The Bronze Bell Part 21

"Make haste, hazoor!" cried the owner of the hand, in Hindustani. "Make haste, lest they seek to fasten this crime upon your head."

CHAPTER X

MAHARANA OF KHANDAWAR

Both hand and voice might well have been Labertouche's; Amber believed they were. And the darkness rendered visual identification impossible.

No shadow of doubt troubled him as he yielded to the urgent hand, and permitted himself to be dragged, more than led, through the reeking, milling mob, whose numbers seemed each instant augmented. He had thought, dully, to find it a difficult matter to worm through and escape, but somehow his guide seemed to have little trouble. Others, likewise, evidently wished to get out of sight before the arrival of the police, and in the wake of a little knot of these Amber felt himself drawn along until, within less than two minutes, they were on the outskirts of the crowd.

He drew a long breath of relief. Ever since that knife had flown whining past his cheek, his instinct of self-preservation had been dominated by a serene confidence that Pink Satin was at hand to steer him in safety away from the brawl. For his own part he was troubled by a feeling of helplessness and dependence unusual with him, who was of a self-reliant habit, accustomed to shift for himself whatever the emergency. But this was something vastly different from the run of experiences that had theretofore fallen to his lot. In. the foulest stews of a vast city, with no least notion of how to win his way back to the security of the Chowringhee quarter; in the heart of a howling native rabble stimulated to a pitch of frenzy by the only things that ever seem really to rouse the Oriental from his apathy--the scent and sight of human blood; and with a sense of terror chilling him as he realised the truth at which his guide had hinted--that the actual a.s.sa.s.sin would not hesitate an instant to cry the murder upon the head of one of the Sahib-logue: Amber felt as little confidence in his ability to work out his salvation as though he had been a child. He thanked his stars for Labertouche--for the hand that clasped his arm and the voice that spoke guardedly in his ear.

And then, by the light of the street, he discovered that his grat.i.tude had been premature and misplaced. His guide had fallen a pace behind and was shouldering him along with almost frantic energy; but a glance aside showed Amber, in Labertouche's stead, a chunky little Gurkha in the fatigue uniform of his regiment of the British Army in India. Pink Satin was nowhere in sight and it was immediately apparent that an attempt to find him among the teeming hundreds before the goldsmith's stall would be as futile as foolish--if not fatal. Yet Amber's impulse was to wait, and he faltered--something which seemed to exasperate the Gurkha, who fairly danced with excitement and impatience.

"Hasten, hazoor!" he cried. "Is this a time to loiter? Hasten ere they charge you with this spilling of blood. The G.o.ds lend wings to our feet this night!"

"But who are you?" demanded Amber.

"What matter is that? Is it not enough that I am here and well disposed toward you, that I risk my skin to save yours?" He cannoned suddenly against Amber, shunting him unceremoniously out of the bazaar road and into a narrow black alley.

Simultaneously Amber heard a cry go up, shrill above the clamour of the mob, screaming that a white sailor had knifed the goldsmith. And he turned pale beneath his tan.

"You hear, hazoor? They are naming you to the police-wallahs. Come!"

"You're right." Amber fell into a long, free stride that threatened quickly to distance the Gurka's short, st.u.r.dy legs. "Yet why do you take this trouble for me?"

"Why ask?" panted the Gurkha. "Did I not stand behind you and see that you did not throw the knife? Am I a dog to stand by and see an innocent man yoked to a crime?" He laughed shortly. "Am I a fool to forget how great is the generosity of Kings? This way, hazoor!"

"Why call me King?" Amber hurdled a heap of offal and picked up his pace again. "Yet you will find me generous, though but a sahib."

"The sahibs are very generous." Again the Gurkha laughed briefly and unpleasantly. "But this is no time for words. Save your breath, for now we must run."

He broke into a springy lope, with his chin up, elbows in and chest distended, his quick small feet slopping regardlessly through the viscous mud of the unpaved byway. "Hear that!" he cried, as a series of short, sharp yells rose in the bazaar behind them. "The dogs have found the scent!" And for a time terror winged their flight. Eastern mobs are hard to handle; if overtaken the chances were anything-you-please to one that the fugitives would be torn to pieces as by wild animals ere the police could interfere.

They struck through stranger and more awful quarters than Amber had believed could be tolerated, even in India. For if there were a better way of escape they had no time to pause and choose it. From the racket in their rear the pursuit was hot upon their trail, and with every stride, well-nigh, they were pa.s.sing those who would mark them down and, when the rabble came up, cry it on with explicit directions.

