The Marriage of Meldrum Strange/Chapter 10

ONG before dawn they let Ommony out to interview the priests and send for clothes, provisions, servants and what not else. Strange’s cigars had all been ruined; the tobacco in Jeff’s tin can was scattered on a dusty floor; they were a desperate garrison in danger of ill-temper.

“Tobacco first!” said Jeff. “Send stacks of it.”

“And tell those priests I’ll fight ’em to the last ditch unless they’re reasonable,” was Strange’s final word.

So Ommony took the dusty road along to where an idol sat in moonlight on a pile of masonry that might have been a wayside altar once on a time. The idol came suddenly to life as he drew within ten feet of it, rolling off-center and lurching into the road before him.

“Have seat, sahib. Meditation-place of fakirs—most gregarious for wisdom—just like sitting under shower-bath of ideas! Thoughts being habituated like trained animals to come to holy man in certain place, whoever sits there—take a seat and try, sahib!"

Ommony preferred to take it standing up and declined the invitation. Too obviously Chullunder Ghose was seeking to soften the impact of bad news.

“What did the priests say?” he demanded.

“They are worse than Christian devil, which is saying much!”

“What did they say?”

“Very little, yet ultimatively! Proud fools! Unwilling to concede your honor’s right to dictate outcome pi events! This babu, using seven keys of argument to unlock hierophantic minds, failed nevertheless. Said locked minds are rusty. Nobody home, and nothing doing, same as Charley sahib says! The best they will concede is that Panch Mahal must become theirs absolutely. On such terms they will play into sahib’s hands in matter of initiation. They demand explicit promise.”

“Meanwhile, how much more of this horse-play have they in mind?”

“Hee-hee! In mind, much. In posse, very much. In esse, at moment, no more. There is armistice. Temporary respite for accumulation of resources. Hee-hee! Sahib, they have congeries of living animals, reptiles and insects, that would make Zoological Society of London gnash teeth in envy! Noah should be relegated now to second place! Hee! They have gas composed of petrifying corpses, mixed with dust of red pepper and sal volatile! They have a corpse so realistic that there is serious anxiety lest the God of the Dead should demand its immediate decomposition! There is a tube concealed in the walls that will magnify a scream; and there are two tunnels through which they have access to the interior of the building by secret doors.”

“If they’re not careful Strange will discover those tunnels—or Ramsden will. Then the game will be all up.”

“They will be very careful, sahib. They are most resourceful. Trust them.”

“I don’t, and I won’t. But will they trust me? If I tell them they may have the Panch Mahal, will they believe it?”

“Why not? A promise made to the priests and broken subsequently is”

“I get you.”

“Sahib, there was a High Commissioner once who broke a promise to the priests, and took long leave, and went to London. He had a servant to taste his food, but neglected to consider the gum on the flaps of envelops he licked. It is possible to oppose the priests, and even to defeat them without unpremeditated consequences. But to break a promise made to them is suicide. Speaking of which, I see Charley sahib riding this way on native pony!”

Ommony, who had turned his back to the moonlight in order to see the babu’s face, did not look round.

“How d’you know it’s Charley?”

“Blind idiot with head in bag could recognize in darkness U. S. effort to ride bare-back in fashion of Chota Pegu. Back-bone of lean old pony proves uncomfortable—very!”

The pony’s hoofs drummed nearer and Ommony, expecting new awkward developments, turned slowly to watch the herald of disposing gods. It was not such a bad attempt, after all, that Charley made to ride in Chota Pegu style; he looked like a native of the country mimicking a white man, with turban-end astream behind him and his right arm working like a flail to keep his balance. The pony “planted” twenty yards from Ommony, and Charley saved himself from a header by vaulting.

“Glad I’ve found you,” he said. “Your sister has come, along with Sir William Molyneux!”

“Angel of light and devil of darkness in same train, eh!” said the babu.

“Came at midnight in a special—locomotive, one car, and caboose. She’s A 1. Nice old lady. Don’t know what to make of him. His voice is like a kerosene-can falling downhill. He looks like a cross between a prize-fighter and an Anglican bishop.”

“He is,” said Ommony.

