The Winds of the World by Talbot Mundy (readnow TXT) 📗

of your officers ever visit her?"

"Not when they're supposed to be on duty."

"But at other times?"

"None of my affair if they do. Don't know, I'm sure."

"Um-m-m!"

"Yes," said Kirby, without vehemence.

"Look at his beak!" said one of the two men by the window. "Never see a big bird act that way? Look at his bright eye!"

"Wish mine were as bright, and my beak as aquiline; means directness—soldierly directness, that does!"

"Who is your best native officer, supposing you've any choice?" asked the man in the drab silk suit, speaking to the ceiling apparently.

"Ranjoor Singh," said Kirby promptly.

It was quite clear there was no doubt in his mind.

"How is he best? In what way?"

"Best man I've got. Fit to command the regiment."

"Um-m-m!"

"Yes," said Kirby.

The man in drab sat sidewise and caught Kirby's eye, which was not difficult. There was nothing furtive about him.

"With a censorship that isn't admitted, but which has been rather obvious for more than a month; with all forces undergoing field training during the worst of the rains—it's fair to suppose your men smell something?"

"They've been sweating, certainly."

"Do they smell a rat?"

"Yes."

"Ask questions?"

"Yes."

"What do you tell them?"

"That I don't know, and they must wait until I do."

"Any recent efforts been made to tamper with them?"

"Not more than I reported. You know, of course, of the translations from Canadian papers, discussing the rejection of Sikh immigrants? Each man received a copy through the mail."

"Yes. We caught the crowd who printed that. Couldn't discover, though, how it got into the regiment's mail bags without being postmarked. Let's see—wasn't Ranjoor Singh officer-of-the-day?"

"Yes."

"Um-m-m! Would it surprise you to know that Ranjoor Singh visits
Yasmini?"

"Wouldn't interest me."

"What follows is in strict confidence, please."

"I'm listening."

"I want you to hear reason. India, the whole of India, mind, has its ear to the ground. All up and down the length of the land—in every bazaar—in the ranks of every native regiment—it's known that people representing some other European Power are trying to sow discontent with our rule; and it's obvious to any native that we're on the watch for something big that we expect to break any minute. Is that clear?"

"Yes."

"Our strongest card is the loyalty of the native troops."

"Yes."

"Everybody knows that. Also, this thing we're looking for is most damnably real—might burst to-day, to-morrow—any time. So, even with the censorship in working order, it wouldn't be wise to arrest a native officer merely on suspicion."

"I'd arrest one of mine," said Kirby, "if I had any reason to suspect him for a second."

"Wouldn't be wise! You mustn't!" The man in drab silk shook his head.
"Now, suppose you were to arrest Ranjoor Singh—"

Kirby laughed outright.

"Suppose the Chandni Chowk were Regent Street!" he jeered.

"Last night," said the man in drab silk, "Risaldar-Major Ranjoor Singh visited Yasmini, leaving six or more of the men of his squadron waiting for him in the street outside. In Yasmini's room he listened for hours to a lecture on Germany, delivered by a German who has British naturalization papers, whether forged or not is not yet clear.

"After the lecture he had a private conversation lasting some minutes with the German who says he is an Englishman, and who, by the way, speaks Hindustani like a native. And, before he started home, his men who waited in the street thrashed an Afridi within an inch of his life for threatening to report Ranjoor Singh's presence at the lecture to the authorities."

"Who told you this?" asked Colonel Kirby.

"The Afridi, Yasmini, and three hillmen who were there by invitation. I spoke with them all less than an hour ago. They all agree. But if Ranjoor Singh were asked about it, he would lie himself out of it in any of a dozen ways, and would be on his guard in future. If he were arrested, it would bring to a head what may prove to be a passing trifle; it would make the men angry, and the news would spread, whatever we might do to prevent it."

"What am I to understand that you want, then?" asked Kirby.

"Watch him closely, without letting him suspect it."

"Before I'd seriously consider orders to do that, they'd have to come through military channels in the regular way," said Kirby, without emotion.

"I could arrange that, of course. I'll mention it to Todhunter."

"And if the order reached me in the regular way, I'd resign rather than carry it out."

"Um-m-m!" said the man in drab silk.

"Yes," said Kirby.

"You seem to forget that I, too, represent a government department, and have the country's interests at heart. Do you imagine I have a grudge against Ranjoor Singh?"

"I forget nothing of the kind," said Kirby, "and imagination doesn't enter into it. I know Ranjoor Singh, and that's enough. If he's a traitor, so am I. If he's not a loyal gallant officer, then I'm not either. I'll stand or fall by his honor, for I know the man and you don't."

"Uh!" said the man in drab silk.

"Yes," said Colonel Kirby.

"Look!" said one of the two men at the window. "Direct as a hornet's sting—isn't a kink in him! Look at the angle of his chin!"

"You can tell his Sikh officers; they imitate him."

"Do I understand you to refuse me point—blank?" asked the man in the drab suit, still fidgeting with his watch—guard. Perhaps he guessed that two men in the window were discussing him.

"Yes," said Kirby.

"I shall have to go over your head."

