Chapter Five.
Murad Afzul, Terror.
Peaks—jagged and lofty, peaks—stark and pointed, cleaning up into the unclouded but somewhat brassy blue. Rock-sides, cleft into wondrous, criss-cross seams; loose rocks again, scattering smoother slopes of shale, where the white gypsum streaks forced their way through. Beneath—far beneath—winding among these, a mere thread—the white dust of a road. Of vegetation none, save for coarse, sparse grass bents, and here and there a sorry attempt at a pistachio shrub. A great black vulture, circling on spreading wing, over this chaos of cliff and chasm, of desolation and lifelessness, turns his head from side to side and croaks; for experience tells him that its seeming lifelessness is but apparent.
“Ya, Allah! and are we to wait here until the end of the world? In truth, brother, we had better seek to serve some other chief.”
Thus one dirty-white-clad figure to another dirty-white-clad figure—both resembling each other marvellously. The same bronze visage, the same hooked nose and rapacious eyes, the same jetty tresses on each side of the face, and the same long and shaggy beard, characterised these two no less than the score and a half other precisely similar figures lying up among the interstices of this serrated ridge, watching the way beneath. The dirty-white turbans had been laid aside in favour of a conical dust-coloured kulla, the neutral hue of which headgear blended with the sad tints of the surrounding rocks and stones.
“I know not, brother,” rejoined the second hook-nosed son of the wilderness. “Yet it seems that since the Sirkar (Note 1) has been changed at Mazaran, a great change too has come over our father the Nawab.”
“Nawab!” repeated the first speaker, with disgust. “Nawab! How can our chief take such a dirty title, only fit for swine of Hindu idolators. It is an insult on the part of the accursed Feringhi to offer such a title to a freeborn son of the mountains; and such a one as the chief of the Gularzai. Nawab!” and the speaker spat from between his closed teeth, with a sort of hiss of contempt.
“Yet, if it serves to place him higher in the estimation of the Feringhi and of the tribes our neighbours, what matter?” returned the other. “The Nawab Mahomed Mushîm Khan sounds great in the ears of such.”
The sneering laugh which rattled from the other’s throat was checked, for now the attention of all became concentrated on a cloud of dust coming into view, and advancing along the thread of road winding beneath. Eagerly now, thirty pairs of fierce eyes were bent on that which moved beneath their gaze—a passing of men, mounted and armed, to the number of about three score; and fierce brows bent in hatred, as they scowled upon the representative of that irresistible Power, which, with all its failings and errors of judgment, yet in the long run held in salutary restraint the excesses of their wild and predatory race. For this was the escort of the British Political Agent, returning from an official visit to their tribal chieftain.
A squad of Levy Sowars rode in front, and a larger one of Native Cavalry, the official himself, with two or three attendants being between; the servants with camp necessaries and furniture bringing up the rear, yet taking apparent care to keep somewhat close upon the heels of the armed escort. Upon this array the wild hillmen gazed with many a muttered curse. The time for that might come, in the orderings of Allah and His Prophet; but it was not to-day—was the thought that possessed several of their minds.
The cavalcade held on its way, winding round a high precipitous spur, to reappear again further on, small and distant, then to vanish entirely where a great tangi cleft the heart of the mountain. And look! Below, once more, in the direction whence it had first appeared, whirled another cloud of dust, insignificant this time compared with before.
The eyes of the marauders gleamed from beneath shaggy brows, and a stir ran through their numbers. Brown, claw-like hands gripped the barrels of firearms—no antiquated, if picturesque jezails these, but Lee-Metford magazine rifles up to date, save for a few Martinis—while tulwars were half drawn from their scabbards, and gazed at with lovingly murderous graze ere being replaced again. Yet the group of figures which emerged into view on the road beneath was not formidable, consisting in fact of but four human beings.
Two were mounted, and two on foot, and between them they were driving several pack animals, laden to their fullest capacity. At sight of these, the band, all its tactics prearranged, moved down from its eyrie-like lurking place, dividing, as it did so, into three.
Chand Lall, general trader, who was mounted, and his two assistants who were afoot, were uneasy, and the former was secretly cursing his own avarice which had prevented him from purchasing an extra pack animal or two, which would have enabled him and his possessions to have kept beneath the wing of the Political Agent’s escort, whereas now he was very considerably behind the tail of the same. But the fourth of the group, the other mounted man, was quite cool; indeed, it looked as though he actually preferred the solitude of their wild surroundings—and perhaps he did.
“Be at peace, brother,” this one was saying. “Are we not safe, for we are in the hand of Allah? Wherefore then this hurry? Nothing can be but what is written. But there, I forget, my memory groweth old with its owner. Thou art not of the number of true believers.” And he deliberately and leisurely dismounted, as though discovering a sudden lameness in the near foreleg of his horse.
“That is all very well, Ibrahim, who art a Moslem,” said the fat Hindu, whose distressed impatience was painfully manifest. “None will harm thee. But I—”
The words died in his throat, choked there by the sight of a number of stealing figures, flitting down from rock to rock. The countenance of the unfortunate trader grew a dirty leaden white. Already the road before him was barred. Wildly he gazed around. That behind him was barred too. His companion, quite unmoved, was still examining the hoof of his horse. High overhead, a speck in the ether, above the gnomelike crags, the black vulture still turned his head from side to side and croaked.
Already the marauders had seized the pack animals. The two young men who drove them had fallen flat and were grovelling and wailing for mercy. Rough hands had flung the Hindu from his saddle, and he lay on the ground, moaning with fear, and quaking in every limb, as he stared frantically at the dull flash of razor-edged tulwars, brandished over him, the savage, hairy faces glowering down upon him, fell and threatening with religious hate and racial contempt.
