He was sitting in the shade, chewing an unlit cigar, day-dreaming about water-pressure and dams and gallons-per-hour, when Gungadhura"s note came and he ordered the dog-cart at once, rather glad of something to keep him occupied. As he drove away he did not see Mukhum Da.s.s lurking near the small gate, as it was not intended that he should.
Mukhum Da.s.s, for his part, did not see Pinga, the one-eyed beggar with his vertical smile, who watched him from behind a rock, for that was not intended either. Pinga himself was noticed closely by another man.
The minute d.i.c.k was out of sight Mukhum Da.s.s entered the small gate in the wall, and called out for Chamu brazenly. Chamu received him at the bottom of the house-steps, but Mukhum Da.s.s walked up them uninvited.
"The cellar," he said. "I have come to see the cellar. There is a complaint regarding the foundations. I must see."
"But, sahib, the door is locked."
"Unlock it."
"I have no key."
"Then break the lock!"
"The cellar door is nailed down!"
"Draw the nails!"
"I dare not! I don"t know how! By what right should I do this thing?"
"It is my house. I order it!"
"But, sahib, only yesterday Blaine sahib dismissed me in great anger because I permitted another one as much as to look into the cellar!"
If the tale Yasmini told him on the morning of her first visit to Tess had not been enough to determine Mukhum Da.s.s, now, with the lost t.i.tle-deed recovered, the conviction that Gungadhura wanted the place for secret reasons, and Chamu"s objections to confirm the whole wild story, he became as set on his course and determined to wring the last anna out of the mystery as only a money-lender can be.
"With what money did you repay to me the loan that your son obtained by false pretenses?" he demanded.
"I? What? I repaid the loan. I have the receipt. That is enough."
"On the receipt stands written the number of the bank-note. I have kept the bank-note. It was stolen from the Princess Yasmini. Do you wish to go to jail? Then open that cellar door!"
"Sahib, I never stole the note!" wept Chamu. "It was thrust into my c.u.mmerbund from behind!"
But Mukhum Da.s.s set his face like a flint, and the wretched Chamu knew nothing about the law against compounding felonies. Wishing he had had curiosity enough himself to search the cellar thoroughly before the door was nailed down, he finally yielded to the money-lender"s threats and between them, with much sweating and grunting, they pushed and pulled the safe from off the trap. Then came the much more difficult task of drawing nails without an instrument designed for it. d.i.c.k Blaine kept all his tools locked up.
"There is an outside door to the cellar, behind the house," said Chamu.
"But that is of iron, idiot! and bolts on the inside with a great bar resting in the stonework. Are there no tools in the garden?"
Chamu did not know, and the money-lender went himself to see. There Pinga with the vertical smile saw him choose a small crow-bar and return into the house with it. Pinga pa.s.sed the word along to another man, who told it to a third, who ran with it hot-foot to Gungadhura"s palace.
Once inside the house again Mukhum Da.s.s lost no time, arguing to himself most likely that with the secret of the treasure of Sialpore in his possession it would not much matter what damage he had done.
He would be able to settle for it. He broke the hasp of the door, and levered up the trap, splintering it badly and breaking both hinges in the process, while Chamu watched him, growing green with fear.
Then he ordered a lamp and went alone into the cellar, while Chamu, deciding that a desperate situation called for desperate remedies, went up-stairs on business of his own. It took Mukhum Da.s.s about two minutes to discover the loose stone--less than two more to raise it--and about ten seconds to see and pounce on the silver tube. He was too bent on business to notice the man with the vertical smile peering down at him through the trap. Pinga escaped from the house after seeing the money-lender hide the tube inside his clothes, and less than a minute later a lean man ran like the wind to Gungadhura"s palace to confirm the first"s report.
With a wry face at the splintered trap-door, and a shrug of his shoulders of the kind he used when clients begged in tears for extra time in which to pay, Mukhum Da.s.s looked about for Chamu with a sort of half-notion of giving him a small bribe. But Chamu was not to be seen. So he left the house by the way he had come, mounted his mule where he had left it in a hollow down the road, and rode off smiling.
Ten minutes later Chamu and the cook both left by the same exit.
