The Elephant God Part 36

He guided it across the courtyard until it stood under the window from which the Rajah and the _Dewan_ stared down at him in amazement and superst.i.tious dread. Then he said to the animal:

"_Salaam kuro!_ (Salute!)"

It raised its trunk and trumpeted in the royal salutation. With a mocking smile, Dermot lifted his hat to the shrinking pair of murderers and turned the elephant away.

Then for the first time he became aware that the balcony of the lounge was crowded with his fellow-countrymen. Ida and Mrs. Rice were sobbing hysterically on each other's shoulders. Noreen, clinging to her brother, whose arm was about her, was staring down at him with a set, white face.

And as he looked up and saw them the men went mad. They burst into a roar of cheering, of greeting, and applause that drove the Rajah and his Minister into hiding again, for the shouts had something of menace in them.

Dermot took off his hat in acknowledgment of the cheers and, seeing the Hindu engineer shrinking behind the others with an expression of amazed terror on his face, called to him:

"Would you kindly send one of your friends to open the door, Mr.

Chunerb.u.t.ty? It seems to have got shut by some unfortunate accident."

He brought the elephant to its knees and dismounted. Then as it rose he pointed to the gateway and said in the _mahout's_ tongue:

"Return to your stall."

The animal walked away submissively. The two surviving natives shrank against the buildings in deadly fear, but the animal disappeared quietly.

Dermot went to the door and waited. Soon he heard the key turned in the lock and the rusty bolts drawn back. The door was then flung open by one of the porters, while the others huddled against the wall, for Barclay stood in front of them with a pistol raised. He sprang forward and seized Dermot's hand.

"Heaven and earth! How are you alive?" he cried. "I thought the devils had got you this time. I was tempted to shoot these swine here for being so long in opening the door."

There was a clatter of boots on the marble floor, as Payne and Granger, followed by the rest of the Englishmen, ran up the hall, cheering. They crowded round Dermot, nearly shook his arm off, thumped him on the back, and overwhelmed him with congratulations.

As Dermot thanked them he said:

"I didn't know that you fellows were looking on, otherwise I wouldn't have done that little bit of gallery-play. But I had a reason for it." "Yes; we know," said Payne significantly. "Barclay told us."

Then they dragged him protesting upstairs to the lounge, that the women might congratulate him too; which they did each in her own fashion. Ida was effusive and sentimental, Mrs. Rice fatuous, and Noreen timid and almost stiff. The girl, who had endured an agony worse than many deaths, could not voice her feelings, and her congratulations seemed curt and cold to others besides Dermot.

She had no opportunity of speaking to him apart, even for a minute, for the men surrounded him and insisted on toasting him and questioning him until it was time to dress for dinner. And even then they formed a guard of honour and escorted him to his room.

Noreen, utterly worn out by her sleepless nights and the storm of emotions that had shaken her, was unable to come down to dinner, and at her brother's wish went to bed instead. And so she did not learn that Dermot was leaving the Palace at the early hour of four o'clock in the morning.

That night as Dermot and Barclay went upstairs together the police officer said:

"I wonder if they'll dare to try anything against you tonight, Major. I should say they'd give you a miss in baulk, for they must believe you invulnerable. Still, I'm going with you to your room to see."

When they reached it and threw open the door a figure half rose from the floor. Barclay's hand went out to it with levelled pistol, but the words arrested him.

"_Khodawund!_ (Lord of the World!) Forgive me! I did not know. I did not know."

It was the treacherous Rama who had tried to lead Dermot to his death. He lay face to the ground.

"d.a.m.ned liar!" growled Barclay in English.

"Did not know that thou wert leading me under the feet of the _must_ elephant?" demanded Dermot incredulously.

"Aye, that I knew of course, _Huzoor_. How can I deceive thee? But thee I knew not; though the elephant Shiva-_ji_ did, even in his madness. It is not my fault. I am not of this country. I am a man of the Punjaub. I know naught of the G.o.ds of Bengal."

Barclay had heard from the planters the belief in Dermot's divinity which was universal in their district, and perceived that the legend had reached this man. He was quick to see the advantages that they could reap from his superst.i.tious fears. He signed to Dermot to be silent and said in solemn tones:

"Rama, thou hast grievously offended the G.o.ds. Thou knowest the truth at last?"

"I do, Sahib. The talk through the Palace, aye, throughout the city, is all of the G.o.d of the Elephants, of the Terrible One who feeds his herd of demons on the flesh of men. The temple of _Gunesh_ will be full indeed tonight. But alas! I am an ignorant man. I knew not that the holy one took form among the _gora-logue_ (white folk)."

"The G.o.ds know no country. The truth, Rama, the truth," said Barclay impressively. "Else thou art lost. Shiva-_ji_, mayhap, is hungry and needs his meal of flesh."

"Ai! sahib, say not so," wailed the terror-stricken man. "He has feasted well today. With my own eyes I saw him feed on Man Singh the Rajput."

Natives believe that an elephant, when it seizes in its mouth the limbs of a man that it has killed and is about to tear in pieces, eats his flesh. In dread of a like doom, of the terrible vengeance of this mysterious Being, G.o.d, man, or demon, perhaps all three, from whom death shrank aside, whom neither poison of food nor venom of snake could harm, who used mad, man-slaying elephants as steeds, Rama unburdened his soul. He told how the _Dewan's_ confidential man had bade him carry out the attempts on Dermot's life. He showed them that the Major's suspicions when he saw the Rajah's soldiery were correct, and that from Lalpuri came the inspiration of the carrying-off of Noreen. He told them of a party of these same soldiers that had gone on a secret mission into the Great Jungle, from which but a few came back after awful sufferings, and the strange tales whispered in the bazaar as to the fate of their comrades.

