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

with equal resonance, like the note of a hidden bell.

"And since, my Lords, in olden days it happened often that a Rajput woman held and buttressed up her husband's throne, honoring him and Rajputana with her courage and her wit, and daring even in the arts of war, so now: this prince shall have his throne by woman's wit. Before another full moon rises he shall sit throned in the palace of his ancestors; and ye who love royal Rajasthan shall answer whether I chose wisely, in the days to come!"

They answered then and there to the utmost of their lungs. And while the hall resounded to the crash and clangor of applause she let go Utirupa's hand, bowed low to him, and vanished through the gilded door in the midst of her attendant women.

For two hours after that she was the center of a vortex of congratulation— questions—whisperings—laughter and advice, while the women flocked about her and she introduced Tess to them one by one. Tess, hardly understanding a word of what was said to her, was never made so much of in her life, sharing honors with Yasmini, almost as much a novelty as she—a Western woman, spirited behind the purdah by the same new alchemy that made a girl of partly foreign birth, and so without caste in the Hindu sense of it, revive a royal custom with its antecedents rooted in the very rocks of time. It was a night of breathless novelty.

There were the inevitable sweetmeats—the inevitable sugared drinks. Then the elephants again, and torches under the mysterious trees, with a sabered escort plunging to the right and left. The same torch-lit faces peering from the village doors and walls; and at last the gate again in the garden wall, and a bolt shot home, and silence. Then:

"Did I do well?" Yasmini asked, leaning at last on Tess. "Oh, my sister!
Without you there to lend me courage I had failed!"

Chapter Seventeen

How about the door! Did somebody lock it?
"I," said the Chairman, "had the key in my pocket."
Who shut the windows? "I," said the vice.
"I shut the window, it seemed to me wise."
"I," said the clerk, "looked under the table
And out on the balcony under the gable."
Then who let the secret out? Who overheard?
Maybe a mouse, or the flies, or a bird!

"Suppose I lock the door?"

Tom Tripe felt like a new man, and his whiskers crackled with self- satisfaction. For one thing, his dog Trotters was back again—sore-footed, it was true, and unable at present to follow him on his rounds; and rather badly scratched where a leopard must have missed his spring on the moonlit desert; but asleep in the stable litter, on the highroad to recovery.

Tom had ridden that morning, first to Dick Blaine up at the gold mine, because he was a friend and needed good news of his wife; then across the bridge to Samson, straightening out the crumpled letter from Yasmini as he rode, and chuckling to himself at the thought of mystifying the commissioner. And it all worked out the way he hoped, even to the offer of a drink—good brandy—Hennesey's Three Star.

"How did you manage it?" asked Samson. "The princess has disappeared. There's a rumor she's over the border in the next state. Gungadhura has seized her palace and rifled it. How did you get my letter to her, and her answer so swiftly?"

"Ah, sir," said Tom Tripe mischievously, "we in the native service have our little compensations—our little ways and means!"

That was better than frankincense and myrrh, to mystify a genuine commissioner! Tom rode back to his quarters turning over the taste of brandy in his mouth—he had made a martial raid on Samson's tantalus— and all aglow with good humor.

Not so Samson. The commissioner was irritable, and more so now that he opened the scented letter Tom had brought. It was deuced curt, it seemed to him, and veiled a sort of suggested laughter, if there was anything insinuative in polite phrases.

"The Princess Yasmini Omanoff Singh," it ran, "hastens to return thanks for Sir Roland Samson's kind letter. She is not, however, afraid of imprisonment or of undue pressure; and as for her secret, that is safe as long as the river runs through the state of Sialpore."

Not a word more. He frowned at the letter, and read and reread it, sniffing at the scent and holding up the paper to the light, so that Sita Ram very nearly had a chance to read it through the knot-hole in the door. The last phrase was the puzzler. It read at first like a boast—like one of those picturesque expressions with which the Eastern mind enjoys to overstate its case. But he reflected on it. As an Orientalist of admitted distinction he had long ago concluded that hyperbole in the East is always based on some fact hidden in the user's mind, often without the user's knowledge. He had written a paper on that very subject, which the Spectator printed with favorable editorial comment; and Mendelsohn K. C. had written him a very agreeable letter stating that his own experience in criminal cases amply bore out the theory. He rang the desk bell for Sita Ram.

"Get me the map of the province."

Sita Ram held it by two corners under the draughty punkah while Samson traced the boundaries with his finger. It was exactly as he thought: without that little palace and its grounds, the state of Sialpore would be bounded exactly by the river. Take away the so-called River Palace with the broad acres surrounding it, and the river would no longer run through the state of Sialpore. That would be the end, then, of the safety of the secret. There was food for reflection there.

What if the famous treasure of Sialpore were buried somewhere in the grounds of the River Palace! Somewhere, for instance, among those gigantic pipal trees.

He folded the map and returned it to Sita Ram.

"I'm expecting half a dozen officers presently. Show them in the minute they come. And—ah—you'd better lock that middle door."

