The Temple of the Ten/Chapter 11

AY calmly dropped the glowing butt of his cigaret. He did not perceive the peculiar emotion which had gripped his companion.

“This is more like it!” he exclaimed heartily. “The devil has trapped us—a neat business, too! I've seen affairs like this in some of the western hill temples; they got the idea from India, probably, and kept wild animals in the cages. Well, let's get shaved and dressed, Kilgore. This part of it seems too good to be true.”

Kilgore made no response; he appeared sunk in a stupor of despair. When Day set about unpacking his stuff, however, the Canadian roused himself to follow suit.

“Here's my spare pipe!” cried Day suddenly. “Bully for Esrun! Never mind the iron bars now—we're a lot better off than we were five hours ago, Kilgore. Perhaps Severn and Sir Fandi are alive after all.”

At the name of the Rajput, Kilgore shivered. He lifted his eyes for a moment, and in them was a fearful look.

“If we had only guessed!” he murmured.

“Guessed what?” queried Day.

Kilgore caught himself up with an effort, straightened his shoulders.

“Tell you later,” he said. “Any weapons in your kit?”

“Not a sign of one. You?”

“The same. Unless you call safety razors weapons! I don't.”

Silence ensued. The two men, each in his own barred partition of the chamber, were occupied in removing their rags, in shaving, in searching for articles of clothing. To Day, this singular reception appeared quite encouraging; to Kilgore, it was terrible.

Half an hour effected a huge transformation in the looks of each man. Kilgore remained pallid, his eyes sunken, the square chin projecting more than usual; but he was nearly his old self. Day was more gaunt—he had become a man of iron, refined and hardened in the fire of torture and suffering. His haggard features were harsh, almost brutal, in their betrayal of his aggressive character.

Shirted, trousered, booted, the two came to the grating that separated them and surveyed each other, cigaret and pipe alight.

“My word, you look fit!” said Kilgore.

“Same to you, old man. How about some grub? That solidified alcohol stove of yours is over here. Got anything to cook?”

“No end; here, I'll pass some stuff through the grating.”

They set about the preparation of a meal. Another half-hour effected a further transformation in appearance and looks. The only difference was that as Day became more cheerful and confident, Kilgore became more silent. The two sat side by side at the grating for their meal. When the last drop of tea was gone, Kilgore spoke up.

“I say, have you any open scratches or cuts?”

“A few,” rejoined the American. “Why?”

Kilgore passed him a bottle of iodine. “Fill up. Here's plaster—cover them.”

“Not much! You have to leave a cut open to drain”

“Cover them!” snapped Kilgore, a snap of steel to his voice.

Day obeyed the mandate, then refilled and lighted his pipe, and stretched out.

“Spill it,” he ordered briefly. “What's on your mind?”

Kilgore tossed away his cigaret, clasped both hands about his knees and stared at his companion fixedly.

“Listen, old chap. We're up against a worse proposition than I ever dreamed,” he said, a note of dreadful calm in his voice that gained Day's instant attention. “If I had known outside there what I now know, we would never have entered.”

“I'm a better looking corpse than I was,” said Day whimsically. “But have it your own way. Go on.”

“You remember that I told you Fandi and I were boys together? Long before my pater came out to Canada, of course. Well, I mentioned having an uncle high up in Government”

“The chap that woman's voice referred to, of course!” exclaimed Day. “How did she know so much? Thought transference?”

Kilgore smiled.

“Not at all. Cecil Kilgore and the father of Sir Fandi were good friends. Don't mind sayin' that my uncle was a bit of a wild 'un at times. So was the rajah—Fandi's father. They went shootin' together and that sort of thing. Before my time, it was. Thirty years ago a chap could stir up considerable excitement in India, you know!”

“Thirty years ago? I'm surprized at you,” intervened Day judicially. “I've had a taste or two myself of Indian nights, and if you think India has changed”

He fell silent at a gesture from Kilgore, who pursued his subject quickly.

“No use blinkin' the fact, Day; my avuncular relative did run a bit wild. Well, it seems that on one occasion they went to Kashmir together to look up some ruins, and they met a girl. She was a pure-blooded Rajput of the royal blood. Her name I don't know; I always heard her referred to as the Rani. She was very beautiful.”

“They all are,” said Day.

Kilgore made a gesture of irritation.

“When I say that my uncle wanted to marry her,” he said sharply, “you will understand that she was more than beautiful. Englishmen don't marry native girls, you know; not even queens. It isn't done. The hitch was that the rajah wanted to marry her also.”

“Ah!” said Day with interest. “A duel? The poor girl committed suicide? Broken hearts and the thrill of tragedy!”

“Not yet,” returned Kilgore. “As a matter of fact, she was in love with some native and turned up her nose at white men and rajahs. Well, one day her lover showed up with a knife in his side, dead. Whether the rajah was behind it, I can't say; at all events, the Rani swore that he and my uncle had murdered her man. Now, it seems that she had a most extraordinary voice—remarkably musical, with a vibrant thrill to it that a man could not forget.”

“And in that voice she swore vengeance?” asked the irreverent Day.

“Yes. Some months later, the rajah's coffee was poisoned; so was the rajah. He died. My uncle, meantime, had returned to England. He got my father and me and went back to India with a knighthood and a seat on the woolsack.

“One day I was in court, a bit of a lad, hearing my great uncle try cases. They brought in a veiled woman who was accused of being a leper and evading restraint—I fancy she had stabbed some one, or somethin' of the sort. At the first word she said, my uncle rose out of his seat like a man daft and commanded her to unveil. She did so. I can remember her face to this day—the most beautiful native woman I ever saw in my life!”

