A Rival from the Grave Read online

  Her full, sad mouth curved in a sarcastic smile as she continued: “But the priests do not spend years in educating these women merely for the glory of the gods—bayadères are not like Christian nuns; far from it. When the naikin has served her long novitiate and been examined for proficiency in every branch of her learning, she is ready for service. For a stipulated fee she may be hired to dance and sing at the sumptuous entertainments of the rajahs; for a greater sum she may be sent to the zenana of some prince to remain there as long as he pays the yearly rental agreed upon with the priests. But never can she be married, for she is already a wife, wedded to the god whose temple she serves.

  “I always hated the temple and the temple life. The priests were foul beasts; lazy, drunken, addicted to drugs and every imaginable form of vice; there was an undercurrent of nastiness running through every word and act and thought inside the temple, and against this I rebelled, but only instinctively, for my background was purely Hindoo, and all my experience since babyhood had been in the poisonous atmosphere of the inner temple.

  “Then, one day when I was still a little girl, according to Western ideas, I was taken with some older temple women to assist at a nautch given by a great noble, for already my voice had developed and I was clever at playing on the sitar and singing the simpler ghazals, or love songs. Traffic was impeded by a herd of sacred cows moving through the street, and our camel-carriage stopped by a corner where a missionary sahib was preaching. He talked in the vernacular, and my childish ears drank up his words as sunburned sand absorbs the grateful rain-drops. Never before had I dreamed there could be such a god as that he spoke of. The gods I knew were cruel, lecherous and vengeful; this god the Englay sahib told of was gracious, kind and merciful, ‘desiring not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should leave his wickedness and lead a new life,’ he said—and every god I knew wreaked punishment on his followers through countless incarnations. At last the missionary finished and pronounced his benediction in a foreign tongue. The words were strange to me, but the syllables clung indelibly in my childish memory: ‘. . . by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.’

  “Then the traffic was resumed and our cart moved on, but the seed of rebellion had been sown in my heart.

  “When I was fourteen it was arranged that I should go to the zenana of Karowli Singh, the new Maharajah of Dhittapur, for he had seen me dancing in the temple and desired me; desired me so much that he paid the priests an annual rental of 30,000 rupees—nearly $10,000—for me in advance.

  “The temple slaves dressed me in my finest clothes, put emerald ear-rings in my ears and a golden flower in my nose, loaded my arms and wrists and ankles with bangles and put a ring on every toe and finger. Then I was ready for my royal master—I, a child of fourteen who for seven years had been a wife, yet never felt a man’s caress. I was supposed to be elated at my fortune, and they had no thought that I would try to run away. The fact that I was destined for the harem of a rajah was considered sufficient protection; so only one old woman, too old for other service, was sent with me as ayah.

  “We had almost reached the limits of the city, and my ayah had put back the curtains of our bullock cart for air, when I chanced to see a tall, broad-shouldered sahib walking by the road. I had not seen many sahibs in my life, but this one seemed strangely familiar to me, for while he wore the white-drill clothes and pith sun-helmet common to every feringhi, his collar was different, and instead of a cravat he wore a little patch of black cloth on his chest. I recognized him; he was a missionary sahib like the one whose sermon had so thrilled me years before.

  “Before the old woman or the gharry-wallah could restrain me I had leaped from the bullock cart and rushed up to the missionary sahib. I knew just what to say, for years I had repeated those unknown but thrilling foreign words in my temple cell. I flung myself down before him, taking the dust from his feet and crying:

  “‘. . . defend us from all perils and dangers, through Jesus our Lord. Amen!’”

  “The old ayah ran screaming in protest, and the gharry-wallah joined her and would have dragged me back, but the Englay sahib carried a blackthorn stick and beat them off with it. Even when the gharry-wallah drew a knife the sahib did not let me go, but struck the knife out of his hand and beat him till he squealed for mercy.

  “Then he took me to a mission school and I was baptized as Madeline Kamla, and was no longer Kamla Devi, the temple woman.

