CHAPTER VI
“C. O. TO Z. P.” “Z. P. TO C. O.”
C. O. to Z. P. Hold the fort. Let nothing persuade you to leave the palace until further advice from me. Be sick if necessary. Please feed the dog before sending her back.
In the small, file-littered office behind his bedroom Ommony folded the slip of paper and tucked it under the leather loop inside Diana’s collar. Then he pulled out Zelmira’s handkerchief and let the hound smell the vague, unusual scent.
“Go quick!” he ordered.
The hound’s tail drooped. She detested errands so far away from Ommony, but was too well used to them to hesitate. As if she had been reproved she drew her tail tight under her and slunk out, but broke into a trot the moment she left the house, and within the minute was extended in the long, elastic canter she could hold all day.
Ommony had begun to see daylight through the woods; but the raja was in a quandary. He stayed to lunch, and used every artifice' he could invent for decoying Ommony into a tête-à-tête. But that astute individual purposed neither to advise him further nor to arouse suspicion by refusing. He could not even be tempted into a corner by the sight of a new, gold-plated pistol.
He was depending on Destiny, in league with the fire “made of ennui, debt, and the lure of a gay city.” Prodding at Destiny impatiently is apt to bring the importunist down under the flaming wheels, so his artifices for avoiding private conversation were better invented than the raja’s for procuring it. Even the excuse that the stallion was unfit for the journey home availed nothing; while the beast was resting Ommony employed himself among the new plantations on his own horse, and in the end the raja had to ride away on the stallion, uncomforted by wisdom from his host.
Then Ommony took tea on the veranda, under the guns of Strange’s arrogant contempt.
“That stuff’s the undoing of the English!” Strange volunteered. “They sip tea like old women even in the Bank of England. It’s the symbol of England’s decadence.”
“You think we’ve fallen far yet?” Ommony asked him.
Strange snorted.
“You’re succumbing to the same degeneracy you’ve imposed on conquered peoples—just as Rome did. That raja’s a case for you. Intelligent in a superficial way, like a monkey. I don’t doubt his ancestors were men, who could seize, administer and keep; they’d nous enough to rule. That fellow’s delighted like a child with a new toy pistol—spineless—no initiative; he’s a product of afternoon tea and English education!”
The light back of Ommony’s eyes was of deeper amusement than the outburst seemed to warrant. But Strange by habit scorned the men he proposed to have the better of, and the strongest are blind when in that mood. It is on written record in Millsville, N. H., that Meldrum Strange at fourteen was turned out of Sunday School for insisting that, if he had been Goliath, not only would he have crushed David at long range with a big rock, but that he would have been right to do it.
“I hate to see the world stand still. Progress!” he insisted. “That’s the proper key-note. Progress!”
After dinner that evening he resumed the topic. He was still laying law down, lecturing Ommony on the proper use of opportunity, when Diana slunk up through the shadows to the veranda and lay down at Ommony’s feet. She was so quiet that not even Jeff observed her. The other dogs took no notice. Ommony slid his hand down to feel for a message in the loop under the collar, found what he expected, snatched it out, and shouted in Tamil:
“Boy! Bring the flash-light!”
“Care to come, Jeff?” he asked, explaining nothing but leading the dog by the collar, away from Strange, around the corner of the veranda to where a side-door, seldom used, provided access near the bathroom. The servant brought the flash-light.
“Warm water in a hurry!” Ommony commanded.
“Blood!” said Jeff, fingering the dog’s shoulder.
“I thought at first it was a blow from a leopard,” said Ommony, “but you see, there’s a hole in here, and out there. It must have left off bleeding some time ago. No serious damage. Hurts her though.”
Diana whimpered as Ommony fingered the loose skin above her powerful shoulders.
“Bullet undoubtedly,” said Jeff.
“Might be a thirty-two. Did you notice a weapon of that bore this afternoon?”
“The raja’s gold-plated toy!”
“Exactly!” Nobody else near this forest owns a thirty-two. That rascally raja suspected her of carrying a message; Diana’s notorious, ain’t you, old lady! And he’s a good shot with a pistol, his eyes!”
“It was a close call for the dog,” said Jeff, examining the wound.
“As close for me, I think! Let’s see what the message says.”
He read it by the bathroom night-lamp, holding Diana with one hand to keep her quiet, while the servant held a flash-light and Jeff syringed out the wound, the dog whimpering.
Z. P. to C. O. Am sitting tight. Chullunder Ghose met him in forest and told about Strange liking to shoot tigers. Chullunder Ghose says that may open Panch Mahal, but I don’t understand what he means. Will be very sick if necessary. Please meet Charley at noon tomorrow at the look-out rock. He will ride the horse you left here. Chullunder Ghose says the raja has no funds. Shall I lend?
“No, no, no!” said Ommony, so that Jeff looked up, whereat Ommony took the scissors and clipped carefully.
“There, old lady; you’ll be all right in a few days.”
He stuffed the note in his pocket and scratched his chin, grinning.
“It beats the Dutch,” he said, “the way Dame Destiny arranges things. Strange goes from here to the Panch Mahal. That’s a little old-fashioned palace twenty miles from Chota Pegu, where rajas hold high revel on occasion. It means ‘the play-place of the ladies.’”
“Gosh!” said Jeff.
“Two tuts! The tiger shooting’s often very good there. Caretakers have kept the place from ruin, but it hasn’t been used often in the last ten years.”
“Any personal risk for Strange?” Jeff asked, acutely conscious of being on Strange’s pay-roll.
