The Sirdar's Oath Part 18

The words were spoken in Hindustani, and now Raynier answered in the same tongue,--

"I suppose I have been. But where am I, and--who are you?"

"I am a Hakim [native physician.]. The Sahib must not talk," was the answer, ignoring the first part of the question. This the patient did not fail to notice.

"That is all right, Hakim Sahib"--Raynier was always polite in his address with natives, and if they had any t.i.tle or rank never failed to give them the benefit of it. "But what I want to know is, where am I?"

The question was asked with some impatience. The doctor, seeing that he was likely to become excited, which would be highly prejudicial to the patient, and therefore equally so to his own interest, replied,--

"You are in the house of his Greatness the Nawab."

"What?" almost shouted Raynier.

"In the house of the Nawab Mahomed Mushim Khan," repeated the Hakim.

"Oh, then, I am in good hands. The Nawab and I are friends. Is the Miss Sahib here too?"

Even if the doctor had not turned away to conceal it, Raynier would not have noticed the strange look which had come over his face, as indeed how should he?

"Yes, yes," was the hurried answer. "Now the Sahib must not talk any more."

"But I must see her if only for a minute. She will come, I know. Bring her to me, Hakim Sahib, then I will be as quiet as you wish."

"That cannot be," was the answer. "She is getting on well, but not well enough to talk to the Sahib. In a few days, perhaps. Now the Sahib must rest quiet or he will not get well enough to see her at all."

Raynier sighed. There was sense in what the other said, he supposed, yet it was hard. Hilda would naturally have suffered from reaction, and could conceivably be anything but well. Why, he himself was as weak as a cat, as the sapient simile for some inscrutable reason puts it, the harmless, necessary domestic feline being, proportionately, of the strongest and most wiry of the animal creation.

"Can I see the Nawab, then?" he said.

"The Nawab is absent."

"Then his brother, the Sirdar Kuhandil Khan? Will he not come and see me?"

"He too is absent, Sahib. In a few days, perhaps, when the Sahib is well."

With this answer Raynier must fain be content. A drowsiness stole over him, begotten of the exertion of talking, and a great sense of security and comfort Mushim Khan was his friend, and although he might have been drawn into the present bobbery--all these mountain tribes dearly loved the fun of fighting--why, he and Hilda would be perfectly safe under his roof. Hilda, of course, had been found at the same time as himself, and brought here. They would meet in a day or two, as the doctor had said, and when the fighting was over, why, then, they would return to Mazaran, and--good Heavens! why would the thought of Cynthia Daintree obtrude itself? And as, in consequence, he began to turn restlessly, the Hakim glided to his side.

"Drink this," he said, pouring something from a phial. Raynier did so, and in another moment was slumbering hard and peacefully.

For two or three days longer was Raynier thus tended, but day and night the Hakim was with him, or in the room which lay behind the _chik_, or, if absent for a while, his place was supplied by an attendant. But not by any chance, not for one single instant was he ever left alone. Had he been a criminal awaiting the gallows he could not have been more closely and continuously watched. He tried to obtain information as to what was going on outside, but without avail. On general subjects the doctor or the attendant would converse, but let him once touch that of the present disturbance and they were closeness itself. Then he thought it was time to insist on seeing Hilda.

With deprecatory words, and far from easy in his mind, the Hakim told him that the Miss Sahib was not there. He had told him the contrary, it was true, but he was very weak and ill, and good news is better for a sick man than bad news, wherefore he had told him what he had.

What, then, had become of Miss Sahib? Raynier asked. Had she not been found at the same time as himself? He was repressing a murderous desire to leap upon and throttle this liar of a Hakim, and only the knowledge that violence would serve no good purpose whatever availed to restrain him. He controlled his voice, too, striving to speak calmly.

No, she had not been found, the doctor answered. It was not even known that there was a Miss Sahib with him at all. He had been found by a party of Gularzai in the early morning lying unconscious on the mountain side, and brought here. But there was n.o.body with him. And then the Hakim, looking at him with something like pity, it might have been thought, suggested that the time had come when the Sahib might take a little fresh air.