  “Karowli Singh was furious. He demanded return of the rental he had paid for me, but the priests refused to refund it unless he delivered me to them, and so a feud was started.

  “But now I was in double peril, for both the maharajah and the priests desired me. The prince’s dignity had been affronted by my flight, and he could not regain the 30,000 rupees rental he had paid till he delivered me at the temple. The priests demanded my return that they might torture me to death as a warning to other bayadères, for if other temple women followed my example and escaped, they would lose much money.

  “But since I had been married to the great god Vishnu and made a naikin bayadère they could not put me to death ceremoniously unless I voluntarily relinquished my rank and titles. They might poison or stab me, or hide a scorpion in my bed, or the maharajah’s servants might kidnap or murder me, but only my voluntary relinquishment of my status as a wife of Vishnu could give the priests the right to torture me to death. Still, if they could once get hold of me I knew that some way would be found to make me say the ancient formula of renunciation: ‘Do with me as thou wilt.’ For a temple woman to forsake her divine husband and her marriage vows and run away, especially to become a Christian, is an unforgivable sin, you know, and merits death by torture here and unending torment throughout the Seven Eternities hereafter.

  “They tried to capture me by every means they knew. Twice emissaries from the maharajah attempted to abduct me from the mission, temple girls were sent as pretended converts to the school with poisoned sweetmeats, and even with deadly little kraits, or dust-snakes, concealed in leather bags to be put into my bed; once the mission was set afire. Finally the priests brought pressure on the British raj, and threatened an uprising if I were not returned.

  “The British did not want to give me up, but it is their policy never to interfere with the religion of the country, and my shelter by the mission was making it very difficult for the government. Finally it was decided that I would be safer in America, where chance of pursuit by the priests or maharajah seemed impossible, so it was decided to send me here; but the question of my entry offered fresh difficulties. Hindoos are not eligible for naturalization, though ethnically we are as much members of the white race as the English and Germans, and the quota barriers prevented my entry otherwise. I could come as a student, but when my studies were completed I should have to return, and that would mean my certain death. Finally”—a flush mantled her olive cheeks—“finally it was decided I might enter as a non-quota immigrant, if I came as—”

  She paused, and for the first time her escort spoke:

  “If she came in as my wife. It was my father, the Rev. Edward Anspacher, to whom she first appealed, and I met her at the mission three years later when I went out to visit Dad after my graduation from Rutgers. I don’t know how it was with Madeline—yes, I do, too, she’s told me!—it was love at first sight between us, and I’d have married her and brought her home with me even if that pack of hell-hounds hadn’t been yapping at her heels. What I can’t understand, though, is whether it’s just an evil chance that brings Karowli Singh here, or whether he found out where we lived and came here on purpose to get Madeline. It doesn’t matter much now, though; he’s seen her.”

  “But why did you—er—bow to him when you saw him tonight?” I asked the girl. “Surely, you’re so changed, with your Western clothes and the passage of time, that you might have ignored his presence, and the chances are he’d never have recognized you.”

  She gave me a qu
ick, sad smile. “Doctor Trowbridge,” she replied, “during the most impressionable period of my life I was under the utter domination of the priests, having no thought or word or act save such as they dictated. I believed implicitly in their power and in the power of the gods of India. Five years among Americans is not enough to overcome the training of a lifetime, and when a person has been reared in the knowledge that a certain class of others hold her life at the dictate of their slightest whim, and when she has been compelled to prostrate herself and kiss the earth before those others—why, when I came suddenly face to face with Karowli Singh tonight, my early training came over me with a sudden rush, and automatically I made him the ‘sublime obeisance’ with which I had been taught to greet priests and rajahs in my childhood.”

  It was very quiet in the study as the girl ceased speaking. To me there was something horrible in the matter-of-fact way in which she had related her bizarre story. She was little more than a child, and all the dreadful things of which she told had occurred since the Armistice, yet—

  “Eh bien, Monsieur,” de Grandin’s practical comment broke through my thought, “it seems they have long memories—and arms—these genial gentlemen of Dhittapur. I gave you better advice than I realized when I suggested that you leave your wraps and come with us. If you will excuse me I shall go now and retrieve them. You will await my return?” He rose with a bow, ascended the stairs to his room and employed himself with some mysterious business for a few moments.

