Bengal Fire, page 11
From the adjoining sub-editor’s room came sounds of a mild commotion—chairs scraping along the floor, men speaking. One voice Marvin knew instantly, a crisp, authoritative voice with the cold, latent power of a coiled spring. Evidently Dormer, too, knew the voice, for his lips were white as he advanced on Marvin.
“Damn you!” he murmured, scarcely opening his mouth. Then he sprang at Marvin, his scrawny body galvanized into a fury of activity. Hammering and clawing with fists that opened and closed spasmodically he caught the heavier man by surprise, drove him off balance, beat him back from the window. Marvin recoiled, set himself, launched a long, defensive left. Dormer ducked, then leaped for the window sill.
At the same moment Inspector Prike pushed open the door. He saw Dormer crouched in the window frame. His arm went back. Gunmetal gleamed in his hand—a split-second too late. Dormer was gone!
In one bound, Prike crossed the room. The sights of his gun swung into line against a whitish blur through the window. But he did not fire.
There was a cry, the crash and jangle of broken glass.
Prike and Marvin stared down through a jagged opening in the broken skylight to the composing-room.
The composing-room was in an uproar when Prike reached it, through the more conventional stairway, a minute later. The half-naked compositors left their keyboards and were running about, shouting. The white-bearded make-up man was gesticulating to the Bengali foreman over the ruins of wooden type-cases which had stood directly beneath the broken skylight. The floor was strewn with a silvery shower of linotype slugs, pied type, and shattered glass.
“It was Mr. Dormer, sar,” said the Bengali foreman, as Prike was observing a thin trail of blood leading away from the wreckage. “Although he has never made entrance in similar manner before.”
“Where did he go?” demanded Deputy Inspector Robbins, who had just rushed in from the front compound where he had been waiting.
Inspector Prike’s thumb indicated the direction of the blood drops.
“Hurry, Robbins,” said Prike, “you may get him before he scales the outbuildings in the rear compound. He’s been hurt.”
“But not badly, sar,” said the Bengali foreman. “Fall was cushioned by upper- and lower-case, eighteen- and twenty-four point Cheltenham boldface and italics. He received only torn clothings and slight cuts on forehead. He-”
But Inspector Prike was not listening. He had gone through the back of the composing-room to the rear compound where Deputy Inspector Robbins was shining his flashlight in the startled faces of sleepy natives, whom he routed from the outbuildings. No, they had seen no one. They had heard nothing except the crash of breaking glass. If anyone had gone over the rain-wet roof, they knew nothing of it.
Rufus Dormer had disappeared, as if by some prodigious feat of oriental magic.
Chapter Fifteen
IN THE ICY GRASP OF DREAD
Evelyn Branch awoke with a start. The fingers of her right hand clutched the perspiration-soaked pillow as she sat up very straight. What had wakened her? She peered into the warm darkness. The hazel of her mosquito-netting gave a grotesque nightmarish indistinctness to the unfamiliar objects of her room in Mrs. Pereira’s boarding-house. The punka motor, whirring overhead, spat lurid sparks. She listened. Above the pounding of her heart and the faint clucking sounds of a chameleon on the picture molding she heard only the distinct wrangling of coolies. Suddenly a loud, insistent banging resounded on the door. Evelyn lifted the mosquito bar, swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
“Who’s there?” she called.
A booming masculine voice answered from the other side of the door, “A message for Miss Branch, please.”
The girl fumbled for the greenish spot of luminosity on her night table. The hands of her watch marked nearly one o’clock.
“I’ll get it in the morning,” she said.
“But it is important.”
“Slip it under the door, then.”
“I cannot. The chit requires an immediate answer.”
“Wait, then.” The girl got up, drew a dressing-gown over her shoulders, switched on the light. She unlocked the door, opened it a crack. As she snatched a large envelope which a brown hand extended, she caught a glimpse of a purple turban and gleaming white teeth. Quickly she pushed the door shut, leaned against it as she ripped open the envelope. The communication, written in a vertical, highly ornamental, copperplate hand, read:
I am commanded by His Highness the Maharajah to request the immediate presence of Miss Evelyn Branch at the Palace of His Highness in Alipore.—Chitterji Rao, Household Officer to H.H. The Maharajah of Jharnpur.
