Little Lost Lambs, page 28
For an instant Fen Huan’s broad face hardened; then he closed his eyes as if blandly meditating on a pleasant thought.
“ How much will you take?” She tried Coyle this time. “ To give me a horse at once?”
“ My dear Miss Bryce,” the master of the Koh-i-Darband said bluntly. “ We are not to be bought. We only desire to be unmolested while we complete our work here. Then I promise you Mr. Weston will take you back to Simla in his machine.”
“ How long will that be?”
“ A week. Perhaps more. It depends on Mr. Weston’s acumen. He is our—consulting engineer.”
“ You don’t dare keep me by force.”
“ Unfortunately we must. You interrupted our work.”
I was waiting my chance to speak. The sight of the girl sitting helplessly before the two was like a lash. Especially it angered me to see Fen Huan’s intent stare, which seemed to drink in the girl’s beauty. I knew the two were watching for any move on my part, and the thought rendered me cautious, for the girl’s sake as well as my own. For I was the only one in the bungalow who would take her part.
So I sat well back from the table, waiting.
Helen Bryce rose and went to the fire. Standing near it, she fell to twisting her hair back into place, as a woman will. She took no further notice of us, but Fen Huan followed her every movement, his black eyes mellow with the drug.
Coyle began singing to himself, a raucous murmur that repeated the refrain of some music-hall catch. I waited, staring at the flicker of the fire in the hearth and wondering what I was going to do without coming to any conclusion.
To attempt to clear myself before Helen Bryce would only bring denials from the other two, and probably insure my being locked in my quarters something I was in no mood for, because of an uneasiness that was growing on me.
“ Which is my room?" asked Helen Bryce of Coyle.
She was tired out and hungry; but she spoke as mistress to servant, with a lift of the firm chin.
Fen Huan arose and bowed.
“ You will occupy my room to-night,” he said politely.
Coyle stretched himself lazily in his chair. “ Then you’ll have to bunk in the study, Fen Huan,” he muttered. “ I've only a cot, you know.”
The mandarin caressed the embroidered sleeve of his silk blouse.
“ I shall be in my room,” he said.
Chapter XI
I Start Things.
I THINK I was the first to grasp his meaning; because I'd been looking for something of the kind. Coyle frowned, then his jaw dropped and he stared at his companion.
“ Miss Bryce will spend the night with me.” Fen Huan laid his pipe aside, and the glance he cast at the girl made my teeth grit. Hashish, beyond heating his brain and stirring his passions, had little apparent effect on the Chinaman. “ She is a delightful person.”
“ Satan’s beldame!” swore Coyle. “ I’m damned if she’ll do that. Do you want to be shot on sight by the first English trooper that comes along?”
Fen Huan made no response, but his bland smile did not change. I heard the girl catch her breath softly. Coyle pounded on the table angrily.
“ Ain't we taking risks enough as it is, Fen Huan?” he growled. “ You’re a Chinaman. ain’t you? You know what that means? Love of God, man, don’t put your hand on the girl! It’s that dope, Fen Huan, that's workin’ on you——”
His tone changed from threatening to pleading. Helen Bryce had drawn herself up, a white-faced statue of pride.
“ I bid you good night, Mr. Coyle, and you, too, Mr. Weston,” said Fen Huan.
It was too much for Coyle, renegade though he was.
“ You can't do that, Fen Huan,” he protested. “ You can’t do that. Why, you’ll never get out of India alive.”
“ I go where I please in this country, and my own—and the white men do not know.” Fen Huan’s soft voice had grown shriller. Into his face crept his racial intolerance of foreigners, linked with indifference to the fate of a woman, whether white or yellow.
“ If this gets known——”
Coyle was pleading, but not for Helen Bryce. He was begging Fen Huan not to endanger their own safety.
“ Why should there be talk?” Fen Huan’s slant eyes were vicious. “ Will she speak? Will we?”
He stepped in front of Helen Bryce, regarding her as he would one of his own slave girls. She met his gaze fairly, with a scorn that would have shamed another man, yet did not touch the drug-twisted soul of the mandarin. He swung angrily on Coyle, who was cursing under his beard.
