The Bronze Bell Part 18

All afternoon the _Poonah_ plodded steadily on toward the pall of smoke that hemmed the northern horizon. The reedy river banks narrowed and receded, gorgeous with colour, unvaryingly monotonous, revealing nothing. Behind walls of rank foliage, dense green curtains almost impenetrable even to light, the flat and spongy delta of the Ganges lay decorously screened. If now and again the hangings parted they disclosed nothing more than a brief vista of half-stagnant water or a little clearing, half-overgrown, with the crumbling red brick walls of some roofless and abandoned dwelling.

In the lavender and gold and scarlet of a windless sunset, Calcutta lifted suddenly up before them, a fairy city, mystic and unreal with its spires and domes and minarets a-glare with hot colour behind a hedge of etched black masts and funnels--all dimmed and made indefinite by a heavy dun haze of smoke: lifted up in glory against the evening sky and was blotted out as if by magic by the swooping night; then lived again in a myriad lights pin-p.r.i.c.ked upon the dense bluish-blackness.

The _Poonah_ slipped in to her dock under cover of darkness. Amber, disembarking with Doggott, climbed into an open ghari on the landing stage and was driven swiftly to his hotel.

As he alighted and, leaving Doggott to settle with the ghariwallah, crossed the sidewalk to the hotel entrance, a beggar slipped through the throng of wayfarers, whining at his elbow:

"Give, O give, Protector of the Poor!"

Preoccupied, Amber hardly heard, and pa.s.sed on; but the native stuck leech-like to his side.

"Give, hazoor--and the mercy of G.o.d shall be upon the Heaven-born for ten-thousand years!"

Now "Heaven-born" is flattery properly reserved for those who sit in high places. Amber turned and eyed the man curiously, at the same time dropping into the filthy, importunate palm a few annas.

"May the shadow of the Heaven-born be long upon the land, when he shall have pa.s.sed through the Gateway of Swords!"

And like a flash the man was gone--dodging nimbly round the ghari and across Old Court House Street, losing himself almost instantly in the press of early evening traffic.

"The devil!" said Amber thoughtfully. "Why should it be a.s.sumed that I have any shadow of an intention of entering that d.a.m.nable Gateway of Swords?"

An incident at the desk, while he was arranging for his room, further mystified him. He had given his name to the clerk, who looked up, smiling.

"Mr. David Amber?" he said.

"Why, yes--"

"We were expecting you, sir. You came by the _Poonah_?"

"Yes, but--"

"There's a note for you." The man turned to a rack, sorting out a small square envelope from others pigeon-holed under "A."

Could it be possible that Sophia Farrell had been advised of his coming? Amber's hand trembled slightly with eagerness and excitement as he took the missive.

"An Eurasian boy left it for you half an hour ago," said the clerk.

"Thank you," returned Amber, controlling himself sufficiently to wait until he should be conducted to his room before opening the note.

It was not, he observed later, superscribed in a feminine hand. Could it be from Quain's friend Labertouche? Who else?... Amber lifted his shoulders resignedly. "I wish Quain had minded his own business," he said ungratefully; "I can take care of myself. This Labertouche'll probably make life a misery for me."

There was a quality in the note, however, to make him forget his resentment of Quain's well-meant interference.

"My dear Sir," it began formally: "Quain's letter did not reach me until this afternoon; a circ.u.mstance which I regret. Otherwise I should be better prepared to a.s.sist you. I have, on the other hand, set afoot enquiries which may shortly result in some interesting information bearing upon the matters which engage you. I expect to have news of the Fs. to-night, and shall be glad to communicate it to you at once. I am presuming that you purpose losing no time in attending to the affair of the goldsmith, but I take the liberty of advising you that to attempt to find him without proper guidance or preparation would be an undertaking hazardous in the extreme. May I offer you my services? If you decide to accept them, be good enough to come before ten to-night to the sailors' lodging house known as 'Honest George's,' back of the Lal Bazaar, and ask for Honest George himself, refraining from mentioning my name. Dress yourself in your oldest and shabbiest clothing; you cannot overdo this, since the neighbourhood is questionable and a well-dressed man would immediately become an object of suspicion. Do not wear the ring; keep it about you, out of sight.