Evelyn read the chit three times before the words made any impression on her. Even then they failed to make sense. Who was this Chitterji Rao and why did he summon her in the middle of the night? She did not even know the Maharajah of Jharnpur. What did he want with her? George Linnet had something to do with it, of course.
“Are you coming now, please?” demanded the bass voice behind the closed door.
“At one in the morning? Naturally not,” Evelyn retorted.
“His Highness has sent a motorcar. It is waiting outside.”
“But I’m not dressed.”
“I will wait ten minutes.”
“I’m sorry but I see no reason why I shouldn’t see the Maharajah in the morning just as well.” There was both indignation and breathless fear in the girl’s voice. “I’m not in the habit of paying midnight calls on men, particularly a man I have never met.”
The reply from the man behind the door was a curious low-pitched laugh that was half a sigh and half the meaningless chuckle of a maniac. The overtones of that throaty, mirthless laugh touched Evelyn with a chill sense of foreboding that tingled at the roots of her hair and crawled down her spine. She turned the key in the lock.
“You had better come tonight, Miss Branch.” The voice behind the door rumbled ominously. “His Highness cannot be disappointed. It is to your—very best interests—to come at once.”
Again came that chilling laugh which was completely devoid of any amusement except the sadistic anticipation of threat. By this time Evelyn was thoroughly frightened. She was afraid of the man in the purple turban, terrified at the prospect of riding through the night at the command of an unknown Oriental potentate; yet something sinister in that low, mocking laughter behind the door made her even more terrified at what might happen if she refused.
“Very well,” she said. “Wait. I’ll get dressed.”
With fingers made clumsy by haste and apprehension she performed a hurried toilet. She placed the note from Chitterji Rao prominently on the night table—as a clue to searchers in case she did not return. Then she opened the door.
The man in the purple turban salaamed so abjectly that the exaggeration could only be sarcasm. Then he escorted the girl downstairs. A long, sleek motorcar was waiting outside in Guru’s Lane. A resplendent footman opened the door and Evelyn got in.
As the headlights of the motor swung south and bored through the Indian night, a rain squall swept across the Maidan from the Hooghly to burst upon the city with tropical suddenness. The huge drops roared upon the roof of the car, slanted through the headlight beams like streams of molten metal, danced madly in the quickly flooded streets. Inside the speeding car Evelyn Branch sat very stiff and very straight, yet mentally she was cowering at the violence of the storm. Each livid flash of heat lightning revealed to her the man in the purple turban, leaning back in the opposite corner with his arms folded. He had made no attempt to touch her and had not spoken a word after leaving Guru’s Lane, yet his presence was a constant reminder that she had only the vaguest idea of where she was going. She was a fool to have come. Would she have been a bigger fool in refusing? Was she actually being taken to the palace of the Maharajah or did the man in the purple turban represent some new element in an intrigue which was hourly becoming more complex?
Her thoughts careened back through the weeks until she saw herself seated prosaically behind a typewriter, answering telephones, with no more serious worries than an inconvenient appointment with the hairdresser or an evening gown that had shrunk at the cleaners. Then another lightning flash unveiled the rain-blurred minarets of a mosque, a disconsolate group of humped-back oxen huddled like gray specters under the lashing fronds of ghostly palms; and always, in his corner, the man with the purple turban. She shuddered. She found it hard to believe that she was actually awake and not living some delirious fantasy.
The rain ceased abruptly as the car sped past the Alipore Zoological Gardens. A few minutes later the wheels skidded to a stop. Evelyn pressed her face against the glass. The glow from the headlights outlined an imposing array of gray towers and Indo-Persian domes. The man in the purple turban got out, held the door open, and salaamed. “Please, Miss Branch.”
Evelyn followed through a tall, pointed Baghdad arch. A detachment of gaudy Jharnpur guards stood at attention as she passed, their brilliant orange turbans flaming like torches in the gloom.
