Caravans By Night Part 54

To the north, in the maze of houses that lay flat and huddled beneath the sovereign structure of Lhakang-gompa, a dog was howling. Another answered it; another took it up; and the melancholy baying wavered from roof to roof--a tuneless dirge. Irrelevantly, Trent thought of a vermilion-lacquered sedan-chair that by this time should be at the ruined gateway. It was a sheer, breathless moment, a moment detached and charged with exquisite suspense.

The rattle of harness-chains drew him back to earth. His eyes swerved to the path from the temple. After a moment, shadows took shape in the moonlight--mounts and riders. He wheeled his pony and rode to meet the caravan.

Sarojini Nanjee sat erect upon a horse at the head of a string of mules; the scent of sandalwood awakened in him a queer alertness. She always breathed of earth-perfume--an odor of the senses. Beyond her were the looming shapes of three men--muleteers. Trent saw the contours of sacks on the pack-animals.

"Your men have left the city?" was her first question. Her breath came quickly and the black opals had been kindled in her eyes.

He answered with a nod.

She insinuated her hand into his; pressed his fingers.

"We win!" she whispered. "You and I!"

He smiled to himself, grimly. What Hsien Sgam had said was fresh in his ears. One of her men pa.s.sed and opened the gate. Outside, on the embankment, she turned her mount, waiting at one side while the caravan moved out. Trent reined in his pony beside her.

"Look!" she commanded, pointing through the gate at the magnificent ma.s.s of Lhakang-gompa, above whose broken roofs the moon was poised.

"Shingtse-lunpo--Lhakang-gompa--all! I hold them, like this!" And she made a gesture and laughed--that old familiar laugh that rippled low in her throat. "All is not finished! Nay! I promised you vengeance--and to-night, in a few minutes, you shall know that I keep my promises!"

Then she struck her horse in the flanks and dashed down the slope, to the head of the caravan. Trent followed. Behind, the gate closed softly and hoofs thudded in the mud of the road.

"_To-night ... you shall know that I keep my promises!_"

That rang in Trent's brain; rang and echoed and reeled away, and left him to grope for the meaning.

They rode on. Several times Sarojini Nanjee glanced over her shoulder.

The ruins above the tunnel were reached, pa.s.sed. Ahead the road swerved and lost itself in high rushes--rushes that swayed and sighed and shivered. Trent's hand hovered close to his revolver. The flesh over his spine crawled uncomfortably as they approached the end of the marsh-belt. He strained his eyes, but saw only the fringed line of tall reeds against the sky.... And now the white columns of the ruined gateway loomed, broken sentinels guarding the half-buried remains of an ancient fortification.

They were within a few yards of the gateway when, ahead, a horse whinnied.

Trent's heart leaped into his throat, and Sarojini Nanjee swiftly reined in her horse. Something gleamed in her hand.

From behind the shattered walls appeared a horseman--a robed horseman, phantom-like in the moonlight. Behind him rode another--another. They were fairly vomited through the gateway. Trent recognized Kerth at the head, Kee Meng and Hsaio behind.

The thing in Sarojini's hand coughed, and the red glare of discharged powder momentarily stained the darkness. But none of the three hors.e.m.e.n faltered. Before she could fire again Trent gripped her mount's bridle and dug his heels into his own pony. They plunged forward, side by side.

He was almost dragged from the saddle, but he managed to remain seated--to cling to the bridle of Sarojini's horse. When they were outside the broken gate he jerked both animals to a standstill. Melted fire-opals blazed in the woman's eyes. But he had her revolver.

"You fool!"

Vitriol was in her voice--but he heard her only in a detached way, for he saw, swimming in the moonlight behind the wall, a sedan-chair, and in it the pale oval of a face. It was in the midst of mules and packs and several mounted men. Hsien Sgam was there, in the saddle, between two muleteers. Kerth, Kee Meng and Hsiao had drawn rein in the gateway, thus separating Sarojini Nanjee from her caravan.

This, a quick negative, snapped and printed upon Trent's brain.

From him the woman's eyes moved around the group--past Kerth, past the muleteers and the sedan-chair--to Hsien Sgam.

"You did this!" Her words stung with venom, and her eyes traveled back swiftly to Trent. "Perhaps he fooled you into betraying me--_but ask him why he wanted you to believe Chavigny alive and see, then, if you want him as your ally_!"

A moment of tenseness followed--a moment that seemed to lengthen into a dead interval of time. The very world ached with dumbness, ached and waited. Hsien Sgam, who sat stooped upon his pony, was the first to speak.

"Major Trent, you wish to know who murdered your friend. Sarojini Nanjee did it. But not with her own hand...." His words were like smooth pellets emerging from vats of molten metal. "I loved her," the Mongol declared; "loved her ... and I went to Gaya, to your house, when I learned of her interest in you.... And there I made a fatal mistake--"

His words were buried as a m.u.f.fled detonation ruptured the quiet. An abrupt shock quivered the ground. Eyes swerved to the source of sound.

