CHAPTER XXIV
THE VULTURE'S NEST
Tash-Kurgan, so called by the tribes of Central Asia, had been erected out of the mountain rock by an Imperial general of the Dragon Throne, to guard the gorge and the caravan track along the opposite cliff against the Tartar foes. This general and his staff, with his foes, were dust in the valleys and gray bones in forgotten tombs long before Tamerlane, the Lame Conqueror, led his armies across the mountains which had repelled so many invasions.
So, the Kurgan resembled roughly a medieval stronghold. It was placed almost at the brink of the cliff that led down into the valley with its steaming riverlet. Its only entrance, consisting of a narrow flight of stone steps running diagonally up the wall, was on the western side, away from the ravine. Around it ran a ditch, once a moat but now half filled with pulverized sandstone and débris.
The sandstone walls with their crenelated tops were much worn by rains and snows. In places the stones had cascaded into the moat. The wall itself was some dozen feet high and three feet in thickness. Within, appeared a courtyard of beaten, level clay. Rude stone shelters, roofless for the most part, were built against the inner ramparts.
Only at one end was there a solid sandstone structure resembling, except for height, the keep of a medieval castle. In one corner of it rose the square tower, much broader at the base than the summit—after the fashion of the Tibetan lamaseries. Once a pagoda roof of sturdy cedar logs had surmounted the tower top. Now this had fallen in.
The Kurgan was very much like a bird's nest of many years ago.
In one of the chambers of the hold itself Edith Rand had been placed. It was walled with teakwood that did not entirely keep out the drafts of cold air that swept the Kurgan. But a kerosene stove gave out an odorous heat, and heavy Kirghiz carpets had been placed over the gaps in the teakwood.
Candle lanterns, hung from the beams, revealed a hasty attempt to make the chamber habitable—a mattress and disordered blankets in one comer, saddlebags with their contents of cooking utensils and clothing piled in the center of the uneven flooring that was littered with dust and ashes of former fires. In another corner Edith noticed a heap of moldy boots, some rusted tin lamps, and bits of military gear grouped around a smashed samovar.
These, and the carpets, were the only relics of Russian occupancy that had been left by stray plunderers.
"Not much of a boudoir, my lady," Monsey had assured her, "but then we will not be here long. I hope to make you more comfortable."
Edith had not answered. The room was Monsey's, and she compared it without knowing just why she did so with the neatness of Donovan's quarters. She was oppressed by the aspect of the teakwood room.
The ride from Yakka Arik had taken long, involving, as it did, the crossing of the ravine, the climb and descent of numerous heights and the passage through a forest where the girl wondered how her captors could find their way, not knowing that they had familiarized themselves carefully with the lay of the countryside.
Above the low voices of the men she could hear the stamp of horses near by, the crackle of a fire, and an occasional footfall. Not until Abbas Abad had departed—and Edith recognized in him, without especial surprise, the leader of the men in the Kashgar serai—did Monsey fling off his belt with its holster and revolver and speak to her, seating himself on an upturned packing case, and drawing another forward for her. She remained standing.
"Still haughty, my lady? Ah, you do not know the pains I have taken to save you from the devils of Yakka Arik. Well, I apologize for using you roughly in what you Americans call the 'get-away.' It was necessary. You are quite strong."
His glance went over her, and Edith turned her head away. Monsey leaned back comfortably, stroking his black, drooping mustache idly. He was well pleased with himself, but he was curious as to what the girl thought of him.
"You remember the dance at Srinagar, Edith—the one you—ah—refused me? You see, it would have been much better to have gone with me than that Rawul Singh. But you did not trust me. Do you trust me now?"
"No."
"That is too bad. Why?"
Edith met his gaze with her honest gray eyes, and Monsey looked away.
"I don't know."
Surprised at this unexpected retort, Monsey's brows went up. Other women had found it good policy to please him. This American, wrapped in her pride, was like an icicle, he thought. Well, he liked her all the better for it.
