So, I am a dog? Hence I must come
To do thy bidding faster?
Must tell thee--Nay, a dog stays dumb!
A dog obeys one master!
NOT many yards from where the restless elephants stood lined under
big brick arches--in an age-old courtyard, three sides of which were
stone-carved splendor and the fourth a typically Eastern mess of
stables, servants' quarters, litter, stink, and noisy confusion--a
stone door, slab-hewn, gave back the aching glitter of the sun. Its only
opening--a narrow slit quite near the top--was barred. A man--his face
close-pressed against them--peered through the interwoven iron rods from
within.
Jaimihr, in a rose-pink pugree still, but not at all the swaggering
cavalier who pranced, high-booted, through the streets--a down-at-heel
prince, looking slovenly and heavy-eyed from too much opium--sat in
a long chair under the cloister which faced the barred stone door. He
swished with a rhino riding-whip at the stone column beside him, and the
much-swathed individual of the plethoric paunch who stood and spoke with
him kept a very leery eye on it; he seemed to expect the binding swish
of it across his own shins, and the thought seemed tantalizing.
“It is not to be done,” said Jaimihr, speaking in a dialect peculiar
to Howrah. “That--of all the idiotic notions I have listened to--is the
least worth while! Thy brains are in thy belly and are lost amid the
fat! If my brother Howrah only had such counsellors as thou--such monkey
folk to make his plans for him--the jackals would have finished with him
long ago.”
“Sahib, did I not bring word, and overhear, and trap the man?”
“Truly! Overheard whisperings, and trapped me a hyena I must feed!
Now thou sayest, 'Torture him!' He is a Rangar, and of good stock;
therefore, no amount of torturing will make him speak. He is that pig
Mahommed Gunga's man; therefore, there' is nothing more sure than that
Mahommed Gunga will be here, sooner or later, to look for him--Mahommed
Gunga, with the half of a Hindoo name, the whole of a Moslem's fire, and
the blind friendship of the British to rely on!”
“But if the man be dead when Mahommed Gunga comes?”
“He will be dead when Mahommed Gunga comes, if only what we await has
first happened. But this rising that is planned hangs fire. Were I
Maharajah I would like to see the Rangar who dare flout me or ask
questions! I would like but to set eyes on that Rangar once! But I
am not yet Maharajah; I am a prince--a younger brother--surrounded,
counselled, impeded, hampered, rendered laughable by fat idiots!”
“My belly but shows your highness's generosity. At whose cost have I
grown fat?”
“Ay, at whose cost? I should have kept thee slim, on prison diet, and
saved myself a world of useless problems! Cease prattling! Get away from
me! If I have to poison this Ali Partab, or wring his casteless neck, I
will make thee do it, and give thee to Mahommed Gunga to wreak vengeance
on. Leave me to think!”
The fat former occupant of the room above the arch of the caravansary
waddled to the far end of the cloister, and sat down, cross-legged,
to grumble to himself and scratch his paunch at intervals. His master,
low-browed and irritable, continued to strike the stone column with his
cane. He was in a horrid quandary.
Mahommed Gunga was one of many men he did not want, for the present,
to offend seriously. Given a fair cause for quarrel, that irascible
ex-Risaldar was capable of going to any lengths, and was known,
moreover, to be trusted by the British. Nobody seemed to know whether or
not Mahommed Gunga reciprocated the British regard, and nobody had cared
to ask him except his own intimates; and they, like he, were men of
close counsel.
The Prince had given no orders for the capture of Ali Partab; that had
been carried out by his men in a fit of ill-advised officiousness. But
the Prince had to solve the serious problem caused by the presence of
Ali Partab within a stone-walled cell.
Should he let the fellow go, a report would be certain to reach Mahommed
Gunga by the speediest route. Vengeance would be instantly decided on,
for a Rajput does not merely accept service; he repays it, feudal-wise,
and smites hip and thigh for the honor of his men. The vengeance would
be sure to follow purely Eastern lines, and would be complicated; it
would no doubt take the form of siding in some way or other with his
brother the Maharajah. There would be instant, active doings, for
that was Mahommed Gunga's style! The fat would be in the fire months,
perhaps, before the proper time.
