Bombay Mail, page 12
“Well, unless he’s an acrobat, he’s still in it. Why don’t you sneak out the window at the next station and try—”
For a single instant Jack Hawley’s mind was filled with unpleasant thoughts. Still acutely conscious of the scene in the dining-saloon, in which Xavier and “Madame Smeganoff” had figured, he had a sharp feeling that this mysterious young lady was taking advantage of an opportunity to send him into a trap of some kind. Perhaps the whole thing was planned from the beginning. Perhaps even the murder of the Governor of Bengal, and the subsequent killing of the Maharajah had something to do with it. But militating against this thought was a belief that had Beatrice Jones and Xavier been working together, they would not have been so stupid as to disclose their association in the dining-saloon. However, caution commanded that he be on his guard. Then he had an idea. If Xavier and his cohorts had laid a deep plot against him, depending upon their ability to move him about like a chessman, any initiative on his part would throw their plans awry. He felt that it was his move now—a surprise move. So he said, watching her narrowly, “I’m not going to wait for the next station!”
She read his purpose at once and laid a restraining hand on his arm. There was genuine concern in her voice;
“But you might be killed! Suppose you fell under the wheels?”
“That wouldn’t matter to anybody but me, would it?” he asked.
“Why I—I don’t know. I don’t like the thought, that’s all. You’re too young to die.”
“Thanks,” said Hawley. “I’ll be careful not to slip, so you won’t have any unpleasant thoughts.”
“Besides,” said the girl, “if you did manage to get clear of the train, maybe you could—” she stopped.
“Something I could do for you?” he asked.
“No,” she replied. “It was a selfish thought. You’ve got enough to worry about.”
He hesitated.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I can help you when I come back— if you will ask me then.”
The girl smiled wistfully.
“Maybe,” she said.
Hawley opened the window: The air from outside was like a blast from a furnace. The Brahmin, who had finished his rice, watched curiously.
“Good-by,” said Hawley.
“Good luck. Be careful.”
Hawley climbed on the sill, bent over to get outside. The girl steadied his feet with her hands as he straightened up, hugging the white flank of the car. He got his hands on top of the car, groped in vain over the smooth, curving surface for a hand hold. Above the window was a line of raised brass letters which ran along the car to spell EAST INDIAN RAILWAY. They did not protrude very far, but they would have to serve as foothold. Hawley lifted one leg, until he hooked his heel on the narrow crossbar of an A. He gave a spring, flung himself up and inward, sprawled on the top of the car. The roof of the car, exposed all day to the pitiless sun, burned his hands and bare knees.
Slowly, cautiously, Hawley pulled himself over the arched roof until he reached the narrow catwalk that ran the length of the center of the car, studded at intervals with tiny ventilator cowls. He drew his feet under him, tried to stand up, but the force of the scorching air rushing over the top of the speeding train threatened to blow him off. He dropped to a crouching posture and made his way on his hands and knees to the end of the car. He looked down. Between the two coaches, through a pattern of couplings, buffers, and air hoses, he caught a brief glimpse of the ground flying under him. He had a moment of dizziness. He closed his eyes, opened them again, poised himself, then sprang. As he landed atop the next car, one foot struck the curve of the roof, slipped. He slid sideways with sickening swiftness until his hands caught the edge of the catwalk. He hung on. The car swayed and jolted over switch points. Hawley did not dare move for several seconds. He wondered if the thump he had made when he landed on the roof had been heard inside the car. Then he decided that he was lying above the servants’ compartment, and stopped worrying. Carefully he pulled himself back to the catwalk.
He started crawling forward toward the head of the train. Far ahead he could see the engineer leaning out of his cab. He could see the cars swing into a wide arc as the train took a curve. He crouched low to keep his balance. In the hollow of the curve was a village of mud huts. Women in bright red saris were pushing back the green scum from a little pond to fill brass pots with water. A naked boy was stacking cakes of dried cow dung into a pyramid higher than he was. The train straightened out and Hawley crept forward again. Once more he came to the short but dizzy chasm between two cars. Again he jumped. This time he landed firmly.