“This way, please.”
Evelyn was led through vaulted stone corridors, across flagged courtyards. She was aware of murmured commands in Hindustani, the clank of swords, the patter of bare feet. Her heels clicked on stone steps, then sank silently into the deep pile of a rug as the man in the purple turban stopped to talk to an A.D.C. in a long green coat. A door swung open.
“This way, please.”
At the end of another corridor, along which a dozen oil lights flickered in blue glass bowls, Evelyn turned a corner—and blinked. She was standing on the threshold of a room that was filled with a strange radiance. Thousands of tiny mirrors embedded in the walls and ceiling scintillated with the light of a great hanging Cairene lamp. When her eyes became accustomed to the queer flashing pattern of the myriad reflections, Evelyn saw a man arising from a mound of satin cushions. He put aside the mouthpiece of a hookah as he said, “Hello, sister. I’ve been all in an uproar, waiting for you.”
“Waiting for me, Colonel?” If Evelyn was relieved to see the familiar face of George Linnet in these bizarre surroundings, she did not show it. She smiled, but she remained poised on the threshold.
“Sure,” said George Linnet. “Didn’t I send for you?”
“Did you? Since when have you been elected Maharajah of Jharnpur?”
Linnet grinned as he walked across the room to take Evelyn’s arm. “I’m just helping out around the house,” he said. “The perfect week-end guest. But the Maharajah wants to see you, all right.”
“Where is he, then?”
“He’s in bed,” said Linnet.
The girl flushed. “So was I,” she declared, “before someone turned in this false alarm. Say, what is this, anyway? A rib?”
“A rib made the first woman,” said Linnet hopefully.
“If you insist, I’ll laugh,” Evelyn retorted, “but don’t get the idea that I climbed out of bed in the middle of the night to listen to your bad puns.”
She was suddenly uneasy under Linnet’s ocular caress. Ever since she had stepped into the room she had had the sensation of being pawed, mentally. Linnet was physically attractive; he had proved an exceedingly pleasant shipboard companion, and she liked him well enough to have confided in him that afternoon; but she did not relish the X-ray quality in his gaze as it rose slowly from her trim ankles. She moved away a step.
Linnet retained hold of her arm. With brutal abruptness he pulled her against him, kissed her savagely. Evelyn turned her head. She froze into impersonal immobility, as she felt his lips on her cheek.
“What am I supposed to do?” she asked when she could disengage her lips. “Slap your face?”
“You’re a damned cute little trick,” said Linnet. Hungrily he kissed the hollow of her shoulder.
Evelyn pushed her hands against his chest, managed a few inches of breathing room. “This is even less fun than listening to your bad puns,” she said.
Linnet raised his head. “Why don’t you stop pretending?”
“I’m not pretending. I’ve never said anything to you that I didn’t mean, and I’m not beginning now when I say I’m going home.”
“Please don’t go yet, Miss Branch,” said a voice behind her.
She turned. A Hindu in a long black coat was coming toward her. The tail of his almond-green turban was draped over one shoulder.
“I am Chitterji Rao,” he said. “His Highness, who has retired, asked me to receive you—but I see Colonel Linnet has already done the honors. Will you sit down?” The sweep of his hand indicated the pile of cushions. “Or shall I have some European chairs brought?”
“I prefer to stand,” said Evelyn Branch, looking at Linnet.
Chitterji Rao made a sound in his throat like the purring of a monstrous cat.
“You are very charming to have come tonight,” he said. “Did you bring it with you?”
“Bring what?” Evelyn again looked at Linnet. Linnet laughed.
“The nao-ratna,” said Chitterji Rao.
Evelyn appeared puzzled.
“The nao-ratna,” explained Linnet, “is a sort of necklace that has the Bosa pearl as a pendant.”
“Oh.”
“And Colonel Linnet tells me that you were going to the flat of Mr. Lee Marvin tonight to get the pearl. Did you get it?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Chitterji Rao laughed softly as he glanced at a streak of lipstick on Linnet’s cheek. “I smile,” he said, “because in Hindustani—I suppose you do not speak the language? —because in Hindustani the word bosa means kiss. The man who named the pearl evidently saw the gem as the very essence of beauty and loveliness. Very pretty imagery, don’t you think?”