Kilgore paused for a moment, then continued.

“She was sentenced and taken away, but not before I had heard her speak a good deal; she threatened my uncle in a mild way. Ever since, her voice haunted me. It came to me in my dreams, in the midst of a musical concert, in the harmonies of an orchestra—that singular, thrilling timbre such as no other human throat has ever known!”

Day entertained a conviction that his friend was maundering. He should have known better; perhaps it was because he was actually drunken with this sudden return to physical comfort—this abrupt reversion to his former self. At all events, he had been listening in a perfunctory manner, his gaze fixed upon the iron grating which cut off his escape from the chamber.

Now he rose with a sudden movement and advanced to this grating.

“'A touch o' sun, a touch o' sun,' the color-sergeant said!” he hummed. “Excuse me, most venerable Canuck, but I have an idea. They are rare with me; I can't afford to lose one.” He stopped and examined the grating, tested the iron and rose. Without a word, but with a sudden brilliancy in his eye, he returned to his place. “Now, proceed! You were speaking of the haunting voice. Did the lady die of leprosy?”

“I have always thought so until today,” said Kilgore. “You heard me spoken of as the nephew of Sir Cecil Kilgore? That was her voice.”

He sat staring at his clasped hands.

Day regarded him for a space in stupefied disbelief and only gradually comprehended that Kilgore was speaking in dead earnest. Then he swore softly.

“Old man, what's come over you? My, you can't be ass enough to believe that this Esrun is the same woman!”

Kilgore lifted his head, looked his friend in the eye for a moment.

“You saw that bed of saffron flowers? You saw the yellow robes of our guide? Only a Kashmiri would affect such things in this place. I don't say that Esrun is the woman, of course; but I do say the woman is here! I would know that voice again in .”

Day looked at Kilgore, shook his head sadly and rose.

“You believe it, all right—poor chap! You can't make me believe it. So let's respect each other's convictions and be happy. Me, I'm going to bust out of this cage in two minutes. Quit repining, and watch Mr. Day exert his manly muscle, old sport!”

So saying, the American returned to the iron grating which formed the front of his prison chamber. Kilgore watched him frowningly.

Day went to the center of the long grill and attempted to shake it. It gave slightly. The lattice-work of iron had openings of not more than six inches across. After examining these, Day uttered a low grunt of satisfaction. He seated himself upon the floor, planted his feet apart and against the iron grill, then seized one of the rusty segments of the lattice in both hands.

In effect, he transformed himself into a crossbow, a human fulcrum. He was pitting the strength of his legs and thighs against the strength of his arms and shoulders—and both of these against the slender bars of wrought iron.

His arms drew taut. His legs, still bent at the knee, shoved in a steady pressure against the grill. The curve of his back, the bowed curve of his shoulders and bent over head, settled into rigidity as absolute as that of the iron segments before him. Inch by inch his legs straightened.

His face became suffused with blood, purple; the eyes bulged terribly. From his lips came a sound that was half a gasp of effort, half an oath of rage. Kilgore stared—it was impossible for flesh and blood to endure such a frightful effort without being torn asunder! Yet, inch by inch, the bent legs continued to straighten. The man had lifted himself from the floor by this time.

Crack! Day fell backward.

“Told you so!” he panted as he scrambled to his feet. His hands, dripping blood, held out a segment of the iron. “Rusted”

“Quit it!” said Kilgore. “It's insane—useless”

For answer, Day uttered a joyous laugh and sat down again before the grill. Once more he planted his feet in position. Once more he gripped the iron, a segment adjoining that which had given way. Once more his body settled into lines of frightful tension. He expended his strength with reckless abandon.

Kilgore, drawn out of his apathy by his prodigious exhibition, came to his feet. He saw Day once again lift himself from the ground, his body bent nearly double, the leg muscles expanding inch by inch. It was too much; he uttered a sharp cry of protest. His cry was lost in the sound of Day falling, the dull crack of iron. It was not the man which had given way, but the metal.

This time Day did not scramble up at once, but slowly staggered to his feet. Triumph had blazoned its mark in his bloodshot, staring eyes. This time a section of the iron had come away, leaving a hole in the grating a foot square.

“Next—time—wins!” gasped Day exultantly.

He wrapped about his bleeding palms some of his discarded rags. For a moment he stood eying the grating with a vast satisfaction, puffing mightily. Then with a final deep breath of resolution he again sat down. Kilgore watched in silence; he no longer cherished any doubt that the grating would give way—he only hoped that the man's body would not give way likewise.

For the third time Day strained. But on this occasion, instead of taking a single bit of iron between both hands, he grasped two separate strands of the lattice! Again he was bent double, again a violent rush of blood suffused his face and neck, while his rigid hands clamped upon the iron—crack! Weakened by the previous breakage, the grill sundered. A yawning hole answered the efforts of the man.

Day did not rise, but sat where he had fallen. For an instant he was incapable of speech. Then he dragged himself to one knee and shook the broken fragment of iron at the grill before him.

“Beat you!” he cried savagely. “Beat you—muscle over iron! Now”

He paused abruptly as another voice floated upon the cavern chamber, a voice whose thrilling timbre was by this time haunting Day himself.

“Good!” it cried. “Good! Try again, burra sahib!”

From the roof came a sudden creaking and grind of iron. Sudden and swift, an object rushed downward, came to the floor with a clangor and strident ring of iron.

This object was a second grating, six inches inside the first one!

“Try again, burra sahib!” echoed that haunting voice.

Day uttered a despairing gasp and dropped again to the floor. He was beaten.