Guns of the Gods Part 34

Jinendra's priest feigned surprise.

"Is it not as clear as the stupidity on thy fat face that the ten-times casteless hussy is behind this? Bag of wind and widows' tenths! Now I must buy the house on the hill from Mukhum Da.s.s and pay the brute his price for it!"

"Borrowing the money from him first?" the priest suggested with a fat smirk.

None guessed better than he how low debauch had brought the maharajah's private treasury.

"Go and pray!" growled Gungadhura. "Are thy temple offices of no more use than to bring thee here twitting me with poverty? Go and lay that belly on the flags, and beat thy stupid brains out on the altar step!

Jinendra will be glad to see thy dark soul on its way to Yum (the judge of the dead) and maybe will reward me afterward! Go! Get out here!

Leave me alone to think!"

The priest went through the form of blessing him, taking more than the usual time about the ceremony for sake of the annoyance that it gave.

Gungadhura was too superst.i.tious to dare interrupt him.

"Better tell that Mukhum Da.s.s to sell me the house cheap," said the maharajah as a sort of afterthought. Patali had been whispering to him.

"Tell him the G.o.ds would take it as an act of merit."

"Cheap?" said the priest over his shoulder as he reached the door.

"I proposed it to him." (That was not exactly true. He had proposed that Mukhum Da.s.s should give the t.i.tle to the temple as an act of grace.) "He answered that what the G.o.ds have returned to him must be doubly precious and certainly entrusted to his keeping; therefore he would count it a deadly sin to part with the t.i.tle now on any terms!"

"Go!" growled Gungadhura. "Get out of here!"

After the priest had gone he talked matters over with Patali, while she stroked his aching head. Whoever knows the mind of the Indian dancing girl could reason out the calculus of treason. They are capable of treachery and loyalty to several sides at once; of sale of their affections to the highest bidder, and of death beside the buyer in his last extremity, having sold his life to a rival whom they loathe. They are the very priestesses of subterfuge--idolators of intrigue--past--mistresses of sedition and seduction. Yet even Patali did not know the real reason why Gungadhura l.u.s.ted for possession of that small house on the hill.

She believed it was for a house of pleasure for herself.

"Persuade the American gold-digger to transfer the lease of it," she suggested. "He is thy servant. He dare not refuse."

But Gungadhura had already enough experience of Richard Blaine to suspect the American of limitless powers of refusal. He was superst.i.tious enough to believe in the alleged vision of Jinendra's priest, that the clue to the treasure of Sialpore would be found in the cellar of that house, where Jengal Singh had placed it; impious enough to double-cross the priest, and to use any means whatever, foul preferred, to get possession of the clue. But he was sensible enough to know that d.i.c.k Blaine could not be put out of his house by less than legal process.

Patali, watching the expression of his eyes, mercurially changed her tactics.

"Today the court is closed," she said. "Tomorrow Mukhum Da.s.s will go to file his paper and defeat the suit of Dhulap Singh. He will ride by way of the ghat between the temple of Siva and the place where the dead Afghan kept his camels. He must ride that way, for his home is on the edge of town."

But Gungadhura shook his head. He hardly dared seize Mukhum Da.s.s or have him robbed, because the money-lender was registered as a British subject, which gave him full right to be extortionate in any state he pleased, with protection in case of interference. He could rob d.i.c.k Blaine with better prospect of impunity. Suddenly he decided to throw caution to the winds. Patali ceased from stroking his head, for she recognized in his eyes the blaze of determination, and it put all her instincts on the defensive.

"Pen, ink and paper!" he ordered.

Patali brought them, and he addressed the envelope first, practising the spelling and the none too easily accomplished English.

"Why to him?" she asked, watching beside his shoulder. "If you send him a letter he will think himself important. Word of mouth--"

"Silence, fool! He would not come without a letter."

"Better to meet him, then, as if by accident and--"

"There is no time! That cursed daughter of my uncle is up to mischief.

She has fled. Would that Yum had her! She went to Samson days ago.

The English hara.s.s me. She has made a bargain with the English to get the treasure first and ruin me. I need what I need swiftly!"

"Then the house is not for me?"

"No!"

He wrote the letter, scratching it laboriously in a narrow Italian hand; then sealed and sent it by a messenger. But Patali, sure in her own mind that her second thoughts had been best and determined to have the house for her own, went out to set spies to keep a very careful eye on Mukhum Da.s.s and to report the money-lender's movements to her hour by hour.

In less than an hour d.i.c.k Blaine arrived by dog-cart in answer to the note, and Patali did her best to listen through a keyhole to the interview.

But she was caught in the act by Gungadhura's much neglected queen, and sent to another part of the palace with a string of unedifying t.i.tles ringing in her ears.

There was not a great deal to hear. d.i.c.k Blaine was perfectly satisfied to let the maharajah search his cellar. He was almost suspiciously complaisant, making no objection whatever to surrendering the key and explaining at considerable length just how it would be easiest to draw the nails. He would be away from home all day, but Chamu the butler would undoubtedly admit the maharajah and his men. For the rest, he hoped they would find what they were looking for, whatever that might be; and he sincerely hoped that the maharajah had not hurt his head seriously.

Asked why he had nailed the cellar door down, he replied that he objected to unauthorized people nosing about in there.

"Who has been in the cellar?" asked Gungadhura.

"Only Tom Tripe."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite. Until that very evening I always kept the cellar padlocked. It's a Yale lock. There's n.o.body in this man's town could pick it."

"Well--thank you for the permission."

"Don't mention it. I hope your head don't hurt you much. Good morning."

d.i.c.k little suspected, as he drove the dog-cart across the bridge toward the club, chuckling over the quick success of Yasmini's ruse, that he himself had set the stage for tragedy.

Chapter Fifteen

He who sets a tiger-trap (Hus.h.!.+ and watch! and wait!) Can't afford a little nap Hidden where the twigs enwrap Lest--it has occurred--mayhap A jackal take the bait.

So stay awake, my sportsman bold, And peel your anxious eye, There's more than tigers, so I'm told, To test your cunning by!

"Me for the princess!"

It is not always an entirely simple matter in India to dismiss domestic servants. To begin with it was Sunday; the ordinary means of cas.h.i.+ng checks were therefore unavailable, and d.i.c.k Blaine had overlooked the fact that he had no money of small denominations in the house.

It was hardly reasonable to expect Chamu and the cook to leave without their wages.

Then again, Sita Ram had not yet sent new servants to replace the potential poisoners; and Chamu had put up a piteous bleating, using every argument, from his being an orphan and the father of a son, down to the less appealing one that Gungadhura would be angry. In vain d.i.c.k rea.s.sured him that he and cook and maharajah might all go to h.e.l.l together with his, d.i.c.k Blaine's, express permission. In vain he advised him to put the son to work, and be supported for a while in idleness.

Chamu lamented noisily. Finally d.i.c.k compromised by letting both servants remain for one more day, reflecting that they could not very well tamper with boiled eggs; lunch and dinner he would get at the English club across the river; for breakfast on Monday he would content himself again with boiled eggs, and biscuits out of an imported tin, after which he would cash a check and send both the rascals packing.

So the toast that Chamu brought him he broke up and threw into the garden, where the crows devoured it without apparent ill-effect; he went without tea, and spent an hour or so after breakfast with a good cigar and a copy of a month-old Nevada newspaper. That religious rite performed, he shaved twice over, it being Sunday, and strolled out to look at the horses and potter about the garden that was beginning to shrivel up already at the commencement of the hot weather.

"If I knew who would be maharajah of this state from one week to the next," he told himself, "I'd get a contract from him to pipe water all over the place from the hills behind."