“ Did you think Fen Huan feared this woman?” he demanded shrilly. “ Am I one to take notice of her, except to have her for myself? You are a weakling. Coyle, you are but a fool fumbling after riches! You are no more than a finger of one of my hands. If I do not help you out of Kashmir into China, where will you go? Into an English prison, unless you join my caravan. The servants in this house are mine, except Kallick. Ask Kallick if he will disobey Fen Huan, the merchant!”
Coyle’s unsteady glance wavered from the impassive shikari to the mandarin. He did not look at the girl.
He shrugged his shoulders and poured himself a glassful of gin with a quivering hand. It was plain to me who was the real master in the Koh-i-Darband!
The girl, too, had instinctively perceived as much. I saw her glance about the room pitifully.
“ I will make a bargain with you, Fen Huan,” I said.
They all looked at me. The Chinaman, sure of his power, had once more mastered his temper.
“ Perhaps I’ve found the location of the tomb, Fen Huan,” I observed slowly. “ The odds are that I have. If you will allow Miss Bryce to have my room, and let me remain outside the door, as long as she is kept in the Koh-i-Darband, I will show you what I have discovered.”
He smiled and drew his fan from his sleeve. I don’t know whether I could have made good my point or not; but just then Kallick spoke to Coyle, who sprang to his feet.
“ By the saints of hell, Fen Huan!” he cried. “ Kallick says Weston used my drawing-instruments and wrote down his calculations on your map. It’s in his coat pocket.”
I cursed my stupidity in leaving what I’d done on paper. If I’d kept it in my head, my case would have been stronger. Coyle was aroused by the prospect of finding the jade. My idea of bargaining had been foolish and what I did now was more so.
The chair I was sitting on was heavy ebony. As I stood up I heaved it at Fen Huan’s head. Mandarin and chair crashed to the floor.
I sidestepped, to avoid a possible shot from Kallick and to put Coyle between the native and myself. Coyle was prompt to act. His arm circled my neck from behind, jerking back my chin.
Now I’m not exactly weak, and I’d had one or two free-for-all fights before. Leaning back, I got my hands together behind Coyle’s neck and swung forward from the hips, sending him over my head.
When Coyle struck the floor, my knees hit him in the ribs, driving the breath out of his lungs for a moment. I rolled him over while his arms reached for me feebly, and felt his pockets. He had no revolver.
Whang! The blast of a discharge filled the room. Kallick had missed me with his first shot, thanks to my rolling tactics.
“ Do not shoot him!” I heard Fen Huan’s voice from somewhere. “ Call the servants.”
“ Run to the door, Miss Bryce,” I panted, warding off Coyle’s grip.
Then I saw she couldn’t. She was gripped fast by two hundred pounds of Chinese bone and fat. My chair had ripped Fen Huan’s cheek, but he was on his feet.
The girl twisted and wrenched vainly in his arms. I kicked Coyle loose—it being no time for niceties of conduct. Kallick had vanished, and I jumped for the open door of the study and the rifles inside.
A flood of brown natives swept from the rear of the house and closed around me as I reached the door. The first two went down under short-arm jabs. There never was an Oriental who could fight with his fists.
Kallick swung the gun-butt at my head, and missed. One of the boys had me by the legs and it took a precious half-minute to pry him away with my knees.
The light native boys could not have availed much against my weight, but Coyle was afoot now and enraged. He charged me with a bellow, and took two good swings to the jaw that straightened him, without hurting him seriously.
By that time I’d lost hope of getting clear of my enemies. It’s easy to say that a sizable, two-fisted white man can hold his own with a half-dozen natives. But, with one on the back of my neck, two clinging to my waist and Kallick jamming his gun-butt in my face, my wind and strength were going quickly.
I saw Coyle snatch the rifle from Kallick. And my groping hand closed over the bottle on the table. It served to free me from the two boys at my hips, and it broke over the head of the second one. Coyle’s first blow with the gun went amiss and crumpled the native on my back to the floor.
