In response to Chumru’s request the grain-dealer allowed the men to cook their food in an inner courtyard. While Malcolm extracted additional details as to the chaos that reigned in the city the newcomers from Gwalior consulted among themselves. They had seen enough to be convinced that there were parts of India much preferable to Delhi for residential purposes.
“Behold, sirdar!” said one of them after they had eaten, “you led us in, and now we pray you lead us out again. There are plenty here to fight the Feringhis, and we may be more useful at Lucknow.”
Malcolm could have laughed at the strangeness of his position, but he saw in this request the nucleus of a new method of winning his way beyond the walls.
“Bide here,” he said gruffly, “until Ali Khan and I return, which we will surely do ere night. Then we shall consider what steps to take. At present, I am of the same mind as you.”
He wanted to visit the Cashmere Gate and examine its defenses. Then, he believed, he would have obtained all the information that Nicholson required. He was certain that Delhi would fall if once the British secured a footing inside the fortifications. The city was seething with discontent. Even if left to its own devices it would speedily become disrupted by the warring elements within its bounds.
Chumru and he rode first to the Mori Gate. Thence, by a side road, they followed the wall to the Cashmere Gate. Traveling as rapidly as the crowded state of the thoroughfare permitted and thus wearing the semblance of being engaged on some urgent duty, they counted the guns in each battery and noted their positions.
Arrived at the Cashmere Gate they loitered there a few minutes. This was the key of Delhi. Once it was won, a broad road led straight to the heart of the city, with the palace on one hand and the Chandni Chowk on the other.
Malcolm saw with a feeling of unutterable loathing that the mutineers had converted St. James’s Church into a stable. Not so had the founder, Colonel James Skinner, treated the religions of the people among whom he lived. The legend goes that the gallant soldier, a veteran of the Mahratta wars, had married three wives, an Englishwoman, a Mohammedan, and a Hindu. His own religious views were of the nebulous order, but, so says the story, being hard pressed once in a fight, he vowed to build a church to his wife’s memory if he escaped. His assailants were driven off and the vow remained. When he came to give effect to it he was puzzled to know which wife he should honor, so he built a church, a mosque and a temple, each at a corner of the triangular space just within the Cashmere Gate.
Whether the origin of the structures is correctly stated or not, they stand to this day where Skinner’s workmen placed them, and it was a dastardly act on the part of men who worshiped in mosque and temple to profane the hallowed shrine of another and far superior faith.