THE RETURN OF IMRAY
The doors were wide, the story saith, Out of the night came the patient wraith, He might not speak, and he could not stir A hair of the Baron's minniver-- Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin, He roved the castle to seek his kin. And oh,'twas a piteous thing to see The dumb ghost follow his enemy! THE BARON.
Imray achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivablemotive, in his youth, at the threshold of his career he chose todisappear from the world---which is to say, the little Indian stationwhere he lived.
Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence among thebilliard-tables at his Club. Upon a morning, he was not, and no mannerof search could make sure where he might be. He had stepped out of hisplace; he had not appeared at his office at the proper time, and hisdogcart was not upon the public roads. For these reasons, and becausehe was hampering, in a microscopical degree, the administration of theIndian Empire, that Empire paused for one microscopical moment to makeinquiry into the fate of Imray. Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed,telegrams were despatched down the lines of railways and to the nearestseaport town-twelve hundred miles away; but Imray was not at the end ofthe drag-ropes nor the telegraph wires. He was gone, and his place knewhim no more.
Then the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it couldnot be delayed, and Imray from being a man became a mystery--such athing as men talk over at their tables in the Club for a month, and thenforget utterly. His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highestbidder. His superior officer wrote an altogether absurd letter tohis mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably disappeared, and hisbungalow stood empty.
After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by, myfriend Strickland, of the Police, saw fit to rent the bungalow fromthe native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss Youghal--anaffair which has been described in another place--and while hewas pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life wassufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs.There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times formeals. He ate, standing up and walking about, whatever he might findat the sideboard, and this is not good for human beings. His domesticequipment was limited to six rifles, three shot-guns, five saddles, anda collection of stiff-jointed mahseer-rods, bigger and stronger than thelargest salmon-rods. These occupied one-half of his bungalow, and theother half was given up to Strickland and his dog Tietjens--an enormousRampur slut who devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke toStrickland in a language of her own; and whenever, walking abroad,she saw things calculated to destroy the peace of Her Majesty theQueen-Empress, she returned to her master and laid information.Strickland would take steps at once, and the end of his labours wastrouble and fine and imprisonment for other people. The natives believedthat Tietjens was a familiar spirit, and treated her with the greatreverence that is born of hate and fear. One room in the bungalow wasset apart for her special use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket, and adrinking-trough, and if any one came into Strickland's room at night hercustom was to knock down the invader and give tongue till some onecame with a light. Strickland owed his life to her, when he was on theFrontier, in search of a local murderer, who came in the gray dawn tosend Strickland much farther than the Andaman Islands. Tietjens caughtthe man as he was crawling into Strickland's tent with a dagger betweenhis teeth; and after his record of iniquity was established in the eyesof the law he was hanged. From that date Tietjens wore a collar of roughsilver, and employed a monogram on her night-blanket; and the blanketwas of double woven Kashmir cloth, for she was a delicate dog.
Under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland; and once,when he was ill with fever, made great trouble for the doctors, becauseshe did not know how to help her master and would not allow anothercreature to attempt aid. Macarnaght, of the Indian Medical Service, beather over her head with a gun-butt before she could understand that shemust give room for those who could give quinine.
A short time after Strickland had taken Imray's bungalow, my businesstook me through that Station, and naturally, the Club quarters beingfull, I quartered myself upon Strickland. It was a desirable bungalow,eight-roomed and heavily thatched against any chance of leakage fromrain. Under the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling-cloth which looked justas neat as a white-washed ceiling. The landlord had repainted it whenStrickland took the bungalow. Unless you knew how Indian bungalows werebuilt you would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the darkthree-cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the underside ofthe thatch harboured all manner of rats, bats, ants, and foul things.