“I’d nothing to do—couldn’t sleep—so I went to the station to get pointers on how a deaf and dumb Hindu should behave himself. Usual ten or a dozen people there, sleeping on the platform, ready for to-morrow’s train, so I sat around and watched ’em, having fun with the station babu who asked to see my ticket. He told me at last to beat it, but I got wise a train was coming, so I shook my head and stayed on, squatting in the lamp-light like a”

“Wait!” said Ommony. “How did you cover twenty miles to the palace in an ox-cart before midnight?”

“! That was easy. I ditched the cart and turned the oxen loose. Zelmira and I both figured we’d sooner walk. I guess we walked a mile, till we came to a thing they call a house in these parts. There were two ponies in a thorn corral; this beast’s one of ’em. We waked the owner and Zelmira bought the critturs; she had cash with her, but it took us half an hour to make the guy see reason. Then we rode, and Gee! she looked funny. But she beat me to the palace gate. I couldn’t go in, of course, in this disguise, so I went to the station after a while, as I told you; and along come Molyneux and your sister, he helping her down out of the car as if she were the queen.”

“How’s she looking?” Ommony interrupted.

“Fine. The people on the platform all did poojah, and the babu fussed like a wet hen. Nobody’d expected ’em, and there weren’t any orders, so nobody knew what to do about it, and they all did nothing at the limit of their lungs. I sat there looking deaf and dumb. I guess I was the only one on the platform who wasn’t yelling—except maybe your sister; she was coaxing Moly neux to keep his temper. Seems a telegram had missed fire. Nowhere to go—nobody to meet’em—nothing. Your name bursting on the scene like hand-grenades at intervals. Me sitting still.

“Pretty soon Molyneux gets your sister back into the car, and demands a messenger to go and find you. No messenger. Nobody knows where you are. Nobody cares a, either. The babu tells Molyneux in English that the train’s got to move out of the way, or go back to Sissoo Junction or something, and Molyneux swears it shall stay right where it is for a week unless he gets a messenger to go on horseback and find Ommony sahib.

“Well, the babu points to me and says I’m a deaf and dumb lunatic who won’t go away. He adds I’ve a pony hitched to the station railings. Molyneux strides up to me, takes me by the ear, and yanks me up-standing.

“‘Let’s see whether I can make him understand,’ he said, scowling with his forehead all over his eyes—just like a pug.

“I didn’t take to that any too cordially. So he says:

“‘Hello! A Hindu who can use his fists? What does this mean?’ And he pulled my turban off. ‘Short hair, eh?’

“I said, ‘Shut up, you fool!’ and he looked kind of hard at me in the lamp-light. I was getting ready to run, for he could have whipped me with one hand tied. However, he says:

“‘We must look into this. Come with me.’

“So I went with him into the car, where I told Miss Ommony how glad I was to meet a sister of her brother.

“Well: Molyneux thinks at once I’m in the secret service, and I had a dickens of a time to unconvince him. Then he starts to shoot questions at me like an old stork picking a dead dog to pieces, and I was plumb scared. I didn’t know how much it was safe to tell him. At last I doped it out that as your sister was there, and he was talking right out in front of her, he was prob’ly o.k. with you. I took a chance on that and told him all of it.

“He laughed for about seven minutes straight on end. His laugh’s worse than his talking voice. When I’d done counting all the fillings in his teeth he asked me to go on the pony and find you. I guessed I’d better.

“‘Tell him,’ he said, ‘that Brass-face says he is anxious Ommony should watch his step. Say the raja of Chota Pegu has wired to the Central Government that Ommony is accepting bribes in league with some priests to give a millionaire named Strange a half-nelson on the forest. Tell him we’ve got to straighten this out without pulling feathers, within the week or there’ll be trouble.’ That’s the message.”

“Brass-face is a brick!” said Ommony.

“That brick struck this babu once. Not again!” said Chullunder Ghose, and he was on his way instantly—any whither except in the direction of the station.

“Stop!” commanded Ommony.

“But that Brass-face sahib”

“Sha’n’t hurt you this time.”

“Sahib, he hurts all and sundry. His bowels are merciless! He is chucker-out-bouncer for Government when illegality shall be done under mask of high-handed individual mistake. He thrashed a Maharajah! He will enter temples and desecrate holiness at moment’s notice on any whim of caprice. He deprived me of government office, leaving self, family and numerous dependents at mercy of chance emolument. He kicked me twice in same place, which is manifestly unfair. He”

“I tell you, I’ll protect you.”