This was the car in which Beatrice Jones had seen the man with the fez disappear. Third compartment, she had said. Hawley counted the ventilators on the roof and estimated the position of the third compartment. Crawling to the center of the car, he checked his bearings by the water chutes—the vents by which tanks in each compartment are filled from the outside. He must be at about the right place. Now to get in!
He slid down over the curving roof, feet first. He turned over on his stomach and worked his way down until he caught his fingers in the ridge that marked the bulge over a door. He had a hard time keeping his legs close to the side of the train. The wind blew them outward. He finally caught his toe in the door handle, and worked his other foot over until it rested on the window sill. He decided he would have to act quickly, in case the man inside the compartment saw his legs and attacked first.
He felt his shoe rattle over a series of wooden slats. The shutter was pulled up over the window. He swung one leg back, kicked with all his might. The shutter crashed into the compartment. Hawley slid in after it.
As he picked himself up off the floor, Hawley was confronted, not by the man with the fez, but by a thin, angular lady who had opened her mouth to scream but who was too terrified to emit a sound. The sight of this young man, blackened by the grime of the car roofs, his bare knees showing scratched and bleeding below his khaki shorts, was too much for Miss Ursula Klink. First Doctor Lenoir, with his black bag, then the grinning man with the fez, and now this grimy, bleeding youth! Her emotional equipment had already been strained to the limit of its endurance. Miss Klink fainted.
Chapter Seventeen: WHERE A SLIP MEANS DEATH
As Ursula Klink toppled over, Hawley caught her in his arms. He was bewildered and dismayed. He must have climbed into the wrong compartment. Perhaps Beatrice Jones had made a mistake, perhaps the mistake had been his, in not being more suspicious of Madame Smeganoff’s dual personality. He stretched Miss Klink on a berth, wondering what he should do next. Should he get out of the compartment before the woman came to and gave the alarm? Or should he try to revive her?
Suddenly he straightened up. He had heard someone moving in the lavatory at the end of the compartment. He crossed the floor with quick steps, pulled at the door. It was locked, but it was locked from the outside. Hawley unlocked it.
Instantly the door flew open, knocking Hawley off his balance. The man with the fez came hurtling out, striking Hawley in the chest, kicking him in the stomach. Hawley went down. He was up at once, ready to fight, furious with himself for having been caught off his guard. But the man with the fez was not staying to give battle. Already he was disappearing through the window Hawley had unceremoniously opened.
Hawley dived after him. The man with the fez was quick and agile. He was scrambling up the outside of the car to the roof. His feet vanished just as Hawley got to the window.
Hawley leaned out, reached up, grabbed one foot. He pulled. The man above held fast. Still clinging to the foot, Hawley swung himself into a better position, braced himself in the window frame, reached up to grab the foot with both hands. Again he yanked. The foot did not give an inch. The man in the fez was firmly set. He must have one hand anchored in a water chute.
Still, Hawley reasoned, the man above was at a disadvantage. His position could not be as secure as Hawley’s. He had only the muscles of his arms and fingers—iron muscles, they seemed to be—while Hawley had all his strength, plus the advantage of his weight and whatever leverage he could get from his lower position. He would pull the man down. He must. The man had his rubies— otherwise why should he have taken flight?
Hawley squirmed farther out the window, braced his knees against the side of the frame, dragged again—in vain.
Then Miss Klink regained consciousness. She sat up. She screamed. She got off her berth and scurried about the compartment. She picked up her patent folding artist’s stool and rushed to the window. Her lips were set in a thin, firm line. At last she saw her way clear to rid her compartment of these persistent male intruders.
She whacked at Hawley’s bare knees with her stool. Hawley instinctively withdrew the knee she struck. Miss Klink whacked at the other one, poked Hawley in the stomach with the legs of the stool. Hawley tried to get his first knee back on the window frame. Miss Klink battered away with her stool; then, with a supreme effort, pushed Hawley clear of the window.
