"Jaimihr-sahib, I will help you to escape tonight on the terms that you have named--that you spare these Rangars and every living body on this hill. Then I will do my utmost to persuade the Rangars to ride to your a.s.sistance on your condition, that you lead your men to help the British afterward. And if my action in helping you escape should make the Rangars turn against me and my immediate friends, I shall claim your protection. Is that agreed?"
"Sahiba--absolutely!"
"Then let me pa.s.s!"
Reluctantly he stood aside. She slipped out and let the bar down un.o.bserved. But she had not recovered all her self-possession when she reached the courtyard.
"Evening, Miss McClean," said Cunningham; and she all but fainted, she was strained to such a pitch of nervousness.
"Where have you come from, Miss McClean?" asked Cunningham. And she told him. She was not quite so stiff-chinned as she had been.
"What were you doing there?"
She told him that, too.
"Where is your father?"
"In his chair on the veranda, Mr. Cunningham. There, in that deep shadow."
"Come to him, please. I want your explanation in his presence."
She followed as obediently as a child. The sense of guilt--of fright--of impending judgment left her as she walked with him, and gave place to a glow of comfort that here should be a man on whom to lean. She did not fight the new sensation, for she was growing strangely weary of the other one. By the time that they had reached her father, and he was standing before Cunningham wiping his spectacles in his nervous way, she had completely recovered her self-possession, although it is likely she would not have given any reason for it to herself.
Cunningham held a lantern up, so that he could study both their faces.
His own face muscles were set rigidly, and he questioned them as he might have cross-examined a spy caught in the act. His voice was uncompromising, and his manner stern.
"Do you both understand how serious this situation is?" he asked.
"We naturally do," said Duncan McClean. The Scotsman was beginning to betray an inclination to bridle under the youngster"s att.i.tude, and to show an equally p.r.o.nounced desire not to appear to. "More so, probably, than anybody else!"
"Are you positive--both of you--you too, Mr. McClean--that all that talk about treasure in Howrah City is not mere imagination and legend?"
"Absolutely positive!" They both answered him at once, both looking in his eyes across the unsteady rays of the flickering, smoky lamp. "The amount has been, of course, much exaggerated," said McClean, "but I have no doubt there is enough there to pay the taxes of all India for a year or two."
"Then I have another question to ask. Do you both--or do you not--place yourselves at the service of the Company? It is likely to be dangerous--a desperate service. But the Company needs all that it can muster."
"Of course we do!" Again both answered in one breath.
"Do you understand that that involves taking my orders?"
This time Duncan McClean did the answering, and now it was he who seized the lamp. He held it high, and scanned Cunningham"s face as though he were reading a finely drawn map.
"We are prepared--I speak for my daughter as well as for myself--to obey any orders that you have a right to give, young man."
"You misunderstand me," answered Cunningham. "I am offering you the opportunity to serve the Company. As the Company"s senior officer in the neighborhood, I am responsible to the Company for such orders as I see fit to give. I could not have my orders questioned. I don"t mind telling you that I"m asking you, as British subjects, no more than I intend to ask Alwa and his Rangars. You can do as much as they are going to be asked to do. You can"t do more. But you can do less if you like. You are being given the opportunity now to offer your services unconditionally--that is to say in the only manner in which I will accept them. Otherwise you will remain non-combatants, and I shall take such measures for your safety as I see fit. Time presses. Your answer, please!"
"I will obey your legal orders," said McClean, still making full use of the lantern.
"I refuse to admit the qualification," answered Cunningham promptly.
"Either you will obey, or you will not. You are asked to say which, that is all."
"I will obey," said Rosemary McClean quietly. She said it through straight lips and in a level voice that carried more a.s.surance than a string of loud-voiced oaths.
"And you, sir?"
"Since my daughter sees fit to--ah--capitulate, I have no option."
"Be good enough to be explicit."
"I agree to obey your orders."
"Thank you." He seemed to have finished with McClean. He turned away from him and faced Rosemary, not troubling to examine her face closely as he had done her father"s, but seeming none the less to give her full attention. "I understood you to say that you promised to help Prince Jaimihr to escape from his cell tonight?"
"WHAT?"
Duncan McClean could not have acted such amazement. Cunningham desired no further evidence that he had not been accessory to his daughter"s visit to the prisoner. He silenced him with a gesture. And now his eyes seemed for the time being to have finished with both of them; in spite of the darkness they both knew that he had resumed the far-away look that seemed able to see things finished.
"Yes," said Rosemary. "I promised. I had to."
Her father gasped. But Cunningham appeared to follow an unbroken chain of thought, and she listened.
"Well. You will both realize readily that we, as British subjects, are ranged all together on one side opposed to treachery, as represented by the large majority of the natives. That means that our first consideration must be to keep our given word. What we say,--what we promise--what we boast--must tally with what we undertake, and at the least try, to do. You must keep your word to Jaimihr, Miss McClean!"
She stared back at Cunningham through wide, unfrightened eyes. Whatever this man said to her, she seemed unable to feel fear while she had his attention. Her father seemed utterly bewildered, and she held his hand to rea.s.sure him.
"On the other hand, we cannot be guilty of a breach of faith to our friend Alwa here. I must have a little talk with him before I issue any orders. Please wait here and--ah--do nothing while I talk to Alwa. Did you--ah--did you agree to marry Jaimihr, should he make you Maharanee?"
"No! I told him I would rather die!"
"Thank you. That makes matters easier. Now tell me over again from the beginning what you know about the political situation in Howrah.
Quickly, please. Consider yourself a scout reporting to his officer."
Ten minutes later Cunninham heard a commotion by the parapet, and stalked off to find Alwa, close followed by Mahommed Gunga. The grim old Rajput was grinning in his beard as he recognized the set of what might have been Cunningham the elder"s shoulders.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Ye may go and lay your praise At a shrine of other days By the tomb of him who gat, and her who bore me; My plan is good--my way-- The sons of kings obey-- But, I"m reaping where another sowed before me.
JAIDEV SINGH was a five-K man, with the hair, breeches, bangle, comb, and dagger that betoken him who has sworn the vow of Khanda ka Pahul.
Every item of the Sikh ritual was devised with no other motive than to preserve the fighting character of the organization. The very name Singh means lion. The Sikh"s long hair with the iron ring hidden underneath is meant as a protection against sword-cuts. And because their faith is rather spiritual than fanatical--based rather on the cause of things than on material effect--men of that creed take first rank among fighting men.
Jaidev Singh arrived soon after the moon had risen. The notice of his coming was the steady drumming footfall of his horse, that slowed occasionally, and responded to the spur again immediately.