“Sahib, he will get you next! He is administration whips and scorpions, laying on hard! Not known as Brass-face because he is gentle. By no means. Believe me.”

“Brass-face is my friend,” said Ommony quietly.

“Krishna! You and he will then run universe! But if he kicks me, I will poison him.”

“My kingdom for a horse!” laughed Ommony. “Wireless! Telephone’s best. I must talk with my sister or Molyneux. I don’t care which. Both for choice.”

“This brute’s about finished,” said Charley. “You’re too heavy for him anyway.”

“He’ll have to serve. Chullunder Ghose! Feed Charley sahib and find him a place to sleep.”

“Am I God of Hebrews, producing manna in wilderness?” the babu answered impudently.

“You heard what I said. Work a miracle, confound you! He eats before dawn, or you catch it! See you later,” he called back to Charley, driving his heels into the flanks of the miserable plug.

'SAY what you like about oats—and they’re needful—but it is the will of riders that makes horses gallop when reason declares they can’t do it. Ommony rode, not using stick or heels too much, those being inefficient substitutes for horsemanship. The lean beast scattered three good leagues behind him, and most of the dust that covered those, until in the glimmer of false dawn he fetched up foundered near the house of an old-time friend of Ommony’s.

The friend came forth with half a dish-rag on his loins and a turban big enough for two men, grinning, and as pleased to be of use as a dog to see his master.

“Aye, sahib, verily; and in haste! The fleetest animal in Hind! A mare I bought from the 'army, cast for vice because the fat soldiery were afraid of her. A beast with a heart, and legs. Behold her eye! She has but the one, and lo the white of it! Deal not gently with her, sahib. Best to let her feel a strong hand on the rein; and beat her thrice over the buttock as she rears. See—I will stand here, thus, and strike her with a lathi. Aye, sahib, I will feed the other carrion, though he isn’t worth the meal. Come again, sahib! Come soon! Nay, no payment! Nay, the mare is thine!”

So Ommony came to the station on a squealing bay of nearly seventeen hands, who took three fathoms at a spring, and tried to savage him as he dismounted. And as he might have guessed if he had stopped to think of it, he found Sir William Molyneux asleep and snoring serenades to Miss Ommony, who leaned rather bored from the window of the front compartment.

She refused to kiss Ommony, objecting to his whiskers; but she was a nice little middle-aged spinster, with a twinkle in her gray eyes and the same way of carrying her chin half-tilted toward the tree-tops that Ommony, and some sea-captains, have.

“He’s really ramping,” she said calmly, glancing at the open car-window whence the snores came. “I think it’s a good thing he found me waiting at Sissoo Junction and brought me along in his train. He says you play too much politics and he’ll break you for it if you don’t reform, even if he is your friend. You’d better humor him; I know there’s no hope of reforming you, but you needn’t emphasize that.”

So Ommony entered the other compartment and awoke Molyneux, who was sleeping fully clothed in deference to mid-Victorian proprieties. (His father was a bishop.)

“Hah! Uh-huh-Hurrum!” said Molyneux, sitting up, wide-awake instantly and searching through vest pockets for his monocle.

“Yes, I know all about that, sir,” said Ommony. “Point is”

“The point is, what the do you mean by the presumption! Why in blazes didn’t you refer Strange to the Central Government, and leave them to tell him to go to ?”

“Because they wouldn’t have told him to,” Ommony answered. “They’d have referred it home, and Whitehall would have asked the Treasury; the Treasury would have called bankers into consultation; and the bankers would have backed up Strange, on the scratch me and I’ll scratch you principle. Farewell, forest!”

“What’s this about the priests?”

“They’re offering Strange the Third Degree.”

“What for?”

“Same old game. If he recognizes their authority by submitting to that they’ll let him occupy the Panch Mahal in peace. If not, no.”

“And the idiot consents? By Gad, he must mean business! He realizes if the priests once recognize him as lawful life-tenant he’ll have a status here no Government could upset. The priests ’ud construe eviction of him into insult to them. ’Twon’t do. Got to stop it. You’ve made a mess of this!”

