A few days after Colonel Stuart's death John Raby was making up his accounts in a very unenviable frame of mind, though the balance on the right side was a large one. As a rule this result would have given him keen pleasure; for though he was as yet too young to enjoy that delight of dotage, the actual fingering of gold, he inherited the instinct too strongly not to rejoice at the sight of its equivalent in figures. There were two reasons for his annoyance. First, the constantly recurring regret of not being able to invest his savings as he chose. With endless opportunities for turning over a high percentage coming under his notice, it was galling to be restricted by the terms of his covenant with Government from any commercial enterprise. Not that he would have scrupled to evade the regulation had the game been worth the candle; but as yet it was not. By and by, when his capital warranted a plunge, he had every intention of risking his position, and, if need be, of throwing it up. But for this justification he must wait years, unless indeed Fate sent him a rich wife. Heiresses however are scarce in India, and furlough was not yet due. So John Raby had to content himself with four per cent, which was all the more annoying when he remembered that Shunker Dâs was making forty out of the very indigo business on which he had tried to evade the income-tax. Sooner or later John Raby intended to have his finger in that pie, unless some more fortunate person plucked the plum out first.
The other reason for his annoyance arose from the fact, clearly demonstrated by his neat system of accounts, that over nine thousand rupees of his balance were the proceeds ofécartéplayed with a man who had had the confidence to make him his executor. The young civilian had no qualms of conscience here either; it had been a fair fight, the Colonel considering himself quite as good at the game as his antagonist. But somehow the total looked bad beside that other one, where intricate columns of figures added themselves into a row of nothings for the widow and orphans. Not a penny, so far as the executor could see, after paying current debts. About Madame and the black-and-tans, as he irreverently styled her family, he did not much concern himself; but for Belle it was different. He liked the girl, and had often told himself that the addition of money would have made her an excellent wife; just the sort one could safely have at home; and that to a busy man meant much. The thought that Philip Marsden with his large fortune showed a disposition to annex the prize lessened his regrets for her poverty, and yet increased them. Why, he asked himself savagely, did nice girls never have money? The only gleam of satisfaction, in short, to be yielded by the balance was the remembrance that his possession of the nine thousand rupees prevented Lâlâ Shunker Dâs from absorbing it. As a matter of fact his executorship had proved a wholesome check on the usurer's outcries, and it gave the young man some consolation to think that no one could have managed the Lâlâ so well as he did. The smile raised by this remembrance lingered still when Major Marsden walked, unannounced, through the window in unceremonious Indian fashion.
"Hullo," said John Raby, "glad to see you. Miss Stuart is much better to-day."
There was no reason why this very pleasant and natural remark should annoy his hearer, but it did. It reminded him that John Raby had acquired a sort of authority over the dead man's daughter by virtue of his executorship. Neither of them had seen her since the day of the funeral, for she had been hovering on the verge of nervous fever; but the responsibility of caring for her had fallen on John Raby and not on Philip Marsden. John Raby, and not he, had had to make all the necessary arrangements for her comfort and speedy departure to the hills as soon as possible; for Mrs. Stuart had collapsed under the shock of her husband's death, and the rapid Indian funeral had made the presence of the others impossible. So Philip Marsden felt himself to be out in the cold, and resented it.
"The nurse told me so when I inquired just now," he replied shortly.
"I'm to see her this afternoon when she comes back from her drive. I've sent for Shunker Dâs's carriage."
Major Marsden frowned. "You might have chosen some one else's, surely. He ruined her father."
"Not at all; he lent him money. Some one had to do it."
"Well, it's a grim world, and her drive can't be more so than the last she had." The remembrance evidently absorbed him, for he sat silent.
"You're looking used up, Marsden," said the other kindly. "Anything the matter?"
"Yes."
"Well, if it has to do with the Commissariat business I don't wonder. The Colonel's private affairs are simply chaos." He pointed to the piles of papers on and below the table with a contemptuous smile.
Major Marsden shook his head. "The public ones are in fairly good order. I'm surprised at the method; but of course he had good clerks; and then the system of checks--"
"Make it possible to be inaccurate with the utmost accuracy. What's wrong?"
Philip Marsden moved uneasily in his chair and gave an impatient sigh. "I suppose I've got to tell you, because you're the man's executor; but I don't want to."
"Never do anything you don't want, my dear fellow; it's a mistake. You don't know what will please other people, and you generally have a rough guess at your own desires."
"I don't suppose this will please you, the fact is there is a deficit of four thousand five hundred rupees in the private safe of which Colonel Stuart kept the key."
"Is that all?"
"All! Surely it is enough?"
"Quite enough; but I'm not exactly surprised."
"Then I am," returned the Major emphatically. "In fact I don't believe there really is any deficit at all. Do you think Shunker Dâs is the sort of man to make a false claim?"