  “I shall return anon,” he announced from the front hall. “Do you entertain Madame and Monsieur, Friend Trowbridge, and on no account permit yourselves to be enticed from the house till I come back.”

  “Not much fear of that,” I assured the visitors as the door banged to behind my little friend. “It’s nearly morning, and my practise is scarcely the kind which brings casual patients to—”

  A sudden battering-ram knocking at the front door interrupted, and, though my declaration of intention was still uncompleted, I rose with the medical man’s ingrained habit to answer the summons.

  “Be careful!” warned the girl as I went down the hall. “Do not open the door, Doctor; look through the window, first, for—”

  Some secret warning in my inner consciousness bade me follow her advice and I put back the curtain of the door’s sidelight and peered out on the darkened porch.

  Tight fingers seemed to close about my throat as I looked, and involuntarily I shook my head to clear my vision. There, crouched upon the door-mat, green eyes shining with malevolent anticipation, was a great, striped tiger, and even as I looked, I saw the beast put forth a pink tongue and lick its chaps. “Good heavens—” I began, but:

  “Kai hai!” the girl called shrilly as she peered across my shoulder at the crouching beast. Followed a flood of high-pitched, singsong phrases, screamed rather than spoken, and, accompanying them, the girl’s slim hands seemed to trace invisible figures in the air.

  Amazement gave way to something like superstitious awe in my heart as I saw the gigantic beast slowly become wraith-like, transparent, finally vanish completely, like a slow fade-out in a motion picture.

  “Wha—what was it?” I queried. “Was there really something there, or—”

  Madeline Anspacher was trembling violently, and her pale-olive face seemed to have gone paler, making her large, purple eyes seem bigger by comparison, but she took control of herself with an effort as she answered: “Yes, it was there, ready to spring on you if you unbarred the door; yet—”

  “But I saw it fade away,” I cut in. “Was it really a tiger or was it just—”

  “I can not explain,” she answered quickly. “You have seen yogis do their magic; seen them make a whole tree grow from a planted seed in a minute or so, perhaps? How they do it no one knows, but I have seen it done many times and I have heard some of their charms. The chant I recited was the one they use to make a vision vanish. I do not know the words they use to conjure up a spell, nor do I think that what I said to make it go away would have been effective if the guru had been near by; so he must be working his magic from a distance, perhaps as far away as—”

  Ron, ron, ron,

  Le bleu dragon . . .

  Singing blithely, though a trifle bawdily, Jules de Grandin came up the path, his arms laden with our visitors’ outdoor wraps.

  Sacré de nom,

  Ron, ron, ron . . .

  “De Grandin!” I cried, caution thrown away as I unlatched the door and leaped out on the porch. “Look out, de Grandin, the tiger’s there, and—”

  Something tawny-black and horribly agile, a great cat-thing, seemed suddenly to materialize out of the cold morning air and launch itself like a bolt of living fire at my small friend, and my warning changed to a shout of inarticulate terror as I looked.

  But, astonishingly, the pouncing beast seemed stopped in mid-spring, as though it came in contact with a barricade of invisible steel bars, and the little Frenchman proceeded on his way as imperturbably as though out for an early-morning stroll. “Do not disturb yourself, mon vieux,” he bade me almost casually, “it is a harmless pussy-cat they send—harmless as long as I am possessed of this!” he added, unclasping his right hand to display a crumpled marigold blossom in his palm. “For every poison there is an antidote, and this is that which makes them powerless, n’est-ce-pas, petite?” he smiled engagingly at Mrs. Anspacher.

