King--of the Khyber Rifles Part 4

"Atcha, sahib."

"Make yourself scarce, then!"

Major Hyde was dressed, having performed that military evolution in something less than record time.

"Who was that you were talking to?" he demanded. But King continued to look out the door.

Hyde came and tapped on his shoulder impatiently, but King did not seem to understand until the native sergeant had quite vanished into the shadows.

"Let me pa.s.s, will you!" Hyde demanded. "I'll have that thief caught if the train has to wait a week while they do it!"

He pushed past, but he was scarcely on the step when the station-master blew his whistle, and his colored minion waved a lantern back and forth. The engine shrieked forthwith of death and torment; carriage doors slammed shut in staccato series; the heat relaxed as the engine moved-loosened-let go-lifted at last, and a trainload of hot pa.s.sengers sighed thanks to an unresponsive sky as the train gained speed and wind crept in through the thermantidotes.

Only through the broken thermantidote in King's compartment no wet air came. Hyde knelt on King's berth and wrestled with it like a caged animal, but with no result except that the sweat poured out all over him and he was more uncomfortable than before.

"What are you looking at?" he demanded at last, sitting on King's berth. His head swam. He had to wait a few seconds before he could step across to his own side.

"Only a knife," said King. He was standing under the dim gas lamp that helped make the darkness more unbearable.

"Not that robber's knife? Did he drop it?"

"It's my knife," said King.

"Strange time to stand staring at it, if it's yours! Didn't you ever see it before?"

King stowed the knife away in his bosom, and the major crossed to his own side.

"I'm thinking I'll know it again, at all events!" King answered, sitting down. "Good night, sir."

"Good night."

Within ten minutes Hyde was asleep, snoring prodigiously. Then King pulled out the knife again and studied it for half an hour. The blade was of bronze, with an edge hammered to the keenness of a razor. The hilt was of nearly pure gold, in the form of a woman dancing.

The whole thing was so exquisitely wrought that age had only softened the lines, without in the least impairing them. It looked like one of those Grecian toys with which Roman women of Nero's day stabbed their lovers. But that was not why he began to whistle very softly to himself.

Presently he drew out the general's package of papers, with the photograph on the top. He stood up, to hold both knife and papers close to the light in the roof.

It needed no great stretch of imagination to suggest a likeness between the woman of the photograph and the other, of the golden knife-hilt. And n.o.body, looking at him then, would have dared suggest he lacked imagination.

If the knife had not been so ancient they might have been portraits of the same woman, in the same disguise, taken at the same time.

"She knew I had been chosen to work with her. The general sent her word that I am coming," he muttered to himself. "Man number one had a try for me, but I had him pinched too soon. There must have been a spy watching at Peshawur, who wired to Rawal-Pindi for this man to jump the train and go on with the job. She must have had him planted at Rawal-Pindi in case of accidents. She seems thorough! Why should she give the man a knife with her own portrait on it? Is she queen of a secret society? Well-we shall see!"

He sat down on his berth again and sighed, not discontentedly. Then he lit one of his great black cigars and blew rings for five or six minutes. Then he lay back with his head on the pillow, and before five minutes more had gone he was asleep, with the cold cigar still clutched between his fingers.

He looked as interesting in his sleep as when awake. His mobile face in repose looked Roman, for the sun had tanned his skin and his nose was aquiline. In museums, where sculptured heads of Roman generals and emperors stand around the wall on pedestals, it would not be difficult to pick several that bore more than a faint resemblance to him. He had breadth and depth of forehead and a jowl that lent itself to smiles as well as sternness, and a throat that expressed manly determination in every molded line.

He slept like a boy until dawn; and he and Hyde had scarcely exchanged another dozen words when the train screamed next day into Delhi station. Then he saluted stiffly and was gone.

"Young jackanapes!" Hyde muttered after him. "Lazy young devil! He ought to be with his regiment, marching and setting a good example to his men! We'll have our work cut out to win this war, if there are many of his stamp! And I'm afraid there are-I'm afraid so-far too many of 'em! Pity! Such a pity! If the right men were at the top the youngsters at the foot of the ladder would mind their P's and Q's. As it is, I'm afraid we shall get beaten in this show. Dear, oh, dear!"

Being what he was, and consistent before all things, Major Hyde drew out his writing materials there and then and wrote a report against Athelstan King, which he signed, addressed to headquarters and mailed at the first opportunity. There some future historian may find it and draw from it unkind deductions on the morale of the British army.

Chapter II

The only things which can not be explained are facts. So, use 'em. A riddle is proof there is a key to it. Nor is it a riddle when you've got the key. Life is as simple as all that.-c.o.c.ker Delhi boasts a round half-dozen railway stations, all of them designed with regard to war, so that to King there was nothing unexpected in the fact that the train had brought him to an unexpected station. He plunged into its crowd much as a man in the mood might plunge into a whirlpool,-laughing as he plunged, for it was the most intoxicating splurge of color, din and smell that even India, the many-peopled-even Delhi, mother of dynasties-ever had, evolved.

