‘They are on the other side,’ muttered Niaz.
Alex nodded, frowning. He knew the far bank of the river well. The jungle that clothed it was so dense as to be almost impenetrable. A horse could not force its way through that tangle of trees and scrub and high grass, and it was no easy task for a man, for there were no paths except those made by wild animals. The only road was the one which wound for almost ten miles from the river to Lunjore, walled in by the jungle. And even if they could swim the horses across there was no point for several miles, either up stream or down, where they could get them ashore, since the current ran strongly on the far side and had worn away the bank until it overhung the river. The only possible landing-place was the cutting where the bridge of boats ended and the road ran up a long, gentle slope to where another brick-built toll-house and half a dozen mud huts huddled on the fringe of the jungle. They would have to leave the horses.
‘We must swim,’ said Alex slowly.
Niaz did not speak but he pointed silently, and Alex, looking along his raised arm as a man sights along the barrels of a gun, saw a long grey object at the water’s edge; something that might have been a log washed down by the river, and which lay at the exact angle that such a log would have grounded. Mugger; the blunt-nosed, man-eating crocodile of the Indian rivers.
‘If I die, I will die on land,’ said Niaz, ‘and not in the belly of such as that. Besides, I am no swimmer, and it will go hard with thee to swim against the current with a wounded arm. No. I will go forward, riding one of the horses. Why should they do me harm? They look for a Pathan. If there be only a few, I may slay them, and then I return for thee.’
‘And if there be a dozen of them and they hold thee until first light? The men we bound at Pari will be found at the dawn, and they will follow here and will remember thee.’
‘I said we should have killed them,’ said Niaz disgustedly. ‘It is in my mind to ride back now and slit their throats. But it were better I think to go forward while the night lasts.’
Alex said: ‘Try then. It may serve. Take my horse, for it is the least spent. And if there be too many of them, ride for Lunjore and tell Gardener Sahib to send a company with all speed.’
They walked back through the casuarinas and the clogging sand towards the road and the thicket where they had left the horses, but as they reached the road’s edge Niaz checked suddenly to listen and Alex, following his example, heard a faint and distant sound that he had heard once before that night. A sound of galloping hoof-beats that came nearer and louder. This time from the direction of Pari.
The two men stood motionless in the shelter of the trees and presently five riders galloped past them in the clear moonlight, raising a choking white cloud of dust. They heard the headlong pace check at the toll-hut and a sound of voices, and then clear in the silence the creak and clop of horsemen crossing the bridge of boats.
Niaz let his breath out in a small sigh. ‘One at least of those men is one who watched by the cart. I should have hit harder. The bridge is closed to us. It may be that we can win back to the Khanwai road. They will not look to see us there, and we have the horses. Let us go back.’
‘And be hunted through Oudh? No. We must go forward - or die.’
‘Then I think we die tonight!’ said Niaz grimly.
‘If we can reach the bridge it should be possible to swim the river,’ said Alex thoughtfully. ‘We can hold by the bridge and—’
‘We cannot do it,’ said Niaz. ‘No two men could reach the boats unseen even on their bellies. There is not cover for a tree-rat.’
Alex digested the truth of this statement in silence. The base of the stone causeway was considerably wider than its top and the ramp on either side offered no cover, while from the bank to the bridge lay close on two hundred yards of flat open sand and shallow pools which the river covered in the rainy season. Anything moving on it would be visible while the moon was up, but between moonset and first light there would be at least a short period of darkness, and during that time it might be possible to wriggle unseen to where the bridge began, and there to take to the water. Niaz was no swimmer as he had said, but even he could pull himself over by the boats, for the ropes that tethered them together would provide a handhold. But they had first to reach the bridge …
Alex had had barely three hours’ sleep in the last two days and his head was aching. His wounded arm was absurdly painful and it throbbed to a steady burning beat of pain that seemed to find an odd rumbling echo in the night. An echo which slowly drowned the throb of his blood, until he realized suddenly what it was. There were carts approaching down the road towards the bridge. A long line of creaking, bullock-drawn carts of the kind that may be met with on any Indian road at any time of the night; their drivers asleep while the patient beasts plod slowly onward hour after hour in the darkness.