"Not unless he has fallen upon fair proofs," said the other coolly. "What claim does he make?"
"He says he paid in three thousand five hundred the very day of Colonel Stuart's death and produces a receipt. Another thousand was paid in by some one else the day before. It seems odd that this should just make up the deficiency."
"But you have no proof that these are actually the notes missing?"
"Curiously enough I have. Contrary to what one would have expected, Colonel Stuart made a practice of writing the numbers of notes received in a private ledger, and none of the four entered as having been given by Shunker are to be found. Now, as you were Stuart's friend, and are his executor, do you know of any large payment made to any one within two days of his death? It limits itself, you see, to that time."
"Nothing to account for three thousand five hundred," returned John Raby a little hastily. "Let's stick to Shunker's claim first; it may be false. You say he holds a receipt?"
"Yes, and gives the numbers of the notes also."
"Right?"
"All but one. The book gives a 3 where he gives a 5; but natives often confuse figures."
John Raby nodded, and leant back in his chair thinking. "I believe the notes were paid," he said at last, "and if they are not to be found, the inference, I'm afraid, is clear. The Colonelborrowedthem."
"I don't believe it," returned the Major slowly. He had been drawing diagrams idly on a piece of paper and now threw aside the pen with decision. "I don't believe it," he repeated, "and I'll tell you why; I'd rather not tell you, as I said before, but as you're his executor I must. When I found him dead that morning there was a paper,--it wasn't a mistake, you understand"--his hearer nodded again--"and in it he had set down the reasons, or want of reasons, clearly enough. I haven't got the paper; I burnt it. I suppose I ought to have kept it, but it seemed a pity at the time. Anyhow the total he had,--borrowed--was close on ten thousand."
"Ten! you said there was only--"
"Just so; you see, as luck would have it, I had money with me at the time. So I replaced it."
"Ten thousand?"
"No; to be strictly accurate nine thousand seven hundred and fifty. Well,--you needn't stare so, Raby! Why the devil shouldn't I if I chose?"
John Raby gave a low whistle. "You must be awfully fond of Belle," he said after a pause.
Philip flushed a deep angry red. Ever since the possible necessity for giving his action to the world had dawned upon him he had known what comment would be made; but the knowledge did not lessen its sting. "Don't you think we had better keep Miss Stuart's name out of the conversation? I merely tell you this to show that I have good reasons for supposing that there is some chicanery, or confusion--"
"I beg your pardon! exactly so," assented John Raby with a smile. "I am as anxious as you can be to keep her out of it; and so, as executor, I'll undertake to refund the deficiency at once. There may be some mistake, but it is best to have no inquiry."
"I hardly see how that is to be prevented, for of course I had to report the matter."
John Raby literally bounded from his chair in unrestrained vexation. "Reported it! my dear Marsden, what the devil!--Oh, I beg your pardon, but really, to begin with, you cut your own throat."
"What else could I do?" asked the other quietly. "You forget I am in charge of the office."
"Do?" returned his hearer, pausing in his rapid pacing of the room. "Ah, I don't supposeyoucould do anything else; but I'm not so high-flown myself, and I can't see the good of chucking ten thousand rupees into the gutter for the sake of a sentiment, and then chucking the sentiment after it. For the girl adored her father, and I warn you--"
"If we can't keep off that subject I'll go," interrupted Philip rising. "I thought you might know something. Colonel Stuart dined with you that last evening, if you remember."
The civilian needed no reminder; indeed for the last ten minutes he had been distractingly conscious of a note for a thousand rupees lying in his despatch-box which might throw-some light on the mysterious disappearances. "Yes," he replied, "he did, and,--I see what you are thinking of, Marsden--he playedécartétoo; but to tell the truth, he was so fuddled and excited that I refused to go on, and sent him home. See what comes of benevolence. If I had let him play and rooked him, he wouldn't have had the opportunity of brooding over difficulties and putting an end to them. Again, you see there's nothing so unsafe as unselfishness."
Philip, remembering the notice of transfer he had found open by the dead man's side, wondered if matters might not have turned out differently had it been viewed by the calm light of day.
"Well, it can't be helped now," continued the speaker. "I don't approve of what has been done, but I'll do my best,--in fact I'm bound as executor--to clear the matter up. Though I'm sure I don't know where the inquiry may not lead me. It's an infernal nuisance, nothing less! Well, hand me over the papers and--I suppose you've no objection to my searching the office?"
"None; the Colonel's room is as he left it. I was afraid of noise so near the house." The speaker frowned at his own words, annoyed to find how thought for Belle crept into all his actions.
"So far, good. And look here, Marsden, if you value that girl's opinion go and tell her the downright truth. She will be able to see you this afternoon."