Should this fail to reach you in time, try to-morrow night between eight and ten. You would serve us both well by _burning_ this immediately. Pray believe me yours to command in all respects."

There was no signature.

Amber frowned and whistled over this. "Undoubtedly from Labertouche,"

he considered. "But why this flavour of intrigue? Does he know anything more than I do? I presume he must. It'd be a great comfort if.... Hold on. 'News of the Fs.' That spells the Farrells. How in blazes does he know anything about the Farrells? I told Quain nothing.... Can it be a trap? Is it possible that the chap who took that photograph recognised...?"

The problem held him in perplexity throughout the evening meal. He turned it over this way and that without being able to arrive at any comforting solution. Impulse in the end decided him--impulse and a glance at his watch which told him that the time grew short. "I'll go,"

he declared, "no matter what. It's nearly nine, but the Lal Bazaar's not far."

In the face of Doggott's unbending disapproval he left the hotel some twenty minutes later, having levied on Doggott's wardrobe for suitable clothing. Dressed in an old suit of soft grey serge, somewhat too large for him, and wearing a grey felt hat with the brim pulled down over his eyes, he felt that he was not easily to be identified with his every-day self--the David Amber whose exacting yet conservative "correctness" had become a by-word with his friends.

Once away from the Great Eastern he quietly insinuated himself into the tide of the city's night life that tirelessly ebbs and flows north of Dalhousie Square--the restless currents of native life that move ceaselessly in obedience to impulses so meaningless and strange to the Occidental understanding. Before he realised it he had left civilisation behind him and was breathing the atmosphere, heady and weird, of the Thousand-and-One Nights. The Lal Bazaar seethed round him noisily, with a roaring not unlike that of a surf in the hearing of him who had so long lived separate from such scenes. But gradually the strangeness of it pa.s.sed away and he began to feel at home. And ere long he pa.s.sed in a single stride from the glare of many lights and the tumult of a hundred tongues to the dark and the quiet hush of an alley that wormed a sinuous way through the hinterland of the bazaar. Here the air hung close and still and gravid with the odour of the East, half stench, half perfume, wholly individual and indescribable; here black shadows clung jealously to black and slimy walls, while lighter ones but vaguely suggestive of robed figures glided silently hither and yon; and odd noises, whispers, sobs, sounds of laughter and of rage, a.s.sailed the ear and excited the imagination....

At a corner where there was more light he came upon a policeman whose tunic, helmet, and truncheon were so closely patterned after those of the London Bobby that the simple sight of them was calculated to revive confidence in the security of one's person. He inspected Amber shrewdly while the latter was asking his way to Honest George's, and in response jerked a white-gloved thumb down the wide thoroughfare.

"You carn't miss it, sir--s'ylors' boardin'-'ouse, all lit up and likely with a row on at the bar. Mind your eye, guv'nor. It ayn't a plyce you'd ought to visit on your lone."

"Thanks; I've business there. I reckon to take care of myself."

Nevertheless it was with a mind preyed upon by forebodings that Amber stumbled down the cobbled way, reeking with filth, toward the establishment of Honest George. Why on earth should Labertouche make an appointment in so unholy a spot? Amber's doubts revived and he became more than half persuaded that this must be a snare devised by those acute intelligences which had instigated both the theft of the photograph and that snarled mock-benediction of the mendicant.

"I don't like it," he admitted ruefully; "it's so canny."

He stopped in front of a building whose squat brick facade was lettered with the rea.s.suring sobriquet of its proprietor. A bench, running the width of the structure, was thick with sprawling loafers, who smoked and spat and spoke a jargon of the seas, the chief part of which was blasphemy. Within, visible through windows never closed, was a crowded barroom ablaze with flaring gas-jets, uproarious with voices thick with drink.

One needed courage of no common order to run the gauntlet of that rowdy room and brave the more secret dangers of the infamous den. "You've got to have your nerve with you," Amber put it. "But I suppose it's all in the game. Let's chance it." And he entered.

