A Rival from the Grave Page 7
The big old house was dark as Erebus, but as we crouched by the foundation we descried a tiny beam of light leaking from a broken window, and at de Grandin’s signal rose and glued our eyes to the cracked and dust-soiled pane.
The room in which we looked had evidently been used as the assembly hall, for it was as large as a small theater, and by the dim light of several oil-lamps swinging from the ceiling we could pick out every detail of the scene. A group of some twenty swart-faced turbaned men squatted tailor-fashion in a circle, while straight ahead, on a sort of dais formed of heaped-up pillows, lolled an olive-skinned young man, handsome in a sinister Oriental way, but with the weak face of a petulant, spoiled child. His head was wrapped in a turban of shimmering silk from the front of which flashed a diamond aigret. Over his shoulders dropped a cloak of leopardskin lined with scarlet, and round his neck and on his breast lay row on row of perfectly matched pearls and emeralds. Three dark-skinned, cameo-featured women, wrapped about head and shoulders with jewel-fringed shawls of red and black, crouched on the cushions at his feet. Naked save for turban and breech-clout, an emaciated old man with the straggling beard and mocking, sardonic eyes of an old and vicious goat squatted cross-legged on a mat before the dais.
A single glance identified the young man lolling on the piled-up cushions; for once seen, that sinister, cruel face could not be forgotten, whatever type of head-gear its owner wore. It was Karowli Singh, Maharajah of Dhittapur, who held his court here—for what purpose we knew all too well.
Once again the deep-toned gong boomed sonorously, and the rajah raised his hand in signal.
The folding doors at the farther end of the room slid back noiselessly, and two black-robed, hooded women entered, leading a third between them. It was Madeline Anspacher, yet it was not Madeline Anspacher, the Christian wife of a Christian American, but Kamla Devi, the Hindoo girl, naikin bayadère of the Inner Temple, and wife of Vishnu, the Preserver of the Universe, who stepped with meek, bowed head into this hall of Oriental justice.
Her head was covered with a shawl, or sari, of gold and black which fell across her shoulders, crossed at the bosom, then trailed its jewel-adorned fringes at her feet. Between her eyes was set a tiny, fiery-red caste mark, which stood out against the pale flesh like a new wound. Great ear-rings of gold, thick-set with glowing emeralds, caressed her cheeks, a smaller hoop of gold in which a gorgeous emerald solitaire gleamed vividly was in her nose. Her arms were fairly weighted down with bracelets of raw gold close-set with flashing emeralds, and on her rounded bare ankles were broad golden bands adorned with tiny, tinkling bells and fitted with fine golden chains each of which ended in a brilliantly jeweled toe-ring.
And now she stood before the rajah, no longer with bowed head, but proudly, almost arrogantly, like a princess of the blood, straight as a candle-flame in a windless room.
For a moment she stood thus; then, hands palm to palm, fingers pointing down, she bent her head and murmured: “As the gods command I come to thee, my lord, that thou mayest do with me as thou wilt. Ram, Sita, Ram!”
The young man on the dais smiled. “Does Kamla Devi come as a naikin bayadère?” he demanded.
“Nay, dreadful lord of life and death,” she answered, lifting the mantle of black and gold tissue from her head and shoulders and dropping it at her feet, “behold, with unveiled head she stands before thee like a slave. Do with her as thou wilt. Ram, Sita, Ram!”
“’Tis not enough,” he told her. “Kamla Devi has sinned past hope of pardon. She must taste of utmost degradation.”
“Hearing and obeying,” she replied, and with a swift brushing motion of her hand effaced the glowing caste mark from her brow, then from round her throat unclasped the triple-stranded necklace of pearls and emeralds and dropped it on the crumpled sari at her feet. From her arms she swept the golden bracelets, and slipped the tinkling, bell-hung anklets over her slim feet, laying them beside the other jewels on the discarded mantle; last of all, with a convulsive gesture she ripped the fastenings of her short, gem-embroidered jacket open, and as her breasts were bared, fell forward on her face, elbows to the floor, hands clasped above her bowed neck. As she dropped prostrate in utter self-abasement, I noticed that the palms of her hands and feet and the part in her hair were painted bright vermilion, and with a wondering start recalled hearing that Hindoo women who died before their husbands were thus adorned before the bearers took their bodies to the burning-ghat for incineration.
