Chapter 14

He who is most easily persuaded is perhaps a fool, for the world is
full of fools, and it is dangerous to deal with them. But perhaps he
is a man who sees his own advantage hidden in the folds of your
proposal; and that is dangerous too. —Eastern Proverb

"Acting on instructions from Your Highness!"

It tickled Gungadhura’s vanity to have an Englishman in his employ;
but Tom Tripe never knew from one day to another what his next
reception would be. On occasion it would suit the despot’s sense of
humor to snub and slight the veteran soldier of a said-to-be superior
race; and he would choose to do that when there was least excuse
for it. On the other hand, he recognized Tom as almost indispensable;
he could put a lick and polish on the maharajah’s troops that no amount
of cursing and coaxing by their own officers accomplished. Tom
understood to a nicety that drift of the Rajput’s martial mind that caused
each sepoy to believe himself the equal of any other Rajput man, but
permitted him to tolerate fierce disciplining by an alien.

And Tom had his own peculiarities. Born in a Shorncliffe barrack hut,
he had a feudal attitude toward people of higher birth. As for a prince—
there was almost no limit to what he would not endure from one, without
concerning himself whether the prince was right or wrong. Not that he
did not know his rights; his limitations were not Prussian; he would
stand up for his rights, and on their account would answer the maharajah
back more bluntly and even offensively than Samson, for instance,
would have dreamed of doing. But a prince was a prince, and that
was all about it.

So, on the morning following the flight of Yasmini and Tess, Tom,
sore-eyed from lack of sleep but with an eye-opener of raw brandy
inside him, and a sense of irritation due to the absence of his dog,
roundly cursed nine unhappy mahouts for having dared let an elephant
steal his rum—drilled two companies of heavy infantry in marching order
on parade until the sweat ran down into their boots and each miserable
man saw two suns in the sky where one should be—dismissed them
with a threat of extra parades for a month to come unless they picked
their feet up cleaner—and reported, with his heart in his throat, at
Gungadhura’s palace.

As luck would have it, the Sikh doctor was just leaving. It always suited
that doctor to be very friendly with Tom Tripe, because there were
pickings, in the way of sick certificates that Tom could pass along to
him, and shortcomings that Tom could overlook. He told Tom that the
maharajah was in no mood to be spoken to, and in no condition to be seen.

"Then you go back and tell his highness," Tom retorted, "that I’ve got
to speak with him! Business is business!"

The doctor used both hands to illustrate.

"But his cheek is cut with a great gash from here to here! He was testing
a sword-blade in the armory, last night, and it broke and pierced him."

"Hasn’t a soldier like me seen wounds before? I don’t swoon away
at the sight of blood! He can do his talking through a curtain if he’s minded!"

"I would not dare, Mr. Tripe! He has given orders. You must ask one
of the eunuchs—really."

"I thought you and I were friends?" said Tom, with whiskers bristling.

"Always! I hope always! But in this instance—"

Tom folded both arms behind his back, drill-master-on-parade fashion.

"Suit yourself," he answered. "Friendship’s friendship. Scratch my
back and I’ll scratch yours. I want to see his highness. I want to see
him bad. You’re the man that’s asked to turn the trick for me."

"Well, Mr. Tripe, I will try. I will try. But what shall I tell him?"

Tom hesitated. That doctor was a more or less discreet individual,
or he would not have been sent for. Besides, he had lied quite plausibly
about the dagger-wound. But there are limits.

"Tell him," he said presently, "that I’ve found the man who left that
sword in his armory o’ purpose for to injure him! Say I need private
and personal instructions quick!"

The doctor returned up the palace steps. Ten minutes later he came
down again smiling, with the word that Tom was to be admitted. In a
hurry, then, Tom’s brass spurs rang on Gungadhura’s marble staircase
while a breathless major-domo tried to keep ahead of him. One takes
no chances with a man who can change his mind as swiftly as Gungadhura
habitually did. Without a glance at silver shields, boars’ heads, tiger-skins,
curtains and graven gold ornaments beyond price, or any of the other
trappings of royal luxury, Tom followed the major-domo into a room
furnished with one sole divan and a little Buhl-work table. The maharajah,
sprawling on the divan in a flowered silk deshabille and with his head
swathed in bandages, ignored Tom Tripe’s salute, and snarled at the
major-domo to take himself out of sight and hearing.

Soldier-fashion, as soon as the door had closed behind him Tom stood
on no ceremony, but spoke first.

"There was a fracas last night, Your Highness, outside a certain palace
gate." He pronounced the word to rhyme with jackass, but Gungadhura
was not in a mood to smile. "An escaped elephant bumped into the
gate and bent it. The guard took to their heels; so I’ve locked ’em all up,
solitary, to think their conduct over."

The maharajah nodded.

"Good!" he said curtly.

"I cautioned the relieving guard that if they had a word to say to any one
they’d follow the first lot into cells. It don’t do to have it known that
elephants break loose that easy."

"Good!"

"Subsequently, acting on instructions from Your Highness, I searched
the cellar of Mr. Blaine’s house on the hill, Chamu the butler holding
a candle for me." "What did he see? What did that treacherous swine
see?" snapped Gungadhura, pushing back the bandage irritably from
the corner of his mouth.