A piece of sound advice meant kindly, which had the not unusual effect of making the recipient hesitate about a course of action on which he had almost decided. In after years, when he considered the tangled clew Fate held at this time for his unwinding, he never hesitated to say, "Here I went wrong;" but at the time it seemed of small importance whether he saw the girl that day or the next. And once more the assumption of authority on John Raby's part irritated him into contradiction. "It will be a pity to disturb Miss Stuart's first day," he replied stiffly, and rode away.
The young civilian shrugged his shoulders. Philip Marsden wasn't a bad fellow on the whole, but a prig of the first water. Imagine any one gifted with a grain of common sense acting as he had done! Why, if he wanted the girl's good graces, had he not paid up the rest of the money and finished the whole affair? It was a long price to pay, of course, but it was better than giving ten thousand for nothing. Only a morbid self-esteem could have prevented him. Really, the sense of duty to be found in some people was almost enough to engender a belief in original sin. The mere struggle for existence could never have produced such a congeries of useless sentiment.
He threw himself into a chair determining to have a quiet cigar before tasking his brain with further thought about what he had just heard. But the first glance at the daily paper which had just come in made him throw it from him in disgust; for it contained a fulsomely flattering notice extolling Major Marsden at the expense of Colonel Stuart, and openly hinting at discrepancies in the accounts which the former officer was determined to bring home to the latter. The style betrayed the hand of some clerk toadying for promotion; but style or no style, the matter was clear, and to be read by the million. It all came from Marsden's infernal sense of duty, and John Raby had half a mind to spoil his little game by sending the paper over to Belle as usual. But with all his faults he was not a spiteful man, or one inclined to play the part of dog-in-the-manger. Consequently when Lâlâ Shunker Dâs's carriage went over for Belle thechuprassiin charge only carried a bouquet; the newspaper remained behind, keeping company with John Raby and magnanimity.
Belle never noticed the omission, for she was still strangely forgetful and indifferent; even when she drove along the familiar road, she hardly remembered anything of her last dismal ride. Only one or two things showed distinctly in the midst of past pain; such trivial things as a crooked cross of flowers, and screaming parrots in a stormy sky. The rest had gone, to come back,--the doctor told John Raby--ere long; just now the forgetfulness was best, though it showed how narrowly she had escaped brain-fever. So nobody spoke of the past, and while Philip was cherishing the remembrance of that first day, and using it to build up his belief in her trust, she was not even conscious that he had been the kindest among many kind.
Meanwhile Philip Marsden had not found himself in a bed of roses. The impossibility of seeing Belle left him a prey to uncertainty, and if he was ready fifty times a day to admit that he was in love, there were quite as many times when he doubted the fact. Yet love or no love, he was strenuously eager to save her from trouble; so his relief at finding the office in good order had been great. In regard to matters which had been in Colonel Stuart's own hands he naturally felt safe; the discovery of the deficiency therefore had been a most unpleasant shock, the more so because he saw at once that inquiry might make it necessary for him to betray his own action. He wearied himself fruitlessly with endeavours to discover any error, but the thought of hushing the matter up never occurred to him as possible. To some men it might have been a temptation; to him it was none, so he deserved no credit on that score. He told himself again that if Belle were what he deemed her, she would see the necessity of a report also; but then he was reckoning on perfection, and poor Belle, as it so happened, was in such a state of nervous tension that she was utterly incapable of judging calmly about anything relating to her father.
She lay on the sofa after she returned from her drive, feeling all the dreariness of coming back to everyday life, and, in consequence, exalting the standard of her loss till the tears rolled quietly down her cheeks. Whereupon poor Healy's Mary Ann, full of the best intentions, brewed her a cup of tea, and sent over the road for the newspaper, which she imagined had been forgotten. The master of the house was out for his evening ride, and thus it came to pass that when he called on his way home, he found Belle studying the misleading paragraph with flushed cheeks and tearful eyes. "What does it mean?" she asked tempestuously. "What is it that he dares to say of father?"
With her pretty, troubled face looking into his John Raby washed his hands of further magnanimity. He refused to play the part of Providence to a man who could not look after his own interests, and whom, in a vague way, he felt to be a rival. So, considering Belle only, he told the modified truth, making as light as he could of the deficiency, and openly expressing his regret that it should ever have been reported, the more so because Major Marsden himself believed there was some mistake. This consolation increased her indignation.
"Do you mean to say," she cried, trembling with anger and weakness, "that he has dragged father's name in the dirt for a mistake? Why didn't he come to me, or to you?Wewould have told him it was impossible. But he always misjudged father; he hated him; he never would come here. Ah yes! I see it all now! I understand."