A few moments ago, and how welcome the idea would have been. He was longing to see something beyond the four walls of his room--of his prison; and from his window nothing was visible but another wall. But now the shock was too great, too stunning. He had pictured Hilda here with him, here in security, and, after their hardships, in some degree of comfort. And all the time this infernal Hakim had been feeding him on lies. What had become of her? He remembered how she had gone after the horse, but of the descent of the mist he remembered nothing. Had she wandered too far and been unable to find him again? Great Heaven!

how awful. A defenceless woman, alone, lost, in that savage mountain solitude, with night coming on, and that woman Hilda Clive. And then by a strange inspiration came a modic.u.m of comfort in the thought that it was Hilda Clive; for it brought back to him certain recollections. He remembered her bizarre midnight walk in a semi-trance, the perilous episode in the _tangi_ and the consummate nerve and utter unconcern she had displayed. She had qualities, properties, gifts, what you will, which placed her utterly outside any other woman he had ever known--and these might now carry her through where another would succ.u.mb.

Following the Hakim and the attendant mechanically, Raynier found himself in a kind of courtyard, rather was it a roof, flat and walled in. He could see two or three other similar roof courtyards, with people on them. But where was he? He had been in Mushim Khan's dwelling, an ordinary mud-walled village similar in every way to a hundred others inhabited by the Gularzai and kindred border tribes, but this place was akin to a castle or rock fortress. He could not see much of it, but it seemed to him that the place he was in crowned the summit of a rock eminence, into which it was partly built. Had Mushim Khan another dwelling, then--a mountain stronghold which he used in times of disturbance? It looked so.

How blue the sky was, how bracing the air. Raynier drew in deep draughts of the latter. He felt recovered already, and earnestly he longed for the return of the Nawab, that he might be set at liberty, and at once start in search of Hilda. Little he cared now about his official prospects or anything of the kind. This girl who had been his companion in danger and hardship filled all his thoughts.

And then immediately beneath him arose an outburst of the most awful cries and shrieks, such as could have been wrung only from a human being undergoing the extremity of anguish and bodily torture. With blanched face and chilled blood he rushed to the parapet and looked over.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

THE MULLAH AGAIN.

Beneath, at a distance of some thirty feet, ran a narrow alley way, and on the opposite side of this were doors. Round one of these several men were cl.u.s.tered, as though gazing upon and rather enjoying something that was going on within. And it was from this door that those horrible shrieks and screams proceeded.

Raynier's blood ran chill within him. What act of devilish cruelty was going on within that sinister chamber? He noticed that a kind of thin steam was issuing from the upper part of the door, wafting up a nauseous and greasy odour to where he stood. He could hear a mutter of voices within the place, and a plashing sound, then the shrieks of agony broke forth afresh louder than ever till he was forced to stop his ears.

Still, a horrible fascination kept him riveted--his gaze fixed on that grisly door. What did it all mean? Then he was conscious that the yelling had ceased, and now those cl.u.s.tering around parted to give way to several persons who issued from the place. Among them was a tall, fine-looking man, who had the air and importance of a chief. At him Raynier looked somewhat curiously, for he thought he was acquainted with all the Sirdars of the Gularzai. Then this man stopped, and half-turned, and Raynier saw dragged forth between two others a limp, quaking figure, its quivering features expressing an extremity of terror that was akin to mania. And in this object he recognised his quondam smart, well-groomed--and, to all but himself, somewhat arrogant-- chupra.s.si, Kaur Singh. This was the man they had been torturing, then.

But the words of the chief told him the next moment that it was not.

"Dog of an idolater," the latter said, "thou hast seen the torments in which thy brother has died, which are but the beginning of what he is now undergoing. Wherefore, if thou wouldst preserve thy miserable carcase a little longer I advise thee to write that which shall hurry those who are collecting thine ill-gotten gains."

The answer was an abject whine, and the follower of Brahma wallowed and cringed before the follower of Mahomed.

