Told in the East, Talbot Mundy [crime books to read .txt] 📗

“Say that if I let my men kill him, my men will believe me superhuman, and his men will know that he is only a man with a withered arm! But tell him this: He's got the best chance he ever had to perform a miracle, and have the whole of this province believe in him forevermore.”

Again the fakir's eyes took on a keener than usual glare, as he listened to the Beluchi. He did not nod, though, and he made no other sign, beyond the involuntary evidence of understanding that his eyes betrayed.

“His men can see that noose round his neck, tell him. And his men know me, more or less, and British methods anyhow. They believe now, they're sure, they're positive that his neck's got about as much chance of escaping from that noose as a blind cow has of running from a tiger. Now then! Tell him this. Let him come the heavy fakir all he likes. Tell him to tell his gang that he's going to give an order. Let him tell them that when he says 'Hookum hai!' my men'll loose his neck straight away, and fall down flat. Only, first of all he's got to tell them that he needs us for the present. Let him say that he's got an extra-special awful death in store for us by and by, and that he's going to keep us by him until he's ready to work the miracle. Meantime, nobody's to touch us, or come near us, except to bring him and us food!”

The fakir listened, and said nothing. At a sign from Brown the rope tightened just a little. The fakir raised his chin.

“And tell him that, if he doesn't do what I say, and exactly what I say, and do it now, he's got just so long to live as it takes a man to choke his soul out!”

The fakir answered nothing.

“Just ever such a wee bit tighter, men!”

The fakir lost his balance, and had to scramble to his feet and stand there swaying on his heels, clutching at the rope above him with his one uninjured hand, and sawing upward with his head for air. There came a murmur from the shadows, and a dozen breech-bolts clicked. There seemed no disposition to lie idle while the holiest thing in a temple-ridden province dangled in mid-air.

“In case of a rush,” said Brown quietly, “all but two of you let go! The remainder seize your rifles and fire independently. The two men on the rope, haul taut, and make fast to the tree-trunk. This tree's as good a place to die as anywhere, but he dies first! Understand?”

The fakir rolled his eyes, and tried to make some sort of signal with his free arm.

“Just a wee shade tighter!” ordered Brown. “I'm not sure, but I think he's seeing reason!”

The fakir gurgled. No one but a native, and he a wise one, could have recognized a meaning in the guttural gasp that he let escape him.

“He says 'All right! sahib!'” translated the Beluchi.

“Good!” said Brown. “Ease away on the rope; men! And now! You all heard what I told him. If he says 'Hookum hai!' you all let go the rope, and fall flat. But keep hold of your rifles!”

The fakir's voice, rose in a high-pitched, nasal wail, and from the darkness all around them there came an answering murmur that was like the whispering of wind through trees. By the sound, there must have been a crowd of more than a hundred there, and either the crowd was sneaking around them to surround them at close quarters, or else the crowd was growing.

“Keep awake, men!” cautioned Brown.

“Aye, aye, sir! All awake, sir!”

“Listen, now! And if he says one word except what I told him he might say, tip me the wink at once.”

Brown swung the Beluchi out in front of him where he could hear the fakir better.

“I'll hang you, remember, after I've hanged him, if anything goes wrong!”

“He is saying, sahib, exactly what you said.”

“He'd better! Listen now! Listen carefully! Look out for tricks!”

The fakir paused a second from his high-pitched monologue, and a murmur from the darkness answered him.

“Stand by to haul tight, you men!”

“All ready, sir!”

The rope tightened just a little—just sufficiently to keep the fakir cognizant of its position. The fakir howled out a sort of singsong dirge, which plainly had imperatives in every line of it. At each short pause for breath he added something in an undertone that made the Beluchi strain his ears.

“He says, sahib, that they understand. He says, 'Now is the time!' He says now he will order 'Hookum hai!' He says, 'Are you ready?' He says, sahib,—he says it, sahib,—not I—he says, 'Thou art a fool to stare thus! Thou and thy men are fools! Stare, instead, as men who are bewitched!'”

“Try to look like boiled owls, to oblige his Highness, men!” said Brown. “Now, that's better; watch for the word! Easy on the rope a little!”

The men did their best to pose for the part of semimesmerized victims of a superhuman power. The flame from the burning roofs was dying down already, for the thatch burned fast, and the glowing gloom was deep enough to hide indifferent acting. With their lives at stake, though, men act better than they might at other times.

The fakir spun round on his heels and, clutching with his whole hand at the rope, began to execute a sort of dance—a weird, fantastic, horrible affair of quivering limbs and rolling eyeballs, topped by a withered arm that pointed upward, and a tortured fingernail-pierced fist that nodded on a dried-out-wrist-joint.

“Hookum hai!” he screamed suddenly, waving his sound hand upward, and bringing it down suddenly with a jerk, as though by sheer force he was blasting them.

“Down with you!” ordered Brown, and all except Brown and the Beluchi tumbled over backward.

“Keep hold of your rifles!” ordered Brown.

The fakir's wailing continued for a while. With his own hand he took the noose from his neck and, now that the flames had died away to nothing but spasmodic spurts above a dull red underglow, there was no one in the watching ring who could see Brown's sword-point. Only Brown and the fakir knew that it was scratching at the skin between the fakir's shoulder-blades.

“It is done!” said the fakir presently. “Now take me back to my dais again!” And the Beluchi translated.

“I'd like to hear their trigger-springs released,” suggested Brown. “This has all been a shade too slick for me. I've got my doubts yet about it's being done. Tell him to order them to uncock their rifles, so that I can hear them do it.”

“He says that they are gone already!” translated the Beluchi.