Full Moon (7 page)

Blair scowled, keen on his job and yet dreading it. “I’m in the dark,” he
said. “I can’t guess why I wasn’t murdered last night— once by Wu Tu,
once by Zaman Ali. They both had a chance. I obeyed orders and behaved like
an imbecile—walked straight into an obvious trap, and took all
chances.”

“I only know one other officer who could do that,” said the commissioner
in one of his bursts of generosity, “Most men would have been clever at the
wrong time.”

Blair had an almost superstitious dread of being praised before a job was
finished, so he talked for the sake of talking, using words as an umbrella
against bad luck:

“Wu Tu did her best to scare me—I mean inside-psychic-scare
me—with a poisoned dagger. But it wasn’t poisoned. The stuff looked to
me like alcohol. I suppose she was no such fool as to take a chance with
poison, knowing I might get a scratch with the thing. I laid odds she didn’t
want me murdered—not in her house.
They
wanted police passes.
She
wanted me knocked out. They won both bets. I suppose it’s reckoned
easier to hypnotise a man when he’s out from a blow on the head. If I had
questioned her about that golden figurine—”

“Why didn’t you?”

“It was too obviously set to attract my attention, so I shied oft, hoping
she would make a break about it. But it’s difficult to make a woman lead
trumps. I believe the thing was gold. If you know what I mean by
pre-Egyptian, I should say it was all that. I never saw anything like it in
any museum. It was exactly the same color as that box or whatever it is you
showed me. It looked as if it had been smoothed by a million hands for a
million years. Its face was—damned if I can tell you. Elemental is the
only word I can think of. I’ve seen something rather like it in dreams.
Pretty hair-raising. Nothing decent about it—except the skill; it was
marvelous molding. It wasn’t Indian, I’ll swear that.”

“She said nothing at all about it?”

“No. Sent it out of the room with the dagger, perhaps to increase my
curiosity: she must have known I’d notice it. When I get in the train I’ll
try to draw a picture of the thing from memory and post it back to you.”

“Yes, do that. Are you absolutely sure Chetusingh walked out alone?”

“No. I heard him pass along the corridor. He made a signal. It’s a special
one he and I invented. Wu Tu bragged about having corrupted him. She may have
done it. Govind Singh took money from her.”

“You saw that?”

“Two one-hundred rupee notes. And Govind Singh’s one of our old
reliables.”

The commissioner grinned. “Yes, I think I can depend on Govind Singh. Wu
Tu doesn’t tip for nothing, even in a tight place. But police secrets are
like stable-secrets; you can’t check ‘em. Govind Singh will tell her the
police are hot-foot after Zaman Ali and his friends—and that you’ve
been hurried off to Rajputana. Give ‘em what they want. I always do it. Your
taking a train six stations up the line will make ‘em think we’re trying to
keep your movements secret. Obvious secrecy is the best decoy in the world.
You’re a decoy. Remember it.”

The car’s long shadow flitted monstrously through suburbs, where the dust
lay thick on sunlit mango trees and the smoke of a million dung-cakes
sharpened the scent of the stirring countryside. There was nearly a crash.
The Sikh drove roaring between two bullock carts. A rising camel missed
Nirvana by the width of a ray of sunshine on his mangy hide. But. all that
vanished in a cloud of dust and neither the Sikh nor his passengers batted an
eyelid. They sat in silence. It was the Sikh’s job anyhow.

“A crime that includes David Frensham and his daughter isn’t ordinary,”
the commissioner said at last. “Zaman Ali sold his string of horses at a
loss—let ‘em go for a song. That means something else pays him better
than horses. Treasure? Remember, he has been dealing in bullion and spending
money remarkably freely for him. So has Wu Tu dealt in bullion. Taron Ling
has bolted as I hoped.”

“Lost him?” Blair asked.

“For the moment. We’ll catch him. And so Wu Tu wants you to make love to
Henrietta? Always give ‘em what they want, Blair!”

“Damn her eyes. How does she know about me and Henrietta? Who told?”

“It was pretty well bruited around, six months ago, that you and Henrietta
were as good as engaged. Wu Tu gets all the gossip.”

Blair scowled. “It was my fault. I wish I’d pulled out sooner. Truth is.
Henrietta acted damned well and it never dawned on me, until too late, that
she was getting romantic. I treated her damned badly.”

