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

working with her twig broom, still with her back toward the rubbish hole, she approached until the darkest shadow swallowed her.

There were two in the dark then—she and the man who listened. He, motionless as stone, had watched her; peering outward at the lesser darkness, he lost sight of her for a second as she backed into the deepest shadow unexpectedly. Before he could become accustomed to the altered focus and the deeper black, her beady eyes picked out the whites of his. Before he could move she was on him—at his throat, tearing it with thin, steel fingers. Before he could utter a sound, or move, she had drawn a short knife from her clothing and had driven it to the hilt below his ear. He dropped without a gurgle, and without a sound she gathered up her broom again and swept her way back past the cage-bars, where Ali Partab waited.

“Was any there?” he whispered.

“There was one.”

“And—?”

“He was.”

“Good! Now will the reward be three mohurs instead of two!”

“Where are they?”

“These pigs have taken all the money from me. Now we must wait until Mahommed Gunga-sahib comes. His word is pledged.”

“He said two mohurs.”

“I—Ali Partab—pledge his word for three.”

“And who art thou? The bear in the cage said: 'I will eat thee if I get outside!”'

“Mother of corruption! Listen! Alwa must know! Canst thou escape from here? Canst thou reach the Alwa-sahib?”

“If the price were four mohurs, there might be many things that I could do.”

“The price is three! I have spoken!”

“'I would eat honey were I outside!' said the bear.”

“Hag! The bear died in the cage, and they sold his pelt for how much? Alive, he had been worth three mohurs, but he died while they bargained for him!—Quick!”

“I am black, sahib, and the night is black. I am old, and none would believe me active. They watch the gates, but the bats fly in and out.”

“Find out, then, what has happened to my horses, left at the caravansary; give that information to the Alwa-sahib. Tell the Miss-sahib at the mission where I am. Tell her whither I have sent thee. Tell the Alwa-sahib that a Rangar—by name Ali Partab—sworn follower of the prophet, and servant of the Risaldar Mahommed Gunga—is in need and asks his instant aid. Say also to the Alwa-sahib that it may be well to rescue the Miss-sahib first, before he looks for me, but of that matter I am no judge, being imprisoned and unable to ascertain the truth. Hast thou understood?”

“And all that for three mohurs?”

“Nay. The price is now two mohurs again. It will be one unless—”

“Three, sahib! It was three!”

“Then run! Hasten!”

The shadows swallowed her again. She crept where they were darkest—lay still once, breathless, while a man walked almost over her—reached the outer wall, and felt her way along it until she reached low eaves that reached down like a jagged saw from utter blackness. Less than a minute later she was crawling monkeywise along a roof; before another five had passed she had dropped on all fours in the dust of the outer road and was running like a black ghost—head down—an end of her loin-cloth between her teeth—one arm held tight to her side and the other crooked outward, swinging—striding, panting, boring through the blackness.

She wasted little time at the caravansary. The gate was shut and a sleepy watchman cursed her for breaking into his revery.

“Horses? Belonging to a Rangar? Fool! Does not the Maharajah-sahib impound all horses left ownerless? Ask them back of him that took them! Go, night-owl! Go ask him!”

Almost as quickly as a native pony could have eaten up the distance, she dropped panting on the door-step of the little mission house. She was panting now from fright as well as sheer exhaustion. There were watchers—two sets of them. One man stood, with his back turned within ten paces of her, and another—less than two yards away from him—stood, turned half sideways, looking up the street and whistling to himself. There was not a corner or an angle of the little place that was not guarded.

She had tried the back door first, but that was locked, and she had rapped on it gently until she remembered that of evenings the missionary and his daughter occupied the front room always and that they would not have heard her had she hammered. She tapped now, very gently, with her fingers on the lower panel of the door, quaking and trembling in every limb, but taking care to make her little noise unevenly, in a way that would be certain to attract attention inside. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap. The door opened suddenly. Both watchers turned and gazed straight into the lamplight that streamed out past the tall form of Duncan McClean. He stared at them and they stared back again. Joanna slunk into the deep shadow at one side of the steps.

“Is it necessary for you to annoy me by rapping on my door as well as by spying on me?” asked the missionary in a tone of weary remonstrance.

The guards laughed and turned their backs with added insolence. In that second Joanna shot like a black spirit of the night straight past the missionary's legs and collapsed in a bundle on the floor behind him.

“Shut the door, sahib!” she hissed at him. “Quick! Shut the door!”

He shut it and bolted it, half recognizing something in the voice or else guided by instinct.

“Joanna!” he exclaimed, holding up a lamp above her. “You, Joanna!”

At the name, Rosemary McClean came running out—looked for an instant—and then knelt by the old woman.

“Father, bring some water, please, quickly!”

The missionary went in search of a water-jar, and Rosemary McClean bent down above the ancient, shrivelled, sorry-looking mummy of a woman—drew the wrinkled head into her lap—stroked the drawn face—and wept over her. The spent, age-weakened, dried-out widow had fainted; there was no wakened self-consciousness of black and white to interfere. This was a friend—one lone friend of her own sex amid all the waste of smouldering hate—some one surely to be wept over and made much of and caressed. The poor old hag recovered consciousness with her head pillowed on a European lap, and Duncan McClean—no stickler for convention and no believer in a line too tightly drawn—saw fit to remonstrate as he laid the jar of water down beside them.

“Why,” she answered, looking up at him, “father, I'd have kissed a dog that got lost and came back again like this!”

They picked her up between them, after they had let her drink, and carried her