When Captain Barlow had gone Amir Khan took up the message and read it.
Once he chuckled, for it was in his Oriental mind that the deceiving of
Barlow as to his knowledge of writing was rather a joke. Once as he
read the heavy silk _purdah_ of the door swayed a little at one side as
if a draught of wind had shifted it and an evil face appeared in the
opening.
Presently he rose from his chair, took the lamp in one hand and the
paper in the other, and crossed to the iron box in a far corner of the
room. He set the flickering light upon the floor, and dropping to his
knees, drew from his waistband a silver chain, at the end of which were
his seal and keys. His broad shoulders blanked the tiny cone of light,
and behind through a marble fretwork, a delicate tracery of lotus
flowers that screened the window, trickled cold shafts of moonlight
that fell upon something evil that wriggled across the white and black
slabs of marble from beneath the door curtain. The moonlight glistened
the bronze skin of the silent, crawling thing that was a huge snake, or
a giant centipede; it was even like a square-snouted, shovel-headed
_mugger_ that had crept up out of the slimy river that circled
sluggishly the eastern wall of the palace.
Once as Amir Khan fitted a key in the lock he checked and knelt, as
silent, as passive as a bronze Buddha, listening; and the creeping
thing was but a blur, a shadow without movement, silent. Then he
raised the lid of the box and paused, holding it with his right hand,
the flickering light upon his bronze face showing a smile as his eyes
dwelt lovingly upon the gold and jewels within.
And again the thing crept, or glided, not even a slipping purr,
noiseless, just a drifting shadow; only where a ribbon of moonlight
from between a lotus and a leaf picked it out was the brown thing of
evil marked against the marble. Then the divan blurred it from sight.
From behind the divan to the ebony chair, and the wide black-topped
table the shadow drifted; and when Amir Khan had clanged the iron lid
closed, and risen, lamp in hand, there was nothing to catch his eye.
He placed the lamp that was fashioned like a lotus upon the table, and
dropping into his chair, yawned sleepily. Then he raised his voice to
call his bearer:
"Abd--"
The name died on his lips, for the brown thing behind the chair had
slipped upward with the silent undulation of a panther, and a deadly
_roomal_ (towel) had flashed over the Chief's head and was now a
strangling knot about his tawny throat; the hard knuckles of Hunsa were
kneading his spine at the back of the skull with a half twist of the
cloth. He was pinioned to the back of the chair; he was in a vise, the
jaws of which closed his throat. Just a stifled gurgle escaped from
his lips as his hand clutched at a dagger hilt. The muscles of the
naked brown body behind stood out in knobs of strength, and the face of
the strangler, pan-reddened teeth showing in the flickering light as if
they had bitten into blood, was the face of a ghoul.
The powerful Pindari struggled in smothering desperation; and Hunsa,
twisting the gorilla hands, sought in vain to break the neck--it was
too strong.
Then the chair careened sidewise, and the Pindari shot downward, his
forehead striking a marble slab, stunning him. Hunsa, with the
death-grip still on the roomal, planted a knee between the victim's
shoulder-blades, and jerked the head upward--still the spine did not
snap; and slowly tightening the pressure of the cloth he smothered the
man beneath his knee till he felt the muscles go slack and the body lie
limp--dead!
Then Hunsa crossed the _roomal_ in his left hand, and stretching out
his right grasped the Chief's dagger where it lay upon the floor, and
drove it, from behind, through his heart. He placed the knife upon the
floor where drops of blood, trickling from its curved point, lay upon
the white marble like spilled rubies. He unfastened the silver chain
that carried the keys and crossed the floor with the slouching crouch
of a hyena. Rapidly he opened the iron box, took the paper Amir Khan
had placed there, and hesitated for a second, his ghoulish eyes
gloating over the jewels and gold; but he did not touch them, his
animal cunning holding him to the simple plan that was now working so
smoothly. He locked the box and slipped the key-chain about the dead
man's waist; then seizing the right hand of his victim he smeared the
thumb in blood and imprinted it upon the paper just beside the seal of
the British Raj, muttering: "This will do for Nana Sahib as well as
your head, Pindari, and is much easier hidden."
He placed the paper in a roll of his turban, blew out the flickering
light, and with noiseless bare feet glided cautiously to the door. The
_purdah_ swung back and there was left just the silent room, all dark,
save for little trickles of silver that dropped spots and grotesque
lines upon the body of the dead Chief. It fell full upon the knife
flooding its blade into a finger-like mirror, and glinted the blood
drops as if in reality they had turned to rubies. Without the _purdah_
Hunsa did not crouch and run, he walked swiftly, though noiselessly, as
one upon a message. Ten paces of the dim-lighted hall he turned to the
right to a balcony.
Here at the top of a narrow winding stone stairway Hunsa listened; no
sound came from below, and he glided down. Beneath was a balcony
corresponding with the one above, and just beyond was a domed cell that
he had investigated. It was a cell that at one time had witnessed the
quick descent of headless bodies to the river below. A teakwood beam
with a round hole in the centre spanned the cell just above an opening
that had all the appearance of a well. Hunsa had investigated this
exit for this very purpose, for he had been somewhat of a privileged
character about the palace.
He now unslung from about his waist, hidden by his baggy trousers, a
strong, fine line of camel hair. Making one end fast to the teakwood
sill he went down hand over hand, his strong hard palms gripping the
soft line. At the end of it he still had a drop of ten or twelve feet,
but bracing his shoulders to one wall and his feet to the other he let
go. Hunsa was shaken by his drop of a dozen feet, but the soft sand of
the river bed had broken the shock of his fall. He picked himself up,
and crouching in the hiding shadow of the bank hurried along for fifty
yards; then he clambered up cautiously to the waste of white sand that
was studded with the tents of the Pindari horsemen. On his right,
floating up the hill in terraces, its marble white in the moonlight,
was the palace where Amir Khan lay dead. It still held a sombre
quietude; the murder had not been discovered.
He had mapped this route out carefully in the day and knew just how to
avoid the patrolling guards, and he was back in the narrow _chouk_ of
the town that was a struggling stream of swaggering Pindaris, and
darker skinned Marwari bunnias and shopkeepers. Hunsa pushed his way
through this motley crowd and continued on to the gate of the palace.
To the guard who halted him he said: "If the other who went up to see
the Chief has gone, I would go now, _meer_ sahib. As I have said, it
is a message from the Gulab Begum."
"I looked for you when I returned from above," the guard answered, "but
you had gone. The Afghan has gone but a little since--stay you here."
He called within, "Yacoub!"
It was the orderly who had conducted Barlow to Amir Khan who answered,
and to him the guard said: "Go to the Chief's apartment and say that
one waits here with word from the favourite."
Hunsa sat down nonchalantly upon a marble step, and drew the guard into
a talk of raids, explaining that he had ridden once upon a time with
Chitu, on his foray into the territory of the Nizam.