Chamu had with him, besides his own bundle of belongings, a revolver belonging to d.i.c.k Blaine, two bracelets belonging to Tess, a fountain-pen that he had long had his heart on, plenty of note-paper on which to have a writer forge new references, a half-dozen of d.i.c.k"s silk handkerchiefs and a turquoise tie-pin. The revolver alone, in that country in those days, would sell for enough to take him to Bombay, where new jobs with newly arrived sahibs are plentiful. The cook, not having enjoyed the run of the house, had only a few knives and a pound of cocoa. They quarreled all the way down-hill as to why Chamu should and should not defray the cook"s traveling expenses.
A little later, in the ghat between Siva"s temple and the building, where the dead Afghan used to keep his camels, Mukhum Da.s.s, smiling as he rode, was struck down by a knife-blow from behind and pitched off his mule head-foremost. The mule ran away. The money-lender"s body was left lying in a pool of blood, with the clothing torn from it; and it was considered by those who found the body several hours afterward and drove away the pariah dogs and kites, that the fact of his money having been taken deprived the murder of any unusual interest.
Late that evening d.i.c.k Blaine, returning from a desultory dinner at the club across the river, very nearly fell into the trap-door, for the hamal had run away too, thinking he would surely be accused of all the mischief, and no lamps were lit.
"Well!" he remarked, striking a match to look about him, "dad-blame me if that isn"t a regular small town yegg"s trick! You"d think after I gave Gungadhura the key and all, he"d have the courtesy to use it and draw the nails! His head can"t ache enough to suit me! Me for the princess!
If I"d any scruples, believe me, bo, they"re vanished--gone--Vamoosed!
That young woman"s going to win against the whole darned outfit, English, Indian and all! Me for her! Chamu! Where"s Chamu? Why aren"t the lamps lit?"
He wandered through the house in the dark in search of servants, and finally lit a lamp himself, locked all the doors and went to bed.
Chapter Sixteen
The buildings rear immense, horizons fade And thought forgets old gages in the ecstasy of view.
The standards go by which the steps were made.
On which we trod from former levels to the new.
No time for backward glance, no pause for breath, Since impulse like a bowstring loosed us in full flight And in delirium of speed none aim considereth Nor in the blaze of burning codes can think of night.
The whirring of sped wheels and horn remind That speed, more speed is best and peace is waste!
They rank unfortunate who tag behind And only they seem wise who urge, and haste and haste.
New comforts multiply (for there is need!) Each ballot adds a.s.sent to law that crowds the days.
None pause. None clamor but for speed--more speed!
And yet--there was a sweetness in the olden ways.
"And since, my Lords, in olden days--"
Trotters, fed on chopped raw meat by advice of Tess, and brushed by Bimbu for an hour to get the stiffness out of him, was sent off in the noon heat with a double message for his master, one addressed to Samson, one to d.i.c.k Blaine, and both wrapped in the same chewed leather cover, that the dog might understand. The mongrel in him made him more immune to heat than a thoroughbred would have been. In any case, he showed nothing but eagerness to get back to Tom Tripe, and, settling the package comfortably in his jaws, was off without ceremony at a steady canter.
"If all my friends were like that one," said Yasmini, "I would be empress of the earth, not queen of a little part of Rajputana! However, one thing at a time!"
It was hardly more than a village that Tess could see through the jalousies of her bedroom windows. The room was at a corner, so that she had a wide view in two directions from either deep window-seat. There were all the signs of Indian village life about her--low, thatched houses in compounds fenced with thorn and p.r.i.c.kly pear,--temples in between them,--trades and handicrafts plied in the shade of ancient trees,--squalor and beauty, leisure, wealth, poverty and lordliness all hand in hand.
She could see the backs of elephants standing in a compound under trees, and there were peac.o.c.ks swaggering everywhere, eating the same offal, though, as the unpretentious chickens in the streets. Over in the distance, beyond the elephants, was the tiled roof of a great house glinting in strong sunlight between the green of enormous pipal trees; and there were other houses, strong to look at but not so great, jumbled together in one quarter where a stream pa.s.sed through the village.
Yasmini came and sat beside her in the window-seat, as simply dressed in white as on the night before, with her gold hair braided up loosely and an air of reveling in the luxury of peace and rest.
"That great house," she said, peering through the jalousies, "is where the ceremony is to be tonight. My father"s father built it. This is not our state, but he owned the land."
"Doesn"t it belong to Gungadhura now?" Tess asked.
"No. It was part of my legacy. This house, too, that we are in. Look, some of them have come on elephants to do me honor. Many of the n.o.bles of the land are poor in these days; one, they tell me, came on foot, walking by night lest the ill-bred laugh at him. He has a horse now.
He shall have ten when I am maharanee!"