"Nothing, Your Highness, except that he saw me lift a stone and look
under it."

"What did you see under the stone?"

"A silver tube, all wrought over with Persian patterns, and sealed at both
ends with a silver cap and lots o’ wax."

"Why didn’t you take it, you idiot?"

"Two reasons. Your Highness told me to report to you what I saw, not
to take nothing. And Mr. Blaine came to the top of the cellar ladder
and was damned angry. He’d have seen me if I’d pinched a cockroach.
He was that angry that he locked the cellar door afterward, and nailed
it down, and rolled a safe on top of it!"

"Did he suspect anything?"

"I don’t know, Your Highness."

"What did you tell him?"

"Said I was looking for rum."

"Doubtless he believed that; you have a reputation! You are an idiot!
If you had brought away what you saw under that stone, you might have
drawn your pension today and left India for good!"

Tom made no answer. The next move was Gungadhura’s. There was
silence while a gold clock on the wall ticked off eighty seconds.

"You are an idiot!" Gungadhura broke out at last. "You have missed
a golden opportunity! But if you will hold your tongue—absolutely—you
shall draw your pension in a month or two from now, with ten thousand
rupees in gold into the bargain!"

"Yes, Your Highness." (A native of the country would have begun to
try to bargain there and then. But there are more differences than one
between the ranks of East and West; more degrees than one of
dissimulation. Tom gravely doubted Gungadhura’s prospect of being
in position to grant him a pension, or any other favor, a month or two
from then. A native of the country would have bargained nevertheless.

"Keep that guard confined for the present. You have my leave to go."

Tom saluted and withdrew. He was minded to spit on the palace steps,
but refrained because the guard would surely have reported what he
did to Gungadhura, who would have understood the act in its exact significance.

As he left the palace yard he passed a curtained two-wheeled cart
drawn by small humped bulls, and turned his head in time to see the
high priest of Jinendra heave his bulk out from behind the curtains and
wheezily ascend the palace steps.

"A little ghostly consolation for the maharajah’s sins!" he muttered, as
he headed toward his own quarters for another stiff glass of brandy
and some sleep. He felt he needed both—or all three!

"If it’s true there’s no hell, then I’m on velvet!" he muttered. "But I’m
a liar! A liar by imputation—by suggestion—by allegation—by collusion—
and in fact! Now, if I was one o’ them Hindus I could hire a priest to
sing a hymn and start me clean again from the beginning. Trouble is,
I’m a complacent liar! I’ll do it again, and I know it! Brandy’s the right
oracle for me!"

But there was no consolation, ghostly or otherwise, being brought to
Gungadhura. Jinendra’s fat high priest, short-winded from his effort
on the stairs, with aching hams and knees that trembled from exertion,
was ushered into a chamber some way removed from that in which
Tom Tripe had had his interview. The maharajah lay now with his head
on the lap of Patali, his favorite dancing girl, in a room all scent and
cushions and contrivances. (That was how Yasmini learned about
it afterward.)

It was against all the canons of caste and decency to accord an interview
to any one in that flagrant state of impropriety—to a high priest especially.
But it amused Gungadhura to outrage the priest’s alleged asceticism,
and to show him discourtesy (without in the least affecting his own
superstitious scruples in the matter of religion.) Besides, his head ached,
and he liked to have Patali’s resourcefulness and wit to reenforce his
own tired intuition.

The priest sat for several minutes recovering breath and equipoise.
Then, when the pain had left his thighs and he felt comfortable, he
began with a bomb.

"Mukhum Dass the money-lender has been to me to give thanks, and
to make a meager offering for the recovery of his lost title-deed! He
has it back!"

Gungadhura swore so savagely that Patali screamed.

"How did he find it? Where?"

Mukhum Dass had told the exact truth, as it happened, but the priest
had drawn his own conclusions from the fact that it was Samson’s babu
who returned the document. He was less than ever sure of Gungadhura’s
prospects, suspecting, especially since his own night-interview with
the commissioner, that some new dark plot was being hatched on the
English side of the river. Having no least objection to see Gungadhura
in the toils, he did not propose to tell him more than would frighten and
worry him.

"He said that a hand gave him the paper in the dark. It was the work
of Jinendra doubtless."

"Pah! Thy god functions without thee, then! That is a wondrous bellyful
of brains of thine! Do you know that the princess has fled the palace?"

Jinendra’s priest feigned surprise.

"Is it not as clear as the stupidity on thy fat face that the ten-times casteless
hussy is behind this? Bag of wind and widows’ tenths! Now I must buy
the house on the hill from Mukhum Dass and pay the brute his price for it!"

"Borrowing the money from him first?" the priest suggested with a fat smirk.
None guessed better than he how low debauch had brought the maharajah’s
private treasury.

"Go and pray!" growled Gungadhura. "Are thy temple offices of no
more use than to bring thee here twitting me with poverty? Go and lay
that belly on the flags, and beat thy stupid brains out on the altar step!
Jinendra will be glad to see thy dark soul on its way to Yum (the judge
of the dead) and maybe will reward me afterward! Go! Get out here!
Leave me alone to think!"