Hawley swung free, clinging desperately to Martini’s foot. The foot seemed to give, as Hawley’s full weight dragged upon it. For a moment he thought that the man above had lost his grip, that they would both be dashed to the ground. But Martini held fast. Dangling like a weight at the end of a rope, Hawley tried to get his feet back on the window sill. He could not reach it. He felt the man above moving his leg, trying to kick Hawley loose. Hawley held on. Again the leg moved.
Martini was drawing his leg upward and Hawley with it.
Inch by inch the foot moved. It reached the little ridge at the edge of the car roof. Hawley felt the skin scraped from his hands as they dragged across the ridge. There was power in his adversary’s limbs. But Hawley was far from flabby. His straight elbows began to crook into angles that grew slowly more acute. He was chinning himself on Martini’s foot.
Hawley’s eyes rose above the edge of the roof. He had a brief glimpse of Martini’s dark, sweating face. He noticed that his foe was strangely handicapped by the fact that his left arm was thrust through the handle loops of a black Gladstone bag. Hawley wondered briefly what the bag might contain. Even if it were empty, the weight and bulk of the satchel, continually slipping into the crotch of Martini’s elbow, made the man’s precarious position more precarious. Hawley marveled at the way Martini handled himself. His confused thoughts tried vainly to connect the black bag with the stolen rubies. Beatrice Jones had been right about the man with the fez being in the compartment she had indicated; perhaps she was right about the rubies, too.
Hawley redoubled his efforts to mount the roof. He saw, within easy reach, the aperture of a water chute. He released one hand from Martini’s ankle, stabbed at the water chute, sank his fingers into the vent. He had a two-point leverage now. He could swing his legs to the roof.
His ankle freed of one of Hawley’s hands, Martini began to kick frantically. He caught Hawley a glancing blow on the chin. Hawley saw flashes of painful light— but he hung bn.
Hawley got one knee on the roof of the car. Martini continued to kick. Hawley got the other knee up. Martini shouted something at him. The wind whisked the words out of his mouth.
Hawley raised himself, half standing, still grasping Martini’s ankle. He lunged forward, bearing Martini to the roof. He lay for a moment breathless, pinning Martini’s shoulders against the hot catwalk.
“If you don’t—give me—those rubies—” he gasped.
Martini’s shoulders suddenly twisted in a strange contortion. With astonishing agility he squirmed free from under Hawley. Almost before Hawley realized what was happening, Martini was moving along the top of the car toward the locomotive, running on all fours with a queer monkey-like gait. The black bag swung from the crook of his elbow, banging against the roof.
Hawley scrambled to his feet, started after him. Abandoning all precaution, he ran standing up, bending forward against the rush of air, trusting to luck that he would keep his footing.
Two-thirds of the way to the end of the car, he caught Martini about the hips. Martini spun half around, aimed a swinging right at Hawley’s head. Hawley ducked. The impetus of the missed blow threw Martini against him. Hawley held fast. He clinched. His hands sought Martini’s pockets.
The Bombay Mail was climbing. The hoarse panting of the locomotive came sharply to Hawley’s ears. The cars were angling around a curve. He braced his feet against the jolting motion. The trailing cloud of pungent coal smoke swept across the top of the train, bringing tears to Hawley’s eyes. He coughed. Martini’s fist smashed into the pit of his stomach. He crooked one-elbow about Martini’s neck. Martini kicked him violently in the shins. Hawley’s feet went out from under him.
Hawley sprawled on the car top, with the empty fabric of Martini’s pocket flap clutched in one hand. He felt himself slipping helplessly down the curved side of the roof. He saw the ground rushing dizzily past. He pressed his hands desperately, futilely, against the roof to stop his fall. Then his heels caught in the slight ridge along the edge of the car. He stopped sliding.
In an instant he was on his knees again, crawling back up the curve of the roof. He saw Martini’s head disappearing between two cars. He made his way to the end of the coach and looked down. A hot blast of dust swirled up from below. He did not see Martini.
