The Bronze Bell Part 30

CHAPTER XIV

OVER THE WATER

Ram Nath, patient and impa.s.sive as ever, had the tonga waiting for Amber before the Residency. Exalted beyond words, the American permitted himself to be driven off through Kuttarpur's intricate network of streets and backways, toward a destination of which he knew as little as he cared. He was a guest of the State, officially domiciled at the designated house of hospitality; without especial permission, obtained through the efforts of the Resident, he could sleep in no other spot in the city or its purlieus. He was indifferent, absolutely; the matter interested him as scantily--which is to say not at all--as did the fact that an escort of troopers of the State, very well accoutred and disciplined, followed the tonga with a great jangling of steel and tumult of hoofs.

He was in that condition of semi-daze which is the not extraordinary portion of a declared lover revelling in the memory of his mistress's eyes, whose parting look has not been unkind. Upon that glance of secret understanding, signalled to him from eyes as brown as beautiful, he was building him a palace of dreams so strange, so sweet, that the mere contemplation of its unsubstantial loveliness filled him with an exquisite agony of hope, a poignant ecstasy of despair. It was too much to hope for, that she should smile upon him in the morning.... Yet he hoped.

Unconscious of the pa.s.sage of time, he was roused only by the pausing of the tonga and its escort before the Gateway of the Elephants--the main octroi gate in the northern wall of the city. There ensued a brief interchange of formalities between the sergeant of his escort and the captain of the Quarter Guard. Then the tonga was permitted to pa.s.s out, and for five minutes rattled and clattered along the border of the lake, stopping finally at the rest-house.

Alighting in the compound, Amber disbursed a few rupees to the troopers, paid off Ram Nath--who was swift to drive off city-wards, in mad haste lest the gates be shut upon him for the night--and entered the bungalow. An aged, talkative, and amiable khansamah met him at the threshold with expressions of exaggerated respect, no doubt genuine enough, and followed him, a mumbling shadow, as the Virginian made a brief round of inspection.

Standing between the road and the water, the rest-house proved to be moderately s.p.a.cious and clean; on the lake-front it opened upon a marble bund, or landing-stage, its lip lapped by whispering ripples of the lake. Amber went out upon this to discover, separated from him by little more than half a mile of black water, the ghostly white walls of the Raj Mahal climbing in dim majesty to the stars. A single line of white lights outlined the topmost parapet; at the water's edge a single marble entrance was aglow; between the two, towers and terraces, hanging gardens and white scarp-like walls rose in darkened confusion unimaginable--or, rather, fell like a cascade of architecture, down the hillside to the lake. A dark hive teeming with the occult life of unnumbered men and women--Salig Singh the inscrutable and strong, Naraini the mysterious, whose loveliness lived a fable in the land, and how many thousand others--living and dying, working and idling, in joy and sadness, in hatred and love, weaving forever that myriad-stranded web of intrigue which is the life of native palaces ...

The Virginian remained long in rapt wondering contemplation of it, until the wind blowing across the waters had chilled him to the point of s.h.i.+vering; when he turned indoors to his bed. But he was to have little rest that night. The khansamah who attended him had hardly turned low his light when Amber was disturbed by the noise of an angry altercation in the compound. He arose and in dressing-gown and slippers went to investigate, and found Ram Nath in violent dispute with the sergeant of the escort--which, it appeared, had builded a fire and camped round it in the compound: a circ.u.mstance which furnished food for thought.

Amber began to suspect that the troops had been furnished as a guard less of honour than of espionage, less in formal courtesy than in demonstration of the unsleeping vigilance of the Eye--kindly a.s.sisted by the Maharana of Khandawar.

A man who, warmed by the ardour of his first love, feels suddenly the shadow of death falling cold upon him, is apt to neglect nothing. Amber considered that he had given Ram Nath no commission of any sort, and bent an attentive ear to the communication which the tonga-wallah insisted upon making to him.

Ram Nath had returned, he a.s.serted, solely for the purpose of informing Amber in accordance with his desires. "The telegraph-office for which you enquired, sahib, stands just within the Gateway of the Elephants,"

he announced. "The telegraph-babu will be on duty very early in the morning, should you desire still to send the message."

"Oh, yes," said Amber indifferently. "I'd forgotten. Thanks."

He returned to his charpoy with spirits considerably higher. Ram Nath had not winked this time, but the fact was indisputable that Amber had _not_ expressed any interest whatever in the location of the telegraph-office.

Wondering if the telegraph-babu by any chance wore pink satin, he dozed off on the decision that he would need to send a message the first thing in the morning.

Some time later he was a second time awakened by further disputation in the compound. The troopers were squabbling amongst themselves; he was able to make this much out in spite of the fact that the sepoys, recruited exclusively from the native population of Khandawar, spoke a patois of Hindi so corrupt that even an expert in Oriental languages would experience difficulty in trying to interpret it. Amber did not weary himself with the task, but presently lifted up his voice and demanded silence, desiring to be informed if his sleep was to be continually broken by the bickerings of sons of mothers without noses.

