Ranjoor Singh; on the trail of a murderer, shoved with his whole strength against a little door of the House-of-the-Eight-Half-brothers. It yielded suddenly. He shot in headlong, and the door slammed behind him. As he fell forward into pitch blackness he was conscious of shooting bolts behind and of the squeaking of a beam swung into place.
But, having served the Raj for more years than he wanted to remember, through three campaigns in the Himalayas, once against the Masudis, and once in China, he was in full possession of trained soldier senses. Darkness, he calculated instantly, was a shield to him who can use it, and a danger only to the unwary; and there are grades of wariness, just as there are grades of sloth.
Two men who thought themselves so wide awake as to be beyond the reach of government, each threw a noosed rope, and caught each other. Ranjoor Singh could not see the ropes, but he could hear the stifled swearing and the ensuing struggle; and an ear is as good as an eye in the dark.
Something—he never knew what—warned him to duck and step forward. He felt the whistle of a club that missed him by so little as to make the skin twitch on the back of his neck.
His right leg shot sidewise, and he tripped a man. In another second he had the club, and there was no measurable interval of time then before the darkness was a living miracle of blows that came from everywhere and missed nothing.
Three men went down, and Ranjoor Singh was in command of a situation whose wherefore and possibilities he could not guess until an electric torch declared itself some twenty feet away, at more than twice his height, and he stood vignetted in a circle of white light.
"The sahib proves a gentle guest!" purred a voice he thought he recognized. It was a woman's. "Has the sahib a pistol with him?"
Ranjoor Singh, cursing his own neglect of soldierly precaution, saw fit not to answer. A human arm reached like a snake into the ring of light. He struck at it with the club, and a groan announced that he had struck hard enough.
"Does the sahib think that the noise of a pistol would cause his friends to come? Is Ranjoor Singh ashamed? Speak, sahib! Is it well to break into a house and be surly with the hostess?"
Ranjoor Singh stepped backward, and the ring of light followed him, until he stood pressed against the teak door and could feel the heavy beam that ran up and down it, locked firmly above and below. He prodded over his head behind him with the club, trying to find what held the beam, and the ring of light lifted a foot or two, then five feet, until its center was on the center of the club's handle.
A pistol cracked and flashed then, from behind the light, and the club splintered. He dropped it, and the torch-light ceased, leaving him dazed, but not so dazed that he did not hear a man sneak up and carry the splintered club away. He followed after the man, for he knew now that he was in a narrow passage and no man could get by him to attack from behind.
But again the torch-light sought him out. Half-way to the foot of steep stairs that he could dimly outline he halted, for advance against hidden pistol-fire and dazzling light was futile.
"Look!" said the same soft, woman's voice. "Look, sahib! See, RanjoorSingh! the hooded death! See the hooded death behind you!"
It was not her command that made him look. He knew better than to turn his head at an unseen woman's bidding in the dark. But he heard them hiss, and he turned to see four cobras come toward him, with the front third of their bodies raised from the floor and their hoods extended. He saw that a panel in the wooden wall had slid, and the last snake's tail was yet inside the gap. There was no need of a man to slip between him and the door!
"There are more in the wall, Ranjoor Singh! Will they follow thee up-stairs? See, they come! Step swiftly, for the hooded death is swift!"
The light went out again, and his ears were all he had to warn him of the snakes' approach—ears and imagination. Swift as a well launched charge of light cavalry, he leaped for the stairs and took them four at a time. He reached the top one sooner than he knew it. The torch flashed in his eyes, and he saw a pistol-mouth just beyond arm-reach.
"Stand, Ranjoor Singh!" said a voice that he felt sure he recognized.His eyes began to search beyond the light for glimpses of dim outline.
"Back, Ranjoor Singh! Back to the right—toward that door! In, through that door—so!"
He obeyed, since he knew now with whom he had to deal. There was no sense at all in taking liberties with Yasmini. He stepped into a bare, dark, teak-walled room, and she followed him, and she had scarcely closed the door at her back before another door opened at the farther end, and two of her maids appeared, carrying candle-lamps.
"What do you want with me?" demanded Ranjoor Singh.
"Nay! Did I invite the sahib?"
"I came about a murderer who entered by that door through which I came."
"To pay him the reward, perhaps?" she asked impudently.
"Is this thy house?" asked Ranjoor Singh.
"This is the House-of-the-Eight-Half-brothers, sahib."
"This is a hole where murderers hide! A man of mine was slain in the street below, and the murderer came in here. Where is he now?"
"He and the bigger fool who followed him," said Yasmini, poising herself like a nodding blossom and smiling like the promise of new love, as she paused to be insolent and let the insolence sink home, "are at my mercy!"
Ranjoor Singh did not answer, but she could draw no amusement from his silence, for his eye was unafraid.
"I am from the North, where the quality of mercy is thought weakness," she smiled sweetly.
"Who asks mercy? I was seen and heard to enter. There will be a hundred seeking me within an hour!"
"Sahib, within two hours there will be five thousand around this house, yet none will seek to enter! And they will find no murderer, though thou shalt see thy murderer. Come this way, sahib."
A whiff of warm wind might have blown her, so swiftly, lissomely she ran toward the other door, laughing back at him across her shoulder and leaving a trail of aromatic scent. The two maids held their candle-lanterns high, and, striding like a soldier, Ranjoor Singh followed Yasmini, not caring that the maids shut the heavy door behind him and bolted it. He argued to himself that he was as safe in one room as in another, and she as dangerous; also, that it made no difference in which room he might be when the squadron or his colonel missed him.
"Look, Ranjoor Singh! Look through that hole!"
There was plenty of light in this room, for there was a lantern in every corner. He could see that she was gazing through a hole in the wall at something that amused her, and she motioned to another hole eight feet away from it. He crossed a floor that was solid and age-old; no two planks of it were of even width or length, but none creaked.