He looked back along the top of the train, watching the rails unwind behind like two glistening ribbons. He expected to see the mangled body of the man with his rubies suddenly revealed by the passage of the last car. He saw only the monotonously retreating ladder of ties. The man with the rubies must have crawled under the cars.
Hawley let himself carefully down between the two coaches. He crouched on the couplings, wondering under which of the two cars the thief had disappeared. He leaned down to look in both directions. He got his eyes full of sand, but he thought he glimpsed a smudge of dirty white, far behind in the dim maze of trucks and girder-work.
If that was actually the thief he had seen, the man must be used to traveling under railway trains. Hawley had a cold feeling of defeat as he considered the peril of following him. One mistake, and he would be ground to death beneath the screaming wheels. But he would have to take the risk.
He tore a strip from the sleeve of his shirt and tied it about his nose and mouth to keep the dust out of his lungs. Then he swung down under the couplings. The noise was paralyzing—the ringing cry of the wheel flanges, the staccato snap of the rail junctures, the creak of the couplings and heavy springs, the constant blast of burning, sand laden wind. Hawley was painfully conscious of the nearness of the ground, rushing under his back, only inches away. He extended his legs to slide under the car.
The seconds it took him to ease himself into the space between the top of the first truck and the bottom of the car seemed hours. He was terrified at first to find himself wedged into this narrow space, scarcely able to move, with the wheels and rails roaring in his ears. He found it awkward to get out. It would be better, he decided, to try crawling on his stomach. He wriggled his way over the hot, greasy metal, toward a pattern of rods and brake beams, toward Martini and his rubies.
The sixty-odd feet from one end of the car to the other seemed a mile—a fearsome, infernal mile, with roaring death waiting at each move. But Hawley made it. He squirmed across the top of the last four-wheel truck and lay a few seconds, panting, when he noticed a change in the clanking rhythm of the rail joints. The train was slowing down. He heard the brakes being applied. The train was stopping. There was a hiss of compressed air—almost in his ears. The Bombay Mail jolted to a halt.
An explosion like the boom of a cannon shook the ground. Hawley scrambled out from under the car and stood a moment in the space between the two coaches. Directly ahead was the second-class car in which he had traveled the night before. Hawley peered cautiously around the corner of the car. The tail of his eye caught the glitter of gorgeously decked elephants and the brilliance of a rank of Indian troops. He vaguely realized that some sort of ceremony was going on, that the fifing he heard was from a saluting cannon, but he gave no thought to the matter. His interest was fixed on a man in a grimy red fez, who was crawling out from under the train, three cars ahead.
The man in the fez glanced briefly about, then started to run. Hawley moved out from between the cars. He started boldly in the same direction. He had taken three steps when he felt his arm seized from behind. He whirled, his fists clenched.
“Sahib!”
Hawley stared into the full-whiskered face of Yatim, his Hindu bearer, who had just stepped out of the servants’ compartment of the second-class coach.
“You were arrested, Sahib. You have escaped?”
“Let go of my arm, Yatim. I’ve got to follow that man in the red fez—he’s running toward the guard’s van.”
“I will follow him, Sahib. Look, there are policemen about. You will be taken. Hide in here, Sahib.”
The bewhiskered bearer was pulling Hawley into the servants’ compartment. Hawley, exhausted by his ordeal of the past hour, offered little resistance. Perhaps, after all, Yatim was right. Yatim was a loyal, intelligent servant. The door of the compartment closed, and Hawley was alone with two Moslem servants, who regarded him in silence, their lips, scarlet from chewing betel, parted in suspicious surprise.
Outside the cannon was still firing. Hawley sat on the edge of the wooden shelf that was Yatim’s bed. He was beginning to breathe regularly again when he was aware of a commotion on the station platform. He went to the door, opened it a crack. Men were running about, yelling. Soldiers were pushing back surging crowds. Someone shouted, “The Maharajah of Zunjore’s been shot!”
Yatim pulled the door open and came in. He was out of breath.
“I saw him, Sahib,” he panted. “The guard said there was no one there, but I saw the top of the red fez. I told the guard I had a chit for the man with the fez. I said he was my master. The guard would hot let me in, and the fez disappeared again. I think the guard is his friend, Sahib.”
