Rung Ho! A Novel

by Talbot Mundy

Below, in damp, unlit dungeons, there were silken cords suspended from stone ceilings; their ends were noosed, and the nooses hung ten feet above the floor; those told only, though, of the fate of women who had schemed unwisely—favorites of a week, perhaps, who had dared to sulk, listeners through screens who had forgotten to forget. No men died ever by the silken cord, and no tales ever reached the outside world of who did die down in the echoing brick cellars; there was a path that led underground to the alligator tank and a trap-door that opened just above the water edge. Night, and the fungus-fouled long jaws, and slimy, weed-filled water—the creak of rusty hinges—a splash—the bang of a falling trap—a swirl in the moonlit water, and ring after heavy, widening ring that lapped at last against the stone would write conclusion to a tragedy. There would be no record kept.

Howrah was childless. That, of all the hell-sent troubles that beset him, was the worst. That alone was worse than the hoarded treasure whose secret he and his brother and the priests of Siva shared. Only in India could it happen that a line of Rajahs, drag-net-armed—oblivious to the duties of a king and greedy only of the royal right to tax—could pile up, century by century, a hoard of gold an jewels—to be looked at. The secret of that treasure made the throne worth plotting for—gave the priests, who shared the secret, more than nine tenths of their power for blackmail, pressure, and intrigue—and grew, like a cancer, into each succeeding Rajah's mind until, from a man with a soul inside him he became in turn a heartless, fear ridden miser.

Any childless king is liable to feel the insolent expectancy betrayed by the heir apparent. But Jaimihr—who had no sons either—was an heir who understood all of the Indian arts whereby a man of brain may hasten the succession. Worry, artfully stirred up, is the greatest weapon of them all, and never a day passed but some cleverly concocted tale would reach the Rajah, calculated to set his guessing faculties at work.

Either of the brothers, when he happened to be thirsty, would call his least-trusted counsellor to drink first from the jewelled cup, and would watch the man afterward for at least ten minutes before daring to slake his thirst; but Jaimihr had the moral advantage of an aspirant; Howrah, on the defensive, wilted under the nibbling necessity for wakefulness, while Jaimihr grinned.

What were five thousand drilled, armed men to a king who feared to use them? Of what use was a waiting countryside, armed if not drilled, if he was not sure that his brother had not won every man's allegiance? Being Hindoo, priest-reared, priest-fooled, and priest-flattered, he knew, or thought he knew, to an anna the value he might set on Hindoo loyalty or on the loyalty of any man who did not stand to gain in pocket by remaining true; and, as many another fear-sick tyrant has begun to do, he turned, in his mind at least, to men of another creed—which in India means of another race, practically-wondering whether he could not make use of them against his own.

Like every other Rajah of his line, he longed to have sole control of that wonderful treasure that had eaten out his very manhood. Miser though he was, he was prepared at least to bargain with outsiders with the promise of a portion of it, if that would give him possession of it all. He had learned from the priests who took such full advantage of him an absolute contempt for Mohammedans; and their teaching, as well as his own trend of character, made him quite indifferent to promises he might make, for the sake of diplomacy, to men of another creed. It began to be obvious to him that he would lose nothing by courting the favor of the Rangars, and of Alwa in particular, and that he might win security by coaxing them to take his part. Of one thing he was certain: the Rangars would do anything at all, if by doing it they could harm the Hindoo priests.

But, being of the East Eastern, and at that Hindoo, he could not have brought himself to make overtures direct and go straight to the real issue. He had to feel his way gingerly. The thousand horses in his stables, he reflected, would mount a thousand of the Rangars and place at his disposal a regiment of cavalry which would be difficult to beat; but a thousand mounted Mohammedans might be a worse thorn in his side than even his brother or the priests. He decided to write to Alwa, but to open negotiations with a very thin and delicately inserted wedge.

He could write. The priests had overlooked that opportunity, and had taught him in his boyhood; in that one thing he was their equal. But the other things that they had taught him, too, offset his penmanship. He was too proud to write—too lazy, too enamoured of his dignity. He called a court official, and the man sat very humbly at his feet—listened meekly to the stern command to secrecy—and took the letter from dictation.

Alwa was informed, quite briefly, that in view of certain happenings in Howrah City His Highness the Maharajah had considered it expedient to set a guard over the Christian missionaries in the city, for their safety. The accompanying horse was a gift to the Alwa-sahib. The Alwa-sahib himself would be a welcome guest whenever he might care to come.

The document was placed in a silver tube and scaled. Within the space of half an hour a horseman was kicking up the desert dust, riding as though he carried news of life-and-death importance, and with another man and a led horse galloping behind him. Five minutes after the man had started, in a cell below the temple, of Siva, the court official who had taken down the letter was repeating it word for word to a congeries of priests. And one hour later still, in a room up near the roof of Jaimihr's palace, one of the priests—panting from having come so fast—was asking the Rajah's brother what he thought about it.