At her invitation he looked through the little square hole she pointed out. And then, for the first time, he confessed surprise.
"Thou, Jagut Singh!" he exclaimed.
He stepped back, blinked to reassure himself, and stepped to the hole again. Back to back, tied right hand to right, left hand to left, so that their arms were crossed behind them, and lashed waist to waist, a trooper of D Squadron and the Afridi whom lie had kicked at Yasmini's sat on the floor facing opposite walls. Dumb misery was stamped on the Sikh's face, the despair of evaporated savagery on the Afridi's.
"Jagut Singh!" said the risaldar-major, louder this time; and the trooper looked up, almost as if hope had been that instant born in him.
"Jagut Singh!"
The trooper grinned. A white row of ivory showed between his black beard and mustache. He tried to look sidewise, but the rope that held him tight to the Afridi hurt his neck.
"I knew it, sahib!" he shouted. "I knew that one would come for me! This hill wildcat has fought until the ropes cut both of us; but take time, sahib! I can wait. Attend to the duty first. Only let him who comes bring water with him, for this is a thirsty place!"
Ranjoor Singh looked sidewise. He could see that Yasmini was absorbed in contemplation of her prisoners. Her little lithe form was pressed tightly against the wall, less than two yards away. He could guess, and he had heard a dozen times, that dancing had made her stronger than a panther and more swift. Yet he thought that if he had her in his arms he could crush those light ribs until she would yield and order her prisoner released. The trooper's confidence deserved immediate, not postponed, reward.
He watched for a minute. He could see that her bosom rose and fell regularly against the woodwork; she was all unconscious of her danger, he was sure of it. He changed his position, and she neither looked nor moved. He changed it again, so that his weight was all on his left foot; he was sure she had not noticed. Then he sprang.
He sprang sidewise, as a horse does that sees a snake by the roadside, every nerve and sinew keyed to the tightest pitch—eye, ear and instinct working together. And she, in the same second, turned to meet him smiling, with outstretched arms, as if she would meet him half-way and hug him to her bosom, only she stepped a pace backward, instead of forward as she had seemed to intend.
He landed where he had meant to, on the spot where she had stood. His left hand clutched at the wall, and a second too late he made a wild grab at the hole she had peered through, trying to get his fingers into it. What she had done he never knew, but the floor she had stood on yielded, and he heard her laugh as he slipped through the opening like a tiger into a pit-trap, and fell downward into blackness.
With a last tremendous effort he caught at the floor and held himself suspended by his finger-ends. But she came and trod on them, and though her weight was light, malice made her skilful, and she hurt him until he had to set his teeth and drop. He would never have believed that those soft slipper-soles could have given so much pain.
"Forget not thy trooper in his need!" she called, as he fell away through the opening. And then the trap shut.
To his surprise he did not fall very far, and though he landed on an elbow and a hip, he struck so softly that for a moment he believed he must be mad, or dead, or dreaming. Then his fingers, numb from Yasmini's pressure, began to recognize the feel of gunny-bags, and of cotton-wool, and of paper. Also, he smelled kerosene or something very like it.
"Forget not the water for thy trooper, Ranjoor Singh!"
He looked up to see Yasmini's face framed in the opening, and he thought there was more devilment expressed in it, for all her loveliness, than in her voice that never quite lost its hint of laughter. He did not answer, and the trap-door closed again.
He knelt and began to grope through the dark on hands and knees, but gave that up presently because the dust from old sacks and piles of rubbish began to choke him. Then rats came to investigate him. He heard several of them scamper close, and one bit his leg; so he made ready to fight for his life against the worst enemy a man may have, praying a little in the Sikh way, that does not reckon God to be far off at any time.
Suddenly the trap-door opened, and the rats scampered away from the light and noise.
"Thus is a soldier answered!" muttered Ranjoor Singh.
"Is the risaldar-major sahib thirsty?" wondered Yasmini.
He could hear her pouring water out of a brass ewer into a dish, and pouring it back again. The metal rang and the water splashed deliriously, but he was not very thirsty yet; he had been thirstier on parade a hundred times.
When her head and shoulders darkened the aperture, he did not trouble this time to look at her.
"Is it dark down there?" she asked him; but he did not answer.
So she struck a match and lit a newspaper. In a moment a ball of fire was floating downward to him, and it was then that the smell of dust and kerosene entered his consciousness as pincers enter the flesh of men in torment. He stood up with hands upstretched to catch the fire—caught it—bore it downward—and smothered it in gunny-bags.
"Still dark?" she said, looking through the aperture once more. "I will send another one!"
So Ranjoor Singh found his tongue and cursed her with a force and comprehensiveness that only Asia can command; he gave her to understand that the next fire she dropped on him should be allowed to work God's will and burn her—her, her rats, her cobras, and her cutthroats. Two honest Sikhs, he swore, would die well to such an end.
"Drop thy fire and I will fan the flame!" he vowed, and she believed him.
"I will send my cobras down to keep the sahib company!" she mocked.
But Ranjoor Singh proposed to take one danger at a time, and he was quite sure that she wanted him alive, not dead, for otherwise he would have been dead already. He held his tongue and listened while she splashed the water.
"Thy trooper is very thirsty, sahib!"
She was on a warmer scent now, for that squadron of his and the men of his squadron were the one love of his warrior life. Some spirit of malice whispered her as much.
"The trooper shall have water when Ranjoor Singh sahib has promised on his Sikh honor."
"Promised what?" His voice betrayed interest at last; it suggested future possibilities instead of a grim present.
"That he will do what is required of him!"
"Is that the price of a drink for Jagut Singh?"
"Aye! Will the sahib pay, or will he let the trooper parch?"
"Ask Jagut Singh! Go, ask him! Let it be as he answers!"
He could hear her hurry away, although she slammed the trap-door shut. Evidently she was not satisfied to speak through the little hole, and he suspected that she was showing the man water, perhaps giving some to the Afridi for sweet suggestion's sake. She was back within five minutes, and by the way she opened the trap and grinned at him he knew what her answer would be.