“Rise up, fat dog,” said one of the marauders, kicking him. “Rise up, and come with us.”
“Mercy, Sirdar Sahib, and suffer me to go my way,” whined the terrified man, as he tremblingly obeyed the first clause of the injunction. “I am but a poor trader, but have ever been generous to such as ye. Take therefore of my poor store, yet leave me a little that I may begin life again.”
The leader of the band laughed evilly and spat.
“Thy poor store! Ha! We will take all and afterwards skin thee of yet more, thou usurer, who comest into our country but to leave it poorer.”
“Not so, Sirdar Sahib,” expostulated the trader, plucking up a little courage by virtue of the name he was about to invoke. “What I have, I have from the Nawab—the Nawab Mushîm Khan—given in honest trade. Shall I then suffer ill-treatment at the Nawab’s very gates?”
“The Nawab. Ha—ha!” jeered the leader, spitting again. “Walk, fat infidel dog. Dost hear?”
And a buffet on the side of the head, which nearly felled him, convinced the unfortunate trader that this was no time for further expostulation; and, accordingly, panting, wheezing, stumbling, he strove his painful utmost to keep pace up the steep hill with his perilous and unwelcome escort. His attendants were undergoing but little ill-treatment. They were young and lithe, and gave no trouble; moreover, they had little or nothing to lose, so feared nothing. Ibrahim, who happened to be a mullah, and whom the other had subsidised for the supposed protection of his own company, to whom no violence whatever had been offered, was leading his steed tranquilly over the rough, stony slope, chatting and laughing familiarly with the band; and at the sight the unhappy Chand Lall’s soul grew more bitter within him. Why had he been so ready to accept this plausible rogue’s benevolent sanctity, he thought, as now fifty instances occurred to him of delays, slight at the time, but on colourable pretext, to retard him more and more—to increase subtly and imperceptibly more and more the distance between him and the armed force with which he had obtained permission to travel. Bitterly he reproached himself. He saw through it now—in fact, he did not believe that Ibrahim was a mullah at all; but mullah or not, certain it was that he was the confederate and decoy of the ferocious and predatory gang who had so daringly swooped down upon himself and his goods, almost within call of the Political Agent’s armed escort.
On they fared, higher and higher, until at length, utterly exhausted, Chand Lall realised that he lay powerless and beyond all reach or hope of aid in one of the fastnesses of his captors, away in the most savage and frowning recesses of the mountain world. And then something in the very hopelessness of it all as he saw the fruits of a long and toilsome expedition utterly thrown away, moved the wretched man to a sort of desperation. He threatened.
“See you,” he said, “I am not a man who can be smuggled away and no inquiries made. I am not a man who can be ill-treated with impunity. I am a man of consequence, and of importance to the Sirkar. I am a friend of the Nawab—”
He stopped short. There was that in the look of the leader—to whom he had addressed these words—which seemed to freeze the half delirious desperation within him.
“A friend of the Nawab! Ha—ha! Hearken, O man of consequence and of importance to the Sirkar,” bending down a savage face to note and revel in the terror he was about to strike into his victim. “Is it possible that thou hast never yet heard the name of Murad Afzul? Is it possible, I say? Ya, Allah! is it possible?”
Note 1. Government ordinarily. In this instance the representative of Government.
Chapter Six.
The Victim.
The effect of his mere name upon his prisoner answered the robber chief’s own question, nor had the latter any reason to feel disappointed over the method of its reception. The wretched trader’s countenance became ghastly, and his mouth fell open, while the perspiration oozed from him at every pore. He would about as soon have fallen into the power of the Enemy of mankind.
“Mercy, Sirdar Sahib. Take what I have and suffer me to depart,” was all he could articulate, slobberingly.
Murad Afzul laughed, and a harsh evil laugh it was. He was a fine-looking man, tall and with good features, which would have been pleasing, but for the quick, predatory look, and the savage scowl which would cloud them upon very slight provocation.
“Tell me, fat dog,” he said. “Canst thou name one of thy sort who fell into my hands and came forth again?”
The trader fairly howled with terror, for this was just where his position came home to him. If there was one thing for which this Murad Afzul and his band were known and dreaded, it was for their absolute mercilessness. Mere death was the greatest mercy their victims could expect. True, there were some who had come forth alive, but so hideously maimed and shattered that they had better have been dead, and with awful tales to tell of torture and horror either witnessed or undergone. Indeed, such a scourge had these freebooters become, that strong pressure was brought to bear upon the chief of the Gularzai, and in the result these outrages had ceased, in recognition of which prompt compliance Mahomed Mushîm Khan had been invested by the Indian Government with the title of Nawab—somewhat to the contempt of these fierce mountaineers, as we heard them express it.
With all of this was the unfortunate Hindu so well acquainted that he would never have dreamed of trusting his person or possessions in these mountain solitudes, but that he, like others, was under the impression that Murad Afzul had taken himself and his depredations clean away to the territory of some other potentate, and the possibility of that redoubted outlaw taking advantage of the advent of a new Political Agent to break out afresh had escaped him altogether.
Now, under the direction of their chief, the freebooters were rifling the packs—and at first found not much in them, for they were for the most part stuffed out with dummy matter, to convey the idea that their owner had done so bad a trade as not to be worth plundering. But everything that could possibly conceal a coin was promptly laid open by the expeditious process of a blow with a stone hammer or the slash of a tulwar, and soon a goodly pile of rupees lay heaped up ready for division. Murad Afzul grinned with delight.