It would be a pleasant sensation to master her pride. Monsey did not doubt his ability to do it. He did not mean to allow Edith to return to her father for some time. Money payment, even a large one, seemed a small thing when he had the woman herself near him. Life itself had ceased to bore him—and recently there had been certain fears, certain unrest. Abbas Abad had said that he was a marked man in these hills. Monsey had taken to using the Alaman's drugs, and this had not helped jaded nerves.
"You fear me, my handsome lady?"
"No."
There was no doubting the sincerity in Edith's low voice. To tell the truth, she disliked and suspected the former Russian officer partly because he was associated with Abbas Abad, partly because he had put aside her own will in bringing her from Yakka Arik, but more because of her own intuition. She read the insincerity in his assertion that he was acting for Arthur Rand.
Monsey's narrow mind, self-centered and suspicious, sought for other reasons. He had the patient, consuming desire for the girl that masters all other impulse in a man of his type.
"Let me see. You spoke of a friend in Yakka Arik—a khan, was it not? So, you stoop to a native's—friendship"
His calculating words accomplished their purpose. Edith flamed into swift retort, forgetting all caution.
"Donovan Khan is a white man, and I found him very much of a gentleman. He will follow you. Oh, I hope"
She broke off, at a strange light in the man's amber eyes.
"Donovan Khan? Donovan. By all the images of the Church! Not Captain John Campbell Donovan?" His hard eyes read her easily. "Captain Donovan—in Yakka Arik, alive."
For a moment he considered this, intently. Then he laughed.
"Why, it is fate itself, my beautiful lady. No, not that. It is my luck, my good luck. So, you found a lover waiting in that Sayak pesthole?"
Edith had mastered her impulse of anger as quickly as it came. She wrapped her arms in the end of the shawl, seating herself on the box, her back to Monsey.
"A beggarly Englishman, with a brown beard? The Falcon, as the Sayaks name him? Yes, that is Donovan, who is a leader of these assassins, a renegade, outcast from the British army"
"I don't believe you!"
"Presently, you will believe." Somewhat uncertainly he studied her, wondering at the change in the girl since Srinagar. "Look here, my fine lady, you can't afford to quarrel with me! Have not I said that Arthur Rand sent me? You choose not to believe? Very well! I have made it known in Kashgar, and the Sayak spies have carried the news that I am your friend to their murderers' nest. So, you will see how Donovan and his allies conduct themselves against the agent of your American father."
Edith shook her head mutely, her faith in Donovan strong within her; but Monsey smiled.
"My luck holds. A few hours and we will see the last act of this little play. I want you to watch it"
Monsey had begun to pace the room. His brown face had been reddened by exposure to the sun; the lines of his jaw were obscured by fat; his heavy mustache fell over the corners of his mouth. Under a bald forehead, the eyes, revealing a network of red veins and set too close together, were prone to wander. This was the only indication of the hashish he used.
His powerful figure swelled under the short black coat with its astrakhan collar. He had grown stouter, more gross. His former careful politeness had altered to an overbearing intimacy. The mask had fallen, now that he no longer needed a mask. Edith saw that he had changed, coarsened. In his face was a faint, unmistakable resemblance to a vulture.
Monsey halted as Abbas stepped into the room without noddng. When the two had spoken briefly, he turned to Edith.
"Horsemen have been seen in the passes around here. I fancy the Sayaks mean to invade the privacy of my abode."
Edith did not reveal the quickened hope that his words aroused. She had learned by experience to judge the events that thronged into this new world. And she reasoned that Monsey expected this to happen. Otherwise, why was he not disturbed?
Presently, with a glance at Abbas, he went out, carrying the holster and belt with him. For some time he had not taken the drug that he now needed at regular intervals. Abbas came nearer at once and peered into the girl's face. He tried to take the shawl from her shoulders, but she would not let him.
"Missy khanum," the Alaman whispered in very bad English, "you come with me, sometime. Oh, yas, by God." He pointed after Monsey. "Not him, no. He is the Vulture. Me, I, Abbas Abad, Alaman, kum dan! I give you—your fadder, for verree small paying—yes."
Edith shook her head somewhat wearily. Abbas stepped back as Monsey appeared silently in the door. The Russian surveyed him suspiciously. Abbas grinned as he saw the other's hand move toward the revolver in his belt.
