Chapter Eight.
The Mark of Murad Afzul.
Raynier was wondering over several things. He was wondering how anyone living could stand Tarleton for life—as his wife did; how anyone could stand him for a week, or two or three—as his guest was doing; or for two or three hours—as he himself was trying to do. Then, constantly observing Hilda Clive—opposite him, for they were a party of four—he was wondering how it was that she had held out so little attraction to him hitherto. For nearly three weeks they had been pent up together in the close proximity of shipboard—yet he had hardly been aware of her existence. While he was looking after her at Bombay, she had seemed more attractive, but not much. Yet now, meeting her again and unexpectedly, he was conscious of this or that subtle trait which interested him.
Still, why had he not discovered it before? Time, opportunity—all had been favourable. He supposed it was that the recollection of Cynthia Daintree had left a bitter taste in his mouth, and that he had been passing through a misogynistic stage accordingly.
“I don’t believe these ‘budmashes’ are as quiet as they seem,” Tarleton was saying. “Or if they are, it’s because they are hatching devilment. I’ve been longer among them than you have, Raynier, and Mushîm Khan isn’t the sort to turn into a lamb all of a sudden, as he seems to have done lately.”
They were talking over Raynier’s visit to the Nawab, and Tarleton, as usual, was contradictious.
“What is the Nawab like, Mr Raynier?” said Hilda Clive.
“Rather a fine-looking man—in fact, very.”
“And is his palace very splendid?”
Raynier stared.
“Very splendid?” he repeated—“Oh, I see! The idea is quite a natural one. But, as a matter of fact, he hasn’t got any ‘palace’ at all. He lives in a mud-walled village.”
“No. Not really?”
“Miss Clive thinks he ought to wear a crown and go about blazing with jewels,” said Tarleton.
“Well, that isn’t an inexcusable mistake,” rejoined Raynier, “considering the ideas people generally associate with his title. You see, Miss Clive, the Gularzai are almost savages—fine savages, but still savages—something akin to our ideas of the desert Arab.”
“Well, they can’t help that, can they?” struck in Tarleton, apparently for no earthly reason, unless that nobody had dreamed of saying they could.
“I should like to see something of these people in their own homes,” said the girl. “They must be rather interesting. I admire these I see walking about the station. It is a fine type of face. Are they Gularzai, Mr Raynier?”
“Fine type of face!” cut in Tarleton. “Why, they’re the most villainous-looking scoundrels unhung. Any one of them would cut your throat for eight annas.”
“A good many are Gularzai, Miss Clive,” answered Raynier. “But all these mountain tribes are very much alike in appearance.”
Now Tarleton broached a subject which an hour or two earlier would have been unwelcome to the other in the last degree. Raynier was going on a camping expedition very shortly—together with Haslam, the Forest Officer—and Tarleton was anxious to join it.
“There’s precious little to shoot,” was the answer, “though one might do a clamber after markhôr. But it would give Miss Clive the very opportunity she was wanting.”
“Eh? How?” said Tarleton.
“Why she’d see something of the country, and incidentally of the people.”
This was putting matters in a new light to Tarleton. He had not proposed to include his womenkind in the scheme. But now both his wife and their guest declared the prospect a delightful one, and as there was no valid reason against it, Tarleton, for a wonder, consented.
It was midnight when Raynier bade his entertainers good-bye, and as he bowled along the smooth high road he found himself wondering again—and this time over two things. One was that he had spent an uncommonly pleasant evening at Tarleton’s; the other that he should actually have welcomed the prospect of Tarleton’s society for a matter of a couple of weeks or so, on the projected camping expedition. Well, as to the latter he need not see much of Tarleton.
His bicycle ran smoothly, and, absorbed in his thoughts, he was nearly passing his own compound, when—what was that? A cry—a little distance further on—and it expressed terror. Passing his own gate he whirled straight on, and in a moment, there in the middle of the road lay a human form. But before he could dismount, another sound caught his ear. Without giving the man who lay there another thought he started in pursuit.
The stripe of the road lay before him in the darkness, dim yet clearly defined. At the side of it, under the high tamarisk hedge, he made out two figures. Peremptorily, and in Hindustani, he called upon them to halt. They obeyed. But so far from such compliance affording Raynier any satisfaction, he felt at that moment that he would give a great deal to see them get through the hedge somehow, and disappear from his sight for ever. In a flash he realised that he had embarked on a very dangerous and foolhardy undertaking, as he recognised that a brace of tall, savage, mountain desperadoes were waiting to receive him, he being totally unarmed, and the road as lonely at that hour of the night as any wild peak he could see looming dimly against the stars around.
A bicycle, moreover, is a desperately bad steed to fight on, but knowing this he realised at the same time that it is an excellent one to run away on, given a clear road ahead. But would they allow him such? No, they would not.
It was all done in a flash. Raynier saw the two figures, in half-bent, crouching attitude, glide suddenly into the middle of the road—and he knew that each held a long knife. There was no time to stop. He saw his bicycle strike one of them full in the chest, as he put it at him at full speed—then became conscious that he himself was whirling through the air to land with a crash beneath the tamarisk hedge. He saw the other of them coming towards him knife in hand; saw in a moment the shaggy tresses, and the savage eyes glaring beneath the great turban, and then—there crashed forth a couple of shots, seemingly over his head.
His assailant had disappeared. At the moment he realised the position. The occurrence had taken place just in front of the Forest Officer’s compound, and the Forest Officer being a very great sportsman, his bungalow was a miniature arsenal of weapons of all sorts. Moreover, he was a man of experience and quick wit. He too had heard the expiring yell of the murdered man, and had come forth to investigate, armed with a large and business-like revolver which he well knew how to use. In this instance, however, the darkness, and some fear of hitting the wrong man, had spoiled his shots. But of either at whom they were directed there remained no sign. Both had made themselves scarce.
“What’s all the bobbery about?” sang out this friend in need, descrying the doubled-up figure under the hedge. “Who is it?”
“Me—Raynier.”
“The devil! Not hurt, are you?”
“Someone up the road is—that’s why I was chevying those ‘budmashes.’ Come along up there and we’ll investigate.”
The Forest Officer shouted lustily to his servants to bring a lantern, and they, aroused by the shots, were not long in doing so. Raynier picked himself up, somewhat gingerly.
“I say—you did get a toss,” said the other. “Not hurt, eh?”
“N-no. I think not. Shaken up a bit—like a tonic bottle.”
Strange to say the bicycle had received little or no damage either.
“These Pathans are tough,” said the Forest Officer. “Fancy being able to clear out after a collision like that.”
They reached the spot where the dead man was lying. A shout or two from Raynier brought out his own people, with more lanterns. It was not a nice sight to gaze upon at midnight—the ghastly fear and agony stamped upon the dead face, and the great pool of blood still welling forth afresh as they turned the body over. Raynier could not help contrasting it in his mind with the scene he had just left hardly more than a quarter of an hour ago.
“I seem to know the face too,” he said, in a puzzled way. “Who is he, Kaur Singh? Do you know?”
“Ha, Huzoor. It is the trading man whom your Highness allowed to travel on the skirt of your protection when we had been visiting Mushîm Khan.”
But the rascal took very good care to say nothing about having turned him away from the gate that very night. The man was dead, and therefore he himself was safe. But the offender was happily ignorant of the fateful consequences that rebuff was destined to entail upon his master, upon others—and, perchance, upon himself.
For what they gazed upon here was but a beginning. It was the mark of Murad Afzul.