“God is good,” he said, rubbing his hands. “The spoils of the infidel hath he delivered to the true believer. Yet, O fat pig, it is not enough. Ha! not enough.”
“Not enough? But it is my all, Sirdar Sahib; yea, my all,” groaned the trader.
“Wah-wah! but I am poor, and have not the wherewith to start life afresh.”
“It is not enough,” repeated the other, the glitter of his eyes and the fell meaning of his tone becoming terrible in its significance. “Ten thousand rupees must be added to it.”
“Ten thousand! How can I find such a sum, Sirdar Sahib, I who am but a poor man? I have not a tenth of it.”
“Now art thou blowing up the fire which shall consume thine own limbs, yet slowly, thou foul dog. Wait. Thou shalt taste how it feels.”
At a signal the prisoner was seized and bound. The while, others were heating an old gun-barrel in a fire which had been kindled when they first halted. Then they brought it towards him. At the sight the miserable wretch uttered a loud scream of terror and despair.
“Squeal louder, pig,” jeered Murad Afzul. “There is none to hear thee save these rocks, and they are accustomed to such sounds. Ha! ha!”
The miserable man struggled frantically, promising to pay anything if they would refrain from torturing him. But the lust of cruelty, now awakened in those ferocious natures, would not be allayed, and the hot iron was laid hissing to the thigh of their victim, whose frenzied and agonising yells rang in deafening and fiend-like echoes from the surrounding rocks, grim and pitiless as though rejoicing in the act of savagery upon which they glared down. Then Murad Afzul, too experienced in such matters to prolong the agony unduly, made a sign that it should cease.
“How likest thou that, pig?” he said. “Did not thy fat frizzle? I have a mind to send a slice of it to the swine-eating Feringhi at Mazaran. Did it hurt, the kiss of the hot iron? Yet that was but the beginning. How would it feel lasting the whole day. Think, for thou wilt now have a little time.”
It was the hour of prayer, and now the whole band, with their shoes off, and their chuddas spread on the ground, facing in the direction of Mecca, were going through the prescribed prostrations and formulae of the Moslem ritual. Ibrahim the mullah, a little in front of the rest: led the devotions, intoning each strophe in a nasal, droning key, the others ranged behind him in rows, now kneeling, now rising, responded somewhat after the manner of the recital of a litany, but perhaps, to an outside observer, the absolute and wholehearted devoutness of their demeanour would have constituted the strangest part of it. Not a shadow of compunction had they for the hideous act of barbarity in which they had a moment ago indulged, and which they would almost certainly repeat. Why should they, indeed? What was the agony of an infidel dog more or less to them or to Heaven? Why, the very cries of such must be as music in the ears of the latter. So they continued laying this brick in the edifice of their salvation; and, having concluded, resumed their shoes and turned their attention once more to their victim.
The latter, the while, had been thinking if haply some hope of rescue might not occur to him. The Sahib had known of his presence, for he himself had given him permission to travel under his protection. Would he not miss him, and, as a consequence, order a body of men to ride back to his rescue? These would assuredly come upon the scene of his capture and follow upon his tracks. But—would they? The Levy Sowars were drawn from the same region and were of the same faith as his captors, of whom they would know the strength and resource, and with whom they would certainly avoid engaging in a fight on behalf of such as he. Besides—and again Chand Lall had reason to curse his own stinginess, in that he had been more than “near” in bestowing the expected dasturi upon the Sahib’s chuprassis, wherefore these would infallibly take care that no suspicion of his disaster should reach their master’s ears. Further, was it not a matter of absolute certainty that, rather than allow his rescue, Murad Afzul would give orders for his throat to be cut from ear to ear? No, there was no hope—not a ray.
“Talk we again of the rupees,” began Murad Afzul. “I am moved to require double the amount now, but Allah is merciful, and shall I be less so? I will be content with ten thousand. Wherefore, O dog, thou shalt write and deliver to Ibrahim, our brother—who is holy and learned—a letter which shall cause those who guard the fruits of thine avarice and usury, to pay over to him that sum. Yet think not to write aught that shall render this void, for Ibrahim is learned as well as holy, and can read in many tongues. Further, should he not return to us, thine own fate shall be even as though thou wert already writhing in the lowest depths of Jehanum.”
“It were better, Sirdar Sahib, that I myself travelled to Mazaran to procure it, for our people are distrustful of strangers.” Murad Afzul laughed evilly. “But we are doubly so, O worshipper of debauched idols,” he said. “So thou wouldst fain fare forth thyself? Ha, ha, then how long would it be before we beheld thee again, or one single one of the ten thousand rupees?”
“Why, as soon as I could collect them, and to do that I would spare no pains, no trouble, Sirdar Sahib, although it would leave me a poor man, and in debt for life,” replied Chand Lall, eagerly thinking, poor fool, that his jailor was going to set him free on so slender a security as his bare word. But the shout of laughter that went up from all who heard quickly undeceived him.
“Who having a caged bird of value turns that bird loose to stretch his wings in the hope that it will return to its cage?” said the chief. “Thou art to us a caged bird of value, thou eater of money—wherefore we keep thee until thou hast no further value. Show him,” he added, turning to his followers.
In obedience to this somewhat mysterious mandate one of them turned and dived into a cleft, producing therefrom an object which he gleefully unrolled, and held up before the gaze of the horrified captive—and well, indeed, might the latter quake, for it was the skin of a man.
It had been most deftly taken off. Face, head, ears—everything in fact. Staring at the horrid thing, Chand Lall felt his very marrow melt within him.
“See,” said Murad Afzul. “He did not die, even then. He lived to taste of fire and boiling ghee.” And the rest of the band laughed like fiends, but the wretched Hindu covered his face and shook.