The "we" sounded sweetly in the young man's ears, but its injustice was too appalling to be passed over. He felt compelled to defence. For a moment he thought of telling the whole truth, but he reflected that Philip had a tongue as well as he, and that no one had a right to make free with another man's confidence. Consequently his palliation only referred to the culprit's well-known inflexibility and almost morbid sense of duty; all of which made Belle more and more angry, as if the very insistence on such virtues involved some depreciation of their quality in the dead man.
"I do not care what happens now," she said vehemently. "I know well enough that nothing he can say will harm father's good name; but I will never forgive him, never! It is no use excusing him; all you say only makes it more unnecessary, and cruel, and,--and stupid. I will never forgive him; no, never!"
And all that night she lay awake working herself into a fever, mental and bodily, by piling up the many evidences in favour of her theory as to Philip's long-cherished enmity. He had never called, never spoken to them when all the world beside had been friendly. His very kindness to Dick was tainted; for had he not sided with the boy against her father? Once the train of thought started, it was easy to turn the points so that there seemed no possibility of its following any other line than the one she laid down for it as she went along. Finally, to clinch the matter, memory served her a sorry trick by suddenly recalling to her recollection Philip Marsden's gloomy face when she had told him who she was on their first meeting at the railway-station. She sat up in bed with little hot hands stretched into the darkness. "O father! father! I was the only one who loved you,--the only one!" A climax at once of sorrow and consolation which somehow soothed her to sleep.
Now, while she was employed in blackening his character, Philip Marsden was crediting her with all the cardinal virtues. He had not seen the daily paper, for reasons which put many other things out of his head for the time being. He had no idea when he wilfully went to play racquets that evening instead of following Raby's advice of seeing Belle, that he was throwing away his last chance of an interview; but as he sat outside the court, cooling himself after the game, an urgent summons came from the orderly-room. Ten minutes after he was reading a telegram bidding the 101st Sikhs start to the front immediately. Farewell to leisure; for though the regiment had been under warning for service and in a great measure prepared for it, the next forty-eight hours were ones of exceeding bustle. Philip, harassed on all sides, had barely time to realise what it meant; and, despite a catch at his heart when he thought of Belle, the blood ran faster in his veins from the prospect of action. His own certainty, moreover, was so great, that it seemed almost incredible that one, of whose sympathy he felt assured, should see the matter with other eyes. Nevertheless he was determined to tell her all at the first opportunity; and often, as he went untiringly through the wearisome details of inspection, his mind was busy over the interview to come; but the end was always the same, and left him with a smile on his face.
John Raby happened to be standing in the verandah when, between pillar and post, Philip found that vacant five minutes which he had been chasing all day long.
"Can't see you, I'm afraid," he returned, cheerfully, to the inquiry for Miss Stuart. "The fact is she has worried herself into a fever over that paragraph. I don't wonder; it was infernal!"
"What paragraph?" asked Philip innocently.
John Raby looked at him and laughed, not a very pleasant kind of laugh. "Upon my soul," he said, "youarean unlucky beggar. I begin to think it's a true case, for you've enough real bad luck to make a three-volume-course of true love run rough! So you haven't seen it? Then I'll fetch it out. The paper is just inside."
Philip, reining in his restive horse viciously, read the offending lines, punctuating them with admonitory digs of his heels and tugs at the bridle as the charger fretted at the fluttering paper. He looked well on horseback, and the civilian, lazily leaning against a pillar, admired him, dangling sword, jingling spurs, and all. He folded the paper methodically against his knee and handed it back. "And Miss Stuart believed all that?" he asked quietly.
"Women always believe what they see printed. She is in an awful rage, of course; but I warned you, Marsden, you know I did."
"You were most kind. Will you tell Miss Stuart, when you see her, that I called to say good-bye and that I was sorry,--yes! you can say I was sorry, for the cause of her fever." His tone was bitterness itself.
"Look here, Marsden," said the other, "don't huff; take my advice this time and write to her."
"Do you think the belief of women extends to what they see written? I didn't know you had such a high opinion of the sex, Raby! Well, good-bye to you, and thanks."
"Oh, I shall be down to see the 101st march out. Five A.M., isn't it?"
Philip nodded as he rode off. All through that last night in cantonments he was angry with everything and everybody, himself included. Why had he meddled? What demon had possessed the Brigadier to put him in charge of the Commissariat office? Why had not this order for the front come before? Why had it come now? What induced thebabuwho penned that paragraph to be born? And why did a Mission school teach him the misuse of adjectives? He was still too angry to ask himself why he had not taken John Raby's advice; that touched too closely on the real mistake to be acknowledged yet awhile.
