The Bronze Bell Part 23

"Thank you 'most to death, Salig Singh. Now will you be good enough to order a ghari to take me back to the Great Eastern?"

"My lord's will is his servant's." Salig Singh started for the door the least trace too eagerly.

"One moment," said Amber sharply. "Not so fast, my friend." He tapped his palm with the barrel of the pistol to add weight to his peremptory manner. "I think if you will lift your voice and call, some one will answer. I've taken a great fancy to you, if you don't know it, and I don't purpose letting you out of my sight until I'm safely out of this house."

With a sullen air the Rajput yielded. From his expression Amber would have wagered much that there was a bad quarter of an hour in store for those who had neglected to disarm him when the opportunity was theirs.

"As you will," conceded Salig Singh; and he clapped his hands smartly, crying: "Ohe, Moto!"

Almost instantly the iron door swung open and the lamp-bearer appeared, salaaming.

"Tell him," ordered Amber, "to bring me a cloak of some sort--not too conspicuous. I've no fancy to kick up a scandal at the hotel by returning with these duds visible. You can charge it up to profit and loss; if it hadn't been for the tender treatment your a.s.sa.s.sins gave me, I'd be less disreputable."

A faint smile flickered in Salig Singh's eyes--a look that was not wholly devoid of admiration for the man who had turned the tables on him with such ease. "Indeed," he said, "I were lacking in courtesy did I refuse thee that." And turning to the servant he issued instructions in accordance with Amber's demands, adding gratuitously an order that the way of exit should be kept clear.

As the man bowed and withdrew Amber grinned cheerfully. "It wasn't a bad afterthought, Salig Singh," he observed; "precautions like that relieve the mind wonderfully sometimes."

But the humour of the situation seemed to be lost upon the Rajput.

In the brief wait that followed Amber shifted his position to one wherefrom he could command both the doorway and Salig Singh; his solicitude, however, was without apparent warrant; nothing happened to justify him of his vigilance. Without undue delay the servant returned with a light cloak and the announcement that the ghari was in waiting.

His offer to help the American don the garment was graciously declined.

"I've a fancy to have my arms free for the present," Amber explained; "I can get it on by myself in the ghari." He took the cloak over his left arm. "I'm ready; lead on!" he said, and with a graceful wave of the pistol bowed Salig Singh out of the cellar.

Moto leading with the light, they proceeded in silence down a musty but deserted pa.s.sage, Amber bringing up the rear with his heart in his mouth and his finger nervous upon the trigger. After a little the pa.s.sage turned and discovered a door open to the street. Beyond this a ghari could be seen.

Amber civilly insisted that both the servant and his master leave the house before him, but, once outside, he made a wary detour and got between them and the waiting conveyance. Then, "It's kind of you, Salig Singh," he said; "I'm properly grateful. I'll say this for you: you play the game fairly when anybody calls your attention to the rules.

Good-night to you--and, I say, be kind enough to shut the door as you go in. I'll just wait until you do."

The Rajput found no answer; conceivably, his chagrin was intense. With a curt nod he turned and reentered the house, Moto following. The door closed and Amber jumped briskly into the ghari.

"Home, James," he told the ghariwallah, in great conceit with himself.

"I mean, the Great Eastern Hotel--and _juldee jao_!"

The driver wrapped a whiplash round the corrugated flanks of his horse and the ghari turned the corner with gratifying speed. In half a minute they were in the Chitpur Road. In fifteen they drew up before the hotel.

It was after midnight and the city had begun to quiet down, but Old Court House Street was still populous with carriages and pedestrians, black and tan and white. There was a Viceregal function of some sort towards in the Government House, and broughams and victorias, coaches, hansoms, and coupes, with lamps alight and liveried coachmen--turn-outs groomed to the last degree of smartness--crowded the thoroughfare to the peril and discomfort of the casual ghari. The scene was unbelievably brilliant. Amber felt like rubbing his eyes. Here were sidewalks, pavements, throbbing electric arcs, Englishmen in evening dress, fair Englishwomen in dainty gowns and pretty wraps, the hum of English voices, the very smell of civilisation. And back there, just across the border he had so recently crossed, still reigned the midnight of the Orient, glamorous with the glamour of the Arabian Nights, dreadful with its dumb menace, its atmosphere of plot and counterplot, mutiny, treason, intrigue, and death. Here, a little island of life and light and gay, heedless laughter; there, all round it, pressing close, silence and impenetrable darkness, like some dark sea of death lapping its sh.o.r.es....

In a cold sweat of horror Amber got out of the vehicle and paid his fare. As he turned he discovered an uniformed policeman stalking to and fro before the hotel, symbol of the sane power that ruled the land.

Amber was torn by an impulse to throw himself upon the man and shriek aloud his tale of terror--to turn and scream warning in the ears of those who lived so lightly on the lip of h.e.l.l....

A Bengali drifted listlessly past, a bored and blase babu in a suit of pink satin, wandering home and interested in nothing save his own bland self and the native cigarette that drooped languidly from his lips. He pa.s.sed within a foot of Amber, and from somewhere a voice spoke--the Virginian could have taken an oath that the babu's lips did not move--in a clear yet discreet whisper.

"To-morrow," it said; "Darjeeling."

Amber hitched his cloak round him and entered the hotel.

CHAPTER XI

THE TONGA

"Badshah Junction, Mr. Amber ... Badshah Junction ... We'll be there in 'alf an hour ..."

Inexorably the voice droned on, repeating the admonition over and over.

Mutinous, Amber stirred and grumbled in his sleep; stirred and, grumbling, wakened to another day. Doggott stood over him, doggedly insistent.

