Rung Ho! A Novel, Talbot Mundy [free ebook reader for ipad .txt] 📗

CHAPTER XIV 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