Guns of the Gods Part 33

As luck would have it, the Sikh doctor was just leaving. It always suited that doctor to be very friendly with Tom Tripe, because there were pickings, in the way of sick certificates that Tom could pa.s.s along to him, and shortcomings that Tom could overlook. He told Tom that the maharajah was in no mood to be spoken to, and in no condition to be seen.

"Then you go back and tell his highness," Tom retorted, "that I've got to speak with him! Business is business!"

The doctor used both hands to ill.u.s.trate.

"But his cheek is cut with a great gash from here to here! He was testing a sword-blade in the armory, last night, and it broke and pierced him."

"Hasn't a soldier like me seen wounds before? I don't swoon away at the sight of blood! He can do his talking through a curtain if he's minded!"

"I would not dare, Mr. Tripe! He has given orders. You must ask one of the eunuchs--really."

"I thought you and I were friends?" said Tom, with whiskers bristling.

"Always! I hope always! But in this instance--"

Tom folded both arms behind his back, drill-master-on-parade fas.h.i.+on.

"Suit yourself," he answered. "Friends.h.i.+p's friends.h.i.+p. Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. I want to see his highness. I want to see him bad. You're the man that's asked to turn the trick for me."

"Well, Mr. Tripe, I will try. I will try. But what shall I tell him?"

Tom hesitated. That doctor was a more or less discreet individual, or he would not have been sent for. Besides, he had lied quite plausibly about the dagger-wound. But there are limits.

"Tell him," he said presently, "that I've found the man who left that sword in his armory o' purpose for to injure him! Say I need private and personal instructions quick!"

The doctor returned up the palace steps. Ten minutes later he came down again smiling, with the word that Tom was to be admitted. In a hurry, then, Tom's bra.s.s spurs rang on Gungadhura's marble staircase while a breathless major-domo tried to keep ahead of him. One takes no chances with a man who can change his mind as swiftly as Gungadhura habitually did. Without a glance at silver s.h.i.+elds, boars' heads, tiger-skins, curtains and graven gold ornaments beyond price, or any of the other trappings of royal luxury, Tom followed the major-domo into a room furnished with one sole divan and a little Buhl-work table. The maharajah, sprawling on the divan in a flowered silk deshabille and with his head swathed in bandages, ignored Tom Tripe's salute, and snarled at the major-domo to take himself out of sight and hearing.

Soldier-fas.h.i.+on, as soon as the door had closed behind him Tom stood on no ceremony, but spoke first.

"There was a fracas last night, Your Highness, outside a certain palace gate." He p.r.o.nounced the word to rhyme with jacka.s.s, but Gungadhura was not in a mood to smile. "An escaped elephant b.u.mped into the gate and bent it. The guard took to their heels; so I've locked 'em all up, solitary, to think their conduct over."

The maharajah nodded.

"Good!" he said curtly.

"I cautioned the relieving guard that if they had a word to say to any one they'd follow the first lot into cells. It don't do to have it known that elephants break loose that easy."

"Good!"

"Subsequently, acting on instructions from Your Highness, I searched the cellar of Mr. Blaine's house on the hill, Chamu the butler holding a candle for me." "What did he see? What did that treacherous swine see?" snapped Gungadhura, pus.h.i.+ng back the bandage irritably from the corner of his mouth.

"Nothing, Your Highness, except that he saw me lift a stone and look under it."

"What did you see under the stone?"

"A silver tube, all wrought over with Persian patterns, and sealed at both ends with a silver cap and lots o' wax."

"Why didn't you take it, you idiot?"

"Two reasons. Your Highness told me to report to you what I saw, not to take nothing. And Mr. Blaine came to the top of the cellar ladder and was d.a.m.ned angry. He'd have seen me if I'd pinched a c.o.c.kroach.

He was that angry that he locked the cellar door afterward, and nailed it down, and rolled a safe on top of it!"

"Did he suspect anything?"

"I don't know, Your Highness."

"What did you tell him?"

"Said I was looking for rum."

"Doubtless he believed that; you have a reputation! You are an idiot!

If you had brought away what you saw under that stone, you might have drawn your pension today and left India for good!"

Tom made no answer. The next move was Gungadhura's. There was silence while a gold clock on the wall ticked off eighty seconds.

"You are an idiot!" Gungadhura broke out at last. "You have missed a golden opportunity! But if you will hold your tongue--absolutely--you shall draw your pension in a month or two from now, with ten thousand rupees in gold into the bargain!"

"Yes, Your Highness." (A native of the country would have begun to try to bargain there and then. But there are more differences than one between the ranks of East and West; more degrees than one of dissimulation. Tom gravely doubted Gungadhura's prospect of being in position to grant him a pension, or any other favor, a month or two from then. A native of the country would have bargained nevertheless.

"Keep that guard confined for the present. You have my leave to go."

Tom saluted and withdrew. He was minded to spit on the palace steps, but refrained because the guard would surely have reported what he did to Gungadhura, who would have understood the act in its exact significance.

As he left the palace yard he pa.s.sed a curtained two-wheeled cart drawn by small humped bulls, and turned his head in time to see the high priest of Jinendra heave his bulk out from behind the curtains and wheezily ascend the palace steps.

"A little ghostly consolation for the maharajah's sins!" he muttered, as he headed toward his own quarters for another stiff gla.s.s of brandy and some sleep. He felt he needed both--or all three!

"If it's true there's no h.e.l.l, then I'm on velvet!" he muttered. "But I'm a liar! A liar by imputation--by suggestion--by allegation--by collusion-- and in fact! Now, if I was one o' them Hindus I could hire a priest to sing a hymn and start me clean again from the beginning. Trouble is, I'm a complacent liar! I'll do it again, and I know it! Brandy's the right oracle for me!"

But there was no consolation, ghostly or otherwise, being brought to Gungadhura. Jinendra's fat high priest, short-winded from his effort on the stairs, with aching hams and knees that trembled from exertion, was ushered into a chamber some way removed from that in which Tom Tripe had had his interview. The maharajah lay now with his head on the lap of Patali, his favorite dancing girl, in a room all scent and cus.h.i.+ons and contrivances. (That was how Yasmini learned about it afterward.)

It was against all the canons of caste and decency to accord an interview to any one in that flagrant state of impropriety--to a high priest especially.

But it amused Gungadhura to outrage the priest's alleged asceticism, and to show him discourtesy (without in the least affecting his own superst.i.tious scruples in the matter of religion.) Besides, his head ached, and he liked to have Patali's resourcefulness and wit to reenforce his own tired intuition.

The priest sat for several minutes recovering breath and equipoise.

Then, when the pain had left his thighs and he felt comfortable, he began with a bomb.

"Mukhum Da.s.s the money-lender has been to me to give thanks, and to make a meager offering for the recovery of his lost t.i.tle-deed! He has it back!"

Gungadhura swore so savagely that Patali screamed.

"How did he find it? Where?"

Mukhum Da.s.s had told the exact truth, as it happened, but the priest had drawn his own conclusions from the fact that it was Samson's babu who returned the doc.u.ment. He was less than ever sure of Gungadhura's prospects, suspecting, especially since his own night-interview with the commissioner, that some new dark plot was being hatched on the English side of the river. Having no least objection to see Gungadhura in the toils, he did not propose to tell him more than would frighten and worry him.

"He said that a hand gave him the paper in the dark. It was the work of Jinendra doubtless."

"Pah! Thy G.o.d functions without thee, then! That is a wondrous bellyful of brains of thine! Do you know that the princess has fled the palace?"