“Well mayst thou tremble,” went on his pitiless tormentor. “For should Ibrahim return without ten thousand rupees, or not return at all, by the setting of the third sun, thine own skin shall dry beside that one.”
The victim uttered a loud cry.
“The third sun! Why, Sirdar Sahib, that will be impossible. I can never have so much money collected in so short a time. Make it the sixth sun.”
Murad Afzul consulted a moment with his followers. Then he said,—
“Allah is merciful, and so, too, will I be. I will say then by the setting of the fifth sun after this one. Yet try not to play us any false trick, thou dog, for it will be useless, and for what it will mean to thyself, look on yonder and be assured,” and, as though to emphasise the chief’s words, he who held the horrible human skin shook it warningly and suggestively in the face of the thoroughly terrified hostage.
The Political Agent, having dined well in his evening camp, was going over some official papers by the light of the tent lamp.
“Oh, Sunt Singh,” he said, looking up as a chuprassi entered, “what became of that trader who was with us? I didn’t see him when we first camped.”
“Huzoor, he is camped just below the sowars’ tents, I believe.”
“Yes? You may go,” and the official resumed what he was doing, without further thought for the luckless Chand Lall, who certainly was not where the lying chuprassi had said.
Chapter Seven.
A Surprise.
Herbert Raynier ran lightly up the steps of his verandah, feeling intensely satisfied with himself and things in general.
Though summer, the air was delightfully balmy, and the glow of the sunset reddening the heads of the mountains surrounding the basin in which lay Mazaran, was soothing and grateful to the eye. The bungalow was roomy and commodious, and stood in the midst of a pleasant garden, where closing flowers distilled fragrant scents upon the evening air—all this sent his mind back in thankful contrast to hot, steaming, languid Baghnagar, its brassy skies and feverish exhalations, where even at this late hour the very crows lining the roof would be open-billed and gasping. And thus contrasting the new with the old order of things he decided for the fiftieth time that the luckiest moment of his life was when he opened the official letter—which met him on landing at Bombay—appointing him Political Agent at Mazaran.
Hardly less in contrast between the climate of his new station and the last, were the people with whom he now had to deal. There was nothing whatever in common between the meek subservient native he had hitherto ruled and the stalwart independence of these wild mountain tribes, whose turbulent and predatory instincts needed nice handling to keep in efficient control. But all this appealed to him vividly, and he threw himself into his new duties with an eager zest which caused those who had known his predecessor to smile. He recognised that here at least was a chance; here he might find scope for such latent ability which the stagnant routine of his old Department had been in danger of stifling altogether. In fact, he was inclined to regret the abnormally tranquil state of things, when Jelson, his predecessor, had congratulated him upon the fact that Mushîm Khan, the chief of the powerful, and often turbulent, Gularzai tribe, had become so amenable since the Government had created him a Nawab that the meanest bunniah might almost walk through the Gularzai country alone and with his pockets bulging with rupees, in perfect safety.
Herbert Raynier flung himself into a comfortable chair on the verandah and lighted a cheroot. He had half an hour to spare before it should be time to dress and go out to dinner, and how should such be better spent than in a restful smoke: yet, while enjoying this, his thoughts were active enough. His prospects, rosy as the afterglow which dwelt upon the surrounding peaks, kept him busy for a time, and over all was a sense of great relief. If he had saved the life of an unknown Oriental at the hands of a particularly brutal mob, assuredly he had been repaid to the full, for, but for that circumstance, matters would never have come to a head with Cynthia. He would still be bound hard and fast by a chain of which he only realised the full weight since he had broken it. For he had broken it—finally, irrevocably, unmistakably, he told himself. Since that last scene in the Vicarage garden he and Cynthia had exchanged no word. The remainder of that day had not been of a pleasant nature, and he had left by an early train on the following morning, to return three days later to India. No letter, either of farewell, or reproach or recrimination—as he had half feared—reached him at the last, and it was with feelings of genuine relief that he watched the shores of the mother country fade into the invisible.
Tarleton, the Civil Surgeon, at whose bungalow Raynier was dining, was somewhat of a trying social unit, in that he was never even by chance known to agree with any remark or proposition, weighty or trivial, put forward by anybody, or if there was no conceivable room for gainsaying such, why then he would append some brisk aggressive comment in rider fashion. As thus,—
“How do, Raynier? How did you come over? Didn’t walk, did you?”
“No. Biked.”
“Ho! Bicycle’s not much use up here, I can tell you.”
Raynier remarked that he found the machine useful for getting about the station with, and that the roads in and immediately around the same were rather good.
“Well, you didn’t expect to find them all rocks and stones, did you?” came the prompt rejoinder.
Tarleton was white-haired and red-faced, which caused him to look older than his actual years. Another of his peculiarities was that he was continually altering his facial appearance. Now he would grow a beard; then suddenly, without a word to anybody, would trim it down to what they call in Transatlantic a “chin-whisker,” or shave it altogether. Or, one day he would appear with a long, carefully-waxed moustache, and the next with that appendage clipped to the consistency of a toothbrush. And so on.
Just at this stage, however, Raynier, recognising that he was on the high road to cordially detesting the man, had laid himself out to be extra long-suffering.
“Wonder if those women ever mean to come in?” went on Tarleton, with a fidgety glance at the clock, for the two were alone in the drawing-room just before dinner.
“Oh, one has to give the ornamental sex a little ‘law,’” said the other, good-humouredly.