“Prodigious I should say, it means Zelmira marries him!”
In spite of his quarrelsome mood Strange presently wearied of sitting alone, and came blustering in to see what they were doing. Diana, in no sweet mood herself, showed him a glimpse of her fangs.
“Place looks like a butcher-shop!” he snorted, and blustered out again.
“Thought so!” said Ommony.
“Thought what?”
“I have what you’d call the dope on him. Men who want to save the world by system and tyranny are all alike. Everything’s impersonal until it applies to him personally—blood in a bathroom included.”
“Exactly. That’s why I’d rather resign and then lick him!” said Jeff. “Do him good!”
“No. Save him for Zelmira! That’s her job. Besides, you see, she has bought my soul!” Ommony answered, grinning his pleasantest.
JEFF had utterly ceased to enjoy his visit. A stickler for loyalty all his life long, he hated to lend a hand against Strange, but hated at least equally the thought of Strange accepting Ommony’s hospitality and using the man’s very roof as a cover for intrigue. Ommony’s loyalty to the forest and the job appealed to Jeff; Strange’s greed and arrogance disgusted him; but worse than either, he despised himself for not knowing what to do about it. Ommony divined the situation pretty accurately.
“Are Strange’s love-affairs your business?” he asked, cleaning out the syringe.
“No, and by gad, I’m not his valet!”
“What is your job?”
“I’m his partner in business—salaried partner. He owns control and can vote me out, any time he sees fit.”
“Stick to business, then.”
“I’ll have to warn him to pull out of this, then.”
Ommony grinned again.
“I wish you would! If you’ll stick strictly to business, and leave him to paddle his love-canoe, there’ll be no accidents.”
So Jeff recovered his good-humor, and when bed-time came he followed Strange into his room and sat there for an hour, while Ommony, remaining with his pipe on the veranda, caught fragments of a violent debate, in between the pauses of his own conversation with two men, who wore no clothes, and did not trespass on to the veranda, but spoke like dark goblins from the shadow beyond the flower-bed.
“You’re a natural-born employee! You can’t see things on a big scale!”
“I see more than you imagine! I’m warning you.”
“You’ve osseous formations on the occiput! Bone and beef aren’t brain! How d’you suppose I made millions? By being afraid of things? You and this man Ommony would make a pair in double-harness! Go to bed.”
“All right. I’ve said my say, and you won’t listen. I tell you again, you’re wrong. D’you want my resignation?”
“No, you ass! When I want that I’ll tell you quick enough. You’re a first-class detail man—a perfect child when it comes to visualizing. Turn in and sleep off your fears!”
Jeff came glooming out on the way to his tent, and sat down for a minute beside Ommony; and once again, as the pipe-ash glowed and dimmed, Ommony divined the wise remark to offer:
“You see, you’re a bit too big to quit in the middle of it all. I’ve depended on you all along to go to the Panch Mahal with Strange and see him through it.”
“I’m dumb from now on!” Jeff retorted, and shoving his pipe in his pocket, strode discontentedly to bed. Ommony sat still on the veranda for half an hour, chuckling at intervals.
Next morning only the servants saw him, for he breakfasted alone and thereafter rode to the new plantations, superintending precautions against drought until it was nearly noon and time to keep the appointment with Charley Mears. He was seated up on the look-out rock when Charley came galloping down the glade, and Charley, squinting at lights and half-lights, climbed up to sit beside him.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t get the message,” Charley began when he had his breath. “The raja said he saw your dog limping along as if some one had shot her. He sent out men to hunt for any one with a firearm who might have done it.”
“In America you call that ‘bull,’” Ommony answered. “Here it’s known as eyewash. He shot the dog, but she got home.”
“How do you know that?”
Ommony whistled. Two black, naked shadows emerged from the trees and stood bathed in the sun.
“Those men saw it. They came last night and told me.”
He whistled again, and the junglis disappeared.
“Well I’m !” muttered Charley.
“No. The raja is. It’s too bad poor old Di got hurt, but she’ll recover, and the raja won’t. For doing that, he shall have his own way and go to Paris, where the last state of that raja will be worse than the first. Do you know Paris, Charley? There are professionals there, male and female, who can squeeze a raja dry in shorter time than it takes you and me to squeeze a lemon. Thereafter, the ash-heap! He’s a nuisance here.”
“Too bad it’ll be his subjects’ money.”
“No. Strange’s money!”
“I don’t get you.”
“Strange will! And Zelmira will get him, if she plays her hand wisely. There’s only one link missing now. What did you come to talk to me about?”
“Nothing serious,” said Charley. “There’s a box on the way from Delhi, addressed to me in your care. Do you mind paying the charges on it and arranging for me to get it somehow?”
Ommony filled his pipe and lit it carefully before he answered. He likes to suppress excitement. He crowded it down the way he put tobacco in, making sure none protruded.
“I believe I’ll be delighted,” he said then. “Is it bad manners to ask what’s in the box?”
“My motion picture outfit.”
“Any film?”
“Scads of it.”
Ommony’s out-going breath, smoke-burdened, bore a prayer of thanks into the Infinite.
“The last link! Charley, you shall have that box if I have to set it on my own head, and carry it on foot, alone, all the way across the forest to Chota Pegu! What did the gods look like who put that thought into your head?”
“She’s a goddess. Zelmira suggested I should ship it before we left Delhi,” Charley answered. “She’s as mad about movies as the rest of ’em.”
“Whom Allah hath made mad let none offend!” answered Ommony, piously quoting scripture.