Caravans By Night Part 45

As one of the muleteers took Trent's mount, he looked about the quadrangle for Dana Charteris.

"Where is my brother?" he asked.

The muleteer muttered a few unintelligible words.

"Where?" Trent repeated.

The Oriental looked as though he expected Trent to strike him, as he answered:

"He left the house--this morning--soon after you did, _Tajen_."

"Alone?" He snapped out the question.

"No, _Tajen_; Kee Meng went, too."

"Where? Do you know?"--this with a frown.

"To the festival, _Tajen_."

Trent stood motionless. The frown disappeared as he remembered that he had ridden from the amphitheatre; they, being on foot, would be later in coming.

"Send Kee Meng to me as soon as he returns," he rapped, and entered the dwelling.

When a half-hour had gone by and Dana Charteris and Kee Meng had not come, the frown returned to Trent's forehead; returned and stayed; and deepened into furrows when another thirty minutes did not bring them. He went up on the roof to smoke and to be alone; and he paced the stones, drawing nervously upon the amber stem and confessing to himself that he was alarmed.

His heart beat a swift symphony of antic.i.p.ation when he heard the gate open. Without looking over the roof-wall, he hurried below. As he stepped into the quadrangle and beheld the limp figure that was being supported by two muleteers, fear sank its talons into him.

The sound of his footsteps brought the limp figure up with a visible effort. He thrust back the two men; took a step; dropped on his knees before Trent.

"_Tajen!_" whispered Kee Meng. "_Tajen_, I swear by Allah that--"

Trent gripped his shoulders. His right hand encountered moisture; he saw a stain.

"What is it?" he demanded, his muscles bound in a rigor of dreadful apprehension.

"_Tajen_, as we were coming from that--that devil dance, the brother and I.... We were in a street no wider than this"--painfully he lifted his hands in ill.u.s.tration--"and they jumped on us from behind--"

"Who did?"

"I do not know, _Tajen_; but I think they were lamas. They struck me from behind--and as I lay there I heard the brother scream--and I....

They stabbed me, _Tajen_. I saw black for a long while, oh, a very long while! When I woke up I was lying in the gutter. The brother--he was gone! I was hurt; but I knew you would kill me if I returned without looking--so I hunted--until I spilled my blood over the city and had none left to keep me alive. Then I came--came back!"

He sank in a huddle at Trent's feet.

"Kill me, _Tajen_," he moaned. "The brother--how could I refuse when he told me to go with him to...? But kill me--I am not worth the--" His voice broke; he was still.

Trent bent swiftly. After a moment he stood erect.

"Carry him inside," he directed the muleteers. "It isn't a bad wound; he's weak from loss of blood."

The two yellow men stooped and picked up the unconscious Kee Meng. As Trent entered the house behind them the putrid odor of b.u.t.ter-lamps a.s.saulted him, sickened him. The blow had come with a maiming force. He felt suddenly crippled.

5

When Trent had dressed Kee Meng's wound he returned to the roof, to his pipe and the stars. The spot seemed a lone haven of cleanliness, raised above the malefic atmosphere of the city.... To think--to decide what to do. He told himself that over and over as he paced the stones. His hands, figuratively, were tied. There was no one to whom he dared appeal--none save Kerth, and the two of them might search for days in the labyrinth of the city without even finding a clue. Meanwhile, Dana Charteris was in danger--a danger that was more frightful because of the indefiniteness of its character. There was but one explanation for her disappearance: either Sarojini Nanjee or Hsien Sgam had discovered her s.e.x and had taken steps to place her where she was likely to cause the least trouble ... and where she might prove a weapon.

He smoked on, pipe clamped between his teeth, striding the length of the housetop. The stars saw what few men had ever seen--Arnold Trent stripped of his mask, his citadel of impa.s.sivity beaten down. A great hollow infinity seemed to press upon him and quench the very breath from his lips. He came to understand a new emotion--the agony of separation.

The scales of unreason weighed values, and an alien recklessness urged him to forsake the sovereign motive for his presence in Shingtse-lunpo and with one mighty effort break the bonds that held him to a discreet course. Did not duty toward flesh transcend duty toward the inanimate?... Thus the lover's litany--a beautiful heresy.

But all this ache, longing, and unreason only carried him about in a circle; and from these purposeless revolutions the memory of her, a continuous glow in the dimness, led him into patience, to a mastery of himself. There were lines in his face--the mellow writing of anguish. It was as though he had partaken of the eucharist of suffering and from the bitter sacrament had come quiescence.

With the first easing of the tension came a plan. It broke upon him suddenly. If Sarojini Nanjee had abducted Dana Charteris, he could only rely upon his wits to free her; but if it was Hsien Sgam--His plan was a counter-blow at the Mongol in the event he was responsible for the girl's disappearance. It was a bold play, and if he failed....

As he heard a soft footfall, he swung about toward the shaft. A figure emerged--one of the muleteers.

"_Tajen_, a lama is below," he announced. "He came over the garden wall.

He says he would speak with you."

"Send him up here," directed Trent.

Several minutes later a shaven skull projected itself above the black opening in the roof, and Kerth, in his lama robes, stepped out. There was something rea.s.suring in the sight of him. A white man! That alone was a moral fire in which to forge his resolution.

Kerth listened in silence while Trent recounted what had happened and told of his plan.

"I know of a place to conceal him," Kerth announced, when Trent had concluded. "It's an old ruin at the other end of the city; and there's a vault, with a door that will lock. I stayed there the first few days I was in Shingtse-lunpo. We'll have to strike now--to-night. To-morrow morning I enter Lhakang-gompa, to serve in one of the cells." He smiled his satanic smile. "It's my one chance to get at the source of things in the monastery."

They descended from the roof--and a few minutes afterward, when Kerth climbed over the garden wall, he was accompanied by two of Trent's muleteers. Trent stood in the shadow of the willow-thorn until their footsteps ceased, then returned to the house to wait.

He kept vigil in the quadrangle for more than an hour, restless, impatient. At the first sounds in the willow-grove, he hurried to the garden and met the two caravan-men.

"All is well, _Tajen_," reported one of the Orientals. "The lama bade me tell you everything happened as planned and that the councillor Na-chung is hidden in the vault."

"The lama sent no other message?"

"He said he wishes you the peace of Gaudama Siddartha."

Good old Kerth, Trent thought warmly. That was his message of comfort.

"You have done well," he commended the muleteers. "To-morrow you will each receive a gift."

It was near midnight, and the stars had fled before black clouds and a drizzling rain, when Trent forced himself to lie down. Almost the instant he relaxed unconsciousness carried him into its dim cathedral, and he drank of the sleep that deadens even the pains of the dying.

CHAPTER XII