On the Face of the Waters Part 49

Jim Douglas nodded.

"There is a court at the back. The bullocks are there, for we are taking cloth the Lala wants to smuggle out. A length or two in each empty sack; for he hath been looted beyond limits. So he will have no eyes, not the caravan either, for secret work in dark corners. Bring the boy drugged as he came here, the Rajpootni will carry the bundle as a spinner, to the third door down the lane. 'Tis an empty yard; I will have the bullock there with the half-load of raw cotton. We have two or three more as foils to the empty bags. Come as a Bunjarah, then the Huzoor can see the last of the child, and see old Tiddu's loyalty."

The familiar whine came back to his voice; he could scarcely resist a thrust forward of his open hand. But dignity or no dignity, Jim Douglas knew that itching palm well, and said significantly:

"It will be worth a thousand rupees to you, Tiddu, if the child gets safe."

A look of offended virtue came over the smooth face. "This slave is not thinking of money. The child is as his own child."

"And the mem as your mother, remember," put in the other quickly.

Tiddu hesitated. "If his servant saves the baba, cannot the master save the lady?" he said with the effrontery of a child trying how far he might go; but Jim Douglas' revolver was out in a second, and Tiddu, with an air of injured innocence, went on without a pause:

"The mem will be safe enough, Huzoor, when the child is gone, if the Huzoor will himself remain day and night to answer for the screened, sick woman within. His slave will be back by dawn; and if he smells trouble, the mem must be moved in a dhoolie to another house, the Rajpootni must go home, and I will be mother-in-law. I can play the part, Huzoor."

He could indeed! If Kate were to be safe anywhere, it would be with this old scoundrel with his thousand-faces, his undoubted gift for influencing the eyes of men. Three days of pa.s.sing from one place to another, with him in some new character, and their traces must be lost. A good plan certainly!

"And there is no danger to-day?" he asked finally. Tiddu paused again, and his luminous eyes sought the sahib's. "Who can say that, Huzoor, for a mem, in this city. But I think none. We can do no more, danger or not. And I will watch. And see, here is the dream-giver. The Rajpootni will know the dose for the child."

The dream-giver! All that day the little screw of paper Tiddu had taken from his waistbelt lay in a fold of Jim Douglas' high-twined pugri, and its contents seemed to make him dull. Not that it mattered, since there was literally nothing to be done before dusk; for it would be cruel to tell Kate and keep her on tenterhooks all day to no purpose. But after a while she noticed his dullness, and came over to where he sat, his head on his hand, in his favorite att.i.tude.

"I believe you are going to have fever and ague again," she said solicitously; "do take some aconite; if we could only get some quinine, that would end the tiresome thing at once."

He took some to please her, and because her suggestion gave him a reasonable excuse for being slack; but as he lounged about lazily, watching her playing with the boy, seeing her put him to sleep as the heat of the day came on, noting the cheerful content with which she adapted herself to a simplicity of life unknown to her three months before, the wonder of the circ.u.mstances which had led to it faded in the regret that it should be coming to an end. It had been three months of incredible peace and good-will; and to-day the peace and goodwill seemed to strike him all the more keenly because he knew that in an hour or so at most he must disturb it. It seemed hard.

But something else began the task for him. About sunset a sudden flash dazzled his eyes, and ere he grasped its vividness the walls were rocking silently, and a second after a roar as of a thousand thunder-claps deafened his ears. Kate had Sonny in her arms ere he could reach her, thrusting her away from the high parapet wall, which, in one already cracked corner, looked as if it must come down; which did indeed crumble outward, leaving a jagged gap halfway down its height, the debris falling with a rattle on the roof of the next house.

But ere the noise ended the vibration had pa.s.sed, leaving him with relief on his face looking at a great mushroom of smoke and steam which had shot up into the sky.

"It's the powder factory!" he exclaimed, using Hindustani for Tara's benefit as well, since she had rushed in from the outer court at the first hint of danger to cling round his feet. "It is all over now, but it's lucky we were no nearer."

As he spoke he was wondering if this would make any difference in Tiddu's plans for the night, since the powder factory had stood equa-distant between them and the Delhi gate. He wondered also what had caused the explosion. Not a sh.e.l.l certainly. The factory had purposely been placed at the furthest point from the Ridge. However, there was a fine supply of powder gone, and, he hoped, a few mutineers. But Kate's mind had reverted to that other explosion which had been the prologue to the three months of peace and quiet. Was this one to be the epilogue? A vague dread, a sudden premonition made her ask quickly:

"Can it mean anything serious? Can anything be the matter, Mr.

Greyman? Is anything wrong?"

It was a trifle early, he thought. She might have had another half hour or so. But this was a good beginning, or rather a fitting end.

"And you have known this all day?" she said reproachfully when he told her the truth. "How unkind of you not to tell me!"

"Unkind!" he echoed. "What possible good----"

"I should have known it was the last day--I--I should have made the--the most of it."