Ducking under his rifle, I closed with Coyle, pushing him back against the wall. I gripped the gun-barrel and hung my weight on it. We were both gasping in the fight for the weapon.
Then came a dull pain in the back of my head, and a feeling as if all Niagara Falls were rushing through the base of my skull. The room swayed around, and a haze veiled everything.
Chapter XII
A Bargain.
WHAT Kallick hit me with I don’t know. Perhaps another gun from the study. Anyway, it ended my share of the fight. It was a poor sort of fight, a lot of mess that got me nowhere. I'd better have waited until there was a real opening.
But the sight of the girl confronting those two had been too much for me. I felt hands fumbling at my coat. When the haze cleared so I could see a bit, Fen Huan and Coyle were scanning my drawing under the lamp, while the three boys who could stand were holding me against the wall.
The mandarin's face was inscrutable, but Coyle plainly elated.
“ I'm damned if Weston ain’t found the spot!” he cried.
“ Yes, perhaps on paper." Fen Huan shrugged his shoulders. But how can we come to it in the ruins?”
“ We'll search. We’ll pull that part of the place apart, if it takes a week."
“ Meanwhile——”
“ Weston needs a lesson."
Coyle stepped over to me. I could see the girl watching him. her dark eyes framed in a drawn face. The boys gripped me tighter, but there was no need. I couldn't have lifted one arm to my shoulder.
Coyle raised his fist and began striking me heavily on the jaw and cheek-bone. Kallick grinned. My senses were so numbed that I felt little, except when my injured head struck the wall.
“ You’re a hound, Coyle, a mongrel dog!” I told him, grinning through a split lip.
I called him all the hard names I could think of. It made him more angry and he substituted the gun-butt for his fist, trying to strike my eyes.
The gun-butt was too big for that. My head was swimming, and it was hard to see the others. I heard the girl say something sharply to Coyle, and I heard him laugh. Evidently what she’d said was not flattering to him.
I’d been thinking about her, in the intervals when Coyle got tired, and my brains weren't jarred loose. About Helen Bryce and Fen Huan. and praying there was something I could do even now to help her.
Then an idea came to me.
“ You want to break into the tomb—don’t you?” I mumbled. I had to say it three times before he heard.
“ You’re jolly well right, Weston,” he responded, grinning.
“ Well, I’ll show you the place, Coyle. I’ll take you there to-morrow.”
“ The hell you will,” he assented amiably.
“ I can.” I looked him full in the face—what I could see of it. “ You see that diagram I drew. Well, how did I guess that?”
He was silent at that, looking at me thoughtfully.
“ Because I knew where the place was before I drew it," I told him.
It was bluff, pure and simple—the last card of a desperate man.
“ Remember when I met Miss Bryce over there?" I had to spit out some blood to frame the words, “ Well, she was sitting by the door of the tomb. If she’s allowed to stay safe in my room to-night, I’ll take you to the place to-morrow. I can find it. again.”
Fen Huan came and stood by Coyle and stared at me intently. It was harder to face down the Chinaman: but I think I did it. I made the bluff good.
“ Miss Bryce is a friend of the hillmen,” I added, trying to think connectedly in spite of a splitting headache. “ They’ve shown her the tomb—knew she wouldn’t injure it. Yussuf wanted to kick me off the cliff, but she wouldn’t let him.”
Fen Huan stroked his injured cheek.
“ If you are lying——” he began.
“ You'll know to-morrow. I didn't aim to tell you this, but you’ve forced my hand.”
The mandarin turned swiftly on the girl.
“ Is this true?" he asked harshly.
I saw her start. I don't think before then she’d had a chance to realize what the two were after.
“ She won’t tell you,” I said, before she could reply. “ She won't see the tomb of her friends plundered. It doesn’t matter to me.”
For the space of a moment Fen Huan and his partner stared at me. Then Coyle lowered his gun.
“ By God! We’ll see if it's so.”
“ You’ll see,” I assured him.