Sita Ram dutifully locked the door on Samson's side, and drew the curtain over it. There was a small hole in the curtain, of peculiar shape— moths had been the verdict when Samson first noticed it, and Sita Ram had advised him to indent for some preventive of the pests; which Samson did, and the hole did not grow any greater afterward.

Samson had had to call a conference, much though he disliked doing it. The rules for procedure in the case of native states included the provision of an official known as resident, whose duty was to live near the native ruler— and keep a sharp eye on him. But Samson, prince of indiscretion, had seen fit three months before to let that official go home to England on long leave, and to volunteer the double duty in his absence. The proposal having economic value, and there being no known trouble in Sialpore just then, the State Department had consented.

The worst of that was that there was no one now in actual close touch with Gungadhura. The best of it was that there was none to share the knowledge of Samson's underlying scheme—which was after all nothing but to win high laurels for himself, by somewhat devious ways, perhaps, but justified in his opinion in the circumstances. And the very worst of it was that good form and official precedent obliged him to call a conference before recommending certain drastic action to his government. Having no official resident to consult, he had to go through the form of consulting somebody; and the more he called in, the less likelihood there was of any one man arrogating undue credit to himself.

They were ushered in presently by Sita Ram. Ross, the principal medical officer came first; it was a pity he ranked so high that he could not be overlooked, but there you were. Then came Sir Hookum Bannerjee, judge of the circuit court—likely to have a lot to say without much meaning in it, and certainly anxious to please. Next after him Sita Ram showed in Norwood, superintendent of police; one disliked calling in policemen, they were so interfering and tactless, but Norwood had his rights. Then came Topham, acting assistant to Samson, loaned from another state to replace young Wilkinson, home on sick leave, and full-back on the polo team—a quiet man as a rule, anxious to get back to his own district, and probably reasonably safe. Last came Lieutenant-Colonel Willoughby de Wing—small, brusk and florid—acting in command of the 88th Sikh Lancers, and preferring that to any other task this side of heaven or hell;— "Nothing to do with politics, my boy,—not built that way—don't like 'em— never understood 'em anyhow. Soldiering's my business."

It was well understood it was to be a secret conference. The invitations had been marked "Secret."

"Suppose I lock the door," suggested Samson by way of additional reminder; and he did that, resuming his chair with an expression that permitted just the least suggestion of a serious situation to escape him. But he was smiling amiably, and his curled mustache did not disguise the corners of a wilful mouth.

"There is proof conclusive," he began, "—I've telegrams here that you may see in confidence, that Gungadhura has been trafficking with Northwest tribes. He has sent them money, and made them promises. There isn't a shade of doubt of it. The evidence is black. The question is, what's to be done?"

They passed the telegrams from hand to hand, Norwood looking rather supercilious. (The police could handle espionage of that sort so much better.) But it was the youngest man's place to speak first.

"Depose him, I suppose, and put his young son in his place," suggested
Topham. "There's plenty of precedent."

The doctor shook his head.

"I know Gungadhura. He's a bad strain. It's physiological. I've made a study of these things, and I'm as certain as that I sit here that any son of Gungadhura's would eventually show the same traits as his sire. If you can get rid of Gungadhura, get rid of his whole connection by all means."

"What should be done with the sons, then?" asked Sir Hookum Bannerjee, father of half a dozen budding lawyers.

"Oh, send 'em to school in England, I suppose," said Samson. "There's precedent for that too. But there's another point. Mukhum Dass the money-lender has been foully murdered, struck down by a knife from behind by some one who relieved him of his money. Either a case of simply robbery, or else—"

"Or else what?" Colonel Willoughby de Wing screwed home his monocle.

"That's as obvious as twice two. That rascal Mukhum Dass was bound to die violently sooner or later. He was notoriously the worst usurer and title-jumper on this side of India. He charged me once a total of eighty-five per cent. for a small loan—and legally, too; kept within the law! I know him!"

"On the other hand," said Samson, "I've been informed that the cellar of the house at present occupied by those Americans on the hill—the gold-miner, you know—Blaine—was burgled last Sunday morning. Blaine himself complained to me. It seems that he had given Gungadhura leave to search the cellar, at Gungadhura's request, for what purpose Blaine professes not to know. Blaine himself, you may remember, lunched and dined at the club last Sunday and gave three of us a rather costly lesson in his national game of poker. It took place while he was with us at the club. He has been able to discover, by cross-examining some witnesses—beggars, I believe, who haunt the house,—that Mukhum Dass got to the place ahead of Gungadhura, burgled the cellar, removed something of great value to Gungadhura, and went off with it. On the way home he was murdered."

"The murder of Mukhum Dass was known very soon afterward, of course, to the police," said Norwood. "But we can't do anything across the river without orders. Why didn't Mr. Blaine bring his complaint and evidence to me?"

"Because I asked him not to!" answered Samson. "We're mixed up here in