He felt glad of his own impatience of the sentimentality as he turned away, for in truth the look on her face hit him hard. It sent him to pace up and down the outer roof resting till the time for action came.

Then he had a whispered consultation with Tara regarding the dose of raw opium safe for a child of Sonny's years.

"Are you sure that is not too much?" he asked anxiously.

Tara looked at the little black pellet she was rolling gravely. "It is large, Huzoor, but it is for life or death; and if it was the Huzoor's own son I would give no less."

Once more the remembrance of the still little morsel in Zora's tinsel veil brought an odd compunction; the very possibility of this strange child's death roused greater pain than that certainty had done. He felt unnerved at the responsibility; but Kate, looking up as he rejoined her, held out her hand without a tremor.

"Give it me, please," she said, and her voice was steady also; "he will take it best from me. I have some sugar here."

The child, drowsy already with the near approach of bedtime, was in her lap, and rested its head on her breast, as with her arms still round him her hands disguised the drug.

"It is a very large dose," she said dully. "I knew it must be; that's why I wanted to give it--myself. Sonny! Open your mouth, darling--it's sweet--there--swallow it quick--that's a good Sonnikins."

"You are very brave," he said with a catch in his voice.

She glanced up at him for a second with a sort of scorn in her eyes.

"I knew he would take it from me," she replied, and then, shifting the child to an easier position, began to sing in a half voice:

"There is a happy land----"

"Far--farze--away," echoed Sonny contentedly. It was his usual lullaby, chosen because it resembled a native air, beloved of ayahs.

And as she sang and Sonny's eyelids drooped the man watched them both with a tender awe in his heart; and the other woman, crouching in the corner, watched all three with hungry, pa.s.sionate eyes. Here, in this group of man, woman, and child, without a personal claim on each other, was something new, half incomprehensible, wholly sweet.

"He is asleep now," said Kate after a time. "You had better take him."

He stooped to obey, and she stooped also to leave a long, lingering kiss on the boy's soft cheek. It sent a thrill through the man as he recognized that in giving him the child she had given him more than kisses.

The feeling that it was so made him linger a few minutes afterward at the door with a new sense of his responsibilities toward her to say:

"I wish I had not to leave you alone."

"You will be back directly, and I shall be all right," she said, pausing in her closing of the door, for Tara had already pa.s.sed down the stair with her bundle.

"Shall I lock it outside?" he began. Tara and he had been used to do so in those first days when they left her.

She laid her hand lightly on his arm. "Don't," she said, "don't get anxious about me again. What can happen in half an hour?"

He heard her slip the catch on the staple, however, before he ran downstairs. He was to take a different road to the Delhi gate from the quiet, more devious alleys which Tara would choose in her character of poor spinner carrying her raw stuff home. She was to await his arrival, to deposit the bundle somewhere close to the third door in the back lane by the cloth merchant's shop, leaving it to him to take inside, as if he were one of the caravan; this plan insuring two things--immunity from notice in the streets, and also in the yard.

But, as Tara would be longer than he by a few minutes in reaching the tryst, he purposely went through a bit of the Thunbi Bazaar to hear what he could of the explosion. He was surprised--a trifle alarmed--at the excitement. Crowds were gathered round many of the balconies, talking of spies, swearing that half the court was in league with the Ridge, and that, after all, Abool-Bukr might not have a wild-goose chase.

"There will be naught but slops and slaps for him in _my_ information, I'll swear," said one with a laugh. "I'll back old Mother Sobrai to beat off a dozen princes."

"And blows and bludgeons in _mine_," chuckled another. "I chose the house of Bahadur, the single-stick player."

And as, having no more time to lose, he cut across gateward, he saw down an alley a mob surging round Ahsan-Oolah, the physician's, house, and heard a pa.s.serby say, "They have the traitor safe." It made him vaguely uneasy, since he knew that when once the talk turns on hidden things, people, not to be behindhand in gossip, rake up every trivial doubt and wonder.

Still there was a file of bullocks waiting by the cloth merchant's as arranged. And as he pa.s.sed into the lane a dim figure, scarce seen in the dark, slipped out of the further end. And there was the bundle. He caught it up as if it belonged to him, and after knocking gently at the third door, pushed it open, knowing that he must show no hesitation. He found himself in a sort of outhouse or covered entrance, pitch dark save for a faintly lighter square showing an outlet, doubtless into the yard beyond. He moved toward it, and stumbled over something unmistakably upon the floor. A man! He dropped the bundle promptly to be ready in case the sleeper should be a stranger. But there was no movement, and he kneeled down to feel if it was Tiddu. A Bunjarah I--that was unmistakable at the first touch--but the limpness was unmistakable too. The man was dead--still warm, but dead! By all that was unlucky!--not Tiddu surely! With the flint and steel in his waist-cloth, he lit a tuft of cotton from the bundle as a torch.

It was Jhungi!--Jhungi, with a knife in his heart!