Told in the East, Talbot Mundy [crime books to read .txt] 📗

Ruth. She was suffering from the effects of long days and nights of nerve-destroying heat, with the shock of unexpected horror super-added, and she showed no disposition to recover consciousness. The priest, though, was very far from having lost his power to think.

“You are a fool!” he sneered at the Risaldar, but the sword leaped from its scabbard at the word and he changed that line of argument. “You hold cards and know not how to play them!”

“I know along which road my honor lies! I lay no plans to murder people in their sleep.”

“Honor! And what is honor? What is the interest on honor—how much percent?”

The Risaldar turned his back on him, but the High Priest laughed.

“'The days of the Raj are numbered!” said the priest. “The English will be slain to the last man and then where will you be? Where will be the profit on your honor?”

The Risaldar listened, for he could not help it, but he made no answer.

“Me you hold here, a prisoner. You can slay or torture. But what good will that do? The woman that you guard will fall sooner or later into Hindu hands. You can not fight against a legion. Listen! I hold the strings of wealth. With a jerk I can unloose a fortune in your lap. I need that woman there!”

“For what?” snarled the Risaldar, whirling round on him, his eyes ablaze.

“'For power! Kharvani's temple here has images and paintings and a voice that speaks—but no Kharvani!”

The Rajput turned away again and affected unconcern.

“Could Kharvani but appear, could her worshipers but see Kharvani manifest, what would a lakh, two lakhs, a crore of rupees mean to me, the High Priest of her temple? I could give thee anything! The power over all India would be in my hands! Kharvani would but appear and say thus and thus, and thus would it be done!”

The Risaldar's hand had risen to his mustache. His back was still turned on the priest, but he showed interest. His eyes wandered to where Ruth lay in a heap by the inner door and then away again.

“Who would believe it?” he growled in an undertone.

“They would all believe it! One and all! Even Mohammedans would become Hindus to worship at her shrine and beg her favors. Thou and I alone would share the secret. Listen! Loose me these bonds—my limbs ache.”

Mahommed Khan turned. He stooped and cut them with his sword.

“Now I can talk,” said the priest, sitting up and rubbing his ankles. “Listen. Take thou two horses and gallop off, so that the rest may think that the white woman has escaped. Then return here secretly and name thy price—and hold thy tongue!”

“And leave her in thy hands?” asked the Risaldar.

“In my keeping.”

“Bah! Who would trust a Hindu priest!”

The Rajput was plainly wavering and the priest stood up, to argue with him the better.

“What need to trust me? You, sahib, will know the secret, and none other but myself will know it. Would I, think you, be fool enough to tell the rest, or, by withholding just payment from you, incite you to spread it broadcast? You and I will know it and we alone. To me the power that it will bring—to you all the wealth you ever dreamed of, and more besides!”

“No other priest would know?”

“Not one! They will think the woman escaped!”

“And she—where would you keep her?”

“In a secret place I know of, below the temple.”

“Does any other know it?”

“No. Not one!”

“Listen!” said the Risaldar, stroking at his beard. “This woman never did me any wrong—but she is a woman, not a man. I owe her no fealty, and yet—I would not like to see her injured. Were I to agree to thy plan, there would needs be a third man in the secret.”

“Who? Name him,” said the priest, grinning his satisfaction.

“My half-brother Suliman.”

“Agreed!”

“He must go with us to the hiding-place and stay there as her servant.”

“Is he a silent man?”

“Silent as the dead, unless I bid him speak!”

“Then, that is agreed; he and thou and I know of this secret, and none other is to know it! Why wait? Let us remove her to the hiding-place!”

“Wait yet for Suliman. How long will I be gone, think you, on my pretended flight?”

“Nay, what think you, sahib?”

“I think many hours. There may be those that watch, or some that ride after me. I think I shall not return until long after daylight, and then there will be no suspicions. Give me a token that will admit me safely back into Hanadra—some sign that the priests will know, and a pass to show to any one that bids me halt.”

The priest held out his hand. “Take off that ring of mine!” he answered. “That is the sacred ring of Kharvani—and all men know it. None will touch thee or refuse thee anything, do they have but the merest sight of it!”

The Risaldar drew off a clumsy silver ring, set with three stones—a sapphire and a ruby and an emerald, each one of which was worth a fortune by itself. He slipped it on his own finger and turned it round slowly, examining it.

“See how I trust thee,” said the priest.

“More than I do thee!” muttered the Risaldar.

“I hear my brother!” growled the Risaldar after another minute. “Be ready to show the way!”

He walked across the room to Ruth, tore a covering from a divan and wrapped her in it; then he opened the outer door for his half-brother.

“Is it well?” he asked in the Rajput tongue.

“All well!” boomed the half-brother, eying the unbound priest with unconcealed surprise.

“Do any watch?”

“Not one! The priests are in the temple; all who are not priests man the walls or rush here and there making ready.”

“And the priestling?”

“Is where I left him.”

“Where?—I said.”

“In the niche underneath the arch, where I trapped the High Priest!”