The insignificant flame showed him a flight of stairs, leading up to darkness. With a drumming heart he began to ascend, counting twenty-one steps ere his feet failed to find another. Then groping again, one hand encountered a bal.u.s.ter-rail; with this for guide he turned and followed it until it began to slant upwards. This time he counted sixteen steps before his eyes, rising above the level of the upper floor, discovered to him a thin line of light, bright along the threshold of a door. He began to breathe more freely, yet apprehension kept him strung up to a high tension of nerves.
He knuckled the door loudly--one double knock followed by another.
From within a voice called cheerfully, in English: "Come in."
He fumbled for the k.n.o.b, found and turned it, and entered a small, low-ceiled chamber, very cosy with lamplight, and simply furnished with a single chair, a charpoy, a water-jug, a large mirror, and beneath the latter a dressing-table littered with a collection of toilet gear, cosmetics and bottles, which would have done credit to an actress.
There was but a single person in the room and he occupied the chair before the dressing-table. As Amber came in, he rose; a middle-aged babu in a suit of pink satin, very dirty. In one hand something caught the light, glittering.
"Oah, Mister Amber, I believe?" he gurgled, oily and affable. "Believe me most charmed to make acquaintance." And he laughed agreeably.
But Amber"s face had darkened. With an oath he sprang back, threw his weight against the door, and with his left hand shot the bolt, while his right whipped from his pocket Rutton"s automatic pistol.
"Drop that gun, you monkey!" he cried sharply. "I was afraid of this, but I think you and I"ll have an accounting before any one else gets in here."
CHAPTER IX
PINK SATIN
Shaking with rage, Amber stood for a long moment with pistol poised and eyes wary; then, bewildered, he slowly lowered the weapon. "Well," he observed reflectively, "I"m d.a.m.ned." For the glittering thing he had mistaken for a revolver lay at his feet; and it was nothing more nor less than a shoehorn. While as for the babu, he had dropped back into the chair and given way to a rude but rea.s.suring paroxysm of gusty, silent laughter.
"I"m a fool," said Amber; "and if I"m not mistaken you"re Labertouche."
With a struggle the babu overcame his emotion. "I am, my dear fellow, I am," he gasped. "And I owe you an apology. Upon my word, I"d forgotten; one grows so accustomed to living the parts in these masquerades, after a time, that one forgets. Forgive me." He offered a hand which Amber grasped warmly in his unutterable relief. "I"m really delighted to meet you," continued Labertouche seriously. "Any man who knows India can"t help being glad to meet the author of "The Peoples of the Hindu Kush.""
"You did frighten me," Amber confessed, smiling. "I didn"t know what to expect--or suspect. Certainly,"--with a glance round the incongruously furnished room--"I never looked forward to anything like this--or you, in that get-up."
"You wouldn"t, you know," Labertouche admitted gravely. "I might have warned you in my note; but that was a risky thing, at best. I feared to go into detail--it might have fallen into the wrong hands."
"Whose?" demanded Amber.
"That, my dear man, is what we"re here to find out--if we can. But sit down; we shall have to have quite a bit of talk." He sc.r.a.ped a heap of gaily-coloured native garments off one end of the charpoy and motioned Amber to the chair. At the same time he fished a cigar-case out of some recess in his clothing. "These are good," he remarked, opening the case and offering it to Amber; "I daren"t smoke anything half so good when at work. The native tobacco is abominable, you know--_quite_ three-fourths filth."
"At work?" questioned Amber, clipping the end of his cigar and lighting it. "You don"t mean to say you travel round in those clothes?"
"But I do. It"s business with me--though few people know it. Quain didn"t; only I had a chance, one day, to tell him some rather startling facts about native life. This sort of thing, done properly, gives a man insight into a lot of unusual things."
Labertouche puffed his cigar into a glow and leaned back, clasping one knee with two brown hands and squinting up at the low, discoloured ceiling. And Amber, looking him over, was amazed by the absolute fidelity of his make-up; the brownish stain on face and hands, the high-cut patent-leather boots, the open-work socks through which his tinted calves showed grossly, his shapeless, baggy, soiled garments--all were hopelessly babu-ish.
"And if it isn"t done properly?"
"Oh, then----!" Labertouche laughed, lifting his shoulders expressively. "No Englishman incapable of living up to a disguise has ever tried it more than once in India; few, very few, have lived to tell of the experiment."
"You"re connected with the police?" Amber"s brows contracted as he remembered Rutton"s emphatic prohibition.
But Quain had not failed to mention that. "Officially, no," said Labertouche readily. "Now and again, of course, I run across a bit of valuable information; and then, somehow, indirectly, the police get wind of it. But this going _fantee_ in an amateur way is simply my hobby; I"ve been at it for years--and very successfully, too. Of course, it"ll have its end. One"s bound to slip up eventually. You can train yourself to live the life of the native, but you can"t train your mind to think as he thinks. That"s how the missteps happen. Some day...." He sighed, not in the least unhappily.... "Some day I"ll dodge into this hole, or another that I know of, put on somebody else"s rags--say, these I"m wearing--and inconspicuously become a mysterious disappearance. That"s how it is with all of us who go in for this sort of thing. But it"s like opium, you know; you try it the first time for the lark of it; the end is tragedy."
Amber drew a long breath, his eyes glistening with wonder and admiration of the man. "You don"t mean to tell me you run such risks for the pure love of it?"
"Well ... perhaps not altogether. But we needn"t go into details, need we?" Labertouche"s smile robbed the rebuke of its sting. "The opium simile is a very good one, though I say it who shouldn"t. One acquires a taste for the forbidden, and one hires a little room like this from an unprincipled blackguard like Honest George, and insensibly one goes deeper and deeper until one gets beyond one"s depth. That is all. It explains me sufficiently. And," he chuckled, "you"d never have known it if your case hadn"t been exceptional."
"It is, I think." Amber"s expression became anxious. "I want to know what you think of it--now Quain"s told you. And, I say, what did you mean by "news of the Fs."?"
"News of the Farrells--father and daughter, of course." Labertouche"s eyes twinkled.
"But how in the name of all that"s strange--!"
"Did I connect the affair Rutton with the Farrells? At first by simple inference. You were charged with a secret errand, demanding the utmost haste, by Rutton; your first thought was to travel by the longer route--which, as it happens, Miss Farrell had started upon a little while before. You had recently met her, and I"ve heard she"s rather a striking young woman. You see?"
"Yes," admitted Amber sheepishly. "But--"
"And then I remembered something," interrupted Labertouche. "I recalled Rutton. I knew him years ago, when he was a young man.... You know the yarn about him?"
"A little--mighty little. I know now that he was a Rajput--though he never told me that; I know that he married a Russian n.o.blewoman"--Amber hesitated imperceptibly--"that she died soon after, that he chose to live out of India and to die rather than return to it."
"He was," said Labertouche, "a singular man, an exotic result of the unnatural conditions we English have brought about in India. The word renegade describes him aptly, I think: he was born and bred a Brahmin, a Rajput, of the hottest and bluest blood in Rajputana; he died to all intents and purposes a European--with an English heart. He is--was--by rights Maharana of Khandawar. As the young Maharaj he was sent to England to be educated. I"m told his record at Oxford was a brilliant one. He became a convert to Christianity--that was predestined--was admitted to the Church of England, a communicant. When his father died and he was summoned to take his place, Rutton at first refused.
Pressure was brought to bear upon him by the English Government and he returned, was enthroned, and for a little time ruled Khandawar. It was then that I knew him. He was continually dissatisfied, however, and after a year or two disappeared. It was rumoured that he"d struck a bargain with his prime-minister, one Salig Singh. At all events Salig Singh contrived to usurp the throne, Government offering no objection.
Rutton turned up eventually in Russia and married a woman there who died in childbirth--twenty years ago, perhaps. The child did not survive its mother...." Labertouche paused deliberately, his glance searching Amber"s face. "So the report ran, at least," he concluded quietly.
"How do you know all this?" Amber countered evasively.
"Government watches its wards very tenderly," said Labertouche with a grin. "Besides, India"s a great place for gossip.... And then," he pursued tenaciously, "I remembered something else. I recalled that Rutton had one very close friend, an Englishman named Farrell--"
"Oh, what"s the use?" Amber cut in nervously. "You understand the situation too well. It"s no good my trying to keep anything from you."
"Such as the fact that Colonel Farrell adopted Rutton"s daughter, who, as it happens, did survive her mother? Yes; I knew that--or, rather, part I knew and part I guessed. But don"t worry, Mr. Amber; I"ll keep the secret."
"For the girl"s sake," said Amber, twisting his hands together.
"For her sake. I pledge you my word."
"Thank you."
"And now ... for what purpose did Rutton ask you to come to India?
Wasn"t it to get Miss Farrell out of the country?"
"I think you"re the devil himself," said Amber.
"I"m not," confessed Labertouche; "but I am a member of the Indian Secret Service--not officially connected with the police, observe!--and I know a deal that you don"t. I think, in short, I can place my finger on the reason why Rutton was so concerned to get his daughter out of the country."
Amber looked his question.
"You read the papers, don"t you, in America?"
"Rather." Amber smiled.