There followed instantaneous silence, broken by a chuckle and an applausive "Shabas.h.!.+" and nothing more.

Amber snuggled down again upon his pillow and soothed himself with the feel of the pistol that his fingers grasped beneath the clothes.

A bar of moonlight slipped through the blinds and fell athwart his eyes. He cursed it bitterly and got up and moved his charpoy into shadow. The sibilant lisping of the wavelets against the bund sang him softly toward oblivion ... and a convention of water-fowl went into stormy executive session out in the middle of the lake. This had to be endured, and in time Amber's senses grew numb to the racket and he dropped off into a fitful doze....

Footfalls and hushed voices in the bungalow were responsible for the next interruption. Amber came to with a start and found himself sitting up on the edge of the charpoy, with a dreamy impression that two people had been standing over him and had just left the room, escaping by way of the khansamah's quarters. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and went out to remonstrate vigorously with the khansamah. The latter naturally professed complete ignorance of the visitation and dwelt with such insistence upon the plausibility of dreams that Amber lost patience and kicked him grievously, so that he complained with a loud voice and cast himself at the sahib's feet, declaring that he was but as the dust beneath them and that Amber was his father and mother and the light of the Universe besides. In short, he raised such a rumpus that some of the sepoys came in to investigate and--went out again, hastily, to testify to their fellows that the hazoor was a man of fluent wrath, surprisingly versed in the art and practice of abuse.

Somewhat mollified and reflecting, at the same time, that this was all but a part of the game, to be expected by those who patronise rest-houses off the beaten roads of travel, the Virginian returned to his charpoy and immediately lapsed into a singularly disquieting dream.... He was strolling by the border of the lake when a coot swam in and hailed him in English; and when he stopped to look the coot lifted an A.D.T. messenger-boy's cap and pleaded with him to sign his name in a little black book, promising that, if he did so, it would be free to doff its disguise and be Labertouche again. So Amber signed "Pink Satin" in the book and the coot stood up and said, "I'm not Labertouche at all, but Ram Nath, and Ram Nath is only another name for Har Dyal Rutton, and besides you had better come away at once, for the Eye thou dost wear upon thy finger never sleeps and it's only a paste Token anyway." Hearing which, Amber caught the coot by the leg and found that he had grasped the arm of Salig Singh, whose eyes were both monstrous emeralds without any whites whatever. And Salig Singh tapped him on the shoulder and began to say over and over again in a whisper...

But here Amber another time found himself wide awake and sitting up, his left hand gripping the wrist of a native and his right holding his pistol steadily levelled at the native's breast. While the voice he heard was real and no figment of a dream-mused imagination; for the man was whispering earnestly and repeatedly:

"_Hasten, hazoor, for the night doth wane and the hour is at hand_."

"What deviltry's this?" Amber demanded sharply, with a threatening gesture.

But the native neither attempted to free himself nor to evade the pistol's mouth. "Have patience, hazoor," he begged earnestly, "and make no disturbance. It is late and the sepoys sleep; if you will be circ.u.mspect and are not afraid--"

"Who are you?"

"I was to say, '_I come from you know whom_,' hazoor."

"That all?"

"In the matter of a certain photograph, hazoor."

"By thunder!" Labertouche's name was on Amber's lips, but he repressed it. "Wait a bit." He gulped down the last dregs of sleep. "Let me think and--see."

This last was an afterthought. As it came to him he dropped the pistol by his side and felt for matches in the pocket of his coat, which hung over the back of a bedside chair. Finding one, he struck it noiselessly and, as the tiny flame broadened, drew his captive nearer.

It was a fat, mean, wicked face that stood out against the darkness: an ochre-tinted face with a wide, loose-lipped mouth and protruding eyes that blinked nervously into his. But he had never seen it before.

"Who are you?" He cast away the match as its flame died and s.n.a.t.c.hed up his weapon.

"I was to say--"

"I heard that once. What's your name?"

"Dulla Dad, hazoor."

"And who are you from?"

"Hazoor, I was not to say."

"I think you'd better," suggested Amber, with grim significance.

"I am the hazoor's slave. I dare not say."

"Now look here--"

"Hazoor, it was charged upon me to say, _'I come from you know whom.'_"

"The devil it was.... Well, what do you want?"

"I was to say, '_Hasten, hazoor, for the night--_"

"I've heard that, too. You mean you're to lead me to somebody, somewhere--you can't say where?"

"Aye, hazoor, even so."

"Get over there, in the corner, while I think this over--and don't move or I'll make you a present of a nice young bullet, Dulla Dad."

"That is as Allah wills; only remember, hazoor, the injunction for haste."

The man, a small stunted Mohammedan, sidled fearsomely over to the spot indicated and waited there, cringing and supplicating Amber with eloquent gestures. The Virginian watched him closely until comforted by the reflection that, had murder been the object, he had been a dead man long since. Then he put aside the revolver and began to dress.