CHAPTER XIII
Beyond question Yasmini is a craftsman of amazing skill, and her genius—as does all true genius—extends to the almost infinite consideration of small details. The medium in which she works—human weakness—affords her unlimited opportunity; and she owns the trick, that most great artists win, of not letting her general plan be known before the climax. Neither friend nor enemy is ever quite sure which is which until she solves the problem to the enemy's confusion.
But Yasmini could have failed in this case through overmuch finesse. She was not used to Germans, and could not realize until too late that her compliance with this man's every demand only served to make him more peremptory and more one-sided in his point of view. From a mere agent, offering the almost unimaginable in return for mere promises, he had grown already into a dictator, demanding action as a prelude to reward. He had even threatened to cause her, Yasmini, to be reported to the police unless she served his purpose better!
If she had obeyed the general and had picked a trooper for the business in hand, it is likely that Yasmini would have had to write a failure to her account. She had come perilously near to obedience on this occasion, and it had been nothing less than luck that put Ranjoor Singh into her hands, luck being the pet name of India's kindest god. Ranjoor Singh was needed in the instant when he came to bring the German back to earth and a due sense of proportion.
The Sikh had a rage in his heart that the German mistook for zeal and native ferocity; his manners became so brusk under the stress of it that they might almost have been Prussian, and, met with its own reflection, that kind of insolence grows limp.
Having agreed to lie, Ranjoor Singh lied with such audacity and so much skill that it would have needed Yasmini to dare disbelieve him.
The German sat in state near Yasmini's great window and received, one after another, liars by the dozen from the hills where lies are current coin. Some of them had listened to his lectures, and some had learned of them at second hand; every man of them had received his cue from Yasmini. There was too much unanimity among them; they wanted too little and agreed too readily to what the German had to say; he was growing almost suspicious toward half-past ten, when Ranjoor Singh came in.
There was no trooper behind him this time, for the man had been sent to watch for the regiment's departure, and to pounce then on Bagh, the charger, and take him away to safety. After the charger had been groomed and fed and hidden, the trooper was to do what might be done toward securing the risaldar-major's kit; but under no condition was the kit to have precedence.
"Groom him until he shines! Guard him until I call for him! Keep him exercised!" was the three-fold order that sang through the trooper's head and overcame astonishment in the hurry to obey.
Now it was the German's turn to be astonished. Ranjoor Singh strode in, dressed as a Sikh farmer, and frowned down Yasmini's instant desire to poke fun at him. The German rose to salute him, and the Sikh acknowledged the salute with a nod such as royalty might spare for a menial.
"Come!" he said curtly, and the German followed him out through the door to the stair-head where so many mirrors were. There Ranjoor Singh made quite a little play of making sure they were not overheard, while the German studied his own Mohammedan disguise from twenty different angles.
"Too much finery!" growled Ranjoor Singh. "I will attend to that. First, listen! Other than your talk, I have had no proof at all of you! You are a spy!"
"I am a"
"You are a spy! All the spies I ever met were liars from the ground up! I am a patriot. I am working to save my country from a yoke that is unbearable, and I must deal in subterfuge and treachery if I would win. But you are merely one who sows trouble. You are like the little jackal—the dirty little jackal—who starts a fight between two tigers so that he may fill his mean belly! Don't speak—listen!"
The German's jaw had dropped, but not because words rushed to his lips. He seemed at a loss for them.
"You made me an offer, and I accepted it," continued Ranjoor Singh. "I accepted it on behalf of India. I shall show you in about an hour from now a native regiment—one of the very best native regiments, so mutinous that its officers must lead it out of Delhi to a camp where it will be less dangerous and less likely to corrupt others."
The German nodded. He had asked no more.
"Then, if you fail to fulfill your part," said Ranjoor Singh grimly, "I shall lock you in the cellar of this house, where Yasmini keeps her cobras!"
"Vorwärts!" laughed the German, for there was conviction in every word the Sikh had said. "I will show you how a German keeps his bargain!"
"A German?" growled Ranjoor Singh. "A German—Germany is nothing to me! If Germany can pick the bones I leave, what do I care? One does not bargain with a spy, either; one pays his price, and throws him to the cobras if he fail! Come!"
The question of precedence no longer seemed to trouble Ranjoor Singh; he turned his back without apology, and as the German followed him down-stairs there came a giggle from behind the curtains.
"Were we overheard?" he asked.
But Ranjoor Singh did not seem to care any more, and did not trouble to answer him.
Outside the door was a bullock-cart, of the kind in which women make long journeys, with a painted, covered super-structure. The German followed Ranjoor Singh into it, and without any need for orders the Sikh driver began to twist the bullocks' tails and send them along at the pace all India loves. Then Ranjoor Singh began to pay attention to the German's dress, pulling off his expensive turban and replacing that and his clothes with cheaper, dirtier ones.
"Why?" asked the German.
"I will show you why," said Ranjoor Singh.
Then they sat back, each against a side of the cart, squatting native style.
"This regiment that I will show you is mine," said Ranjoor Singh. "I command a squadron of it—or, rather, did, until I became suspected. Every man in the regiment is mine, and will follow me at a word. When I give the word they will kill their English officers."
He leaned his head out of the opening to spit; there seemed something in his mouth that tasted nasty.
"Why did they mutiny?" asked the German.
