The Three Sapphires Part 28

"Men who are dead do not come to the market place to complain, and as the priest has not spoken it may be that he is dead."

"Here comes our friend in perpetuity, the Banjara!" Finnerty exclaimed.

He rose, and, going into the bungalow, returned to drop a rupee in the native's hand, saying: "Go back to Raj Bahadar and tell the mahout I will be along shortly." He turned to the captain.

"Swinton, all one's servants may know the thing a man is risking his life to discover and he be none the wiser till some one babbles it like a child."

"As in the mutiny," Swinton suggested. "Our officials saw cow dung plastered on the trees--some few heard what they called 'silly whispers,' but all native India knew, and all India remained hushed till the dead silence was shattered by the tornado."

"Exactly. And while we say Ananda is insane, and all these things are child's play, think of the trifling things that were used as factors to breed that holocaust of hate. The Mussulmans told that the British Raj had greased the cartridges they had to bite with pig's fat to defile their religion; that suttee had been abolished to break the Hindu faith by filling the land with widow prost.i.tutes; that water the Hindu sepoys drank had come in contact with leather valves made from the skin of a cow. There were other trivial things lied into mountains of sins. Ananda knows all that; he has the cunning of a serpent and the viciousness of a black leopard."

The Banjara had arrived, and Finnerty counted out five rupees; then, with a touch of Irish humour, he added another, saying, with a smile: "This for your disappointment in not having a dog killed."

"If the monkey man, Mahadua, had been true to his caste, which is to watch and not talk, there would have been profit for both sides--the sahib would have obtained a kill."

When he had tucked away his money, the Banjara said: "My brother is not now keeper at the tiger garden."

"Why? For whose sin does he suffer?"

"Darna Singh let the black leopard out to meet Rajah Ananda at Jadoo Pool."

"The rajah wasn't there," Finnerty declared in a drawling way.

"No; there was some talk that was either a lie or a mistake; it was another at the pool."

"Who?"

"The horse of the young sahib was found on the hill, and the mem-sahib was seen between the pool and her bungalow."

"A ghost story, Banjara, and it's all finished."

"A bullock that is dead is dead, but a herdsman watches that the other bullocks do not also die from the same thing."

"I trust you, Banjara," Finnerty said, seemingly at an irrelevant angle.

"The mem-sahib rides every day up into the hills, and the roads are not good for pleasure. Packets of cotton that have stomachs come down over the road; cotton grows here."

"What has cotton to do with the one who rides?"

"Perhaps the mem-sahib rides to meet the one who comes behind the packets. My brother, who was the son of a Banjara priest, one who had visions that all the tribe believed, has also had a vision. Perhaps the beating caused a fever, for visions come thus."

"What saw he?" Finnerty asked, knowing that the herdsman had something of moment to tell in this way.

"There was a full moon in the sky, and by its light he saw a rajah, and the rajah had many guns and soldiers--even sahibs as soldiers--and he was driving out the English. And the guns were hidden behind bales of cotton."

"Is that all?" Finnerty asked, for the herdsman had stopped.

"My brother woke at that point, huzoor, and his eyes fell upon a mhowa tree in full bloom."

"Which means that the mhowa is in bloom now?"

"Of the interpreting of visions I know nothing, but it might be that way."

The Banjara now departed, and Swinton said: "Do you remember Prince Ananda saying that if a holy man stood by the Lake of the Golden Coin in the full of the moon, when the mhowa was in bloom, having the three sacred sapphires, he would see the dead king rise in his golden boat?"

"Yes, and this cowherd's chatter means an uprising soon. I hear hoofs; that will be Lord Victor. Are we going to accuse him of being at the pool?"

"I think not. We know as much now as we shall if we question him. But we'll keep him with us; a young a.s.s like that isn't safe without a keeper--he's no match for as clever a traitor as this girl."

Finnerty's chair groaned as though it had received a twist from his big frame, but his voice was devoid of protest: "I can't make the girl out.

My mind is in a psychological state, and I suppose I'm influenced by the apparent candour in her eyes. They seem to express trouble, too, as if she were searching for a moral finger post, for a way out of darkness."

Then the major expressed an apologetic phrase: "I'm afraid I'm a bit awkward at psychology; jungle dwellers are more in my line."

Swinton put his hand on the big man's shoulder. "My dear major, I wish I'd had a brother like you. My family was baked in the crucible of government service for generations; we're executive automatons."

"I understand; you're an Englishman--d.a.m.n it! I mean, in youth you never roamed the hills like s.h.a.ggy-haired colts as we do in Ireland."

"If I had I wouldn't have made a good Raj policeman. But to hark back.

The German machine, more soulless than our own, knows the value of Mona Lisa eyes, and Marie was probably picked for this delicate mission for the very quality that has won your sympathy--her appealing womanhood."

"And yet my perhaps sympathy for the girl was birthed by accident, not design on her part."

"What is an attractive girl doing here so close to Prince Ananda? Why is she here with a Prussian who is an enemy of the British Raj? Why is she averse to being approached? What is she searching for in the hills? It's the road to China, and guns have already arrived, according to our Banjara."

"I haven't an answer for any one of your queries, captain, but we must investigate those packets."

Lord Victor arrived now, and as he had not yet seen the skin of Pundit Bagh he was taken to where it was pegged out on the ground and being rubbed with ashes and alum. This kill of a tiger was probably the first incident in his life calculated to raise elation in the hearts of his friends.

"Something to tack to, eh?" he cried joyfully. "Fancy I hear the chaps in fluffy old London saying as I pa.s.s, 'That's the man that shot a big man-eater on foot.' No sw.a.n.k to that, major, for I did. You know that d.i.c.ky little chapel dedicated to the tiger G.o.d?"

"Yes; the one down in the plain."

"It's simply buried under devotee bric-a-brac this morning. They should have a sign up 'Wet Paint,' for it's gory blood red. When I came along a fat black man, rolled in white muslin, cursed me--absolutely bowled at my wicket with a ball of brimstone. Now what do you make of that, major?

It wasn't about the cow dog, for the bounder had one English word, 'tiger,' which he simply sprayed his lingo with."

Mahadua had come to accompany the party, and, somewhat perplexed, Finnerty turned to the shikari for an explanation.

"Yes, sahib," Mahadua said, "Pundit Bagh was a jungle G.o.d, and they are making prayer to the shrine so that the spirit may return again as a tiger to protect them from such as the black leopard."

Finnerty interpreted: "They feel that you have slain one who defended them against leopards and pig and deer that ate their crops."

"Oh, I say! Sort of a gentleman burglar who did not murder his victims."

The shikari explained that the man who had visited verbal wrath upon Lord Victor was a money lender who lent money at a high rate to the farmers to buy bullocks when the tiger had killed their plough beasts, so he was angry at this loss of revenue. He also said that some one was telling the natives that the sahibs were trying to destroy their religion by killing their jungle G.o.ds.

"Who tells them this?" Finnerty asked.

The shikari answered evasively: "This is not my country, so they do not tell me what is in the hidden room."