And so Amber found himself pounding along at the heels of his Gurkha, threading acres of flimsy huts huddled together in meaningless confusion--frail boxes of bamboo, mud, and wattles thrown roughly together upon corrupt, naked earth that reeked of the drainage of uncounted generations. Whence they pa.s.sed through long, brilliant, silent streets lined with open hovels wherein Vice and Crime bred cheek-by-jowl, the haunts of Shame, painted and unabashed, sickening in the very crudity of its nakedness.... There is no bottom to the Pit wherein the native sinks.... And on, panting, with labouring chests and aching limbs, into the abandoned desolation of the Chinese quarter, and back through the still, deadly ways which Amber had threaded in the footsteps of Pink Satin--where the houses towered high and were ornamented with dingy, crumbling stucco and rusty, empty, treacherous balconies of iron, and the air hung in stagnation as if the very winds here halted to eavesdrop upon the iniquities that were housed behind the jealous, rotting blinds of wood and iron.

By now the voice of the chase had subsided to a dull and distant muttering far behind them, and the way was clear. Beyond its age-old, ineradicable atmosphere of secret infamy there was nothing threatening in the aspect of the neighbourhood. And the Gurkha pulled up, breathing like a wind-broken horse.

"Easily, hazoor!" he gasped. "There is time for rest."

Willingly Amber dropped into a wavering stride, so nearly exhausted that his legs shook under him and he reeled drunkenly; and, fighting for breath, they stumbled on, side by side, in the shadow of the overhanging walls, until as they neared a corner the Gurkha stopped and halted Amber with an imperative gesture.

"The police, sahib, the police!" he breathed, with an expressive sweep of his hand toward the cross street. "Let us wait here till they pa.s.s."

And in evident panic he crowded Amber into the deep and gloomy recess afforded by a door overhung by a balcony.

Taken off his guard, but with growing doubt, Amber was on the point of remonstrating. Why should the police concern themselves with peaceful wayfarers? They could not yet have heard of the crime in the Bazaar, miles distant. But as he opened his lips he heard the latch click behind him, and before he could lift a finger, the Gurkha had flung himself bodily upon him, fairly lifting the American across the threshold.

They went down together, the Gurkha on top. And the door crashed to with a rattle of bolts, leaving Amber on his back, in total darkness, betrayed, lost, and alone with his enemies....

Now take a man--a white man--an American by preference--such an one as David Amber--who has led an active if thoughtful life and lived much out of doors, roughing it cheerfully in out-of-the-way corners of the world, and who has been careful to maintain his physical condition at something above par; bedevil him with a series of mysterious circ.u.mstances for a couple of months, send him on a long journey, entangle him in a pa.s.sably hopeless love affair, work his expectations up to a high pitch of impatience, exasperate him with disappointment, and finally cause him to be tripped up by treachery and thrust into a pitch-black room in an unknown house in one of the vilest quarters of Calcutta: treat him in such a manner and what may you expect of him?

Not discretion, at least.

Amber went temporarily mad with rage. He was no stranger to fear--no man with an imagination is; but for the time being he was utterly foolhardy. He forgot his exhaustion, forgot the hopelessness of his plight, forgot everything save his insatiable thirst for vengeance. He was, in our homely idiom, fighting-mad.

One instant overpowered by and supine beneath the Gurkha, the next he had flung the man off and bounded to his feet. There was the automatic pistol in his coat-pocket, but he, conscious that many hands were reaching out in the darkness to drag him down again, found no time to draw it. He seemed to feel the presence of the nearest antagonist, whom he could by no means see; for he struck out with both bare, clenched fists, one after the other, with his weight behind each, and both blows landed. The sounds of their impact rang like pistol-shots, and beneath his knuckles he felt naked flesh crack and give. Something fell away from him with a grunt like a poled ox. And then, in an instant, before he could recover his poise, even before he knew that the turned-in stone of the emerald ring had bitten deep into his palm, he was the axis of a vortex of humanity. And he fought like a devil unchained.

Those who had thrown themselves upon him, clutching desperately at his arms and legs and hanging upon his body, seemed to be thrown off like chips from a lathe--for a time. In two short minutes he performed prodigies of valour; his arms wrought like piston-rods, his fists flew like flails; and such was the press round him that he struck no blow that failed to find a mark. The room rang with the sounds of the struggle, the shuffle, thud, and sc.r.a.pe of feet both booted and bare, the hoa.r.s.e, harsh breathing of the combatants, their groans, their whispers, their low tense cries....

And abruptly it was over. He was borne down by sheer weight of numbers.

