After a long long while, the game stopped, and the door banged, I slept because I was dead tired. Otherwise I should have preferred to have kept awake. Not for everything in Asia would I have dropped the door-bar and peered into the dark of the next room.
When the morning came, I considered that I had done well and wisely, and inquired for the means of departure.
"By the way, _khansamah_," I said, "what were those three doolies doing in my compound in the night?"
"There were no doolies," said the _khansamah_.
I went into the next room and the daylight streamed through the open door.
I was immensely brave. I would, at that hour, have played Black Pool with the owner of the big Black Pool down below.
"Has this place always been a dak-bungalow?" I asked.
"No," said the _khansamah_. "Ten or twenty years ago, I have forgotten how long, it was a billiard-room."
"A how much?"
"A billiard-room for the Sahibs who built the Railway. I was _khansamah_ then in the big house where all the Railway-Sahibs lived, and I used to come across with brandy-_shrab_. These three rooms were all one, and they held a big table on which the Sahibs played every evening. But the Sahibs are all dead now, and the Railway runs, you say, nearly to Kabul."
"Do you remember anything about the Sahibs?"
"It is long ago, but I remember that one Sahib, a fat man and always angry, was playing here one night, and he said to me:--"Mangal Khan, brandy-_pani do_," and I filled the gla.s.s, and he bent over the table to strike, and his head fell lower and lower till it hit the table, and his spectacles came off, and when we--the Sahibs and I myself--ran to lift him he was dead. I helped to carry him out. Aha, he was a strong Sahib! But he is dead and I, old Mangal Khan, am still living, by your favor."
That was more than enough! I had my ghost--a first-hand, authenticated article. I would write to the Society for Psychical Research--I would paralyze the Empire with the news! But I would, first of all, put eighty miles of a.s.sessed crop-land between myself and that dak-bungalow before nightfall. The Society might send their regular agent to investigate later on.
I went into my own room and prepared to pack after noting down the facts of the case. As I smoked I heard the game begin again--with a miss in balk this time, for the whir was a short one.
The door was open and I could see into the room. _Click-click!_ That was a cannon. I entered the room without fear, for there was sunlight within and a fresh breeze without. The unseen game was going on at a tremendous rate.
And well it might, when a restless little rat was running to and fro inside the dingy ceiling-cloth, and a piece of loose window-sash was making fifty breaks off the window-bolt as it shook in the breeze!
Impossible to mistake the sound of billiard b.a.l.l.s! Impossible to mistake the whir of a ball over the slate! But I was to be excused. Even when I shut my enlightened eyes the sound was marvelously like that of a fast game.
Entered angrily the faithful partner of my sorrows, Kadir Baksh.
"This bungalow is very bad and low-caste! No wonder the Presence was disturbed and is speckled. Three sets of doolie-bearers came to the bungalow late last night when I was sleeping outside, and said that it was their custom to rest in the rooms set apart for the English people! What honor has the _khansamah_? They tried to enter, but I told them to go. No wonder, if these _Oorias_ have been here, that the Presence is sorely spotted. It is shame, and the work of a dirty man!"
Kadir Baksh did not say that he had taken from each gang two annas for rent in advance, and then, beyond my earshot, had beaten them with the big green umbrella whose use I could never before divine. But Kadir Baksh has no notions of morality.
There was an interview with the _khansamah_, but as he promptly lost his head, wrath gave place to pity, and pity led to a long conversation, in the course of which he put the fat Engineer-Sahib"s tragic death in three separate stations--two of them fifty miles away. The third shift was to Calcutta, and there the Sahib died while driving a dog-cart.
If I had encouraged him the _khansamah_ would have wandered all through Bengal with his corpse.
I did not go away as soon as I intended. I stayed for the night, while the wind and the rat and the sash and the window-bolt played a ding-dong "hundred and fifty up." Then the wind ran out and the billiards stopped, and I felt that I had ruined my one genuine, hall-marked ghost story.
Had I only stopped at the proper time, I could have made _anything_ out of it.
That was the bitterest thought of all!
THE BIG DRUNK DRAF"
We"re goin" "ome, we"re goin" "ome-- Our ship is _at_ the sh.o.r.e, An" you mus" pack your "aversack, For we won"t come back no more.
Ho, don"t you grieve for me, My lovely Mary Ann, For I"ll marry you yet on a fourp"ny bit, As a time-expired ma-a-an!
_Barrack Room Ballad_.
An awful thing has happened! My friend, Private Mulvaney, who went home in the _Serapis_, time-expired, not very long ago, has come back to India as a civilian! It was all Dinah Shadd"s fault. She could not stand the poky little lodgings, and she missed her servant Abdullah more than words could tell. The fact was that the Mulvaneys had been out here too long, and had lost touch of England.
Mulvaney knew a contractor on one of the new Central India lines, and wrote to him for some sort of work. The contractor said that if Mulvaney could pay the pa.s.sage he would give him command of a gang of coolies for old sake"s sake. The pay was eighty-five rupees a month, and Dinah Shadd said that if Terence did not accept she would make his life a "basted purgathory." Therefore the Mulvaneys came out as "civilians," which was a great and terrible fall; though Mulvaney tried to disguise it, by saying that he was "Ker"nel on the railway line, an" a consequinshal man."
