Harry Escombe Part 14

How many of these revolting priests are there, do you say?"

"They number about a thousand, Lord," answered Xaxaguana. "We have already taken it upon ourselves to send to Umu, asking him to come to our a.s.sistance; but it will be some time ere our messenger can reach him, and he in turn can reach and order out the guard. We therefore thought it well to come to my Lord and ask him to hasten with us to the temple, there to use his authority to save the lives of those who must otherwise undergo the fire ordeal."

"Of course," a.s.sented Harry, as he scrambled into his clothes. "But what will happen if those mutinous beggars refuse to obey me, eh?"

"Refuse to obey you, Lord?" repeated the Villac Vmu in shocked tones.

"Nay, they will certainly not do that. They have revolted now merely because they cannot be brought to believe that the innovations against which they rebel are in accordance with the orders of our Lord the Inca.

You have but to personally a.s.sure them that such is the case, and they will instantly return to their allegiance."

"Very well," answered Harry, as he threw a heavy cloak over his shoulders to protect himself from the keen night air. "Now I am ready.

Lead the way, somebody, and let us be going."

Emerging from the palace, and hurrying along the almost pitch--dark garden paths, the party swept through the palace gates into the main road, and made a dash for the temple by the nearest possible route, which happened to be through several dark, narrow, deserted side streets, in which not a soul was stirring; the little crowd of hurrying figures consequently pa.s.sed on its way and soon reached the temple without having been observed by so much as a single person.

Somewhat to Es...o...b..'s surprise the temple proved to be in absolute darkness, when the party arrived before the walls; but Xaxaguana explained this by informing the young monarch that the revolted priests were all a.s.sembled in the opposite wing of the building, and that he had deemed it a wise precaution not to attempt to enter on that side, lest they should meet with resistance before the Inca could find an opportunity to make his presence known. As they drew in under the temple walls Xaxaguana called a halt, expressing some anxiety as to the possibility of the door being closed by means of which he proposed to effect an entrance, and he sent forward a scout to reconnoitre. His anxiety, however, proved to be unfounded, for the scout presently returned with the information that the door was unfastened and everything quiet on that side of the building. The party therefore moved forward once more, and presently Es...o...b.. found himself being conducted along a corridor, unlighted save by the smoky flare of the torches carried by his escort. Contrary to the young ruler's expectations, the building, even now that he was inside it, remained dark and silent as the grave; but this was explained by the statement of Xaxaguana that the revolting priests were all gathered together in the rock-hewn bas.e.m.e.nt of the building, where they were at that moment engaged in putting their more faithful brethren to the dreadful "ordeal by fire". Accordingly, when Xaxaguana unlocked a ma.s.sive bronze gate let into a wall, and invited Harry to descend with him to the chamber where the horrid rite was in progress, the young man followed unhesitatingly, as he also did through a door which the priest unlocked when they had reached the foot of the flight of stone steps and traversed some yards of corridor apparently hewn out of the living rock.

The room was comfortably enough furnished, and looked almost as though it might have been prepared for his reception, for it was lighted by a handsome lamp suspended from the roof.

"If my Lord will condescend to wait here a moment and rest, I, his servant, will go and see exactly what is happening, and return to report," remarked Xaxaguana as he stood aside to allow Harry to pa.s.s him.

"But why wait?" demanded Harry, facing round to the High Priest.

"Surely we have not a moment of time to waste. Would it not be--"

But, even as he was speaking, the Villac Vmu slid rapidly back into the pa.s.sage, closing the door behind him with a slam, through the thunderous reverberation of which in the hollow vault Harry thought he caught the sound of a sharp click. With a muttered e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, expressive of annoyance, he sprang to the door and endeavoured to open it; but it was fast, and, as he listened, he heard the sounds of hastily retreating footsteps in the pa.s.sage outside. And in that same moment the truth flashed upon him that, for some inscrutable reason, he was trapped and a prisoner!

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

UMU TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME.