"He begs that you promise! He begs, sahib! He says he is thy trooper, thy dog, thy menial, and very thirsty!"
"Bring some one who knows better how to lie!" said Ranjoor Singh. "Iknowwhat his answer was! He said, 'Say to the risaldar-major sahib that I have eaten salt, but I am not thirsty!' Go, tell him his answer was a good one, and that I know he said it! I know that man, as men know each other. Thou art a woman, and thy knowledge is but emptiness. Thou hast heard now twice what the answer is, once from him and once from me!"
"I will leave thee to the rats!" she said, slamming the trap-door tight.
The rats came, and he began to grope about for a weapon to use against them. He caught one rat in his fingers, squeezed the squealing brute to death and flung it away, and he heard a hundred of its messmates race to devour the carcass.
He began to see little active eyes around him in the blackness, that watched his every movement, and he kept moving since that seemed to puzzle them. Also he wondered, as a drowning man might wonder about things, how long it would be before Colonel Kirby would send for him to ask about the murdered trooper. Something would happen then, he felt quite sure.
The rats by this time had grown very daring, and he had been bitten again twice; he found time to wonder what lies Yasmini would tell to account for her share in things. He did not doubt she would lie herself out of it, but he wondered just how, along what unexpected line. It began to seem to him that the colonel and his squadron were a very long time coming.
"But they will come!" he assured himself.
* * * * *
He was nearer to the mark when he expected unexpectedness from Yasmini, for she did not disappoint him. A door opened at one end of the black dark cellar, and again the rats scampered for cover as Yasmini herself stood framed in it, with a lantern above her head. She was alone, and he could not see that she had any weapon.
"This way, sahib!" she called sweetly to him.
Never—North, South, East or West, in olden days or modern—did a siren call half so seductively. Every move she ever made was poetry expressed, but framed in a golden aura shed by the lamp, and swaying in the velvet blackness of the pit's mouth, she was, it seemed to Ranjoor Singh, as no man had ever yet seen woman.
"Come, sahib!" she called again; and he moved toward her.
"Food and water wait! Thy trooper has drunk his fill. Come, sahib!"
She made no move at all to protect herself from him. She did not lead into the cavern beyond the door. She waited for him, leaning against the door-post and smiling as if she and he were old friends who understood each other.
"I but tried thee, Ranjoor Singh!" she smiled, looking up into his face and holding the lantern closer to his eyes, as if she would read behind them. "Thou art a soldier, and not a buffalo at all! I am sorry that I called thee buffalo. My heart goes out ever to a brave man, Ranjoor Singh!"
He was actually at her side, her clothes touched his, and he could have flung his arms around her. But it was the move next after that which seemed obscure. He wondered what her reply would be; and, moving the lantern a little, she read the hesitation in his eyes—the wavering between desire for vengeance, a soldierly regard for sex, and mistrust of her apparent helplessness. And, being Yasmini, she dared him.
"Like swords I have seen!" she laughed. "Two cutting edges and a point! Not to be held save by the hilt, eh, Ranjoor Singh? Search me for weapons first, and then use that dagger in thy hair—I am unarmed!"
"Lead on!" he commanded in a voice that grated harshly, for it needed all his willpower to prevent his self-command from giving out. He knew that behind temptation of any kind there lie the iron teeth of unexpected consequences.
She let the lantern swing below her knees and leaned back to laugh at him, until the cavern behind her echoed as if all the underworld had seen and was amused.
"I called thee a buffalo!" she panted. "Nay, I was very wrong! I laugh at my mistake! Come, Ranjoor Singh!"
With a swing of the lantern and a swerve of her lithe body, she slipped out of his reach and danced down an age-old hewn-stone passage, out of which doors seemed to lead at every six or seven yards; only the doors were all made fast with iron bolts so huge that it would take two men to manage them.
He hurried after her. But the faster he followed the faster she ran, until it needed little imagination to conceive her a will-o'-the-wisp and himself a crazy man.
"Come!" she kept calling to him. "Come!"
And then she commenced to sing, as if dark passages beneath the Delhi streets were a fit setting for her skill and loveliness. Ranjoor Singh had never heard the song before. It was about a tiger who boasted and fell into a trap. It made him more cautious than he might have been, and when the darkness began to grow less opaque he slowed into a walk. Then he stood still, for he could not see her any longer.
It occurred to him to turn back. But that thought had not more than crossed his mind when a noose was pulled tight around his legs and a big sheet, thrown out of the darkness, was wrapped and wrapped about him until he could neither shout nor move. He knew that they were women who managed the sheet, because he bit one's finger through it and she screamed. Then he heard Yasmini's voice close to his ear.
"Thy colonel sahib and another are outside!" she whispered. "It is not well to wait here, Ranjoor Singh!"
Next he felt a great rush of air, and after that the roar of flame was so unmistakable—although he could feel no heat yet—that he wondered whether he was to be burned alive.
"Is it well alight?" asked Yasmini.
"Yes!" said a maid whose teeth chattered.
"Good! Presently the fools will come and pour water enough to fill this passage. Thus none may follow us! Come!"
Ranjoor Singh was gathered up and carried by frightened women—he could feel them tremble. For a moment he felt the outer air, and he caught the shout of a crowd that had seen flames. Then he was thrown face downward on the floor of some sort of carriage and driven away.
He lost all sense of direction after a moment, though he did not forget to count, and by his rough reckoning he was driven through the streets for about nine minutes at a fast trot. Then the carriage stopped, and he was carried out again, up almost endless stairs, across a floor that seemed yet more endless, and thrown into a corner.
He heard a door slam shut, and almost at the same moment his fingers, that had never once ceased working, tore a corner of the sheet loose.
In another minute he was free.
