Caves of Terror
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CAVES OF TERROR
by
TALBOT MUNDY
Garden City New York
Garden City Publishing Co., Inc
1924
Copyright, 1924, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All Rights Reserved
Copyright, 1922, by Talbot Mundy, and the Ridgway Company
Printed in the United States
at the Country Life Press, Garden City, N. Y.
CONTENTS
I. The Gray Mahatma
II. The Palace of Yasmini
III. Fear is Death
IV. The Pool of Terrors
V. Far Cities
VI. The Fire Bathers
VII. Magic
VIII. The River of Death
IX. The Earthquake Elephant
X. A Date With Doom
XI. "Kill! Kill!"
XII. The Cave of Bones
CAVES OF TERROR
CHAPTER I
THE GRAY MAHATMA
Meldrum Strange has "a way" with him. You need all your tact to get him
past the quarreling point; but once that point is left behind there
isn't a finer business boss in the universe. He likes to put his ringer
on a desk-bell and feel somebody jump in Tibet or Wei-hei-wei or
Honolulu. That's Meldrum Strange.
When he sent me from San Francisco, where I was enjoying a vacation, to
New York, where he was enjoying business, I took the first train.
"You've been a long time on the way," he remarked, as I walked into his
office twenty minutes after the Chicago flyer reached Grand Central
Station. "Look at this!" he growled, shoving into my hand a clipping
from a Western newspaper.
"What about it?" I asked when I had finished reading.
"While you were wasting time on the West Coast this office has been
busy," he snorted, looking more like General Grant than ever as he
pulled out a cigar and started chewing it. "We've taken this matter up
with the British Government, and we've been retained to look into it."
"You want me to go to Washington, I suppose."
"You've got to go to India at once."
"That clipping is two months old," I answered. "Why didn't you wire me
when I was in Egypt to go on from there?"
"Look at this!" he answered, and shoved a letter across the desk.
It bore the address of a club in Simla.
Meldrum Strange, Esq.,
Messrs. Grim, Ramsden and Ross,
New York.
Dear Sir,
Having recently resigned my commission in the British Indian army I
am free to offer my services to your firm, provided you have a
sufficiently responsible position here in India to offer me. My
qualifications and record are known to the British Embassy in
Washington, D. C., to whom I am permitted to refer you, and it is
at the suggestion of ---- ---- (he gave the name of a British
Cabinet Minister who is known the wide world over) that I am making
this proposal; he was good enough to promise his endorsement to any
application I might care to make. If this should interest you,
please send me a cablegram, on receipt of which I will hold my
services at your disposal until your letter has time to reach
Simla, when, if your terms are satisfactory, I will cable my
acceptance without further delay.
Yours faithfully,
Athelstan King, V. C., D. S. O., etc.
"Do you know who he is?" demanded Strange. "That's the fellow who went
to Khinjan Caves--the best secret service officer the British ever had.
I cabled him, of course. Here's his contract. You take it to him. Here's
the whole dope about this propaganda. Take the quickest route to India,
sign up this man King, and go after them at that end for all the two of
you are worth. That's all."
My passport being unexpired, I could make the _Mauretania_ and did.
Moreover I was merciless to the expense account. An aeroplane took me
from Liverpool to London, another from London to Paris.
I don't care how often you arrive in Bombay, the thrill increases. You
steam in at dawn by Gharipuri just as the gun announces sunrise, and the
dreamy bay glimmers like a prophet's vision--temples, domes, minarets,
palm-trees, roofs, towers, and masts.
Almost before the anchor had splashed into the spawn-skeined water off
the Apollo Bunder a native boat drew alongside and a very well-dressed
native climbed up the companion-ladder in quest of me. I had sent King a
wireless, but his messenger was away in advance of even the bankers'
agents, who flock on board to tout for customs business.
He handed me a letter which simply said that the bearer, Gulab Lal
Singh, would look after me and my belongings. So I paid attention to the
man. He was a strapping fellow, handsome as the deuce, with a Roman
nose, and the eye of a gentleman unafraid.
He said that Major King was in Bombay, but detained by urgent business.
However, he invited me to Major King's quarters for breakfast, so
instead of waiting for the regular launch I got into the native sailboat
with him. And he seemed to have some sort of talisman for charming
officials, for on the quay an officer motioned us through without even
examining my passport.