The prisoner's presence was maddening in a million ways. It had been the
Prince's plan (for he knew well enough that Mahommed Gunga had left a
man behind) to allow the escape to start; then it would have been an
easy matter to arrange an ambush--to kill Ali Partab--and to pretend to
ride to the rescue. Once rescued, Miss McClean and her father would be
almost completely at his mercy, for they would not be able to accuse him
of anything but friendliness, and would be obliged to return to whatever
haven of safety he cared to offer them. Once in his palace of their own
consent, they would have had to stay there until the rising of the
whole of India put an end to any chance of interference from the British
Government.
But now there was no Ali Partab outside to try to escort them to
some place of safety; therefore, there was little chance that the
missionaries would try to make a bolt. Instead of being in the position
of a cat that watches silently and springs when the mouse breaks cover,
he was in the unenviable condition now of being forced to make the first
move. Over and over again he cursed the men who had made Ali Partab
prisoner, and over and over again: he wondered how--by all the gods of
all the multitudinous Hindoo mythology--how, when, and by what stroke
of genius he could make use of the stiff-chinned Rangar and convert him
from being a rankling thorn into a useful aid.
He dared not poison him--yet. For the same reason he dared not put him
to the torture, to discover, or try to discover, what Mahommed Gunga's
real leanings were in the matter of loyalty to the Raj or otherwise. He
dared not let the man go, for forgiveness is not one of the virtues
held in high esteem by men of Ali Partab's race, and wrongful arrest is
considered ground enough for a feud to the death. It seemed he did not
dare do anything!
He racked his opium-dulled brain for a suspicion of a plan that
might help solve the difficulty, until his eye--wandering around the
courtyard--fell on the black shape of a woman. She was old and bent and
she was busied, with a handful of dry twigs, pretending to sweep around
the stables.
“Who is that mother of corruption?” demanded Jaimihr; and a man came
running to him.
“Who is that eyesore? I have never seen her, have I?”
“Highness, she is a beggar woman. She sat by the gate, and pretended
to a power of telling fortunes--which it would seem she does possess in
some degree. It was thought better that she should use her gift in here,
for our advantage, than outside to our disadvantage. So she was brought
in and set to sweeping.”
“By the curse of the sin of the sack of Chitor, is my palace, then,
a midden for the crawling offal of all the Howrah streets? First this
Rangar--next a sweeper hag--what follows? What bring you next? Go, fetch
the street dogs in!”
“Highness, she is useful and costs nothing but the measure or two of
meal she eats.”
“A horse eats little more!” the angry Prince retorted, perfectly
accustomed to being argued with by his own servants. That is the
time-honored custom of the East; obedience is one thing--argument
another--both in their way are good, and both have their innings. “Bring
her to me--nay!--keep her at a decent distance--so!--am I dirt for her
broom?”
He sat and scowled at her, and the old woman tried to hide more of her
protruding bones under the rag of clothing that she wore; she stood,
wriggling in evident embarrassment, well out in the sun.
“What willst thou steal of mine?” the Prince demanded suddenly.
“I am no thief.” Bright, beady eyes gleamed back at him, and gave the
lie direct to her shrinking attitude of fear. But he had taken too much
opium overnight, and was in no mood to notice little distinctions.
He was satisfied that she should seem properly afraid of him, and he
scowled angrily when one of his retainers--in slovenly undress--crossed
the courtyard to him. The man's evident intention, made obvious by his
manner and his leer at the old woman, was to say something against her;
the Prince was in a mood to quarrel with any one, on any ground at all,
who did not cower to him.
“Prince, she it is who ran ever with the white woman, as a dog runs in
the dust.”
“What does she here, then?”
“Ask her!” grinned the trooper. “Unless she comes to look for Ali
Partab, I know not.”
He made the last part of his remark in a hurried undertone, too low for
the old woman to hear.
“Let her earn her meal around the stables,” said the Prince. A sudden
light dawned on him. Here was a means, at least, of trying to make use
of Ali Partab. “Go--do thy sweeping!” he commanded, and the hag slunk
off.
For ten minutes longer, Jaimihr sat still and flicked at the stone
column with his whip,--then he sent for his master of the horse, whose
mistaken sense of loyalty had been the direct cause of Ali Partab's
capture. He had acted instantly when the fat Hindoo brought him word,
and he had expected to be praised for quick decision and rewarded; he
was plainly in high dudgeon as he swaggered out of a dark door near the
stables and advanced sulkily toward his master.
“Remove the prisoner from that cell, taking great care that the hag
yonder sees what you do--yes, that hag--the new one; she is a spy. Bring
the prisoner in to me, where I will talk with him; afterward place him
in a different cell--put him where we kept the bear that died--there is
a dark comer beside it, where a man might hide; hide a man there when
it grows dark. And give the hag access. Say nothing to her; let her come
and go as she will; watch, and listen.”