"Ordered to France!" said Ranjoor Singh, with lowered eyes.
For a while there was silence as the cart bumped through the muddy rutty streets; the only sound that interfered with thought was the driver's voice, apostrophizing the bullocks; and the abuse he poured on them was so time-honored as to be unnoticeable, like the cawing of the city crows.
"It is strange," said the German, after a while. "For years I have tried to get in touch with native officers. Here and there I have found a Sepoy who would talk with me, but you are the first officer." He was brown-studying, talking almost to himself. He did not see the curse in the risaldar-major's eyes.
"I have found plenty of merchants who would promise to finance revolt, and plenty of hillmen who would promise anything. But all said, 'We will do what the army does!' And I could not find in all this time, among all those people, anybody to whom I dared show what we—Germany—can do to help. I have seen from the first it was only with the aid of the army that we could accomplish anything, yet the army has been unapproachable. How is it that you have seemed so loyal, all of you, until the minute of war?"
Ranjoor Singh spat again through the opening with thoroughness and great deliberation. Then he proceeded to give proof that, as Yasmini had said, he was really not a buffalo at all. A fool would have taken chances with any one of a dozen other explanations. Ranjoor Singh, with an expression that faintly suggested Colonel Kirby, picked the right, convincing one.
"The English are not bad people," he said simply. "They have left India better than they found it. They have been unselfish. They have treated us soldiers fairly and honorably. We would not have revolted had the opportunity not come, but we have long been waiting for the opportunity.
"We are not madmen—we are soldiers. We know the value of mere words. We have kept our plans secret from the merchants and the hillmen, knowing well that they would all follow our lead. If you think that you, or Germany, have persuaded us, you are mistaken. You could not persuade me, or any other true soldier, if you tried for fifty years!
"It is because we had decided on revolt already that I was willing to listen to your offer of material assistance. We understand that Germany expects to gain advantage from our revolt, but we can not help that; that is incidental. As soldiers, we accept what aid we can get from anywhere!"
"So?" said the German.
"Ja!" said Ranjoor Singh. "And that is why, if you fail me, I shall give you to Yasmini's cobras!"
"You will admit," said the German, "when I have shown you, that Germany's foresight has been long and shrewd. Your great chance of success, my friend, like Germany's in this war, depends on a sudden, swift, tremendous success at first; the rest will follow as a logical corollary. It is the means of securing that first success that we have been making ready for you for two years and more."
"You should have credit for great secrecy," admitted Ranjoor Singh. "Until a little while ago I had heard nothing of any German plans."
"Russia got the blame for what little was guessed at!" laughed the German.
"Oh!" said Ranjoor Singh.
A little before midday they reached the Ajmere Gate, and the lumbering cart passed under it. At the farther side the driver stopped his oxen without orders, and Ranjoor Singh stepped out, looking quickly up and down the road. There were people about, but none whom he chose to favor with a second glance.
Close by the gate, almost under the shadow of it, and so drab and dirty as to be almost unnoticeable, there was a little cotton-tented booth, with a stock of lemonade and sweetmeats, that did interest him. He looked three times at it, and at the third look a Mohammedan wriggled out of it and walked away without a word.
"Come!" commanded Ranjoor Singh, and the German got out of the cart, looking not so very much unlike the poor Mohammedan who had gone away.
"Get in there!" The German slipped into the real owner's place. So far as appearances went, he was a very passable sweetmeat and lemonade seller, and Ranjoor Singh proved competent to guard against contingencies.
He picked a long stick out of the gutter and took his stand near by, frowning as he saw a carriage he suspected to be Yasmini's drive under the gate and come to a stand at the roadside, fifty or sixty yards away.
"If the officers should recognize me," he growled to the German, though seeming not to talk to him at all, "I should be arrested at once, and shot later. But the men will recognize me, and you shall see what you shall see!"
Three small boys came with a coin to spend, but Ranjoor Singh drove them away with his long stick; they argued shrilly from a distance, and one threw a stone at him, but finally they decided he was some new sort of plain-clothes "constabeel," and went away.
One after another, several natives came to make small purchases, but, not being boys any longer, a gruff word was enough to send them running. And then came the clatter of hoofs of the advance-guard, and the German looked up to see a fire in Ranjoor Singh's eyes that a caged tiger could not have outdone.
All this while the bullock-cart in which they had come remained in the middle of the road, its driver dozing dreamily on his seat and the bullocks perfectly content to chew the cud. At the sound of the hoofs behind him, the driver suddenly awoke and began to belabor and kick his animals; he seemed oblivious of another cart that came toward him, and of a third that hurried after him from underneath the gate.
In less than sixty seconds all three carts were neatly interlocked, and their respective drivers were engaged in a war of words that beggared Babel.
The advance-guard halted and added words to the torrent. Colonel Kirby caught up the advance-guard and halted, too.
"Does he look like a man who commands a loyal regiment?" asked Ranjoor Singh; and the German studied the bowed head and thoughtful angle of a man who at that minute was regretting his good friend the risaldar-major.
"You will note that he looks chastened!"
The German nodded.
In his own good time Ranjoor Singh ran out and helped with that long stick of his to straighten out the mess; then in thirty seconds the wheels were unlocked again and the carts moving in a hurry to the roadside. The advance-guard moved on, and Kirby followed. Then, troop by troop, the whole of Outram's Own rode by, and the German began to wonder. It seemed to him that the rest of the officers were not demure enough, although he admitted to himself that the enigmatic Eastern faces in the ranks might mean anything at all. He noted that there was almost no talking, and he took that for a good sign for Germany.