"Not much time to dress, sir; we're due in less than 'alf an hour."

"Oh, _all_ right." Drowsy, stiff and sore in bone and muscle, Amber sat up on the edge of the leather-padded bunk and stared out of the window, wondering. With thundering f.l.a.n.g.es the train fled from east to west across a landscape that still slept wrapped in purple shadows. Far in the north the higher peaks of a long, low range of treeless hills were burning with a pale, cold light. A few stars glimmered in the cloudless vault--glimmered wan, doomed to sudden, swift extinction. Beside the railroad a procession of telegraph poles marched with dipping loops of wire between. There was nothing else to see. None the less the young man, now fully alive to the business of the day, said "Thank G.o.d!" in all sincerity.

"Even a tonga will be a relief after three days of this, Doggott," he observed, surrendering himself to the ministrations of the servant.

It was the third morning succeeding that on which he had risen from his bed in the Great Eastern Hotel in Calcutta, possessed by a wild anxiety to find his way with the least possible delay to Darjeeling and Sophia Farrell--a journey which he was destined never to make. For while he breakfasted a telegram had been brought to him.

"_Your train for Benares_," he read, "_leaves Howrah at nine-thirty.

Imperative_." It was signed: "_Pink Satin_."

He acted upon it without thought of disobedience; he was in the hands of Labertouche, and Labertouche knew best. Between the lines he read that the Englishman considered it unwise to attempt further communication in Calcutta. Something had happened to eliminate the trip to Darjeeling. Labertouche would undoubtedly contrive to meet and enlighten him, either on the way or in Benares itself.

In the long, tiresome, eventless journey that followed his faith was sorely tried; nor was it justified until the train paused some time after midnight at Mogul Serai. There, before Amber and Doggott could alight to change for Benares, their compartment was invaded by an unmistakable loafer, very drunk. Tall and burly; with red-rimmed eyes in a pasty pockmarked face, dirty and rusty with a week-old growth of beard; clothed with sublime contempt for the mode and exalted beyond reason with liquor--a typical loafer of the Indian railways--he flung the door open and himself into Amber's arms, almost knocking the latter down; and resented the accident at the top of his lungs.

"You miserable, misbegotten blighter of a wall-eyed American----" At this point he became unprintably profane, and Doggott fell upon him with the laudable intention of throwing him out. In the struggle Amber caught his eye, and it was bright with meaning. "Pink Satin!" he hissed. "He's gone ahead.... You're to keep on to Agra.... Change for Badshah Junction, Rajputana Route.... Then tonga to Kuttarpur....

Farrell's there and his daughter.... That's right, my man, throw me out!..."

His downfall was spectacular. In his enthusiasm for the part he played, he had erred to the extent of delivering a blow in Doggott's face more forcible, probably, than he had intended it to be. Promptly he landed sprawling on the station platform and, in the sight of a mult.i.tude of natives, but the moment gone by his shrieks roused from their sleep in orderly ranks upon the floor, was gathered into the arms of the stationmaster and had the seriousness of his mistake pointed out to him forthwith and without regard to the sensitiveness of human anatomy.

And the train continued on its appointed way, bearing both Amber and the injured Doggott.

Thus they had come to the heart of Rajputana.

In the chill of dawn they were deposited at Badshah Junction. A scanty length of rude platform received them and their two small travelling bags.

On their left the Haiderabad express roared away, following the night, its course upon the parallel ribbons of shining steel marked by a towering pillar of dust. On their right, beyond the sharp-cut edge of the world, the sun had kindled a mighty conflagration in the skies. On every hand, behind and before them, the desert lay in ebbing shadows, a rolling waste seared by arid nullahs--the bone-dry beds of long-forgotten streams. Off in the north the hills cropped up and stole purposelessly away over the horizon.

They stood, then, forlorn in a howling desolation. For signs of life they had the station, a flimsy shelter roofed with corrugated iron, a beaten track that wandered off northwards and disappeared over a gra.s.sless swell, a handful of mud huts at a distance, and the ticket-agent. The latter a sleepy, surly Eurasian in pyjamas, surveyed them listlessly from the threshold of the station, and without a sign either of interest or contempt turned and locked himself in.

Amber sat down on his upturned suit-case and laughed and lit a cigarette. Doggott growled. The noise of the train died to silence in the distance, and a hyena came out of nowhere, exhibited himself upon the ridge of a dry desert swell, and mocked them sardonically. Then he, like the ticket-agent, went away, leaving an oppressive silence.

Presently the sun rose in glory and sent its burning level rays to cast a shadow several rods long of an enraged American beating frantically with clenched fists upon the door of an unresponsive railway station.

He hammered until he was a-weary, then deputised his task to Doggott, who resourcefully found him a stone of size and proceeded to make dents in the door. This method elicited the Eurasian. He came out, listened attentively to abuse and languidly to their demands for a tonga to bear them to Kuttarpur, and observed that the mail tonga left once a day--at three in the afternoon. Doggott caught him as he was on the point of returning to his interrupted repose and called his attention to the unwisdom of his ways.

Apparently convinced, this ticket-agent announced his intention of endeavouring to find a tonga for the sahib. Besides, he was not unwilling to acquire rupees. He scowled thoughtfully at Amber, ferociously at Doggott, went back into the station, gossipped casually with the telegraph sounder for a quarter of an hour, and finally reappearing, without a word or a nod left the platform for the road and walked and walked and walked and walked. Within thirty yards his figure was blurred by the dance of new-born heat devils. Within a hundred he disappeared; the desert swallowed him up.