Caste Part 24

"Who has pa.s.sed the guard here?"

"But one, the Afghan, who was expected by the Chief. He went forth but lately."

"A Patan!" Ka.s.sim roared. "Trust a woman and a snake but not a Patan."

He turned to the whiskered jamadar: "Quick, go you with men and bring the Afghan." To another he said, "Command to enter from there"--his hand swept the mob in front--"a dozen trusty _sowars_ and flood the palace with them. Up, up; every room, every nook, every place of hiding; under everything, and above everything, and through everything, search. Not even let there be exemption of the seraglio--murder lurks close to women at all times. Seize every servant that is within and bind him; let none escape."

He swept a hand out toward the Pindaris in the street that were like a pack of wolves: "Up the hill--surround the palace! and guard every window and rat-run!"

The guard saluted, venturing: "Commander, none could have entered from outside to do the foul deed."

"Liar! lazy sleeper!"--he smashed with his foot the _hookah_ that sat on the marble floor, its long stem coiled like a snake--"While you busied over such, and opium, one has slipped by."

He reached out a powerful hand and seized the shoulder of a Pindari and jerked him to the step, commanding: "Stay here with this monkey of the tall trees, and see that none pa.s.s. I go to the Chief. When the Afghan comes have him brought up."

Hunsa had stood among the Pindaris, shoved hither and thither as they surged back and forth. Once the flat of a _tulwar_ had smote him across the back, but when he turned his face to the striker who recognised him as a man of privilege, one of the amusers, he was allowed to remain.

The startling cry, "The Chief has been murdered! the Sultan is dead!"

swept out over the desert sand that lay white in the moonlight, and the night air droned with the hum of fifty thousand voices that was like the song of a world full of bees. And the night palpitated with the beat of horses' feet upon the hard sand and against the stony ford of the parched river as the Pindari hors.e.m.e.n swept to Rajgar as if they rode in the sack of a city.

Hoa.r.s.e bull-throated cries calling the curse of Allah upon the murderer were like a deep-voiced hymn of hate--it was continuous.

The _bunnias_, and the oilmen, and the keepers of cookshops hid their wares and crept into dark places to hide. The flickering oil lamps were blotted out; but some of the Pindaris had fastened torches to their long spears, and the fluttering lights waved and circled like shooting stars.

Rajgar was a Shoel; it was as if from the teak forests and the jungles of wild mango had rushed its full holding of tigers, and leopards, and elephants, and screaming monkeys.

Soon a wedge of cavalry, a dozen wild-eyed hors.e.m.e.n, pushed their way through the struggling mob, at their head the jamadar bellowing: "Make way--make the road clean of your bodies."

"They bring the Afghan!" somebody cried and pointed to where Barlow sat strapped to the saddle of his Beluchi mare.

"It is the one who killed the Chief!" another yelped; and the cries rippled along from mouth to mouth; _tulwars_ flashed in the light of the lurid torches as they swept upward at the end of long arms threateningly; but the jamadar roared: "Back, back! you're like jackals snapping and snarling. Back! if the one is killed how shall we know the truth?"

One, an old man, yelled triumphantly: "Allah be praised! a wisdom--a wisdom! The torture; the horse-bucket and the hot ashes! The jamadar will have the truth out of the Afghan. Allah be praised! it is a wisdom!"

At the gate straps were loosed and Barlow was jerked to the marble steps as if he had been a blanket stripped from the horse's back.

"It is _the_ one, Jamadar," the guard declared, thrusting his face into Barlow's; "it is the Afghan. Beyond doubt there will be blood upon his clothes--look to it, Jamadar."

"We found the Afghan in the _serai_, and he was attending to his horse as if about to fly; beyond doubt he is the murderer of our Chief," one who had ridden with the jamadar said.

"Bring the murderer face to face with his foul deed," the jamadar commanded; and clasped by both arms, pinioned, Barlow was pushed through the gate and into the dim-lighted hall. In the scuffle of the pa.s.sing Hunsa sought to slip through, impelled by a devilish fascination to hear all that would be said in the death-chamber. If the case against the Sahib were short and decisive--perhaps they might slice him into ribbons with their swords--Hunsa would then have nothing to fear, and need not attempt flight.

But the guard swept him back with the b.u.t.t of his long smooth-bore, crying: "Dog, where go you?" Then he saw that it was Hunsa, the messenger of his Chiefs favourite--as he took the Gulab to be--and he said: "You cannot enter, Hunsa. It is a matter for the jamadars alone."

At that instant the Gulab slipped through the struggling groups in the street, the Pindaris gallantly making way for her. She had heard of the murder of the Chief, and had seen the dragging in of the Afghan.