D Squadron came last of all, and convinced him. They rode regretfully, as men who missed their squadron leader, and who, in spite of a message from him, would have better loved to see him riding on their flank.
But Ranjoor Singh stepped out into the road, and the right-end man of the front four recognized him. Not a word was said that the German could hear, but he could see the recognition run from rank to rank and troop to troop, until the squadron knew to a man; he saw them glance at Ranjoor Singh, and from him to one another, and ride on with a new stiffening and a new air of "now we'll see what comes of it!"
It was as evident, to his practised eye, that they were glad to have seen Ranjoor Singh, and looked forward to seeing him again very shortly, as that they were in a mood for trouble, and he decided to believe the whole of what the Sikh had said on the strength of the obvious truth of part of it.
"Watch now the supply train!" growled Ranjoor Singh, as the wagons began to rumble by.
The German had no means of knowing that the greater part of the regiment's war provisions had gone away by train from a Delhi station. The wagons that followed the regiment on the march were a generous allowance for a regiment going into camp, but not more than that. The spies whose duty it was to watch the railway sidings reported to somebody else and not to him.
Ranjoor Singh beckoned him after a while, and they came out into the road, to stand between two of the bullock-wagons and gaze after the regiment. The shuttered carriage that Ranjoor Singh had suspected to be Yasmini's passed them again, and the man beside the driver said something to Ranjoor Singh in an undertone, but the German did not hear it; he was watching the colonel and another officer talking together beside the road in the distance. The shuttered carriage passed on, but stopped in the shadow of the gate.
"Look!" said the German. "I thought that officer—the adjutant, isn't he—recognized you. Now he is pointing you out to the colonel! Look!"
Ranjoor Singh did look, and he saw that Colonel Kirby was waiting to let the regiment go by. He knew what was passing through Kirby's mind, since it is given to some men, native and English, to have faith in each other. And he knew that there was danger ahead of him through which he might not come with his life, perhaps even with his honor. He would have given, like Kirby, a full year's pay for a hand-shake then, and have thought the pay well spent.
Kirby began to canter back.
"He has recognized you!" said the German.
"And he is coming to cut me down!" swore Ranjoor Singh.
He dragged the German back behind the nearest cart, and together they ran for the gloom of the big gate, leaving the driver of the bullock-cart standing at gaze where Ranjoor Singh had stood. The door of the shuttered carriage flew open as they reached it, and Ranjoor Singh pushed the German in. He stood a moment longer, with his foot on the carriage step, watching Colonel Kirby; he watched him question the bullock-cart driver.
Then a voice that he recognized said, "Buffalo!" and he followed into the carriage, shutting the door behind him.
The carriage was off almost before the door slammed.
•••••••
"Am I to be kept waiting for a week, while a Jat farmer gazes at cattle on the road?" demanded Yasmini, sitting forward out of the darkest corner of the carriage and throwing aside a veil. "He cares nothing for thee!" she whispered. "Didst thou see the jasmine drop into his lap from the gate? That was mine! Didst thou see him button it into his tunic? So, Ranjoor Singh! That for thy colonel sahib! And his head will smell of my musk for a week to come! What—what fools men are! Jaldee, jaldee!" she called to the driver through the shutters, and the man whipped up his pair.
It was more than scandalous to be driven through Delhi streets in a shuttered carriage with a native lady, and even the German's presence scarcely modified the sensation; the German did not appreciate the rarity of his privilege, for he was too busy staring through the shutters at a world which tried its best to hide excitement; but Ranjoor Singh was aware all the time of Yasmini's mischievous eyes and of mirth that held her all but speechless. He knew that she would make up tales about that ride, and would have told them to half of India to his enduring shame before a year was out.
"Are you satisfied?" she asked the German, after a long silence.
"Of what?" asked the German.
"That Ranjoor Singh sahib can do what he has promised."
The German laughed.
"I have an excuse for doing what I promised," he said, "if that is what you mean."
"That regiment," said Ranjoor Singh, since he had made up his mind to lie thoroughly, "will camp a day's march out of Delhi. The men will wait to hear from me for a day or two, but after that they will mutiny and be done with it; the men are almost out of hand with excitement."
"You mean"
The German's eyebrows rose, and his light-blue eyes sought Ranjoor Singh's.
"I mean that now is the time to do your part, that I may continue doing mine!" he answered.
"What I have to offer would be of no use without the regiment to use it," said the German. "Let the regiment mutiny, and I will lead you and it at once to what I spoke of."
"No," said Ranjoor Singh.
"What then?"
"It does not suit my plan, or my convenience, that there should be any outbreak until I myself have knowledge of all my resources. When everything is in my hand, I will strike hard and fast in my own good time."
"You seem to forget," said the German, "that the material aid I offer is from Germany, and that therefore Germany has a right to state the terms. Of course, I know there are the cobras, but I am not afraid of them. Our stipulation is that there shall be at least a show of fight before aid is given. If the cobras deal with me, and my secret dies with me, there will be one German less and that is all. That regiment I have seen looks ripe for mutiny."
Ranjoor Singh drew breath slowly through set teeth.
"Let it mutiny," said the German, "and I am ready with such material assistance as will place Delhi at its mercy. Delhi is the key to India!"
"It shall mutiny to-night!" said Ranjoor Singh abruptly.
The German stared hard at him, though not so hard as Yasmini; the chief difference was that nobody could have told she was staring, whereas the German gaped.
"It shall mutiny to-night, and you shall be there! You shall lead us then to this material aid you promise, and after that, if it all turns out to be a lie, as I suspect, we will talk about cobras."
For a minute, two minutes, three minutes, while the rubber tires bumped along the road toward Yasmini's, the German sat in silence, looking straight in front of him.
"Order horses for him and me!" commanded Ranjoor Singh; and Yasmini bowed obedience.
"When will you start?" the German asked.
"Now! In twenty minutes! We will follow the regiment and reach camp soon after it."
"I must speak first with my colleagues," said the German.
"No!" growled the Sikh.
"My secret information is that several regiments are ordered oversea. Some of them will consent to go, my friend. We will do well to wait until as many regiments as possible are on the water, and then strike hard with the aid of such as have refused to go."
The carriage drew up at Yasmini's front door, and a man jumped off the box seat to open the carriage.
"Say the rest inside!" she ordered. "Go into the house! Quickly!"
So the German stepped out first, moving toward the door much too spryly for the type of street merchant he was supposed to be.
"Do you mean that?" whispered Yasmini, as she pushed past Ranjoor Singh. "Do you mean to ride away with him and stage a mutiny? How can you?"
"She-buffalo!" he answered, with the first low laugh she had heard from him since the game began.
She ran into the house and all the way up the two steep flights of stairs, laughing like a dozen peals of fairy bells.
At the head of the stairs she began to sing, for she looked back and saw babu Sita Ram waddling wheezily up-stairs after Ranjoor Singh and the German.
"The gods surely love Yasmini!" she told her maids. "Catch me that babu and bottle him! Drive him into a room where I can speak with him alone!"
"Oh, my God, my God!" wailed the babu at the stair-head from amid a maze of women who hustled and shoved him all one way, and that the way he did not want to go. "I must speak with that German gentleman who was giving lecture here—must positivelee give him warning, or all his hopes will be blasted everlastinglee! No—that is room where are cobras—I will not go there!"
In three native languages, one after the other, he pleaded and wailed to no good end; the women were too many for him. He was shoved into a small room as a fat beast is driven into a slaughter-stall, and a door was slammed shut on him. He screamed at an unexpected voice from behind a curtain, and a moment later burst into a sweat from reaction at the sight of Yasmini.
"Listen, babuji," she purred to him.
"Who was that man asking for me?" demanded the German.
"How should I know?" snorted Ranjoor Singh. "Are we to turn aside for every fat babu that asks to speak to us? I have sent for horses."
"I will speak with that man!" said the German.
He began to walk up and down the length of the long room, pushing aside the cushions irritably, and at one end knocking over a great bowl of flowers. He did not appear conscious of his clumsiness, and did not seem to see the maids who ran to mop up the water. At the next turn down the room he pushed between them as if they had not been there. Ranjoor Singh stood watching him, stroking a black beard reflectively; he was perfectly sure that Yasmini would make the next move, and was willing to wait for it.
"The horses should be here in a few minutes," he said hopefully, after a while, for he heard a door open.
Then babu Sita Ram burst in, half running, and holding his great stomach as he always did when in a hurry.
"Oh, my God!" he wailed. "Quick! Where is German gentleman? And not knowing German, how shall I make meaning clear? German should be reckoned among dead languages and Ah! My God, sir, you astonish me! Resemblance to Mohammedan of no particular standing in community is first class! How shall I"
"Say it in English!" said the German, blocking his way.
"My God, sahib, it is bad news! How shall I avoid customaree stigma attaching to bearer of ill tidings?"
"Speak!" said the German. "I won't hurt you!"
"Sahib, in pursuit unavailingly of chance emolument in neighborhood of Chandni Chowk just recently"
"How recently?" the German asked.
"Oh, my God! So recently that there are yet erections of cuticle all down my back! Sahib, not more than twenty minutes have elapsed, and I saw this with my own eyes!"
"Saw what—where?"
"Where? Have I not said where? My God, I am so upset as to be losing sense of all proportion! Where? At German place of business—Sigelman and Meyer—in small street leading out of Chandni Chowk. In search of chance emolument, and finding none yet—finding none yet, sahib—sahib, I am poor man, having wife and familee dependent and also many other disabilitees, including wife's relatives."
The German gave him some paper money impatiently. The babu unfolded it, eyed the denomination with a spasm of relief, folded it again, and appeared to stow it into his capacious stomach.
"Sahib, while I was watching, police came up at double-quick march and arrested everybodee, including all Germans in building. There was much annoyance manifested when search did not reveal presence of one other sahib. So I ran to give warning, being veree poor man and without salaried employment."
"What happened to the Germans?"
"Jail, sahib! All have gone to jail! By this time they are all excommunication, supplied with food and water by authorities. Having once been jail official myself, I can testify"
"What happened to the office?"
"Locked up, sahib! Big red seal—much sealing wax, and stamp of police department, with notice regarding penalty for breaking same, and also police sentry at door!"
Looking more unlike a Mohammedan street vender than ever, the German began to pace the room again with truly martial strides, frowning as he sought through the recesses of his mind for the correct solution of the problem.