The gloom on his face was not out of keeping with the scene, as the regiment marched down the Mall at early dawn while the band playedZakhmi, that plaintive lament of the Afghan maiden for her wounded lover. Yet there was no pitiful crowd of weeping women and children, such as often mars the spectacle of a British regiment going on service. The farewells had all been said at home, and if the women wept in the deserted lines, the men marched, eyes front without a waver, behind the sacred flag borne aloft by the tall drum-major, whose magnificent stature was enhanced by an enormous high-twined turban. Close at his heels went two men waving white silver-mounted whisks over the Holy Grunth, watchful lest aught might settle on the sacred page which lay open on a yellow satin cushion borne by four sergeants. There, plainly discernible even by the half-light, was inscribed in broad red and black lettering the sure guide through death to life for its faithful followers. Then, separated by a wide blank from the book in front and the men behind, rode the Colonel. Finally, shoulder to shoulder, marched as fine a body of men as could be seen east or west, with dexterously knotted turbans neutralising the least difference in height, so that the companies came by as if carved out of one block.
It was a stirring sight, making the blood thrill, especially when, at the turn of the road leading to barracks, the bands of the British regiments formed in front to play their fellow soldiers out of the station, and the Sikhs broke into their old war cry, "Jai! Jail guru-ji ke Jai!(Victory, victory, our Teachers' victory)." It mingled oddly with the--strains of "The Girl I left Behind Me."
A little group of horsemen waited for the last farewells at the cantonment boundary, and one of them riding alongside told Philip Marsden that a clue had been found, and the truth would be made manifest. The conventional answer of pleasure came reluctantly, but as the hands of the two men met, the gloomy, troubled face looked almost wistfully into the clever, contented one. "You are very good to her, Raby; I know that; good-bye." The workmanlike groans and shrieks of the fife and drum replaced the retiring bands, and as cheer after cheer greeted the final departure Philip Marsden felt that John Raby was left completely master of the situation.
That evening, twenty miles out among the sandhills, he put his pride in his pocket, impelled thereto by a persistent gnawing at his heart, and followed the advice of writing to Belle; an honest, if somewhat hard letter, telling her, not of his good deeds, but the truth of those which seemed to her bad. Ten days after at Peshawar, with the last civilised post he was to see for many weeks, his letter came back to him unopened and re-addressed in a shaky hand.
The heart-ache was better by that time. "She might have afforded me the courtesy of an envelope," he said as he threw the letter into the camp-fire.
The clue spoken of by John Raby lay in the note for a thousand rupees with which Colonel Stuart had paid a portion of his card debts during his last deal in the great game. It proved to be not only one of the missing notes, but, as luck would have it, the very one about the number of which uncertainty existed. The figures stood as the Colonel had written them; so the mistake lay with the usurer, if it was really a mistake. John Raby lit a cigarette and meditated, with the list before him; but beyond an odd persistency in threes and fives, the figures presented no peculiarity. So he set the problem aside till he could tackle it on the spot where it had arisen; for he was a great believer in scenery as an aid to the senses.
The day was almost done, however, ere he found leisure for the task; nevertheless, fatigued as he was, he set to work methodically and was rewarded by the immediate discovery that uncertainty existed as to the number of another note, the one which had been paid in by some one else. The entry had been blotted by the hasty closing of the ledger, and though it read like 159934, it was quite conceivable that it might be something else. Again those threes and fives! Idly enough he wrote the two uncertainties on a sheet of paper, and sat staring at them till suddenly a suggestion came to him, making him re-write the number given by Shunker in close imitation of the dead man's bold black figures, and then deliberately blot it by placing it in the ledger. The result bore so close a resemblance to the blurred entry that his quick brain darted off in a wonder how the usurer had got hold of the number of a note which he had not paid in. No reasonable explanation suggesting itself, he began a systematic search in the waste paper basket; the scraps there would at least tell him on what work the Colonel had been engaged during his last day. He knew that Shunker had had an interview with him in the morning, but that did not account for the shreds of a receipt for three thousand five hundred maunds of grain which he found almost on the top. An old receipt dated some months back; three thousand five hundred too--an odd coincidence! So far good; the next thing was to have a sight of Shunker's face before he had time to hear rumours or make plans.
The summons to come up for an interview early next morning rather pleased the Lâlâ, for he received it while at the receipt of custom, when it added to his importance in the eyes of the wedding guests who sat watching a nautch girl sidle, like a pouter pigeon, over a strip of dirty carpet. She was stout to obesity; her oiled hair was plastered so as to narrow her forehead to a triangle; her voluminous skirts ended just under the arms in a superfluity of bust. She held one fat hand to her cheek persistently as if in the agonies of toothache, while she yelled away as if the dentist had failed to comfort her. Yet the best native society of Faizapore had sat there for an hour and a half with the impassive faces of the Asiatic bent on amusement; a face which surely will make Paradise dull work for thehouris.