“Very,” said Evelyn. She noticed that the sardonic gleam in the bulging eyes of the tall Hindu gave her the same chill of apprehension as the laugh of the Oriental who had brought her to the palace. The feeling of relief which Chitterji Rao’s welcome entrance had given her was wearing off rapidly.
“You will return again to Mr. Marvin’s, of course— for the nao-ratna?”
“He says he hasn’t got it,” said Evelyn.
“I am fairly certain he has,” said Chitterji Rao. “I saw it pass into his possession last night. Will you go back to Marvin—for us? His Highness will be generous if you return the nao-ratna to him. He offers a reward of ten thousand rupees. That is, in your money, roughly three thousand five hundred dollars.”
“Why should I bring the pearl to you?” protested Evelyn. “I own an interest in it.”
“Ah?” Chitterji Rao spread his hands in a suave gesture of surprise. “From whom did you acquire this interest?”
“From Harrison Hoyt.”
“I am very sorry,” the Household Officer purred, “but Mr. Hoyt has never owned either the Bosa pearl—nor the diamond, the ruby, the sapphire, the emerald, the topaz, the jacinth, the cat’s-eye, nor the coral which make up the rest of the nao-ratna.”
“You mean to say Harry Hoyt never had the pearl?”
“He had it, yes. But he did not own it.”
“He stole it, then?”
“Not exactly. All I can say is that his possession of these jewels was highly irregular, just as Mr. Marvin’s possession of them was highly irregular. They were, and still are, the property of His Highness.”
“Then why do you have to hire someone to steal them back? Why doesn’t the Maharajah take up the matter through the courts?”
“Ah, the courts! The process of the law is long and tedious. His Highness must have the nao-ratna immediately.”
“Why the rush?”
“The explanation is somewhat involved. Won’t you sit down?”
The girl looked at Linnet.
“I’ve heard all this before,” said Linnet, yawning. “So I think I’ll take off and grab some shut-eye. You’ll excuse me, won’t you, sister?”
“Gladly,” said Evelyn. With the toe of one of her white kid pumps she separated a pillow from the multicolored pile and sank down upon it, her feet under her.
Linnet left.
“In the first place,” Chitterji Rao began, “His Highness the Maharajah is not interested in the intrinsic value of the jewels. They are worth several lakhs of rupees, but this amount is trifling to the richest prince in Eastern India.”
“Naturally!” Evelyn Branch was incredulous. She did not know what to believe any more. This was a page out of the Arabian Nights, and not something that was happening to a girl who had been making forty dollars a week only a short time ago.
“Were it not for the religious significance of the nao-ratna His Highness would not even bother with the matter,” said Chitterji Rao with a superior smile. “But this particular nine-jewel talisman has been promised as a votive offering to the Temple of Kali before the Diwali festival tomorrow night. It is imperative, therefore, that it be returned by that time, as the success of a man’s projects for the entire year is determined at Diwali. Will you undertake to get it from Mr. Marvin—for ten thousand rupees?”
The girl uncurled her legs from the pillow. She arose, and held out her hand. “I’ll think about it,” she said, “and let you know in the morning. Good night.”
“Pakaro!”
As Evelyn started for the door, the sharp command in Urdu rang out behind her. Two fiercely bearded soldiers of Jharnpur materialized suddenly before her. Then she found her way barred by gleaming bayonets which flung back irr dazzling fragments the flashing reflections of the mirrored walls.
Her lips quivering with indignation, the girl rushed back to Chitterji Rao.
“Well?” Her eyes, dark with fear and resentment, made her one word ask a dozen angry questions.
Chitterji Rao’s upper lip lifted a fraction of an inch in silent laughter. “I forgot to tell you, Miss Branch,” he said, “that attached to His Highness’s offer is the provision that in case you refused, you must remain a— shall we say—guest in the Palace until the nao-ratna is recovered.”