Raynier remained rooted to the spot, gazing after the receding forms of those beneath. That the unfortunate Sunt Singh had just been put to some ghastly and lingering form of death within that gruesome chamber, his brother being forced to look on, he now gathered. The motive, too, was apparent, and now he deduced that the man who had spoken must be the far-famed Murad Afzul; and the discovery inspired him with a very genuine misgiving on his own account. What if the Nawab and his brother never returned? What if they were killed or captured in some engagement, and he were thus left at the mercy of this ruffian, whose barbarities were a byword upon that border? What would be his own fate, helpless in such hands? He rejoiced now that Hilda did not share his captivity, the more so that a conviction had been growing upon him that she must have found her way into safety. Then he remembered that Mehrab Khan had learned that Murad Afzul had released Haslam and the Tarletons for money, which looked as though that arch-dacoit deemed it bad luck to murder Europeans. If the worst came to the worst, he, too, might find safety and deliverance that way.

He turned quickly. An interruption, sudden and somewhat startling, had broken in upon his meditations, a most venomous curse to wit, hurled at himself. Framed in the doorway by which he himself had entered this roof courtyard, stood a figure. The face was aged and lined, and the beard grey and undyed. A ragged green turban crowned the head, while the immense hooked nose and the opening and shutting of the extended claw-like hands suggested some weird and exaggerated bird of prey.

Raynier recognised that he had to do with some professional fanatic, a _mullah_ most likely.

"Why dost thou curse me, father?" he said in Pushtu. "What harm have I done thee or thine?"

"Hear him!" cried the _mullah_. "Ya Allah! he calls me father, this son of countless generations of infidels. Hear him, Mahomed, Prophet of Allah ever blessed! Me, thy servant Hadji Haroun, who has three times visited the sacred and inviolable Temple, who has kissed the sacred Stone, this unbeliever calls 'father.'"

And he spat forth a renewed and envenomed string of curses, pausing now and again to raise his eyes heavenward, clasping and unclasping his hooked claws--and then, as though having gained new inspiration, breaking forth afresh.

Raynier felt annoyed. He was not altogether unfamiliar with this rabid and aggressive type of fanaticism, though he had found it more among Hindu fakirs than Mahomedans. He answered shortly,--

"I thought but to please thee, old man, but since I offended thee, though I am sorry, it might be good to depart and leave me in peace."

At this the _mullah_ broke forth into fresh curses--but something of a tumult beneath seemed to interrupt him, for with his head on one side he paused and listened. There was a confused murmur of voices--almost a roar--mingled with the trampling of horses. Of what was going on beneath Raynier could see nothing, nor did he care to turn his back--for longer than the briefest of glances--upon the fanatical _mullah_.

"In peace!" repeated the latter, echoing his last words. "In peace!

Here is he who will give thee peace, O infidel dog. Now will the blood of Allahyar Khan--whom the Prophet console in Paradise--be avenged."

"I know not of what thou art talking, old man," returned Raynier, shortly. "Thy curses matter not greatly, but if thou namest me 'dog'

again I will throw thee over yon parapet even though thou hadst visited the sacred and inviolable Temple thirty times instead of three."

At these words the other uttered a wild, shrill yell, and turning fled down the stairs crying that the Feringhi dog was insulting the tomb of the Prophet and threatening one who had kissed the sacred Stone--and Raynier began to realise that he had made a grave mistake in losing his temper with this old fool, whom he should have allowed to abuse him till to-morrow morning rather than give him any pretext for raising the fanatical hatred of these fierce and easily-roused tribesmen in whose power he was. It was too late now, for already there was an approaching hubbub on the stairs and several of them rushed in, their fierce countenances blazing with wrath. But that their weapons were undrawn Raynier would have expected to be cut to pieces. As it was they flung themselves upon him, and he was dragged and hustled to the door, and down the stairs--along pa.s.sages and through doorways, with incredible force and rapidity. Totally unarmed, and weakened by his recent illness, resistance was out of the question. He supposed his time had come and that he was being dragged to his death.