The Elephant God, Gordon Casserly [best books to read all time txt] 📗

Parry's departure served as a hint to Noreen that it was time for her to say good-night to her guests and withdraw. As soon as she left the room there was an instant hush of expectancy, and all eyes were turned to Dermot. The servants had long since gone, but, after asking his host's permission, he rose from his place and strolled with apparent carelessness to each doorway in turn and satisfied himself that there were no eavesdroppers. Then he shut the doors and asked members of the party to station themselves on guard at each of them. The planters watched these precautions with surprise.

Having thus made sure that he would not be overheard Dermot said:

"Gentlemen, a few of you already know something of what I am going to tell you. I want you to understand that I am now speaking officially and in strict confidence."

He turned to his host.

"I must ask you, Mr. Daleham (Fred looked up in surprise at the formality of the mode of address) to promise to divulge nothing of what I say to your friend, Mr. Chunerbutty."

"Not tell Chunerbutty, sir?" repeated the young planter in astonishment.

"No; the matter is one which must not be mentioned to any but Europeans."

"Oh, but I assure you, Major, Chunerbutty's thoroughly loyal and reliable," said Daleham warmly.

"I repeat that you are not to give him the least inkling of what I am going to say," replied Dermot in a quiet but stern voice. "As I have already told you, I am speaking officially."

The boy was impressed and a little awed by his manner.

"Oh, certainly, sir. I give you my word that I shan't mention it to him."

"Very well. The fact is, gentlemen, that we are on the track of a vast conspiracy against British rule in India, and have reason to believe that the activity of the disloyalists in Bengal has spread to this district. We suspect that the Brahmins who, very much to the surprise of any one acquainted with the ways of their caste, are working as coolies on your gardens, are really emissaries of the seditionists."

"By George, is that really so, Major?" asked a young planter in a doubting tone. "We have a couple of these Bengalis on our place, and they seem such quiet, harmless chaps."

"The Major is quite right. I know it," said one of the oldest men present. "I confess that it didn't occur to me as strange that Brahmins should take such low-caste work until he told me. But I have found since, as others of us have, that these men are the secret cause of all the trouble and unrest that we have had lately among our coolies, to whom they preach sedition and revolution."

Several other estate managers corroborated his statement.

"But surely, sir, you don't suspect Chunerbutty of being mixed up in this?" asked Daleham. "He's been a friend of mine for a long time. I lived with him in London, and I'm certain he is quite loyal and pro-British."

"I know nothing of him, Daleham," replied the soldier. "But he is a Bengali Brahmin, one of the race and caste that are responsible for most of the sedition in India, and we must take precautions."

"I'd stake my life on him," exclaimed the boy hotly. "He's been a good friend to me, and I'll answer for him."

Dermot did not trouble to argue the matter further with him, but said to the company generally:

"This outrageous attempt to carry off Miss Daleham—"

"Oh, but you said yourself, sir, that the ruffians were Bhuttias," broke in the boy, still nourishing a grievance at the mistrust of his friend.

Dermot turned to him again.

"Do Bhuttias talk to each other in Bengali? The leader gave his orders in that language to one man—who, by the way, was the only one he spoke to—and that man passed them on to the others in Bhutanese."

This statement caused a sensation in the company.

"By Jove, is that a fact, Dermot?" cried Payne.

"Yes. These two were the men I shot. Do Bhuttias, unless they have just looted a garden successfully—and we know these fellows had not—carry sums like this?" And Dermot threw on the supper-table a cloth in which coins were wrapped. "Open that, Payne, and count the money, please."

All bent forward and watched as the planter opened the knot fastening the cloth and poured out a stream of bright rupees, the silver coin of India roughly equivalent to a florin. There was silence while he counted them.

"A hundred," he said.

Dermot laid on the table a new automatic pistol and several clips of cartridges.

"Bhuttias from across the border do not possess weapons like these, as you know. Nor do they carry English-made pocket-books with contents like those this one has."

He handed a leather case to Granger who opened it and took out a packet of bank notes and counted them. "Eight hundred and fifty rupees," he said.

The men around him looked at the notes and at each other. A young engineer whistled and said: "Whew! It pays to be a brigand. I'll turn robber myself, I think. Poor but honest man that I am I have never gazed on so much wealth before. Hullo! What's that bit of string?"

Dermot had taken from his pocket the cord that he had cut from the corpse of the second raider and laid it on the table.

"Perhaps some of you may not be sufficiently well acquainted with Indian customs to know what this is."

"I'm blessed if I am, Major," said the engineer. "What is it?"