The first rays of the next morning's sun had scarcely flashed over the ridge of the sierra which hemmed in the eastern side of the valley, when Arima, awaking with a most atrocious headache, and the feeling generally of a man who has just pa.s.sed through an unusually prolonged bout of dissipation--or, alternatively, has been drugged--arose from his bed and, staggering across the room, plunged his throbbing and buzzing head into a large basin of cold water, preparatory to dressing. Once, twice, thrice did he plunge head, neck, and hands into the cooling liquid, with but little satisfactory result, for the relief which he sought, and confidently expected to derive, from the process, refused to come; and he groaned as he sank upon a seat and tightly gripped his throbbing temples in his hands. Never before in his life had he felt so ill, so utterly cheap and used-up, as he did at that moment. In addition to the violent headache from which he was suffering, his blood felt like fire in his veins, his skin was dry and rough; he was so giddy that he could scarcely stand. The truth was that he had been drugged with such brutal severity on the preceding night, by Xaxaguana's emissaries, to make sure of his being out of the way at the moment of his master's seizure, that it had been due more to chance than anything else that he had ever again awakened. After a few minutes' rest he felt so much better that he was able to dress, and afterwards make his way to his master's room. For, ever since the slaying of the monsters in the lake, it had been Es...o...b..'s habit to rise early in the morning, and, making his way to the bottom of the garden, embark on a balsa, from which, after Arima had paddled it a few hundred yards from the sh.o.r.e, master and man had been wont to bathe together. And now, according to custom, the faithful Indian hurried away to awaken his master, as usual, for indulgence in the regular morning dip.

But upon entering the sleeping chamber he of course found it untenanted, and for a moment the thought occurred to him that possibly he was late, and that his master, having awakened at his usual hour, had risen and gone down into the garden alone. A single glance out of the window, however, at the length of the shadows cast by the various objects lighted by the sun outside, sufficed to satisfy him that habit had triumphed over even the influence of the narcotic which had been administered to him, and that he was certainly not more than a few minutes late. Then, with the instinct of the semi-savage, he flung his glances quickly about the room, and instantly detected signs that it had been invaded during the night by a number of people, and that his master had arisen and dressed in haste. Quick to take the alarm where Es...o...b.. was concerned, he at once hurried out, and, without waiting to find any of the palace officials to whom to report his discovery, proceeded forthwith to question as many of the servants as he met. But here again he only found matter for further alarm and apprehension; for not only did the whole service of the building appear to be in a state of complete disorganisation, but it at once became evident to him that every man he met was confused, agitated, and more or less anxious of manner; and, although each and all professed themselves unable to throw any light upon the mystery of the Inca's inexplicable disappearance, he felt instinctively that they were all lying to him.

Realising at length that no information was to be obtained from these people, Arima pa.s.sed from the palace into the grounds, making his way, in the first instance, down to the sh.o.r.e of the lake, for the purpose of satisfying himself beyond all possibility of question whether or not there was any foundation for his first surmise, that Es...o...b.. had risen early and left the palace without waiting for him. But no; there was no sign of his young master in that direction; moreover, the balsa was lying moored in its proper place; also the cutter was at her usual moorings. There was therefore no possibility that the Inca had taken it into his head to go for a solitary early morning sail. Satisfied upon this point, the Indian next made his way round to the front of the palace, and here at once the evidences of a visit of a large party of people to the palace, some time during the preceding night, once more presented themselves, the latest--that is to say the topmost--set of footprints showing that quite a crowd of people had hurried from the main entrance of the building down the broad path leading to the entrance gates of the garden and thence into the main road. Moreover, the "spoor" remained undisturbed in the road for a distance sufficient to indicate the general direction in which the party had gone, although it was lost in the ordinary signs of traffic within a few yards of the gates. Having ascertained thus much, Arima returned to the spot where the footprints first showed outside the palace doors, and, going down upon his hands and knees, patiently set himself to the task of endeavouring to discover his young master's among them. But before he had had time to achieve any result in this direction one of the palace officials appeared and, angrily demanding to know what he was doing there, ordered him back into the palace to attend to his duty; explaining, by way of reply to Arima's agitated representations, that the Inca had left the palace during the early hours of the morning, with a party of companions, to hunt the vicuna. The Indian at once knew this to be a falsehood, for the hunting grounds lay many miles down the valley, and hunting parties never dreamed of proceeding thither otherwise than on horseback, and Arima was prepared to swear that none of the party had been mounted. Moreover he was convinced that his master would never have dreamed of leaving his favourite servant behind had he been bound upon a hunting expedition. The official, however, was curt and peremptory in his manner, and Arima soon understood that he must obey his orders or suffer arrest. He therefore returned to the Inca's rooms and proceeded to put them in order, as was his duty. But the very curtness and peremptoriness of the official's manner to him, as well as the improbable story which he had told, only had the effect of strengthening and confirming the suspicions in the faithful fellow's mind; for the attachment of the young Inca to this man was well known, and even the highest officials of the palace had thus far not disdained to be extremely civil to him.