For a single instant Jack Hawley’s mind was filled with unpleasant thoughts. Still acutely conscious of the scene in the dining-saloon, in which Xavier and “Madame Smeganoff” had figured, he had a sharp feeling that this mysterious young lady was taking advantage of an opportunity to send him into a trap of some kind. Perhaps the whole thing was planned from the beginning. Perhaps even the murder of the Governor of Bengal, and the subsequent killing of the Maharajah had something to do with it. But militating against this thought was a belief that had Beatrice Jones and Xavier been working together, they would not have been so stupid as to disclose their association in the dining-saloon. However, caution commanded that he be on his guard. Then he had an idea. If Xavier and his cohorts had laid a deep plot against him, depending upon their ability to move him about like a chessman, any initiative on his part would throw their plans awry. He felt that it was his move now—a surprise move. So he said, watching her narrowly, “I’m not going to wait for the next station!”
She read his purpose at once and laid a restraining hand on his arm. There was genuine concern in her voice;
“But you might be killed! Suppose you fell under the wheels?”
“That wouldn’t matter to anybody but me, would it?” he asked.
“Why I—I don’t know. I don’t like the thought, that’s all. You’re too young to die.”
“Thanks,” said Hawley. “I’ll be careful not to slip, so you won’t have any unpleasant thoughts.”
“Besides,” said the girl, “if you did manage to get clear of the train, maybe you could—” she stopped.
“Something I could do for you?” he asked.
“No,” she replied. “It was a selfish thought. You’ve got enough to worry about.”
He hesitated.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I can help you when I come back— if you will ask me then.”
The girl smiled wistfully.
“Maybe,” she said.
Hawley opened the window: The air from outside was like a blast from a furnace. The Brahmin, who had finished his rice, watched curiously.
“Good-by,” said Hawley.
“Good luck. Be careful.”
Hawley climbed on the sill, bent over to get outside. The girl steadied his feet with her hands as he straightened up, hugging the white flank of the car. He got his hands on top of the car, groped in vain over the smooth, curving surface for a hand hold. Above the window was a line of raised brass letters which ran along the car to spell EAST INDIAN RAILWAY. They did not protrude very far, but they would have to serve as foothold. Hawley lifted one leg, until he hooked his heel on the narrow crossbar of an A. He gave a spring, flung himself up and inward, sprawled on the top of the car. The roof of the car, exposed all day to the pitiless sun, burned his hands and bare knees.
Slowly, cautiously, Hawley pulled himself over the arched roof until he reached the narrow catwalk that ran the length of the center of the car, studded at intervals with tiny ventilator cowls. He drew his feet under him, tried to stand up, but the force of the scorching air rushing over the top of the speeding train threatened to blow him off. He dropped to a crouching posture and made his way on his hands and knees to the end of the car. He looked down. Between the two coaches, through a pattern of couplings, buffers, and air hoses, he caught a brief glimpse of the ground flying under him. He had a moment of dizziness. He closed his eyes, opened them again, poised himself, then sprang. As he landed atop the next car, one foot struck the curve of the roof, slipped. He slid sideways with sickening swiftness until his hands caught the edge of the catwalk. He hung on. The car swayed and jolted over switch points. Hawley did not dare move for several seconds. He wondered if the thump he had made when he landed on the roof had been heard inside the car. Then he decided that he was lying above the servants’ compartment, and stopped worrying. Carefully he pulled himself back to the catwalk.
He started crawling forward toward the head of the train. Far ahead he could see the engineer leaning out of his cab. He could see the cars swing into a wide arc as the train took a curve. He crouched low to keep his balance. In the hollow of the curve was a village of mud huts. Women in bright red saris were pushing back the green scum from a little pond to fill brass pots with water. A naked boy was stacking cakes of dried cow dung into a pyramid higher than he was. The train straightened out and Hawley crept forward again. Once more he came to the short but dizzy chasm between two cars. Again he jumped. This time he landed firmly.