  The girl nodded. “It is a very holy flower in India,” she admitted. “We—the temple women—used to wear wreaths of it on our heads, and garlands of it are draped on Vishnu’s idols; but I never understood its real significance or—”

  “Tiens, how many Christians know the meanings of the prayers they say?” he interrupted with an elfin grin. “It is enough that the flower possesses virtue to protect its bearer against such empty magic as these old ones make. However”—he stepped inside the house, deposited his burden on the hall table and invited our attention to an inch-long tear in his overcoat—“this was no empty gesture, mes amis.”

  “Great Scott!” I exclaimed. “What did it?”

  “A knife,” he answered easily. “This, to be specific.” From his pocket he produced a double-edged dagger, a frightful-looking thing with heavy blade six inches long, wider at tip than base, its shaft set in a hilt of hammered brass.

  “A Pathan throwing-knife!” exclaimed the girl.

  “Perfectly, Madame, a very useful tool for liberating the soul of one whose existence annoys you,” he agreed. “I was leaving the hotel, having no more thought of assault than the simple, innocent lamb has of mistreatment from the butcher, when whish! I feel the kick of this thing in my back, and the breath is all but knocked from out my lungs. Also, at the same time I hear the beat of running feet. They are not brave, those ones. No, they feared to stand and try conclusions with Jules de Grandin, even though they thought he had been killed to death by their so treacherous knife-in-the-back. Yes.”

  “But, great heavens, man!” I expostulated. “That hole in your coat is three inches below and three inches to the right of your left scapular. However did it miss your heart?”

  “By not reaching it—or my hide, either,” he answered with a chuckle. Divesting himself of overcoat and jacket, he displayed a close-fitting, sweater-like garment of finely woven steel chains above his waistcoat. “Jules de Grandin is the simpleton of no one,” he informed us gravely. “When I set forth tonight I said to me, ‘Jules de Grandin, only an exceedingly brave man or an exceedingly chuckle-headed fool goes into danger unprepared, and the chances of his being a fool are far greater than of his being merely brave. Jules de Grandin, is it that you are an imbecile?’

  “‘Oh, no; by no means,’ I assure me. ‘It are far otherwise.’

  “‘Very well, then, Jules de Grandin,’ I inform me, ‘you would do well to take precautions.’

  “‘And by the whiskers of a pink-faced fish, I shall take them, Jules de Grandin,’ I replied to me.

  “Therefore I went up to my room and took o
ut from my bureau drawer this shirt of chain-mail which I used to wear in Paris when the exigencies of my work took me among the so amiable apaches. They are ready workers with their knives, those ones, and more than once I have owed the preservation of my health to this little vest of steel.

  “Those ones whom I might meet tonight, I knew, could use a knife for other purposes than to cut their food, and so I did not greatly trust them. Also, lest they add magic to attempted murder, I stopped at the hotel florist’s and bought a bunch of marigolds. So I was doubly armed. Eh bien, it was as well. Their knife glanced harmlessly away when it should have pierced my gizzard; their magic-summoned tiger was foiled by my flower. It has been a wholly satisfactory night thus far, my friends. Let us take a drink and go to bed while we still have our luck.”

  HOW LONG I HAD been sleeping I do not know, but it must have been some time, for the rectangle of moonlight from the window had moved perceptibly since I went to bed, and the eastern sky was showing vague streaks of slate-gray when I sat up, stark awake as though some one had slapped me while I slept. “What was it?” I asked myself, looking round the room in which I seemed to sense the presence of something alien, something which had no right to be there. Had I felt something, or dreamed it, or heard—

  Instinctively I held my breath, seeking to pierce the smothering half-light with straining ears. I had heard something, but what? A cry, a voice, or—

  Thin, muffled, like music issuing from a radio when the station is not accurately tuned in, I descried a queer, ululating whine, a rising, a falling, faintly surging and receding monotonous singsong; flat, raucous, metallic, like—what was it like, I asked myself, then, for some cause which had nothing to do with conscious reasoning, shuddered as recognition came to me. It was like the dismal, dolorous caterwauling of a juggler’s reed pipe when the snake-charmer lifts the basket-lid and the scaly serpents slither out to “dance” upon their tails! “What in heaven’s name—” I stammered wonderingly; but: