The Great Amulet Part 4

On Lenox's bare deck-lounge a bull terrier, of powerful build and uncompromising ugliness, slept soundly, nose to tail, and on one of the costly prayer-rugs his Pathan bearer slept also. The deep, even breathing of dog and man formed a murmurous duet in the twilight stillness.

All these things Max Richardson noted, with a twinkle of amus.e.m.e.nt in his blue eyes. Every detail of the room spoke to him eloquently of the man he had not seen for a year. Since his departure on furlough the battery had changed stations, marching across sixty miles of sand desert from Bunnoo to Dera Ishmael Khan, familiarly known as "Dera Dismal," a straggling station a few miles beyond the Indus.

Richardson had arrived from Bombay late that evening, just in time to change and hurry across to the station mess. To his surprise Lenox had not put in an appearance at the mess table, and Richardson, antic.i.p.ating fever,--the curse of frontier life,--had left early, inquired the way to his Commandant's bungalow, and now stood on the threshold, scarcely able to believe the evidence of his senses.

Strange developments must have taken place during his absence, if Lenox--the woman-hater, the confirmed recluse--were actually dining out.

He approached the snoring Pathan and roused him, not ungently, with the toe of his boot. The native sprang up, fumbled at his disarranged turban, salaamed deeply, and finally stood upright, a splendid figure of a man, six feet of him, if his peaked turban were taken into account--hard, wiry, with aquiline features, grey beard, and eyes keen as a sword-thrust; a man without knowledge of fear, cunning and implacable in hatred, but staunchly devoted to the Englishman he served, who, in his eyes, was the first of living men.

"The Captain Sahib--where is he?" Richardson demanded in the vernacular.

"At Desmond Sahib's bungalow for dinner. By eleven o'clock he returneth. Your Honour will await his coming?"

"Decidedly."

Zyarulla turned up the lamp, and proceeded to set whisky, soda-water, and a tumbler among his master's scattered papers. Brutus, at the sound of a remembered voice, tapped the cane chair vigorously with his stump of a tail, without offering to relinquish the one comfortable seat in the room. Richardson sat down beside him, caressed the strong ugly head, and lit a cigar.

The Pathan withdrew, leaving him alone with the dog and the whisky bottle, from which he helped himself liberally. Then, drawing one of the closely written sheets of paper towards him, he fell to reading it with interest and attention. It was a minute geographical record of a recent journey through tracts of mountain country hitherto unexplored, a journey which had gained Lenox the letters C.I.E. after his name.

Richardson, while failing to emulate the older man's zeal for wanderings that cut him off for months together from intercourse with his kind, was yet keenly interested in their practical outcome.

The stronger light in which he now sat revealed him as a big fair man, by no means ill-featured, his soldierly figure emphasised by the gunner mess-dress of those days, with its high scarlet waistcoat and profusion of round gilt b.u.t.tons, in each of which twin flames winked and sparkled. A suggestion of kindly, uncritical contentment with things in general pervaded his face and bearing. The blue eyes were rarely serious for long together; the mouth, under a neatly trimmed moustache, showed no harsh lines, no traces of past conflict. Had the great Overseer of men's destinies not seen fit to guide him to the Frontier, out of reach of demoralising influences, it is doubtful whether he would have escaped the trail of the petticoat, the snare of the gra.s.s-widow in determined search of amus.e.m.e.nt. As it was, he had pa.s.sed through the critical twenties with a clean defaulter sheet; had established himself as a good soldier and a good comrade, a "friend-making, everywhere friend-finding soul," and the closest among these was the Commandant of his battery--a wholesome and pleasant state of things for both.

He was beginning to weary of geographical detail, when steps sounded in the verandah, and he was on his feet as Lenox came in.

"Hullo, d.i.c.k! Good man to wait for me! Thought I should have seen you before mess, though. What do you mean by not coming here straight?"

"None of my fault, old chap. We were delayed as usual crossing that blamed old Indus. Stuck on a sandbank for over an hour. Gives a fellow time to count up his sins and renounce the devil, eh? Expected to find you at mess, of course. I wasn't prepared for this sort of upheaval in the natural order of things!"

Lenox stooped to caress Brutus, who was urgently demanding attention.

"Upheavals belong to the natural order of things," he said quietly.

"The world would come to a standstill without them. Light a fresh cheroot, and fill up."

He indicated the chair vacated by Brutus, sat down by the writing-table, and picking up a pipe proceeded to clean it out with scrupulous care. Richardson watched him the while, his face grown suddenly thoughtful. Once he leaned forward, as though he had some urgent matter to communicate, but apparently changed his mind, and spoke conversationally between puffs at his cigar.

"Zyarulla said you were at the Desmonds. Is that the cavalry Desmond, the V.C. chap, whose wife was shot by a brute of a Ghazi four years ago?"