"Excellency," he observed in Turki, "would you threaten your slave? Nay, it is not the part of wisdom. Besides, a thrown knife is swift—as you know."
"This is not your place."
"Ah. Yet I came here to sleep." He yawned and went to the mattress upon which he flung his fat body with a grunt. Monsey scowled.
"Those are my blankets."
The Alaman closed his eyes. "And the hashish, my Excellency? That is mine and not yours. If you need some presently, I would not want to deny you. Nay, I must sleep now."
Soon he began to snore, with an open mouth. Edith noticed, however, that whenever there was a noise outside the teakwood room Abbas ceased snoring. Monsey had seated himself near her and tried to take her hand. The drug had warmed his train and he did not hide his exultation.
"You are beautiful, Edith," he whispered. "You are worth a risk. Bah, what is risk or danger? You do not believe I love you. Well, you will see what I will risk for you. I tell you, there will be dead men lying about Yakka Arik on your account. And you will know how powerful I am."
The girl had met his hot gaze steadily. Her scorn only served to inflame his fancy the more.
"I would not have you otherwise, Edith. When we leave Yakka Arik you will see the garden that I have prepared near Kashgar. I am master there"
Edith laughed, her nerves high-strung.
"Are you?" She pointed to Abbas. The Alaman had been studying them, one eye wide open. When Monsey turned, the man appeared to be as soundly asleep as before. "Aren't you called the Vulture by the natives? Captain Donovan has been looking for you."
All at once she felt very lonely, very much in need of the Englishman's presence. Her life in the world of Yakka Arik had been built around him. She could not believe that he would desert her.
"Donovan?" Monsey swore under his breath. "We will attend to him."
The sudden set to his full lips left no doubt of the sincerity of this remark, at least.
Time passed. One of the lamps went out. Abbas was snoring in earnest now. The chill that comes with the last hours of the night crept into the teakwood chamber. Monsey, the stimulus of the drug dose gone, paced the floor restlessly, pausing to fiddle with the reeking stove. Edith gave herself up to the inertia that comes with fatigue.
Quiet had settled upon the Kurgan.
To Edith, this silence was ominous of maturing events. Out of this quiet she felt that something would come to pass. Why had not Monsey tried to leave the castle while the coast was free? He must have expected to be followed. How was Abbas content to sleep when the Sayaks had appeared in the vicinity?
A glint of crimson light pierced one of the cracks in the walls. Edith's ears had been strained for a certain sound. Somewhere, beyond the mountains, the sun was rising, and she had not heard the familiar trumpet blast that resounded in Yakka Arik at dawn. Its absence was vaguely disturbing.
She was conscious of the presence of unknown forces mustering around her. This feeling was not premonition or fear—it was certainty. The world of Yakka Arik had been disturbed. The trumpets were silent Out of this silence something would come to the Kurgan. By and by Monsey noticed the evidence of dawn. He buttoned his jacket at the throat and beckoned her.
"Come! You can see now."
Her limbs stiff with cold, Edith followed him out into the still more desolate entrance chamber of the castle hold. Gray light from the embrasures illumined it. She saw a roughly made ladder of saplings resting against the massive sandstone of the wall. Up this Monsey motioned her to climb.
He followed the girl into a square hole in the ceiling. Rotting timbers on the floor below afforded evidence that once a stairway had penetrated where the ladder led. They stood in a very small, dark space. From above came a glimmer of light.
"The first floor of the tower itself," explained Monsey. "Go on."
A winding stair, broken down in places and illumined only by thin arrow slits in the wall, conducted them to the tower top—a nest of tumbled cedar timbers.
Edith looked out upon the dawn.
Mountain ranges were tipped by vivid, ruddy light. The ravine below was in darkness. The courtyard of the Kurgan was a gray square with shadowy corners.
"Look," said Monsey, pointing downward.
On one side of the enclosure some fifty horses were lined with piles of forage at either end of the line. On the other side, the roofless shelters and the open clay of the court itself were filled with sleeping men. Along the walls several sentries paced.
In the darkness, close to midnight, when they had arrived at the castle, Edith had noticed little of this. She had supposed that the only men in the Kurgan were those who had been in Monsey's raiding party. Now she realized that the place sheltered no fewer than two hundred or more.