No, I had no idea where the tomb was. But I knew my calculations on the map had interested them, and that they were wild for a sight of the jade. What would happen on the morrow, I didn’t know, but it was a little time gained.
“ You’re right in guessing that drawing won’t get you there,” I told them. “ Even with its help, it’ll be days before you strike the entrance to the tomb—unless you’re shown.”
Coyle nodded. He had made up his mind.
“ Early to-morrow you’ll go over to the ruins with us, Weston,” he said slowly. “ And you’ll be sorry for the day you got inside your own skin if you can’t show us what we want.”
He and Fen Huan spoke together in whispers. I think Fen Huan wanted to torture me to learn the secret they thought I knew. But I heard Coyle say that I’d only lie.
They could afford to wait a day. They’d still have me and Helen Bryce. And the chance of laying hand on the jade appealed to both of them.
I don’t think Fen Huan gave up his desire for possession of the girl. But a delay of a few hours would not alter the situation as far as he was concerned. Nor. I thought grimly, would it to me.
Chapter XIII
True Faithfulness.
SO they let Helen Bryce go with me to my room. Or, rather, she followed as the natives carried me in and dumped me on the floor.
She asked Coyle for water and clean bandages. When he shrugged his shoulders she went herself to the kitchen and returned with some napkins and a jar of water. She made Kallick fetch a blanket and put it under me.
Coyle said good night, grinning, and locked the door after him. Helen Bryce worked away over my bruised face. I hate to think what I looked like, after Coyle’s massage.
It was some time before she was satisfied. Then she propped a fold of the blanket under my head and sat on the cot. I could barely see her, because they had not seen fit to leave us a candle.
The back of my head felt as if it had been turned inside out, and my throat tasted full of sand. I lay there and wondered how long it would be before the room began to look a natural black, and not crimson.
“ I’m sorry, Miss Bryce," I said, trying to speak clearly in spite of a swollen lip. “ I never meant those two to know you were in the valley——”
“ I think Fen Huan knew it,” she returned quietly. “ That was why Yussuf was watching for intruders on the cliff yesterday. I am the one who should apologize-for the way I welcomed you at tiffin.” She leaned over and felt the bandage gently.
“ You are a brave man, Mr. Weston, and you have been—good to me.”
It was the first praise I’d had from her, and—ill-deserved though it was—it stirred me. As I said, Helen Bryce was a thoroughbred. Most girls would have been crying their eyes out, or nagging at me to do something for them.
“ What's that?” she whispered suddenly. I listened, and laughed without being much amused.
“ Fen Huan playing his phonograph, Miss Bryce. He never seems to sleep.”
Through the remaining hours to dawn the mandarin kept the machine going, playing high-pitched violin fantasies that sounded like the wail of unrestful demons. I lay back, watching the girl hungrily as she sat on the foot of the cot, her head resting against the wall. The starlight was clear, and there was a crescent moon somewhere, so I could make out her profile and the sight consoled me for the hammer and tongs that contested in the hack of my head.
“ What made you offer to show them the tomb, Mr. Weston?” she asked once, turning toward me. “ Did you know——”
“ Nothing,” I assured her. “ It was a stall—a bluff. I doubt, even, if there is a tomb.”
She was silent, looking at me in the half light.
“ Have you any plan for—to-morrow?”
“ To-morrow,” I said as cheerfully as possible, “ is another day. Or rather it’s to-morrow now. Something will turn up. Fen Huan may fall off the cliff. I hope he does.”
“ They would be hard on you,” she meditated.
“ Oh, it takes a good deal to hurt me. I’m accident-proof. Besides"—I hesitated, because there was so much I wanted to say, and the girl’s nearness made me tongue-tied—“ I'm happy to be of service to you.”
She sighed, and I wondered if she was offended. The fact that she was with me those hours was heartening. It was proof she trusted me. I could catch the scent of dried roses or something she had in her hair, or maybe it was the hair itself. It was restful, and mighty nice.
Then came the voice outside the window. I heard it, above the wail of Fen Huan’s infernal machine, and she did, too, for she lifted her head quickly.