The station echoed-reverberated-hummed. A roar went up of human voices, babbling in twenty tongues, and above that rose in differing degrees the ear-splitting shriek of locomotives, the blare of bugles, the neigh of led horses, the bray of mules, the jingle of gun-chains and the thundering cadence of drilled feet.

At one minute the whole building shook to the thunder of a grinning regiment; an instant later it clattered to the wrought-steel hammer of a thousand hoofs, as led troop-horses danced into formation to invade the waiting trucks. Loaded trucks banged into one another and thunderclapped their way into the sidings. And soldiers of nearly every Indian military caste stood about everywhere, in what was picturesque confusion to the uninitiated, yet like the letters of an index to a man who knew. And King knew. Down the back of each platform Tommy Atkins stood in long straight lines, talking or munching great sandwiches or smoking.

The heat smelt and felt of another world. The din was from the same sphere. Yet everywhere was hope and geniality and by-your-leave as if weddings were in the wind and not the overture to death.

Threading his way in and out among the motley swarm with a great black cheroot between his teeth and sweat running into his eyes from his helmet-band, Athelstan King strode at ease-at home-intent-amused-awake-and almost awfully happy. He was not in the least less happy because perfectly aware that a native was following him at a distance, although he did wonder how the native had contrived to pa.s.s within the lines.

The general at Peshawur had compressed about a ton of miscellaneous information into fifteen hurried minutes, but mostly he had given him leave and orders to inform himself; so the fun was under way of winning exact knowledge in spite of officers, not one of whom would not have grown instantly suspicions at the first asked question. At the end of fifteen minutes there was not a glib staff-officer there who could have deceived him as to the numbers and destination of the force entraining.

"Kerachi!" he told himself, chewing the b.u.t.t of his cigar and keeping well ahead of the shadowing native. Always keep a "shadow" moving until you're ready to deal with him is one of c.o.c.ker's very soundest rules.

"Turkey hasn't taken a hand yet-the general said so. No holy war yet. These'll be held in readiness to cross to Basra in case the Turks begin. While they wait for that at Kerachi the tribes won't dare begin anything. One or two spies are sure to break North and tell them what this force is for-but the tribes won't believe. They'll wait until the force has moved to Basra before they take chances. Good! That means no especial hurry for me!"

He did not have to return salutes, because he did not look for them. Very few people noticed him at all, although he was recognized once or twice by former messmates, and one officer stopped him with an out-stretched hand.

"Shake hands, you old tramp! Where are you bound for next? Tibet by any chance-or is it Samarkand this time?"

"Oh, hullo, Carmichel!" he answered, beaming instant good-fellowship. "Where are you bound for?" And the other did not notice that his own question had not been answered.

"Bombay! Bombay-Ma.r.s.eilles-Brussels-Berlin!"

"Wish you luck!" laughed King, pa.s.sing on. Every living man there, with the exception of a few staff-officers, believed himself en route for Europe; their faces said as much. Yet King took another look at the piles of stores and at the kits the men carried.

"Who'd take all that stuff to Europe, where they make it?" he reflected. "And what 'u'd they use camel harness for in France?"

At his leisure-in his own way, that was devious and like a string of miracles-he filtered toward the telegraph office. The native who had followed him all this time drew closer, but he did not let himself be troubled by that.

He whispered proof of his ident.i.ty to the telegraph clerk, who was a Royal Engineer, new to that job that morning, and a sealed telegram was handed to him at once. The "shadow" came very close indeed, presumably to try and read over his shoulder from behind, but he side-stepped into a corner and read the telegram with his back to the wall.

It was in English, no doubt to escape suspicion; and because it was war-time, and the censorship had closed on India like a throttling string, it was not in code. So the wording, all things considered, had to be ingenious, for the Mirza Ali, of the Fort, Bombay, to whom it was addressed, could scarcely be expected to read more than between the lines. The lines had to be there to read between.

"Cattle intended for slaughter," it ran, "despatched Bombay on Fourteen down. Meet train. Will be inspected en route, but should be dealt with carefully, on arrival. Cattle inclined to stampede owing to bad scare received to North of Delhi. Take all precautions and notify Abdul." It was signed "Suliman."

"Good!" he chuckled. "Let's hope we get Abdul too. I wonder who he is!"

Still uninterested in the man who shadowed him, he walked back to the office window and wrote two telegrams; one to Bombay, ordering the arrest of Ali Mirza of the Fort, with an urgent admonition to discover who his man Abdul might be, and to seize him as soon as found; the other to the station in the north, insisting on dose confinement for Suliman.