Without another word, the Prince got up and shuffled in his decorated
slippers to a door at one end of the cloister. Five minutes later Ali
Partab--high-chinned, but looking miserable--was led between two men
through the same door, while the old woman went on very ostentatiously
with her sweeping about the yard. She even turned her back, to prove how
little she was interested.
Ali Partab was hustled forward into a high-ceilinged room, whose light
came filtered through a scrollwork mesh of chiselled stone where the
wall and ceiling joined. There were no windows, but six doors opened
from it, and every one of them was barred, as though they opened into
treasure-vaults. The Prince sat restlessly in a high, carved wooden
chair; there was no other furniture at all, and Ali Partab was left
standing between his guards. The Prince drew a pistol from inside his
clothing.
“Leave us alone!” he ordered; and the guards went out, closing the door
behind them.
“I gave no orders for your capture,” said Jaimihr, with a smile.
“Then, let me go,” grinned Ali Partab.
“First, I must be informed on certain matters.”
Ali Partab still grinned, but the muscles of his face changed their
position slightly, and it took no expert in physiognomy to read that
questions he would answer must be very tactfully asked.
“Ask on!”
“You are Mahommed Gunga's man?”
“Yes. It is an honorable service.”
“Did he order you to stay here?”
“Here--in this palace? Allah forbid!”
“Did he order you to stay in Howrah?”
“He gave me certain orders. I obeyed them until your men invited swift
death for themselves and you by interfering with me!”
“What were the orders?”
Ali Partab grinned again--this time insolently.
“To make sure that the Jaimihr-sahib did not make away with the treasure
of his brother Howrah!” he answered.
“If you were released now what would you proceed to do?”
“To obey my orders.”
Jaimihr changed his tactics and assumed the frequently successful legal
line of pretending to know far more than he really did.
“I am told by one who overheard you speak that you were to take the
missionary and his daughter to Alwa's place. How much is my brother
Howrah paying for Mahommed Gunga's services in this matter? It is well
known that he and Alwa between them could call out all the Rangars in
the district for whichever side they chose. Since they are not on my
side, they must be for Howrah. How much does he pay? I might offer
more.”
“I know not,” said Ali Partab, perfectly ready to admit anything that
was not true.
“It is true, then, that Howrah has designs on the missionary's daughter?
Alwa is to keep her prisoner until the great blow is struck, and Howrah
dare take possession of her?”
“That is not my business,” answered Ali Partab, with the air of a man
who knew all of the secret details but would not admit it. Jaimihr began
to think that he had lit at random on the answer to the riddle.
“Where is Mahommed Gunga?”
“I know not.”
“At Alwa's place?”
“Am I God that I should know where any man is whom I cannot see?”
“Oh! So he is at Alwa's, eh?” That overdose of opium had rendered
Jaimihr's brain very dull indeed; he considered himself clever, and
overlooked the fact that Ali Partab would be almost surely lying to him.
In India men never tell the truth to chance-met strangers or to their
enemies; the truth is a valuable thing, to be shared cautiously among
friends.
“If Mahommed Gunga is at Alwa's,” reasoned Jaimihr, “then he is much
too close at hand to take any chances with. I must keep this man close
confined.” He raised his voice in a high-pitched command, and the guards
opened the door instantly; at a sign from the Prince they seized Ali
Partab by the wrists.
“I will send a message to Mahommed Gunga for thee,” said Jaimihr. “On
his answer will depend your release or otherwise.” He nodded. The guards
took their prisoner out between them--led him past the wrinkled old
woman in the courtyard--and halted him in a far corner, where an
evil-smelling cage of a place stood open to receive him. A moment later,
in order to make sure, the master of the horse sent for the old woman
and made her sweep out the cell a little; then he drove her away with
a fierce injunction not to let herself be caught anywhere near the cell
again unless ordered. Following the line of eastern reasoning, had he
not given that order he would not have known what her object could be
should she make her way toward the cell; but now, if she risked his
wrath by disobeying, he would know beyond the least shadow of a doubt
that she had a message to deliver to the prisoner--the man who was
hidden in the dark corner need entertain no hope of keeping the secret
to himself for purposes of sale or blackmail!
They trust each other wonderfully--with an almost childlike
confidence--in a household such as Jaimihr's!