"Yea! I will come to Raby if he needs me," assented the rich man, turning with a spiteful chuckle to his right hand, where old Mahomed Lateef sat solemn and dignified. "See you, Khânsahib, how even the Sirkar favours money?"
"When I was young, Oh Shunker!" retorted the other grimly, "the hands of Nikalsane and Jan Larnce held the sword too tight to leave room for the rupees."
"Ay! when you Khâns of Kurtpore brought fifty swords to flash behind theirs, without payment. Swords are bought nowadays, and those who lack money must e'en go to the wall."
The old Mahomedan's eyes flared. "Mashâllâh, ohbuniah-ji, if they go to the wall in my poor house they will find swords enow! But yesterday a hut fell--I mean 'twas pulled down for repairs--and we came on five Persian blades![3]Ready to use, O Lâlâ-ji; no spot or blemish of rust. Haply they may help back the rupees some day."
Shunker moved uneasily in his chair, and the guests sank again into silence, broken only by the occasional tributary hiccup which native etiquette demands for the memory of dinner. The stars shone overhead, and a great trail of smoke from the brazier of oil and cotton-seed seemed to mix itself up with the Milky Way. Little Nuttu, the hero of the feast, had fallen asleep in his chair, his baby bride being engaged in cutting her teeth elsewhere. A group of younger men, squatted in the far corner round a flaring paraffin lamp, talked vociferously in a mixed jargon of "individual freedom," "political rights," and "representative government." And no one laughed or cried at anything; neither at the nautch girl with her unmentionable songs, nor the spectacle of people discussing freedom while engaged in taking it away from two harmless infants.
So the night wore on in dull dissipation, leaving Shunker at a disadvantage when he came to confront the young civilian's clear-cut, clean-shaven face in the morning.
"You have made a mistake, Lâlâ-ji," he began, opening fire at once; "a serious mistake about the notes you claim to have left with Colonel Stuart." So much, at least, was certain; John Raby, however, saw more in the unrestrained start of alarm which the surprise evoked. "It isn't so very serious," he continued blandly; "nothing for you to be so frightened about, Lâlâ-ji; we all make mistakes at times. By the way, did you keep your original memorandum of the numbers in English or Mâhâjani [accountant's character]?" "In Mâhâjani,Huzoor," bleated Shunker, and John Raby smiled. For this diminished the possibility of clerical error enormously; indeed it was to settle this point that he had sent for the usurer. "So much the better for you," he went on carelessly, "and if you will bring the paper to me this evening, say about six, I'll see if we can get the error in your claim altered. You have interchanged a five and a three in one number, and it is as well to be accurate before the inquiry commences. It will be a very stringent one. By the by, what time did you last see Colonel Stuart?"
But the usurer was prepared this time, and when he finally bowed himself out, John Raby was as much in the dark as ever in regard to the details of a plot which he felt sure had been laid.
All day long in a sort of under-current of thought he was busy ransacking memory and invention for a theory, coming back again and again, disheartened, to the half-tipsy laugh with which Colonel Stuart had given him the note, declaring it was a windfall. A windfall! what could that mean! Had Shunker given it back? Then there must have been a second interview; but none of the servants could speak to one. He went over early to the office and sat in the dead man's chair trying to piece things together. The shadows were beginning to cling to the corners ere the usurer was announced, and something in the scared glance he gave towards the tall figure in the seat of office convinced John Raby that the man was reminded of another and similar visit to that room. The quaver in hand and voice with which he produced his day-book, and said that theHuzoor'snumber was right after all, clinched the matter.
"I suppose," remarked the young man coolly, "you were confused by the other note." A random shot, but it struck home!
"Huzoor!" faltered the fat man.
John Raby looked him full in the face, and went one better; poker was a game of which he was passionately fond. "The other note with the threes and the fives which you saw,--which you got when,--I mean the second time you came here--when you brought the receipt for the grain which he destroyed--By Jove!" He threw his hand up, and a light came into his face. "Fool not to see it before--the receipt,--thewrongreceipt of course."
"But he never gave me the money; I swear he didn't!" protested Shunker, completely off his guard.
His hearer broke into a fit of cynical laughter. "Thank you, Shunker, thank you! Of course he gave you the money: I see it all; and as one of the numbers were different, you improved on your original memorandum, thinking you had made a mistake. Stay,--number 150034 wasn't your note. By Jove! he must have given you back the whole roll of four thousand five hundred by mistake. You're a bigger blackguard than I thought!"
"No, no!" cried the usurer, beside himself with fear of thisshaitan. "Only three! I swear it! I only picked up three."