This was the car in which Beatrice Jones had seen the man with the fez disappear. Third compartment, she had said. Hawley counted the ventilators on the roof and estimated the position of the third compartment. Crawling to the center of the car, he checked his bearings by the water chutes—the vents by which tanks in each compartment are filled from the outside. He must be at about the right place. Now to get in!
He slid down over the curving roof, feet first. He turned over on his stomach and worked his way down until he caught his fingers in the ridge that marked the bulge over a door. He had a hard time keeping his legs close to the side of the train. The wind blew them outward. He finally caught his toe in the door handle, and worked his other foot over until it rested on the window sill. He decided he would have to act quickly, in case the man inside the compartment saw his legs and attacked first.
He felt his shoe rattle over a series of wooden slats. The shutter was pulled up over the window. He swung one leg back, kicked with all his might. The shutter crashed into the compartment. Hawley slid in after it.
As he picked himself up off the floor, Hawley was confronted, not by the man with the fez, but by a thin, angular lady who had opened her mouth to scream but who was too terrified to emit a sound. The sight of this young man, blackened by the grime of the car roofs, his bare knees showing scratched and bleeding below his khaki shorts, was too much for Miss Ursula Klink. First Doctor Lenoir, with his black bag, then the grinning man with the fez, and now this grimy, bleeding youth! Her emotional equipment had already been strained to the limit of its endurance. Miss Klink fainted.
Chapter Seventeen: WHERE A SLIP MEANS DEATH
As Ursula Klink toppled over, Hawley caught her in his arms. He was bewildered and dismayed. He must have climbed into the wrong compartment. Perhaps Beatrice Jones had made a mistake, perhaps the mistake had been his, in not being more suspicious of Madame Smeganoff’s dual personality. He stretched Miss Klink on a berth, wondering what he should do next. Should he get out of the compartment before the woman came to and gave the alarm? Or should he try to revive her?
Suddenly he straightened up. He had heard someone moving in the lavatory at the end of the compartment. He crossed the floor with quick steps, pulled at the door. It was locked, but it was locked from the outside. Hawley unlocked it.
Instantly the door flew open, knocking Hawley off his balance. The man with the fez came hurtling out, striking Hawley in the chest, kicking him in the stomach. Hawley went down. He was up at once, ready to fight, furious with himself for having been caught off his guard. But the man with the fez was not staying to give battle. Already he was disappearing through the window Hawley had unceremoniously opened.
Hawley dived after him. The man with the fez was quick and agile. He was scrambling up the outside of the car to the roof. His feet vanished just as Hawley got to the window.
Hawley leaned out, reached up, grabbed one foot. He pulled. The man above held fast. Still clinging to the foot, Hawley swung himself into a better position, braced himself in the window frame, reached up to grab the foot with both hands. Again he yanked. The foot did not give an inch. The man in the fez was firmly set. He must have one hand anchored in a water chute.
Still, Hawley reasoned, the man above was at a disadvantage. His position could not be as secure as Hawley’s. He had only the muscles of his arms and fingers—iron muscles, they seemed to be—while Hawley had all his strength, plus the advantage of his weight and whatever leverage he could get from his lower position. He would pull the man down. He must. The man had his rubies— otherwise why should he have taken flight?
Hawley squirmed farther out the window, braced his knees against the side of the frame, dragged again—in vain.
Then Miss Klink regained consciousness. She sat up. She screamed. She got off her berth and scurried about the compartment. She picked up her patent folding artist’s stool and rushed to the window. Her lips were set in a thin, firm line. At last she saw her way clear to rid her compartment of these persistent male intruders.
She whacked at Hawley’s bare knees with her stool. Hawley instinctively withdrew the knee she struck. Miss Klink whacked at the other one, poked Hawley in the stomach with the legs of the stool. Hawley tried to get his first knee back on the window frame. Miss Klink battered away with her stool; then, with a supreme effort, pushed Hawley clear of the window.
Hawley swung free, clinging desperately to Martini’s foot. The foot seemed to give, as Hawley’s full weight dragged upon it. For a moment he thought that the man above had lost his grip, that they would both be dashed to the ground. But Martini held fast. Dangling like a weight at the end of a rope, Hawley tried to get his feet back on the window sill. He could not reach it. He felt the man above moving his leg, trying to kick Hawley loose. Hawley held on. Again the leg moved.
Martini was drawing his leg upward and Hawley with it.
Inch by inch the foot moved. It reached the little ridge at the edge of the car roof. Hawley felt the skin scraped from his hands as they dragged across the ridge. There was power in his adversary’s limbs. But Hawley was far from flabby. His straight elbows began to crook into angles that grew slowly more acute. He was chinning himself on Martini’s foot.
Hawley’s eyes rose above the edge of the roof. He had a brief glimpse of Martini’s dark, sweating face. He noticed that his foe was strangely handicapped by the fact that his left arm was thrust through the handle loops of a black Gladstone bag. Hawley wondered briefly what the bag might contain. Even if it were empty, the weight and bulk of the satchel, continually slipping into the crotch of Martini’s elbow, made the man’s precarious position more precarious. Hawley marveled at the way Martini handled himself. His confused thoughts tried vainly to connect the black bag with the stolen rubies. Beatrice Jones had been right about the man with the fez being in the compartment she had indicated; perhaps she was right about the rubies, too.
Hawley redoubled his efforts to mount the roof. He saw, within easy reach, the aperture of a water chute. He released one hand from Martini’s ankle, stabbed at the water chute, sank his fingers into the vent. He had a two-point leverage now. He could swing his legs to the roof.
His ankle freed of one of Hawley’s hands, Martini began to kick frantically. He caught Hawley a glancing blow on the chin. Hawley saw flashes of painful light— but he hung bn.
Hawley got one knee on the roof of the car. Martini continued to kick. Hawley got the other knee up. Martini shouted something at him. The wind whisked the words out of his mouth.
Hawley raised himself, half standing, still grasping Martini’s ankle. He lunged forward, bearing Martini to the roof. He lay for a moment breathless, pinning Martini’s shoulders against the hot catwalk.
“If you don’t—give me—those rubies—” he gasped.
Martini’s shoulders suddenly twisted in a strange contortion. With astonishing agility he squirmed free from under Hawley. Almost before Hawley realized what was happening, Martini was moving along the top of the car toward the locomotive, running on all fours with a queer monkey-like gait. The black bag swung from the crook of his elbow, banging against the roof.
Hawley scrambled to his feet, started after him. Abandoning all precaution, he ran standing up, bending forward against the rush of air, trusting to luck that he would keep his footing.
Two-thirds of the way to the end of the car, he caught Martini about the hips. Martini spun half around, aimed a swinging right at Hawley’s head. Hawley ducked. The impetus of the missed blow threw Martini against him. Hawley held fast. He clinched. His hands sought Martini’s pockets.
The Bombay Mail was climbing. The hoarse panting of the locomotive came sharply to Hawley’s ears. The cars were angling around a curve. He braced his feet against the jolting motion. The trailing cloud of pungent coal smoke swept across the top of the train, bringing tears to Hawley’s eyes. He coughed. Martini’s fist smashed into the pit of his stomach. He crooked one-elbow about Martini’s neck. Martini kicked him violently in the shins. Hawley’s feet went out from under him.
Hawley sprawled on the car top, with the empty fabric of Martini’s pocket flap clutched in one hand. He felt himself slipping helplessly down the curved side of the roof. He saw the ground rushing dizzily past. He pressed his hands desperately, futilely, against the roof to stop his fall. Then his heels caught in the slight ridge along the edge of the car. He stopped sliding.
In an instant he was on his knees again, crawling back up the curve of the roof. He saw Martini’s head disappearing between two cars. He made his way to the end of the coach and looked down. A hot blast of dust swirled up from below. He did not see Martini.
He looked back along the top of the train, watching the rails unwind behind like two glistening ribbons. He expected to see the mangled body of the man with his rubies suddenly revealed by the passage of the last car. He saw only the monotonously retreating ladder of ties. The man with the rubies must have crawled under the cars.
Hawley let himself carefully down between the two coaches. He crouched on the couplings, wondering under which of the two cars the thief had disappeared. He leaned down to look in both directions. He got his eyes full of sand, but he thought he glimpsed a smudge of dirty white, far behind in the dim maze of trucks and girder-work.
If that was actually the thief he had seen, the man must be used to traveling under railway trains. Hawley had a cold feeling of defeat as he considered the peril of following him. One mistake, and he would be ground to death beneath the screaming wheels. But he would have to take the risk.
He tore a strip from the sleeve of his shirt and tied it about his nose and mouth to keep the dust out of his lungs. Then he swung down under the couplings. The noise was paralyzing—the ringing cry of the wheel flanges, the staccato snap of the rail junctures, the creak of the couplings and heavy springs, the constant blast of burning, sand laden wind. Hawley was painfully conscious of the nearness of the ground, rushing under his back, only inches away. He extended his legs to slide under the car.
The seconds it took him to ease himself into the space between the top of the first truck and the bottom of the car seemed hours. He was terrified at first to find himself wedged into this narrow space, scarcely able to move, with the wheels and rails roaring in his ears. He found it awkward to get out. It would be better, he decided, to try crawling on his stomach. He wriggled his way over the hot, greasy metal, toward a pattern of rods and brake beams, toward Martini and his rubies.
The sixty-odd feet from one end of the car to the other seemed a mile—a fearsome, infernal mile, with roaring death waiting at each move. But Hawley made it. He squirmed across the top of the last four-wheel truck and lay a few seconds, panting, when he noticed a change in the clanking rhythm of the rail joints. The train was slowing down. He heard the brakes being applied. The train was stopping. There was a hiss of compressed air—almost in his ears. The Bombay Mail jolted to a halt.
An explosion like the boom of a cannon shook the ground. Hawley scrambled out from under the car and stood a moment in the space between the two coaches. Directly ahead was the second-class car in which he had traveled the night before. Hawley peered cautiously around the corner of the car. The tail of his eye caught the glitter of gorgeously decked elephants and the brilliance of a rank of Indian troops. He vaguely realized that some sort of ceremony was going on, that the fifing he heard was from a saluting cannon, but he gave no thought to the matter. His interest was fixed on a man in a grimy red fez, who was crawling out from under the train, three cars ahead.
The man in the fez glanced briefly about, then started to run. Hawley moved out from between the cars. He started boldly in the same direction. He had taken three steps when he felt his arm seized from behind. He whirled, his fists clenched.
“Sahib!”
Hawley stared into the full-whiskered face of Yatim, his Hindu bearer, who had just stepped out of the servants’ compartment of the second-class coach.
“You were arrested, Sahib. You have escaped?”
“Let go of my arm, Yatim. I’ve got to follow that man in the red fez—he’s running toward the guard’s van.”
“I will follow him, Sahib. Look, there are policemen about. You will be taken. Hide in here, Sahib.”
The bewhiskered bearer was pulling Hawley into the servants’ compartment. Hawley, exhausted by his ordeal of the past hour, offered little resistance. Perhaps, after all, Yatim was right. Yatim was a loyal, intelligent servant. The door of the compartment closed, and Hawley was alone with two Moslem servants, who regarded him in silence, their lips, scarlet from chewing betel, parted in suspicious surprise.
Outside the cannon was still firing. Hawley sat on the edge of the wooden shelf that was Yatim’s bed. He was beginning to breathe regularly again when he was aware of a commotion on the station platform. He went to the door, opened it a crack. Men were running about, yelling. Soldiers were pushing back surging crowds. Someone shouted, “The Maharajah of Zunjore’s been shot!”
Yatim pulled the door open and came in. He was out of breath.
“I saw him, Sahib,” he panted. “The guard said there was no one there, but I saw the top of the red fez. I told the guard I had a chit for the man with the fez. I said he was my master. The guard would hot let me in, and the fez disappeared again. I think the guard is his friend, Sahib.”