Alex touched Niaz on the arm, and jerking his head in the direction of the distant sound, said: ‘Turn the horses loose. We shall not need them again. I do not think that we shall die tonight, for these will take us across.’
They left the weary horses to graze in the jungle and ran back along the road towards the carts, keeping to the shadows. There were nine carts rumbling and creaking down the moonlit road, moving as slowly as crawling beetles; the torpid bullocks lumbering through the dust in a ruminative trance, noses almost to the ground and horns swaying, while their drivers crouched upon the cartpoles, miraculously preserving their balance, and slept. A flickering oil-lantern swung from the leading cart and the moonlight showed that four of the carts were piled high with sugar-cane while five carried sacks of bhoosa. Alex and Niaz slipped across the road between the carts, and Niaz, walking behind one of them, dragged out several of the light, bulging sacks and flung them away while Alex watched the man on the cart immediately behind for fear that he would wake.
‘In!’ whispered Niaz, and Alex swung up onto the cart and wriggled into the cave that Niaz had made among the sacks. The plodding bullocks did not slow their crawling pace by a step at the additional weight, and Niaz thrust two sacks on top of Alex and dropped back to burrow his way into the heart of a pile of sugar-cane with the celerity of a grass-snake.
Left alone in the dusty, sweet-smelling darkness, Alex shifted the sack beneath him and worked his way down and further forward into the pile until he lay in the centre of the stifling load. The carts rocked and squeaked and rumbled forward on the rutted dusty road, and presently, as the wheels met the dry sand near the river bank and a sleepy voice called from the toll-hut, they jolted to a stop. The carters, jerked abruptly into wakefulness, entered into surly argument with the yawning toll-keeper, and after some delay the carts started forward once more, and with shoutings, tail twistings and belabourings, jolted down the sandy slope onto the causeway. One by one they rolled out onto the bridge which swayed and groaned beneath the rumbling wheels, and one by one, as the bullocks grunted and strained under a hail of blows and shrill yells of encouragement, they breasted the slope on the far side and were on the road again.
Alex did not catch the shouted orders that checked the carts, for the creaking and rumbling had deafened him and the close-packed sacks muffled all other sounds, but the wheels ground to a halt and there were men all about the carts and hoarse angry voices.
‘What is this? Yet another toll?’ called one of the carters. ‘A Pathan? Nay, we have seen no Pathans … Look then and see … Horses? Horses? These be no horse-drawn gharis! Bullocks only. We carry fodder and such stuff to Lunjore. Are you strangers that you do not know this?’
There was another burst of angry shouting and a man’s voice said: ‘Any fool would have known that the bridge would be watched once the word had gone out, and this man we seek is no fool. He will have doubled back to the Ganges. Besides, Narain Dass here says that the horses were spent. Ohé! thou upon the cart there; didst thou see no horses upon the road?’
‘Have I not said that I saw no horses? And no Pathans either! It may be that I slept a little on the
way, but if thou thinkest that we carry horses and Pathans in our carts thou art welcome to search for them. Perchance thou wilt find more than horses - elephants belike, and men of Turkistan! Search then - we cannot wait through the night.’ A torch flared as men passed along the carts prodding and peering, but the task of unloading and reloading each cart was clearly impossible.
‘Thrust with thy spear,’ growled a voice.
‘And who is to pay me for my sacks?’ shrilled the carter furiously.
A voice further down the line said angrily that there was no spear made that could be stabbed down through sugar-cane, adding: ‘Do we play at tent-pegging then?’ - the speaker’s spear had evidently stuck fast in a piece of cane. The wrangling voices passed down the line and presently someone climbed upon the sacks that concealed Alex, crushing them down stiflingly upon him, and something jabbed down, ripping through sacking and bhoosa. It missed Alex by a millimetre, but it caught the edge of the bandage that Niaz had tied about his arm and ripped it away. The blood had clotted and dried, but the wrench tore open the wound and he could feel the fresh blood well out once more. But either the spear had been pulled back in the fractional second before the blood flowed, or the bhoosa and the sacking had cleaned any traces from the metal, for the man jumped down upon the road again and passed on to the next cart.
