Caravans By Night Part 14

Trent flung himself upon a divan pushed against the wall; silken cushions yielded to his weight and clung to him caressingly. Kerth dropped cross-legged at his feet.

Before Chandra Lal made his exit he drew the gold-hued draperies opposite where Trent reclined, drew bamboo blinds and disclosed a white arch that framed a portion of a garden. Stone steps sank into a courtyard where rustling shrubs wove shadows about a fountain; falling water played flute-notes on a tiled basin; stars sc.r.a.ped a white wall.

"She's no novice, this cobra," thought Trent. "Wonder if she's anything like her lair?"

"... wine," thought Kerth. "And we must drink it ... unless--yes, guile for guile."

Suddenly, from behind gold curtains, came the faint whispering of music.

Trent smothered an insurgent desire to laugh. Incongruity, the essence of India! The music was made by a gramophone! Presently he recognized the tune--Tschaikowsky's "Serenade Melancholique"!

He glanced furtively at Kerth. The latter's face was expressionless, his slim hands toying with the ta.s.sel of a cushion. Trent sensed in his att.i.tude the same wild desire to laugh that possessed him.

"Steady!" he mentally encouraged himself, fixing his gaze upon a piece of bra.s.sware close by--a _lota_ overlaid with copper and chased with mythological figures. "Hmm.... Half as old as India, I'll wager," ran his musings. "Siva--who the deuce is the other chap?"

Gold brocades parted and a turbaned servant glided out silently with a tray, which he placed on a pearl-inlaid table. Claret-hued wine glowed in twin beaten-bra.s.s goblets, rich as melted rubies. One he pa.s.sed to Trent, the other to Kerth. Then he made a soundless departure.

Inwardly, Trent smiled. And drained his goblet. The gramophone ceased; only the music of the fountain stole to him, with a breath of fragrant shrubs that made the incense seem sensuous and heavy.

Again the bra.s.s _lota_ claimed his gaze; held it until he heard a sigh from Kerth and looked down to see the latter's eyelids droop, to see his eyes close and his chin sink into his white shawl.

"d.a.m.n!" he swore, almost inaudibly, and his hand sprang to Kerth's shoulder and gripped it none too gently. "Rawul Din!"

As he p.r.o.nounced the name, Kerth fell against the cushions of the divan, drugged in sleep. Some one laughed--a laugh that rippled low in the throat. Trent did not look toward the sound immediately, although that was his first impulse. He let his eyes turn naturally and rest, at first incredulously, upon the woman who had entered and who stood regarding him with a mocking smile. The blood flooded his temples; after a second it receded, leaving him cold, numb, with a tingling sense of unreality.

He did not rise; merely stared; and presently forced a smile.

"Sarojini Nanjee," he said, trying to put down the emotions that declared insurrection against his will. And he repeated, "Sarojini Nanjee, the Swaying Cobra?" He smiled. "I confess, I never once suspected."

Outlined against the gold draperies she stood, dressed as nautches dress, only with more richness and without the customary head-scarf. Her garments were full and as shimmery as cobwebs in the sun, and confined at the waist with a goldcloth girdle that matched the tint of her marvelously smooth skin. Her eyes burned under heavy lids, burned and mocked him; and by their feverish brightness he understood that this meeting wrought in her an excitement equal to his, although she was prepared for it.

"I did not intend that you should suspect," she told him as she moved to the divan where he reclined. "I knew you would not come if you did."

Not until then did he rise. He smiled, and the smile lingered as she bent over Kerth and drew back the lids from his eyes.

"Why did you disobey me by bringing this man?" she demanded, and, a.s.sured that Kerth was drugged, dropped gracefully upon the cushions.

"Why did you drug him?" he countered.

The blood still throbbed at his temples. The irony of it, that they should meet again! And on this mission! She was as beautiful as ever.

But the lure of her eyes--eyes as purple as moist violets--of her smooth golden skin and lithe body, no longer affected him. All that was in the sepulcher of the past. A memory that was like the taste of stale wine upon the tongue.

"I put a sleeping powder in his wine because what I am going to say is for only _your_ ears," she replied.

"And you're called the Swaying Cobra," he mused, more to himself than to the woman, "or did another write that note?"

"I am the Swaying Cobra." A pause. She studied him from under half-lowered lids. "I dance for those I love. I have only venom for those I hate."

The Swaying Cobra! He almost laughed. That was a good symptom, that he could be amused. A pretty viper! Resolving to let her open the subject of his visit, he allowed his eyes to wander about the room.

"Here I cease trying to be an Englishwoman," she said, perceiving his inquisitive look. He did not fail to register the ring of bitterness beneath that a.s.sertion. "In Jehelumpore and in Delhi it is different, but here--here I am a Rajputni." Another pause. She laughed, and it was not without a sting. "I know what you are thinking: that you will refuse to work with me because--because of a foolish Anglo-Saxon sentimentalism!"

She waited for him to respond; he did not.

"But why not forget that we ever knew each other--and did we ever really know each other? Why not regard this as an impersonal affair?

Individuals do not count where an empire is concerned."

Trent smiled discreetly and held his tongue.

"I bear you no rancor," she went on. "On the contrary, I recognize and respect the qualities that prompted me to select you for this mission--imagination, wits, honor! Yes, for these things I chose you--forgetting that when we last saw each other it was not under the most pleasant circ.u.mstances. What is dead is dead."

She fell silent, and he spoke for the first time.

"You've antic.i.p.ated," he said. "I was sent here to work with you and I intend to. I've already forgot that we ever met before to-night. What is dead is dead."

The woman smiled--but had she known what was in his mind at that moment she might not have been so pleased. However, she did not. And she lay back among the brocaded cushions, quite at ease, her hands clasped behind her head, chin tilted, eyes looking upon him as a cat's eyes look upon the mouse it is about to play with.

All of which did not pa.s.s un.o.bserved by Trent, who pictured, instead of a woman lying upon the gold silks with her head lifted, a lithe, beautiful cobra with its black hood raised above the cushions; pictured her thus, and returned her gaze with frankness and a smile that disarmed her.

She clapped her hands and a servant brought wine. "Were you well informed as to the terms of the agreement?" she questioned, handing him a cup of claret-hued liquor.

"I believe so."

"That when you leave this house you are no longer Major Arnold Trent, but another--a well of secrets from which no man can draw, and as mute as the Buddha at Sarnath?"

He demonstrated that he could do so by remaining silent. She resumed:

"And you will do as I direct?"

"To a reasonable extent," he modified.

"To a reasonable extent," she repeated, and nodded. "And if you do not understand a thing, you will trust to my judgment that it is better you do not understand it."

"Then I'm to deliver myself blindfolded?" he put in, remembering Kerth's words of the early evening and glancing involuntarily toward the drugged figure.

"You will be told all that it is consistent to tell." She took a sip of wine and surveyed him. "What is your first question?"

He thrust back the query that came to his tongue and reverted to his conservative tactics. He sat as mute and expressionless as the Buddha at Sarnath. When a moment had pa.s.sed, she announced:

"You would like to know how I know what I know about the jewels; is it not so?"

"I would like to know _what_ you know first," he corrected.

She laughed--that laugh that rippled low in her throat.

"What I know is locked away safely until the time is ripe to bring it forth. Meanwhile, I will say this much: the jewels have not left India."

"Then they _will_?"

He flashed out the question with the air of a fencer thrusting at a weak point in his opponent's guard. But foil met foil. She replied: