The Three Sapphires

Chapter IV

Prince Ananda had welcomed Lord Victor and Captain Swinton on a wide, black-marble verandah from which two marvellously carved doors gave them entrance through a lordly hall to a majestic reception chamber.

"This is the 'Cavern of Lies,'" Ananda said, with a smile, "for here come all who wish to do up the governor – and he's pliant. That, for instance" – he pointed to a billowy sea of glass prisms which hid the ceiling – countless chandeliers jostling each other like huge snowflakes.

"No end of an idea, I call it – fetching!" Lord Victor acclaimed.

Prince Ananda laughed. "The governor went into a big china shop in Calcutta one day when Maharajah Jobungha was there. The two maharajahs are not any too friendly, I may say, and when the governor was told Jobungha had already bought something he took a fancy to, he pointed to the other side of the store, which happened to be the lot of glass junk you see above, and told the shop manager to send the whole thing to Darpore. Ah, here comes the maharajah!" the prince added.

At the far end of the reception room heavy silk curtains had been parted by a gold-and-crimson uniformed servant, who announced in a rich, full voice: "His highness, the Maharajah of Darpore! Salaam, all who are in his noble presence!"

A king had stepped into the room; a reawakened, bronze-skinned Roman gladiator was coming down the centre of the room, his head thrown up like some lordly animal. He was regal in the splendour of his robes. Above the massive torso of the king, with its velvet jacket buttoned by emeralds, the glossy black beard, luxuriantly full, as fine as a woman's hair, was drawn up over the ears, its Rembrandt black throwing into relief a rose tint that flushed the olive-skinned cheek. Deep in the shadow of a massive brow were brilliant, fearless eyes that softened as they fell on Ananda's face. In the gold-edged head-dress a clasp of gold held blue-white diamonds that gleamed like a cascade of falling water. A short sword was thrust in a silk sash, its ruby-studded hilt glinting like red wine.

When Prince Ananda presented Swinton and Lord Gilfain, the latter as the son of Earl Craig, the maharajah's face lighted up; he held out his hand impulsively with simple dignity, saying in Hindustani: "Sit down, sahibs. The young lord's father was my brother; at court his ear heard my heartbeat."

A turmoil of vocal strife fell upon their ears from without. The baboo had arrived.

"Oh, murder!" Swinton groaned, recognising the Dass voice demanding admittance.

The rabble sound was coming down the hall as ineffectually two attendants clung to the ponderous Bengali, mad with his affliction. The words: "The maharajah's jewel is stolen!" caused Prince Ananda to dart to the door. Seeing him, the servants released their grasp of Baboo Dass, and the prince, not daring to leave the king's presence, allowed the half-crazed man to enter the room, where he groveled before the maharajah, bumping his forehead to the marble floor and clawing at the royal feet.

When, at the king's command, the baboo rose, Lord Victor clapped his hand over his mouth to smother his mirth, gasping: "Oh, my aunt! That head!"

Like the rattle of a machine gun, Baboo Dass poured out his tale of wo. When he had finished, the maharajah said calmly: "It doesn't matter," and with a graceful sweep of his hand suggested that Baboo Dass might retire.

Once more the baboo's voice bubbled forth.

"Begone!" And the handsome face of the maharajah took on a tigerish look. For a second it was terrifying; the change was electric. Baboo Dass recoiled and fled.

Then the maharajah's voice was soft, like a rich-toned organ, as he said in Hindustani: "India has two afflictions – famine and the Bengali."

Beside the rajah was a magnificently carved teakwood chair, a padlocked gold chain across the arms indicating that it was not to be used. The carving was marvellous, each side representing a combat between a tiger and a huge python, the graceful curve of whose form constituted the arm. At a question of interest from Gilfain, Prince Ananda spoke in Urdu to his father. The latter nodded, and Ananda, crossing to a silver cabinet, unlocked it and returned bearing a gold casket, upon the top of which was inset a large pearl. Within the casket was a half-smoked cigarette.

As if carried away by the sight of this the maharajah, speaking in Hindustani, which he saw Swinton understood, said: "That cigarette was smoked by the Prince of Wales sitting in this chair which has since been locked. He shook hands with me, sahib; we were friends; he, the son of the empress, and I a king, who was also a son to the empress."

His voice had grown rich and soft and full; the fierce, black, warlike rajput eyes were luminous as though tears lay behind. The maharajah remained silent while Swinton translated this to Lord Victor. "Ah, sahibs, if kings could sit down together and explain, there would not be war nor distrust nor oppression. When your father" – he turned his face toward Gilfain – "was a councillor in Calcutta, close to the viceroy, I had honour; when I crossed the bridge from Howra as many guns would speak welcome from Fort William as did for Maharajah Jobungha. But now I go no more to Calcutta."

If Swinton had been troubled in his analysis of the prince's motives and character, he now swam in a sea of similar tribulation. The maharajah was big. Was he capable of gigantic subtlety, such as his words would veil? He could see that Prince Ananda was abstracted; his face had lost its jaunty, debonair look; worry lines mapped its surface. The loss of the sapphire had hit Ananda hard, but if the robbery had affected the king, he was subtle in a remarkable sense, for he gave no sign.

The maharajah now rose, clapped his hands, and when a servant appeared gave a rapid order. The servant disappeared, and almost immediately returned with a silver salver upon which were two long gold chains of delicate workmanship and an open bottle of attar of rose. The maharajah placed a chain about the neck of each sahib, and sprinkled them with the attar, saying, with a trace of a smile curving his handsome lips: "Sometimes, sahibs, this ceremony is just etiquette, but to-day my heart pains with pleasure because the son of my friend is here." He held out his hand, adding: "Prince Ananda must see that you have the best our land affords."

Chapter V

Swinton was glad when he saw his dogcart turn into the compound to take him to the keddah sahib's for tiffin. Lord Victor had been hypnotised by the splendour of Maharajah Darpore; he went around the bungalow giving vent to ebullitions of praise. "My aunt, but the old Johnnie is a corker! And all the tommyrot one hears at home about another mutiny brewing! Damn it, Swinton, the war chiefs who want every bally Englishman trained to carry a gun like a Prussian ought to be put in the Tower!"

An hour of this sort of thing, and with a silent whoop of joy the captain clambered into his dogcart and sped away, as he bowled along his mind troubled by the maharajah angle of the espionage game.

After tiffin with the major, and out on the verandah, where they were clear of the servant's ears, Swinton asked: "Who is the mysterious lady that rides a grey Persian?"

He was conscious of a quick turn of Finnerty's head; a half-checked movement of the hand that held a lighted match to a cheroot, and as the keddah sahib proceeded to finish the ignition he described the woman and her flight over the brick wall.

"She's Doctor Boelke's niece; she has been here about a month," Finnerty answered, when Captain Swinton had finished.

"I wonder why she risked her neck to avoid me, major?"

"Well, she's German for one thing, and I suppose she knows there's a growing tension between the two peoples."

Captain Swinton allowed a smile to surprise his always set face. "Do you know why I am here, major; that is, have you had advice?"

"Yes," the major answered.

"Very good," Captain Swinton declared. "I'll give you some data. Lord Victor's father, Earl Craig, is under-secretary to India. There was some extraordinary jumble of a state document intended for the Viceroy of India. Whether its misleading phraseology was carelessness or traitorous work on the part of a clerk, nobody knows, but it read that the sircar was to practically conscript Indians – Mussulman and Hindu alike – to fight against the Turks and Germans in the war that we all feel is about to come. This paper bore the official seal; had even been signed. Then Earl Craig's copy of it disappeared – was stolen from Lord Victor, who was acting as his secretary. A girl, with whom the young man was infatuated, was supposed to have taken it for the Prussians for use in India. The girl disappeared, and Lord Victor was sent out here for fear he would get in communication with her again. Neither Lord Victor nor the earl knows I am a secret-service man. Maharajah Darpore is marked 'low visibility' in the viceroy's book of rajah rating, and, as Earl Craig wanted an Anglo-Indian as a companion to his son, this seemed a good chance to investigate quietly. There's another little matter," the captain continued quietly as he drew from his pocket a sapphire in the rough.

"Where the devil did you get that, captain? I thought that old professor pirate had stolen it," Finnerty gasped.

"That's not the stone you lost last night, major."

Finnerty looked at Swinton incredulously as the latter handed him the sapphire, for it was exactly like the stolen stone, even to the inscription.

"Let me explain," Captain Swinton said. "Some time since one Akka, a hillman, came down out of Kululand into Simla leading a donkey that carried two bags of sapphires in the rough. Nobody knew what they were, so, of course, he found it hard to sell his blue stones. That night the stones disappeared, and Akka was found in the morning at the bottom of an abyss with a jade-handled knife sticking in his back. He must have dropped over the rocks so quickly the killer hadn't time to withdraw his knife. About Akka's neck, hidden under his dirty felt coat, was hung this sapphire, and it was given to me, as I was put on the case. I took a trip up into Kululand with a hillman who claimed to have come in with Akka as guide. I got a very fine bharal head – almost a record pair of horns – and a bullet in my left leg that still gives me a limp at times, but as to sapphires in the rough I never saw another until last night."

Finnerty laughed. "India is one devil of a place for mystery."

Swinton related the incidents of the night before, and Baboo Dass' story of the three sapphires, adding: "Of course that's Hindu mythology up to date, the attributing of miraculous powers of good and evil to those blue stones."

Finnerty shifted uneasily in his chair; then, with a little, apologetic smile, said: "I'm getting less dogmatic about beliefs and their trimmings – absolute superstition, I suppose – and if a sapphire, or anything else, were associated in my mind with disaster I'd chuck the devilish thing in the river."

"At any rate, major, the main thing, so far as my mission is concerned, is that if Prince Ananda happens to get possession of the three sapphires every Buddhist – which means all the fighting Nepalese – will believe the expected Buddha has arrived."

"By gad! And the three sapphires are in Darpore – the one that was stolen from me last night, the one stolen from Baboo Dass, and this one."

"Prince Ananda has yours; I saw Boelke purposely tip over that table. But who stole the one from the baboo I don't know; it couldn't have been a raj agent, for it belonged to the maharajah."

"Where did they come from?" Finnerty queried.

"Yours, of course, was on Burra Moti's neck, and she must have been attached to some temple; Akka probably murdered some lama who had this one about his neck; where Prince Ananda got the third one I don't know."

"By Jove!" Finnerty ejaculated. "It was a hillman that Moti put her foot on. He had been sent to steal that bell, as he couldn't carry the elephant."

"Here's another thing," Captain Swinton said. "In the United States there has been arrested a clique of Hindus who have sold a great quantity of rare old jewels, gold ornaments, and sapphires in the rough. Machine guns and ammunition were bought with the money obtained, and quite a consignment is somewhere on the road now between China and India."

"Great Scott! Up this way – to come in through Nepal?"

"The stuff was shipped from San Francisco to Hongkong, and though the British government had every road leading out of that city watched, they never got track of it. Our men there think it was transshipped in Hongkong harbour and is being brought around to India by water."

"Does the government think the maharajah is mixed up in this?"

"I'm here to find out. He mystified me to-day. Gilfain thinks he's magnificent – as natural as a child. But he's too big for me to judge; I can't docket him like I can Ananda. He was as regally disinterested over the disappearance of that sapphire as the Duke of Buckingham was when his famous string of black pearls broke and scattered over the floor at the Tuileries; but the prince was seething."

Finnerty waved his cheroot in the direction of the palace hill. "The trouble is up there. Ananda is wily; he's like a moon bear he has there in a cage that smiles and invites you to tickle the back of his neck; then, before you know it, the first joint of a finger is gone."

A little lull in the talk between Swinton and Finnerty was broken by a turmoil that wound its volcanic force around the bungalow from the stables. Finnerty sprang to his feet as a pair of Rampore hounds reached the drive, galloping toward a tall native at whose heels came a big hunting dog.

"Faith, I was just in time," Finnerty said as he led the two hounds to the verandah, a finger under each collar; "they'd soon have chewed up that Banjara's dog."

The Rampores were very like an English greyhound that had been shaved; they were perhaps coarser, a little heavier in the jaw. A panting keeper now appeared, and the dogs were leashed.

Seeing this, the native approached, and in a deep, sombre voice said: "Salaam, Sahib Bahadur!" Having announced himself, the Banjara came up the steps and squatted on his heels; the long male-bamboo staff he carried betokened he was a herdsman.

"What do you want, Lumbani?" Finnerty queried.

"Yes, sahib, I am a Banjara of the Lumbani caste. The sahib who is so strong is also wise in the ways of my people."

"I wonder what this will cost me in wasted time," the major lamented in English. "I judge his soul is weighted with matters of deep import." Then, in Hindustani: "That's a true Banjara dog, Lumbani."