He disclosed more. He spoke of mysterious travellers from many lands that came to the Palace to confer with the _Dewan_--Chinese, Afghans, Bhutanese, Indians of many castes and races, white men not of the sahib-_logue_. He said enough to convince his hearers that many threads of the world-wide conspiracy against the British Raj led to Lalpuri. There was not proof enough yet for the Government of India to take action against its rulers, perhaps, but sufficient to show where the arch-conspirators of Bengal were to be sought for.

Rama left the room, not pardoned indeed, but with the promise of punishment suspended as long as he was true to the oath he had sworn by the Blessed Water of the Ganges, to be true slave and bearer of news when Dermot needed him.

Long after he left, the two sat and talked of the strange happenings of the last few days, and disclosed to each other what they knew of the treason that stalked the land, for each was servant of the Crown and his knowledge might help the other. And when the hoot of Payne's motor-horn in the outer courtyard told them that it was time for Dermot to go, they said good-bye in the outwardly careless fashion of the Briton who has looked into another's eyes and found him true man and friend.

Then through the darkness into the dawn Dermot sped away with his companions from the City of Shame and the Palace of Death.

And Noreen woke later to learn that the man she loved had left her again without farewell, that the fog of misunderstanding between them was not yet lifted.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE CAT AND THE TIGER

Several weeks had pa.s.sed since the Durga Puja Festival. Over the Indian Empire the dark clouds were gathering fast. The Pathan tribes along the North-west Frontier were straining at the leash; Afridis, Yusufzais, Mohmands, all the _Pukhtana_, were restless and excited. The _mullahs_ were preaching a holy war; and the _maliks_, or tribal elders, could not restrain their young men. Raids into British Indian territory were frequent.

There was worse menace behind. The Afghan troops, organised, trained, and equipped as they had never been before in their history, were ma.s.sing near the Khyber Pa.s.s. Some of the Penlops, the great feudal chieftains of little-known Bhutan, were rumoured to have broken out into rebellion against the Maharajah because, loyal to his treaties with the Government of India, he had refused a Chinese army free pa.s.sage through the country. All the masterless Bhuttia rogues on both sides of the border were sharpening their _dahs_ and looking down greedily on the fertile plains below.

All India itself seemed trembling on the verge of revolt. The Punjaub was honeycombed with sedition. Men said that the warlike castes and races that had helped Britain to hold the land in the Black Year of the Mutiny would be the first to tear it from her now. In the Bengals outrages and open disloyalty were the order of the day. The curs that had fattened under England's protection were the first to snap at her heels. The Day of Doom seemed very near. Only the great feudatories of the King-Emperor, the n.o.ble Princes of India, faithful to their oaths, were loyal.

Through the borderland of Bhutan Dermot and Badshah still ranged, watching the many gates through the walls of mountains better than battalions of spies. The man rarely slept in a bed. His nights were pa.s.sed beside his faithful friend high up in the Himalayan pa.s.ses, where the snow was already falling, or down in the jungles still reeking of fever and sweltering in tropic heat. By his instructions Parker and his two hundred sepoys toiled to improve the defences of Ranga Duar; and the subaltern was happy in the possession of several machine guns wrung from the Ordnance Department with difficulty.

Often, as Dermot sat high perched on the mountain side, searching the narrow valleys and deep ravines of Bhutan with powerful gla.s.ses, his thoughts flew to Noreen safe beyond the giant hills at his back. It cheered him to know that he was watching over her safety as well as guarding the peace of hundreds of millions in the same land. He had seldom seen her since their return from Lalpuri, and on the rare occasions of their meeting she seemed to avoid him more than ever. Chunerb.u.t.ty was always by her side.

Could there be truth, then, in this fresh story that Ida Smith had told him on their last night at the Palace, when she said that she had discovered that she was mistaken in believing in Noreen's approaching betrothal to Charlesworth, of which she had a.s.sured him in Darjeeling? For at Lalpuri she said she had extracted from the girl the confession that she had refused the Rifleman and others for love of someone in the Plains below.

And Ida, judging from Chunerb.u.t.ty's constant attendance on, and proprietorial manner with Noreen, confided to Dermot her firm belief that the Bengali was the man.

The thought was unbearable to the soldier. As he sat in his lonely eyrie he knew now that he loved the girl, that it would be unbearable for him to see her another's wife. Those few days at Lalpuri, when first he felt the estrangement between them, had revealed the truth to him. When in the courtyard of the Palace he saw Death rushing on him he had given her what he believed would be his last thought.

He recalled her charm, her delightful comradeship, her brightness, and her beauty. It was hateful to think that she would dower this renegade Hindu with them all. Dermot had no unjust prejudice against the natives of the land in which so much of his life was pa.s.sed. Like every officer in the Indian Army he loved his sepoys and regarded them as his children. Their troubles, their welfare, were his. He respected the men of those gallant warrior races that once had faced the British valiantly in battle and fought as loyally beside them since. But for the effeminate and cowardly peoples of India, that ever crawled to kiss the feet of each conqueror of the peninsula in turn and then stabbed him in the back if they could, he had the contempt that every member of the martial races of the land, every Sikh, Rajput, Gurkha, Punjaubi had.

The girl would scarcely have refused so good a match as Charlesworth or come away heart-whole from Darjeeling, where so many had striven for her favour, if she had gone there without a prior attachment. That she cared for no man in England he was sure, for she had often told him that she had no desire to return to that country. He had seen her among the planters of the district and was certain that she loved none of them. Only Chunerb.u.t.ty was left; it must indeed be he.