Caravans By Night Part 48

As he expected, she lied.

"How should I know? Armor, I fancy. Yonder"--with a gesture--"is the entrance from the monastery. Soldiers guard the other side of the door.... Come!"

As she led off under the arches and along an aisle between the boxes, Trent asked himself why stores of explosives and ammunition were hidden beneath a Tibetan monastery. Perhaps, after all, there was something to Hsien Sgam's revolution....

An arched doorway admitted them to a corridor lined with gleaming idols.

Hideous frescoes were painted upon long panels between the images, and at the end was a ma.s.sive crimson-stained door. Before one of the panels Sarojini stopped. The painting was monstrous and pictured a three-eyed G.o.d standing in the midst of skulls and human entrails--a G.o.d that Trent recognized with a start as the one whose image was wrought on the coral symbol of the Order of the Falcon. At regular intervals on the panel were four bra.s.s rings, each having a long scarlet ta.s.sel attached to it.

Sarojini thrust the torch into Trent's hand and caught one of the bra.s.s rings. She twisted it and tugged, and the panel yielded, sliding to one side and disclosing a dark cavity in the wall. The woman stepped in first, Trent following. The recess was not more than fifty feet in diameter--a square s.p.a.ce with frescoed walls. Opposite the entrance, and upon a lacquered pedestal, was a silver image of Janesseron, the Three-eyed G.o.d of Thunder--and his trio of narrow little orbs looked down upon the several chests that were pushed against the walls of the small room.

"You remember," began Sarojini, "that you were told you would reach enlightenment by gradations?... Now you stand upon the next to the last terrace."

With that she moved to one of the chests; lifted the lid; turned to Trent.

"Come closer," she commanded.

He did. And his eyes met the glitter of gems. And he caught his breath, for he knew he stood in the midst of the jewels for which he had penetrated into the forbidden arcanum of Asia.

"Look," directed the woman, indicating a card attached to the inside of the small chest. "It is written in Hindustani. See: H. H. Tukaji Rao Holkar III, Bahadur, Maharajah of Indore!"

There was a cool, tinkling sound as she drew from the chest a scarf of pearls--tiny l.u.s.trous spheres that shone like miniature moons.

"For these," she said, "Andre Chavigny died."

In the dimness, above the ray of the pocket-lamp, their eyes met, his expressionless, hers again like black opals. He heard her quick breathing--felt, as did she, the contagion of the jewels.... In her hands she held a fortune. Vaguely, irrelevantly, he tried to recall the sum at which the pearls of Indore were appraised; instead, wondered why she wished him to believe Chavigny out of the game.

"Hsien Sgam was the first to show me where the jewels were hidden," she resumed. "But he did not take me through the tunnel." Again the cool, musical tinkle as she dropped the pearls into the chest. "We came from the corridors above the Armory. The possibility of ever making away with the jewels seemed very meager--until I found out that there was a tunnel leading from a point somewhere outside the city up into the vaults of Lhakang-gompa. I learned it from a young layman who was loose of tongue and eager for _tengas_--learned also that there had been trouble between Sakya-muni and the Great Magician and that the Living Buddha was threatening to depose his chief sorcerer. So I went to the Great Magician...." She shrugged. "The lock is easy to him who knows the combination; thus with men.... The tunnel had been sealed; but after the sorcerer's men had worked for five nights that obstacle was removed. The pa.s.sage was completely opened yesterday. The fool--the magician--thinks he will fly with us when we leave and receive a portion of the jewels!

But he will never pa.s.s the walls of Shingtse-lunpo after to-night, nor will he interfere with my plans!"

Before Trent could ask the question that came to the end of his tongue Sarojini Nanjee threw back the lid of the largest of the chests, and the shimmer and flare of gems disconnected thought from speech.

"The Gaekwar of Baroda," announced the woman, pointing to the card on the inside of the lid. "This is the Star of the Deccan."

She clasped a necklace of diamonds about her throat, and the stones trembled against her skin like spiders of fire.

"Do not they look well about my neck?" she asked in a repressed voice, a voice that shook. Then she laughed, but he did not like the symptoms that underlay it. He gripped himself. The muscles of his throat stood out, and there was about him the air of a man preparing to do battle.

Sarojini Nanjee returned the diamonds to the chest. Gems rattled. She lifted what seemed a fabric of the spun brilliance of the universe--and a flame swept into Trent's brain. This amazing dazzle, as of cascading stars, was born of a rug made entirely of pearls, with central and corner figures of diamonds; a rug that coruscated and blazed as though its weaver had threaded the shuttle with flame and woven a carpet for the G.o.ds; a rug whose gems were multi-hued little serpents that coiled about Trent's brain and sank their fangs into his reason.

The carpet slipped from Sarojini Nanjee's hands and lay in a quivering heap on the edge of the chest. The fire in her eyes matched that of the rug.

"Millions!" she murmured in a husky voice. "Millions!"

... As one in a dream, Trent saw her hands stretch out to him; felt them on his arms. The touch sent a shock of warning through his frame.

Involuntarily he stiffened and took a step backward--but the perfume of her hair, the scent of bruised sandalwood, was in his nostrils and on his lips and face, like the fragrant breath of the sirocco ... and the hot mystery of her eyes challenged him to take the caress that her lips offered. (Of the earth always, this Sarojini Nanjee, with earth's gifts for men.) A deadly languor locked about him. He was in some fever-breeding jungle, and she was there, this golden woman, very close to him....

A small incident saved him from Attila's fate.