The commissioner tried to smoke, but the wind spoiled the cigar so he
threw it away.

“Did I tell you she’s my god-child?”

“Yes, you mentioned it.” Blair spotted the sideways glance from under the
gray eyebrows. He neither avoided nor met it. “Is that like vaccination? I
mean—” Then he suddenly met the commissioner’s eyes as straight and
hard as point engages point in duel. “What does that protect her from?”

“Nothing. But it makes me sentimental. I suspect her. You’re to make love
if you have to. I hate it.”

“I won’t do it,” Blair answered. “I’d a lot rather go to hell.”

“That’s why you’re going. It’s your privilege perhaps to save her from a
bad mess. I suspect we’re on the track of something more than ordinarily
deadly, as well as mysterious, so don’t go off half-cocked. Information, yes;
proof, yes; fireworks, no! Take your time and get your evidence. I’ll watch
Wu Tu. If she doesn’t bolt, I’ll do something to scare her out. Nothing like
getting ‘em moving.”

They approached a wayside station. A short, special freight train, that
had happened to be going north from that station with government stores, had
been caught by telephone. It waited in the station siding with an
old-fashioned passenger coach attached. Porters pounced on Blair’s bedding,
steel trunk, rifle-case and two or three small packages. The commissioner
smiled:

“Bear in mind that David Frensham, just before he disappeared, was
curiously interested in the difference between sun- and moon-light. It was
one of his crazes.”

Blair shrugged his shoulders.

“And remember that the East has always dreaded moon-light. It’s supposed
not only to madden lovers. David Frensham seriously believed it has
mysterious qualities that sunshine hasn’t.”

“Damn all moonshine!” Blair climbed into the train and they shook hands
through the window.

“If my suspicions are right,” said the commissioner, “File FF should get
some interesting additions.”

“To hell with FF!”

“Quite right. It’s a bloody nuisance. It disturbs a fellow’s trust in
Hoyle and Culbertson. So keep your hair on. Walk into anything whatever that
looks like a trap, and trust me to keep you in sight. We’ll be close behind
you. Good-by. Good luck!”

The engine seethed and clamored. An impatient Eurasian station-master with
his watch ill his hand kicked at a sleeping cur and made it yelp to call
attention to himself; the commissioner nodded to him and he blew his
whistle.

The train started.

There was no ice—no comfort. The engine grumbled along a track that
resembled an aching steel nerve, toward a heat-haze bounded only by infinity.
The commissioner’s car sped away in a dust cloud of its own, toward the
smoke-stacks which fringe the hot crucible of human emotions known on the
maps as Bombay City.

When Blair Warrender stepped from the train at Abu Road, it was into the
dazzling glare of Rajasthan. He loved it. It was a land after his own
heart—a land of anger and good manners. Conquered times out of number,
its conquered, like the English Saxons, always forced new masters and new
chivalry to bloom and live by glory or be damned.

Warrender’s great-grandfather had fought under Arthur Wellesley. He was
the grandson of a gunner officer who died on the Ridge in ‘57. His uncle had
led a squadron of Indian cavalry to Kabul and was mentioned in despatches by
“Bobs” of Kandahar. So he was unlikely to lack what he needed in that land,
where even a peasant usually, traces his descent from warriors who looted and
fought ere history was written.

A rajah, whose royal lineage was already ancient when the gods (so says
the legend) walked on earth with men, provided too many ponies and too much
camp equipment. A
zemindar
lent servants to whom such service is
traditional privilege, a trifle arrogantly seized and quarrelsomely held, but
rendered feudally and with alertness to observe all reasons why such duties
are a source of pride.

The encampments, night after night for five nights, were a rendezvous for
veterans who had served before Blair Warrender saw daylight, under men whose
graves had strewn the long length of the North-West Frontier. There were
tales and songs by fire—and moonlight, and the days were a procession
of wayside courtesies. Until one evening Blair pitched near Doongar, where
the jungle heaves at the foot of Gaglajung, amid hills like the humps of
camels.

Abdurrahman Khan—Moslem
Zemindar
of Hindu acres, and as part
and parcel of them as ever a Norman landlord was on Saxon soil —sat
gray and dignified on a camp-stool under the awning of Blair’s big tent. He
reached out a hand such as El Greco painted, for the rifle that Blair’s
borrowed gun-bearer was cleaning. His own sabre, brought in honor of the
occasion, lay bright and legendary-looking on the knees of a grandson
squatting near him. He examined the rifle and then handed it back.

“In my day,” he remarked, “I have seen much that was new, which seemed
good. But by Allah (blessings on His Prophet!) it was forth from a man that
goodness came. And not always was it goodness! As a man’s heart are his
weapons.”

Blair merely nodded, watching the Indian night, dark, swift, splendid,
deepen on jungle and hills. Such information as he sought lurks, shy of
argument. It creeps forth like the jungle dwellers in the stillness. Royal
Rajasthan drew on her starlit cloak, which is a conjurer of moods. He awaited
a mood of indiscretion. In front, a mile away, the ruined keep of
Gaglajung—shadowy fangs on a dark crag—told of the days when men
of action struck such blows on time that the reverberations still make songs
on the lips of minstrels. Such history lives in the night. It could be felt,
like the smells in the dew that the animals observe and understand.

“By God, we need more
chota sahibs
,” the old Rangar grumbled. He
had talked mere politics for an hour. “There were never enough of those young
brass-gutted Britons. They rode hard and died laughing at mysteries. They
understood not much except how to be men, but that was plenty. They served
for us to form on and to follow, and by God, we did it. But to-day whom shall
the men with stout hearts follow? Babus? Nowadays the sahibs have to wait on
babu’s orders. As for the police—”

It was coming. Blair did not betray that he was waiting for it. He watched
the rise of the moon, almost full, beyond Gaglajung. It suffused night with
amber mystery—that secret stuff of which songs are woven, and music,
and tales of gods and men. The passionate beauty and silence of the scene
would have been almost unendurable but for the old Rangar’s croaking:

“I am old. My day is done. But I know man from woman. He, camped yonder,
is a woman. He is too much wifed. He looks up regulations in a book. He
hesitates, instead of knowing what he knows and. by God, leaving what he does
not know to give God exercise. He has another woman with him who could make
two men of one husband. But he is married to a wife who makes two women of
him.”

Blair said nothing. For a minute or two the old Rangar meditated, until
out of the distant silences there came a cough, half roar, half grunt. The
obscene voice of Kol-Bhalu, the jackal who follows tigers, answered. Then,
for a sudden moment, even the insects were still, and Blair glanced at his
rifle.

“Time enough yet,” said the Rangar. “Grayne sahib won’t leave a book to
spoil our sport. To-night is our night. Such as he is, put off danger until
tomorrow, and then give the order to build a
machan
in a safe place
such as books recommend. Wah! A father of tigers, this one. Some name him,
saying also that Kol Bhalu. who dogs him, is the spirit of a money-lender
whom he slew last year—aye, and devoured. Since then he has slain seven
men. He has grown cunning: he is not to be taken in traps. But the watchers
are out. The stops are well placed. He will slake his thirst at one of three
pools, and then he will find all roads closed against him, except this one,
by the charcoal-burners’
ghat
, toward us. He will come near midnight.
… I was speaking of women.”

“Speak on.”

“Frennisham. her name is—daughter to the Brigadier Bahadur who they
say is missing. What she does here is a mystery, save that she visits the
Graynes; and them she uses as it suits her. She is without fear and she runs
uncommon risks—wanders these hills all alone, on a pony or on foot as
the spirit moves her —and by night, too. Hers is a restless spirit. She
should be the mother of good fighting men. She knows the ancient songs of
Rajasthan— aye, and the dances—teaches them to the children, who
were better without such superstitious stuff. She has slept more than once in
a villager’s hut—forever questioning—forever seeking something,
none unless it be the Bat-Brahmin, knows what. They tell strange tales about
him and her.”

Blair met the old Rangar’s gaze for a moment.

“It is a land of strange tales.” he answered. Then he stared again at the
ruined keep of Gaglajung, now reddish amid soot-dark shadows. Where the moon
shone through gaps of broken masonry imagination refused to believe there was
not living flame. He spoke unexpectedly:

“Tell me the story of that place.” Old tales beget true confidences.
Questions about Henrietta Frensham would have stanched the flow of truth by
suggesting curiosity, which makes the eastern mind evasive.