But the question in Arima's mind now was: what precisely was it that had happened to his young master, and whither and why had he gone? For even thus far no glimmering of the hideous truth had reached the Indian's mind. His suspicions and apprehensions were all as yet chaotic and formless, and he was very far from fearing that Es...o...b..'s life was in danger. But as he proceeded with his business, seeking from time to time to get some relief from his splitting headache and the other extremely disagreeable symptoms from which he was still suffering acutely, it gradually began to dawn upon him, as his mental faculties slowly shook off their stupor, that every one of those symptoms were synonymous with those following upon the administration of an overdose of a decoction made from a certain poisonous plant growing here and there in the valley, and which was sometimes used as an anaesthetic by the local physicians. He was fully aware of the tremendous potency of the extracted juices of this plant, as also of its tastelessness, and the consequent ease with which it could be administered, and he recognised clearly that if anyone had wished to administer such a draught to him on the previous night it could easily have been done.

The question which next arose in his mind naturally was: why should anyone desire to administer such a draught to him? But his mental powers had by this time sufficiently recovered from the effects of the drug to enable him quickly to trace a connection--however obscure as yet--between this act and the extraordinary fact of his master being missing. When once the faithful fellow had reached the length of connecting the two circ.u.mstances together he was not long in realising the terrible possibilities that lurked in such a sinister combination of circ.u.mstances. And with this realisation he suddenly took fright, for at the same moment the significance of certain apparently trivial remarks and occurrences that had lately come to his knowledge suddenly dawned upon him. Could it be that these matters, scarcely noticed at the moment, really bore the significance which he now attached to them, or was it all the result of some bodily disorder reacting upon his mental processes and causing him to take a distorted and unnatural view of things that were actually of no moment whatever? He could not tell; his brain was still in too muddled a condition for him to feel that he could trust it. But there was one sensible thing that he could do, he told himself. He could go to Umu and lay the whole matter before him.

Umu was a shrewd sensible man, who would soon say whether or not there was anything in those mad fantasies that were now beginning to chase each other through his bewildered brain. Besides, Umu was the Inca's most devoted friend--next to himself, perhaps. So, slipping out of the palace by the garden entrance--lest perchance he should be seen and stopped if he attempted to pa.s.s out by way of the other--he plunged at once into the most unfrequented paths, and so betook himself, by a circuitous route, to the lake sh.o.r.e, where he at once got aboard the balsa, and, paddling the primitive craft some half a mile beyond the royal demesne, beached her in a secluded spot, and thence made the best of his way to Umu's house.

The morning was by this time so well advanced that the hour for the first meal of the day was past, and it became a moot point with Arima whether to seek Umu at his house or at the barracks of the Inca's bodyguard. He decided, however, upon trying the house first, and it was well that he did; for, although Umu was not at home, neither, it seemed, was he at the barracks. But Maia, his daughter, had an impression that she knew where he might be found, and Arima had not poured into the girl's ear half a dozen sentences of his somewhat disjointed tale before she cut him short by explaining that she was about to seek her father, and that he (Arima) must on no account whatever attempt to stir from the house until her return, unless, of course, her father should make his appearance in the interim. Having bestowed that injunction, Maia, wild- eyed and white-lipped, rushed into the street and hurried on her way; for she, too, had heard words said, to which at the moment she had given scant heed, but which in the light of what was hinted at by Arima now bore to the quick-witted girl an awful significance.

As it happened, she had not to go very far, for she had not left the house more than five minutes at the utmost when she caught sight of her father, mounted, on his way to the barracks, a good mile distant.

Fortunately for her he reined up to exchange a few pa.s.sing words with an acquaintance, and that afforded her the opportunity to overtake and stop him. She did not dare, however, to mention the errand which had brought her out in search of her father until the two friends had parted, when she briefly explained that Arima was seeking him, and urged him to hasten back to the house without delay, at the same time telling him sufficient of what had pa.s.sed between herself and the Inca's henchman to cause Umu to realise something of the gravity of the situation; for he dug his heels into his charger's ribs and dashed off at a gallop.

When Maia arrived back at the house, she found Arima in the midst of the relation of his story to her father, and, quite as a matter of course, sat down to listen. The Indian had, in the interim between her departure and Umu's arrival, found time to pull himself together and properly arrange his thoughts, and he related his narrative with due regard to sequence of events, beginning with such apparently casual words and trivial occurrences as had come under his notice, and had only a.s.sumed a significance in the light of more recent happenings. Then going on to describe his sensations upon awaking that morning, he completed his story by relating in detail everything he had done, and the thoughts and suspicions that had occurred to him subsequent to his discovery of his master's absence.