Tietjens met me in the verandah with a bay like the boom of the bell ofSt. Paul's, putting her paws on my shoulder to show she was glad to seeme. Strickland had contrived to claw together a sort of meal which hecalled lunch, and immediately after it was finished went out about hisbusiness. I was left alone with Tietjens and my own affairs. The heat ofthe summer had broken up and turned to the warm damp of the rains. Therewas no motion in the heated air, but the rain fell like ramrods on theearth, and flung up a blue mist when it splashed back. The bamboos, andthe custard-apples, the poinsettias, and the mango-trees in the gardenstood still while the warm water lashed through them, and the frogsbegan to sing among the aloe hedges. A little before the light failed,and when the rain was at its worst, I sat in the back verandah andheard the water roar from the eaves, and scratched myself because I wascovered with the thing called prickly-heat. Tietjens came out withme and put her head in my lap and was very sorrowful; so I gave herbiscuits when tea was ready, and I took tea in the back verandah onaccount of the little coolness found there. The rooms of the house weredark behind me. I could smell Strickland's saddlery and the oil on hisguns, and I had no desire to sit among these things. My own servant cameto me in the twilight, the muslin of his clothes clinging tightly to hisdrenched body, and told me that a gentleman had called and wished to seesome one. Very much against my will, but only because of the darkness ofthe rooms, I went into the naked drawing-room, telling my man to bringthe lights. There might or might not have been a caller waiting---itseemed to me that I saw a figure by one of the windows---but when thelights came there was nothing save the spikes of the rain without,and the smell of the drinking earth in my nostrils. I explained to myservant that he was no wiser than he ought to be, and went back to theverandah to talk to Tietjens. She had gone out into the wet, and Icould hardly coax her back to me; even with biscuits with sugar tops.Strickland came home, dripping wet, just before dinner, and the firstthing he said was.
'Has any one called?'
I explained, with apologies, that my servant had summoned me into thedrawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer had tried to call onStrickland, and thinking better of it had fled after giving his name.Strickiand ordered dinner, without comment, and since it was a realdinner with a white tablecloth attached, we sat down.
At nine o'clock Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I was tired too.Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up, and swunginto the least exposed verandah as soon as her master moved to his ownroom, which was next to the stately chamber set apart for Tietjens. If amere wife had wished to sleep out of doors in that pelting rain it wouldnot have mattered; but Tietjens was a dog, and therefore the betteranimal. I looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flay her witha whip. He smiled queerly, as a man would smile after telling someunpleasant domestic tragedy. 'She has done this ever since I moved inhere,' said he. 'Let her go.'
The dog was Strickland's dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all thatStrickland felt In being thus made light of. Tietjens encamped outsidemy bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered on thethatch, and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a thrown eggspatters a barn-door, but the light was pale blue, not yellow; and,looking through my split bamboo blinds, I could see the great dogstanding, not sleeping, in the verandah, the hackles alift on her backand her fee
t anchored as tensely as the drawn wire-rope of a suspensionbridge. In the very short pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep, butit seemed that some one wanted me very urgently. He, whoever he was,was trying to call me by name, but his voice was no more than a huskywhisper. The thunder ceased, and Tietjens went into the garden andhowled at the low moon. Somebody tried to open my door, walked about andabout through the house and stood breathing heavily in the verandahs,and just when I was falling asleep I fancied that I heard a wildhammering and clamouring above my head or on the door.
I ran into Strickland's room and asked him whether he was ill, and hadbeen calling for me. He was lying on his bed half dressed, a pipe in hismouth. 'I thought you'd come,' he said. 'Have I been walking round thehouse recently?'
I explained that he had been tramping in the dining-room and thesmoking-room and two or three other places, and he laughed and told meto go back to bed. I went back to bed and slept till the morning, butthrough all my mixed dreams I was sure I was doing some one an injusticein not attending to his wants. What those wants were I could not tell;but a fluttering, whispering, bolt-fumbling, lurking, loitering Someonewas reproaching me for my slackness, and, half awake, I heard thehowling of Tietjens in the garden and the threshing of the rain.
I lived in that house for two days. Strickland went to his officedaily, leaving me alone for eight or ten hours with Tietjens for my onlycompanion. As long as the full light lasted I was comfortable, and sowas Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I moved into the back verandahand cuddled each other for company. We were alone in the house, but nonethe less it was much too fully occupied by a tenant with whom I did notwish to interfere. I never saw him, but I could see the curtains betweenthe rooms quivering where he had just passed through; I could hearthe chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that hadjust quitted them; and I could feel when I went to get a book fromthe dining-room that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the frontverandah till I should have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight moreinteresting by glaring into the darkened rooms with every hair erect,and following the motions of something that I could not see. She neverentered the rooms, but her eyes moved interestedly: that was quitesufficient. Only when my servant came to trim the lamps and make alllight and habitable she would come in with me and spend her time sittingon her haunches, watching an invisible extra man as he moved aboutbehind my shoulder. Dogs are cheerful companions.
I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over tothe Club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality,was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much care for hishouse and its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end, and then smiledvery wearily, but without contempt, for he is a man who understandsthings. 'Stay on,' he said, 'and see what this thing means. All you havetalked about I have known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait.Tietjens has left me. Are you going too?'
