Caravans By Night Part 47

"Captain Manlove, who shared my bungalow at Gaya, was murdered the night the monks were there. I asked him if he could explain it."

A queer, cold expression settled upon Sarojini Nanjee's face. Only her eyes were warm: they burned like melted opals. She smiled--a rather terrible smile.

"I had not heard that before, that your friend was murdered," she announced. "Why did not you tell me?"

"Why should I?"

Her eyes searched his face; encountered that barrier of impa.s.sivity.

"You say you suspected the monks?"

"Not until I reached s.h.i.+ngtse-lunpo."

A pause before she pursued:

"But why, even then, did you suspect them? What motive--"

"I'm at loss for a motive," he cut in quietly. "I don't know what to think, for, you see, I found this"--he drew from under his robe a glittering object--"in his, in Captain Manlove's, hand."

He opened the silver-chased pendant and extended it to her. She glanced at the name graven within; looked up at him. The lids sank over her eyes--to cover surprise, he imagined.

"But why," she queried, "did not you tell me of this before?"

"Because if you lied to me once, I thought it likely you'd lie a second time. You swore that Chavigny had nothing to do with the Order--yet--"

He motioned toward the piece of coral.

Her eyes burned with a steady flame.

"I spoke the truth!" she declared. "Chavigny has nothing to do with the Order, has had nothing to do with it since several days before your Captain Manlove was murdered. Oh, I know what you think--that I am lying now! But, even as I spoke the truth then, I speak it now! Chavigny is dead--was dead before your friend was killed!"

Trent took the pendant, avoiding her eyes. It was one of his idiosyncrasies not to look at a person whom he believed lying to him.

"Chavigny was intrusted with certain work at Indore," she continued, "but he ran amuck; tried to steal the Pearl Scarf for himself and subst.i.tuted an imitation. A blundering Secret Service agent, who had followed Chavigny from Calcutta, interfered. I am not aware of the exact circ.u.mstances, but this Secret Service agent came into possession of the real Pearl Scarf. The Order allowed Chavigny to go to Delhi. There the subst.i.tute was discovered--and Chavigny put out of the way. The Secret Service agent who had the real jewels was in Delhi, where he had tracked Chavigny. I was instructed to recover the Pearl Scarf, and I sent my servant, Chandra Lal, to the hotel where the Government agent was staying. He got the pearls and--"

"And you took them to Gaya, to the lamas?" Trent interposed.

"Did I say that?" she retorted. "What I did with them is no concern of yours--at present."

"But you were at Gaya?"

"I refuse to answer that."

"But if Chavigny was put out of the way, as you say, how do you account for this?" he pressed on, extending the pendant.

"How does one account for the sun, the moon, the stars?" she returned.

"No, I do not know now--but I _will_ know! And you shall avenge the slaying of your friend! You shall have blood for blood! I, Sarojini Nanjee, promise that! I will learn the truth--even if I must go to the Falcon!"

Trent took that as his cue and asked:

"Who _is_ the Falcon?"

She stared at him. "Then you have not seen him?"

Trent wanted to smile. Without herself realizing it, she had told him the one thing he wished to know. He had said that he had talked with Hsien Sgam--and now she asked if he had seen the Falcon....

"No," he replied, "I have not seen him."

"You will see him, then," she said quickly, "at the proper time. Minutes are too precious to spend on explanations now. To-night I shall show you one of the secrets of s.h.i.+ngtse-lunpo.... Come! You must meet the Great Magician."

The high priest of sorcery (whose presence they had for the while forgotten) greeted Trent cordially in Hindustani, but it was evident that he was troubled--though the fact that his lips trembled slightly may have been due to the dampness of the temple.

Sarojini Nanjee threw a robe about her shoulders and, motioning to Trent, guided him to one side of the large golden image, to a door that the Great Magician had opened. Beyond was a courtyard. It was still drizzling and low black clouds impended. A gate was pushed open by the high priest and they emerged upon a path that ended at a gate in the nearby city-walls. If there was a guard, he was discreetly out of sight.

Outside was a low embankment, then the dark waste of the mora.s.s that girded s.h.i.+ngtse-lunpo. To the west, in the thin veil of rain, was a shapeless blur that Trent imagined was Amber Bridge. The Great Magician shut the gate and led the way down the embankment. The ground was not soggy, as Trent expected, and, straining his eyes, he saw the reason.

They were following a barely visible road through the rushes.

Toward the shapeless blur they moved. As they drew nearer it became apparent that it was not Amber Bridge, but a pile of broken stone--a remnant of the old outer-fortifications--in the middle of the swamp-belt. When they reached the ma.s.s of masonry Trent saw that it was a portion of a broken wall, rising above nearly obliterated flagstones that formed the floor of what had once been a room, or a tunnel, under a mighty rampart--a wall that was hollowed and whose roof had fallen in.