“As a slave of slaves Kamla Devi lies before thy feet, my lord, divested of her caste and ornaments, her bosoms bared like any casteless woman’s, and makes thee offer of her forfeited life. Do with her as thou wilt. Ram, Sita, Ram!” she sobbed despairingly.
The aged, goat-faced man turned toward the youth upon the dais. “What shall be the punishment, O Mightiness?” he asked in a high, cracked voice.
The rajah closed his eyes in thought a moment, then answered slowly: “She is too fair to break with stones or burn with fire or smash with flailing clubs, O Holy One. I am much inclined to show her mercy. What is thy thought?”
“Ahee,” the old man chuckled, “the night is young and death ends everything, my lord; do not drain the cup of vengeance at a single gulp. Let her dance with Nag and Nagaina, and let this be the judgment of her sins.”
“Wah, thou hast spoken wisely, O brother of the elephant. Let her dance with Nag and with Nagaina,” said the rajah.
“Good God!” I heard young Anspacher sob hysterically. “Nag and Nagaina! That means—”
“Be still, you fool!” de Grandin hissed. “We must await the others. Name of a name, why do they not come?”
The bearded, goat-faced man had risen and disappeared into the farther room. In a moment he returned with a pot-shaped basket of woven rushes covered with a scarlet cloth. A silken thong hung round his neck, something gruesomely like a skull dependent from it.
He set the basket down some ten feet from the girl, resumed his squatting posture at the rajah’s feet and, unlooping the silk cord from his neck, began swinging the gourd—if it were a gourd—to which it was attached. Backward and forward, right, left; left, right, like a slowly oscillating pendulum he swung the bleached, skull-like sphere. He beat it as it swung, striking short, light taps with finger-tips and palms alternately, and it sounded with a hollow, melancholy murmur, a clucking, syncopated sort of rhythm, every seventh beat accentuated:
Tock, tock-a-tock-a, tock—
Tock, tock-a-tock-a, tock . . .
Monotonously, insistently, endlessly the pounding rhythm sounded:
Tock, tock-a-tock-a, tock—
Tock, tock-a-tock-a, tock . . .
He stared at the rush basket with fixed, hot eyes, and presently the red cloth on its top stirred slightly, as though lifted by a vagrant breath of wind.
Tock, tock-a-tock-a, tock . . .
The red cloth stirred again, slipped back an inch or so, and a flat, wedge-shaped head, set with little, gleaming eyes of green, reared from the opening. Another rose beside it, and now we saw the lamplight glitter evilly on the gray-white scalings of snakes’ bellies as two giant cobras, one male, one female, writhed across the basket’s lip, dropped thudding to the floor and coiled with upreared heads and outspread hoods, as though seeking to locate the throbbing drum.
“Rise and dance, O Kamla Devi; rise and dance with Nag and Nagaina and sing the snake-song to them as you dance. Sing long, my little nightingale, sing well, little thrush, sing sweetly, little linnet of the slim, white throat, for when you cease to sing you die,” laughed Karowli Singh, and as he spoke the drum’s soft sobbing ceased, and a silence like the silence of the tomb seemed rushing in to fill the air to overflowing.
“S-s-s-sss!” The great male cobra, Nag, coiled itself, its green eyes flashing evilly, its darting tongue signalling its anger. Then slowly it lowered its head and glided swiftly forward toward the girl’s white feet.
“S-S-S-sss!” Nagaina, the female, joined her mate, and twisted her glea
ming coils across the floor.
Kamla Devi leaped into the air with the litheness of an acrobat, landing with a little thudding sound some three feet from the snakes, and as she poised on slender, outspread toes, she pirouetted slowly, and from her parted lips there came a chant, a rising, falling, faintly surging and receding monotonous sing-song; raucous, metallic—like the music of a snake-charmer’s pipe.
The hooded reptiles paused, reared their heads, and seemed to listen. Suddenly, from right and left, as though by concerted agreement, they raised their heads still higher, opened their jaws till the deadly poison-fangs gleamed whitely in the lamplight, and struck.