Monsey pointed out a dozen rifle stacks before the shelters.
"A company of soldiers," he whispered. "Tartars, who were once part of the Turkish army. They know that I am a leader who rewards his men. They came with me from the Caucasus region—waited around Khokand. Look there!"
He indicated a huddle of figures in sheepskin coats and black hats, each one sleeping with a musket in hand, their dark faces upturned to the sky.
"Alamans, who came with Abbas from Kashgar. And at the foot of the tower wandering Kurds and Turkomans—all armed. The Tartars have Mauser rifles, with magazines."
The men were sprawled about the clay, around some ashes of fires, between piles of littered garments, bags of grain, some stacks of women's silk garments, and an occasional heap of copper and silver vessels, candlesticks, and glittering cloths.
"All good Mohammedans," said Monsey complacently.
"Then why are not they at sunrise prayers?" demanded Edith coldly, remembering the custom of the devout Moslems of Yakka Arik.
"Prayers?" Monsey stared at her in some surprise. "Oh, my fellows are well enough. They are Mohammedans now, because they are on a religious mission. If need be, I dare say they could be Jainists or other things—anything but Sayaks, sun-worshipers. Every Mohammedan hates a Sayak. Now, look there."
Below the wall on the side away from the cliff Edith could see that the moat had been dug out to a greater depth. In it was a tangle of dead tree branches, with many pointed stakes uprising from the ground.
"A lesson of the war," laughed the Russian. "Openings in the wall command that cursed ditch. My men could dig there without being seen because it is below the level of the surrounding ground. Oh, they made a good job of it—rafter one or two of the lazy Tartars had the soles of their feet touched up a bit by Abbas. Now, why don't you ask how they got here?"
Edith was silent.
"Well," he went on, pleased with his own cleverness, "you'll notice those nullahs to the south. They lead in a roundabout fashion to Kashgar. I brought in my fellows, fifty or so at a time, at night. No one saw them. Only a dozen riders have been seen by the Sayak devils. That's what I want."
As a matter of fact the wooded ravines running between the heights that led to the great southern peaks of the Himalayas might have afforded shelter to many times that number. To the west, facing the prepared trench, was a level plain of some size, rocky at the further end and leading to broken, rolling woodland. At a distance, on all sides, were the mountains.
Nothing could be seen from here of Yakka Arik, the villages, fields, or lake. Edith fancied, as the sun topped the peaks behind them, that she could recognize the snow summit of Mustagh Ata standing against the dawn in the direction of Kashgar, across the river's gorge.
"You see I've studied the defenses of this place, my lady," grinned the Russian. "I've been here before, and by the beard of Allah and Satan's hoof, I didn't want to come here again without a bodyguard."
At that Edith drew a quick breath, recalling the tale of Iskander. So Monsey had been the Russian who raided Yakka Arik! But her companion saw no reason for further concealment.
"You don't understand it all yet, my American." He paused at a sound from below and went on in an altered tone. "You were necessary to our plans. The Sayaks will follow you because you know the secret of their mosque. Abbas and I know that, too. And when the Sayaks realize we're here, they will fall the more easily into our trap. Then Abbas and I will settle our reckoning. Oh, I know those fanatics. Their fighting men will attack this castle like mad dogs, thinking only a score of men are here. Then they will find themselves in a pretty mess. I wonder why they haven't tried it already. My outposts haven't seen anything."
Three or four scattered groups were stationed on knolls or the plains. Monsey waved his hand at them, and Abbas grinned.
"Now you understand, my lady. When we have killed off the armed men of those brigands we'll move against the valley. And there won't be so many to kill, at that. Besides some Arabs and a handful of Afghans those Sayaks are not much use in a fight. They do not number a hundred able-bodied men. Then we will take care of the mosque."
Abbas stretched powerful arms.
"Spoil," he grunted, "gold—ev'ryting, by Allah. Maili barlik!"
"I thought," Edith faced Monsey, "you came to Yakka Arik because my father sent you to rescue me."
Monsey scowled, then shrugged.
