The Three Sapphires Part 17

He went along to the verandah, and, putting the sapphire into Swinton's palm, hiding its transference with his own hand, said: "Slip that quietly into your pocket, and when you get home hide it."

"I don't value it much," Swinton answered.

With an uncertain laugh, Finnerty declared: "I'd throw it in the sea.

Like the baboo, I think it's an evil G.o.d. I mean, it will be if Ananda gets the three sapphires together; he'll play up their miracle power; they'll be worth fifty thousand sepoys to him."

They smoked in silence till Swinton broke it: "I found a little notebook the murderer of Perreira dropped that evidently belonged to a British officer, though leaves had been torn out here and there for the purpose of destroying his ident.i.ty. The man himself didn't do this, for there were entries in a different hand at the pages these leaves had been torn from--sort of memos, bearing on the destroyed matter."

"If the ident.i.ty were destroyed, captain, how do you know an officer owned it?"

"For one thing, he had used an army code, though changed so that I could only make out bits of it; and in two or three places the other has written the word 'captain.' One entry in code that I've partly worked out is significant: 'Darpore, March.' And that entry, I gather from other words surrounding it, was written in England. The second handwriting wasn't Perreira's; I have his on that envelope he addressed to me. The latter entries are in a woman's hand."

Strangely there was no comment from Finnerty. He had pulled the cheroot box toward him and was lighting a fresh smoke.

"What do you really know about the Boelke girl, major?" the captain asked pointedly, his blue-coloured wax disks of eyes fixed in their placid, opaque way on Finnerty, who, throwing away the match he had held interminably to his cheroot, turned to answer: "She popped into Darpore one day, and I don't think even Doctor Boelke, who is supposed to be her uncle, expected her. You know India, captain--nothing that pertains to the sahibs can be kept quiet--and I hadn't heard a word of her coming.

Boelke gave out that she had been living in Calcutta while he was up here, but I don't believe that; I think she came straight from Europe. I probably would not have met the girl--Marie is her name--but for an accident. Up on an elephant path that leads to an elephant highway, a great, broad trail, we have elephant traps--pits ten feet deep, covered over with bamboos, leaves, and earth that completely hide their presence. One day I was riding along this trail, inspecting, when I heard, just beyond a sharp turn in the path, a devil of a row, and, driving my mount forward, was just in time to throw myself off, grab that grey stallion by the nostrils, and choke him to a standstill. He had put a hoof through a pit covering and gone to his knees, the sudden lurch throwing the girl over his head; and there she was, her foot caught in a stirrup, being dragged in a circle by the crazed beast, for she was gamely hanging onto the rein."

"She'd have been trampled to death only for you. And to-day you saved her life again."

The major gave a dry laugh. "I think she was in a temper over it, too."

"What's this station gossip about Ananda's intentions?"

"The girl doesn't seem like that; to me she's the greatest mystery in all this fogged thing. She speaks just like an English girl."

"Perhaps she's one of Ananda's London flames, and the relations.h.i.+p with Boelke is only claimed in a chaperoning sense. He couldn't marry her, having a princess now."

"Rajahs arrange their domestic matters to suit themselves. Much can be done with a pinch of datura, or a little cobra venom collected in a piece of raw meat that has been put with a cobra in a pot that sits over a slow fire. But if Ananda tries that game----You saw his brother-in-law, Darna Singh?"

Swinton nodded. "A Rajput!"

"Yes. Well, Darna Singh would stick a knife in the prince, knowing that he would become regent till Ananda's little son came of age; that is, of course, after the maharajah had been settled, for in spite of all his magnificent appearance he's just a sh.e.l.l--the usual thing, brandy in champagne and all the rest of it."

The trembling whistle of a small owl coming from behind the bungalow caused Finnerty to turn his head and listen intently. He rose and slipped along the wall to the end rail, where he stood silently for two minutes. Then he dropped over the rail and came back to Swinton from the other end, having circled the bungalow.

"An owl, wasn't it?" the captain asked.

"No; it was the call of an owl badly done by a native. There's some game on."

As he ceased speaking, there came floating up the road from a mango thicket the dreary, monotonous "tonk, tonk, tonk, tonk!" of the little, green-coated coppersmith bird. It sounded as if some one tapped on a hollow pipe.

"What about that? Is that a bird?" Swinton whispered.

"A two-legged bird." They both laughed softly. "I mean a native. If it had been a coppersmith bird, he wouldn't have stopped at four notes; he'd have kept it up. That fellow is tapping off on a piece of metal an answer to the owl."

"Here comes my tom-tom," Swinton said, as a groom, leading a horse in the shafts of a dogcart, appeared, coming up the road. Rising, he touched Finnerty on the arm and went into the bungalow, where, taking the sapphire from his pocket, he said: "I wish you'd put this in your box for to-night; I've got a curious, flabby streak of depression--as if I'd lose the thing."