"Listen!" he said, coming to a stand in front of Ranjoor Singh. "I have changed my mind!"
"The horses are ready," answered Ranjoor Singh.
"The German government has been to huge expense to provide aid of the right kind, to be ready at the right minute. My sole business is to see that the utmost use is made of it."
"That also is my sole business!" vowed Ranjoor Singh.
"You have heard that the police are after me?"
Ranjoor Singh nodded.
"Can you get away from here unseen—unknown to the police?"
Ranjoor Singh nodded again, for he was very sure of Yasmini's resource.
Again the German began to pace the room, now with his hands behind him, now with folded arms, now with his chin down to his breast, and now with a high chin as he seemed on the verge of reaching some determination. And then Yasmini began to loose the flood of her resources, that Ranjoor Singh might make use of what he chose; she was satisfied to leave the German in the Sikh's hands and to squander aid at random.
Men began to come in, one at a time. They would whisper to Ranjoor Singh, and hurry out again. Some of them would whisper to Yasmini over in the window, and she would give them mock messages to carry, very seriously. Babu Sita Ram was stirred out of a meditative coma and sent hurrying away, to come back after a little while and wring his hands. He ran over to Yasmini.
"It is awful!" he wailed. "Soon there will be no troops left with which to quell Mohammedan uprising. All loyal troops are leaving, and none but disloyal men are left behind. The government is mad, and I am veree much afraid!"
Yasmini quieted him, and Ranjoor Singh, pretending to be busy with other messengers, noted the effect of the babu's wail on the German. He judged the "change of mind" had gone far enough.
"We should lose time by following my regiment," he said at last. "There are now five more regiments ready to mutiny, and they will come to me to wherever I send for them."
The German's blue eyes gazed into the Sikh's brown ones very shrewdly and very long. His hand sought the neighborhood of his hip, and dwelt there a moment longer than the Sikh thought necessary.
"I have decided we must hurry," he said. "I will show you what I have to show. I will not be taking chances. You must bring a messenger, and he must go for your mutineers while you stay there with me. When we are there, you will be in my power until the regiments come; and when they come I will surrender to you. Do you agree?"
"Yes," said Ranjoor Singh.
"Then choose your messenger. Choose a man who will not try to play tricks—a man who will not warn the authorities, because if there is any slip, any trickery, I will undo in one second all that has been done!"
So Ranjoor Singh conferred with Yasmini over the two great bowls of flowers that always stand in her big window; and she suppressed a squeal of excitement while she watched the German resume his pacing up and down.
"Take Sita Ram!" she advised.
Ranjoor Singh scowled at the babu.
"That fat bellyful of fear!" he growled. "I would rather take a pig!"
"All the same, take Sita Ram!" she advised.
So the babu was roused again out of a comfortable snooze, and Yasmini whispered to him something that frightened him so much that he trembled like a man with palsy.
"I am married man with children!" he expostulated.
"I will be kind to your widow!" purred Yasmini.
"I will not go!" vowed the babu.
"Put him in the cobra room!" she commanded, and some maids came closer to obey.
"I will go!" said Sita Ram. "But, oh, my God, a man should receive pecuniary recompense far greater than legendary ransom! I shall not come back alive! I know I shall not come back alive!"
"Who cares, babuji?" asked Yasmini.
"True!" said Sita Ram. "This is land of devil-take-hindmost, and with my big stomach I am often last. I am veree full of fear!"
"We shall need food," interposed the German. "Water will be there, but we had better have sufficient food with us for two nights."
Yasmini gave a sharp order, and several of her maids ran out of the room. Ten minutes later they returned with three baskets, and gave one each to the German, to Ranjoor Singh, and to Sita Ram. Sita Ham opened his and peered in. The German opened his, looked pleased, and closed the lid again. Ranjoor Singh accepted his at its face value, and did not open it.
"May the memsahib never lack plenty from which to give!" he said, for there is no word for "Thank you" in all India.
"I will bless the memsahib at each mouthful!" said Sita Ram.
"Truly a bellyful of blessings!" laughed Yasmini.
Then they all went to the stair-head and watched and listened through the open door while a closed carriage was driven away in a great hurry. Three maids and six men came up-stairs one after another, at intervals, to report the road all clear; the first carriage had not been followed, and there was nobody watching; another carriage waited. Babu Sita Ram was sent downstairs to get into the waiting carriage and stay there on the lookout.
"Now bring him better clothes!" said Ranjoor Singh.
But Yasmini had anticipated that order.
"They are in the carriage, on the seat," she said.
So the German went down-stairs and climbed in beside the babu, changing his turban at once for the better one that he found waiting in there.
"This performance is worth a rajah's ransom!" grumbled babu Sita Ram. "Will sahib not put elbow in my belly, seeing same is highly sensitive?"
But the German laughed at him.
"Love is rare, non-contagious sickness!" asserted Sita Ram with conviction.
At the head of the stairs Ranjoor Singh and Yasmini stood looking into each other's eyes. He looked into pools of laughter and mystery that told him nothing at all; she saw a man's heart glowing in his brown ones.
"It will be for you now," said Ranjoor Singh, "to act with speed and all discretion. I don't know what we are going to see, although I know it is artillery of some sort. I am sure he has a plan for destroying every trace of whatever it is, and of himself and me, if he suspects treachery. I know no more. I can only go ahead."
"And trust me!" said Yasmini.
The Sikh did not answer.
"And trust me!" repeated Yasmini. "I will save you out of this, Ranjoor Singh sahib, that we may fight our quarrel to a finish later on. What would the world be without enemies? You will not find artillery!"
"How do you know?"
"I have known for nearly two years what you will find there, my friend! Only I have not known exactly where to find it. And yet sometimes I have thought that I have known that, too! Go, Ranjoor Singh. You will be in danger. Above all, do not try to force that German's hand too far until I come with aid. It is better to talk than fight, so long as the enemy is strongest!"
"Woman!" swore Ranjoor Singh so savagely that she laughed straight into his face. "If you suspect—if you can guess where we are going—send men to surround the place and watch!"
"Will a tiger walk into a watched lair?" she answered. "Go, talker! Go and do things!"
So, swearing and dissatisfied, Ranjoor Singh went down and climbed on to the box seat of a two-horse carriage.
"Which way?" he asked; and the German growled an answer through the shutters.
"Now straight on!" said the German, after fifteen minutes. "Straight on out of Delhi!"
They were headed south, and driving very slowly, for to have driven fast would have been to draw attention to themselves. Ranjoor Singh scarcely troubled to look about him, and Sita Ram fell into a doze, in spite of his protestations of fear. The German was the only one of the party who was at pains to keep a lookout, and he was most exercised to know whether they were being followed; over and over again he called on Ranjoor Singh to stop until a following carriage should overtake them and pass on.
So they were a very long time driving to Old Delhi, where the ruins of old cities stand piled against one another in a tangled mass of verdure that is hardly penetrable except where the tracks wind in and out. The shadow of the Kutb Minar was long when they drove past it, and it was dusk when the German shouted and Ranjoor Singh turned the horses in between two age-old trees and drew rein at a shattered temple door.
Some monkeys loped away, chattering, and about a thousand parakeets flew off, shrilling for another roost. But there was no other sign of life.
"Stable the horses in here!" said the German; and they did so, Ranjoor Singh dipping water out of a rain-pool and filling a stone trough that had once done duty as receptacle for gifts for a long-forgotten god. Then they pushed the carriage under a tangle of hanging branches.
"Look about you!" advised the German, as he emptied food for the horses on the temple floor; and babu Sita Ram made very careful note of the temple bearings, while Ranjoor Singh and the German blocked the old doorway with whatever they could find to keep night-prowlers outside and the horses in.
Then the German led the way into the dark, swinging a lantern that he had unearthed from some recess. Babu Sita Ram walked second, complaining audibly and shuddering at every shadow. Last came Ranjoor Singh, grim, silent. And the rain beat down on all three of them until they were drenched and numb, and their feet squelched in mud at every step.
For all the darkness, Ranjoor Singh made note of the fact that they were following a wagon track, into which the wheels of a native cart had sunk deep times without number. Only native ox-carts leave a track like that.
It must have been nine o'clock, and the babu was giving signs of nearly complete exhaustion, when they passed beyond a ring of trees into a clearing. They stood at the edge of the clearing in a shadow for about ten minutes, while the German watched catwise for signs of life.
"It is now," he said, tapping Ranjoor Singh's chest, "that you begin to be at my mercy. I assure you that the least disobedience on your part will mean your instant death!"
"Lead on!" growled Ranjoor Singh.
"Do you recognize the place?"
Ranjoor Singh peered through the rain in every direction. At each corner of the clearing, north, south, east and west, he could dimly see some sort of ruined arch, and there was another ruin in the center.
"No," he said.
"This is the oldest temple ruin anywhere near Delhi. On some inscriptions it is called 'Temple of the Four Winds,' but the old Hindu who lived in it before we bribed him to go away called it the 'Winds of the World.' It is known as 'Winds of the World' on the books of the German War Office. I think it is really of Greek origin myself, but I am not an Orientalist, and the text-books all say that I am wrong."
"Lead on!" said Ranjoor Singh; and the German led them, swinging his lantern and seeming not at all afraid of being seen now.
"We have taken steps quite often to make the people hereabouts believe this temple haunted!" he said. "They avoid it at night as if the devil lived here. If any of them see my lantern, they will not stop running till they reach the sea!"
They came to a ruin that was such an utter ruin that it looked as if an earthquake must have shaken a temple to pieces to be disintegrated by the weather; but Ranjoor Singh noticed that the cart-tracks wound around the side of it, and when they came to a fairly large teak trap-door, half hidden by creepers, he was not much surprised.
"My God, gentlemen!" said Sita Ram. "That place is wet-weather refuge for many million cobras! If I must die, I will prefer to perish in rain, where wife and family may find me for proper funeral rites. I will not go in there!"
But the German raised the trap-door, and Ranjoor Singh took the unhappy babu by the scruff of his fat neck.
"In with you!" he ordered.
And, chattering as if his teeth were castanets, the babu trod gingerly down damp stone steps whose center had been worn into ruts by countless feet. The German came last, and let the trap slam shut.
"My God!" yelled the babu. "Let me go! I am family man!"
"Vorwärts!" laughed the German, leading the way toward a teak door set in a stone wall.
They were in an ancient temple vault that seemed to have miraculously escaped from the destruction that had overwhelmed the whole upper part. Not a stone of it was out of place. It was wind and water-tight, and the vaulted roof, that above was nothing better than a mound of debris, from below looked nearly as perfect as when the stones had first been fitted into place.
The German produced a long key, opened the teak door, and stood aside to let them pass.
"No, no!" shuddered Sita Ram; but Ranjoor Singh pushed him through; the German followed, and the door slammed shut as the trap had done.
"And now, my friends, I will convince you!" said the German, holding the lantern high. "What are those?"
The light from the solitary lantern fell on rows and rows of bales, arranged in neat straight lines, until away in the distance it suggested endless other shadowy bales, whose outlines could be little more than guessed at. They were in a vault so huge that Ranjoor Singh made no attempt to estimate its size.
"See this!" said the German, walking close to something on a wooden stand, and he held the light above it. "In the office in Delhi that the police have just sealed up there is a wireless apparatus very much like this. This, that you see here, is a detonator. This is fulminate of mercury. This is dynamite. With a touch of a certain key in Delhi we could have blown up this vault at any minute of the past two years, if we had thought it necessary to hide our tracks. A shot from this pistol would have much the same effect," he added darkly.
"But the bales?" asked Ranjoor Singh. "What is in the bales?"
"Dynamite bombs, my friend! You native soldiers have no artillery, and we have seen from the first the necessity of supplying a substitute. By making full use of the element of surprise, these bombs should serve your purpose. There are one million of them, packed two hundred in a bale—much more useful than artillery in the hands of untrained men!
"Those look like bales of blankets. They are. Cotton blankets from München-Gladbach. Only, the middle blankets have been omitted, and the outer ones have served as a cushion to prevent accidental discharge. They have been imported in small lots at a time, and brought here four or five at a time in ox-carts from one or other of the Delhi railway stations by men who are no longer in this part of India—men who have been pensioned off."
"How did you get them through the Customs?" wondered Ranjoor Singh.
"Did you ever see a rabbit go into his hole?" the German asked. "They were very small consignments, obviously of blankets. The duty was paid without demur, and the price paid the Customs men was worth their while. That part was easy!"
"Of what size are the bombs?" asked Ranjoor Singh.
"About the size of an orange. Come, I'll show you."
He led him to an opened bale, and showed him two hundred of them nestling like the eggs of some big bird.
"My God!" moaned Sita Ram. "Are those dynamite? Sahibs—snakes are better! Snakes can feel afraid, but those—ow! Let me go away!"
"Let him go," said the German. "Let him take his message."
"Go, then!" ordered Ranjoor Singh; and the German walked to the door to let him out.
"What is your message?" he asked.
"To Yasmini first, for she is in touch with all of them," said Sita Ram. "First I will go to Yasmini. Then she will come here to say the regiments have started. First she will come alone; after her the regiments."
"She had better be alone!" said the German. "Go on, run! And don't forget the way back? Wait! How will she know the way? How will you describe it to her?"
"She? Describe it to her? I will tell her 'The Winds of the World,' and she will come straight."
"How? How will she know?"
"The priest who used to be here—whom you bribed to go away—he is her night doorkeeper now!" said Sita Ram. "Yes, she will come veree quickly!"
The German let him out with an air mixed of surprise and disbelief, and returned to Ranjoor Singh with far less iron in his stride, though with no less determination.
"Now we shall see!" he said, drawing an automatic pistol and cocking it carefully. "This is not meant as a personal threat to you, so long as we two are in here alone. It's in case of trickery from outside. I shall blow this place sky-high if anything goes wrong. If the regiments come, good! You shall have the bombs. If they don't come, or if there's a trick played—click! Good-by! We'll argue the rest in Heaven!"
"Very well," said Ranjoor Singh; and, to show how little he felt concerned, he drew his basket to him and began to eat.
The German followed suit. Then Ranjoor Singh took most of his wet clothes off and spread them upon the bales to dry. The German imitated that too.
"Go to sleep if you care to," said the German. "I shall stand watch," he added, with a dry laugh.
But if a Sikh soldier can not manage without sleep, there is nobody on earth who can. Ranjoor Singh sat back against a bale, and the watch resolved itself into a contest of endurance, with the end by no means in sight.
"How long should it take that man to reach her?" asked the German.
"Who knows?" the Sikh answered. "Perhaps three hours, perhaps a week! She is never still, and there are those five regiments to hold in readiness."
"She is a wonderful woman," said the German.
Ranjoor Singh grunted.
"How is it that she has known of this place all this time, and yet has never tried to meddle with us?"
"I, too, am anxious to know that!" said Ranjoor Singh.
"You are surly, my friend! You do not like this pistol? You take it as an insult? Is that it?"
"I am thinking of those regiments, and of these grenades, and of what I mean to do," said Ranjoor Singh.
"Let us talk it over."
"No."
"Please your self!"
They sat facing each other for hour after dreary hour, leaning back against bales and thinking each his own thoughts. After about four hours of it, it occurred to the German to dismantle the wireless detonator.
"We should have been blown up if the police had grown inquisitive," he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, returning to his seat.
After that they sat still for four hours more, and then put their clothes on, not that they were dry yet, but the German had grown tired of comparing Ranjoor Singh's better physique with his own. He put his clothes on to hide inferiority, and Ranjoor Singh followed suit for the sake of manners.