"Understand me, then. If an order of that kind reaches me, I shall arrest Ranjoor Singh at once, so that he may stand trial and be cleared like a gentleman. I'll have nothing done to one of my officers that would be intolerable if done to me, so long as I command the regiment!"

"What alternative do you suggest?" asked the man in gray, with a wry face.

"Ask Ranjoor Singh about it."

"Who? You or I?"

"He wouldn't answer you."

"Then ask him yourself. But I shall remember, Colonel Kirby, that you did not oblige me in the matter."

"Very well," said Kirby,

"Another drink?"

"No, thanks."

"Who won?" asked one of the two men in the window.

"Kirby!"

"I don't think so. I've been watching his face. He's the least bit rattled. It's somebody else who has won; he's been fighting another man's battle. But it's obvious who lost—look at that watch-chain going! Come away."

If a man has a price at all, his price is neither high nor low, but just that price that you will pay him.

NATIVE PROVERB. CHAPTER IV

Of course an Afridi can be depended on to overdo anything. The particular Afridi whom Ranjoor Singh had kicked was able to see very little virtue in Yasmin's method of attack. Suckled in a mountain-range where vengeance is believed as real and worthy as love must be transitory, his very bowels ached for physical retaliation, just as his skin and bones smarted from the beating the risaldar-major's men had given him.

He was scoffed at by small boys as he slunk through byways of the big bazaar. A woman who had smiled at him but a day ago now emptied unseemly things on him from an upper story when he went to moan beneath her window. He decided to include that woman in his vengeance, too, if possible, but not to miss Ranjoor Singh on her account; there was not room for him and Ranjoor Singh on one rain-pelted earth, but, if needs must, the woman might wait a while.

As nearly all humans do when their mood is similar to his, he slunk into dark places, growling like a dog and believing all the world his enemy. He came very near to the summit of exasperation when, on making application at a free dispensary, his sores were dressed for him by a Hindu assistant apothecary who lectured him on brotherly love with interlarded excerpts from Carlyle done into Hindustani. But the climax came when a native policeman poked him in the ribs with a truncheon and ordered him out of sight.

With a snarl that would have done credit to a panther driven off its prey, he slunk up a byway to shelter himself and think of new obscenities; and as he stood beneath a cloth awning to await the passing of a more than usually heavy downpour, the rotten fibers burst at last and let ten gallons of filthy rain down on him.

From that minute he could see only red; so it was in a red haze that two of the troopers from Ranjoor Singh's squadron passed the end of the lane. He felt himself clutching at a red knife, breathing red air through distended nostrils. He forgot his sores; forgot to feel them.

As he hunted the two troopers through the maze of streets, he recognized them for two of the men who had thrashed him; so he drew closer, for fear they might escape him in the crowd. Now that he no longer wandered objectless, but looked ahead and walked with a will and a purpose, street-corner "constabeels" ceased to trouble him; there were too many people in those thronged, kaleidoscopic streets for any but the loafers to be noticed. He drew nearer and nearer to the troopers, all unsuspected.

But the pace was fast, and they approached their barracks, where his chance of ramming a knife into them and getting away unseen would be increasingly more remote; and he had no desire to die until he had killed the other four men, Ranjoor Singh himself, and the woman who had spurned his love. He must kill these two, he decided, while yet safe from barrack hue and cry.

He crept yet closer, and—now that his plan was forming in his mind-began to see less red. In a minute more he recognized a house at a street corner, whose lower story once had been a shop, but that now was boarded up and showed from outside little sign of occupation. But he saw that the door at the end of an alley by the building was ajar, and through a chink between the shutters of an upper story his keen northern eyes detected lamp-light. That was enough. He set his teeth and drew his long clean knife.

Wounds, bruises, pain, all mean nothing to a hillman when there is murder in his eye, unless they be spurs that goad him to greater frenzy and more speed. The troopers swaggered at a drilled man's marching pace; the Afridi came like a wind—devil, ripping down a gully from the northern hills, all frenzy.

Had he not seen red again, had only a little brain—work mingled in his rage, he would have scored a clean victory and have been free to wreak red vengeance on the rest. As it was, rage mastered him, and he yelled as he drove the long knife home between the shoulders of one of the troopers in front of him.

That yell was a mistake, for he was dealing with picked, drilled men of birth and a certain education. The struck man sank to his knees, but the other turned in time to guard the next blow with his forearm; he seized a good fistful of the Afridi's bandages and landed hard on his naked foot with the heel of an ammunition boot. The Afridi screamed like a wild beast as he wrenched himself away, leaving the bandages in the trooper's hand; and for an instant the trooper half turned to succor his comrade.

"Nay, after him!" urged the wounded man in the Jat tongue; and, seeing a crowd come running from four directions, the Sikh let him lie, to race after the Afridi.

He caught little more than a glimpse of torn clothes disappearing through the little door at the end of the alley by the boarded shop, and a second after he had started in pursuit he saw the door shut with a slam and thought he heard a bolt snick home.

The door, though small, looked stout, and, thinking as he charged to the assault, the Sikh put all the advantage he had of weight, and steel-shod boots, and strength, and speed into the effort. A yard from the door he took off, as a man does at the broad jump in the inter-regimental sports, landing against the lower panel with his heels two feet from the bottom.

The door went inward