"Thank you again, Lâlâ. You picked up three. Let me see; how was it?" The young man rose, pacing the room quickly and talking rapidly. "Stuart must have taken four from the safe. The windfall! by George! the windfall. The Colonel must have thought Shunker had only taken two. Well! you're a nice sort of scoundrel," he went on, stopping opposite the usurer and viewing him with critical eyes. "So you gave him the wrong receipt on purpose, and now claim a second payment, is that it?"
Shunker collapsed to the floor as if every bone had left his body. "I didn't,--I'll swear by holy Ganges, by my son's head--I didn't mean it. I thought he would kill me, and I gave him the wrong receipt in my hurry. Oh, sir, I swear--"
"Let go my legs, you fool, or I shall! Stand up, and don't let your teeth chatter. I'm not going to kill you. So you weren't even a good scoundrel, Shunker, only a pitiful fortune-finder. Having done a clever trick by mistake, you thought it safe to claim the money again, as the only witness was dead. And it was safe, but for that chance of the other note! It was hard luck, Lâlâ-ji, hard luck!"
There was something almost uncanny in John Raby's jeering smile as he threw himself into a chair and began to light one of his eternal cigarettes. The fact being that he was elated beyond measure at his own success, and unwilling to detract, as it were, from his own skill by any hint of carelessness on the other side.
"And now, Shunker," he asked, his chief attention being apparently given to his tobacco, "what do you intend to do?" Coolly as he spoke, he was conscious of inward anxiety; for he had rapidly reviewed the position, and confessed himself impotent should the usurer regain the courage of denial, since any attempt to prove the facts must bring to light his own possession of the unlucky note. His best chance therefore was to work on the Lâlâ's terror without delay.
"I throw myself on your honour's mercy," quavered the usurer in a dull despairing tone, knowing by experience that it was but a broken reed on which to rely.
"You don't deserve any; still there are reasons which incline me to be lenient. Your son is young to be deprived of a father's care; besides, as the Colonelsahib'sexecutor, I do not wish to have a committee of inquiry in the office. You understand?"
"Sahib, I understand." This eminently sensible view of the matter was as welcome as it was unexpected.
"Therefore I shall be content if you withdraw your claim, in some credible way of course. Equally, of course, you will sign a confession, which I will burn when--"
"But,sahib, how--?"
"Not another word. I particularly do not wish to know what you are going to do; but I haven't lived seven years in India without being aware how thingscanbe burked."
"If thesahibwould only tell me--"
"I tell you to burke it! Why, man, if I only hadyour conscienceall things would be possible; I'd make money even out of this. I'll help you so far. You have somehow or another to restore certain notes, the numbers of which are known. I happen to have traced one of these already, and you happen to have got hold of a wrong one. I will exchange. If you haven't got it about you,--ah! I see you have; that is a great saving of trouble."
A quarter of an hour later John Raby wrote a few lines to Major Marsden's successor enclosing a thousand-rupee note which he had found in an unexpected place in Colonel Stuart's office, adding his belief that the others would doubtless turn up ere long, and suggesting a few days' grace in order that a thorough search might be made.
"Never lie if you can help it," he said to himself sardonically. "That dear old prig Marsden would be shocked at my squaring this business, though at one stage of the proceedings he tried to do so himself. What the devil would be the good of an inquiry to any living soul? And as I've lost a thousand in avoiding one, no one could accuse me of interested motives. Marsden and I row in the same boat, and if I had had as much money as he has!-- Well, she is a dear little girl, and that's a fact."
He called on the dear little girl after leaving the office, and comforted her greatly by general expressions of hope. They made her almost more grateful to him than any certainty would have done, for they showed a more perfect trust in her father's integrity. So even the young man's caution told in his favour, and he went home very well satisfied with himself, to await the final explanation that was to emanate from the Lâlâ's fertile brain. The notes would be found somewhere, no doubt; or else in looking over his accounts he would discover a like sum owing to Government which would cause the disappearance of the apparent deficiency.
But amid all his terror, the Lâlâ had noted John Raby's assertion that, given a certain conscience, he could make money out of the restitution; and these idle words stood between him and many a solution of the difficulty. His soul (if he had one) was full of hate, a sense of defeat, and a desire for revenge. If only he could devise some plan by which he could retain the plunder, especially that thousand-rupee note the white-facedshaitanhad given him in exchange!
Dawn found him still in the upper chamber alone with his faithful jackal. There was determination in his face and dogged resistance in Râm Lâl's.
"Fool!" whispered the usurer. "If I fall, where art thou? And I swear I will let the whole thing go. I have money,--thou hast none. It is only a year without opium or tobacco, Râmu, and the wife and children well cared for meanwhile. Are you going to back out of the agreement, unfaithful to salt?"
"A year is ten years without opium, Lâlâ; and there is no need for this. I am the scapegoat, it is true, but only for safety."