“Well, you can’t expect them to put on their clothes and all that as quickly as we can,” was the rejoinder to this accommodating speech. And just then “those women,” in the shape of Mrs Tarleton and a guest, entered. The first was a good-humoured, pleasant-looking little Irishwoman, the second—
“How d’you do, Miss Clive? Why, this is a surprise,” began Raynier, without waiting for an introduction.
“I like surprises,” laughed the hostess. “They’re great fun. We thought we’d give you one, Mr Raynier.”
“They are, if, as now, they are pleasant ones,” he answered.
“Why, Mr Raynier, I didn’t think that kind of speech-making was at all in your line,” said the “Surprise,” demurely.
She was a tallish girl, rather slight, with refined and regular features, which nineteen out of twenty pronounced “cold.” She had a great deal of dark brown hair, and very uncommon eyes; in fact, they were unequivocally and unmistakably green. Yet framed in their dark, abundant lashes, they might be capable of throwing as complete an attraction, a fascination, as the more regulation blue or hazel ones. She was not popular with men. Not enough “go” in her, they declared. Seemed more cut out for a blue-stocking.
She and Raynier had been fellow-passengers out; but had had little to say to each other on board. He had danced with her three or four times, which was rather remarkable in view of that being a form of exercise which he favoured but little. Both had this in common, that they held aloof from the usual ’board-ship amusements, yet they had not come together at all. It was only when they landed at Bombay, and the friends she had expected to meet her had not arrived, that Raynier, noticing the look of intense consternation, of bewilderment even, upon the girl’s face, as she realised how she was stranded, a total stranger in a very strange land, had come to the rescue—had even foregone his train and remained over until the next day to be of service to her. This he had done out of sheer kindness—the other passengers having gone their respective ways without giving her a thought—and having handed her over to her friends who had been unavoidably delayed, had bidden her good-bye and had gone his own—he, too, scarcely giving her another thought.
“Hilda says you were so kind to her at Bombay, Mr Raynier,” went on his hostess.
“Oh, no—that’s nothing, Mrs Tarleton. Glad to have been of any service, of course,” he replied, in that hurried, half-confused way to be expected of a man of his disposition under the circumstances.
“But it isn’t nothing,” struck in the girl, decidedly. “Do you know, Mrs Tarleton, Mr Raynier even waited till the next day to look after me. And it’s odd, because we hardly knew each other on the ship.”
“Oh, well,” mumbled Raynier, jerkily, “you can’t see anybody stranded like that—a lady especially—in a totally strange place without doing something to straighten things out for them.”
Hilda Clive smiled.
“None of the others seemed to be of that opinion, at any rate,” she said.
Snapped Tarleton, “Well, you can’t expect a lot of people just landed from a voyage to think about anything but themselves and their own belongings.”
For once Raynier felt frankly grateful to the contentious one—if only that it was sufficient for Tarleton to lay down a statement on any given subject to cause his ordinary hearers to drop that subject like a red-hot bar. Wherefore these promptly turned to another.
Sunt Singh and Kaur Singh, chuprassis, were aroused from the drowsy enjoyment of their hubble-bubbles by a very unwonted intruder in the Political Agent’s compound late at night, and were well-nigh speechless with supercilious amazement. The fat trader they had left on the road! See the Huzoor! At that time of night! It was the Police Station the fool wanted. Something of the highest importance? Let him come in the morning. It would keep until then. Besides, the Huzoor was out dining.
In a direful state of fear and perplexity Chand Lall, thus rebuffed, got out into the road again, and with a scared look over each shoulder, took his way as quickly as he could from the gate. But this was not quick, for even in the darkness it might have been seen that he walked with a painful limp. In the darkness too, something else might have been seen—two figures stealing along in the deeper shade of the tamarisk hedge. He whom they shadowed saw them not—at first—then having chosen their spot, they quickened their pace, and darting forward flung themselves upon him.
The yell which the assailed man opened his mouth to utter died in his throat as the white light of a long knife blade streaked before his eyes.
“Silence or thou art dead,” snarled a harsh voice. “So, dog, thou wouldst betray us?”
In the dirty-white turbans and hairy, hook-nosed faces, Chand Lall knew only too well who were these. Already they had begun to drag him swiftly along. Then in his frenzy of terror at the recollection of the fate he had escaped from and which certainly waited him now, even the fear of instant death did not avail. A loud, quavering shriek for aid rang from his lips.
But it died in a choking gasp. The white knife blade disappeared, to emerge again red—and this not once only. A corpse lay wallowing in the road, and two loosely-clad figures vanished into the darkness, even as they had come out of it.
Chapter Eight.
The Mark of Murad Afzul.
Raynier was wondering over several things. He was wondering how anyone living could stand Tarleton for life—as his wife did; how anyone could stand him for a week, or two or three—as his guest was doing; or for two or three hours—as he himself was trying to do. Then, constantly observing Hilda Clive—opposite him, for they were a party of four—he was wondering how it was that she had held out so little attraction to him hitherto. For nearly three weeks they had been pent up together in the close proximity of shipboard—yet he had hardly been aware of her existence. While he was looking after her at Bombay, she had seemed more attractive, but not much. Yet now, meeting her again and unexpectedly, he was conscious of this or that subtle trait which interested him.
Still, why had he not discovered it before? Time, opportunity—all had been favourable. He supposed it was that the recollection of Cynthia Daintree had left a bitter taste in his mouth, and that he had been passing through a misogynistic stage accordingly.
“I don’t believe these ‘budmashes’ are as quiet as they seem,” Tarleton was saying. “Or if they are, it’s because they are hatching devilment. I’ve been longer among them than you have, Raynier, and Mushîm Khan isn’t the sort to turn into a lamb all of a sudden, as he seems to have done lately.”
