Beneath, at a distance of some thirty feet, ran a narrow alley way, and on the opposite side of this were doors. Round one of these several men were clustered, as though gazing upon and rather enjoying something that was going on within. And it was from this door that those horrible shrieks and screams proceeded.
Raynier’s blood ran chill within him. What act of devilish cruelty was going on within that sinister chamber? He noticed that a kind of thin steam was issuing from the upper part of the door, wafting up a nauseous and greasy odour to where he stood. He could hear a mutter of voices within the place, and a plashing sound, then the shrieks of agony broke forth afresh louder than ever till he was forced to stop his ears.
Still, a horrible fascination kept him riveted—his gaze fixed on that grisly door. What did it all mean? Then he was conscious that the yelling had ceased, and now those clustering around parted to give way to several persons who issued from the place. Among them was a tall, fine-looking man, who had the air and importance of a chief. At him Raynier looked somewhat curiously, for he thought he was acquainted with all the Sirdars of the Gularzai. Then this man stopped, and half-turned, and Raynier saw dragged forth between two others a limp, quaking figure, its quivering features expressing an extremity of terror that was akin to mania. And in this object he recognised his quondam smart, well-groomed—and, to all but himself, somewhat arrogant—chuprassi, Kaur Singh. This was the man they had been torturing, then. But the words of the chief told him the next moment that it was not.
“Dog of an idolater,” the latter said, “thou hast seen the torments in which thy brother has died, which are but the beginning of what he is now undergoing. Wherefore, if thou wouldst preserve thy miserable carcase a little longer I advise thee to write that which shall hurry those who are collecting thine ill-gotten gains.”
The answer was an abject whine, and the follower of Brahma wallowed and cringed before the follower of Mahomed.
Raynier remained rooted to the spot, gazing after the receding forms of those beneath. That the unfortunate Sunt Singh had just been put to some ghastly and lingering form of death within that gruesome chamber, his brother being forced to look on, he now gathered. The motive, too, was apparent, and now he deduced that the man who had spoken must be the far-famed Murad Afzul; and the discovery inspired him with a very genuine misgiving on his own account. What if the Nawab and his brother never returned? What if they were killed or captured in some engagement, and he were thus left at the mercy of this ruffian, whose barbarities were a byword upon that border? What would be his own fate, helpless in such hands? He rejoiced now that Hilda did not share his captivity, the more so that a conviction had been growing upon him that she must have found her way into safety. Then he remembered that Mehrab Khan had learned that Murad Afzul had released Haslam and the Tarletons for money, which looked as though that arch-dacoit deemed it bad luck to murder Europeans. If the worst came to the worst, he, too, might find safety and deliverance that way.
He turned quickly. An interruption, sudden and somewhat startling, had broken in upon his meditations, a most venomous curse to wit, hurled at himself. Framed in the doorway by which he himself had entered this roof courtyard, stood a figure. The face was aged and lined, and the beard grey and undyed. A ragged green turban crowned the head, while the immense hooked nose and the opening and shutting of the extended claw-like hands suggested some weird and exaggerated bird of prey. Raynier recognised that he had to do with some professional fanatic, a mullah most likely.
“Why dost thou curse me, father?” he said in Pushtu. “What harm have I done thee or thine?”
“Hear him!” cried the mullah. “Ya Allah! he calls me father, this son of countless generations of infidels. Hear him, Mahomed, Prophet of Allah ever blessed! Me, thy servant Hadji Haroun, who has three times visited the sacred and inviolable Temple, who has kissed the sacred Stone, this unbeliever calls ‘father.’”
And he spat forth a renewed and envenomed string of curses, pausing now and again to raise his eyes heavenward, clasping and unclasping his hooked claws—and then, as though having gained new inspiration, breaking forth afresh.