A DATE WITH DOOM
I hunted about, looked around corners, searched the next courtyard, and drew blank. Then I asked Ismail, and he mocked me.
"The Mahatma? You are like those fools who pursue virtue. There never was any!"
"That mahout named you rightly just now," said I. "He knew your character perfectly."
"That may be," Ismail answered, rising to his feet. "But he was on an elephant where I could not reach him. You think you are a strong man? Feel of that then!"
He was old, but no mean adversary. Luckily for him he did not draw a knife. I hugged the wind out of him, whirled him until he was dizzy and threw him down into his dog's corner by the gate, not much the worse except for a bruise or two.
"Now!" I said. "Which way went King sahib and the Gray Mahatma?"
"All ways are one, and the one way leads to her!"
That was all I could get out of him. So I took the one way, straight down through the courtyards and under the arches, past the old black panther's cage—the way that King and I had taken when we first arrived. But it seemed like a year since I had trodden those ancient flagstones side by side with King—more than a year! It seemed as if a dozen lifetimes intervened. And it also occurred to me that I was growing famished and desperately sleepy, and I knew that King must be in even worse condition. The old, black panther was sleeping as I went by, and I envied him.
There was a choice of two ways when I reached the panch mahal, for it was feasible to enter through the lower door, which was apparently unguarded, and climb the stone stairway that wound inside the wall. However, I chose the marble front steps, and barked my knuckles on the door at the top.
I was kept waiting several minutes, and then four women opened it in place of the customary two; and instead of smiling, as on previous occasions, they frowned, lining up across the threshold. They were older women than the others had been and looked perfectly capable of showing fight; allowing for their long pins and possible hidden weapons I would not have given ten cents for my chance against them. So I asked for King and the Mahatma.
They pretended not to understand. They knew no Hindustani. My dialect of Punjabi was as Greek to them. They knew nothing about my clothes, or the suitcase that King and I shared between us and that, according to Yasmini, had been carried by her orders to the palace. The words "King" and "Mahatma" seemed to convey no meaning to them. They made it perfectly obvious that they suspected me of being mad.
I began to suspect myself of the same thing! Feeling as sleepy as I did, it was not unreasonable to suspect myself at any rate of dreaming; yet I had sufficient power of reasoning left to argue that if those were dream-women they would give way in front of me. So I stepped straight forward, and they no more gave way than a she-bear will if you call on her when she is nursing cubs. Two more women stepped out from behind the curtains with long slithery daggers in their hands, and somehow I was not minded to test whether those were dream-daggers or not.
It was a puzzle to know what to do. The one unthinkable thing would be to leave King unsought for. Suddenly it occurred to me to try that door underneath the steps; so I kissed my hand irreverently to the quarterguard of harridans, and turned my back on them—which I daresay was the most unwise move that I ever made in my whole life. I have done things that were more disastrous in the outcome, but never anything more deserving of ruin.
Have you ever been tackled, tripped and hog-tied by women? Run rather than risk it!
They threw a rope over my shoulders from behind, and I felt the foot of one termagant in the small of my back as she hauled taut. I spun round and stepped forward to slacken the noose and free myself, and two more nooses went over my head in swift succession. Another caught my right foot—another my right hand! More women came, with more ropes. It was only a matter of seconds before they were almost dragging me asunder as they hauled, two hags to a rope, and every one of them straining as if the game were tug-of-war.
There was nothing else to do, and plenty of inducement, so I did it. I yelled. I sent my voice bellowing through those echoing halls to such tune that if King were anywhere in the place he would have to hear me. But it did me no good. They only produced a gag and added that to my discomfort, shoving a great lump of rubber in my mouth and wrapping a towel over it so tightly that I could hardly breathe.
Then came Yasmini, gorgeously amused, standing at the top of the steps where the inner hall was raised a few feet above the outer, and ordering me blindfolded as well as rendered dumb.
"For if he can see as well as he can roar he will presently know too much," she explained sarcastically.
So they wrapped another towel over my eyes and pinned it with a cursed export safety-pin that pierced clean through my scalp. And the harder I struggled, the tighter they pulled on the ropes and the louder Yasmini laughed, until I might as well have been on that rack that King and I saw in the cavern underneath the temple.
"So strong Ganesha-ji!" she mocked. "So strong and yet so impotent! Such muscles! Look at them! Can the buffalo hear, or are his ears stopped too?"
A woman rearranged the head-towel to make sure that my ears were missing nothing; after which Yasmini purred her pleasantest.
"O buffalo Ganesha, I would have you whipped to death if I thought that would not anger Athelstan! What do you mistake me for? Me, who have been twice a queen! That was a mighty jump from my window; and even as the buffalo you swam, Ganesha! Buffalo, buffalo! Who but a buffalo would snatch my Athelstan away from me, and then return alone! What have you done with him? Hah! You would like to answer that you have done nothing with him—buffalo, buffalo! He would never have left you willingly, nor you him—you two companions who share one foolish little bag between you!
"Does he love you? Hope, Ganesha! Hope that he loves you! For unless he comes to find you, Ganesha, all the horrors that you saw last night, and all the deaths, and all the tortures shall be yours—with alligators at last to abolish the last traces of you! Do you like snakes, Ganesha? Do you like a madhouse in the dark? I think not. Therefore, Ganesha, you shall be left to yourself to think a little while. Think keenly! Invent a means of finding Athelstan and I will let you go free for his sake. But—fail—to think—of a successful plan—Ganesha—and you shall suffer in every atom of your big body! Bass! Take him away!"
I was frog-marched, and flung face-downward on to cushions, after which I heard a door snap shut and had leisure to work myself free from the ropes and gag and towels. It took time, for the hussies had drawn the cords until they bit into the muscles, and maybe I was twenty minutes about getting loose. Then, for ten minutes more I sat and chafed the rope-cuts, craving food, examining the room, and wishing above all things that conscience would let me fall asleep on the feathery, scented pillows with which the floor was strewn, rather than stay awake on the off-chance of discovering where King might be.
It was practically a bare room, having walls of painted wood that sounded solid when I made the circuit of the floor and tapped each panel in turn. But that proved nothing, for even the door sounded equally solid; the folk who built that palace used solid timber, not veneer, and as I found out afterward the door was nearly a foot thick. On the floor I could make no impression whatever by thumping, and there was no furniture except the pillows—nothing that I could use for a weapon.
But there were the cotton ropes with which they had bound me, and before doing anything else I knotted them all into one. I had no particular reason for doing that beyond the general principle that one long rope is usually better than a half-a-dozen short ones in most emergencies.
There was only one window, and that was perhaps two feet high, big enough, that is, to scramble through, but practically inaccessible, and barred. The only weapon I had was that infernal brass safety-pin that had held the towel to my scalp, and I stuck that away in my clothes like a magpie hiding things on general principles.
I began to wonder whether it would not be wisest after all to lie down and sleep. But I was too hungry to sleep, and it was recognition of that fact which produced the right idea.
Beyond doubt Yasmini realized that I was hungry. She had threatened me with tortures, and was likely to inflict them if she should think that necessary; but nothing seemed more unlikely than that she would keep me for the present without food and water. It would be bad strategy, to say the least of it. She had admitted that she did not want to offend King.
The more I considered that, the more worth while it seemed to bet on it; and as I had nothing to bet with except will power and personal convenience, I plunged with both and determined to stay awake as long as human endurance could hold out.
There was only one way that food could possibly be brought into the room, and that was through the massive teak-wood door. It was in the middle of the wall, and opened inward; there were no bolts on the inside. Anybody opening it cautiously would be able to see instantly all down the length of half that wall, and possibly two thirds of the room as well.
It would have been hardly practical to stand against the door and hit at the first head that showed, for then if the door should open suddenly, it would strike me and give the alarm. There was nothing else for it but to stand well back against the wall on the side of the door on which the hinges were; and as that would make the range too long for quick action I had to invent some other means of dealing with the owner of the first head than jumping in and punching it.
There was nothing whatever to contrive a trap with but the cotton rope and the safety-pin, but the safety-pin like Mohammed's Allah, "made all things possible." I stuck that safety-pin in the woodwork and hung the noose in such position that the least jerk would bring it down over an intruding head—practised the stunt for ten or fifteen minutes, and then got well back against the wall with the end of the line in hand, and waited.
I have read Izaak Walton, and continue unconvinced. I still class fishing and golf together with tiddledywinks, and eschew all three as thoughtfully as I avoid bazaars and "crushes" given by the ladies of both sexes. The rest of that performance was too much like fishing with a worm to suit my temperament, and although I caught more in the end than I ever took with rod and line, the next half-hour was boredom pure and simple, multiplied to the point of torture by intense yearning for sleep.
But patience sometimes is rewarded. I very nearly was asleep when the sound of a bolt being drawn on the far side of the door brought every sense to the alert with that stinging feeling that means blood spurting through your veins after a spell of lethargy. The bolt was a long time drawing, as if some one were afraid of making too much noise, and I had plenty of time to make sure that my trap was in working order.
And when the door opened gingerly at last, a head inserted itself, my noose fell, and I hauled taut, I don't know which was most surprised—myself or the Gray Mahatma! I jerked the noose so tight that he could not breathe, let alone argue the point. I reckon I nearly hanged him, for his neck jammed against the door, and I did not dare let go for fear he might withdraw himself and collapse on the wrong side. I wanted him inside, and in a hurry.
He was about two-thirds unconscious when I seized him by his one long lock of hair and hauled him in, shutting the door again and leaning my weight against it, while I pried the noose free to save him from sure death. Those cotton ropes don't render the way a hemp one would. And while I was doing that a sickening, utterly unexpected sound announced that somebody outside the door had cautiously shot the bolt again! The Mahatma and I were both prisoners!
I sat the old fellow down on a cushion in a corner and chafed his neck until the blood performed its normal office of revivifying him. And as he slowly opened first one eye and then the other, instead of cursing me as I expected, he actually smiled.
"The quality of your mercy was rather too well strained," he said in English, "but I thank you for the offer nevertheless!"
"Offer?" I answered. "What offer have I made you?"
"A very friendly offer. But the penalty of being in the secret of our sciences is that we may not die, except in the service of the cause. Therefore, my friend, your goodwill fell on barren ground, for if you had succeeded in killing me my obligation would have been held to pass to you, and you would have suffered terribly."
"Who locked the door on us just now?" I asked him.
"I don't know," he answered, smiling whimsically.
"Very well," I said, "suppose you work one of your miracles! You and King disappeared a while ago simply perfectly from right alongside me. Can you repeat the process here and spirit me away?"
He shook his head.
"My friend, if your eyes had not been fixed on things unworthy of consideration such as an elephant's rump and the theft of sugar-cane, you would have seen us go."
"How did you persuade King to leave me standing there without a word of warning?" I demanded.
"How were you persuaded into this place?" he retorted.
"You mean you gagged and bound him?"
He smiled again.
"Your friend was weak from having so nearly been drowned; nevertheless, you overestimate my powers!"
"When I first met you, you gripped my hand," I answered. "I am reckoned a strong man, yet I could not shift your hand a fraction of an inch. Now you suggest that you are weaker than a half-drowned man. I don't understand you."
"Of course you don't. That is because you don't understand the form of energy that I used on the first occasion. Unfortunately I can only use it when arrangements have been made in advance. It is as mechanical as your watch, only a different kind of mechanics—something, in fact, that some of your Western scientists would say has not yet been invented."
"Well, where's King?" I asked him.
"Upstairs. He asked me to bring you. Now how can I?"
He smiled again with that peculiar whimsical helplessness that contrasted so strangely with his former arrogance. He who had looked like a lion when we first encountered him seemed now to be a meek and rather weak old man—much weaker in fact than could be accounted for by the red ring that my noose had made on his neck.
"Is King at liberty?" I demanded.
"And what do you call liberty?" he asked me blandly, as if he were really curious to know my opinion on that subject.
"Can he come and go without molestation?"
"If he cares to run that risk, and is not caught. Try not to become impatient with me! Anger is impotence! Explanations that do not explain are part and parcel of all religions and most sciences; therefore why lose your temper? Your friend is free to come and go, but must take his chance of being caught. He pursues investigations."
"Where?"
"Where else than in this palace? Listen!"
Among all the phenomena of nature there is none more difficult to explain than sound. Hitherto in that teak-lined room we had seemed shut off from the rest of the world completely, for the door and walls were so thick and the floor so solid that sound-waves seemed unable to penetrate. Yet now a noise rather like sandpaper being chafed together began to assert itself so distinctly as to seem almost to have its origin in the room. In a way it resembled the forest noise when a breeze stirs the tree-tops at night—irregular enough, and yet with a kind of pulse in it, increasing and decreasing.
"You recognize that?" asked the Mahatma.
I shook my head.
"Veiled women, walking!"
"You mean the princesses have come?"
"A few, and their attendants."
"How many princesses?"
"Oh, not more than twenty. But each will bring at the least twenty attendants, and perhaps a score of friends, each of whom in turn will have her own attendants. And only the princesses and their friends will enter the audience hall, which, however, will be surrounded by the attendants, whose business it will be to see that no stranger, and above all no male shall see or overhear."
"And if they were to catch Athelstan King up there?"
"That would be his last and least pleasant experience in this world!"
That was easy enough to believe. I had just had an experience of what those palace women could do.
"She, who learned our secrets, will take care that none shall play that trick on her," the Mahatma went on confidently. "These women will use the audience hall she lent to us. Their plan is to control the new movement in India, and their strength consists in secrecy. They will take all precautions."
"Do you mean to tell me," I demanded, "that as you sit here now you are impotent? Can't you work any of your tricks?"
"Those are not tricks, my friend, they are sciences. Can your Western scientists perform to order without their right environment and preparations?"
"Then you can't break that door down, or turn loose any magnetic force?"
"You speak like a superstitious fool," he retorted calmly. "The answer is no."
"That," said I, "is all that I was driving at. Do you see this?" And I held my right fist sufficiently close to his nose to call urgent attention to it. "Tell me just what transpired between you and King from the time when you disappeared out there in the courtyard until you came in here alone!"
"No beating in the world could make me say a word," he answered calmly. "You would only feel horribly ashamed."
I believed him, and sat still, he looking at me in a sort of way in which a connoisseur studies a picture with his eyelids a little lowered.
"Nevertheless," he went on presently, "I observe that I have misjudged you in some respects. You are a man of violent temper, which is cave-man foolishness; yet you have prevailing judgment, which is the beginning of civilization. There is no reason why I should not tell you what you desire to know, even though it will do you no good."
"I listen," I answered, trying to achieve that air of humility with which chelas listen to their gurus.
That was partly because I really respected the man in a way; and partly because there was small harm in flattering him a little, if that could induce him to tell me the more.
"Know then," he began, "that it was my fault that the Princess Yasmini was able to play that trick on us. It was to me that she first made the proposal that we should use her audience hall for our conference. It was I who conveyed that proposal to those whom it concerned, and I who persuaded them. It was through my lack of diligence that the hiding-place was overlooked in which she and certain of her women lay concealed, so that they overheard some of our secrets.
"For that I should have been condemned to death at once, and it would have been better if that had been done.
"Yet for fifty years I have been a man of honor. And although it is one of our chief requirements that we lay aside such foolishness as sentiment, nevertheless the seeds of sentiment remained, and those men were loath to enforce the penalty on me, who had taught so many of them.
"So they compromised, which is inevitably fatal. For compromise bears within itself the roots of right and wrong, so that whatever good may come of it must nevertheless be ruined by inherent evil. I bade them use me for their studies, and have done with compromise, but being at fault my authority was gone, so they had their way.
"They imposed on me the task of making use of the Princess Yasmini, and of employing her by some means to make a beginning of the liberation of India. And she sought to make use of me to get Athelstan King into her clutches. Moreover, believing that her influence over us was now too great to be resisted, she demanded that Athelstan King and yourself should be shown sciences; and I consented, believing that thereby your friend might be convinced, and would agree to go to the United States to shape public opinion.
"Thereafter you know what happened. You know also that, because the seeds of compromise were inherent in the plan, my purpose failed. Instead of consenting to go to the United States Athelstan King insisted on learning our sciences. You and he escaped, by a dive from the upper window of this palace that would not have disgraced two fish-hawks, and although you never guessed it, by that dive you sentenced me to death.
"For I had to report your escape to those whom it most concerned. And at once it was obvious to them that you were certain to tell what you had seen.
"Nevertheless, there was one chance remaining that you might both be drowned; and one chance that you might be recaptured before you could tell any one what you had seen. And there was a third chance that, if you should be recaptured, you might be persuaded to promise never to reveal what little of our secrets you already know. In that case, your lives might be spared, although not mine.
"So it was laid upon me to discover where you were, and to bring you back if possible. And on the polished table in that cave in which you saw Benares and Bombay and London and New York, I watched you swim down the river until you were rescued by the elephants.
"So then I went to meet you and bring you back."
"What if we had refused?"
"That elephant you rode—hah! One word from me, and the mob would have blamed you for the damage. They would have pulled you from the elephant and beaten you to death. Such processes are very simple to any one who understands mob-passions. Just a word—just a hint—and the rest is inevitable."
"But you say you are under sentence of death. What if you should refuse to obey them?"
"Why refuse? What good would that do?"
"But you were at liberty. Why not run away?"
"Whither? Besides, should I, who have enforced the penalty of death on so many fools, disloyal ones and fanatics, reject it for myself when I myself have failed? There is nothing unpleasant about death, my friend, although the manner of it may be terrible. But even torture is soon over; and the sting is gone from torture when the victim knows that the cause of science is thereby being advanced. They will learn from my agonies."
"Suit yourself!" I urged him. "Each to his own amusement. What happened after I turned to watch the elephant at the gate?"
"Those on whom the keeping of our secret rests considered that none would believe you, even if you were to tell what you have seen. But Athelstan King is different. For many years the Indian Government has accepted his bare word. Moreover, we knew that we can also accept his word. He is a man whose promises are as good as money, as the saying is.
"So after you turned aside to watch an elephant, those who were watching us opened a hidden door and Athelstan King was made prisoner from behind. They carried him bound and gagged into a cavern such as those you visited; and there he was confronted by the Nine Unknown, who asked him whether or not he will promise never to reveal what he had seen."
The Mahatma paused.
"Did he promise?" I asked him.
"He refused. What was more, he dared them to make away with him, saying that the mahout who had accompanied us hither would already have informed the Maharajah Jihanbihar, who would certainly report to the Government. And I, standing beside him, confirmed his statement."
"You seem to have acted as prosecuting attorney against yourself!" I said.
"No, I simply told the truth," he answered. "We who calculate in terms of eternity and infinity have scant use for untruth. I told the Nine Unknown the exact truth—that this man Athelstan King might not be killed, because of the consequences; and that whatever he might say to certain officers of the Government would be believed. So they let him go again, and set midnight to-night as the hour of the beginning of my death."
"Did King know that his refusal to promise entailed your death?" I asked.
He shook his head.
"Why didn't you tell him?"
"Because it would not have been true, my friend. I had already been sentenced to death. His promise could make no possible difference to my fate. They let him go, and ordered me to present myself at midnight; so I went with him, to preserve him from the cobras in a tunnel through which he must pass.
"I brought him into this palace by hidden ways, and after I had shown him the audience hall, where these princesses are to meet, he asked me to go and find you—that being easier for me than for him, because none in this palace would be likely to question me, whereas he would be detected instantly and watched, even if not prevented. And when I had found you—and you nearly killed me—some one, as you know, locked the door and shut us in here together. It is all one to me," he added with a shrug of the shoulders; "I have only until midnight at any event, and it makes small difference where I spend the intervening hours. Perhaps you would like to sleep a little? Why not? Sleep, and I will keep watch."
But, badly though I needed sleep, that sort of death-watch did not quite appeal. Besides, gentle, and honest and plausible though the Gray Mahatma now seemed, there was still something within me that rebelled at trusting him entirely. He had been all along too mysterious, and mystery is what irritates most of us more than anything else. It needs a man like Athelstan King to recognize the stark honesty of such a man as that Gray Mahatma; and Athelstan King was not there to set the example. I preferred to keep awake by continuing to question him.
"And d'you mean that those devils will deliberately torture you to death after you surrender voluntarily?" I asked.
"They are not devils," he answered solemnly.
"But they'll torture you?"
"What is called torture can hardly fail to accompany the process they will put me through—especially if I am to be honored as I hope. For a long time we have sought to make one experiment for which no suitable subject could be found. For centuries it has been believed that a certain scientific step is possible; but the subject on whom the experiment is tried must be one who knows all our secrets and well understands the manipulation of vibrations of the atmosphere. It is seldom that such an one has to be sentenced to death. And it is one of our laws that death shall never be imposed on any one not deserving of it. There are many, myself included, who would cheerfully have offered ourselves for that experiment at any time, had it been allowed."
"So you're really almost contented with the prospect?" I suggested.
"No, my friend. I am discontented. And for this reason. It may be that the nine unknown, who are obliged by the oath of our order to be stern and devoid of sentiment, will discover how pleased I would be to submit myself to that experiment. And in that case, in place of that experiment they would feel obliged merely to repeat some test that I have seen a dozen times."
"And throw your body to the alligators afterward?"
"In that case, yes. But if what I hope takes place, there will be nothing left for the alligators—nothing but bones without moisture in them that will seem ten centuries old."