“Hear both sides first,” said Ommony. “The priests are willing to take our side, on condition they get title to the Panch Mahal.”

“We can’t do that. It belongs to the raja.”

“No, he’s sold it to Strange.”

“Worse and worse! If we refuse to register the transfer, that means a fight through three courts against Strange and his millions. Complications, Ommony! It won’t do.”

“You haven’t heard all yet. Did you bring the padre? There’s a lady in this”

“Not your sister? For heaven’s sake!—yes, the padre’s coming. Couldn’t imagine why you wanted him.”

“A Madame Zelmira Poulakis”

“What? Zelmira Poulakis! I met her in Delhi. She’s charming.”

Molyneux found his monocle at last, screwed it in, and stared at Ommony, frowning over it as if the weight of brow were necessary to keep it in place.

“You’ll meet her again then. She’s here.”

“The you say!”

“She’s crazy enough to want to marry Strange.”

“Crazy my eye! The man’s richer than Crœsus.”

“And as pleasant as physic! However, she wants him. If she gets him, she’ll call him off from interfering with the forest. I don’t doubt she’ll do anything we ask about the Panch Mahal.”

“But could she call him off?”

“Oh yes. He’s run away from her. She’s the real reason why he’s hiding in the Panch Mahal this minute.”

“Hates her, eh?”

“No.”

“’Fraid of her?”

“No. Afraid of himself. He’s got bachelor’s bile. He’s afraid if he sees too much of her he’ll discover his heart somewhere, and ask her to marry him, and be a bachelor no more, amen.”

“How sure are you of this?”

“As that I sit here. It all depends on you, sir.”

“, what have I done?”

Molyneux sat silent for as long as it took Ommony to charge his pipe.

“! Eh? A woman in it!” he said at last. “She’s a charming woman, Ommony. I’d say she’s brains.”

“She’s all right.”

“Yes, I think so. The whole of Delhi was after her, self included. She turned us down one after the other. Knows her P’s and Q’s. Can she be trusted?”

“I understand she has been trusted by some of the most suspicious crooks in the world,” said Ommony.

“By gad, sir, so have you!” said Molyneux. “That’s a recommendation. Umti-tiddle-i-um-tum-tum. But suppose Strange bolts for it, and lays his case before the Central Government?”

“He can’t, sir. He’s in pajamas in the Panch Mahal. No clothes, no horses, no servants, no possible messenger except Jeff Ramsden, who’s in pajamas too; no telegraph—telephone—nothing.”

“Got his check-book with him, I suppose! He can buy what he needs. There’s always some one after money.”

“No, the place is watched.”

“By whom, for instance?”

“Babu Chullunder Ghose for one.”

“That rascal? That settles it! Strange can give us all the slip the moment he’s inclined.”

“No, sir. Chullunder Ghose is in Zelmira Poulakis’ pay and in the secret, expecting what he calls a ‘competency’ if she pulls this off.”

“By, the thing looks water-tight!” said Molyneux.

“Depends on you, sir.”

“Confound it, no! It’s you. If you’ve misjudged the situation, ! we’ll all be in the soup! I admit, I’ve never had cause to regret trusting you. But that’s the way it goes; you trust a man, and trust him, until he lets you down finally; it’s human nature.”

“Up to you, sir.”

“What do you want of me?” demanded Molyneux.

“Tobacco and cigars. The more the merrier. I’ll take them to the Panch Mahal to keep Strange and Ramsden from going mad, while I get some sleep.”

“They’re in that hand-bag. What next?”

“Take my sister to the palace and introduce her to Madame Poulakis. Talk it all over with her.”

“! First thing you know, the raja will blow the gaff. He’s a cheap reptile.”

“Promise him a trip to Paris, sir. He’s got Strange’s money. The shell of him that returns in a year’s time won’t hurt anybody!”

“Yes, that’s reasonable. The first  he hooks up with ’ll put the hat on him forever. All right, what else?”

“Nothing more now, sir. I’ll be off,” said Ommony. “Look after my sister. Good morning.”

And Ommony mounted the vicious bay after a five-minute fight for mastery, and vanished in clouds of sun-lit dust.