5
A few minutes later Kerth was seated on the throne of Sâkya-mûni (Trent and Hsien Sgam stood on the red carpets before the daïs) and reaching toward a gong that hung from one of the carved lions of the chair. Following the mellow ring, the curtains in the other end of the chamber parted to admit the Donyer-chenpo, who bowed and stood waiting.
The thin voice sounded from under the yellow veil—a stream of Tibetan words. Trent wondered, irrelevantly, if it was really Kerth who spoke—Kerth of the satanic smile.
And now he saw the yellow-robed figure motioning him to leave, and backed slowly to where the Donyer-chenpo stood; backed between the parted draperies; and the curtains dropped, and he was in darkness.
In the first ante-chamber the Donyer-chenpo resumed his seat at the nacre-inlaid desk, among the other cardinals, and Trent continued with the soldiers. Back through the courts and corridors they went (each glimpse of the stars brought to Trent a sweet recollection of another lustrous pallor), and down the innumerable staircases. They emerged at length into the courtyard where the horses were waiting; mounted; rode out of Lhakang-gompa and down the causeway.
Afterward, Trent could remember no single incident of that brief ride from the lamasery; it was a panorama of moon and white walls and darkness. The bewildering events of the past few hours had left him in a state of mental confusion. The soldiers wheeled about at his gate, and he rode into the deserted quadrangle alone.
He was about to dismount when a shadow detached itself from the gloom of the garden—the garden, with its flaming hollyhocks. (Odd that he should think of flowers now!) It was the long-haired guide of the previous night. He grunted what Trent supposed was a greeting, and caught the bridle, guiding the pony back to the gate. Trent turned for a last look at the dark dwelling—the house where he first partook of the lover's eucharist. Then the Tibetan swung himself upon the pony, behind him, clamping his knees upon the beast's flanks, and Trent inhaled the reek of soiled clothing.
Through familiar streets they clattered, and over a stone bridge toward the city's ramparts. Few people were astir; dogs prowled in the lurking shadows. The temple of the Great Magician had a ghostly semblance as they approached it; its dome was spattered with moonlight, like a huge anthill flecked with drippings of glow-paint. Something in the sight of the bulk of masonry brought to Trent's mind what Sarojini Nanjee had said....
They passed the temple. A narrow foot-path took them to the Great Magician's Gate. As on the preceding night, there was no guard. When Trent's pony was brought to a halt, the Tibetan made a gesture which Trent interpreted to mean that he should stay there and slunk away along the path to the temple. Trent glanced at his watch as the man left.
To the north, in the maze of houses that lay flat and huddled beneath the sovereign structure of Lhakang-gompa, a dog was howling. Another answered it; another took it up; and the melancholy baying wavered from roof to roof—a tuneless dirge. Irrelevantly, Trent thought of a vermilion-lacquered sedan-chair that by this time should be at the ruined gateway. It was a sheer, breathless moment, a moment detached and charged with exquisite suspense.
The rattle of harness-chains drew him back to earth. His eyes swerved to the path from the temple. After a moment, shadows took shape in the moonlight—mounts and riders. He wheeled his pony and rode to meet the caravan.
Sarojini Nanjee sat erect upon a horse at the head of a string of mules; the scent of sandalwood awakened in him a queer alertness. She always breathed of earth-perfume—an odor of the senses. Beyond her were the looming shapes of three men—muleteers. Trent saw the contours of sacks on the pack-animals.
"Your men have left the city?" was her first question. Her breath came quickly and the black opals had been kindled in her eyes.
He answered with a nod.
She insinuated her hand into his; pressed his fingers.
"We win!" she whispered. "You and I!"
He smiled to himself, grimly. What Hsien Sgam had said was fresh in his ears. One of her men passed and opened the gate. Outside, on the embankment, she turned her mount, waiting at one side while the caravan moved out. Trent reined in his pony beside her.
"Look!" she commanded, pointing through the gate at the magnificent mass of Lhakang-gompa, above whose broken roofs the moon was poised. "Shingtse-lunpo—Lhakang-gompa—all! I hold them, like this!" And she made a gesture and laughed—that old familiar laugh that rippled low in her throat. "All is not finished! Nay! I promised you vengeance—and to-night, in a few minutes, you shall know that I keep my promises!"
Then she struck her horse in the flanks and dashed down the slope, to the head of the caravan. Trent followed. Behind, the gate closed softly and hoofs thudded in the mud of the road.
"To-night ... you shall know that I keep my promises!"
That rang in Trent's brain; rang and echoed and reeled away, and left him to grope for the meaning.
They rode on. Several times Sarojini Nanjee glanced over her shoulder. The ruins above the tunnel were reached, passed. Ahead the road swerved and lost itself in high rushes—rushes that swayed and sighed and shivered. Trent's hand hovered close to his revolver. The flesh over his spine crawled uncomfortably as they approached the end of the marsh-belt. He strained his eyes, but saw only the fringed line of tall reeds against the sky.... And now the white columns of the ruined gateway loomed, broken sentinels guarding the half-buried remains of an ancient fortification.
They were within a few yards of the gateway when, ahead, a horse whinnied.