"Yes, sahib, he is one of that great breed. Also in the sahib's hands are two thoroughbred Rampores; they be true dogs of the Tazi breed, the breed that came from Tazi who slept by the bedside of Nawab Faiz Mahomed five generations since. The sahib must be in high favour with the Nawab of Rampore, for such dogs are only given in esteem; they are not got as one buys bullocks."

"What is it you want?" queried Finnerty.

The Banjara looked at Swinton; he coughed; then he loosened the loin cloth that pinched at his lean stomach.

"This dog, sahib – Banda is the noble creature's name – has the yellow eyes that Krishna is pleased with; that is a true sign of a Banjara." He held out his hand, and Banda came up the steps to crouch at his side.

At this intrusion of the native's dog, the patrician Rampores sprang the full length of their leash with all the ferocity that is inherent in this breed. A pariah dog would have slunk away in affright, but the Banjara's yellow eyes gleamed with fighting defiance; he rose on his powerful, straight legs, and his long fangs shone between curled lips.

"Good stuff!" Finnerty commented, and to his groom added: "Take the hounds away. He's a sure-enough Banjara, Swinton," he resumed in English. "Look at that terrier cast in the face, as though there were a streak of Irish or Airedale in him."

Indeed, the dog was a beauty, with his piercing bright eyes set in the long, flat head that carried punishing jaws studded with strong teeth. The neck was long, rising from flat, sloping shoulders, backed up by well-rounded ribs and arched loins leading to well-developed quarters. The chest was narrow and deep, and the flanks tucked up.

"They're game, too," Finnerty declared. He turned to the owner. "Will Banda tackle a panther?"

"He and his sons have been in at the death of more than one; they will follow a leopard into a cave."

"How much will you take for him?" Swinton asked.

The native looked his scorn. He turned to Finnerty as though his sarcasm might be wasted upon this sahib who thought a Banjara would sell one of the famous breed. "Perhaps the strange sahib will go to Umar Khan, at Shahpur, and buy one of the Salt Range horses – a mare of the Unmool breed. When he has I will sell him Banda."

Swinton laughed, and, taking a rupee from his pocket, passed it to the native, saying: "Food for Banda. The sarcasm was worth it," he added in English, "an Unmool mare being above price."

"All this talk of the dogs," Finnerty declared, "is that our friend has something on his mind. He was studying you, but you've broken the ice with your silver hammer."

The native salaamed, tucked the rupee in his loin cloth, and the questioning, furtive look that had been in his eyes disappeared. He turned to the major:

"Huzoor, I am a man of many buffaloes, robbing none, going in peace with my herds up into the hills in the hot weather when the new grass comes green and strong from the ashes of the fire that has been set out in the spring, and coming back to the plains when the weather is cold."

"Where is your country?" Finnerty queried.

"Where my grain bags and my cooking pots are is my country, my fathers holding that all lands were theirs to travel in. For fifteen years in this moon have I remained down yonder by the river with my herd, just where the heavy kagar grass makes good hunting for tiger, and always on good terms of friendship with him."

"Gad! I thought so," Finnerty ejaculated. "We'll get news of a kill in a minute."

"If we met in the path – that is, your slave and tiger – I would say: 'Khudawand, pass here, for the thorns in the bush are bad for thy feet,' and if tiger was inclined he would pass, or he would turn. Often lying on the broad back of a buffalo as we crossed where the muck is deep I would see tiger lying in wait for pig or chinkara, and I would call, 'Kudawand, good hunting!' Then what think you, sahib, if after years of such living in peace, this depraved outcast, begotten of a hyena, makes the kill of a cow?"

"A tiger, like a woman, is to be watched," Finnerty declared, quoting a tribal adage.

"And all in the way of evil temper, sahib, for the cow lies yonder with no mark beyond a broken neck, while in the jungles rajah tiger is growling abuse. A young cow, sahib, in full milk. For the sake of God, sahib, come and slay the brute."

The Banjara had worked himself into a passion; tears of rage stood in his eyes. "And to think that I had saved the life of this depraved one," he wailed.

"You saved the tiger's life, Lumbani?"

"Surely, sahib. Of the Banjaras some are Mussulmans – outcasts that lot are – and some are Hindus, as is your servant, so we are careful in the matter of a kill, lest we slay one of our own people who has returned. This slayer of my cow always took pleasure in being near the buffalo. Why, huzoor, I have seen him up in the hills looking as though he had felt lonesome without the herd. Noting that, it was in my mind that perhaps a Banjara herdsman had been born again as a tiger. That is why I saved his life from the red dogs of the jungle; nothing can stand before them when they are many. From the back of a buffalo I saw one of these jungle devils standing on high ground, beckoning, with his tail stuck up like a flag, to others of his kind."