He threw the sheet from him and looked about, accustoming his eyes to darkness. Presently, not far from him, he made out the sheeted figure of another man, who lay exactly as he had done and worked with tired fingers. He drew the dagger out of his hair and cut the man loose.
"Jagut Singh!" he exclaimed.
The trooper stood up and saluted.
"Who brought thee here?"
"Women, sahib, in a carriage!"
"When?"
"Even now!"
"Where is that Afridi?"
"Dead, sahib!"
"How?"
"She brought us water in a brass vessel, saying it was by thy orders, sahib. She cut us loose and gave him water first. Then, while she gave me to drink the Afridi attacked her, and I slew him with my hands, tearing his throat out—thus! While the life yet fluttered in him they threw a sheet over me—and here I am! Salaam, sahib!"
The trooper saluted again.
"Who made thee prisoner in the first place?"
"Hillmen, sahib, at the orders of the Afridi who is now dead. They made ready to torture me, showing me the knives they would use. But she came, and they obeyed her, binding the Afridi fast to me. After that I heard the sahib's voice, and then this happened. That is all, sahib."
"Well!" said Ranjoor Singh. And for the third time his trooper saw fit to salute him.
Who shall be trusted to carry my trust?(Hither, and answer me, stranger!)Slow to give ground be he—swifter to thrust—Instant,—yet wary o' danger!Hand without craftiness, eye without lust,Lip without flattery! Such an one mustProve yet his worthiness—yet earn my trust!(Closer, and answer me, stranger!)First let me lead him alone, and apart;There let me feel of his pulse and his heart!(Hither, and play with me, stranger!)
Men say Yasmini does not sleep. Of course, that is absurd. None the less, it is certain she must do much of her plotting in the daytime, for by night, until after midnight, she is always the Yasmini whom the Northern gentry know, at home to all comers in her wonderful apartment.
It is ever a mystery to them how she knows all that is going on in Delhi, and in India, and in the greater outer world, although they themselves bring her information that no government could ever suck out of the silent hills. They know where she keeps her cobras—where the strong-box is, in which her jewels lie crowded—who run her errands—and some of her past history, for not even a mongoose is more inquisitive than a man born in the hills, and Yasmini has many maids. But none—not even her favorite, most confidential maids—know what is in the little room that she reaches down a private flight of stairs that have a steel door at the top.
She keeps the key to that steel door, and it has, besides, a combination lock that only she understands.
Once a very clever hillman, who had been south for an education and had learned skepticism in addition to the rule of three, undertook to discover wires leading over roof-tops to that room; but he searched for a week and did not find them. When his search was over, and all had done laughing at him, he was found one night with a knife-wound between his shoulder-blades, and, later still, Yasmini sang a song about him. None searched for wires after that, and the consensus of opinion still is that she makes magic in the room below-stairs.
She sought that room the minute Ranjoor Singh was safely locked in with his trooper, although her maids reported more than one Northern gentleman waiting impatiently in the larger of her two reception-rooms for official information of the war. Government bulletins are regarded as pure fiction always, unless confirmed by Yasmini.
And, within five minutes of Ranjoor Singh's release of his trooper from the sheet, no less a personage than a general officer had thrown aside other business and had drawn on a cloak of secrecy that not even his own secretary could penetrate.
"Closed carriage!" he ordered; and, as though the fire brigade were doing double duty, a carriage came, and the horses, rump-down, halted from the gallop outside his door.
"Pathan turban!" he ordered; and his servant brought him one.
"Sheepskin cloak!"
In a moment the upper half of him would have passed in the dark for that of a rather portly Northern trader. He decided that a rug would do the rest, and snatched one as he ran for the carriage with the turban under his arm. He gave no order to the driver other than "Cheloh!" and that means "Go ahead"; so the driver, who was a Sikh, went ahead as the guns go into action, asway and aswing, regardless of everything but speed.
"Yasmini's!" said the general, at the end of a hundred yards; and the Sikh took a square, right-angle turn at full gallop with a neatness the Horse Artillery could not have bettered. There seemed to be no need of further instructions, for the Sikh pulled up unbidden at the private door that is to all appearance only a mark on the dirty-looking wall.
With a rug around his middle, there shot out then what a watching small boy described afterward as "a fat hill-rajah on his way to be fleeced." The carriage drove on, for coachmen who wait outside Yasmini's door are likely to be butts for questions. The door opened without any audible signal, and the man with the rug around his middle disappeared.
He had ceased to bear any resemblance to any one but a stout English general in mess-dress by the time he reached the dark stairhead; and Yasmini took the precaution of being there alone to meet him. She held, a candle-lantern.
"Whom have you?" he demanded.
They seemed to understand each other—these two. He paid her no compliments, and she expected none; she made no attempt at all to flatter him or deceive him. But, being Yasmini, it did not lie in her to answer straightly.
"I set a trap and a buffalo blundered into it! He will do better than any other!"
"Whom have you?"
"Risaldar-Major Ranjoor Singh!"
The general whistled softly.
"Of the Sikh Light Cavalry?" he asked.
"One of Kirby sahib's officers, and a trooper into the bargain!"
The general whistled again.
"There were two troopers whom I meant to catch," she said hurriedly, for it was evident that the general did not at all approve of the turn affairs had taken. "I had a trap for them at the House-of-the-Eight-Half-brothers, and some hillmen in there ready to rush out and seize them as they passed. But a fool Afridi murdered one, and I only got there in the nick of time to save the other's life. I meant that Ranjoor Singh, who is a buffalo, should be troubled about his troopers and suspected on his own account, for he and I have a private quarrel. I did not mean to catch him, or make use of him. But he walked into the trap. What shall be done with him? Let the sahib say the word and——"
Her gesture was inimitable. Not so the gurgle that she gave, for a man's breath bubbling through the blood of a slit throat makes the same shuddersome sound exactly. The general took no notice whatever of that, for wise men of the West understand the East's attempts to scandalize them. It is the everlasting amusement of Yasmini, and a thousand others, to pretend that the English are even more blood careless than themselves, just as it is their practise to build confidently on the opposite fact.