Alex pressed his wounded arm against a yielding sack and tried to get his right hand across to cover it, for if blood should drip upon the white dust of the road it would be seen when the carts moved on. He managed to clench his fingers over it, but the warm sticky tide seeped between them. And then, after what seemed an eternity, the carts jerked forward again. It was over - and they were through. The dusty airless darkness closed in upon him, and he was still asleep when Niaz pulled him out from among the blood-stained sacks in the yellow dawn.
Three hours later, bathed, shaved and fed; clothed once more in his own clothes and with his wound probed, cleaned and bound and his arm in a sling, Alex presented himself at the Residency.
The Commissioner was engaged with a visitor and sent out word asking Captain Randall to wait. He would not, he said, be above half an hour.
Alex sat down in a verandah chair, and stretching his legs out before him prepared himself to wait. It was over thirty hours since he had left Khanwai, and an hour’s more delay could make little difference one way or another. He could hear a murmur of voices from the large living-room on the far side of the Commissioner’s office and supposed that Mr Barton’s visitor must have called in a social rather than an official capacity. After a time the gorgeously uniformed chupprassi who squatted further down the verandah by one of the outer doors of the living-room, sprang to his feet and held aside the split-cane curtain that hung in front of it, and Alex could hear the Commissioner’s voice raised in affable farewell. A man, an Indian, came out past the salaaming chupprassi and turned and walked down the length of the verandah. It was Kishan Prasad.
Alex did not move and not a muscle in his face quivered; nor was there any alteration in his lounging pose to betray the shock and the incredulous surprise that the sight of Kishan Prasad had given him. Kishan Prasad, walking softly, came to a stop in front of him and bowed. Alex did not return the greeting. He looked up at Kishan Prasad under his black brows with eyes that were as cold and hard and passionless as grey granite, and smiled.
Kishan Prasad drew back involuntarily and for a fractional moment some of his assurance seemed to drop from him and the lines about his mouth and jaw were suddenly accentuated. Then he recovered himself and his voice was smoothly urbane:
‘Ah, Captain Randall. This is an unexpected pleasure. The Commissioner was telling me that he did not expect you back until next week when your replacement, Mr Parbury, is due to leave. I am sorry to see that you have suffered an injury to your arm. Nothing serious, I hope?’
‘No, nothing serious,’ said Alex from behind that cold smile. ‘It was kind of you to come here. It will save me the trouble of sending an escort to bring you in.’
‘To bring me where?’ inquired Kishan Prasad, affecting polite surprise.
‘To the jail - and the gallows.’
‘My dear Captain Randall! I must admit that I do not understand you. Is it some English joke?’
‘You understand me perfectly,’ said Alex softly. ‘Murder has always been a capital offence.’
‘Murder?’
‘What else? “This thing that ye have seen done shall be binding upon you all, for were it known, there is not one of you whom they would not hang at a rope’s end for this night’s work,”’ quoted Alex in the vernacular. He saw Kishan Prasad’s pupils widen and said: ‘Yes, you were right. I am the man whom your cut-throats are hunting through Oudh. You should be more careful whom you admit to your meetings.’
‘I do not understand—’ repeated Kishan Prasad woodenly.
Alex said: ‘But I do. I had heard many tales, but until two nights ago I had no proof. Now I have it. And your life and the life of every man who was there is twice forfeit - for sedition and for murder.’
Kishan Prasad released his breath in an audible sigh and after a moment he said very softly: ‘That killing was by no will of mine. I do not war on babes, and had I known what was planned I should have prevented it. I am no ignorant worshipper of devils to dabble in such foulness. As for the rest, I have told you before that I desire to pull down your Company’s Raj, and to that end I will use any and every means that lie to my hand. But you cannot hang me, because this proof that you have is no proof. It is only your word, and it will not be believed. No’ - he held up a hand to check the words that Alex would have spoken - ‘hear me out. I do not know how you knew of that meeting or how you came by the password, but I know that had I not in a foolish moment given you a certain token you would not have seen - what you saw. But having used that token to gain admittance, there was a penalty. It was told to me that a certain Pathan had entered, having shown it. I could not believe - yet it was possible. The word went out against that Pathan; but in case he were not stopped certain other things were done. If you send men now to Khanwai there will be nothing found in proof of your tale. As for me, a hundred witnesses can prove that I was elsewhere, and not at Khanwai, two nights ago.’