Trent's heart leaped into his throat, and Sarojini Nanjee swiftly reined in her horse. Something gleamed in her hand.
From behind the shattered walls appeared a horseman—a robed horseman, phantom-like in the moonlight. Behind him rode another—another. They were fairly vomited through the gateway. Trent recognized Kerth at the head, Kee Meng and Hsaio behind.
The thing in Sarojini's hand coughed, and the red glare of discharged powder momentarily stained the darkness. But none of the three horsemen faltered. Before she could fire again Trent gripped her mount's bridle and dug his heels into his own pony. They plunged forward, side by side. He was almost dragged from the saddle, but he managed to remain seated—to cling to the bridle of Sarojini's horse. When they were outside the broken gate he jerked both animals to a standstill. Melted fire-opals blazed in the woman's eyes. But he had her revolver.
"You fool!"
Vitriol was in her voice—but he heard her only in a detached way, for he saw, swimming in the moonlight behind the wall, a sedan-chair, and in it the pale oval of a face. It was in the midst of mules and packs and several mounted men. Hsien Sgam was there, in the saddle, between two muleteers. Kerth, Kee Meng and Hsiao had drawn rein in the gateway, thus separating Sarojini Nanjee from her caravan.
This, a quick negative, snapped and printed upon Trent's brain.
From him the woman's eyes moved around the group—past Kerth, past the muleteers and the sedan-chair—to Hsien Sgam.
"You did this!" Her words stung with venom, and her eyes traveled back swiftly to Trent. "Perhaps he fooled you into betraying me—but ask him why he wanted you to believe Chavigny alive and see, then, if you want him as your ally!"
A moment of tenseness followed—a moment that seemed to lengthen into a dead interval of time. The very world ached with dumbness, ached and waited. Hsien Sgam, who sat stooped upon his pony, was the first to speak.
"Major Trent, you wish to know who murdered your friend. Sarojini Nanjee did it. But not with her own hand...." His words were like smooth pellets emerging from vats of molten metal. "I loved her," the Mongol declared; "loved her ... and I went to Gaya, to your house, when I learned of her interest in you.... And there I made a fatal mistake—"
His words were buried as a muffled detonation ruptured the quiet. An abrupt shock quivered the ground. Eyes swerved to the source of sound. For an infinitesimal moment the very universe seemed to hang in dreadful suspense; then came two violent throbs, like the blows of a seismic hammer. A terrific roar was born out of the womb of inter-stellar silence—a roar that smote the eardrums of those who heard, that pressed ponderously against the heart and whipped the blood into throat and nostrils and eyes.
From the towering mass of Lhakang-gompa rose a quick glare that stabbed up, sank, and with it the roofs and walls of the monastery.... Smoke belched upon the sky. The earth shook. The very stars seemed dim with dread, and a wraith of nebulous black veiled the face of the moon. It was as though the gigantic machinery of a planet had been suddenly crippled.
The hush that followed seemed to pluck from Trent's lungs the power to breathe. He thought the ground still heaved, that the rumbling was still pouring about his ears.... He was a pigmy in the midst of some cosmic disorder.... His pony snorted and trembled violently. For a space of seconds no one spoke; no one dared. All looked toward the cloud that was settling, doom-black, over what had been Lhakang-gompa, over the seamed and broken heart of Shingtse-lunpo!... And then came a soft, repressed voice—a herald of earth recalling them to its dominion after some awful furlough.
"Sarojini Nanjee is very clever. I should have known better than to oppose a woman."
A rattling laugh broke from Hsien Sgam, a laugh that was punctuated by a crash. Trent, turning, saw a rapier of corrosive flame leap from the Mongol's hand; saw it reflect hideously upon the features of Sarojini Nanjee. He sought to catch her, but she slipped from the saddle.... Her face stared up at him from a pool of black hair.
Again the rattling laugh—as the muleteers lunged at Hsien Sgam; again the crash and the rapier of corrosive flame, a broken rapier, that sank its hot shaft into the Mongol's own breast.... He hung limp between the muleteers, and a shining thing dropped from his hand to the ground. But his eyes were open. Trent saw them; Kerth, who had dismounted, saw them.
"I regret that I killed your friend, Major Trent"—the Mongol spoke in a stricken voice—"I regret, too, that I was forced to close the lips of a native who appeared at an inopportune time. It is unpardonable, major, that I stabbed this Captain Manlove—instead—of you."
Then he swayed; fell forward upon the neck of his mount. He was still alive when Trent reached him, but the Buddha-like face seemed shrunken and the oblique eyes, revealed by the searching brilliance of the moonlight, were half closed with pain. He smiled in a twisted, grotesque manner.
"Mysteries are exquisite things, major," he whispered. "Consider how delightful it—it will be, in years to come, to—to wonder whether Chavigny ... ah, Shinje!... whether he was killed in Delhi, as Sarojini claims, or died in—in Lhakang-gompa; and to wonder if she really meant to—to murder you, or if I—I lied—" He laughed softly. "You have heard of the scorpion, major, who, surrounded, stings himself to death...."
They had to lift him from the pony, and Trent, looking down upon the huddled body, knew it did not belong to the boy who went forth from Mongolia with the dream of a messiah shining in his heart.