"Didyoufire the House-of-the-Eight-Half-brothers?" asked the general suddenly. "Am I a sweeper?" she retorted.
"Did you order it done?"
"Did Jumna rise when the rain came? There were six good cobras of mine burned alive, to say nothing of the bones of a dead Afridi! Nay, sahib, I ordered a clear trail left from there to here, connecting me and thee and Ranjoor Singh to the Germans and a dog of an Afridi murderer. I left a trail that even the police could follow!"
"Whose property is that house?"
"Whose? Ask the lawyers! They have fought about it in the courts until lawyers own every stick and stone of it, and now the lawyers fight one another! The government will spend a year now," she laughed, "seeking whom to fine for the fire. It will be good to see the lawyers run to cover!"
"This is a bad business!" said the general sternly; and he used two words in the native tongue that are thirty times more expressive of badness as applied to machinations than are the English for them. "The plan was to kidnap a trooper, or two troopers—to tempt him, or them—and, should they prove incorruptible, to give them certain work to do. And what have you done?"
Yasmini laughed at him—merry, mocking laughter that stung him because it was so surely genuine. She did not need to tell him in words that she was not afraid of him; she could laugh in his face and make the truth sink deeper.
"And now what will theburrasahib do?" she mocked. "There is war—a great war—a war of all the world—but Yasmini fired a rat-run and avenged a murdered Sikh. First let us punish Yasmini! Shall I send for police to arrest me,burrasahib? Or shall I send a maid in search of babu Sita Ram that the game may continue?"
"What do you want Sita Ram for?"
"Sita Ram is nearly always useful, sahib. He is on a message now. He is a fool who likes to meddle where hethinksnone notice him. Such are the sort who cost least and work the longest hours. Who, for instance, sahib, is to balk Kirby sahib when he grows suspicious and begins to search in earnest for his Ranjoor Singh? He knew that Ranjoor Singh was at the House-of-the-Eight-Half-brothers; there was a man on watch outside. He will come here next, for Ranjoor Singh has been reported to him as having talked with Germans in my house."
"Reported by whom?"
"By the Afridi who is now dead."
"Who killed the Afridi?"
"Does theburrasahib think I killed him?"
"I asked a question!" snapped the general.
"In the first place, then, Ranjoor Singh, the buffalo, struck the Afridi with his foot. The Afridi, who was a dog with yellow teeth, went outside to sing sweet compliments to Ranjoor Singh. Certain Sikhs heard him—of whom one was the trooper who waits in another room with Ranjoor Singh—and they beat him nearly to death because, being buffaloes themselves, they love Ranjoor Singh, who is the greatest buffalo of all.
"For revenge, the Afridi told tales of Ranjoor Singh, and later knifed one Sikh trooper who had beaten him. The other trooper followed him into the House-of-the-Eight-Half-brothers, where he soon had opportunity for vengeance. Now theburrasahib knows all. Is it not a sweet love-story! Now theburrasahib may arrest everybody, and all will be well!"
"Where did Ranjoor Singh kick the Afridi?"
"Here—in my house!"
"Then he was here?"
"How else would he kick the man here? Could he send his foot by messenger?"
"Was the German here? Did he have word with the German?"
"Surely. He spoke with him alone. So the Afridi reported him to the'Rat sahib.'"
The general frowned. However deeply the military may intrigue, they neither like nor profess to like civilians who play the same game.
"If Ranjoor Singh is under suspicion, what is the use of—"
"Oh, all men are alike!" jeered Yasmini, holding up the light and looking more impudent than the general had ever seen her—and he had seen her often, for most of his private information about the regions north of the Himalayas had come through her in one way or another, and often enough from her lips direct. "I have said that Ranjoor Singh is a buffalo! He was born a buffalo—he has been trained to be one by the British—he likes to be one—and he will die one, with a German bullet in his belly, unless this business prove too much for him and he dies of fretting before he can get away to fight!
"I—look at me, sahib! I have tempted Ranjoor Singh, and he did not yield a hair! I stood closer to him than I am to you, and his pulse beat no faster! All he thought of was whether he could crush me and make me give up my prisoner.
"Ranjoor Singh is a buffalo of buffaloes—a Jat buffalo of no imagination and no sense. He is buffalo enough to love the British Raj and his squadron of Jat farmers with all his stupid Sikh heart! Therecouldnot be a better for the purpose than this Ranjoor Singh! He is stupid enough, and nearly blunt enough, to be an Englishman. He is just of the very caliber to fool a German! Trust me, sahib—I, who picked the man who—"
"That'll do!" said the general; and Yasmini laughed again like the tinkling of a silver bell.
There came then a soft rap on the door. It opened about six inches, and a maid whispered.
"Wait!" ordered Yasmini. "Come through! Wait here!" She pulled the maid through the door to the little back stair-head landing. "Did you hear?" she hissed excitedly. "She says Kirby sahib has come, and another with him!"
She was twitching with excitement. Her fingers clutched the general's sleeve, and he found himself thinking of his youth. He released her fingers gently and she spared a giggle for him.
"Bad business!" said the general again. "Kirby will ask questions and go away; but the troopers of Ranjoor Singh's squadron will come later, and they will not go away in such a hurry. You can fool Colonel Kirby sahib, but you can not fool a hundred troopers!"
"No?" she purred. She had done thinking and was herself again, impudent and artful. "I can fool anybody, and any thousand men! I have sent Sita Ram already with a message to the troopers of Ranjoor Singh's squadron. The message was supposed to be from him, and it was worded just as he would have worded it. Presently Sita Ram will come back, when he has helped himself to payment. Then I can send him with yet another message.