"It's the janeo, or sacred cord worn by the three highest of the original Hindu castes as a symbol of their second or spiritual birth and to mark the distinction between their noble twice-born selves and the lower caste once-born Súdras. You see it is made up of three strings of spun cotton to symbolise the Hindu Trimurti (Trinity), Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, and also Earth, Air, and Heaven, the three worlds pervaded by their essence."

"Oh, I see. But where did you get it?" asked the engineer.

"Off the body of the second man that I shot, together with the pistol and pocket-book. Now, Bhuttias do not wear the janeo, not being Hindus. But high-caste Hindus do—and a Brahmin would never be without it."

"Oh, no. So you mean that the man wasn't a Bhuttia?"

"This is the last exhibit, as they say in the Law Courts," said Dermot, producing a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. "You don't find Bhuttias wearing these."

"By Jove, no," said Granger, taking them up and trying them. "Damned good glasses, these, and cost a bit, too."

Dermot turned towards Daleham.

"Do you remember showing me on this garden one day a coolie whom you said was a B.A. of Calcutta University?"

"Yes; he was called Narain Dass," replied Fred. "We spoke to him, you recollect, Major? He talked excellent English of the babu sort."

"What has happened to him?"

"I don't know. He disappeared a short time ago. Deserted, I suppose, though I don't see why he should. He was getting on well here."

Dermot smiled grimly and touched the cord and spectacles.

"The man who wore these, who led the Bhuttias in the raid, was Narain Dass."

These was a moment's amazed silence in the room. Then a hubbub arose, and there was a chorus of exclamations and questions.

"Good Heavens, is it possible, Major? He appeared to be such a decent, civil chap," exclaimed Daleham.

"His face seemed familiar to me, as he lay dead on the ground," replied Dermot. "I couldn't place him, though, until I found the spectacles. I put them on his nose, and then I knew him. His hair was cropped close, he was wearing Bhuttia clothes, but it was Narain Dass, the University graduate who was working as a coolie for a few annas a day."

"And he had eight hundred and fifty rupees on him," added the young engineer.

"Yes; and if all the Bhuttias had as much as the one shot that meant over two thousand."

"Where did they get it?"

"Who is behind all this?"

"The seditionists, of course," said an elderly planter.

"Yes; but today it isn't a question of an isolated outrage on one Englishwoman, nor of a few Bengali lawyers in Calcutta and their dupes among hot-headed students and ignorant peasants," said Dermot. "It's the biggest thing we've ever had to face yet in India. What we want to get at is the head and brains of the conspiracy."

"What do you make of this attempt on Miss Daleham?" asked Granger. "What was the object of it?"

"Probably just terrorism. They wanted to show that no one is secure under our rule. It may be that Narain Dass, who had worked on this garden and seen Miss Daleham, suggested it. They may have thought that the carrying off of an Englishwoman would make more impression than the mere bombing of a police officer or a magistrate—we are too used to that."

"But why employ Bhuttias?" asked Payne.

"To throw the pursuers off the track and prevent their being run down. The search would stop if we thought they'd gone across the frontier, so they could get away easily. When they had got Miss Daleham safely hidden away in the labyrinths of a native bazaar, perhaps in Calcutta, they'd have let everyone know who had carried her off."

"Who was the other fellow with Narain Dass—the chap who talked Bengali?"

"Probably a Bhuttia who knew the language was given the Brahmin as an interpreter."

"But I say, Major," cried a planter, "who the devil were the lot that attacked you?"

"I'm hanged if I know," Dermot answered. "I have been inclined to believe them to be a gang of political dacoits, probably coming to meet the Bhuttias and take Miss Daleham from them, but in that case they would have been young Brahmins and better armed. This lot were low-caste men and their weapons were mostly old muzzle-loading muskets."

"Perhaps they were just ordinary dacoits," hazarded a planter.

"Possibly; but they must have been new to the business," replied the Major. "For there wouldn't be much of an opening for robbers in the middle of the forest."

"It's a puzzle. I can't make it out," said Granger, shaking his head.

The others discussed the subject for some time, but no one could elucidate the mystery. At length Dermot said to Daleham:

"No answer has come to that telegram you sent to Ranga Duar, I suppose?"

"No, Major; though there's been plenty of time for a reply."

"It's strange. Parker would have answered at once if he'd got the wire, I know," said Dermot. "But did he? Most of the telegraph clerks in this Province are Brahmins—I don't trust them. Anyhow, if Parker did receive the wire, he'd start a party off at once. It's a long forty miles, and marching through the jungle is slow work. They couldn't get here before dawn. And the men would be pretty done up."

"I bet they would if they had to go through the forest in the dark," said a planter.

"Well, I want to start at daybreak to search the scene of the attack on us and the place where I came on the Bhuttias.