Guns of the Gods: A Story of Yasmini's Youth, Talbot Mundy [book club books .TXT] 📗

he demanded, reaching backward for a little lamp that hung on the wall behind him and trying to see her face.

"I am the same who met you that morning on the hilltop and purchased silence from you at a price."

He peered through the narrow opening, holding the lamp above his head.

"That was a man. You are a woman."

For answer to that she stood on tiptoe and blew the lamp out. He would have slammed the door, but her foot was in the way.

"By dark or daylight, Mukhum Dass, your eyes read nothing but the names on hundis (notes)! Now, what does the car say? Does the voice tell nothing?"

"Aye, it is the same."

"You shall have that title-deed tomorrow at dawn—on certain terms."

"How do I know?'

"Because I say it—I, who said that Chamu would repay his son's loan,— I, who knew from the first all about the title-deed,—I, who know where it is this minute,—I, who know the secrets of Jinendra's priest,—I, whose name stands written on the hundred-rupee note with which the butler paid his son's debt!"

"The princess! The Princess Yasmini! It was her name on the note!"

"Her name is mine!"

The money-lender stood irresolutely, shifting his balance from foot to foot. It was his experience that when people with high-born names came to him by night mysteriously there was always profit in it for himself. And then, there was that title-deed. He had bought the house cheap, but its present value was five times what he gave for it. Its loss would mean more to him than the loss of a wife to some men—as Yasmini knew, and counted on.

"Open the door and let me in, Mukhum Dass! The terms are these—"

"Nay, we can talk with the door between us."

"Very well, then, lose thy title-deed! Dhulap Singh, thine enemy, shall have it within the hour!"

She took her foot out from the door and turned away briskly. Promptly he opened the door wide, and called after her.

"Nay, come, we will discuss it."

"I discuss nothing!" she answered with a laugh. "I dictate terms!"

"Name them, then."

"I have here five women. They must stay in safety in your house until an hour before dawn."

"God forbid!"

"Until an hour before dawn, you hear me? If any come to inquire for them or me, you must deny any knowledge."

"That I would be sure enough to do! Shall I have it said that Mukhum
Dass keeps a dozen women in his dotage?"

"An hour before dawn I will come for them."

"None too soon!"

"Then I will write a letter to a certain man, who, on presentation of the letter, will hand you the title-deed at once without payment."

"A likely tale!"

"Was it a likely tale that Chamu would repay his son's debt?"

"Well—I will take the hazard. Bring them in. But I will not feed them. And if you fail to come for them before dawn I will turn them out and it shall be all over Sialpore that the Princess Yasmini—"

"One moment, Mukhum Dass! If one word of this escapes your lips for a month to come, you shall go to jail for receiving stolen money in payment of a debt! My name was on the money that Chamu paid you with. You knew he stole it."

"I did not know!"

"Prove that in court, then!"

"Bring the women in!" he grumbled. "I am no cackler from the roofs!"

Yasmini did not wait for him to change his mind but shepherded her scared dependents through the door, and called for Ismail.

"Did you see these women enter?" she demanded.

"Aye. I saw. Have I not eyes?"

"Stay thou here outside and watch. Afterward, remember, if I say nothing, be thou dumb as Tom Tripe's dog. But if I give the word, tell all Sialpore that Mukhum Dass is a satyr who holds revels in his house by night. Bring ten other men to swear to it with thee, until the very children of the streets shout it after him when he rides his rounds! Hast thou understood? Silence for silence! But talk for talk! Hast thou heard, too, Mukhum Dass? Good! Shut thy door tight, but thy mouth yet tighter! And try rather to take liberties with hornets than with those five women!"

Before he could answer she was gone, leaving Ismail lurking in the shadows. Tess had dismounted from behind Tom Tripe and climbed up beside her husband so that there were three on the front seat again.

"Now, Tom Tripe!" Yasmini ordered, speaking with the voice of command that Tom himself would have used to a subordinate. "Do you as the elephant did, and cause distraction. Draw Gungadhura off the scent!"

"Hell's bells, deary me, Your Ladyship!" he answered. "All the drawing I'll do after this night's work will be my last month's pay, and lucky if I see that! Lordy knows what the guard'll tell the maharajah, nor what his rage'll add to it!"

"Nonsense! Gungadhura and the guard ran from the elephant like dust before the wind. The guards are the better men, and will be back at their post before this; but Gungadhura must find a discreet physician to bind a slit face for him! Visit the guard now, and get their ear first. Tell them Gungadhura wants no talk about tonight's work. Then come to Blaine sahib's house and search the cellar by lamplight, letting Chalmu the butler see you do it, but taking care not to let him see what you see. What you do see, leave where it lies! Then see Gungadhura early in the morning—"

"Lordy me, Your Ladyship, he'll—"

"No, he won't. He'll want to know how much you know about his behavior at the gate. Tell him you know everything, and that you've compelled the guard to keep silence. That ought to reconcile the coward! But if he threatens you, then threaten him! Threaten to go to Samson sahib with the whole story. (But if you do dare really go to Samson sahib, never look me in the face again!) Then tell Gungadhura that you searched the cellar, and what you saw there under a stone, adding that Blaine sahib was suspicious, and watched you, and afterward sealed the cellar door. Have you understood me?"