"Go and put thoughts into the buffalo's head, General sahib, and be quick! There must be a message—a written message from Ranjoor Singh to Kirby sahib—and a token—forget not the token, in proof that the writing is not forged! Forget not the token. There must surely be a token!"
She pushed the general forward down a passage, through a series of doors, and down another passage—halted him while she fitted a strange native key into a lock—opened another door, and pushed him through. Then she ran back to her maid.
"Send somebody to find Sita Ram! Bid him hurry! When he comes, put him in the small room next the cobras, and let him be shown the cobras until fear of too much talking has grown greater in him than the love of being heard! Then let me see him in a mirror, so that I may know when it is time. Have cobras in a hair-noose ready, close behind where the sahibs sit, and watch through the hangings for my signal! Both sahibs will kneel to me. Then watch for another signal, and let all lights be blown out instantly! Or, if the sahibs do not kneel (though theyshall!), then watch yet more closely for a signal which I will give to extinguish lights.
"So—now, go! Am I beautiful? Are my eyes bright? Twist me that jasmine in my hair—so. Now run—I will surprise them through the hangings!"
So Yasmini surprised Kirby and his adjutant, as has been told, and it need not be repeated how she humbled the pride of India's army on their knees. She would have to forego the delight of being Yasmini before she could handle any situation or plan any coup along ordinary lines, and Kirby and his adjutant were not the first Englishmen, nor likely to be the last, to feed her merriment.
The general, for his part, had—even although pushed without ceremony through a door—behaved with perfect confidence, for he knew that, whatever her whim or her sense of humor, or her impudence, Yasmini would not fail him in the pinch. Even she, whose jest it is to see men writhe under her hand, has to own somebody her master, and though she would giggle at the notion of fearing any one man, or any dozen, she does fear the representative of what she and perhaps a hundred others call "The Game." For the night, and for the place, the general was that representative, and however much he might disapprove, he had no doubt of her.
* * * * *
Ranjoor Singh stood aghast at sight of him, and the trooper saluted like an automaton, since nothing save obedience was any affair of his.
"Evening, Risaldar-Major!" smiled the general.
"Salaam, General sahib!"
"To save time, I will tell you that I know stage by stage how you got here."
Ranjoor Singh looked suspicious. For five-and-twenty years he had watched British justice work, and British justice gives both sides a hearing; he had not told his own version yet.
"I know that you have had word in another part of this house with aGerman, who pretends to be a merchant but who is really a spy."
Ranjoor Singh looked even more suspicious. The charge was true, though, so he did not answer.
"Your being brought to this house was part of a plan—part of the same plan that leaves the German still at liberty. You are wanted to take further part in it."
"General sahib, am I an officer of the Raj or am I dreaming?"
Ranjoor Singh had found his tongue at last, and the general noted with keen pleasure that eye, voice and manner were angry and unafraid.
"I command a squadron, sahib, unless I have been stricken mad! Since when is a squadron commander brought face-downward in a carriage out of rat-traps by a woman to do a general's bidding? That has been my fate to-night. Now I am wanted to take further part! Is my honor not yet dirtied enough, General sahib? I will take no further part. I refuse to obey! I order this trooper not to obey. I demand court martial!"
"I see I'd better begin with an apology," smiled the general! He was not trying to pretend he felt comfortable.
"Nay, sahib! I would accept no apology. It must first be proved to me that he, who tells me I am wanted to take further part in this rat-hole treachery, is not a traitor to the Raj! I have read of generals turning traitors! I have read about Napoleon; I know how his generals behaved when the sand in his glass seemed run. I am for the Raj in this and in any other hour! I refuse to obey or to accept apology! Let the explanation be made me at court martial, with Colonel Kirby sahib present to bear witness to my character!"
"As you were!"
The general's eyes met those of the Sikh officer, and neither could have told then, or at any other time, what exactly it was that each man recognized.
"Ranjoor Singh, when I entered this house ten minutes ago I had no notion I should find you here. I have served the same 'Salt' with you, on the same campaigns. I even wear the same medals. In the same house I am entitled to the same credit.
"I am here on urgent business for the Raj, and you are here owing to a grave mistake, which I admit and for which I tender you the most sincere apology on behalf of the government, but which I can not alter. I expected to find a trooper here, not necessarily of your regiment, who should have been waylaid and tempted beyond any doubt as to his trustworthiness.
"I received a message that Yasmini had two absolutely honest men ready, and I came at once to give them their instructions. I ask you to sacrifice your pride, as we all of us must on occasion, and your rights, as is a soldier's privilege, and see this business through to a finish. It is too late to make other arrangements, Ranjoor Singh."
"Sahib, squadron-leading is my trade! I am not cut out for rat-run soldiering! I am willing to leave this house and hold my tongue, and to take this trooper with me and see that he holds his tongue. By nine tomorrow morning I will have satisfied myself that you are for and not against the Raj. And having satisfied myself, I and this trooper here will hold our tongues for ever.Bass!"
The general stood as still on his square foot of floor as did RanjoorSingh on his. It was the fact that he did not flinch and did not strutabout, but stood in one spot with his arms behind him that confirmedRanjoor Singh in his reading of the general's eye.
"You may leave the house, then, and take your trooper. I accept your promise. Before you go, though, I'll tell you something. The ordering of troops for the front—for France—is in my hands. Your regiment is slated for to-morrow. But it can't go unless you'll see this through. The whole regiment will be needed, instead, to mount guard over Delhi."
"The regiment is to go, sahib, and my squadron, and—and I not? I am not to go?"
"That is the sacrifice you are asked to make!"
"Have I made no sacrifices for the Raj? How has my life been spent?Sahib——"
The Sikh's voice broke and he ceased speaking, but the general, too, seemed at a loss for words.
"Sahib—do I understand? If I do this—this rat-business, whatever it is—Colonel Kirby and the regiment go, and another leads my squadron? And unless I do this, whatever it is, the regiment will not go?"