For an infinitesimal moment the very universe seemed to hang in dreadful suspense; then came two violent throbs, like the blows of a seismic hammer. A terrific roar was born out of the womb of inter-stellar silence--a roar that smote the eardrums of those who heard, that pressed ponderously against the heart and whipped the blood into throat and nostrils and eyes.

From the towering ma.s.s of Lhakang-gompa rose a quick glare that stabbed up, sank, and with it the roofs and walls of the monastery.... Smoke belched upon the sky. The earth shook. The very stars seemed dim with dread, and a wraith of nebulous black veiled the face of the moon. It was as though the gigantic machinery of a planet had been suddenly crippled.

The hush that followed seemed to pluck from Trent's lungs the power to breathe. He thought the ground still heaved, that the rumbling was still pouring about his ears.... He was a pigmy in the midst of some cosmic disorder.... His pony snorted and trembled violently. For a s.p.a.ce of seconds no one spoke; no one dared. All looked toward the cloud that was settling, doom-black, over what had been Lhakang-gompa, over the seamed and broken heart of Shingtse-lunpo!... And then came a soft, repressed voice--a herald of earth recalling them to its dominion after some awful furlough.

"Sarojini Nanjee is very clever. I should have known better than to oppose a woman."

A rattling laugh broke from Hsien Sgam, a laugh that was punctuated by a crash. Trent, turning, saw a rapier of corrosive flame leap from the Mongol's hand; saw it reflect hideously upon the features of Sarojini Nanjee. He sought to catch her, but she slipped from the saddle.... Her face stared up at him from a pool of black hair.

Again the rattling laugh--as the muleteers lunged at Hsien Sgam; again the crash and the rapier of corrosive flame, a broken rapier, that sank its hot shaft into the Mongol's own breast.... He hung limp between the muleteers, and a shining thing dropped from his hand to the ground. But his eyes were open. Trent saw them; Kerth, who had dismounted, saw them.

"I regret that I killed your friend, Major Trent"--the Mongol spoke in a stricken voice--"I regret, too, that I was forced to close the lips of a native who appeared at an inopportune time. It is unpardonable, major, that I stabbed this Captain Manlove--instead--of you."

Then he swayed; fell forward upon the neck of his mount. He was still alive when Trent reached him, but the Buddha-like face seemed shrunken and the oblique eyes, revealed by the searching brilliance of the moonlight, were half closed with pain. He smiled in a twisted, grotesque manner.

"Mysteries are exquisite things, major," he whispered. "Consider how delightful it--it will be, in years to come, to--to wonder whether Chavigny ... ah, _Shinje_!... whether he was killed in Delhi, as Sarojini claims, or died in--in Lhakang-gompa; and to wonder if she really meant to--to murder you, or if I--I lied--" He laughed softly.

"You have heard of the scorpion, major, who, surrounded, stings himself to death...."

They had to lift him from the pony, and Trent, looking down upon the huddled body, knew it did not belong to the boy who went forth from Mongolia with the dream of a messiah shining in his heart.

CHAPTER XIV

GYANGTSE

Late afternoon of the seventeenth day, and ahead, against the brazen furnace of the sunset, the battlements of Gyangtse. Trent straightened up in his saddle as he saw the town rise above the ochre hills.

Gyangtse! From there the Chumbi Valley, the pa.s.ses of Sikkhim, and down into tropical India! But Gyangtse meant more than that to him.... Like the frail filament of a dream was the memory of the journey from Shingtse-lunpo--dust and bitter winds; smoke of campfires in the nostrils; and in his heart a cavernous doubt. It was this doubt that fed upon his nerve-tissues, not the travel. And Gyangtse meant that it would end. He would be lifted to lofty spheres, or....

Now, as the town unfolded in the sunset, he looked at Dana Charteris, who rode near him--rode in silence, staring ahead. (Thus she had ridden for those seventeen days--in silence and staring ahead, a wintry coolness freezing the warmth from her eyes.) Tears trembled upon her lashes.

The road took them under a bastion and toward the gate. When they were yet some distance away a uniformed figure, mounted and followed by turbaned Gurkhas, clattered out to meet them.

"Cavendish! The District Agent!"

Kerth, who was riding ahead with the muleteers and the grain-sacks, called back these words to Trent and the girl.

The uniformed figure had drawn up--a tanned young man, with the mark of a helmet-strap running across each cheek and a lonely hungering in his eyes. He was laughing and shaking hands with Trent; then he touched his helmet as he saw Dana Charteris.

They were guided into a compound where marigolds kindled a warmth against white walls. Servants with weathered, smiling faces appeared from the house, sticking out their tongues in greeting.

But Trent found a poignant sharpness in this welcome, for the winter-light in the eyes of Dana Charteris had chilled him to the soul.