The priest went through the form of blessing him, taking more than the
usual time about the ceremony for sake of the annoyance that it gave.
Gungadhura was too superstitious to dare interrupt him.

"Better tell that Mukhum Dass to sell me the house cheap," said the
maharajah as a sort of afterthought. Patali had been whispering to him.
"Tell him the gods would take it as an act of merit."

"Cheap?" said the priest over his shoulder as he reached the door.
"I proposed it to him." (That was not exactly true. He had proposed
that Mukhum Dass should give the title to the temple as an act of grace.)
"He answered that what the gods have returned to him must be doubly
precious and certainly entrusted to his keeping; therefore he would
count it a deadly sin to part with the title now on any terms!"

"Go!" growled Gungadhura. "Get out of here!"

After the priest had gone he talked matters over with Patali, while she
stroked his aching head. Whoever knows the mind of the Indian dancing
girl could reason out the calculus of treason. They are capable of
treachery and loyalty to several sides at once; of sale of their affections
to the highest bidder, and of death beside the buyer in his last extremity,
having sold his life to a rival whom they loathe. They are the very
priestesses of subterfuge—idolators of intrigue—past—mistresses of
sedition and seduction. Yet even Patali did not know the real reason
why Gungadhura lusted for possession of that small house on the hill.
She believed it was for a house of pleasure for herself.

"Persuade the American gold-digger to transfer the lease of it," she
suggested. "He is thy servant. He dare not refuse."

But Gungadhura had already enough experience of Richard Blaine to
suspect the American of limitless powers of refusal. He was superstitious
enough to believe in the alleged vision of Jinendra’s priest, that the
clue to the treasure of Sialpore would be found in the cellar of that house,
where Jengal Singh had placed it; impious enough to double-cross
the priest, and to use any means whatever, foul preferred, to get
possession of the clue. But he was sensible enough to know that
Dick Blaine could not be put out of his house by less than legal process.
Patali, watching the expression of his eyes, mercurially changed her tactics.

"Today the court is closed," she said. "Tomorrow Mukhum Dass will
go to file his paper and defeat the suit of Dhulap Singh. He will ride
by way of the ghat between the temple of Siva and the place where
the dead Afghan kept his camels. He must ride that way, for his home
is on the edge of town."

But Gungadhura shook his head. He hardly dared seize Mukhum Dass
or have him robbed, because the money-lender was registered as a
British subject, which gave him full right to be extortionate in any state
he pleased, with protection in case of interference. He could rob
Dick Blaine with better prospect of impunity. Suddenly he decided to
throw caution to the winds. Patali ceased from stroking his head, for
she recognized in his eyes the blaze of determination, and it put all
her instincts on the defensive.

"Pen, ink and paper!" he ordered.

Patali brought them, and he addressed the envelope first, practising
the spelling and the none too easily accomplished English.

"Why to him?" she asked, watching beside his shoulder. "If you send
him a letter he will think himself important. Word of mouth—"

"Silence, fool! He would not come without a letter."

"Better to meet him, then, as if by accident and—"

"There is no time! That cursed daughter of my uncle is up to mischief.

She has fled. Would that Yum had her! She went to Samson days ago.

The English harass me. She has made a bargain with the English to

get the treasure first and ruin me. I need what I need swiftly!"

 

"Then the house is not for me?"

"No!"

He wrote the letter, scratching it laboriously in a narrow Italian hand;
then sealed and sent it by a messenger. But Patali, sure in her own
mind that her second thoughts had been best and determined to have
the house for her own, went out to set spies to keep a very careful eye
on Mukhum Dass and to report the money-lender’s movements to her
hour by hour.

In less than an hour Dick Blaine arrived by dog-cart in answer to the
note, and Patali did her best to listen through a keyhole to the interview.
But she was caught in the act by Gungadhura’s much neglected queen,
and sent to another part of the palace with a string of unedifying titles
ringing in her ears.

There was not a great deal to hear. Dick Blaine was perfectly satisfied
to let the maharajah search his cellar. He was almost suspiciously
complaisant, making no objection whatever to surrendering the key
and explaining at considerable length just how it would be easiest to
draw the nails. He would be away from home all day, but Chamu the
butler would undoubtedly admit the maharajah and his men. For the
rest, he hoped they would find what they were looking for, whatever
that might be; and he sincerely hoped that the maharajah had not hurt
his head seriously.

Asked why he had nailed the cellar door down, he replied that he
objected to unauthorized people nosing about in there.

"Who has been in the cellar?" asked Gungadhura.

"Only Tom Tripe."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite. Until that very evening I always kept the cellar padlocked. It’s
a Yale lock. There’s nobody in this man’s town could pick it."

"Well—thank you for the permission."

"Don’t mention it. I hope your head don’t hurt you much. Good morning."

Dick little suspected, as he drove the dog-cart across the bridge toward
the club, chuckling over the quick success of Yasmini’s ruse, that he
himself had set the stage for tragedy.