The general nodded. He felt and looked ashamed.
"Has war been declared, sahib?"
"Yes. Germany has invaded Belgium."
For a second the Sikh's eyes blazed, but the fire died down again. He clasped his hands in front of him and hung his head. "I will do this thing that I am asked to do," he said; but his words were scarcely audible. His trooper came a step closer, to be nearer to him in his minute of acutest agony.
"Thou and I, Jagut Singh! We both stay behind!"
"Now, Risaldar-Major, I want you to listen! You've promised like a man," said the general. "I'll make you the best promise I can in return. Mine's conditional, but it's none the less emphatic. If possible, you shall catch your regiment before it puts to sea. If that's impossible, you shall take passage on another ship and try to overtake it. If that again is impossible, you shall follow your regiment and be in France in time to lead your squadron. I think I may say you are sure to be there before the regiment goes into action. But, understand—I said, 'If possible!'"
Ranjoor Singh's eye brightened and he straightened perceptibly.
"This trooper, sahib——"
"My promise is for him as well."
"We accept, sahib! What is the duty?"
"First, write a note to Colonel Kirby—I'll see that it's delivered—asking him to put your name in Orders as assigned to special duty. Here's paper and a fountain pen."
"Why should all this be secret from Colonel Kirby?" asked RanjoorSingh. "There is no wiser and no more loyal officer!"
"Nor any officer more pugnacious on his juniors' account, I assure you! I can't imagine his agreeing to the use I'm making of you. I've no time to listen to his protests. Write, man, write!"
"Give me the paper and the pen, sahib!"
Ranjoor Singh wrote by the light of a flickering oil lamp, using his trooper's shoulder for support. He passed the finished note back to the general.
"Now some token, please, Risaldar-Major, that Colonel Kirby will be sure to recognize—something to prove that the note is not forged."
Ranjoor Singh pulled a ring from his finger and held it out.
"Colonel Kirby sahib gave me this," he said simply.
"Thanks. Shake hands, will you? I've been talking to a man to-night—to two men—if I ever did in my life! I shall go now and give this letter to somebody to deliver to Colonel Kirby, and I shall not see you again probably until all this is over. Please do what Yasmini directs until you hear from me or can see for yourself that your task is finished. Depend on me to remember my promise!"
Ranjoor Singh saluted, military-wise, although he was not in uniform. The general answered his salute and left the room, to be met by a maid, who took the note and the ring from him. Five minutes later, with his rough disguise resumed, the general hunted about among the shadows of the neighboring streets until he had found his carriage. He recognized, but was not recognized by, the risaldar on the box-seat of Colonel Kirby's shay.
Teeth of a wolf on a whitened bone,What do the splinters say?Scent of a sambur, up and gone,Where will he stand at bay?Sparks in the whirl of a hurrying wind.Who was it laid the light?Mischief, back of a woman's mind,Why do the thoughtless fight?
Black smoke still billowed upward from the gutted House-of-the-Eight-Half-brothers, and although there were few stars visible, a watery moon looked out from between dark cloudracks and showed up the smoke above the Delhi roofs. Yasmini picked the right simile as usual. It looked as if the biggest genie ever dreamed of must be hurrying out of a fisherman's vase.
"And who is the fisherman?" she laughed, for she is fond of that sort of question that sets those near her thinking and disguises the trend of her own thoughts as utterly as if she had not any.
"The genie might be the spirit of war!" ventured a Baluchi, forgetting the one God of his Koran in a sententious effort to please Yasmini.
She flashed a glance at him.
"Or it might be the god of the Rekis," she suggested; and everybody chuckled, because Baluchis do not relish reference to their lax religious practise any more than they like to be called "desert people." This man was a Rind Baluch of the Marri Hills, and proud of it; but pride is not always an asset at Yasmini's.
They—and the police would have dearly loved to know exactly who "they" were—stood clustered in Yasmini's great, deep window that overlooks her garden—the garden that can not be guessed at from the street. There was not one of them who could have explained how they came to assemble all on that side of the room; the movement had seemed to evolve out of the infinite calculation that everybody takes for granted, and Moslems particularly, since there seems nothing else to do about it.
It did not occur to anybody to credit Yasmini with the arrangement, or with the suddenly aroused interest in smoke against the after-midnight sky. Yet, when another man entered whose disguise was a joke to any practised eye—and all in the room were practised—it looked to the newcomer almost as if his reception had been ready staged.
He was dressed as a Mohammedan gentleman. But his feet, when he stood still, made nearly a right angle to each other, and his shoulders had none of the grace that goes with good native breeding; they were proud enough, but the pride had been drilled in and cultivated. It sat square. And if a native gentleman had walked through the streets as this man walked, all the small boys of the bazaars would have followed him to learn what nation his might be.
Yasmini seemed delighted with him. She ran toward him, curtsied to him, and called himbahadur. She made two maids bring a chair for him, and made them set it near the middle of the window whence he could see the smoke, pushing the men away on either side until he had a clear view.
But he knew enough of the native mind, at all events, to look at the smoke and not remark on it. It was so obvious that he was meant to talk about the smoke, or to ask about it, that even a German Orientalist understanding the East through German eyes had tact enough to look in silence, and so to speak, "force trumps."
And that again, of course, was exactly what Yasmini wanted. Moreover, she surprised him by not leading trumps.
"They are here," she said, with a side-wise glance at the more than thirty men who crowded near the window.
The German—and he made no pretense any longer of being anything but German—sat sidewise with both hands on his knees to get a better view of them. He scanned each face carefully, and each man entertained a feeling that he had been analyzed and ticketed and stood aside.
"I have seen all these before," he said. "They are men of the North, and good enough fighters, I have no doubt. But they are not what I asked for. How many of these are trained soldiers? Which of these could swing the allegiance of a single native regiment. It is time now for proofs and deeds. The hour of talk is gone. Bring me a soldier!"