He wrote me an invitation, on a tool-indent form, to visit him; and I came down to the funny little "construction" bungalow at the side of the line.
Dinah Shadd had planted peas about and about, and nature had spread all manner of green stuff round the place. There was no change in Mulvaney except the change of clothing, which was deplorable, but could not be helped. He was standing upon his trolly, haranguing a gang-man, and his shoulders were as well drilled, and his big, thick chin was as clean-shaven as ever.
"I"m a civilian now," said Mulvaney. "Cud you tell that I was iver a martial man? Don"t answer, sorr, av you"re strainin" betune a complimint an" a lie. There"s no houldin" Dinah Shadd now she"s got a house av her own. Go inside, an" dhrink tay out av chiny in the drrrrawin"-room, an"
thin we"ll dhrink like Christians undher the tree here. Scutt, ye naygur-folk! There"s a Sahib come to call on me, an" that"s more than he"ll iver do for you onless you run! Get out, an" go on pilin" up the earth, quick, till sundown."
When we three were comfortably settled under the big _sisham_ in front of the bungalow, and the first rush of questions and answers about Privates Ortheris and Learoyd and old times and places had died away, Mulvaney said, reflectively--"Glory be there"s no p"rade to-morrow, an" no bun-headed Corp"ril-bhoy to give you his lip. An" yit I don"t know. Tis harrd to be something ye niver were an" niver meant to be, an" all the ould days shut up along wid your papers. Eyah! I"m growin" rusty, an" "tis the will av G.o.d that a man mustn"t serve his Quane for time an" all."
He helped himself to a fresh peg, and sighed furiously.
"Let your beard grow, Mulvaney," said I, "and then you won"t be troubled with those notions. You"ll be a real civilian."
Dinah Shadd had told me in the drawing-room of her desire to coax Mulvaney into letting his beard grow. "Twas so civilian-like," said poor Dinah, who hated her husband"s hankering for his old life.
"Dinah Shadd, you"re a dishgrace to an honust, clane-sc.r.a.ped man!" said Mulvaney, without replying to me. "Grow a beard on your own chin, darlint, and lave my razors alone. They"re all that stand betune me and dis-ris-pect-ability. Av I didn"t shave, I wud be torminted wid an outrajis thurrst; for there"s nothin" so dhryin" to the throat as a big billy-goat beard waggin" undher the chin. Ye wudn"t have me dhrink _always,_ Dinah Shadd? By the same token, you"re kapin" me crool dhry now.
Let me look at that whiskey."
The whiskey was lent and returned, but Dinah Shadd, who had been just as eager as her husband in asking after old friends, rent me with--
"I take shame for you, sorr, coming down here--though the Saints know you"re as welkim as the daylight whin you _do_ come--an" upsettin"
Terence"s head wid your nonsense about--about fwhat"s much better forgotten. He bein" a civilian now, an" you niver was aught else. Can you not let the Arrmy rest? "Tis not good for Terence."
I took refuge by Mulvaney, for Dinah Shadd has a temper of her own.
"Let be--let be," said Mulvaney, ""Tis only wanst in a way I can talk about the ould days." Then to me:--"Ye say Dhrumshticks is well, an" his lady tu? I niver knew how I liked the grey garron till I was shut av him an" Asia."--"Dhrumshticks" was the nickname of the Colonel commanding Mulvaney"s old regiment.--"Will you be seein" him again? You will. Thin tell him"--Mulvaney"s eyes began to twinkle--"tell him wid Privit"--"_Mister_, Terence," interrupted Dinah Shadd.
"Now the Divil an" all his angils an" the Firmament av Hiven fly away wid the "Mister," an" the sin av making me swear be on your confession, Dinah Shadd! _Privit_, I tell ye. Wid _Privit_ Mulvaney"s best obedience, that but for me the last time-expired wud be still pullin" hair on their way to the sea."
He threw himself back in the chair, chuckled, and was silent.
"Mrs. Mulvaney," I said, "please take up the whiskey, and don"t let him have it until he has told the story."
Dinah Shadd dexterously whipped the bottle away, saying at the same time, ""Tis nothing to be proud av," and thus captured by the enemy, Mulvaney spake:--
""Twas on Chuseday week. I was behaderin" round wid the gangs on the "bankmint--I"ve taught the hoppers how to kape step an" stop screechin"--whin a head-gangman comes up to me, wid about two inches av shirt-tail hanging round his neck an" a disthressful light in his oi.
"Sahib," sez he, "there"s a reg"mint an" a half av soldiers up at the junction, knockin" red cinders out av ivrything an" ivrybody! They thried to hang me in my cloth," he sez, "an" there will be murder an" ruin an"
rape in the place before nightfall! They say they"re comin" down here to wake us up. What will we do wid our womenfolk?"