The Bronze Bell

by Louis Joseph Vance

Willingly Amber dropped into a wavering stride, so nearly exhausted that his legs shook under him and he reeled drunkenly; and, fighting for breath, they stumbled on, side by side, in the shadow of the overhanging walls, until as they neared a corner the Gurkha stopped and halted Amber with an imperative gesture.

"The police, sahib, the police!" he breathed, with an expressive sweep of his hand toward the cross street. "Let us wait here till they pass." And in evident panic he crowded Amber into the deep and gloomy recess afforded by a door overhung by a balcony.

Taken off his guard, but with growing doubt, Amber was on the point of remonstrating. Why should the police concern themselves with peaceful wayfarers? They could not yet have heard of the crime in the Bazaar, miles distant. But as he opened his lips he heard the latch click behind him, and before he could lift a finger, the Gurkha had flung himself bodily upon him, fairly lifting the American across the threshold.

They went down together, the Gurkha on top. And the door crashed to with a rattle of bolts, leaving Amber on his back, in total darkness, betrayed, lost, and alone with his enemies….

Now take a man—a white man—an American by preference—such an one as David Amber—who has led an active if thoughtful life and lived much out of doors, roughing it cheerfully in out-of-the-way corners of the world, and who has been careful to maintain his physical condition at something above par; bedevil him with a series of mysterious circumstances for a couple of months, send him on a long journey, entangle him in a passably hopeless love affair, work his expectations up to a high pitch of impatience, exasperate him with disappointment, and finally cause him to be tripped up by treachery and thrust into a pitch-black room in an unknown house in one of the vilest quarters of Calcutta: treat him in such a manner and what may you expect of him? Not discretion, at least.

Amber went temporarily mad with rage. He was no stranger to fear—no man with an imagination is; but for the time being he was utterly foolhardy. He forgot his exhaustion, forgot the hopelessness of his plight, forgot everything save his insatiable thirst for vengeance. He was, in our homely idiom, fighting-mad.

One instant overpowered by and supine beneath the Gurkha, the next he had flung the man off and bounded to his feet. There was the automatic pistol in his coat-pocket, but he, conscious that many hands were reaching out in the darkness to drag him down again, found no time to draw it. He seemed to feel the presence of the nearest antagonist, whom he could by no means see; for he struck out with both bare, clenched fists, one after the other, with his weight behind each, and both blows landed. The sounds of their impact rang like pistol-shots, and beneath his knuckles he felt naked flesh crack and give. Something fell away from him with a grunt like a poled ox. And then, in an instant, before he could recover his poise, even before he knew that the turned-in stone of the emerald ring had bitten deep into his palm, he was the axis of a vortex of humanity. And he fought like a devil unchained. Those who had thrown themselves upon him, clutching desperately at his arms and legs and hanging upon his body, seemed to be thrown off like chips from a lathe—for a time. In two short minutes he performed prodigies of valour; his arms wrought like piston-rods, his fists flew like flails; and such was the press round him that he struck no blow that failed to find a mark. The room rang with the sounds of the struggle, the shuffle, thud, and scrape of feet both booted and bare, the hoarse, harsh breathing of the combatants, their groans, their whispers, their low tense cries….

And abruptly it was over. He was borne down by sheer weight of numbers. Though he fought with the insanity of despair they were too many for him. He went a second time to the floor, beneath a dozen half-nude bodies. Below him lay another, with an arm encircling his throat, the elbow beneath his chin compressing his windpipe. Powerless to move hand or foot, he gave up … and wondered dully why it was that a knife had not yet slipped between his ribs—between the fifth and sixth—or in his back, beneath the left shoulder-blade, and why his gullet remained unslit.

Gradually it was forced upon him that his captors meant him no bodily harm, for the present at least. His wrath subsided and gave place to curiosity while he rested, regaining his wind, and the natives squirmed away from him, leaving one man kneeling upon his chest and four others each pinioning a limb.

There followed a wait, while some several persons indulged in a whispered confabulation at a distance from him too great for their words to be articulate. Then came a croaking laugh out of the darkness and words intended for his ear.