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

and requested explanations. He was told that the mining contract had not received a moment's consideration and, with equal truth, that the American, being an expert in such matters and on the spot, had been asked to undertake examination of the fort's foundations. The new maharanee, it seemed, had a fancy to build a palace where the fort stood, and the matter was receiving shrewd investigation and estimate in advance.

Samson could not object to that. Those foundations had not been examined carefully for eight hundred years. A perfectly good palace had been wrested away by diplomatic means, on Samson's own initiative, and there was no logical reason why the maharajah should not build another one to replace it. The fort had no modern military value.

"I hope you're not going to try to pay for your new palace out of taxes?"
Samson asked bluntly.

But Utirupa smiled. He hoped nothing of that kind would be necessary. Samson could not go and investigate what Blaine was doing, because he was given plainly to understand that the new palace was the maharanee's business; and one does not intrude uninvited into the affairs of ladies in the East. The efforts of quite a number of spies, too, were unavailing. So Dick had his days pretty much to himself, except when Tess brought his lunch to him, or Yasmini herself in boots and turban rode up for a few minutes to look on. The guards on the bastions, and in the great keep in the center, knew nothing whatever of what was happening, because all Dick's activity was underground and Tom Tripe, with that ferocious dog of his, kept guard over the ancient door that led to the lower passages. Dick used to return home every evening tired out, but Tom Tripe, keeping strictly sober, slept in the fort and said nothing of importance to any one. He looked drawn and nervous, as if something had terrified him, but public opinion ascribed that to the "snakes" on the night of the coronation.

Then about sundown one evening Tom Tripe galloped in a great hurry to Utirupa's palace. That was nothing to excite comment, because in his official capacity he was always supposed to be galloping all over the place on some errand or another. But after dark Utirupa and Yasmini rode out of the palace unattended, which did cause comment, Yasmini in man's clothes, as usual when she went on some adventure. It was not seen which road they took, which was fortunate in the circumstances.

Tess was up at the fort before them, waiting with Dick outside the locked door leading to the ancient passages below. They said nothing beyond the most perfunctory greetings, but, each taking a kerosene lantern, passed through the door in single file, Tom leading, and locked the door after them. That was all that the fort guards ever knew about what happened.

"I've not been in," said Dick's voice from behind them. "All I've done is force an entrance."

From in front Tom Tripe took up the burden.

"And I wouldn't have liked your job, sir! It was bad enough to sit and guard the door. After you'd gone o' nights I'd sit for hours with my hair on end, listening; and the dog 'ud growl beside me as if he saw ghosts!"

"Maybe it was snakes," Yasmini answered. "They will flee from the lantern-light—"

"No, Your Ladyship. I'm not afraid of snakes—except them Scotch plaid ones that come o' brandy on top o' royal durbars! This was the sound o' some one digging—digging all night long down in the bowels of the earth! Look out!"

They all jumped, but it proved to be only Tom's own shadow that had frightened him. His nerves were all to pieces, and Dick Blaine took the lead. The dog was growling intermittently and keeping close to Tom's heels.

They passed down a long spiral flight of stone steps into a sort of cavern that had been used for ammunition room. The departing British troops had left a dozen ancient cannon balls, not all of which were in one place. The smooth flags of the floor were broken, and at the far end one very heavy stone was lifted and laid back, disclosing a dark hole.

"I used the cannon balls," said Dick, "to drop on the stones and listen for a hollow noise. Once I found that, the game was simple."

Leading down into the dark hole were twelve more steps, descending straight, but turning sharply at the bottom. Dick led the way.

"The next sight's gruesome!" he announced, his voice booming hollow among the shadows.

The passage turned into a lofty chamber in the rock, whose walls once had all been lined with dressed stone, but some of the lining had fallen. In the shadows at one end an image of Jinendra smiled complacently, and there were some ancient brass lamps banging on chains from arches cut into the rock on every side.

"This is the grue," said Dick, holding his lantern high.

Its light fell on a circle of skeletons, all perfect, each with its head toward a brass bowl in the center.

"Ugh!" growled Tom Tripe. "Those are the ghosts that dig o' nights!
Go smell 'em, Trotters! Are they the enemy?"

The dog sniffed the bones, but slunk away again uninterested.

"Nothing doing!" laughed Dick. "You haven't laid the ghost yet, Tom!"

"Have you got your pistols with you?" Tom retorted, patting his own jacket to show the bulge of one beneath it.

"Those," said Yasmini, standing between the skeletons and holding up her own light, "are the bones of priests, who died when the secret of the place was taken from them! My father told me they were left to starve to death. This was Jinendra's temple."

"D'you suppose they pulled that cut stone from the walls, trying to force a way out?" Dick hazarded. "The lid of the hole we came down through is a foot thick, and was set solid in cement; they couldn't have lifted that if they tried for a week. Everything's solid in this place. I sounded every inch of the floor with a cannon ball, but it's all hard underneath."

