The Winds of the World Part 11

In the darkness of the barrack wall there were more than a thousand men, women and children, many of them Sikhs, who clamored to be told things, and by the gate was a guard of twenty men drawn up to keep the crowd at bay. The shrill voices of the women drowned the answers of the native officer as well as the noise of the approaching wheels, and the guard had to advance into the road to clear a way for its colonel.

The native officer saluted and grinned.

"Is it true, sahib?" he shouted, and Kirby raised his whip in the affirmative. From that instant the guard began to make more noise than the crowd beyond the wall.

Kirby whipped his horse and took the drive that led to his quarters at a speed there was no overhauling. He wanted to be alone. But his senior major had forestalled him and was waiting by his outer door.

"Oh, hallo, Brammle. Yes, come in."

"Is it peace, Jehu?" asked Brammle.

"War. We'll be the first to go. No, no route yet-likely to get it any minute."

"I'll bet, then. Bet you it's Bombay-a P. and O.-Red Sea and Ma.r.s.eilles! Oh, who wouldn't be light cavalry? First-cla.s.s all the way, first aboard, and first crack at 'em! Any orders, sir?"

"Yes. Take charge. I'm going out, and Warrington's going with me.

Don't know how long we'll be gone. If anybody asks for me, tell him I'll be back soon. Tell the men."

"Somebody's told 'em-listen!"

"Tell 'em that whoever misbehaves from now forward will be left behind. Give 'em my definite promise on that point!"

"Anything else, sir?"

"No."

"Then see you later."

"See you later."

The major went away, and Kirby turned to his adjutant.

"Go and order the closed shay, Warrington. Pick a driver who won't talk. Have some grub sent in here to me, and join me at it in half an hour; say fifteen minutes later. I've some things to see to."

Kirby wanted very much to be alone. The less actual contact a colonel has with his men, and the more he has with his officers, the better-as a rule; but it does not pay to think in the presence of either. Officers and men alike should know him as a man-who-has- thought, a man in whose voice is neither doubt nor hesitation.

Thirty minutes later Warrington found him just emerging from a brown study.

"India's all roots-in-the-air an' dancin'!" he remarked cheerfully.

"There was a babu sittin' by the barrack gate who offers to eat a German a day, as long as we'll catch 'em for him. He's the same man that was tryin' for a job as clerk the other day."

"Fat man?"

"Very."

"Uh-h-h! No credentials-bad hat! Send him packing?"

"The guard did."

Food was laid on a small table by a silent servant who had eyes in the back of his head and ears that would have caught and a.n.a.lyzed the lightest whisper; but the colonel and his adjutant ate hurriedly in silence, and the only thing remarkable that the servant was able to report to the regiment afterward was that both drank only water. Since all Sikhs are supposed to be abstainers from strong drink, that was accepted as a favorable omen.

The shay arrived on time to the second. It was the only closed carriage the regiment owned-a heavy C-springed landau thing, taken over from the previous mess. The colonel peered through outer darkness at the box seat, but the driver did not look toward him; all he could see was that there was only one man on the box.

"Where to?" asked Warrington.

"The club."

Warrington jumped in after him, and the driver sent his pair straining at the traces as if they had a gun behind them. Three hundred yards beyond the barrack wall Colonel Kirby knelt on the front seat and poked the driver from behind.

"Oh! You?" he remarked, as he recognized a native risaldar of D Squadron. Until the novelty wears off it would disconcert any man to discover suddenly that his coachman is a troop commander.

"D'you know a person named Yasmini?" he asked.

"Who does not, sahib?"

"Drive us to her house-in a hurry!"

The immediate answer was a plunge as the whip descended on both horses and the heavy carriage began to sway like a boat in a beam-sea swell. They tore through streets that were living streams of human beings-streams that split apart to let them through and closed like water again behind them. With his spurred heels on the front seat, Warrington hummed softly to himself as ever, happy, so long as there were only action.

"I've heard India spoken of as dead," he remarked after a while.

"Gad! Look at that color against the darkness!"

"If Ranjoor Singh is dead, I'm going to know it!" said Colonel Kirby. "And if he isn't dead, I'm going to dig him out or know the reason why. There's been foul play, Warrington. I happen to know that Ranjoor Singh has been suspected in a certain quarter. Incidentally, I staked my own reputation on his honesty this afternoon. And besides, we can't afford to lose a wing commander such as he is on the eve of the real thing. We've got to find him!"

Once or twice as they flashed by a street-lamp they were recognized as British officers, and then natives, who would have gone to some trouble to seem insolent a few hours before, stopped to half-turn and salaam to them.

"Wonder how they'd like German rule for a change?" mused Warrington.

"India doesn't often wear her heart on her sleeve," said Kirby.

"It's there to-night!" said Warrington. "India's awake, if this is Delhi and not a nightmare! India's makin' love to the British soldier- man!"

They tore through a city that is polychromatic in the daytime and by night a dream of phantom silhouettes. But, that night, day and night were blended in one uproar, and the Chandni Chowk was at floodtide, wave on wave of excited human beings pouring into it from a hundred bystreets and none pouring out again.

So the risaldar drove across the Chandni Chowk, fighting his way with the aid of whip and voice, and made a wide circuit through dark lanes where groups of people argued at the corners, and sometimes a would-be holy man preached that the end of the world had come.

They reached Yasmini's from the corner farthest from the Chandni Chowk, and sprang out of the carriage the instant that the risaldar drew rein.

"Wait within call!" commanded Kirby, and the risaldar raised his whip.

Then, with his adjutant at his heels, Colonel Kirby dived through the gloomy opening in a wall that Yasmini devised to look as little like an approach to her-or heaven-as possible.

"Wonder if he's brought us to the right place?" he whispered, sniffing into the moldy darkness.

"Dunno, sir. There're stairs to your left."

They caught the sound of faint flute music on an upper floor, and as Kirby felt cautiously for his footing on the lower step Warrington began to whistle softly to himself. Next to war, an adventure of this kind was the nearest he could imagine to sheer bliss, and it was all he could do to contrive to keep from singing.

The heavy teak stairs creaked under their joint weight, and though their eyes could not penetrate the upper blackness, yet they both suspected rather than sensed some one waiting for them at the top,