"Son of owls!" cursed the usurer, still under his breath. "It is for safety, thy safety as well as mine. For if thou wilt do as I bid thee, it will tie thatshaitan'shands; and if they be not tied, they will meddle. Besides, thesahib-logueare never satisfied without a scapegoat, and if some one go not to jail they will inquire; and then, Râmu, wilt thou fare better? 'Twill be longer in the cells, that is all. Opium can be smuggled, Râmu! See, I promise five rupees a month to the warder, and a big caste dinner when thou returnest from the father-in-law's house [a native euphemism for the jail]. And listen, Râmu--"
So the whispered colloquy went on and on through the hot night, and during the course of the next day John Raby was asked to sign a search-warrant for the house of one Râmu Lâl, who was suspected by his master, Shunker Dâs, of having stolen the missing notes from Colonel Stuart's office-table. For a moment the young man, taken aback by this unexpected turn of affairs, hesitated; but reflection showed him that, for all he could prove to the contrary, the crime might have been committed. At least there would be time enough for interference at a later stage of the proceedings. So Râmu and his house were searched; a note for five hundred rupees was found on his person, and two previous convictions against him promptly produced by the police.
The discovery of but one, and that the smallest, note gave John Raby the key to Shunker's plan; for if it could be proved that the money had been stolen after it had been duly handed over to the Commissariat officer, the Lâlâ's claim would remain intact. Thus he would be the gainer by exactly three thousand rupees. Some of this would of course go towards indemnifying the scapegoat; but Râmu was notoriously the contractor's jackal, and bound to take such risks.
What was to be done? It was maddening to be outwitted in this manner, but after all no one was really the worse for it. Râmu had evidently been squared: Shunker was bound to escape in any case; and Government had gained all round. Practically speaking, he and Marsden were the only sufferers; the latter in having paid up ten thousand rupees which the authorities must otherwise have lost; he, in having restored one thousand out of his honest earnings. Besides, he had forced Shunker to disgorge another five hundred; in fact, but for him and hisécartéthe fraud could not have been discovered. Surely that was enough for any man to do; especially as one disclosure must lead to another, and in that case Government would have to pay Marsden back his money. All of which devious but straightforward arguments ended in John Raby taking care that the case should be tried in another court; which it was and successfully. Râm Lâl, confronted by a mass of evidence ingeniously compounded after native fashion from truth and falsehood,--from the denials of honest people who could not possibly have seen anything, and the assertions of those who were paid to have seen everything,--pleaded guilty to having watched his master give the money to Colonel Stuart, who, being in a hurry, had placed it in an envelope-box on the writing-table, whence Râmu, returning after dark, had taken it "in a moment of forgetfulness" [the usual native excuse].
Here the Lâlâ interrupted the Court to say in a voice broken by emotion that Râmu was a faithful servant, a very faithful servant indeed.
So the jackal got eighteen months for the theft, and Shunker drove down next morning to the jail on a visit of inspection and took the opportunity of presenting one of the warders with five rupees.
The net result of the whole affair, from a monetary (that is to say from John Raby's) point of view, being that Shunker gained three thousand rupees, the Government six thousand and odd, while Philip Marsden lost over nine, and he himself forfeited one. He did not count other gains and losses; not even when a day or two after the trial he stood, with Belle's hand in his, saying good-bye to her ere she departed to the hills. Thegharriwaited with its pile of luggage outside in the sunlight; poor Healy's Mary Ann, who was to accompany her to Rajpore, was arranging the pillows and fussing over the position of the ice-box which was to ensure comfort.
"I can't thank you," said the girl tearfully, her pretty eyes on his. "I wish I could, but I can't."
"Perhaps you may,--some day," he replied vaguely, wishing it were possible. "After all I did nothing; it was clear from the first that there was a mistake."
"Some people did not see the clearness," she returned bitterly. "So your kindness,--and--and confidence--were all the more welcome. I shall never forget it."
Once more the young civilian was driven, by sheer keenness of perception, to the position of an outsider who, seeing the game, sees the odds also. "If I were you I'd forget all about it," he said, more earnestly than was his wont. "It has been a bad dream from beginning to end. When we all come back from the wars with a paucity of limbs and a plethora of medals we can begin afresh. You look surprised. The fact is I've just accepted a political berth with one of the forces, and am off at once. I am glad; Faizapore will be dull when you are gone."
"What a nice young gentleman a' be, miss," said poor Healy's Mary Ann when he had seen them safely stowed away, and with a plunge and a wild tootle of the coachman's horn they were dashing out of the gate. "So cheerful like. He must a' suffered a deal 'imself for to keep up 'is sperrits so in trouble. It's wonderful what one gets used to."
"He has been very good to me,--and to father," replied Belle softly.