"I understand there's precious little sleep for me tonight, and hell in the morning!"

"Pouf! Are you a soldier?"

"I'm your ladyship's most thorough-paced admirer and obedient slave!"
Tom answered gallantly, his mutton-chop whiskers fairly bristling with a grin.

"Prove it, then, this night!"

"As if I hadn't! Well—all's well, Your Ladyship, I'm on the job! Crib, crupper and breakfast-time, yours truly!"

"When you have finished interviewing Gungadhura, find for Blaine sahib a new cook and a new butler, who can be trusted not to poison him!"

"If I can!"

"Of course you can find them! Tell Sita Ram, Samson sahib's babu, what is wanted. He will find men in one hour who have too much honor, and too little brains, and too great fear to poison any one! Say that I require it of him. Have your understood? Then go! Go swiftly to the guard and stop their tongues!"

Tom whistled his dog and rode off at a canter. Dick gave the horse his head and drove home as fast as the steepness of the hill permitted, Yasmini talking to him nearly all the way.

"You must dismiss Chamu," she insisted. "He is Gungadhura's man, and the cook is under the heel of Chamu. Either man would poison his own mother for a day's pay! Send them both about their business the first thing in the morning if you value your life! Before they go, let them see you put a great lock on the cellar door, and nail it as well, and put weights on it! If men come at any time to pry about the house, ask Samson sahib for a special policeman to guard the place!"

"But what is all this leading to?" demanded Dick. "What does it mean?"

"It means," she said slowly, "that the toils are closing in on Gungadhura!"

"The way I figure it," he answered, "some one else had a pretty narrow shave tonight!"

Yasmini knew better than to threaten Dick, or even to argue with him vehemently, much less give him orders. But each man has a line of least resistance.

"Your wife has told you what Gungadhura attempted?" she asked him.

"Yes, while you were at the money-lender's—something of it."

"If the guard should tell Gungadhura that your wife was in the palace with me and could give evidence against him, what do you suppose Gungadhura would do?"

"Damn him!" Dick murmured.

"There are so many ways—snakes—poison—daggers in the dark—"

"What do you suggest?" he asked her. "Leave Sialpore?"

"Yes, but with me! I know a safe place. She should come with me."

"When?"

"Tonight! Before dawn."

"How?"

"By camel. I had horses and Gungadhura took them all, but his brain was too sotted to think of camels, and I have camels waiting not many miles from here! I shall take my horse from your stable and ride for the camels, bringing them to the house of Mukhum Dass. Let your wife meet me there one hour before dawn."

"Dick!" said Tess, with her arm around him. "I want to go! I know it sounds crazy, and absurd, and desperate; but I'm sure it isn't! I want you to let me go with her."

They reached the house before he answered, he, turning it over and over in his mind, taking into reckoning a thousand things.

"Well," he said at last, "once in a while there's the strength of a man about you, Tess. Maybe I'm a lunatic, but have it your own way, girl, have it your own way!"

Chapter Ten

In odor of sweet sanctity I bloom,
With surplus of beatitude I bless,
I'm the confidant of Destiny and Doom,
I'm the apogee of knowledge more or less.
If I lie, it is to temporize with lying
Lest obliquity should suffer in the light.
If I prey upon the widow and the dying,
They withheld; and I compel them to do right.
I am justified in all that I endeavor,
If I fail it is because the rest are fools.
I'm serene and unimpeachable forever,
The upheld, ordained interpreter of rules.

"Discretion is better part of secrecy!"

Some of what follows presently was told to Yasmini afterward by Sita Ram,
some of it by Tom Tripe, and a little by Dick Blaine, who had it from
Samson himself. The rest she pieced together from admissions by
Jinendra's fat priest and the gossip of some dancing girls.

Sir Roland Samson, K. C. S. I., as told already, was a very demon for swift office work, routine pouring off him into the hands of the right subordinates like water into the runnels of a roof, leaving him free to bask in the sunshine of self-complacency. But there is work that can not be tackled, or even touched by subordinates; and, the fixed belief of envious inferiors to the contrary notwithstanding, there are hours unpaid for, unincluded in the office schedule, and wholly unadvertised that hold such people as commissioners in durance vile.

On the night of Yasmini's escape Samson sat sweating in his private room, with moths of a hundred species irritating him by noisy self- immolation against the oil lamp-whose smoke made matters worse by being sucked up at odd moments by the punkah, pulled jerkily by a new man. Most aggravating circumstance of all, perhaps, was that the movement of the punkah flickered his papers away whenever he removed a weight. Yet he could not study them unless he spread them all in front of him; and without the punkah he felt he would die of apoplexy. He had to reach a decision before midnight.

Babu Sita Ram was supposed to be sitting tinder a punkah in the next room, with a locked door between him and