"What rank do you hold in your army at home?" asked Ranjoor Singh, after an almost endless interval.
"If I told you that, my friend, you would be surprised."
"I think not," said Ranjoor Singh. "I think you are an officer who was dismissed from the service."
"What makes you think so?"
"I am sure of it!"
"What makes you sure?"
"You are too well educated for a non-commissioned officer. If you had not been dismissed from the service you would be on the fighting strength, or else in the reserve and ready for the front in Europe. And what army keeps spies of your type on its strength? Am I right?"
But then came Yasmini, carrying her food-basket as the rest had done. She knocked at the outer trap-door, and the German ran to peep through a hidden window at her. Then he went up a partly ruined stair and looked all around the clearing through gaps in the debris overhead that had been glazed for protection's sake. Then he admitted her.
She ran in past him, ran past him again when he opened the second door, and laughed at Ranjoor Singh. She seemed jubilant and very little interested in the bombs that the German was at pains to explain to her. She had to tell of five regiments on the way.
"The first will be here in two or three hours" she asserted; "your men, Ranjoor Singh—your Jat Sikhs that are ever first to mutiny!"
She squealed delight as the Sikh's face flushed at the insult.
"What is the cocked pistol for?" she asked the German.
He told her, but she did not seem frightened in the least. She began to sing, and her voice echoed strangely through the vault until she herself seemed to grow hypnotized by it, and she began to sway, pushing her basket away from her behind a bale near where the German sat.
"I will dance for you!" she said suddenly.
She arose and produced a little wind instrument from among her clothing—a little bell-mouthed wooden thing, with a voice like Scots bagpipes.
"Out of the way, Ranjoor Singh!" she ordered. "Sit yonder. I will dance between you, so that the German sahib may watch both of us at once!"
So Ranjoor Singh went back twenty feet away, wondering at her mood and wondering even more what trick she meant to play. He had reached the conclusion, very reluctantly, that presently the German would fire that pistol of his and end the careers of all three of them; so he was thinking of the squadron on its way to France. In a way he was sorry for Yasmini; but it was the squadron and Colonel Kirby that drew his heart-strings.
Swaying to and fro, from the waist upward, Yasmini began to play her little instrument. The echoing vault became a solid sea of throbbing noise, and as she played she increased her speed of movement, until the German sat and gaped. He had seen her dance on many more than one occasion. So had Ranjoor Singh. Never had either of them, or any living man, seen Yasmini dance as she did that night.
She was a storm. Her instrument was but an added touch of artistry to heighten the suggestion. Prom a slow, rhythmic swing she went by gusts and fits and starts to the wildest, utterly abandoned fury of a hurricane, sweeping a wide circle with her gauzy dress; and at the height of each elemental climax, in mid-whirl of some new amazing figure, she would set her instrument to screaming, until the German shouted "Bravo!" and Ranjoor Singh nodded grave approval.
"Kreuz blitzen!" swore the German suddenly, leaping to his feet and staggering.
And Yasmini pounced on him. Ranjoor Singh could not see what had happened, but he sprang to his feet and ran toward them. But before he could reach them Yasmini had snatched the German's pistol and tossed it to him, standing back from the writhing German, panting, with blazing eyes, and looking too lovely to be human. She did not speak. She looked.
And Ranjoor Singh looked too. Under the writhing German, and back again over him, there crawled a six-foot hooded cobra, seeming to caress the carcass of his prey.
Yasmini stepped back from the writhing German
"He will be dead in five—ten minutes," said Yasmini, "and then I will catch my snake again! If you want to ask him questions you had better hurry!"
Then Ranjoor Singh recalled the offices that men had done for him when he was wounded. He asked the German if he might send messages, and to whom. But the dying man seemed to be speechless, and only writhed. It was nearly a minute before Ranjoor Singh divined his purpose, and pounced on the hand that lay underneath him. He wrenched away another pistol only just in time. The snake crawled away, and Yasmini coaxed it slowly back into its basket.
"Now," she said, "when he is dead we will drive back to Delhi and amuse ourselves! You shall run away to fight men you never quarreled with, and I will govern India! Is that not so?"
Ranjoor Singh did not answer her. He kept trying again and again to get some message from the German to send perhaps to a friend in Germany. But the man died speechless, and Ranjoor Singh could find no scrap of paper on him or no mark that would give any clue to his identity.
"Come!" said Yasmini. "Lock the door on him. We will tell the general sahib, and the general sahib will send some one to bury him. Come!"
"Not yet," said Ranjoor Singh. "Speak. When did you first know that these Germans had taken this vault to use?"
"More than two years ago," she boasted, "when the old priest, that was no priest at all, came to me to be doorkeeper."
"And when did you know that they were storing dynamite in here?"
"I did not know."
"Then, blankets?"
"Bah! Two years ago, when a Customs clerk with too much money began to make love to a maid of mine."
"Then why did you not warn the government at once, and so save all this trouble?"
"Buffalo! Much fun that would have been! Ranjoor Singh, thy Jat imagination does thee justice. Come, come and chase that regiment of thine, and spill those stupid brains in France! Lock the door and come away!"
Brother, a favor I came to crave,
Oh, more than brother, oh, more than friend!
Spare me a half o' thy soldier grave,
That I sleep with thee at the end!
Spur to spur, and knee to knee,
Brother, I'll ride to death with thee!