Now, secrets and things of the Councils of Kings
Are deucid expensive to buy,
For it wouldn't look nice if a Councillor's price
Were anything other than high.
Be advised, though, and note that the price they will quote
Is less at each grade you go deeper,
And--(Up on its toes it's the Underworld knows!)--
The cheapest of all is the Sweeper.
JOANNA--when Alwa forgot about her and loosed her to run just where she
chose--had sneaked, down alleys and over roof-tops, straight for the
mission house. She found there nothing but a desultory guard and an
impression, rather than the traces, of an empty cage. About two
minutes of cautious questioning of neighbors satisfied her where the
missionaries were; nothing short of death seemed able to deprive her of
ability to flit like a black bat through the shadows, and the distance
to Howrah's palace was accomplished, by her usual bat's entry route,
in less time than a pony would have taken by the devious street. Before
Alwa had thundered on Jaimihr's gate Joanna had mingled in the crowd
outside the palace and was shrewdly questioning again.
She arrived too late to see McClean and his daughter seized; what she
did hear was that they were prisoners, and that the Maharajah, Jaimihr,
and the priests were all of them engaged in the secret ceremony
whose beginning was a monthly spectacle but whose subsequent
developments--supposed to be somewhere in the bowels of the earth--were
known only to the men who held the key.
Like a rat running in the wainscot holes, she tried to follow the
procession; like everybody else, she knew the way it took from the
palace gate, and--as few others were--she was aware of a scaling-place
on the outer wall where a huge baobab drooped century-scarred branches
nearly to the ground on either side. The sacred monkeys used that route
and where they went Joanna could contrive to follow.
It was another member of the sweeper caste, lurking in the darkness
of an inner courtyard, who pointed out the bronze-barred door to her
through which the treasure guardians had chanted on their way; it was
he, too, who told her that Rosemary McClean and her father had been
rushed into the palace through the main entrance. Also, he informed her
that there was no way--positively no way practicable even for a monkey
or a bird--of following further. He was a sweeper-intimate acquaintance
of creeper ladders, trap-doors, gutters drains, and byways; she realized
at once that there would be no wisdom in attempting to find within an
hour what he had not discovered in a lifetime.
So Joanna, her beady eyes glittering between the wrinkled folds of skin,
slunk deeper in a shadow and began to think. She, the looker-on, had
seen the whole play from its first beginning and could judge at least
that part of it which had its bearing on her missionary masters. First,
she knew what Jaimihr's ambition was--every man in Howrah knew how he
planned to seize Miss McClean when the moment should be propitious--and
her Eastern wisdom warned her that Jaimihr, foiled, would stop at
nothing to contrive vengeance. If he could not seize Miss McClean, he
would be likely to use every means within his power to bring about her
death and prevent another from making off with his prize. Jaimihr, then,
was the most pressing danger.
Second, as a Hindoo, she knew well how fiendishly the priests loathed
the Christian missionaries; and it was common knowledge that the
Maharajah was cross-hobbled by the priests. The Maharajah was a fearful
man, and, unless the priests and Jaimihr threatened him with a show
of combination, there was a slight chance that he might dread British
vengeance too much to dare permit violence to the McCleans. Possibly he
might hold out against the priests alone; but before an open alliance
between Jaimihr and the priests he would surrender for his own throne's
sake.
So far Joanna could reason readily enough, for there was a vast fund of
wisdom stored beneath her wrinkled ugliness. But her Eastern limitation
stopped her there. She could not hold loyalty to more than one cause,
or to more than one offshoot of that cause, in the same shrewd head at
once. She decided that at all costs Jaimihr must be out of the way so
that the Maharaja might be left to argue with the priests alone. For the
moment no other thought occurred to her.
The means seemed ready to her hand. A peculiarity of the East, which is
democratic in most ways under the veneer of swaggering autocracy, that
servants of the very lowest caste may speak, and argue on occasion, with
men who would shudder at the prospect of defilement from their touch.
There was nothing in the least outrageous in the proposition that the
sweeper, waiting in a corner for the procession to emerge again so that
he might curl on his mat and sleep undisturbed when it had gone, should
dare to approach Jaimihr and address him. He would run no small risk
of being beaten by the guards; but, on the other hand, should he catch
jaimihr's ear and interest him, he would be safe.
“Wouldst thou win Jaimihr's favor?” asked Joanna, creeping up beside
him, and whispering with all the suggestiveness she could assume.
“Who would not? Who knows that within week he will not be ruler?”
“True. I have a message for him. I must hurry back. Deliver it for me.”
“What would be the nature of the message?”
“This. His prisoner is gone. A raid has taken place. In his absence,
while his men patrolled the city, certain Rangars broke into his
palace--looted--and prepared to burn. Bid him hurry back with all the
men he can collect.”
“From whom is this message?”
“From the captain of the guard.”
“And I am to deliver it? Thou dodderest! Mother of a murrain, have I not
trouble sufficient for one man? Who bears bad news to a prince, or to
any but his enemy? I--with these two eyes--I saw what happened to the
men who bore bad news to Howrah once. I--with this broom of mine--I
helped clean up the mess. Deliver thine own message!”
“Nay. Afterward I will say this--to the Jaimihr-sahib in person. There
is one, I will tell him, a sweeper in the palace, who refused to bear
tidings when the need was great.”
“If his palace is burned and his wealth all ashes, who cares what
Jaimihr hears?”
“There is no glow yet in the sky,” said Joanna looking up. “The palace
is not yet in flames; they loot still.”
“What if it be not true?”
“Will Jaimihr not be glad?”
“Glad to see me, the bearer of false news, impaled--or crushed beneath
an elephant--ay--glad, indeed.”
“The reward, were the Jaimihr-sahib warned in time, would be a great
one.”
“Then, why waitest thou not to have word with him. Art thou above
rewards?”
“Have no fear! He will know in good time who it was brought thee the
news.”
They argued for ten minutes, Joanna threatening and coaxing and
promising rewards, until at last the man consented. It was the thought,
thoroughly encouraged by Joanna, that the penalty for not speaking would
be greater than the beating he might get for bearing evil news that
at last convinced him; and it was not until she had won him over and
assured herself that he would not fail that it dawned on Joanna just
what an edged tool she was playing with. While getting rid of Jaimihr,
she was endangering the liberty and life of Alwa--the one man able to do
anything for the McCleans!
That thought sent her scooting over housetops, diving down dark
alleyways, racing, dodging, hiding, dashing on again, and brought her
in the nick of time to a ditch, from whose shelter she sprang and seized
the hand of Ali Partab. That incident, and her intimation that the
missionaries were in Howrah's palace, took Alwa back up the black, blind
side street; and before he emerged from it he saw Jaimihr and his ten go
thundering past, their eyes on the sky-line for a hint of conflagration,
and their horses--belly-to-the-earth--racing as only fear, or
enthusiasm, or grim desperation in their riders' minds can make them
race.
A little later, in groups and scattered fours, and one by one, his
heavy-breathing troopers followed, cursing the order that had sent
them abroad with-out their horses, damning--as none but a dismounted
cavalryman can damn--the earth's unevenness, their swords, their luck,
their priests, the night, their boots, and Jaimihr. Forewarned, Alwa
held on down the pitch-dark side street, into whose steep-sided chasm
the moon's rays would not reach for an hour or two to come, and once
again he led his party in a sweeping, wide-swung circle, loose-reined
and swifter than the silent night wind--this time for Howrah's palace.
There was his given word, plighted to Mahommed Gunga, to redeem.