A Soldier and a Gentleman/Chapter 11

HE Tail-Twisters rode back to Balibhum after another week had passed, and left the police behind them to gnash their teeth and curse their luck. There were five thousand good rupees not in police pockets that a grudging Government had paid by way of blood reward for Gopi Lall.

What made the police so angry was not so much the fact that the Regiment had “wiped their eye” for them, for the native Indian policeman has neither shame nor sportsmanship nor anything but criminal ideas. Nor was it so much that they did not get the money. It was who did get it that annoyed them.

There were something like a thousand native gentlemen and sixteen officers entitled to a share in that reward. Dost Mohammed had the lion’s claim, but he had sworn to touch no copper piece of it. Therefore there were in the neighborhood of five rupees a head to be divided up among the host. And, five rupees is, say, a dollar and two thirds.

The British officers, of course, declined their share, and the native officers all followed suit in Dost Mohammed’s wake. It was down to the troopers, then, to make fair division of the spoil; and they took a vote on it.

They had many or them lounged, and smoked, and listened up at Yasmini’s.

They had all eye-worshipped her, and some had heard her sing. Some, even, had seen her dance. The rest all wished that they had done these things, and some pretended that they had.

The vote, then, was unanimous. They took the lot to her, in hundred-rupee Bank of India notes, on a salver carried on crossed sabers. And she danced for them in the middle of the courtyard, while they sat their horses in appreciative silence.

And, when the police came a few days later to make trouble, and to order Yasmini away, and (perhaps) receive a little blackmail, Yasmini was gone.

For years after that it was the fashion among subalterns, and civilians, and others who were stony broke but visionary and believing, to ask for leave and travel to Rajahbatkhowa where the Panch Mahal and the hidden jungle city is. There they would hunt for the fabled hidden treasure that was said to have brought Yasmini so far.

They never found a trace of it, though the architectural societies and antiquarians had reason to be thankful—which goes to show how practical the gods who make men mad can be.

But, many years later, long after the sporadic search for hidden treasure had died a natural death and the jungle had covered up again the traces of it, there was a woman up at Delhi who would tell strange stories in the evening, when the fancy seized her, and there were listeners enough. She had once been maid to Yasmini.

She told the story with a thousand varying details—for who wants to listen to the same plain tale twice over?—of the outlaw’s death, and of the officer who killed him with his hands, and of the Colonel sahib who fought with Yasmini and got the worst of it. But she added other things that at the time the story happened would have been of most absorbing interest to the police. They had been among the greediest hunters for the fabled hidden treasure; but they had hunted too, and far more thoroughly, for something else.

Where had the outlaw’s loot gone? It was commonly computed at a lakh of silver coin, and though a tenth of that would have been quite a considerable sum for an outlaw to amass in such a district, still the estimate increased as years rolled on, and every one believed it. Surely it was hidden somewhere!

But the former maid of Yasmini’s would tell how, night after night for three nights, Gopi Lall would come beneath the window of the Panch Mahal, and how she and Yasmini would lower down a rope, and draw up heavy burdens, close-wrapped in cloth. She had no notion what was in the packages, nor yet had anyone—but Yasmini.

And Yasmini, who wove herself most diligently into the inner history of India, never seemed to lack for capital, nor sense to hold her tongue.