The Winds of the World Part 25

Next he felt a great rush of air, and after that the roar of flame was so unmistakable-although he could feel no heat yet-that he wondered whether he was to be burned alive.

"Is it well alight?" asked Yasmini.

"Yes!" said a maid whose teeth chattered.

"Good! Presently the fools will come and pour water enough to fill this pa.s.sage. Thus none may follow us! Come!"

Ranjoor Singh was gathered up and carried by frightened women-he could feel them tremble. For a moment he felt the outer air, and he caught the shout of a crowd that had seen flames. Then he was thrown face downward on the floor of some sort of carriage and driven away.

He lost all sense of direction after a moment, though he did not forget to count, and by his rough reckoning he was driven through the streets for about nine minutes at a fast trot. Then the carriage stopped, and he was carried out again, up almost endless stairs, across a floor that seemed yet more endless, and thrown into a corner.

He heard a door slam shut, and almost at the same moment his fingers, that had never once ceased working, tore a corner of the sheet loose.

In another minute he was free.

He threw the sheet from him and looked about, accustoming his eyes to darkness. Presently, not far from him, he made out the sheeted figure of another man, who lay exactly as he had done and worked with tired fingers. He drew the dagger out of his hair and cut the man loose.

"Jagut Singh!" he exclaimed.

The trooper stood up and saluted.

"Who brought thee here?"

"Women, sahib, in a carriage!"

"When?"

"Even now!"

"Where is that Afridi?"

"Dead, sahib!"

"How?"

"She brought us water in a bra.s.s vessel, saying it was by thy orders, sahib. She cut us loose and gave him water first. Then, while she gave me to drink the Afridi attacked her, and I slew him with my hands, tearing his throat out-thus! While the life yet fluttered in him they threw a sheet over me-and here I am! Salaam, sahib!"

The trooper saluted again.

"Who made thee prisoner in the first place?"

"Hillmen, sahib, at the orders of the Afridi who is now dead. They made ready to torture me, showing me the knives they would use. But she came, and they obeyed her, binding the Afridi fast to me. After that I heard the sahib's voice, and then this happened. That is all, sahib."

"Well!" said Ranjoor Singh. And for the third time his trooper saw fit to salute him.

Who shall be trusted to carry my trust?

(Hither, and answer me, stranger!) Slow to give ground be he-swifter to thrust- Instant,-yet wary o' danger!

Hand without craftiness, eye without l.u.s.t, Lip without flattery! Such an one must Prove yet his worthiness-yet earn my trust!

(Closer, and answer me, stranger!) First let me lead him alone, and apart; There let me feel of his pulse and his heart!

(Hither, and play with me, stranger!)

CHAPTER XI

Men say Yasmini does not sleep. Of course, that is absurd. None the less, it is certain she must do much of her plotting in the daytime, for by night, until after midnight, she is always the Yasmini whom the Northern gentry know, at home to all comers in her wonderful apartment.

It is ever a mystery to them how she knows all that is going on in Delhi, and in India, and in the greater outer world, although they themselves bring her information that no government could ever suck out of the silent hills. They know where she keeps her cobras-where the strong-box is, in which her jewels lie crowded-who run her errands-and some of her past history, for not even a mongoose is more inquisitive than a man born in the hills, and Yasmini has many maids. But none-not even her favorite, most confidential maids-know what is in the little room that she reaches down a private flight of stairs that have a steel door at the top.

She keeps the key to that steel door, and it has, besides, a combination lock that only she understands.

Once a very clever hillman, who had been south for an education and had learned skepticism in addition to the rule of three, undertook to discover wires leading over roof-tops to that room; but he searched for a week and did not find them. When his search was over, and all had done laughing at him, he was found one night with a knife-wound between his shoulder-blades, and, later still, Yasmini sang a song about him. None searched for wires after that, and the consensus of opinion still is that she makes magic in the room below-stairs.

She sought that room the minute Ranjoor Singh was safely locked in with his trooper, although her maids reported more than one Northern gentleman waiting impatiently in the larger of her two reception- rooms for official information of the war. Government bulletins are regarded as pure fiction always, unless confirmed by Yasmini.

And, within five minutes of Ranjoor Singh's release of his trooper from the sheet, no less a personage than a general officer had thrown aside other business and had drawn on a cloak of secrecy that not even his own secretary could penetrate.

"Closed carriage!" he ordered; and, as though the fire brigade were doing double duty, a carriage came, and the horses, rump-down, halted from the gallop outside his door.

"Pathan turban!" he ordered; and his servant brought him one.

"Sheepskin cloak!"

In a moment the upper half of him would have pa.s.sed in the dark for that of a rather portly Northern trader. He decided that a rug would do the rest, and s.n.a.t.c.hed one as he ran for the carriage with the turban under his arm. He gave no order to the driver other than "Cheloh!" and that means "Go ahead"; so the driver, who was a Sikh, went ahead as the guns go into action, asway and aswing, regardless of everything but speed.

"Yasmini's!" said the general, at the end of a hundred yards; and the Sikh took a square, right-angle turn at full gallop with a neatness the Horse Artillery could not have bettered. There seemed to be no need of further instructions, for the Sikh pulled up unbidden at the private door that is to all appearance only a mark on the dirty-looking wall.

With a rug around his middle, there shot out then what a watching small boy described afterward as "a fat hill-rajah on his way to be fleeced." The carriage drove on, for coachmen who wait outside Yasmini's door are likely to be b.u.t.ts for questions. The door opened without any audible signal, and the man with the rug around his middle disappeared.

He had ceased to bear any resemblance to any one but a stout English general in mess-dress by the time he reached the dark stairhead; and Yasmini took the precaution of being there alone to meet him. She held, a candle-lantern.

"Whom have you?" he demanded.

They seemed to understand each other-these two. He paid her no compliments, and she expected none; she made no attempt at all to flatter him or deceive him. But, being Yasmini, it did not lie in her to answer straightly.

"I set a trap and a buffalo blundered into it! He will do better than any other!"

"Whom have you?"

"Risaldar-Major Ranjoor Singh!"

The general whistled softly.

"Of the Sikh Light Cavalry?" he asked.

"One of Kirby sahib's officers, and a trooper into the bargain!"

The general whistled again.