Little Lost Lambs, page 27
I leaned back in my chair comfortably.
“ What do I have as rake-off if the venture succeeds?” I asked.
“ The five thousand we promised you, a whole skin, and a tight mouth—'specially that, Weston. Despoiling a bloomin’ tomb is a penal offense in Kashmir.”
He grinned at me sardonically, enjoying my silence.
“ Likewise, Weston, the British authorities know you’ve come up here by your lonesome; that you met me in a dak bungalow; Helen Bryce saw you searchin' the ruins, and what she knows the Resident knows.”
I thought of my conversation with the girl; and it wasn’t reassuring.
“ Likewise,” continued Coyle, accenting his points with the gin bottle, “ Fen Huan and myself can prove you worked out the way to the tomb, and we’ll admit, if we’re questioned—which won’t be likely, as we'll be safe over the border with a caravan load of good jade—that you were the leading spirit in the little enterprise. If you have the luck of Satan and keep your mouth shut, you may get back through India safe. I don’t know.”
With that he got up and shoved the rice-paper sheets toward me. Fen Huan nodded slowly, to show his satisfaction with what had been said.
After I’d gone to my room to think things over, taking the papers with me—Fen Huan had a copy of the main diagram—Coyle poked his yellow head through the door.
“ Forgot to tell you. young un, Kallick and the boys have orders to shoot you if you should stroll off the porch, or away from the house. Kallick’s a dead shot. Think it over—five thousand dollars an’ a whole skin. That’s generous treatment, Weston.”
“ Suppose I don’t do it?”
“ Oh, you will—one way or another.”
It was some time before I understood how confident he was. But then it was clear enough. He vanished, but presently bobbed in again.
“ Forgot to wish you pleasant dreams, Weston."
He went off snickering at his own wit and stumbling down the passage. But not before he’d turned the key in the door.
I went to the window and looked out. Iron screening was screwed across the opening. Some bushes were just opposite the window. While I watched a shadow moved in the bushes, and the light from the living-room flickered on metal very much like a gun-barrel. Then I heard a sound, swelling and melodious.
Fen Huan was playing his phonograph before going to bed.
Chapter IX
Bringing in a Captive.
THE next day I had the shack to myself.
It was raining—one of those driving storms that drift down the mountains with a sharp wind that tosses the pine-tips like a choppy sea in a squall.
Why Coyle and Fen Huan weren’t in evidence, I didn’t know. I was grateful for the chance to think things over. Since it was permitted to go out on the porch I did so, to find Kallick squatted on the steps with a high-power rifle across his knees.
No, I didn’t have any ambition to rush the shikari. He seemed careless, but he watched me closely. John Coyle was a master whose commands were worth obeying. I fancied, too, that some of the house-boys had an eye on me. And if I should, by some chance, win free of the bungalow, I’d be afoot without knowing the way, and it would be easy for mounted men to hunt me down.
I puzzled over the diagram Fen Huan had drawn. Perhaps an expert mathematician could plot the curve of the prayer-cliff. It was too much for me—at least with my limited knowledge of mathematics.
Above ground the thing wouldn’t have been so hard; but to figure out where the circle of the prayer-cliff would continue into the heart of those ruins wasn’t possible. Once in the stone chambers you couldn’t see twenty feet ahead.
Maybe the builders had worked out the spot before they put up the walls. But they hadn’t put their secret on record.
That didn’t bother me, for two reasons. I had no particular faith in the jade being where Fen Huan thought—or anywhere at all. Fen Huan believed it was there, and so did Coyle. The master of the Koh-i-Darband had probably taken his friend’s word for it, and lust for profit had done the rest. And Fen Huan set a lot of store by the old annals he’d mentioned.
I lit my pipe and considered the matter. It was beginning to be clear now why Coyle had taken the pains he did to get me there. First, he wanted the car. He admitted, after a while, that he thought it would be useful in case they had to make a quick getaway. You see they didn’t know when the hillmen would get ugly, and in spite of their rifles, both men had a healthy respect for the tribes around the tomb. So far they’d been unmolested, for the reason they hadn’t taken anything out of the ruins.
John Coyle had quizzed me dry, down in the dak bungalow. He realized I knew enough mathematics to help them locate the tomb. The offer of the five thousand I didn’t take seriously. I never expected to see the color of their money.
I didn’t feel altogether happy over the prospect. I was losing valuable time that the Robles company was paying for; granting that I finally got back to India with a whole skin and the car, my story wouldn’t be credited, most likely, and if it was, Coyle and Fen Huan would be out of reach of the British law—Fen Huan had a caravan camped over the border in Tibet, waiting his orders.
Human nature’s a curious thing. Here I was, captive at gun-point in the Koh-i-Darband, with a black watching me who’d orders to drill me if I stepped off the porch, and who looked like he’d be tickled to death to do it—and all I was thinking of was some way to get back at Coyle for the way he’d treated me.
No, I wasn’t trembling in my boots. Back home we don’t have many of Coyle’s breed, and men aren't shot out-of-hand because a bully orders it. Back in the U. S. A. we have law that is a law, and it hadn’t penetrated even yet to me that Coyle or his men would risk murder. I looked on his threats and the fool schemes of Fen Huan as some stagy kind of a game that they wouldn’t dare put across.
Before the next day I’d changed my mind.
But at that time I wasn’t worrying much. I even got to thinking of Helen Bryce. She was a thoroughbred, a clean strain of girl, with a temper and beauty to match it. The more I thought of her, the more I wanted to set myself right in her eyes.
If I’d known where she camped I’d have risked a reckoning with Kallick to visit her and Yussuf.
Kallick had company now. The house-boys came around to the front of the bungalow. One of them was carrying a small package. I watched them, having nothing better to do. The rain—which came in sudden squalls—had let up for a while.
One of the natives dug what seemed a tunnel in the gravel by the steps. Then he hollowed out a hole in one end of the tunnel. He poured some stuff from the package into the hole, and patted the wet gravel into a kind of roof over the tunnel, leaving an opening at the other end.
Another native stuck a lighted match to the stuff in the hole, and covered it with a roof of wet clay. Then boy No. 1 lay down with his face pressed to the opening, and drew two or three deep breaths. Boy No. 2 kicked him away and took his place.
It mystified me until I got a whiff of what was smoldering in the hole. The house-boys were having a smoke. They had borrowed a little of Fen Huan’s doped tobacco, and made a pipe to order.
After inhaling the stuff they’d go and lie down, keeping it in their lungs as long as they could. Even Kallick took his turn, leaving two of the others to watch me with the gun while he did so.
It gave me a line on the servants. Then were four house-boys, one Chinese cook, and the shikari. Total six, and evil- looking young devils into the bargain. Fen Huan’s tobacco must have been strong, for they reeled as they walked back into the house,
I began to suspect now why Coyle and the mandarin had such a hold on the servants. Natives of that breed would walk fifty miles, I’d heard, for a pinch of dope.
By the time they’d finished their smoking I had a rough plan of campaign thought out. Since Coyle and Fen Huan counted on me to do their calculations for them, I'd take my time about arriving at any result—bluff up some kind of figuring that would interest them.
Meanwhile I’d search the bungalow quietly for the spark-plugs Coyle had taken. It wasn’t likely he’d carry the things with him, and the chances were that one set at least would be in the house. Then I’d wait until the house-boys were giddy with their daily dope, when Coyle and his partner were over in the ruins, and jump Kallick when he was off guard.
Once I had his rifle I could herd the house-boys into one of the outbuildings, lock them in, and take my time to repair the car.
I thought it was a good plan. It may have been. But it was never carried out.
The first part of it was easy. In fact it was more than that. I studied the diagram Fen Huan had given me. And I thought over all his dope about the sunwise turn.
“ Follow the prayer-fingers by the sunwise turn——”
That was what the monastery annals had said. On the face of it, the words didn’t make much sense. I put my finger on the eastern end of the diagram, at the beginning of the arc “ A.” Somewhere along the circle of which that arc was part, Fen Huan believed the tomb to be.
“ The prayer on the cliff will point the way to the wealth of kings,” Yussuf had repeated.
I ran the two sentences together.
“ Follow the prayer fingers on the cliff by the sunwise turn to the wealth of kings.”
Nothing much in that. There hadn’t been any finger sign-posts on the cliffs. Nothing but the carved lettering. And that couldn’t be followed, for the reason it didn’t continue into the ruins.
But I had to think up something plausible to work out—to keep Coyle in a good humor, and gain time for my own purpose.
I ransacked my mind for forgotten mathematics. All that I hit on was the axiom—or whatever it is—that a point must be located by two lines.
And then the idea hit me.
Two lines. I had two lines in the diagram. Two arcs of two circles.
“ Kallick!” I called. “ Get me a compass—dividers!”
He didn’t understand. But by dint of signs I made him realize what I wanted. He called another boy, gave him the rifle and went to Coyle’s study. It was locked, because of the rifles inside, but Kallick had a key.
He brought out a set of draftsman’s drawing implements. He was shrewd enough to guess I was doing work for Coyle, and he’d best assist me. In a moment, with the dividers, and a simple geometric process, I’d drawn the two complete circles, “ A ” and “ B.”
The point where they met I labeled “ X.”
“ That’s the unknown spot,” I thought.
I now had the diagram shown below.
You see the idea now. Both Fen Huan and I had overlooked it. We’d both figured that the sunwise turn—beginning at the east—could only mean the prayer-circle on the cliff that began at the east. That was “ A.”
The circle “ B ” followed sunwise, seemed to lead away from the ruins. But when the complete circle was drawn it led through the ruins.
For just an instant I had a thrill at my own idea. Here was a point in the ruins located by following the sunwise turn of the “ prayer-fingers.” The ancient builders of the tomb had known geometry and astronomy.
Had I arrived at the solution of the problem? Was the tomb of the Ladakh kings at the point “ X ”?
The thing was not impossible. But I smiled at my own excitement. Kallick, who was watching closely, scowled. Whereupon I tucked the paper in my coat pocket.
Then the shots began. They came from across the valley. First a rapid burst of four or five; then scattered reports.
Kallick pricked up his ears, and I scanned the valley. The rain had set in again, obscuring the opposite cliff. The shots, however, had come from the direction of the ruins.
I knew Coyle was wary of the hillmen, and I wondered if he had been attacked. The interval between reports lengthened. Apparently two rifles had been heard at first. Now, only one was firing.
Silence settled down upon the dawan.
The rain pattered lightly on the cedar slabs of the roof. Beside my chair Fen Huan’s phonograph leered at me with a familiar air. Impatient of the shikari’s scrutiny, I fell to pacing the porch, wishing earnestly that the rain would let up and give me a sight of the valley.
It was late in the afternoon before Covle returned. Fen Huan accompanied him. I heard Kallick shout and turned In time to see the two men coming up the path to the bungalow.
They were carrying a stout bamboo pole. Slung to the pole was a light cotton hammock. In it was Helen Bryce.
The girl’s flannel clothes were wet. and her hair had come partly unbound. It fell to one shoulder in a chestnut flood. And I saw that her wrists were tied in front of her by Coyle’s silk neckerchief. By the stains on her cheeks I suspected she had been crying.
Coyle helped her from the hammock to the porch.
“ Welcome to the Koh-i-Darband, Miss Bryce," he said, and bowed. Then he noticed me.
“ Hear that shooting. Weston? That was me. I was settling Yussuf's hash. The damned infidel shot first. It took quite some time before I scored a hit—tumbled him over the rocks with a bullet between his gullet and gizzard. Then I wasted some more rounds, making sure of him.”
He handed his rifle to Kallick.
“ I’m not a bad shot, Weston. Remember that. Now we’ll have some supper.”
Chapter X
Known By One's Company.
I THOUGHT at first he was joking. But one look at the pale and angry girl showed me he wasn't. When Coyle and Fen Huan had changed to dry clothes, they made her come to the table with them.
Then I learned the reason for her presence here.
“ I will not sit at table with a renegade.” She looked steadily at Coyle, who moved uneasily under the light in her gray eyes. He stroked his beard and smiled.
“ Oh, come now, Miss Bryce,” he said loudly. “ Yussuf shot at me. What was I to do?”
“ He saw you sneaking up toward our tent. You had your rifle leveled. If I had had a revolver I would have done what he did.”
“ I am honored.” Coyle tried to appear at his ease, and failed, being what he was. “ You can hardly blame me, though, for defending myself." He looked at the servants, finding the girl’s hot scrutiny unbearable. “ Yussuf got his deserts. He shot to kill, only his sights were set for five hundred yards. A native doesn’t understand the fine points of a rifle. Eh, Weston?”
Coyle seemed to be trying to make me out his friend.
“ It was unfortunate, Miss Bryce,” put in Fen Huan, who had been watching her silently. “ But it has brought us the celestial happiness of your company in our unworthy house.”
“ Why did you bring me here?” She tossed her dark head and clasped her hands. If she had been crying, it was from anger, not fear. Helen Bryce was no weakling; and her pride was a thing that put Coyle to shame. She sat erect in her chair, without touching the food they offered her, or paying any heed to her wet clothes.
“ You came to the dawan to spy on us,” Coyle responded. “ Ain’t you pleased to be here? No fault of mine if your cousin, the Resident, sends you about his dirty work.”
“ I came because my people of the hill tribes sent a runner to me at Srinagar. A certain smuggler of hashish, who has been long sought by the British authorities, was seen in this valley. I came to see if it was really Fen Huan. The Resident does not know I came. He would not have allowed it——”
I saw a quick look pass from the Chinaman to John Coyle. The girl’s frankness was working her harm. Yet, in her splendid pride, she would stoop to no precautions against the two.
It was characteristic of her race and upbringing that Helen Bryce was fearless of the two scoundrels who had laid hands on her.
“ I knew Fen Huan when I saw him,” she said bitterly. “ He has brought thousands of pounds of hashish from China, by way of Tibet, and he is one of the richest men of Khotan. If the troops at Srinagar knew he was here, he would not leave Kashmir without being tried for his crimes. Not if he turned a great prayer-wheel a hundred and nine thousand times, to purify his sin.”
“ Then,” smiled Fen Huan, waving his fan gently, “ it is well that your troops are engaged in patrolling the northern passes where there is trouble among the natives.”
She bit her lip. I think she was beginning to understand that she must deal with these two as they deserved-—something it had taken me long to see.
“ Give me a horse at once,” she cried. “ Or you will answer to the Resident!”
“ On such a night?” John Coyle shook his head. “ We would be inhospitable. Mr. Weston can attest our hospitality. By the way, he is the one who told us you were in the valley——”
The girl glanced at me swiftly, scornfully.
“ I did not mean to,” I said lamely. Stupidity is hard to excuse.
“ Mr. Weston is—working for us,” put in Fen Huan with a warning frown.
Several things had become clear to me. So Fen Huan was a drug merchant, and smuggler to boot. I knew that the importation of hashish into India was under a ban. The Koh-i-Darband was a ride of only a day and a half from a telegraph-office on the Indian border. If the girl and her servant had ridden there, Fen Huan’s stay would have been brief—and he and Coyle were half-maddened by the treasure lust.
They had gone out to find and capture the girl before she could send news of their presence here. No wonder she had treated me coolly the day before when I’d stumbled into her and Yussuf among the ruins!
She sat back, with an ironical smile, and looked from one of us to the other. Fen Huan had lit his pipe and was puffing at the drug. Coyle sprawled in his chair, fingering his glass uneasy, yet triumphant.
“ How much money do you want?” she demanded scornfully.
“ Money?” Fen Huan waved a deprecating hand. “ Am I a hill-thief?”
“ Worse. I have heard much of you, Fen Huan. Tales travel in the hill tribes, you know.” Again her anger swept over her, and she gave full rein to it. “ There were women taken from the Bhotias and Kashmir villages. Young women, who were not recovered. You will answer for every one of them.”