Though he fought with the insanity of despair they were too many for him. He went a second time to the floor, beneath a dozen half-nude bodies. Below him lay another, with an arm encircling his throat, the elbow beneath his chin compressing his windpipe. Powerless to move hand or foot, he gave up ... and wondered dully why it was that a knife had not yet slipped between his ribs--between the fifth and sixth--or in his back, beneath the left shoulder-blade, and why his gullet remained unslit.

Gradually it was forced upon him that his captors meant him no bodily harm, for the present at least. His wrath subsided and gave place to curiosity while he rested, regaining his wind, and the natives squirmed away from him, leaving one man kneeling upon his chest and four others each pinioning a limb.

There followed a wait, while some several persons indulged in a whispered confabulation at a distance from him too great for their words to be articulate. Then came a croaking laugh out of the darkness and words intended for his ear.

"By Malang Shah! but my lord doth fight like a Rajput!"

Amber caught his breath and exploded. "Half a chance, you d.a.m.ned thugs, and I'd show you how an American can fight!"

But he had spoken in English, and his hearers gathered the import of his words only from his tone, apparently. He who had addressed him laughed applausively.

"It was a gallant fight," he commented, "but like all good things hath had its end. My lord is overcome. Is my lord still minded for battle or for peace? Dare I, his servant, give orders for his release, or----"

Here Amber interrupted; stung by the bitter irony, he told the speaker in fluent idiomatic Hindustani precisely what he might expect if his "lord" ever got the shadow of a chance to lay hands upon him.

The grim cackling laugh followed his words, a mocking echo, and was his only answer. But for all his defiance, he presently heard orders issued to take him up and bear him to another chamber. Promptly the man on his chest moved away, and his fellows lifted and carried Amber, gently and with puzzling consideration, some considerable distance through what he surmised to be an underground corridor. He suffered this pa.s.sively, realising his impotence, and somewhat comforted if perplexed by the tenderness accorded him in return for his savage fight for freedom.

Unexpectedly he was let down upon the floor and released. Bare feet scurried away in the darkness and a door closed with a resounding bang.

He was alone, for all he could say to the contrary--alone and unharmed.

He was more: he was astonished; he had not been disarmed. He got up and felt of himself, marvelling that his pocket still sagged with the weight of the pistol as much as at the circ.u.mstance that, aside from the inevitable damage to his clothing--a coat-sleeve ripped from the arm-hole, several b.u.t.tons missing, suspenders broken--he had come out of the melee unhurt, not even bruised, save for the hand that had been cut by the emerald. He wrapped a handkerchief about this wound, and took the pistol out, deriving a great deal of comfort from the way it balanced, its roughened grip nestling snugly in his palm.

He fairly itched to use the thing, but lacking an excuse, had time to take more rational counsel of himself. It were certainly unwise to presume upon the patience of his captors; though he had battered some of them pretty brutally and himself escaped reprisals, the part of wisdom would seem to be to save his ammunition.

With this running through his mind, the room was suddenly revealed to his eyes, that had so long strained fruitlessly to see. A flood of lamplight leaped through some opening behind him and showed him his shadow, long and gigantic upon a floor of earth and a wall of stone. He wheeled about, alert as a cat; and the sight of his pistol hung steady between the eyes of one who stood at ease, with folded arms, in an open doorway. Over his shoulder was visible the bare brown poll of an attendant whose lank brown arm held aloft the lamp.

One does not shoot down in cold blood a man who makes no aggressive move, and he who stood in the doorway endured impa.s.sively the mute threat of the pistol. Above its sight his eyes met Amber's with a level and unwavering glance, shining out of a dark, set face cast in a mould of insolence and pride. A bushy black beard was parted at his chin and brushed stiffly back. Between his thin hard lips, parted in a shadowy smile, his teeth gleamed white. Standing a head taller than Amber and very gracefully erect in clothing of a semi-military cut and of regal magnificence, every inch of his pose bespoke power, position, and the habit of authority. His head was bound with a turban of spotless white from whose clasp, a single splendid emerald, a jewelled aigret nodded; the bosom of his dark-green tunic blazed with orders and decorations; at his side swung a sabre with richly jewelled hilt. Heavy white gauntlets hid his hands, top-boots of patent leather his legs and feet.

At once impressed and irritated by his att.i.tude, Amber lowered his weapon. "Well?" he demanded querulously. "What do you want? What's your part in this infamous outrage?"

On the other's face the faint smile became more definite. He nodded nonchalantly at Amber's pistol. "My lord intends to shoot?" he enquired in English, his tone courteous and suave.

"That's as may be," retorted Amber defiantly. "I'm going to have satisfaction for this outrage if I die getting it. You may count on that, first and last."

The man lifted his eyebrows and his shoulders in deprecation; then turned to his attendant. "Put down the light and leave us," he said curtly in Hindustani.