"Yes;--a hideous affair. Yet, in the face of his second marriage, one can hardly call it a misfortune. It was one of those evils that had far better happen to a man than not--that's a fact; and there are a good many such on this amazing planet."

"Sounds a bit brutal, though, when the murder of a man's wife is in question."

"Facts are apt to be brutal; even facts relating to the holy estate of matrimony!" Lenox's tone had an edge to it, and Richardson somewhat hastily s.h.i.+fted to another aspect of the subject.

"You are really intimate with these Desmonds,--both of them?"

"Yes. Both of them. I dine there about once a-week, just myself and Desmond's inseparable pal, Wyndham, who is over there most days. You must call at once. She is Colonel Meredith's sister, a magnificent woman in every way."

"A miraculous one, I should say, to have dragged such an adjective out of you!"

Lenox smiled. "No. Only one of the right sort. The sort that makes fine sons. She has one already; splendid little chap. The three of 'em are off to Dalhousie early in May, and they have just persuaded me to spend my two months there instead of beyond Kashmir. Mrs Desmond has a misguided notion that I am knocking myself to bits over my work in the interior."

"Deuced sensible woman!" laughed Richardson. "It'll give me the greatest pleasure in life to shake hands with her."

"Come and do it to-morrow then. I'll go along with you."

While he talked Lenox had filled a long German pipe with a bowl of generous dimensions. Now he set a match to it, and as the first blue clouds curled upward a peculiarly aromatic fragrance filled the room.

"That stuff of yours is A1," Richardson remarked, with an appreciative sniff. "Pretty costly, I suppose?"

"Yes. My one extravagance. A special brand that I get out from home, a big batch at a time. Nothing like it for settling a man's nerves in the small hours."

"Do you still sit up over that sort of thing till the small hours?"

"Yes, most nights. What moons.h.i.+ne are you bothering your head about now?"

"Strikes me that sleeplessness of yours must be becoming serious. You look several degrees less fit than you did a year ago, and that's saying a good deal."

Lenox took his pipe from between his teeth, and regarded his subaltern steadily for a few seconds.

"When I need medical advice I'll send for Courtenay," he said, a hint of authority in his bantering tone. "We were discussing tobacco, and a woman; and the conjunction reminds me of an inspired German proverb I happened on the other day. 'G.o.d made man first; then He made woman; then He felt so sorry for man that He made--tobacco.' Supreme, isn't it?"

Lenox chuckled with keen appreciation over the characteristically Teuton bit of cynicism, and Richardson laughed aloud.

"Rather rough on woman, that. You might almost have originated it yourself."

"Wish I had. I'd be proud of it. Stick to tobacco, d.i.c.k, and you'll never be tempted to blow your brains out. You may take my word for it, that jar of Arcadian mixture," he specified it with his pipe-stem, "is worth all the women in creation put together."

The bitterness that of late years had so puzzled and distressed his friend sounded again in his tone, and the laughter went out of Richardson's eyes.

But Lenox, absorbed in his own reflections, noticed nothing.

"Let's hear what you've been doing with yourself at home, d.i.c.k," he said suddenly. "You're not coherent on paper. I want a few facts.

You went abroad latterly, didn't you? Toboganning, and that sort of thing, I suppose?"

"Yes; went with those cousins I told you of--to Zermatt."

"Delectable spot," Lenox remarked drily, his eyes on the bowl of his pipe. "Hope you enjoyed yourself there?"

"Yes, rather so. Had a rattling good time." Then he leaned forward again, elbows on knees. "Look here, Lenox, old chap; I'm no hand at skirting round a subject, and I feel bound to tell you that I know now . . . what happened there five years ago."

Lenox started so violently that the pipe dropped from his hand. A minimum of sleep and a maximum of tobacco do not tend to steady a man's nerve.

"How the devil d'you come to do that?" he asked, picking up his fallen treasure, and readjusting its contents.

"Well, you see, I happened to be with my cousins when they found out about it. Queer what a deal of trouble some women will take just to satisfy a bit of curiosity."

"d.a.m.n their curiosity!" Lenox muttered between his teeth, adding something hastily, "You can spare me the details. Nothing stands a chance against a woman's pa.s.sion for other people's affairs. Very straight of you to speak out at once. Don't allude to it again, though;--that's all."

"But, Lenox," Richardson persisted, not without misgiving, for it is ill work tampering with the reserve of a Scot, "there's just one question I want to ask you, and I think I have a right to know the truth. I remember writing a certain letter to you that autumn; a rather disparaging letter about--Miss Maurice." The name tripped him up, and he reddened. "I beg your pardon; I ought to say Mrs Lenox, though she still paints under the other name."