"Yes," agreed Umu, when Arima had brought his story to a conclusion, "the whole thing seems reasonably clear, up to a certain point. I have not a shadow of doubt that certain disaffected persons have adopted the extreme, and altogether unprecedented, step of seizing the person of our Lord the Inca; and they caused you, my friend, to be drugged in order that you might not interfere with their plans. The question which we now have to decide is: who are those persons, and what is their object in seizing the Inca? They must be individuals of very great power and influence, otherwise they would never dare--"

At this point Maia, who had been betraying rapidly increasing signs of anxiety and impatience, cut in with:

"My father, to me it seems of the utmost importance that not a moment should be lost in discovering what has become of the Inca, whose life may at this moment be in the utmost jeopardy; for those who were desperate enough to carry him off would probably not hesitate to kill him, if need were: indeed that may be their purpose. Your task, therefore, must be to rescue him without an instant's unnecessary delay, which you should be easily able to do with the aid of your troops.

Probably if the officials of the palace were carefully questioned they could be persuaded to tell you what has become of the Inca, for doubtless they know, since he could not have been carried off without their knowledge and acquiescence."

"Yes, you are right, Maia. I see exactly what you mean, and I have no doubt that I can devise a method of making the palace people tell what they know," answered Umu. "I will ride to the barracks at once, and order the guard to turn out in readiness to proceed wherever required; after which I will proceed to the palace with a squadron, and it will be strange if I do not find means to make somebody tell me what I require to know. You, Arima, had better go to the barracks and await my return there from the palace, when you can ride with us. And now I will go; for, as Maia has said, even moments may now be of importance."

Some twenty minutes later a troop of the Inca's mounted bodyguard, led by Umu, dashed at a gallop in through the gates of the palace gardens, and, at a word from their commander, surrounded the building, a party of a dozen of them following their leader into the palace, to the consternation of all who encountered them. This dozen const.i.tuted a search party, which, with drawn swords, systematically swept the building from bas.e.m.e.nt to roof-tree, gathering together every official and individual of the palace staff that could be found, until the whole, with the exception of some dozen or so underlings, had been captured.

Then all were marched out into the vast palace garden and surrounded by the now dismounted troopers, who meanwhile had made prisoners of four of the chief officials as they were endeavouring to slink out of the palace and make good their escape.

Marching the whole of the captives off to a secluded part of the gardens, where nothing which might happen could be seen save by those immediately concerned, Umu ordered the chamberlain and his three immediate subordinates to be brought to him, and said to them:

"Now, sirs, my business here is to ascertain from you what has become of our Lord the Inca. I have not the slightest doubt that you can tell me; but whether you will tell me the truth or not is quite another matter.

I intend to arrive at the truth, however, either by persuasion or force, and I will try the former first: let me very earnestly advise you not to compel me to resort to the latter. And to make as certain as I can that the information with which you are about to furnish me is true, you will each withdraw from your comrades to a distance at which it will be impossible for you to communicate with each other, and where you will each inform the officer--who, with a file of men, will accompany you--of everything that you know concerning the mysterious disappearance of the Inca--where he has been taken, by whom, and for what purpose. If your stories, when compared with each other, are found to agree at all points, I shall consider that I am justified in believing them to be true; if they do not--" He turned to the other captives and said: "Go to work at once, collect timber, and build a large fire in this open s.p.a.ce." Then, turning to the officers who had been deputed to examine the four prisoners, Umu concluded: "Take them away; hear their story; and then bring them back to me, that each man's tale may be compared with those of the others."

Umu knew his fellow countrymen well. He was fully aware that while the South American Indian, like his brother of the northern continent, will endure the most frightfully excruciating tortures with stoical fort.i.tude if the occasion happens to demand it, he will not willingly subject himself to even a very minor degree of suffering for the sake of shielding those whom he has no particular object in serving. He felt pretty well convinced that these craven wretches who had allowed themselves to be corrupted into betraying their monarch would have very little hesitation in also betraying their corrupters, especially as they might feel a.s.sured that, Umu having taken the matter in hand, those corrupters would henceforth have scant power or opportunity either to reward or to punish. The hint conveyed by the building of a large fire therefore proved quite sufficiently persuasive. In little more than ten minutes the commander of the bodyguard found himself in possession of all the information which the palace officials had it in their power to communicate. This information, in brief, was to the effect that they had, one and all, from the highest to the lowest, been heavily bribed by the emissaries of Huanacocha and Xaxaguana to allow those two powerful n.o.bles, with a strong party of followers, to enter the palace in the dead of night and abduct the person of the Inca, and to hold their peace upon the matter until either Huanacocha or Xaxaguana should personally give them leave to speak and tell them what to say. As the stories of all four of the officials happened to agree, even down to the smallest detail, Umu decided that he might venture to accept them as true; whereupon the whole of the prisoners were hustled back into the palace by way of the back entrance, driven down into one of the bas.e.m.e.nt chambers, and there securely locked up, with a corporal's guard in the pa.s.sage outside. The palace then being locked up, the troop mounted and departed at a gallop for the house of Huanacocha.