Alex said grimly: ‘I think you will find, Rao Sahib, that my word will be taken against a hundred thousand of your witnesses.’
‘Even when one of those witnesses is the Commissioner of Lunjore?’ inquired Kishan Prasad softly.
Alex’s face stiffened and there were suddenly two white patches at the corners of his mouth. He came to his feet with a swiftness that made Kishan Prasad flinch as if in expectation of a blow, and said in a harsh whisper: ‘That I will not believe!’
‘But you will find that it is so. He does not know that he lies,’ said Kishan Prasad. ‘You see, there was a - a little party that night at the house of a mutual friend, and the Commissioner perhaps indulged too freely in perfumed brandy. He does not remember very much of what occurred and he is convinced that I also was present. He was good enough to admire a trinket that I had brought back from France; an ingenious toy that he was pleased to accept. He has even mentioned it to Colonel Moulson, who is with him now. So you see—?’
Kishan Prasad sketched a deprecatory gesture with one slim brown hand, and Alex saw: saw with a complete and bitter understanding. Kishan Prasad had made full use of both Mr Barton’s drunkenness and his vanity. It must have been so easy - so fatally easy. A pre-arranged party at the house of one of the more disreputable noblemen; drink and dancing-girls, champagne laced with brandy and probably opium. A man - any man with a superficial resemblance to Kishan Prasad - and his name repeated until it was impressed upon a fuddled brain. A gift accepted …
Alex knew his chief only too well. If the Commissioner had admitted seeing Kishan Prasad at such an affair he would never go back on such a statement, because to do so would be to admit instead that he had been drunk enough to be deceived, and at the house of a promine
nt Indian.
‘They will say that you must have been mistaken,’ said Kishan Prasad softly. ‘As for this meeting you will tell them of, they will say it was a mere gathering of malcontents. Talk - but no more than talk. Shall I tell you why they will not believe? Because they do not wish to! The colonels who command the sepoy regiments here suspect that their regiments are rank with sedition. Their Indian officers are insolent in many small ways. But for shame’s sake they will not admit it and each cries louder than the other that all is well. You see, I speak frankly to you. What need it there for pretence between us, who know what we know?’
He looked at Alex’s rigid face and lowered his voice until it was barely a whisper: ‘You know that you cannot win this fight. The Company has only a handful of men and its power is an illusion. I have seen the slaughter at Sebastopol and I know that your Queen has no more regiments to send. Do not fight us. Join us! It will not be the first time that men from the West have risen to greatness in the armies of Hind. There have been many - Avitable, George Thomas, Ventura, Potter, Gardiner—’
Alex laughed and the laugh brought a sudden flush into Kishan Prasad’s olive cheeks. His hand dropped and he stepped back. Then: ‘I am sorry,’ he said gravely. ‘That was a foolish thing to say.’
‘Very,’ agreed Alex.
Kishan Prasad smiled. ‘ I am sorry too that our blood makes us enemies. Perhaps in your next life it may be that you will be born a Hindu.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Alex. ‘When I have hung you in this one.’
‘That too may come about,’ said Kishan Prasad. ‘But the time is not yet.’
He saluted Alex with grave courtesy, and turning, walked down the shallow flight of steps into the bright sunlight of the garden and was driven away in an open carriage, his servants running beside it.
But the hours that followed, and the days that followed those hours, bore out all that he had said. Mr Barton listened with entire incredulity to Alex’s story. Alex had made a mistake - a very natural one. All niggers looked as like as two peas when in a crowd. The suggestion that he himself might have been mistaken drove him to blustering and apoplectic indignation. Such an assertion was absurd and insulting! Why, the Rao Sahib had actually shown him a toy that he had bought in Paris - a musical-box ornamented with a naked dancer who contorted her waxen limbs in time to a tinny little tune. There it was, standing on the table to prove his words. Kishan Prasad had begged his acceptance of the trifle and had called only that morning in order to bring the duplicate key - a very sensible idea; these fiddling things were so easily lost …