had blinded them when they first emerged proved to be nothing but
the flicker of two small oil lamps that hung suspended by brass chains
from the painted ceiling. The only furniture was mats spread on the
cut-stone floor.
“By which way did we come?” asked the Risaldar, staring in amazement
round the walls. There was not a door nor crack, nor any sign of one,
except that a wooden ladder in one corner led to a trapdoor overhead,
and they had certainly not entered by the ladder.
“Nay! That is a secret!” grinned the priest. “He who can may find the
opening! Here can the woman and her servant stay until we need them.”
“Here in this place?”
“Where else? No man but I knows of this crypt! The ladder there leads to
another room, where there is yet another ladder, and that one leads out
through a secret door I know of, straight into the temple. Art ready?
There is need for haste!”
“Wait!” said the Risaldar.
“These soldiers!” sneered the priest. “It is wait--wait--wait with them,
always!”
“Hast thou a son.”
“Ay! But what of it?”
“I said 'hast,' not 'hadst'!”
“Ay. I have a son.
“Where?”
“In one of the temple-chambers overhead.”
“Nay, priest! Thy son lies gagged and bound and trussed in a place I
know of, and which thou dost not know!”
“Since when?”
“Since by my orders he was laid there.”
“Thou art the devil! Thou liest, Rajput!”
“So? Go seek thy son!”
The priest's face had blanched beneath the olive of his skin, and he
stared at Mahommed Khan through distended eyes.
“My son!” he muttered.
“Aye! Thy priestling! He stays where he is, as hostage, until my return!
Also the heavenborn stays here! If, on my return, I find the heavenborn
safe and sound, I will exchange her for thy son--and if not, I will
tear thy son into little pieces before thy eyes, priest! Dost thou
understand?”
“Thou liest! My son is overhead in the temple here!”
“Go seek him, then!”
The priest turned and scampered up the ladder with an agility that was
astonishing in a man of his build and paunch.
“Hanuman should have been thy master!” jeered the Risaldar. “So run the
bandar-log, the monkey-folk!”
But the priest had no time to answer him. He was half frantic with the
sickening fear of a father for his only son. He returned ten minutes
later, panting, and more scared than ever.
“Go, take thy white woman,” he exclaimed, “and give me my son back!”
“Nay, priest! Shall I ride with her alone through that horde that
are marching through the gate? I go now for an escort; in
eight--ten--twelve--I know not how many hours, I will return for her,
and then--thy son will be exchanged for her, or he dies thus in many
pieces!”
He turned to Suliman. “Is she awake yet?” he demanded.
“Barely, but she recovers.”
“Then tell her, when consciousness returns, that I have gone and will
return for her. And stay here, thou, and guard her until I come.”
“Ha, sahib!”
“Now, show the way!”
“But--” said the priest, “our bargain? The price that we agreed on--one
lakh, was it not?”
“One lakh of devils take thee and tear thee into little pieces! Wouldst
bribe a Rajput, a Risaldar? For that insult I will repay thee one day
with interest, O priest! Now, show the way!”
“But how shall I be sure about my son?”
“Be sure that the priestling will starve to death or die of thirst or
choke, unless I hurry! He is none too easy where he lies!”
“Go! Hurry, then!” swore the priest. “May all the gods there are, and
thy Allah with them, afflict thee with all their curses--thee and thine!
Up with you! Up that ladder! Run! But, if the gods will, I will meet
thee again when the storm is over!”
“Inshallah!” growled Mahommed Khan.
Ten minutes later a crash and a clatter and a shower of sparks broke out
in the sweltering courtyard where the guns had stood and waited. It was
Shaitan, young Bellairs' Khaubuli charger, with his haunches under him,
plunging across the flagstones, through the black-dark archway, out
on the plain beyond--in answer to the long, sharp-roweled spurs of the
Risaldar Mahommed Khan.