"I've seen that trick," Finnerty commented.

"The tiger had been caught in a snare of the Naga people as he came to partake of a goat they had tied up, as he thought, for his eating; the sahib knows of what like a snare is to retain a tiger. A strong-growing bamboo, young and with great spring, had been bent down and held by a trip so that tiger, putting his paw in the noose, it sprang up, and there he was dancing around like a Nautch girl on the rope that held his wrist, being a loose bamboo too big for a grip of his teeth; it spun around on the rope. The red dogs, hearing his roars, knew he was trapped, and were gathering to settle an old dispute as to the eating of a kill. They would have made an end of him. A mongoose kills a cobra because he is too quick for the snake, and they were too quick for the tiger; so, taking pity upon him as an old friend, with my staff I drove them off; then, climbing into the bamboos, cut the rope."

"Did you tackle them alone, Lumbani?"

"Surely, sahib; jungle dogs run from a man that is not afraid."

Finnerty's shikarri, Mahadua the Ahnd, who had come to the verandah, now said: "The tiger this herder of buffalo tells of is 'Pundit Bagh;' he is well known to all."

"And you never brought word that we might make the hunt," Finnerty reproached.

"Sahib, we Ahnd people when we know a tiger is possessed of a spirit do not seek to destroy that one."

"Why is he called Pundit? Is he the ghost of a teacher?"

"This is the story of Pundit Bagh, sahib: Long ago there was a pundit that had a drug that would change him into an animal, and if he took another it would change him back again."

The Ahnd's little bead eyes watched his master's face furtively.

"One day as the pundit and his wife were walking through the jungle a leopard stepped out in the path to destroy them. He gave his wife one powder to hold, saying: 'I will take this one and change into a tiger, and when I have frightened the leopard away give me the other that I may change back to myself.' But the poor woman when she saw her tiger husband spring on the leopard dropped the powder and ran away; so the pundit has remained a tiger, and is so cunning that it will be small use to make the hunt."

"But coming and going as he must, Mahadua, how know you it is the same one?"

"By the spectacles of the pundit, sahib; there is but one tiger that wears them."

Finnerty laughed. "Does he never drop them, little man?"

"Sahib, they are but black rings around his eyes – such as are on the back of a cobra's head – like unto the horn glasses the pundit wore."

"Baboo Dass declared the tiger that peeped in his window wore spectacles; it must have been this same legendary chap," Swinton remarked.

An old man came running up the road, between its walls of pipal trees, beating his mouth with the palm of his hand in a staccato lament. At the verandah he fell to his knees and clasped Finnerty's feet, crying: "Oh, sahib, Ramia has been mauled by a tiger the size of an elephant, and from the fields all have run away. Come, sahib, and slay him."

"Pundit Bagh keeps busy," the major said; "but by the time we make all our arrangements it will be near evening, and if we wound him we can't follow up in the dark. Go back and keep watch on the tiger; to-morrow we will make the hunt," he told the old man.

To the Hindu to-morrow meant never; when people did not mean to do things they said "to-morrow." Perhaps the sahib was afraid; perhaps he had presented the tiger in too fearful a light, so he hedged. "Come, protector of the poor, come even now, for we are afraid to go into the grass for Ramia. The tiger is not big – he is old and lame; one ball from the sahib's gun will kill him. Indeed, sahib, he is an old tiger without teeth."

Finnerty laughed; but the Banjara flamed into wrath at this trifling. "Son of filth! Skinner of dead cattle! Think'st thou the sahib is afraid? And did an old, toothless tiger kill a buffalo of mine? Begone! When the sahib goes to the hunt, he goes."

The Ahnd now said: "Have patience, man of buffaloes; perhaps another, a leopard, is the guilty one. Pundit Bagh acts not thus; in fact, in the little village of Picklapara, which he guards, more than once when the villagers have made offering to him of a goat has he driven away a leopard that had carried off an old woman or a child."

"Fool! Does a leopard break the neck of a bullock? Does he not slit the throat for the blood? And always does not a leopard first tear open the stomach and eat the heart and the liver? I say it was the tiger," and the Banjara glared at Mahadua.