"Why keep up the appearances, mademoiselle? I must have something to pay my men."
"And yourself!"
"Yes," he said softly, "myself." He nodded at Abbas. "This merchant needs new goods'
"I thought slaves were a thing of the past"
"Not in Central Asia, to-day. Gold is power, and women are gold. So much for Abbas. I tell you, I am leader here. And I only came for you." He touched a strand of her hair. "Do you think I would tell you all this if I were not sure of my cards? I want you to understand how you are fixed—with only my word to keep you from these men. Think about it. You won't be so haughty, then." He paused as the Alaman touched his arm and thrust a stocky forefinger out at the plateau. "Now, who is that?"
From the rocks at the further end of the level space a figure was advancing toward the castle. Edith saw that it was John Donovan.
He had taken only a few steps before a patrol challenged and he halted while a pair of riflemen examined him. Presently the trio began to walk back to the Kurgan. Donovan wore a sun helmet, and was immaculate in his flannels and white jacket beside the short, dingy natives. He strode ahead carelessly, hands in his pockets.
Edith had rejoiced at sight of the man she loved, moving toward her out of the wilderness of rocks. Her heart beat a brief refrain of exultation. Then she bit her lip and repressed a cry of distress.
Apparently Donovan was unarmed. He seemed to take no notice of the two guards. The light of the newly risen sun was dead in his eyes. And he was coming straight into the trap Monsey had set for him and the Sayaks.
The Russian himself was more than a little surprised. Quickly he scanned the near-by woods beyond the rocks, where there was no sign of further movement. "An Englishman, that's certain," he muttered to himself. "No one else would walk or dress like that—here. Now who?"—he glanced at Edith, then peered at the window. "By the sacred head of the Prophet, it's Donovan himself without a beard! I didn't know him at first. Look here!" He gripped the girl's arm viciously. "Silence, you hear? Not a word out of you! Or I'll order my men to shoot him down. Besides that, Abbas may skewer you with his cursed knife on his own account"
He flung a word at the Alaman and scrambled toward the stair.
"I'm going to welcome the khan who is your friend," he called over his shoulder to Edith and disappeared. She heard him mutter something about his "holy luck." Abbas drew nearer her.
The girl stared at Donovan in utter dismay. He had looked up coolly at the tower, but appeared not to recognize her. The guards had halted him a few paces from the ditch. She wanted to call to him, to warn him. But she feared—not for herself—that it would be fatal.
Presently Monsey appeared, going down the entrance steps. She watched him join the group and search his visitor for weapons. After a moment Donovan drew a handkerchief from his pocket and one of the men secured it about his eyes. Then Monsey guided the blindfolded man up the steps, across the courtyard where the awakened natives stared at them curiously, and into the Kurgan hold.
An explanation of Donovan's appearance flashed upon her. He had reasoned that Monsey would not know him; perhaps, even, her protector was unaware that Monsey was in the castle. He must have hoped that Abbas and his men would not connect the arrival of a well-dressed Englishman with the Sayaks.
And she had unwittingly revealed the identity of the white man at Yakka Arik to Monsey. Knowing the Russian, she understood how great was the peril into which Donovan had walked unarmed. Her heart told her why he had come.
It all seemed perfectly hopeless to Edith. She had been comforting herself throughout the night with the thought that Donovan, somehow, would manage to aid her. Abbas signed to her.
"You come," he grinned. "Don' you talk. No, by God!"
His hand moved swiftly to his girdle and Edith caught the flash of steel. In the same instant, the knife thudded into a beam, across the stairs. The Alaman tugged it out, with a meaning glance at her. He laid his hand on the beam.
"Dono-van Khan," he assured her.
The girl passed down the stairs with Abbas behind her. For this reason she did not see, across the ravine, a horseman riding at full gallop along the cliff path toward the south away from Yakka Arik. It was a native, his long cloak fluttering, bending close to the horse and riding as no one but a hill-bred native could ride. And she heard nothing because, although the opposite cliff was within easy rifle range, Monsey had given strict orders to his sentries not to shoot until he gave the word so that the firing might not reveal the secret of the trap he had set so cleverly with the assisstance of Abbas.