Compared with the atmosphere of that public-room a blast from h.e.l.l were sweet and cooling, thought Amber; the first whiff he had of it all but staggered him; and he found himself gasping, perspiration starting from every pore. Faint with disgust he elbowed his way through the mob to the bar, thankful that those about him, absorbed in the engrossing occupation of getting drunk, paid him not the least heed. Flattening himself against the rail he cast about for the proprietor. A blowsy, sweating barmaid caught his eye and without a word slapped down upon the sloppy counter before him a gla.s.s four fingers deep with unspeakable whiskey. And he realised that he would have to drink it; to refuse would be to attract attention, perhaps with unpleasant consequences. "It's more than I bargained for," he grumbled, making a pretence of swallowing the dose, and to his huge relief managing to spill two-thirds of it down the front of his coat. What he swallowed bit like an acid. Tears came to his eyes, but he choked down the cough, and as soon as he could speak paid the girl. "Where's the boss?" he asked.

"Who?" Her glance was penetrating. "Oh, he's wytin' for you." She nodded, lifting a shrill voice. "Garge, O Garge! 'Ere's that Yankee."

With a bare red elbow she indicated the further end of the room.

"You'll find 'im down there," she said, her look not unkindly.

Amber thanked her quietly and, extricating himself from the press round the bar, made his way in the direction indicated. A couple of billiard tables with a small mob of onlookers hindered him, but by main strength and diplomacy he wormed his way past and reached the rear of the room.

There were fewer loafers here and he had little hesitation about selecting from an attendant circle of sycophants the genius of the dive--Honest George himself, a fat and burly ruffian who filled to overflowing the inadequate accommodation of an armchair. Sitting thus enthroned in his shirt-sleeves, his greasy and unshaven red face irradiating a sort of low good-humour that was belied by the cold cunning of his little eyes, he fulfilled admirably the requirements of the role he played self-cast.

"'Ere, you!" he hailed Amber brusquely. "You're a 'ell of a job-'unter, ain't you? Mister Abercrombie's been wytin' for you this hour gone.

'Know the w'y upstairs?"

His tone was boisterous enough to fix upon Amber the attention of the knot of loafers round the arm-chair. Amber felt himself under the particular regard of a dozen pair of eyes, felt that his measure was taken and his identification complete. Displeased, he answered curtly: "No."

"This w'y, then." Honest George hoisted himself ponderously out of his arm-chair and lumbered heavily across the room, shouldering the crowd aside with a high-handed contempt for the pack of them. Jerking open a small door in the side wall, he beckoned Amber on with a backward nod of his heavy head. "Be a bit lively, carn't you?" he growled; and Amber, in despite of qualms of distrust, followed the fellow into a small and noisome hallway lighted by a single gas-jet. On the one hand a flight of rickety steps ran up into repellent obscurity; on the other a low door stood open to the night.

The crimp lowered his voice. "Your friend's this w'y." He waved his fat red hand toward the door. "Them fools back there 'll think you're tryin' for a berth with Abercrombie, the ship-master. I 'opes you'll not tyke offense at the w'y I 'ad to rag you back there, sir."

"No," said Amber, and Honest George led the way out into a small, flagged well between towering black walls and left him at the threshold of a second doorway. "Two flights up, the door at the top," he said; "knock twice and then twice." And without waiting for an answer he lurched heavily back to his own establishment.

Amber watched his broad back fill the dimly-lighted doorway opposite and disappear, of two minds whether or not to turn tail and run.

Suspicious enough in the beginning, the affair had now an exceeding evil smell--as repulsive figuratively as was the actual effluvium of the premises. He hung hesitant in doubt, with a heart oppressed by those grim and silent walls of blackness that loomed above him. With feet slipping on slimy flags he might be pardoned for harbouring suspicions of some fouler treachery. The yawning mouth of the narrow doorway, with the blackness of Erebus within, was deterring at its best; in such a hole a man might be snared and slain and his screams, though they rang to high Heaven, would fall meaningless on mundane ears. Honest George's with its flare of lights and its crowd had been questionable enough....

With a shrug, at length, he took his courage in his hands--and his life, too, for all he knew to the contrary--and moved on into the blackness, groping his way cautiously down a short corridor, his fingers on either side brushing walls of rotten plaster. He had absolutely nothing to guide him beyond the crimp's terse instructions.

Underfoot the flooring seemed to sag ominously; it creaked hideously.

Abruptly he stumbled against an obstruction, halted, and lighted a match.