King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure by Talbot Mundy (ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📗

Chapter IV Men boast in the Hills, when they ought to pray; For the wind blows lusty, and the blood runs red, And Law lies belly upwards for a man to wreak his fancy on it. Down in the plains, in the dust of the plains Where law is master and a good man ought to boast, They all lie belly downwards praying for their Hills again!

The rear lights of the train he had not taken swayed out of Delhi station and King grinned as he wiped the sweat from his face with a dripping handkerchief. Behind him towered the hook-nosed Ismail, resentful of the unexpected. In front of him Saunders eyed the proffered black cheroots suspiciously, accepted one with an air of curiosity and passed the case back. Around them the clatter of the station crowd began to die, and Parsimony in a shabby uniform went round to lower lights.

“Are you sure--”

King's merry eyes looked into Saunders' as if there were no world war really and they two were puppets in a comedy.

“--are you absolutely certain Yasmini is in Delhi?”

“No,” said Saunders. “What I swear to is that she has not left by train. It's my business to know who leaves by train.”

“What can you suggest?” asked King, twisting at his scrubby little mustache. But if he wished to convey the impression of a man at his wits' end, he failed signally.

“I? Nothing! She's the most elusive individual in Asia! One person in the world knows where she is, unless she has an accomplice. My information's negative. I know she has not gone by--”

King struck a match and held it out, so the sentence was unfinished; the first few puffs of the astonishing cigar wiped out all memory of the missing word. And then King changed the subject.

“Those men I asked you to arrest--?”

“Nabbed”--puff--“every one of 'em!”--puff--puff--“all under”--puff--puff--“lock and key,--best smoke I ever tasted--where d'you get 'em?”

“Had they been in communication with her?”

Puff--puff--“You bet they had! Where d'you get these things?”

“Not her special men by any chance?”

Puff--“Gad, what smoke!--couldn't say, of course, but”--puff--puff--“shouldn't think so.”

“Well--I'll go along with you if you like, and look them over.”

Both tone and manner gave Saunders credit for the suggestion, and Saunders seemed to like it. There is nothing like following up, in football, war or courtship.

“I see you're a judge of a cigar,” said King, and Saunders purred, all men being fools to some extent, and the only trouble being to demonstrate the fact.

They had started for the station entrance when a nasal voice began intoning, “Cap-teen King sahib--Cap-teen King sahib!” and a telegraph messenger passed them with his book under his arm. King whistled him. A moment later he was tearing open an official urgent telegram and writing a string of figures in pencil across the top. Then he decoded swiftly,

“Advices are Yasmini was in Delhi as recently as six this evening. Fail to understand your inability to get in touch. Have you tried at her house? Matters in Khyber district much less satisfactory. Word from O-C Khyber Rifles to effect that lashkar is collecting. Better sweep up in Delhi and proceed northward as quickly as compatible with caution. L. M. L.”

The three letters at the end were the general's coded signature. The wording of the telegram was such that as he read King saw a mental picture of the general's bald red skull and could almost hear him say the “fail to understand.” The three words “much less satisfactory” were a bookful of information. So, as he folded up the telegram, tore the penciled strip of figures from the top and burned it with a match, he was at pains to look pleased.

“Good news?” asked Saunders, blowing smoke through his nose.

“Excellent. Where's my man? Here--you--Ismail!”

The giant came and towered above him.

“You swore she went North!”

“Ha, sahib! To Peshawur she went!”

“Did she start from this station?”

“From where else, sahib?”

But this was too much for Saunders, who stepped forward and thrust in an oar. King on the other hand stepped back a pace so as to watch both faces.

“Then, when did she go?”

“I saw her go!” said Ismail, affronted.

“When? When, confound you! When?”

“Yesterday.”

“I expect he means to-morrow,” said King. With the advantage of looker-on and a very deep experience of Northerners, he had noted that Ismail was lying and that Saunders was growing doubtful, although both men concealed the truth with what was very close to being art.

“I have a telegram here,” he said, “that says she is in Delhi!”

He patted his coat, where the inner pocket bulged.

“Nay, then the tar lies, for I saw her go with these two eyes of mine!”

“It is not wise to lie to me, my friend,” King assured him, so pleasantly that none could doubt he was telling truth.

“If I lie may I eat dirt!” Ismail answered him.

Inches lent the Afridi dignity, but dignity has often been used as a stalking horse for untruth. King nodded, and it was not possible to judge by his expression whether he believed or not.

“Let's make a move,” he said, turning to Saunders. “She seems at any rate