We drew up finally in front of a neat little bungalow in a long street
of similar buildings intended for British officials. Gulab Lal Singh
took me straight into the dining room and carried in breakfast with his
own hands, standing behind my chair in silence while I ate.
Without much effort I could see his face in the mirror to my right, and
when I thought he wasn't noticing I studied him carefully.
"Is there anything further that the _sahib_ would care for?" he asked
when the meal was finished.
"Yes," I said, pulling out an envelope. "Here's your contract, Major
King. If you're agreeable we may as well get that signed and mailed to
New York."
I expected to see him look surprised, but he simply sat down at the
table, read the contract over, and signed it.
Then we went out on to a veranda that was shut off from the street by
brown _kaskas tatties_.
"How long does it take you to grow a beard?" was his first, rather
surprising question.
It was not long before I learned how differently he could treat
different individuals. He had simply chosen his extraordinary way of
receiving me as the best means of getting a real line on me without much
loss of time. He did not compliment me on having seen through his
disguise, or apologize for his own failure to keep up the deception. He
sat opposite and studied me as he might the morning newspaper, and I
returned the compliment.
"You see," he said suddenly, as if a previous conversation had been
interrupted, "since the war, governments have lost their grip, so I
resigned from the army. You look to me like a kind of God-send. Is
Meldrum Strange as wealthy as they say?"
I nodded.
"Is he playing for power?"
"He's out to do the world good, but he enjoys the feel of it. He is
absolutely on the level."
"I have a letter from Strange, in which he says you've hunted and
prospected all over the world. Does that include India?"
I nodded.
"Know any of the languages?"
"Enough Hindustani to deceive a foreigner."
"Punjabi?"
I nodded.
Mind you, I was supposed to be this fellow's boss.
"I think we'll be able to work together," he said after another long
look at me.
"Are you familiar with the facts?" he asked me.
"I've the _dossier_ with me. Studied it on the ship of course."
"You understand then: The Princess Yasmini and the Gray Mahatma are the
two keys. The Government daren't arrest either, because it would inflame
mob-passion. There's too much of that already. I'm not in position to
play this game alone--can't afford to. I've joined the firm to get
backing for what I want to do; I'd like that point clear. As long as
we're in harness together I'll take you into confidence. But I expect
absolutely free rein."
"All right," I said. And for two hours he unfolded to me a sort of
panorama of Indian intrigue, including dozens of statements of sheer
fact that not one person in a million would believe if set down in cold
print.
"So you see," he said at last, "there's something needed in the way of
unobtrusive inspection if the rest of the world is to have any kind of
breathing spell. If you've no objection we'll leave Bombay to-night and
get to work."
* * * * *
Athelstan King and I arrived, after certain hot days and choking nights,
at a city in the Punjab that has had nine names in the course of
history. It lies by a winding wide river, whose floods have changed the
land-marks every year since men took to fighting for the common
heritage.
The tremendous wall, along whose base the river sucks and sweeps for
more than a third of the city's whole circumference, has to be kept
repaired by endless labor, but there are compensations. The fierce
current guards and gives privacy to a score of palaces and temples, as
well as a burning ghat.
The city has been very little altered by the vandal hand of progress.
There is a red steel railway bridge, but the same framework carries a
bullock-road.
From the bridge's northern end as far as the bazaar the main street goes
winding roughly parallel with the waterfront. Trees arch over it like a
cathedral roof, and through the huge branches the sun turns everything
beneath to gold, so that even the impious sacred monkeys achieve
vicarious beauty, and the scavenger mongrel dogs scratch, sleep, and are
miserable in an aureole.
There are modern signs, as for instance, a post office, some telegraph
wires on which birds of a thousand colors perch with an air of perpetual
surprise, and--tucked away in the city's busiest maze not four hundred
yards from the western wall--the office of the Sikh apothecary Mulji
Singh.
Mulji Singh takes life seriously, which is a laborious thing to do, and
being an apostle of simple sanitation is looked at askance by the
populace, but he persists.
King's specialty is making use of unconsidered trifles and misunderstood
babus.
* * * * *
King was attired as a native, when we sought out Mulji Singh together
and found him in a back street with a hundred-yard-long waiting list of
low-caste and altogether casteless cripples.
And of course Mulji Singh had all the gossip of the city at his fingers'
ends. When he closed his office at last, and we came inside to sit with
him, he loosed his tongue and would have told us everything he knew if
King had not steered the flow of information between channels.
"Aye, _sahib_, and this Mahatma, they say, is a very holy fellow, who
works miracles. Sometimes he sits under a tree by the burning ghat, but
at night he goes to the temple of the Tirthankers, where none dare
follow him, although they sit in crowds outside to watch him enter and
leave. The common rumor is that at night he leaves his body lifeless in
a crypt in that Tirthanker temple and flies to heaven, where he
fortifies himself with fresh magic. But I know where he goes by night.
There comes to me with boils a one-legged sweeper who cleans a black
panther's cage. The panther took his other leg. He sleeps in a cage
beside the panther's, and it is a part of his duty to turn the panther
loose on intruders. It is necessary that they warn this one-legged
fellow whenever a stranger is expected by night, who should not be torn
to pieces. Night after night he is warned. Night after night there comes
this Mahatma to spend the hours in heaven! There are places less like
heaven than _her_ palace."
"Is he your only informant?" King demanded.
"Aye, _sahib_, the only one on that count. But there is another, whose
foot was caught between stone and stone when they lowered a trap-door
once in that Tirthanker temple. He bade the Tirthankers heal his foot,
but instead they threw him out for having too much knowledge of matters
that they said do not concern him. And he says that the trap-door opens
into a passage that leads under the wall into a chamber from which
access is obtained by another trap-door to a building inside _her_
palace grounds within a stone-throw of that panther's cage. And he, too,
says that the Mahatma goes nightly to _her_ palace."
"Are there any stories of _her_?" King inquired.
"Thousands, _sahib_! But no two agree. It is known that she fell foul of
the _raj_ in some way, and they made her come to this place. I was here
when she came. She has a household of a hundred women--_maunds_ of
furniture--_maunds_ of it, _sahib_! She gave orders to her men-servants
to be meek and inoffensive, so when they moved in there were not more
than ten fights between them and the city-folk who thought they had as
much right to the streets. There was a yellow-fanged northern devil who
marshaled the serving-men, and it is he who keeps her palace gate. He
keeps it well. None trespass."
"What other visitors does she entertain besides the Mahatma?"
"Many, _sahib_, though few enter by the front gate. There are tales of
men being drawn up by ropes from boats in the river."
"Is there word of why they come?"
"_Sahib_, the little naked children weave stories of her doings. Each
has a different tale. They call her empress of the hidden arts. They say
that she knows all the secrets of the priests, and that there is nothing
that she cannot do, because the gods love her and the _Rakshasas_ (male
evil spirits) and _Apsaras_ (female evil spirits) do her bidding."
"What about this Tirthanker temple? Who controls it?"
"None knows that, _sahib_. It is so richly endowed that its priests
despise men's gifts. None is encouraged to worship in that place. When
those old Tirthankers stir abroad they have no dealings with folk in
this city that any man knows of."
"Are you sure they are Tirthankers?" asked King.
"I am sure of nothing, _sahib_. For aught I know they are _devils_!"
King gave him a small sum of money, and we walked away toward the
burning ghat, where there was nothing but a mean smell and a few old men
with rakes gathering up ashes. But outside the ghat, where a golden
mohur tree cast a wide shadow across the road there was a large crowd
sitting and standing in rings around an absolutely naked, ash-smeared
religious fanatic.
The fanatic appeared to have the crowd bewildered, for he cursed and
blessed on no comprehensible schedule, and gave extraordinary answers to
the simplest questions, not acknowledging a question at all unless it
suited him.
King and I had not been there a minute before some one asked him about
the Princess Yasmini.
"Aha! Who stares at the fire burns his eyes! A burned eye is of less use
than a raw one!"
Some laughed, but not many. Most of them seemed to think there was deep
wisdom in his answer to be dug for meditatively, as no doubt there was.
Then a man on the edge of the crowd a long way off from me, who wore the
air of a humorist, asked him about me.
"Does the shadow of this foreigner offend your honor's holiness?"
None glanced in my direction; that might have given the game away. It is
considered an exquisite joke to discuss a white man to his face without
his knowing it. The Gray Mahatma did not glance in my direction either.
"As a bird in the river--as a fish in the air--as a man in trouble is
the foreigner in Hind!" he answered.
Then he suddenly began, declaiming, making his voice ring as if his
throat were brass, yet without moving his body or shifting his head by a
hair's breadth.
"The universe was chaos. _He_ said, let order prevail, and order came
out of the chaos and prevailed. The universe was in darkness. _He_ said,
let there be light and let it prevail over darkness; and light came out
of the womb of darkness and prevailed. _He_ ordained the _Kali-Yug_--an
age of darkness in which all Hind should lie at the feet of foreigners.
And thus ye lie in the dust. But there is an end of night, and so there
is an end to _Kali-Yug_. Bide ye the time, and watch!"
King drew me away, and we returned up-street between old temples and new
iron-fronted stores toward Mulji Singh's quarters where he had left the
traveling bag that we shared between us.
"Is that Gray Mahatma linked up with propaganda in the U.S.A?" I asked,
wondering.
"What's more," King answered, "he's dangerous; he's sincere--the most
dangerous type of politician in the world--the honest visionary, in love
with an abstract theory, capable of offering himself for martyrdom.
Watch him now!"
The crowd was beginning to close in on the Mahatma, seeking to touch
him. Suddenly he flew into a fury, seized a long stick from some one
near him and began beating them over the head, using both hands and
laying on so savagely that ashes fell from him like pipe-clay from a
shaken bag, and several men ran away with the blood pouring down their
faces. However, they were reckoned fortunate.
"Some of those will charge money to let other fools touch them," said
King. "Come on. Let's call on _her_ now."
So we returned to Mulji Singh's stuffy little office, and King changed
into a Major's uniform.
"It isn't exactly according to Hoyle to wear this," he explained.
"However, she doesn't know I've resigned from the army."
CHAPTER II
THE PALACE OF YASMINI
Nobody saw us walk up to Yasmini's palace gate and knock; for whoever
was abroad in the heat was down by the ghat admiring the Mahatma.
The bearded giant who had admitted us stood staring at King, his long,
strong fingers twitching. In his own good time King turned and saw fit
to recognize him.
"Oh, hullo Ismail!"
He held a hand out, but the savage flung arms about him that were as
strong as the iron gate-clamps, and King had to fight to break free from
the embrace.
"Now Allah be praised, he is father of mercies! _She_ warned me!" he
croaked. "She knows the smell of dawn at midnight! She said, 'He cometh
soon!' and none believed her, save only I. This very dawn said she,
'Thou, Ismail,' she said, 'be asleep at the gate when he cometh and
thine eyes shall be thrown to the city dogs!' Aye! Oho!"
King nodded to lead on, and Ismail obeyed with a deal of pantomime
intended to convey a sense of partnership with roots in the past and its
fruition now.
The way was down a passage between high, carved walls so old that
antiquarians burn friendship in disputes not so much about the century
as the very era of that quiet art--under dark arches with latticed
windows into unexpected gardens fresh with the smell of sprinkled
water--by ancient bronze gateways into other passages that opened into
stone-paved courts with fountains in the midst--building joining on to
building and court meeting court until, where an old black panther
snarled at us between iron bars, an arch and a solid bronze door
admitted us at last into the woman's pleasance--a wonderland of jasmine,
magnolia and pomegranates set about a marble pool and therein mirrored
among rainbow-colored fishes.
Beyond the pool a flight of marble steps rose fifty feet until it passed
through a many-windowed wall into the _panch mahal_--the quarters of the
women. At their foot Ismail halted.
"Go thou up alone! Leave this elephant with me!" he said, nudging me and
pointing with his thumb toward a shady bower against the garden wall.
Without acknowledging that pleasantry King took my arm and we went
straight forward together, our tread resounding strangely on steps that
for centuries had felt no sterner shock than that of soft slippers and
naked, jeweled feet.
We were taking nobody entirely by surprise; that much was obvious.
Before we reached the top step two women opened a door and ran to meet
us. One woman threw over King's head such a prodigious garland of
jasmine buds that he had to loop it thrice about his shoulders. Then
each took a hand of one of us and we entered between doors of
many-colored wood, treading on mat-strewn marble, their bare feet
pattering beside ours. There were rustlings to right and left, and once
I heard laughter, smothered instantly.
At last, at the end of a wide hall before many-hued silken curtains our
two guides stopped. As they released our hands, with the always
surprising strength that is part of the dancing woman's stock-in-trade,
they slipped behind us suddenly and thrust us forward through the
curtains.
There was not much to see in front of us. We found ourselves in a
paneled corridor, whose narrow windows overlooked the river, facing a
painted door sixty paces distant at the farther end. King strode down
the corridor and knocked.
The answer was one word that I did not catch, although it rang like a
suddenly struck chord of music, and the door yielded to the pressure of
King's hand.
I entered behind him and the door swung shut of its own weight with a
click. We were in a high-ceilinged, very long room, having seven sides.
There were windows to right and left. A deep divan piled with scented
cushions occupied the whole length of one long wall, and there were
several huge cushions on the floor against another wall. There was one
other door besides that we had entered by.
We stood in that room alone, but I know that King felt as uneasy as I
did, for there was sweat on the back of his neck. We were being watched
by unseen eyes. There is no mistaking that sensation.
Suddenly a voice broke silence like a golden bell whose overtones go
widening in rings into infinity, and a vision of loveliness parted the
curtains of that other door.
"My lord comes as is meet--spurred, and ready to give new kingdoms to
his king! Oh, how my lord is welcome!" she said in Persian.
Her voice thrilled you, because of its perfect resonance, exactly in the
middle of the note. She looked into King's eyes with challenging
familiarity that made him smile, and then eyed me wonderingly. She
glanced from me to a picture on the wall in blue of the
Elephant-god--enormous, opulent, urbane, and then back again at me, and
smiled very sweetly.
"So you have brought Ganesha with you? The god of good luck! How
wonderful! How does one behave toward a real god?"
And while she said that she laid her hands on King's arms as naturally
as if he were a lover whom she had not seen perhaps since yesterday.
Plainly, there was absolutely nothing between him and her except his own
obstinate independence. She was his if he wanted her.
She took King's hand with a laugh that had its roots in past
companionship and led him to the middle, deepest window-seat, beneath
which the river could be heard gurgling busily.
Then, when she had drawn the silken hangings until the softened light
suggested lingering, uncounted hours, and had indicated with a nod to me
a cushion in the corner, she came and lay on the cushions close to King,
chin on hand, where she could watch his eyes.
King sat straight and square, watching her with caution that he did not
trouble to conceal. She took his hand and raised the sleeve until the
broad, gold, graven bracelet showed.
"That link forged in the past must bind us two more surely than an
oath," she said smiling.
"I used it to show to the gatekeeper."
He sat cooly waiting for her next remark. And with almost unnecessary
candor began to remove the bracelet and offer it back to her. So she
unmasked her batteries, with a delicious little rippling laugh and a
lazy, cat-like movement that betokened joy in the danger that was
coming, if I know anything at all of what sign-language means.
"I knew that very day that you resigned your commission in the army, and
I laughed with delight at the news, knowing that the gods who are our
servants had contrived it. I know why thou art here," she said; and the
change from you to thou was not haphazard.
"It is well known, Princess, that your spies are the cleverest in
India," King answered.
"Spies? I need no spies as long as old India lives. Friends are better."
"Do all princesses break their promises?" he countered, meeting her eyes
steadily.
"Never yet did I break one promise, whether it was for good or evil."
"Princess," he answered, looking sternly at her, "in Jamrud Fort you
agreed to take no part again in politics, national or international in
return for a promise of personal freedom and permission to reside in
India."
"My promise was dependent on my liberty. But is this liberty--to be
forced to reside in this old palace, with the spies of the Government
keeping watch on my doings, except when they chance to be outwitted?
Nevertheless, I have kept my promise. Thou knowest me better than to
think that I need to break promises in order to outwit a government of
Englishmen!"
"Quibbles won't help, Princess," he answered. "You promised to do
nothing that Government might object to."
"Well; will they object to my religion?" she retorted, mocking him. "Has
the British _raj_ at last screwed up its courage to the point of
trespassing behind the purdah and blundering in among religious
exercises?"
No man in his senses ever challenges a woman's argument until he knows
the whole of it and has unmasked its ulterior purpose. So King sat still
and said nothing, knowing that that was precisely what she did not want.