They were talking over Raynier’s visit to the Nawab, and Tarleton, as usual, was contradictious.
“What is the Nawab like, Mr Raynier?” said Hilda Clive.
“Rather a fine-looking man—in fact, very.”
“And is his palace very splendid?”
Raynier stared.
“Very splendid?” he repeated—“Oh, I see! The idea is quite a natural one. But, as a matter of fact, he hasn’t got any ‘palace’ at all. He lives in a mud-walled village.”
“No. Not really?”
“Miss Clive thinks he ought to wear a crown and go about blazing with jewels,” said Tarleton.
“Well, that isn’t an inexcusable mistake,” rejoined Raynier, “considering the ideas people generally associate with his title. You see, Miss Clive, the Gularzai are almost savages—fine savages, but still savages—something akin to our ideas of the desert Arab.”
“Well, they can’t help that, can they?” struck in Tarleton, apparently for no earthly reason, unless that nobody had dreamed of saying they could.
“I should like to see something of these people in their own homes,” said the girl. “They must be rather interesting. I admire these I see walking about the station. It is a fine type of face. Are they Gularzai, Mr Raynier?”
“Fine type of face!” cut in Tarleton. “Why, they’re the most villainous-looking scoundrels unhung. Any one of them would cut your throat for eight annas.”
“A good many are Gularzai, Miss Clive,” answered Raynier. “But all these mountain tribes are very much alike in appearance.”
Now Tarleton broached a subject which an hour or two earlier would have been unwelcome to the other in the last degree. Raynier was going on a camping expedition very shortly—together with Haslam, the Forest Officer—and Tarleton was anxious to join it.
“There’s precious little to shoot,” was the answer, “though one might do a clamber after markhôr. But it would give Miss Clive the very opportunity she was wanting.”
“Eh? How?” said Tarleton.
“Why she’d see something of the country, and incidentally of the people.”
This was putting matters in a new light to Tarleton. He had not proposed to include his womenkind in the scheme. But now both his wife and their guest declared the prospect a delightful one, and as there was no valid reason against it, Tarleton, for a wonder, consented.
It was midnight when Raynier bade his entertainers good-bye, and as he bowled along the smooth high road he found himself wondering again—and this time over two things. One was that he had spent an uncommonly pleasant evening at Tarleton’s; the other that he should actually have welcomed the prospect of Tarleton’s society for a matter of a couple of weeks or so, on the projected camping expedition. Well, as to the latter he need not see much of Tarleton.
His bicycle ran smoothly, and, absorbed in his thoughts, he was nearly passing his own compound, when—what was that? A cry—a little distance further on—and it expressed terror. Passing his own gate he whirled straight on, and in a moment, there in the middle of the road lay a human form. But before he could dismount, another sound caught his ear. Without giving the man who lay there another thought he started in pursuit.
The stripe of the road lay before him in the darkness, dim yet clearly defined. At the side of it, under the high tamarisk hedge, he made out two figures. Peremptorily, and in Hindustani, he called upon them to halt. They obeyed. But so far from such compliance affording Raynier any satisfaction, he felt at that moment that he would give a great deal to see them get through the hedge somehow, and disappear from his sight for ever. In a flash he realised that he had embarked on a very dangerous and foolhardy undertaking, as he recognised that a brace of tall, savage, mountain desperadoes were waiting to receive him, he being totally unarmed, and the road as lonely at that hour of the night as any wild peak he could see looming dimly against the stars around.
A bicycle, moreover, is a desperately bad steed to fight on, but knowing this he realised at the same time that it is an excellent one to run away on, given a clear road ahead. But would they allow him such? No, they would not.
It was all done in a flash. Raynier saw the two figures, in half-bent, crouching attitude, glide suddenly into the middle of the road—and he knew that each held a long knife. There was no time to stop. He saw his bicycle strike one of them full in the chest, as he put it at him at full speed—then became conscious that he himself was whirling through the air to land with a crash beneath the tamarisk hedge. He saw the other of them coming towards him knife in hand; saw in a moment the shaggy tresses, and the savage eyes glaring beneath the great turban, and then—there crashed forth a couple of shots, seemingly over his head.
His assailant had disappeared. At the moment he realised the position. The occurrence had taken place just in front of the Forest Officer’s compound, and the Forest Officer being a very great sportsman, his bungalow was a miniature arsenal of weapons of all sorts. Moreover, he was a man of experience and quick wit. He too had heard the expiring yell of the murdered man, and had come forth to investigate, armed with a large and business-like revolver which he well knew how to use. In this instance, however, the darkness, and some fear of hitting the wrong man, had spoiled his shots. But of either at whom they were directed there remained no sign. Both had made themselves scarce.
“What’s all the bobbery about?” sang out this friend in need, descrying the doubled-up figure under the hedge. “Who is it?”
“Me—Raynier.”
“The devil! Not hurt, are you?”
“Someone up the road is—that’s why I was chevying those ‘budmashes.’ Come along up there and we’ll investigate.”
The Forest Officer shouted lustily to his servants to bring a lantern, and they, aroused by the shots, were not long in doing so. Raynier picked himself up, somewhat gingerly.
“I say—you did get a toss,” said the other. “Not hurt, eh?”
“N-no. I think not. Shaken up a bit—like a tonic bottle.”
Strange to say the bicycle had received little or no damage either.
“These Pathans are tough,” said the Forest Officer. “Fancy being able to clear out after a collision like that.”
They reached the spot where the dead man was lying. A shout or two from Raynier brought out his own people, with more lanterns. It was not a nice sight to gaze upon at midnight—the ghastly fear and agony stamped upon the dead face, and the great pool of blood still welling forth afresh as they turned the body over. Raynier could not help contrasting it in his mind with the scene he had just left hardly more than a quarter of an hour ago.