This house, or palace as it might be more appropriately termed, was, like most of the residences of the great Peruvian lords, a large and sumptuous edifice, standing in its own s.p.a.cious grounds. Umu's tactics upon approaching it were similar to those which he had employed upon approaching the palace; that is to say, upon entering the grounds he caused his men to dismount and surround the building, which he then entered, accompanied by a sergeant in charge of a squad of troopers. As he unceremoniously made his way into the great entrance hall he found himself confronted by the chief steward of the establishment, who, followed by the entire staff of terrified servants, was hurrying to the garden, anxious to ascertain the meaning of this unwonted invasion of his master's privacy.

"Where is your lord, sirrah?" thundered Umu, as a file of soldiers promptly arrested the quaking functionary.

"I know not, Lord Umu," answered the unfortunate man, as well as his chattering teeth would allow; "indeed I was about to send out the servants to seek news of him, for I am beginning to fear that evil has befallen him. He left the house alone last night, less than an hour before midnight, saying that he knew not when he should return; and he has not since been seen."

"Then, if he told you that he knew not when he would return, why do you fear that evil has befallen him?" demanded Umu.

"Because, Lord--nay, I know not, except that--that--well, it is a most unusual--for my Lord Huanacocha to absent himself for so many hours without saying whither he intended to go," stammered the steward.

"Say you so?" sneered Umu. "That seems to me strange indeed; for it is not the usual custom of a n.o.ble to acquaint his steward with his business. Nay, friend, I cannot believe your story: you must have some better reason than the one which you have given me for your anxiety as to your lord's safety, and it will be to your great advantage to acquaint me with it forthwith."

"Lord, I have told you the truth; indeed I have," protested the unfortunate man, making as though he would throw himself upon his knees before Umu.

"So much the worse for you," growled Umu savagely, for the delay was beginning to tell upon his patience. "Is there any man here," he continued, "who can tell me where my Lord Huanacocha is to be found?"

He glared round upon the a.s.sembled servants, the whole of whom had by this time been quietly herded together by the soldiers. There was no answer.

"Very well," continued Umu, addressing his men. "Take these people down to the cellars below; lock them in securely; and then set fire to the house and burn it over their heads! I can waste no more time here."

As the troopers, in obedience to this order, closed round the prisoners, and with coa.r.s.e jests began to hustle them unceremoniously toward the head of the flight of steps leading down to the bas.e.m.e.nt of the building, the steward, suddenly realising the desperate nature of his own and his fellow servants' predicament, turned to Umu and cried:

"Stay, Lord, I pray you, and visit not upon us the misdeeds of our lord.

When I said just now that I knew not the whereabouts of my Lord Huanacocha, I spoke only the truth, for indeed I cannot tell for certain where he is--nay, Lord, have patience, and hear what I have to say ere you condemn me to a frightful death for a fault which is not mine. It is indeed true that I know not where my Lord Huanacocha is to be found, for he did not deign to tell me his business when he went out last night; but I believe I can form a very good guess as to where he now is."

"You can?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Umu. "Then say on, and that right quickly. For within the next five minutes this house will be ablaze, and you within it, if you have not by then told me what I want to know." Then, turning to a sergeant, he said: "Take with you a dozen men; bring everything in the house that will burn, pile it in this hall, and pour on it all the oil you can find. Now, sirrah, proceed with your tale."

"Then, Lord, in brief, it is this," answered the wretched steward, speaking as well as his chattering teeth would allow. "From words which I have overheard from time to time of late pa.s.sing between my Lord Huanacocha and others, especially the new Villac Vmu, I believe that when my master left this house last night he did so with the purpose of accompanying the High Priest and an armed party to the palace in order to seize the person of our Lord the Inca and convey him to the temple, that he might be subjected to the fire ordeal, to prove whether or no--"

"The fire ordeal, say you?" roared Umu in a paroxysm of fury, as the full horror of the situation at last dawned upon him.

"Even so, Lord," answered the quaking steward. "I heard my--"