The girl rose upward in a soaring leap, and the driving, venom-laden heads passed like twin lightning strokes beneath her, missing her feet by less than three scant inches.
We heard the serpents hiss with fury as they missed their stroke, saw them lengthen out, then coil again, one to the left, the other to the right.
Louder, more insistently rose the chanting, whining wail, and again the snakes poised doubtfully, reddish-black tongues shooting out between blue-black lips, heads swaying as they watched the whirling dancer and listened to her song.
She faltered in the chant. Her throat was getting dry. She stumbled in her step; her feet were growing heavy, and again the serpents hissed their warning signal and struck and hissed again in fury as they missed the twinkling, fear-winged feet.
“Enough of this, parbleu!” de Grandin rasped. “If Costello and the captain are not ready we must take our chance against them as we are. We can not linger longer—she is tiring fast, and—”
Quaveringly, lightly through the night came the call of a screech-owl, and as it sounded Jules de Grandin drew his pistol, rested it upon the window-sill for better aim and fired.
He shot with all the daintiness of precision which characterized his every act, whether it were tying his cravat, snipping off a vermiform appendix from a quivering colon or adjusting his silk hat, and as though drawn to their targets by force of magnetism, his bullets struck. Shot followed shot so closely that the second was more like a continuation than an echo of the first. But each one was effective, for ere the startled Hindoos could so much as cry a warning to each other the two cobras lay upon the floor, their gleaming, scale-clad bodies quivering in the agony of sudden death, their poison-freighted heads ripped open by the soft-nosed slugs from his revolver.
“Wh-e-ep!” The shrilling of the whistle sounded deafeningly, and as he blew a second blast there came the drumming of heavy feet upon the sagging floors, the hammer of crowbars on the rotting doors, and Captain Chenevert and his men, followed by Costello and his forces, surged into the room. De Grandin mounted to the window-sill and leaped into the house, Anspacher, the officers and I following as best we could.
Cries, shots, the crack of butt-plates on bare skulls, the flash of knives and reek of gunpowder filled the place, mingled with such strange oaths as only soldiers know as the troopers and policemen drove the Hindoos to the wall and held them there.
“Belly th’ wall, ye monkey-faced omad-hauns,” Costello ordered. “Th’ first one as tur-rns round gits a mouthful o’ teeth pushed down ’is throat!”
The captives cowered cringingly, all but the maharajah. Scoundrel he was, heartless, unscrupulous, degenerate; but no coward.
“Bhowanee blast thee, Siva smite thee with his wrath!” he screamed at Jules de Grandin, his face gone gray with rage at thwarted vengeance. “Could I but meet thee man to man—”
“Tiens, my little vicious one, that can be easily arranged,” the Frenchman interrupted. “Though you showed little liking for fair play when you held this poor girl within your power, I will give you one last chance to fight, and—”
“Take them outside,” he ordered, motioning to the maharajah’s suite. “But leave this one to me. He and I have business to transact.”
“Shall we wait? Will ye be comin’ soon, sor?” Costello asked.
“But certainly, my friend; either that or—” he raised his shoulders in a shrug as he selected two keen-edged scimitars dropped in the mêlée and thrust them point-downward in the center of the floor. “Friend Trowbridge will remain to see fair play,” he added. “Should he come forth accompanied only by this one”—he nodded toward the rajah—“I beseech you to permit him to depart in peace and unmolested. Me, I shall not come out alone, I do assure you. Go out, my friends, for I am anxious to have done.”
“Is it to be a dool?” Costello asked.
“More like an execution—but not of the death sentence; that would be too easy,” the Frenchman answered. “Now go and leave me to my work.
“En garde!” he ordered sharply as the officers went out with their prisoners. “Karowli Singh, thou son and grandson of a stinking camel, if you defeat me you go free; if not I take such vengeance as is just!”
Like savage cats they faced each other, circling slowly round, eyes gleaming with as pitiless a glint as that their weapons caught from the uncertain lamplight.
Suddenly the rajah charged, scimitar swinging like a whirling windmill—I heard the curved blade whistle through the air. De Grandin gave ground rapidly, skipping lightly back, making no attempt to meet his adversary’s steel.