“I seem to know the face too,” he said, in a puzzled way. “Who is he, Kaur Singh? Do you know?”
“Ha, Huzoor. It is the trading man whom your Highness allowed to travel on the skirt of your protection when we had been visiting Mushîm Khan.”
But the rascal took very good care to say nothing about having turned him away from the gate that very night. The man was dead, and therefore he himself was safe. But the offender was happily ignorant of the fateful consequences that rebuff was destined to entail upon his master, upon others—and, perchance, upon himself.
For what they gazed upon here was but a beginning. It was the mark of Murad Afzul.
Chapter Nine.
A Legacy of Vengeance.
The Nawab Mahomed Mushîm Khan, commonly known as Mushîm Khan, Chief of the Gularzai, was seated beneath the shade of an apricot tope, discussing affairs of state with his brother and vizier, Kuhandil Khan.
The hour of prayer was just over, yet here and there a group of belated worshippers was still engaged in the prescribed ceremonial, bowing down, low and oft, in the direction of the Holy City, while others were wending their way towards the gate in the long low mud wall behind which stood the village. Here and there, too, knelt camels, in process of being loaded for a journey, eternally snarling and roaring, as is the way of those cross-grained, hideous, but essentially useful animals, and flocks of black goats and of fat-tailed Persian sheep moved lazily off to their browsing grounds attended by tall, shaggy herdsmen armed with their long-barrelled, sickle-stocked guns—and accompanied by great savage dogs, a match for wolf or panther, and far more dangerous than either to any human being not well armed, who should incur their hostility. Even as Raynier had set forth, there was not anything here of the jewelled gorgeousness and architectural splendour popularly associated with the conventional Nawab, yet it was Mushîm Khan’s principal and favourite place of abode.
It lay in a basin-like hollow. Overhead and around, a grim array of chaotic peaks towered to a considerable height—the slopes lined with cliffs, and strewn with tumbled rocks, representing a vastness of area which the unaccustomed eye took some time to appreciate. Through this valley a small river flowed, having for its outlet a narrow, cliff-hung pass, which was, in fact, the principal access to the great natural amphitheatre.
In describing the chief’s personal appearance Raynier had not exaggerated. Mushîm Khan was unquestionably a fine-looking man. Tall and straight, his powerful frame was well set off by the flowing whiteness of his garments, and the symmetrical folds of his snowy turban made an effective framework to the strong and dignified face. It was a finer face than those possessed by most of his countrymen, being somewhat fuller, and, though regular of feature, yet had not that hawk-like and predatory expression engendered by the lean and exaggeratedly aquiline cast of profile of the rest. His full beard and the two long tresses hanging low down on either side of his broad chest were jet black, but in view of the custom of dyeing such his age would be hard to determine approximately. His brother, the Sirdar Kuhandil Khan, was scarcely his inferior in appearance—in fact, there was so strong a family likeness between them that they might easily have been mistaken for each other.
“I know not why we should join in this jihad,” the chief was saying, “nor do I know who is this Hadji Haroun who is stirring it up. He comes from the Orakzai, and he had better return to them in peace.”
“That had he,” agreed the other. “And yet, wherever he goes unrest remains behind him on his path. It seems that he of Kabul has too many mullahs, and when such become troublesome he sends them forth to stir up unrest among such as need them not.”
“And our people are being inflamed by unrest, brother?”
“Are they not?” answered Kuhandil Khan. “Murad Afzul is here among them again, and it seems that he is drawing all men with him.”
“Murad Afzul?” and the chief’s brows darkened. “Murad Afzul! I have a mind to make an end of that robber. To what purpose should we allow such as he to draw us into war with the Feringhi? And what should come of such war? Will our land grow fat beneath it or our people increase?”
“It would not be good to make an end of him at this moment,” said the vizier. “His following is large and powerful, and our people are ever turbulent. For long has he been teaching them to cast eyes upon Mazaran, whose garrison is weak, and where there is much plunder.”
“Then Murad Afzul is chief of the Gularzai,” said Mushîm Khan, bitterly. “Well, we shall see, for I will order him to take his possessions and depart.”
“The omen is favourable,” said the vizier, lifting his eyes. “Lo—here he comes?”
Two men were approaching—one tall and of middle age, the other of medium height and old. These drew near and salaamed, yet without the obsequious servility customary on approaching the presence of the more despotic Eastern ruler; for these mountain chiefs ruled more by patriarchal prestige than despotic power. Mushîm Khan gave them peace, and they seated themselves.
With the taller and younger of the two we are already acquainted. The other was lean and wrinkled, with fierce eyes staring restlessly out from beneath shaggy brows. He had also a trick of clenching and unclenching his claw-like fingers as though gripping something, and this, together with his bony, hawk-like countenance and rolling eyes, gave him an indescribably cruel, not to say demoniacal, aspect.
“Peace to the chief of the Gularzai,” began this man, in a nasal grating snuffle. “Peace to him whom the Feringhi hath created a Nawab, for men say he loves peace.”
“And on you peace, who have beheld the tomb of the Prophet,” returned Mushîm Khan, in deep tones, for he was not pleased to behold this stranger, this interfering mullah, who stirred up strife whichever way he went, and was, in fact, engaged in preaching jihad throughout the mountain tribes.
The mullah, Hadji Haroun, was possessed of a very evil gift of eloquence, evil because invariably turned towards the stirring up of strife, and the sowing of plot and intrigue. For long he spoke, unfolding his plan, the design of which was to involve the Gularzai in common with other of the mountain tribes in an aggressive war with the Indian Government. An insignificant military expedition was then on foot against an insignificant unit of these, and here was a grand opportunity to assert themselves, and enjoy some sport in the shape of the slaughter of infidels, which would be pleasing to Allah at the same time—and the seizing of considerable loot, which would be pleasing to themselves. The opportunity was here. The Feringhi were unsuspicious that any hostility could be in existence against them, for had not the Sirkar just created Mushîm Khan a Nawab. The town of Mazaran simply lay in the hand of the Gularzai, and could be taken without a blow, captured by a clever surprise.
What tribe or combination of tribes had ever prevailed in the end when pitted against the Sirkar? No—not in the end, but which of them was any the worse? Soldiers were sent. There was a fight or two, and peace was made. Then things were just as they had been before. The Gularzai would soon become as women, and forget what battle was, if they sat still much longer.
To all of this the chief listened gravely. He distrusted the speaker, and wholly disapproved of the plan, for he had already been sounded on the matter, and that not once. Murad Afzul spat from time to time, nodding his evil head in approval as he gloated in anticipation over the delights in store—of the bazaar in Mazaran running with blood, and the camel loads of choice loot which should find their way to his mountain retreat. Oh, there were merry times ahead.
Yet assuredly disappointment awaited, for Mushîm Khan, having heard all that had been said, absolutely declined to join in the plot. He had given the Sirkar assurances of his friendship. The new Sahib who had come as representative of the Sirkar, had treated him straightforwardly and as a brother, and he refused to behave towards him treacherously and as a liar. Infidel or not, to act thus towards him would not be pleasing to Allah, nor could it be justified out of the teaching of His Prophet.
“As a brother?” repeated the crafty mullah, now about to throw his trump card. “And was not the Sirdar Allahyar Khan a brother of the Nawab?”
“Surely,” answered Mushîm Khan, looking slightly puzzled, for he saw no coherence in the question.
“And his end—peace to his soul?” went on the mullah. “And his end, what was it?”
“His end was that of a brave man if a mistaken one,” replied the chief, in a deep voice, and frowning, for he disliked and resented the raking up of this matter. But Hadji Haroun nodded, looking as though awaiting further particulars.
“He died fighting the Feringhi, by whom he was shot—and is now in Paradise,” supplemented Kuhandil Khan.
“But if he was not so shot?” pursued the mullah, a gleam of triumphant malice darting from his cruel eyes.
“Then he is alive?”
The words broke simultaneously from the chief and his brother. But the mullah dropped his eyes to the ground, and for a moment kept silence. Then he said,—
“Would that he were. Would that his end had been that of a soldier. But it was not. Ya, Mahomed! What an end was his! Wah-wah! what an end!”
And the crooked, claw-like fingers clenched and unclenched upon empty air. Murad Afzul, who had been prepared for this psychological moment, now rose, and having salaamed, moved away, for it was not fitting that he should hear the terrible disclosure about to be made to the two brothers.
“The Sirdar Allahyar Khan was a havildar in one of the regiments serving under the Feringhi at the time of the great rising?” went on the mullah, in a kind of slow monotone.
“And by them he was shot, by reason of the part he took against them in the rising,” said the chief. “And, after all, it was what he might expect, for many of the Feringhi were then slain.”
“By them he was not shot, O Chief of the Gularzai whom the Feringhi have named Nawab,” returned the mullah. “By them he was hanged.”
“Hanged?” broke from both, in incredulous horror. “Now that cannot be. The Feringhi would never put to so shameful a death a man of his descent.”
“Yet he was hanged, O chiefs—hanged in such fashion as is not to be named—hanged with a portion of swine flesh tied to his body.”
Both the listeners had half sprung to their feet, and all unconsciously had struck a crouching, wild-beast attitude—and in truth their faces were in keeping. Their lips had gone back from their teeth and their eyes were glaring.
“Is this a lie, old man?” gasped Mushîm Khan. “For if it is thou shalt die. Yes, thou shalt die the death of the boiling fat unless thou canst prove its truth, and this wert thou a hundred times a mullah or even the grandson of the Prophet himself.”
But the other did not quail.
“It is no lie. Ya, Mahomed! To such a death did they put a Sirdar of the Gularzai. Many were so put to death by the Feringhi, they declaring that such had slain their women and children, having first been lashed, and so also did Allahyar Khan die. But before he died there was one who stood by to whom he whispered his bequest of vengeance, and from that one at his own death came the knowledge to me. Read; here is proof.”
He drew a soiled, faded parchment from beneath his clothing, and tendered it to the chief. It was traced in Pushtu characters, and set forth how the Sirdar Allahyar Khan, havildar in a regiment recruited from all the border tribes, having been accused—and falsely—of being concerned in the murders of women and children, was adjudged to be hanged as the speaker had described; but the name of the officer in command who had ordered this savage retribution was somewhat difficult to decipher. Watching the two brothers, their heads meeting over the scroll, their features perfectly convulsed with horror and fury, Hadji Haroun smiled evilly to himself, though his countenance wore rather a snarl than a smile.
“The name?” they growled, looking up. “The name, the name?”
“General Raynier Sahib,” answered the mullah, fairly quivering with delight. “Say now, Chief of the Gularzai. Is the Sahib yonder at Mazaran still as thy brother?”
“What has he to do with this?” thundered the chief.
“Ya, Allah! Observe, O Nawab. He who is now as the Sirkar at Mazaran is named Raynier Sahib. He is the son of the man who thus slew the brother of the chief of the Gularzai. Say; is he still as thy brother?”