I had seen him through one little affair, connected with a heathenidol, that had brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I hadno desire to help him through further experiences. He was a man to whomunpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.
Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely,and would be happy to see him in the daytime; but that I did not care tosleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone outto lie in the verandah.
''Pon my soul, I don't wonder,' said Strickland, with his eyes on theceiling-cloth. 'Look at that!'
The tails of two brown snakes were hanging between the cloth and thecornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in the lamplight.
'If you are afraid of snakes of course--' said Strickland.
I hate and fear snakes, because if you look into the eyes of any snakeyou will see that it knows all and more of the mystery of man's fall,and that it feels all the contempt that the Devil felt when Adam wasevicted from Eden. Besides which its bite is generally fatal, and ittwists up trouser legs.
'You ought to get your thatch overhauled,' I said.
'Give me a mahseer-rod, and we'll poke 'em down.'
'They'll hide among the roof-beams,' said Strickland. 'I can't standsnakes overhead. I'm going up into the roof. If I shake 'em down, standby with a cleaning-rod and break their backs.'
I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, but I took thecleaning-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland brought agardener's ladder from the verandah, and set it against the side of theroom.
The snake-tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear thedry rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy ceiling-cloth.Strickland took a lamp with him, while I tried to make clear to himthe danger of hunting roof-snakes between a ceiling-cloth and athatch, apart from the deterioration of property caused by ripping outceiling-cloths.
'Nonsense!' said Strickland. 'They're sure to hide near the walls by thecloth. The bricks are too cold for 'em, and the heat of the room is justwhat they like.' He put his hand to the corner of the stuff andripped it from the cornice. It gave with a great sound of tearing, andStrickland put his head through the opening into the dark of the angleof the roof-beams. I set my teeth and lifted the rod, for I had not theleast knowledge of what might descend.
'H'm!' said Strickland, and his voice rolled and rumbled in the roof.'There's room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove, some oneis occupying 'em!'
'Snakes?' I said from below.
'No. It's a buffalo. Hand me up the two last joints of a mahseer-rod,and I'll prod it. It's lying on the main roof-beam.'
I handed up the rod.
'What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here,'said Strickland, climbing farther into the roof. I could see his elbowthrusting with the rod. 'Come out of that, whoever you are! Heads belowthere! It's falling.'
I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with ashape that was pressing it downwards and downwards towards the lightedlamp on the table. I snatched the lamp out of danger and stood back.Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shotdown upon the table something that I dared not look at, till Stricklandhad slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.
He did not say much, being a man of few words; but he picked up theloose end of the tablecloth and threw it over the remnants on the table.
'It strikes me,' said he, putting down the lamp, 'our friend Imray hascome back. Oh! you would, would you?'
There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out,to be back-broken by the butt of the mahseer-rod. I was sufficientlysick to make no remarks worth recording.
Strickland meditated, and helped himself to drinks. The arrangementunder the cloth made no more signs of life.
'Is it Imray?' I said.
Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment, and looked.
'It is Imray,' he said; 'and his throat is cut from ear to ear.'
Then we spoke, both together and to ourselves: 'That's why he whisperedabout the house.'
Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later hergreat nose heaved open the dining-room door.
She sniffed and was still. The tattered ceiling-cloth hung down almostto the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away fromthe discovery.
Tietjens came in and sat down; her teeth bared under her lip and herforepaws planted. She looked at Strickland.
'It's a bad business, old lady,' said he. 'Men don't climb up into theroofs of their bungalows to die, and they don't fasten up the ceilingcloth behind 'em. Let's think it out.'
'Let's think it out somewhere else,' I said.
'Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We'll get into my room.'
I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland's room first,and allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me, and we littobacco and thought. Strickland thought. I smoked furiously, because Iwas afraid.
'Imray is back,' said Strickland. 'The question is---who killed Imray
?Don't talk, I've a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I tookover most of Imray's servants. Imray was guileless and inoffensive,wasn't he?'
I agreed; though the heap under the cloth had looked neither one thingnor the other.
'If I call in all the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lielike Aryans. What do you suggest?'
'Call 'em in one by one,' I said.
'They'll run away and give the news to all their fellows,' saidStrickland. 'We must segregate 'em. Do you suppose your servant knowsanything about it?'
'He may, for aught I know; but I don't think it's likely. He has onlybeen here two or three days,' I answered. 'What's your notion?'