"Have a peg--there's the Scotch on the table--while I put it away," and the major darted into his room.

"That's not my horse; I've been driving a chestnut," Swinton exclaimed, when they stood beside a cow-hocked, hog-maned bay whose eyes showed an evil spread of white.

"Yes, sahib; other pony going lame," the groom explained.

"One of those devilish, fiddle-headed Cabul ponies--less brains than a coolie," Finnerty growled. "You'll have to watch him going downhill, or he'll put you over the kud; I never saw one yet that wouldn't shy at a shadow." He stood watching the scuttling first rush of the horse, the groom madly scrambling to the back seat, till they had vanished around a corner.

The watchman, having heard his master's guest depart, now came from the servants' quarters to place his charpoy beside the door for his nightly sleep. Throwing away his cheroot and taking a loaded malacca cane from a rack, Finnerty said: "Gutra, there are rogues about; sit you in my room while I make a search."

Reaching the mango thicket, he stood behind a tree from where his eye could command the moon-lighted compound that surrounded the bungalow. At that instant from down the road floated up the call of a voice; there was a crash, and the high-pitched scream of a horse in terror. Finnerty was off; rounding a turn, he came head on into a fleeing syce, who was knocked flat, to lie there, crying: "Oh, my lord, the sahib is eaten by a tiger!"

Finnerty grabbed the native and yanked him to his feet. "Stop the lies!

Tell me what's happened! Where is the sahib?"

"Have mercy on me, a poor man, huzoor; the tiger sprang from the jungle and took the sahib in his mouth like a leg of a chicken and went back into the jungle. I tried to frighten the tiger away by beating him with my hands; then I am running to tell you, my lord."

But Finnerty was speeding on before the man had finished.

Where the road swept sharply around the edge of a cliff, Finnerty almost stepped on Swinton, lying quite still beside a white boulder on the road. With a groan, he knelt beside the captain, apprehension numbing his brain; but the latter's heart was beating with the even pulsation of a perfect motor. He tipped back an eyelid; the dull blue eyes were as if their owner slept. He ran his fingers along the scalp, and just behind an ear found a soft, puffy lump, but no blood.

"Good old chap! You've just got a concussion--that's all," welled in relief from the Irishman.

Some chafing of the hands, a little pumping of the lungs by lifting the torso gently up and down, and, with preliminary, spasmodic jerks, Swinton sat up, rubbed his eyes, looked at Finnerty, and asked: "What time is it? I--I've been asleep----" Then, memory coming faster than his hesitating words, he rose to his feet, saying: "The pony and cart went over the kud."

"That Cabuli donkey thought the boulder a crouching wolf and s.h.i.+ed, eh?

The syce said a tiger had eaten you."

"He never saw the chita. Back around the turn I felt the dogcart tip up and knew the syce had jumped down, as I thought, to run ahead to see that the road was clear at this narrow turn. When I saw the boulder I looked around for him to take the pony's head, but he had vanished. As I walked the Cabuli up to the boulder, he suddenly went crazy with fright, and at that instant, with a snarling rasp, a chita shot from the bank just above our heads there, and, lighting on my pony's back, carried him over, the sudden whirl of the cart pitching me on my head."

"And you went out?"

"No, I didn't; not just then. I staggered to my feet--I remember that distinctly--and something hit me. That time I did go out."

"Good heavens--a plant! The syce, knowing what was going to happen, funked it and bolted--feared the leopard might make a mistake in his man."

"Looks like it."

"Then, as you didn't go over the bank, somebody tapped you from behind, thinking you had the sapphire in your pocket. We'll go back to the bungalow and come out in the morning and have a look."

As they tramped along, Finnerty remarked: "You said a hunting chita.

There are none of them in these jungles; it must have been a leopard."

"No; I could see quite distinctly in the moonlight his upstanding, feathered ears and his long, lank body. I had a year at Jhodpore, and went out after antelope many a time with a hunting chita chained on a cart till we got within striking distance."

"Gad! That's why the brute took the pony for it--force of habit. And they sent that fool Cabuli--they knew he'd go crazy and topple over the bank. The stone was placed in the road, too."

As they went up on the verandah, Finnerty turned sharply, and, putting his hand on Swinton's arm, said: "Gad, man! That's why Ananda asked Lord Victor to dinner and left you out of it; he knew you'd dine with me here. They either meant to put you out of action or got to know you owned the sapphire that was used on Moti to-day and hoped to get it off your body."

"Looks rather fishy, I must say. The prince would not take a chance on an inquiry over the death of an officer unless, as in this case, it could not be taken for anything but an accident."