Caravans By Night Part 6

An hour after the interview with the Director of Central Intelligence, Sarojini Nanjee lay back in a great cane chair in the living-room of her bungalow, idly watching the smoke from her cigarette as it spiraled upward and was rent into vaporous tatters by the electric punkah.

The room, like its occupant, was exotic. A Kyoto gong kindled a bright spot among softer tones--rare rugs, brocade hangings, and a tall lamp afloat on the shadows, like an amber island. The woman seemed to melt into it, her very att.i.tude expressing its utter luxury. Deep iris-hued eyes dreamed under heavy lids. Her skin glowed with a golden sheen, and the lacy folds of a negligee fell sheer from her slender ankles and embroidered the carpet with foamy white.

She had been thus for some time, her brain immersed in a languor, her thoughts propelled with as little mental volition as possible. She stirred only to flick the cigarette-ashes into a bra.s.s bowl at her elbow, or to arch one arm above her head in a gesture of complete abandon. A pa.s.sing recollection of her call at Sir Francis Duncraigie's residence invariably caused a faint, inscrutable smile to slip into her eyes. But for the most part she did not burden herself with either thought or retrospection; merely sat in the dull, sweet stupor of semi-inertia.

A night beetle rattled harshly outside. The sound came to the woman as a sudden recall from her absorption. She placed her nearly burnt-out cigarette in the ash-bowl; stretched, rose, and struck the Kyoto gong.

As the rich, deep-throated echo sank into a hush, the curtains on one side of the room parted and a servant in white garments and a blue turban entered.

"I shall retire now, Chandra Lal," she announced quietly. "You have your instructions."

"Yes, Heavenborn!"

"You remember the place--the room?"

"How could I forget, Heavenborn?"

"You will"--she hesitated--"cause no injury unless necessary."

"Nay, Heavenborn!"

"Stop calling me that!"--irritably.

Scarlet betel-stained teeth were revealed in a smile.

"Very well, Memsahib."

"You may go now."

"To hear is to obey, Memsahib!"

The blue-turbaned Chandra Lal slipped noiselessly between the curtains.

Sarojini Nanjee moved to a door in the other end of the room, paused tentatively and stepped over the threshold. The door closed behind her.

And as she left the room, Chandra Lal reappeared.

He stood motionless in the division of the curtains, listening; then crept softly to a desk in a dusky corner. He produced a key from his breeches; fitted it into a lock; opened a drawer. For several seconds his hands moved swiftly, silently through the papers within. After that he wrote a line on a small sc.r.a.p of paper. This he folded and slipped under the edge of his blue turban.

Noiselessly he locked the drawer and recrossed the room. At the doorway he looked back.... The curtains fell together behind him.

4

Dana Charteris sat before a mirror in her room at the hotel and released her hair from all restraining pins. It tumbled over her shoulders in ripples of gold; little bronze-tipped waves, rather reddish, glowed with soft fire under the searching rays of the electric lamp. The face that looked back at her from the mirror, a face framed in the shimmering copperish ma.s.ses, had a l.u.s.trous pallor. She returned the stare of her own image solemnly and realized, not for the first time, that while the features in the mirror were those of a girl, there were hints of maturity. The fullness of the throat, of the lips, and the sympathetic, almost poignant expression in the brown eyes.

She sighed, then hummed a little tune as she ran a comb through the thick strands. The odor of tobacco floated to her from the adjoining room where Alan was making out a report. She liked the smell; it was clean and masculine.

When she had plaited her hair into two long braids, she slipped into a dressing-gown and pattered into her brother's room in bedroom sandals.

"Alan," she said, slipping her arms about his neck, "it's so wonderful to be with you! Why, just think, two months ago I was teaching music in Bayou Latouche!"

He put his pipe aside.

"To-morrow we'll ramble about the city, through the Fort and the bazaars," he told her. "And the next day--to Lah.o.r.e."

"I always think of Lah.o.r.e with a picture of _Kim_ sitting on '_Zam-zammah_'."

He smiled. "Then to Peshawar and the Khyber. I've an old friend at Ali Masjid Fort and he's promised to take us through the Pa.s.s."

Then he rose, picked her up bodily and carried her into her room, placing her upon the bed.

"Good night; sleep tight!"

He kissed her, turned out the light and returned to his room.

Dana slipped out of her dressing-gown; flung it across the foot of the bed; dropped her slippers upon the floor. Then she lay back upon the pillows, watching the moonlight that streamed in through the open cas.e.m.e.nt.

The wide-flung windows yielded a view of the sky and the white Indian stars. In her fancy she likened them to a string of jewels. Jewels. That word brought to her mind a picture of the looted treasures of which Alan had told her. Gems. What fascinating things! Jewels of rajahs and maharajahs, the pomp and rust of pagan rulers! Diamonds stripped from idols' eyes, and rubies and sapphires pillaged from the vaults of ancient temples! She had heard stories of the pearl fisheries of Ceylon where stones were stolen and hidden in cobras, even in human bodies....

India, mother of intrigue. She shivered.

She could not forget the copy of the Pearl Scarf of Indore. It haunted her.... Pearls.... Chavigny, a thief of international notoriety....

Alan's pen was scratching steadily on in the next room. The odor of tobacco was comforting. It made her forget the jewels of Ind; conjured in her mind a picture of the great, pillared house at Bayou Latouche.

And she was still thinking of Bayou Latouche, and hearing faintly the _scratch-scratch_ of the pen, when she fell asleep.

5

Dana awakened with a start. Involuntarily she sat up in bed, staring drowsily about the room. It was buried in dusk. The moonlight, floating through the cas.e.m.e.nt, crusted the floor with a band of pearl. As full consciousness wiped the threads of sleep from her brain, she wondered what had caused her sudden awakening. No noise, for silence shut down like a lid, made more intense by the sighing of trees beyond the stone terrace. The sounds of a clock on the dressing-table seemed to st.i.tch the hush.

For a moment she sat there, vaguely uneasy; then swung her feet over the side and slipped them into bedroom sandals. Moving quietly to the dressing-table, she looked at the clock. After one.... Her sandals lisped on the floor as she crept to the window.

Delhi lay asleep in the breathless night. Temple, tower, dome and minaret swam in the moonlight, and in the jungle stretch by the river jackals were laughing hysterically. With a little shiver she returned to the bed.

Strange to awaken like this, she thought. The new surroundings probably.

She sighed and settled deeper in the bed.

... She was almost asleep when a shadow flitted across her vision. At first it seemed a part of the slumber that had nearly overcome her, and she lay there contemplating the window-cas.e.m.e.nt where it had pa.s.sed until it was borne to her, suddenly, and not without a shock, that she was fully awake and the shadow was not a shadow, but a very substantial human form that had stolen by on the stone terrace. The realization drew her muscles rigid, and she lay motionless, listening to the hammering of her heart.

A faint sc.r.a.ping noise came from Alan's room. What was it, a footfall?

An oblong reservoir of darkness outlined the doorway. She could see nothing.... She must move, must call her brother. But her body was locked in a temporary paralysis, her tongue dry.

Again the sound. Unmistakable. Some one was walking stealthily. The crackle of paper.

Her fright increased, swelled, became so acute that she could no longer endure it.

"Alan!"

It was not a scream; a whisper. She found that she could move, and she sat up.