'I can't quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side ofthe ceiling-cloth?'
There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland's bedroom door. Thisshowed that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked from sleep andwished to put Strickland to bed.
'Come in,' said Strickland. 'It's a very warm night, isn't it?'
Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mahomedan, said that itwas a very warm night; but that there was more rain pending, which, byhis Honour's favour, would bring relief to the country.
'It will be so, if God pleases,' said Strickland, tugging off his boots.'It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselesslyfor many days---ever since that time when thou first earnest into myservice. What time was that?'
'Has the Heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretlyto Europe without warning given; and I-even I-came into the honouredservice of the protector of the poor.'
'And Imray Sahib went to Europe?'
'It is so said among those who were his servants.'
'And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?'
'Assuredly, Sahib. He was a good master, and cherished his dependants.'
'That is true. I am very tired, but I go buck-shooting to-morrow. Giveme the little sharp rifle that I use for black-buck; it is in the caseyonder.'
The man stooped over the case; handed barrels, stock, and fore-end toStrickland, who fitted all together, yawning dolefully. Then he reacheddown to the gun-case, took a solid-drawn cartridge, and slipped it intothe breech of the '360 Express.
'And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly! That is very strange,Bahadur Khan, is it not?'
'What do I know of the ways of the white man. Heaven-born?'
'Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more anon. It has reached methat Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and thateven now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.'
'Sahib!'
The lamplight slid along the barrels of the rifle as they levelledthemselves at Bahadur Khan's broad breast.
'Go and look!'said Strickland. 'Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and hewaits thee. Go!'
The man picked up a lamp, and went into the dining-room, Stricklandfollowing, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. Helooked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth; at thewrithing snake under foot; and last, a gray glaze settling on his face,at the thing under the tablecloth.
'Hast thou seen?' said Strickland after a pause.
'I have seen. I am clay in the white man's hands. What does the Presencedo?'
'Hang thee within the month. What else?'
'For killing him? Nay, Sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants,he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him hebewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever--my child!'
'What said Imray Sahib?'
'He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; whereforemy child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when hehad come back from office, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him upinto the roof-beams and made all fast behind him. The Heaven-born knowsall things. I am the servant of the Heaven-born.'
Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular,'Thou art witness to this saying? He has killed.'
Bahadur Khan stood ashen gray in the light of the one lamp. The need forjustification came upon him very swiftly. 'I am trapped,' he said, 'butthe offence was that man's. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and Ikilled and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,' he glared atTietjens, couched stolidly before him, 'only such could know what Idid.'
'It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with arope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!'
A drowsy policeman answered Strickland's call. He was followed byanother, and Tietjens sat wondrous still.
'Take him to the police-station,' said Strickland. 'There is a casetoward.'
'Do I hang, then?' said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape, andkeeping his eyes on the ground.
'If the sun shines or the water runs--yes!' said Strickland.
Bahadur Khan stepped back one long pace, quivered, and stood still. Thetwo policemen waited further orders.
'Go!'said Strickland.
'Nay; but I go very swiftly,' said Bahadur Khan. 'Look! I am even now adead man.'
He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of thehalf-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.
'I come of land-holding stock,' said Bahadur Khan, rocking where hestood. 'It were a disgrace to me to go to the public scaffold: thereforeI take this way. Be it remembered that the Sahib's shirts are correctlyenumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his washbasin.My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek toslay me with the rope? My honour is saved, and--and--I die.'
At the end of an hour he died, as they die who are bitten by thelittle brown karait, and the policemen bore him and the thing under thetablecloth to their appointed places. All were needed to make clear thedisappearance of Imray.
'This,' said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, 'is calledthe nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?'
'I heard,' I answered. 'Imray made a mistake.'
'Simply and solely through not knowing the nature of the Oriental, andthe coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan had been withhim for four years.'
I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length oftime. When I went over to my own room I found my man waiting, impassiveas the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.
'What has befallen Bahadur Khan?' said I.
'He was bitten by a snake and died. The rest the Sahib knows,' was theanswer.
'And how much of this matter hast thou known?'
'As much as might be gathered from One coming in in the twilight to seeksatisfaction. Gently, Sahib. Let me pull off those boots.'
I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Stricklandshouting from his side of the house--
'Tietjens has come back to her place!'
And so she had. The great deerhound was couched statelily on her ownbedstead on her own blanket, while, in the next room, the idle, empty,ceiling-cloth waggled as it trailed on the table.