The pa.s.sage thus formed was not more than three feet in width and ran for several yards before it ended in a _cul-de-sac_.

Into the narrow s.p.a.ce between the walls Trent and Sarojini Nanjee followed the Great Magician. It was damp and smelled of freshly-turned earth. A few feet from the entrance the Tibetan paused and grunted a word to Sarojini. Instantly a saber of light smote the darkness, a ray from a very modern electric torch in the woman's hand. The Great Magician took the light from her, flas.h.i.+ng it into the _cul-de-sac_ and upon a small stone stairway that plunged into grim depths.

Down into the bowels of the earth it carried them, into a rectangular crypt. Blocks of masonry had been torn away from one side of the wall and an irregular aperture gaped blackly. Trent observed that the stones had not been removed recently, for they were wedged in mud and grown with fungi.

Through the rent in the crypt they pa.s.sed, entering a tunnel that bored downward at a gradual incline. The torchlight wavered upon damp, ancient walls; upon several inches of water in the bottom of the pa.s.sage. Cold, earthy odors fouled the air. Before they had proceeded far, loose rocks rattled underfoot, and Trent, glancing down, saw that he was treading upon chips and small particles of stone. White dust streaked the muddy water. This prepared him for the pile of shattered rock that appeared suddenly ahead, heaped at one side of a crude doorway. All of which attested to the fact that the pa.s.sage had at one time been sealed, but very recently opened--and by men who were not masons.

The tunnel continued its gradual downward course for what Trent calculated was at least a mile. If he judged aright they must be somewhere near the middle of the city. Suddenly the subterranean corridor made a series of turns, then sloped upward, running straight after that and bringing them at length into a crypt similar to the one beneath the swamp-ruins. The smell of oil hung in the air, and Trent identified it with the iron-bound door at one side. He was surprised to see that its lock was very modern. (From some shop in Gyangtse or Darjeeling--thus he conjectured irrelevantly.) The Great Magician fumbled at the formidable portal, and, following a grating noise, it swung out soundlessly on well-oiled hinges. Yellow light impinged upon the darkness of a stairway, on the bottom step of which rested a bra.s.s lamp.

The priest lighted the lamp, and Sarojini Nanjee, slipping her hand into Trent's, led the Englishman through the door and up the stairway.

Looking back, Trent saw the Great Magician sink cross-legged upon the floor; then the picture was shut out as they climbed higher into gloom.

Near the top Sarojini halted and directed the light upward. It swept a square of stone at the very head of the stairs; the lines where it fitted into place were scarcely visible.

"You will have to lift the stone," Sarojini told him, stepping aside.

He mounted the few remaining stairs and stooped in the meager s.p.a.ce at the top, pressing hands and shoulders against the square of stone. Warm blood rushed into his stained cheeks as he slowly drew erect, lifting the stone from place and letting it fall noisily upon the floor above.

The s.p.a.ce into which the rock fitted was perhaps three yards around, widening out at the top. Trent's head and shoulders projected from the aperture into blackness that was more intense because of the light from which he had emerged.

"Pull yourself up," directed Sarojini. "Then I will give you the light."

He drew himself out of the stairway with little difficulty, clambering to his knees on the stone floor above and leaning back to receive the pocket-lamp. As he lifted the light he gained an impression of vastness and gloom and many indistinguishable objects. Placing the torch on the floor beside him, he grasped Sarojini's hands and pulled her through the small s.p.a.ce--and she lingered uncomfortably long in his arms, whether by chance or otherwise, he could only wonder.

He recovered the torchlight, and the woman took it from him. The ray cleaved through shadows and stamped a bar of yellow upon a row of oblong wooden boxes; traveled across more boxes (the latter, Trent observed, the length of ordinary rifles) and brought into glowing prominence the slender objects that hung upon the walls. With a quickening of his heart-beat Trent guessed where they were--for the glowing things were swords and lances. Piles of armor shone with a repressed gleam on the floor, and numerous bright shapes outside the intimate radiance of the light resolved into jeweled pistols such as he had seen in the possession of soldiers of the Golden Army. But with the boxes he was mainly concerned; their blank sides intrigued him and challenged his fancy.

"We are in the Armory," said Sarojini Nanjee, "under the center of Lhakang-gompa--not beneath the ground, as you would imagine, but just below the surface of the rocky eminence where the building stands."

She let the light rove about the Armory, which was vast and stretched on four sides into black obscurity. A series of arches and pillars deepened the mystery; armor and various types of weapons kindled dully against a background of gloom. There were more wooden boxes in remote corners, innumerable piles of them.

"What do they contain?" he inquired, indicating the many boxes.