"These also say it is all talk, sahib—words, words, words! They say they will wait until the fleet that has been spoken of comes to bombard the coast. For the present there are none to rally round."
"Yet you hinted at soldiers!" said the German. "You hinted at a regiment ready to revolt!"
"Aye, sahib! I have repeated whatthesesay. When the soldier comes there shall be other talk! See yonder smoke,bahadur?"
Now, then, it was time to notice things, and the German gazed over the garden and Delhi walls and roofs at what looked very much more important than it really was. It looked as if at least a street must be on fire.
"He made that holocaust, did the soldier!"
Yasmini's manner was of blended awe and admiration.
"He was suspected of disloyalty. He entered that house to make arrangements for the mutiny of a whole regiment of Sikhs, who are not willing to be sent to fight across the sea. He was followed to the house, and so, since he would not be taken, he burned all the houses. Such, a man is he who comes presently. Did the sahib hear the mob roar when the flames burst out at evening? No? A pity! There were many soldiers in the mob, and many thousand discontented people!"
She went close to the window, to be between the German and the light, and let him see her silhouetted in an attitude of hope awakening. She gazed at the billowing smoke as if the hope of India were embodied in it.
"It was thus in 'fifty-seven," she said darkly. "Men began with burnings!"
Brown eyes, behind the German, exchanged glances, for the East is chary of words when it does not understand. The German nodded, for he had studied history and was sure he understood.
"Sahibhai!" said a sudden woman's voice, and Yasmini started as if taken by surprise. There were those in the room who knew that when taken by surprise she never started; but they were not German. "He is here!" she whispered; and the German showed that he felt a crisis had arrived. He settled down to meet it like a soldier and a man.
"Salaam!" purred Yasmini in her silveriest voice, as Ranjoor Singh strode down the middle of the room with the dignity the West may some day learn.
"See!" whispered Yasmini. "He trusts nobody. He brings his own guard with him!"
By the door at which he had entered stood a trooper of D Squadron, Outram's Own, no longer in uniform, but dressed as a Sikh servant. The man's arms were folded on his breast. The rigidity, straight stature, and attitude appealed to the German as the sight of sea did to the ancient Greeks.
"Salaam!" said Ranjoor Singh.
The German noticed that his eyes glowed, but the rest of him was all calm dignity.
"We have met before," said the German, rising. "You are the Sikh with whom I spoke the other night—the Sikh officer—the squadron leader!"
"Ja!"said Ranjoor Singh; and the one word startled the German so that he caught his breath.
"Sie sprechen Deutsch?"
"Ja wohl!"
The German muttered something half under his breath that may have been meant for a compliment to Ranjoor Singh, but the risaldar-major missed it, for he had stepped up to the nearest of the Northern gentlemen and confronted him. There was a great show of looking in each other's eyes and muttering under the breath some word and counter-word. Each made a sign with his right hand, then with his left, that the German could not see, and then Ranjoor Singh stepped side wise to the next man.
Man by man, slowly and with care, he looked each man present in the eyes and tested him for the password, while Yasmini watched admiringly.
"Any who do not know the word will die to-night!" she whispered; and the German nodded, because it was evident that the Northerners were quite afraid. He approved of that kind of discipline.
"These are all true men—patriots," said Ranjoor Singh, walking back to him. "Now say what you have to say."
"Jetzt——" began the German.
"Speak Hindustani that they all may understand," said Ranjoor Singh; and the others gathered closer.
"My friend, I am told——"
But Yasmini broke in, bursting between Ranjoor Singh and the German.
"Nay, let the sahibs go alone into the other room. Neither will speak his mind freely before company—is it not so? Into the other room, sahibs, while we wait here!"
Ranjoor Singh bowed, and the German clicked his heels together. Ranjoor Singh made a sign, but the German yielded precedence; so Ranjoor Singh strode ahead, and the German followed him, wishing to high Heaven he could learn to walk with such consummate grace. As they disappeared through the jingling bead-curtain, the Sikh trooper followed them, and took his stand again with folded arms by the door-post. The German saw him, and smiled; he approved of that.
Then Yasmini gathered her thirty curious Northerners together around her and proceeded to entertain them while the plot grew nearer to its climax in another room. She led them back to the divans by the inner wall. She set them to smoking while she sang a song to them. She parried their questions with dark hints and innuendoes that left them more mystified than ever; yet no man would admit he could not understand.
And then she danced to them. She danced for an hour, to the wild minor music that her women made, and she seemed to gather strength and lightness as the night wore on. Near dawn the German and Ranjoor Singh came out together, to find her yet dancing, and she ceased only to pull the German aside and speak to him.
"Does hereallyspeak German?" she whispered.
"He? He has read Nietzsche and von Bernhardi in the German!"
"Who are they?"
"They are difficult to read—philosophers."
"Has he satisfied you?"
"He has promised that he will."
"Then go before I send the rest away!"
So the German tried to look like a Mohammedan again, and went below to a waiting landau. Before he was half-way down the stairs Yasmini's hands gripped tight on Ranjoor Singh's forearms and she had him backed into a corner.
"Ranjoor Singh, thou art no buffalo! I was wrong! Thou are a great man,Ranjoor Singh!"
She received no answer.
"What hast thou promised him?"
"To show him a mutinous regiment of Sikhs."
"And what has he promised?"
"To show me what we seek."
She nodded.
"Good!" she said.
"So now I promise thee something," said Ranjoor Singh sternly. "To-morrow—to-day—I shall eat black shame on thy account, for this is thy doing. Later I will go to France. Later again, I will come back and—"
"And love me as they all do!" laughed Yasmini, pushing him away.
If I must lie, who love the truth,(And honour bids me lie),I'll tell a lordly lie forsoothTo be remembered by.If I must cheat, whose fame is fair,And fret my fame away,I'll do worse than the devil dareThat men may rue the day!