"I would have gone straight to the image of Jinendra," said Yasmini. "Jinendra smiles and keeps his secrets so well that I should have suspected him at once!"

"I went to that last," Dick answered. "It looks so like a piece of high relief carved out of the rock wall. As a matter of fact, though, it's about six tons of quartz with a vein of gold in it—see the gold running straight up the line of the nose and over the middle of the head?—I pried it away from the wall at last with steel wedges, and there's just room to squeeze in behind it. Beyond that is another wall that I had to cut through with a chisel. Who goes in first?"

"Who looks for gold finds gold!" Yasmini quoted. "The vein of gold you have been mining was the clue to the secret all along."

She would have led the way, but Utirupa stopped her.

"If there is danger," he said, "it is my place to lead."

But nobody would permit that, Yasmini least of all.

"Shall Samson choose a new maharajah so soon as all that?" she laughed.

"Let the dog go first!" Tom proposed. Trotters was sniffing at the dark gap behind Jinendra's image, with eyes glaring and a low rumbling growl issuing from between bared teeth. But Trotters would not go.

Finally, in the teeth of remonstrances from Tess, Dick cocked a pistol and, with his lantern in the other hand, strode in boldly. Trotters followed him, and Tom Tripe next. Then Utirupa. Then the women.

Nothing happened. The passage was about ten feet long and a yard wide. They squeezed one at a time through the narrow break Dick had made in the end of it, into a high, pitch-dark cave that smelt unexplainably of wood-smoke, Dick standing just inside the gap to bold the lantern for them and help them through—continuing to stand there after Tess had entered last.

"Jee-rusalem!" he exclaimed. "This is where I lose out!"

The first glance was enough to show that they stood in the secret treasure-vault of Sialpore. There were ancient gold coins in heaps on the floor where they had burst by their own weight out of long-demolished bags— countless coins; and drums and bags and boxes more of them behind. But what made Dick exclaim were the bars of silver stacked at the rear and along one side in rows as high as a man.

"My contract reads gold!" he said. "A percentage of all gold. There's not a word in it of silver. Who'd ever have thought of finding silver, anyhow, in this old mountain?"

"Your percentage of the gold will make you rich," said Utirupa. "But you shall take silver too. Without you we might have found nothing for years to come."

"A contract's a contract," Dick answered. "I drew it myself, and it stands."

"Look out!" yelled Tom Tripe suddenly. But the warning came too late.

Out of the shadow behind a stack of silver bars rushed a man with a long dagger, stabbing frantically at Dick. Tom's great barking army revolver missed, filling the chamber with noise and smoke, for he used black powder.

Down went Dick under his assailant, and the dagger rose and fell in spasmodic jerks. Dick had hold of the man's wrist, but the dagger-point dripped blood and the fury of the attack increased as Dick appeared to weaken. Utirupa ran in to drag the assailant off, but Trotters got there first—chose his neck-hold like a wolf in battle—and in another second Dick was free with Tess kneeling beside him while a life-and-death fight between animal and man raged between the bars of silver.

"Gungadhura!" Yasmini shouted, waving her lantern for a sight of the struggling man's face. He was lashing out savagely with the long knife, but the dog had him by the neck from behind, and he only inflicted surface wounds.

"Hell's bells! He'll kill my dog!" roared Tom. "Hi, Trotters. Here, you—Trotters!"

But the dog took that for a call to do his thinking, and let go for a better hold. His long fangs closed again on the victim's jugular, and tore it out. The long knife clattered on the stone floor, and then Tom got his dog by the jaws and hauled him off.

"You can't blame the dog," he grumbled. "He knew the smell of him.
He'd been told to kill him if he got the chance."

"Gungadhura!" said Yasmini again, holding her lantern over the dying man. "So Gungadhura was Tom Tripe's ghost! What a pity that the dog should kill him, when all he wanted was a battle to the death with me! I would have given him his fight!"

Dick was in no bad way. He had three flesh wounds on his right side, and none of them serious. Tess staunched them with torn linen, and she and Tom Tripe propped him against some bags of bullion, while Utirupa threw his cloak over Gungadhura's dead body.

"How did Gungadhura get in here?" wondered Tess.

"Through the hole at the end of the mine-shaft, I suppose," said Dick. "I built up the lower one—he came one day and saw me doing it—but left a space at the top that looked too small for a man to crawl through. Then I blocked the mouth of the tunnel afterward, and shut him in, I suppose. He's had the men's rice and water-bottles, and they left a lot of faggots in the tunnel, too, I remember. That accounts for the smell of smoke."

"But what was the digging I've heard o' nights?" demanded Tom. "I'm not the only one. The British garrison was scared out of its wits."

Utirupa was hunting about with a lantern in his hand, watching the dog go sniffing in the shadows.

"Come and see what he has done!" he called suddenly, and Yasmini ran to his side.

In a corner of the vault one of the great facing stones had been removed, disclosing a deep