There came a sound, a gentle rattle and patter, like cool rain upon his thirsty thoughts. Something seemed to snap in his brain, and he moved back a pace--and out of the danger zone. He perceived, then, that the jewel-carpet had slipped from the chest to the floor, thus rescuing him from the very web that it had contrived.

Sarojini, too, drew back. Chagrin smothered the fire from her eyes.

Concupiscence in him--her chief weapon--was broken. She saw by the set of his features that control had returned, and knew that having once been so close to defeat, he would be thrice as wary as before. She had lost in this first campaign. She smiled cynically.

"You were always a fool, Arnold," she told him. "Another moment and I might have said that to the north, across Mongolia, lies Russia ... and there, the portals of the world ... you and I...." She smiled again, and there was a trace of bitterness in it. "Oh, yes, I can forget Jehelumpore--can forgive. Said I not that I am the Swaying Cobra, that I dance for those I love, but have only venom for those I hate? Now, Arnold, you are your old Anglo-Saxon self again--oh, you English, with your 'sense of honor'--and to-night you will start for India and your humdrum life. Yes, we will leave Shingtse-lunpo to-night, with these"--she made a gesture--"and for a while you will be a hero--and then--" She broke off, still smiling; shrugged. "Then, in the years that follow, you will often remember that night in Tibet when the Swaying Cobra might have offered you the wealth of an empire ... and perhaps you will regret your Anglo-Saxon sentimentalism."

Then she turned and placed in the chest the carpet whose only gift to men, down through the years, was a dream of crime. Trent drew one hand across his moist forehead, as though to wipe away the obfuscations of a nightmare. The recollection of his weakness came as a hot accusation.

His lips had touched the cup of delirium, and of that shuddering moment there remained but the memory--gray anti-climax.

"We dare not remain here longer," announced Sarojini. "The Great Magician is a coward, and if we are too long we shall find him chattering like the ape that he is. I will give you your instructions now. Listen well. To-night--it must be near dawn now--I shall have a pack-train ready, and in barley sacks, upon the animals, will be the jewels. You will send your caravan out of the city beforehand, with instructions to wait on the road a mile beyond Amber Bridge. Meanwhile, at eleven o'clock--remember, eleven--a man will be at your house and will guide you to the gate by which we left the city this morning, the Great Magician's Gate. There I will meet you.

"The gems will not be missed until the following day--and I have taken precautions to cover our trail. Yesterday a man left with a caravan of yaks, and several miles beyond the _tchorten_ outpost he is waiting.

There we will change pack-animals. He will go north, along the road to Mongolia, with the ponies and mules; while we will travel south, with the yaks. The soldiers at the outpost will describe us as having been on mules, and our pursuers will follow the tracks of the horses and mules.

When they discover their mistake we will be near the border of India--for we shall travel along the Himalayas to Gyangtse. There the District Agent will protect us."

"Can my muleteers leave Shingtse-lunpo without pa.s.sports?" Trent questioned.

She nodded. "A pa.s.sport is necessary only when one wishes to enter; it is not required at all of Tibetans.... Come, we must go."

They left the recess in the wall, closed the panel and returned to the vast, dim Armory. Again the blank sides of the boxes intrigued Trent.

Sarojini, carrying the flashlight, preceded him through the aperture in the floor and stood on the stair, directing the ray up while he fitted the stone into place. Then they descended into the crypt.

The Great Magician was waiting as they had left him--sitting cross-legged on the floor. Extinguishing the lamp, he placed it upon the bottom step and locked the door.

Back through the tunnel, with its cold, earthy odors, they went; reached the crypt in the swamp; ascended into the ruins. It was still dark. The rain had stopped, but a lingering moisture saturated the cold air.

Under the gray barren sky they crossed the marsh and entered the city.

The Tibetan who guided Trent to the Great Magician's temple was waiting just within the gate, and there the Englishman parted with Sarojini Nanjee.

"This man will come for you to-night," she whispered in English. "Be ready. To-night we win or lose, Arnold--and if we lose, Hsien Sgam will have us put to death as he did those mute fools who were executed in the amphitheater yesterday!"

She smiled--a smile that might have been a promise or a threat--and hurried away with the Great Magician.

Trent moved off behind his guide. Once more they traveled the silent, ghostly streets where only snarling curs were astir. The Tibetan uttered never a word--not even when he left. At Trent's house he helped the Englishman over the wall, then slunk toward the mouth of the lane.

The muleteers were asleep in the quadrangle, but Trent's footsteps aroused them. He instructed Hsiao to make a fire. Kee Meng, who lay upon a yak-hair robe by the main entrance, told him he had been sleeping well, that there was little pain and he could stand without ill effects.

As Trent dried his clothing by the fire, scenes of the past few hours conjured themselves in the darkness beyond the flames. Three things he had learned; three things he had yet to learn. He knew where the jewels were hidden; knew that Sarojini Nanjee and Hsien Sgam were not allied (although her connection with the Mongol puzzled him); knew the woman could tell him something about the murder of Manlove (for she was in Gaya the night he was killed). But the mystery of Chavigny was yet unsolved, as was the mystery of Manlove's death and the mystery of Dana Charteris' disappearance. He did not altogether trust Sarojini; the incident of the rug (flame to the memory) was a hint of some purpose of her own. Furthermore, her plan was too simple to be convincing.... And how much there was to be accomplished before eleven o'clock! He had one remaining card to play. And he would not wait for Hsien Sgam to send for him; he would seek him out, force his hand.

With this purpose established in his mind, he instructed the muleteers to call him three hours after sunrise and went to his room. He was weary--body and soul.

When he fell asleep, dawn was beginning to bleed the veins of the East.

CHAPTER XIII

FALCON'S NEST