The Hindoo’s white teeth flashed in a snarling smile. “Coward, poltroon, craven!” he taunted. “The gods fight with me; I, their chosen one—”
“Will choose no more to torture helpless beasts and women, I damn think!” the Frenchman interrupted. “Cochon va!”
The trick was worked so quickly that I could not follow it; but it seemed as if he drove straight forward with his blade, then slacked his thrust in mid-stab and cut a slashing S-shaped gash in the air before the other’s face. Whatever the technique, the result was instant, for the rajah’s sword seemed to fly from his hand as though he flung it from him, and a second later de Grandin raised his point and dashed his hilt into the other’s mouth, sending him sprawling to the floor.
“Thy gods fight with thee, hein?” he queried mockingly. “Pardieu, I think that you and they alike are helpless when opposed by Jules de Grandin!”
From an inner pocket of his jacket he drew forth a gleaming instrument and leant above his foe. “Look for the last time on the world you know, thou sacré singe!” he ordered, and drove the hypodermic needle deep into the other’s arm.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “You promised—”
“I promised freedom if he won; I did not say what I should do if I prevailed,” he interrupted coldly, putting the hypo carefully away in its black-leather case.
“What was the injection?”
“A little drug from his own country,” he replied. “Gunga, it is sometimes called, though it contains other things than hashish. It is the justice of poetry that he should receive it, is it not? Behold how quickly it accomplishes its end.”
I looked, and as I looked a chill ran through me. Karowli Singh was sitting on the floor, a silly, vacuous smile upon his face. Saliva dribbled from the corners of his mouth, his tongue hung out flaccidly, pendulously, across his chin, and he kept putting up his hands to stuff it back into his mouth, giggling as he did so. No doctor—no second-year medical student—could misread the signs. Complete, incurable, terminal dementia was stamped upon his features.
“Will—will he recover?” I asked in an awed whisper, knowing all the time what the answer must inevitably be.
“Eh bien, in hell perhaps; never in this world,” de Grandin replied negligently. “Come, let us send Costello in to him, and—have you any idea how soon we can reach home? Me, I am most vilely thirsty for a drink.”
The Malay Horror
THE STORM WHICH HAD been threatening since noon broke with tropic fury just as darkness dropped upon the northern Jersey hills. Hackensack, where we might have found asylum, was half an hour’s steady drive behind us, Harrisonville almost as far ahead, and, as far as I could remember, nothing offering more effective shelter than a road-side tree stood anywhere bet
ween, not even a hot-dog stand, a filling-station or a vegetable market.
“Looks as though we’re in for it,” I muttered grimly, drawing the storm curtains as tightly as I could and setting the automatic windshield-wiper clicking. “If we hadn’t stopped for that last drink at the clubhouse—”
“We should have had a ducking, just the same, and should have missed the drink, parbleu,” Jules de Grandin cut in with a laugh. “A little water is no tragedy, if applied to one’s outside, my friend, and—”
The deafening detonation of a clap of thunder and the blinding flash of lightning searing through the dripping heavens interrupted him, and like an echo of the thunderbolt’s concussion came the crashing of a tree across the road ahead. Another zigzag of forked lightning ripped the clouds apart and struck its target squarely, hurling a shattered oak athwart the highway just behind us.
Our position was untenable. The thunder had increased to drumfire quickness, and everywhere about us trees were crashing down. Our only safety lay in abandoning the car and taking to the open fields. Turning up our jacket collars, we scrambled from the shelter of the motor-car and dodged among the groaning, storm-racked trees.
The trip through the woods was like running the gauntlet of a barrage, for the lightning was almost incessant and the howling storm-wind bent the tree trunks and ripped off branches, which came hurtling down with smashing impact. More by luck than conscious effort, we struggled through the copse of oak and maple and padded ankle-deep in sodden grass across the open field.
“Yonder—shines—a—light!” de Grandin bellowed in my ear between cupped hands, then pointed to a shifting, fitful gleam which shone through the blinding storm three hundred yards or so away.
I sank my chin a little deeper in the collar of my sopping jacket and, bending my head against the driving storm, began to trot toward the promised shelter.