Harry Escombe: A Tale of Adventure in Peru

by Harry Collingwood

Realising at length that no information was to be obtained from these people, Arima passed from the palace into the grounds, making his way, in the first instance, down to the shore of the lake, for the purpose of satisfying himself beyond all possibility of question whether or not there was any foundation for his first surmise, that Escombe had risen early and left the palace without waiting for him. But no; there was no sign of his young master in that direction; moreover, the balsa was lying moored in its proper place; also the cutter was at her usual moorings. There was therefore no possibility that the Inca had taken it into his head to go for a solitary early morning sail. Satisfied upon this point, the Indian next made his way round to the front of the palace, and here at once the evidences of a visit of a large party of people to the palace, some time during the preceding night, once more presented themselves, the latest—that is to say the topmost—set of footprints showing that quite a crowd of people had hurried from the main entrance of the building down the broad path leading to the entrance gates of the garden and thence into the main road. Moreover, the “spoor” remained undisturbed in the road for a distance sufficient to indicate the general direction in which the party had gone, although it was lost in the ordinary signs of traffic within a few yards of the gates. Having ascertained thus much, Arima returned to the spot where the footprints first showed outside the palace doors, and, going down upon his hands and knees, patiently set himself to the task of endeavouring to discover his young master’s among them. But before he had had time to achieve any result in this direction one of the palace officials appeared and, angrily demanding to know what he was doing there, ordered him back into the palace to attend to his duty; explaining, by way of reply to Arima’s agitated representations, that the Inca had left the palace during the early hours of the morning, with a party of companions, to hunt the vicuña. The Indian at once knew this to be a falsehood, for the hunting grounds lay many miles down the valley, and hunting parties never dreamed of proceeding thither otherwise than on horseback, and Arima was prepared to swear that none of the party had been mounted. Moreover he was convinced that his master would never have dreamed of leaving his favourite servant behind had he been bound upon a hunting expedition. The official, however, was curt and peremptory in his manner, and Arima soon understood that he must obey his orders or suffer arrest. He therefore returned to the Inca’s rooms and proceeded to put them in order, as was his duty. But the very curtness and peremptoriness of the official’s manner to him, as well as the improbable story which he had told, only had the effect of strengthening and confirming the suspicions in the faithful fellow’s mind; for the attachment of the young Inca to this man was well known, and even the highest officials of the palace had thus far not disdained to be extremely civil to him.

But the question in Arima’s mind now was: what precisely was it that had happened to his young master, and whither and why had he gone? For even thus far no glimmering of the hideous truth had reached the Indian’s mind. His suspicions and apprehensions were all as yet chaotic and formless, and he was very far from fearing that Escombe’s life was in danger. But as he proceeded with his business, seeking from time to time to get some relief from his splitting headache and the other extremely disagreeable symptoms from which he was still suffering acutely, it gradually began to dawn upon him, as his mental faculties slowly shook off their stupor, that every one of those symptoms were synonymous with those following upon the administration of an overdose of a decoction made from a certain poisonous plant growing here and there in the valley, and which was sometimes used as an anaesthetic by the local physicians. He was fully aware of the tremendous potency of the extracted juices of this plant, as also of its tastelessness, and the consequent ease with which it could be administered, and he recognised clearly that if anyone had wished to administer such a draught to him on the previous night it could easily have been done. The question which next arose in his mind naturally was: why should anyone desire to administer such a draught to him? But his mental powers had by this time sufficiently recovered from the effects of the drug to enable him quickly to trace a connection—however obscure as yet—between this act and the extraordinary fact of his master being missing. When once the faithful fellow had reached the length of connecting the two circumstances together he was not long in realising the terrible possibilities that lurked in such a sinister combination of circumstances. And with this realisation he suddenly took fright, for at the same moment the significance of certain apparently trivial remarks and occurrences that had lately come to his knowledge suddenly dawned upon him. Could it be that these matters, scarcely noticed at the moment, really bore the significance which he now attached to them, or was it all the result of some bodily disorder reacting upon his mental processes and causing him to take a distorted and unnatural view of things that were actually of no moment whatever? He could not tell; his brain was still in too muddled a condition for him to feel that he could trust it. But there was one sensible thing that he could do, he told himself. He could go to Umu and lay the whole matter before him. Umu was a shrewd sensible man, who would soon say whether or not there was anything in those mad fantasies that were now beginning to chase each other through his bewildered brain. Besides, Umu was the Inca’s most devoted friend—next to himself, perhaps. So, slipping out of the palace by the garden entrance—lest perchance he should be seen and stopped if he attempted to pass out by way of the other—he plunged at once into the most unfrequented paths, and so betook himself, by a circuitous route, to the lake shore, where he at once got aboard the balsa, and, paddling the primitive craft some half a mile beyond the royal demesne, beached her in a secluded spot, and thence made the best of his way to Umu’s house.

The morning was by this time so well advanced that the hour for the first meal of the day was past, and it became a moot point with Arima whether to seek Umu at his house or at the barracks of the Inca’s bodyguard. He decided, however, upon trying the house first, and it was well that he did; for, although Umu was not at home, neither, it seemed, was he at the barracks. But Maia, his daughter, had an impression that she knew where he might be found, and Arima had not poured into the girl’s ear half a dozen sentences of his somewhat disjointed tale before she cut him short by explaining that she was about to seek her father, and that he (Arima) must on no account whatever attempt to stir from the house until her return, unless, of course, her father should make his appearance in the interim. Having bestowed that injunction, Maia, wild-eyed and white-lipped, rushed into the street and hurried on her way; for she, too, had heard words said, to which at the moment she had given scant heed, but which in the light of what was hinted at by Arima now bore to the quick-witted girl an awful significance.

As it happened, she had not to go very far, for she had not left the house more than five minutes at the utmost when she caught sight of her father, mounted, on his way to the barracks, a good mile distant. Fortunately for her he reined up to exchange a few passing words with an acquaintance, and that afforded her the opportunity to overtake and stop him. She did not dare, however, to mention the errand which had brought her out in search of her father until the two friends had parted, when she briefly explained that Arima was seeking him, and urged him to hasten back to the house without delay, at the same time telling him sufficient of what had passed between herself and the Inca’s henchman to cause Umu to realise something of the gravity of the situation; for he dug his heels into his charger’s ribs and dashed off at a gallop.

When Maia arrived back at the house, she found Arima in the midst of the relation of his story to her father, and, quite as a matter of course, sat down to listen. The Indian had, in the interim between her departure and Umu’s arrival, found time to pull himself together and properly arrange his thoughts, and he related his narrative with due regard to sequence of events, beginning with such apparently casual words and trivial occurrences as had come under his notice, and had only assumed a significance in the light of more recent happenings. Then going on to describe his sensations upon awaking that morning, he completed his story by relating in detail everything he had done, and the thoughts and suspicions that had occurred to him subsequent to his discovery of his master’s absence.

“Yes,” agreed Umu, when Arima had brought his story to a conclusion, “the whole thing seems reasonably clear, up to a certain point. I have not a shadow of doubt that certain disaffected persons have adopted the extreme, and altogether unprecedented, step of seizing the person of our Lord the Inca; and they caused you, my friend, to be drugged in order that you might not interfere with their plans. The question which we now have to decide is: who are those persons, and what is their object in seizing the Inca? They must be individuals of very great power and influence, otherwise they would never dare—”

At this point Maia, who had been betraying rapidly increasing signs of anxiety and impatience, cut in with:

“My father, to me it seems of the utmost importance that not a moment should be lost in discovering what has become of the Inca, whose life may at this moment be in the utmost jeopardy; for those who were desperate enough to carry him off would probably not hesitate to kill him, if need were: indeed that may be their purpose. Your task, therefore, must be to rescue him without an instant’s unnecessary delay, which you should be easily able to do with the aid of your troops. Probably if the officials of the palace were carefully questioned they could be persuaded to tell you what has become of the Inca, for doubtless they know, since he could not have been carried off without their knowledge and acquiescence.”

“Yes, you are right, Maia. I see exactly what you mean, and I have no doubt that I can devise a method of making the palace people tell what they know,” answered Umu. “I will ride to the barracks at once, and order the guard to turn out in readiness to proceed wherever required; after which I will proceed to the palace with a squadron, and it will be strange if I do not find means to make somebody tell me what I require to know. You, Arima, had better go to the barracks and await my return there from the palace, when you can ride with us. And now I will go; for, as Maia has said, even moments may now be of importance.”

Some twenty minutes later a troop of the Inca’s mounted bodyguard, led by Umu, dashed at a gallop in through the gates of the palace gardens, and, at a word from their commander, surrounded the building, a party of a dozen of them following their leader into the palace, to the consternation of all who encountered them. This dozen constituted a search party, which, with drawn swords, systematically swept the building from basement to roof-tree, gathering together every official and individual of the palace staff that could be found, until the whole, with the exception of some dozen or so underlings, had been captured. Then all were marched out into the vast palace garden and surrounded by the now dismounted troopers, who meanwhile had made prisoners of four of the chief officials as they were endeavouring to slink out of the palace and make good their escape.