"Let me go up, guard," she pleaded.

"It is a matter for men," he objected. "The jamadar would be angry, and my sword and gun would be taken away and I should be put to scrub the legs of horses if I let you pa.s.s."

"The jamadar will not be angry," she pleaded, "for there is something to be said which only I have knowledge of. It was spoken to me by the Chief, he had fear of this Afghan, and, please, in the name of Allah, let Hunsa by, for being alone I have need of him."

The soft dark eyes pleaded stronger than the girl's words, and the guard yielded, half reluctantly. To the young Pindari he said, "Go you with these two, and if the jamadar is for cutting off their heads, say that those in the street pulled me from the door-way, and these slipped through; I have no fancy for the compliment of a sword on my neck."

In the dim hallway two men stood guarding the door to the Chief's chamber, and when the man who had taken the Gulab up explained her mission, one of them said, "Wait you here. I will ask of Ka.s.sim his pleasure." Presently he returned; "The Commander will see the woman but if it is a matter of trifling let the penalty fall upon the guard below. The mingling of women in an affair of men is an abomination in the sight of Allah."

When Bootea entered the chamber she gave a gasping cry of horror. The Chief lay upon the floor, face downward, just as he had dropped when slain, for Ka.s.sim had said; "Amir Khan is dead, may Allah take him to his bosom, and such things as we may learn of his death may help us to avenge our Chief. Touch not the body."

Her entrance was not more than half observed, for Ka.s.sim at that moment was questioning the Afghan, who stood, a man on either side of him, and two behind.

He was just answering a question from the Commander and was saying: "I left your Chief with the Peace of Allah upon both our heads, for he gripped my hand in fellows.h.i.+p, and said that we were two men. Why should I slay one such who was veritably a soldier, who was a follower of Mahomet?"

The man who had brought Barlow up to Amir Khan when he came for the audience, said: "Commander, I left this one, the Afghan, here with the Chief and took with me his sword and the short gun; he had no weapons."

"Inshalla! it was but a pretence," the Commander declared; "a pretence to gain the confidence of the Chief, for he was slain with his own knife. It was a Patan trick."

The Commander turned to the Afghan: "Why hadst thou audience with the Chief alone and at night here--what was the mission?"

Barlow hesitated, a slight hope that might save his own life would be to declare himself as a Sahib, and his mission; but he felt sure that the Chief had been murdered because of this very thing, that somebody, an agent of Nana Sahib, had waited hidden, had killed the Chief and taken the paper. To speak of it would be to start a rumour that would run across India that the British had negotiated with the Pindaris, and if the paper weren't found there--which it wouldn't be--he wouldn't be believed. Better to accept the roll of the dice as they lay, that he had lost, and die as an Afghan rather than as an Englishman, a spy who had killed their Chief.

"Speak, Patan," Ka.s.sim commanded; "thou dwellest overlong upon some lie."

"There was a mission," Barlow answered; "it was from my own people, the people of Sind."

"Of Sindhia?"

"No; from the land of Sind, Afghanistan. We ride not with the Mahrattas; they are infidels, while we be followers of the true Prophet."

"Thou art a fair speaker, Afghan. And was there a sealed message?"

"There was, Commander Sahib."

"Where is it now?"

"I know not. It was left with Amir Khan."

There was a hush of three seconds. Then Ka.s.sim, whose eye had searched the room, saw the iron box. "This has a bearing upon matters," he declared; "this affair of a written message. Open the box and see if it is within," he commanded a Pindari.

"How now, woman," for the Gulab had stepped forward; "what dost thou here--ah! there was talk of a message from the Chief. It might be, it might be, because,"--his leonine face, full whiskered, the face of a wild rider, a warrior, softened as he looked at the slight figure,--"our n.o.ble Chief had spoken soft words of thee, and pa.s.sed the order that thou wert Begum, that whatsoever thou desired was to be."

"Commander," Bootea said, and her voice was like her eyes, trembling, vibrant, "let me look upon the face of Amir Khan; then there are things to be said that will avenge his death in the sight of Allah."

Ka.s.sim hesitated. Then he said; "It matters not--we have the killer."

And reverently, with his own hands, he turned the Chief on his back, saying, softly, "In the name of Allah, thou restest better thus."

The Gulab, kneeling, pushed back the black beard with her hand, and they thought that she was making oath upon the beard of the slain man.

Then she rose to her feet, and said: "There is one without, Hunsa, bring him here, and see that there is no weapon upon him."

Ka.s.sim pa.s.sed an order and Hunsa was brought, his evil eyes turning from face to face with the restless query of a caged leopard.