Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy (11 page)

Here I said, ‘But what induced Suddhoo to drag me into the business? Of course I can speak to the seal-cutter, and he shall refund. The whole thing is child’s talk – shame – and senseless.’

‘Suddhoo
is
an old child,’ said Janoo. ‘He has lived on the roofs these seventy years and is as senseless as a milch-goat. He brought you here to assure himself that he was not breaking any law of the
Sirkar
,whose salt he ate many years ago. He worships the dust off the feet of the seal-cutter, and that cow-devourer has forbidden him to go and see his son. What does Suddhoo know of your laws or the lightning-post? I have to watch his money going day by day to that lying beast below.’

Janoo stamped her foot on the floor and nearly cried with vexation; while Suddhoo was whimpering under a blanket in the corner, and Azizun was trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth.

Now, the case stands thus. Unthinkingly, I have laid myself open to the charge of aiding and abetting the seal-cutter in obtaining money under false pretences, which is forbidden by Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code. I am helpless in the matter for these reasons. I cannot inform the Police. What witnesses would support my statements? Janoo refuses flatly, and Azizun is a veiled woman somewhere near Bareilly – lost in this big India of ours. I dare not again take the law into my own hands, and speak to the seal-cutter; for certain am I that, not only would Suddhoo disbelieve me, but this step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is bound hand and foot by her debt to the
bunnia.
Suddhoo is an old dotard; and whenever we meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the
Sirkar
rather patronises the Black Art than otherwise. His son is well now; but Suddhoo is completely under the influence of the seal-cutter, by whose advice he regulates the affairs of his life. Janoo watches daily the money that she hoped to wheedle out of Suddhoo taken by the seal-cutter, and becomes daily more furious and sullen.

She will never tell, because she dare not; but, unless something happens to prevent her, I am afraid that the seal-cutter will die of cholera – the white arsenic kind– about the middle of May. And thus I shall be privy to a murder in the House of Suddhoo.

THE BISARA OF POOREE

Little Blind Fish, thou art marvellous wise,

Little Blind Fish, who put out thy eyes?

Open thy ears while I whisper my wish –

Bring me a lover, thou little Blind Fish.

The Charm of the Bisara

Some natives say that it came from the other side of Kulu, where the eleven-inch Temple Sapphire is. Others that it was made at the Devil-Shrine of Ao-Chung in Thibet, was stolen by a Kafir, from him by a Gurkha, from him again by a Lahouli, from him by a
khitmatgar,
and by this latter sold to an Englishman, so all its virtue was lost; because, to work properly, the Bisara of Pooree must be stolen – with bloodshed if possible, but, at any rate, stolen.

These stories of the coming into India are all false. It was made at Pooree ages since – the manner of its making would fill a small book – was stolen by one of the Temple dancing-girls there, for her own purposes, and then passed on from hand to hand, steadily northward, till it reached Hanlé: always bearing the same name – the Bisara of Pooree. In shape it is a tiny square box of silver, studded outside with eight small balas-rubies. Inside the box, which opens with a spring, is a little eyeless fish, carved from some sort of dark, shiny nut and wrapped in a shred of faded gold cloth. That
is
the Bisara of Pooree, and it were better for a man to take a king-cobra in his hand than to touch the Bisara of Pooree.

All kinds of magic are out of date and done away with, except in India, where nothing changes in spite of the shiny, top-scum stuff that people call ‘civilisation.’ Any man who knows about the Bisara of Pooree will tell you what its powers are – always supposing that it has been honestly stolen. It is the only regularly working, trustworthy love-charm in thecountry, with one exception. [The other charm is in the hands of a trooper of the Nizam’s Horse, at a place called Tuprani, due north of Hyderabad.] This can be depended upon for a fact. Some one else may explain it.

If the Bisara be not stolen, but given or bought or found, it turns against its owner in three years, and leads to ruin or death. This is another fact which you may explain when you have time. Meanwhile, you can laugh at it. At present the Bisara is safe on a hack-pony’s neck, inside the blue bead-necklace that keeps off the Evil Eye. If the pony-driver ever finds it, and wears it, or gives it to his wife, I am sorry for him.

A very dirty Hill-coolie woman, with goitre, owned it at Theog in 1884. It came into Simla from the north before Churton’s
khitmatgar
bought it, and sold it, for three times its silver-value, to Churton, who collected curiosities. The servant knew no more what he had bought than the master; but a man looking over Churton’s collection of curiosities – Churton was an Assistant Commissioner by the way – saw and held his tongue. He was an Englishman, but knew how to believe. Which shows that he was different from most Englishmen. He knew that it was dangerous to have any share in the little box when working or dormant; for Love unsought is a terrible gift.

Pack – ‘Grubby’ Pack, as we used to call him – was, in every way, a nasty little man who must have crawled into the Army by mistake. He was three inches taller than his sword, but not half so strong. And the sword was a fifty-shilling, tailor-made one. Nobody liked him, and, I suppose, it was his wizenedness and worthlessness that made him fall so hopelessly in love with Miss Hollis, who was good and sweet, and five-feet-seven in her tennis-shoes. He was not content with falling in love quietly, but brought all the strength of his miserable little nature into the business. If he had not been so objectionable, one might have pitied him. He vapoured, and fretted, and fumed, and trotted up and down, and tried to make himself pleasing to Miss Hollis’s big, quiet, grey eyes, and failed. It was one of the cases that you sometimes meet, even in our country, where we marry by Code, of a really blind attachment all on one side, without the faintest possibility of return. Miss

Hollis looked on Pack as some sort of vermin running about the road. He had no prospects beyond Captain’s pay, and no wits to help that out by one penny. In a large-sized man love like his would have been touching. In a good man it would have been grand. He being what he was, it was only a nuisance.

You will believe this much. What you will not believe is what follows: Churton, and The Man who Knew what the Bisara was, were lunching at the Simla Club together. Churton was complaining of life in general. His best mare had rolled out of stable down the cliff and had broken her back; his decisions were being reversed by the upper Courts more than an Assistant Commissioner of eight years’ standing has a right to expect; he knew liver and fever, and for weeks past had felt out of sorts. Altogether, he was disgusted and disheartened.

Simla Club dining-room is built, as all the world knows, in two sections, with an arch-arrangement dividing them. Come in, turn to your own left, take the table under the window, and you cannot see any one who has come in, turned to the right, and taken a table on the right side of the arch. Curiously enough, every word that you say can be heard, not only by the other diner, but by the servants beyond the screen through which they bring dinner. This is worth knowing; an echoing-room is a trap to be forewarned against.

Half in fun, and half hoping to be believed, The Man who Knew told Churton the story of the Bisara of Pooree at rather greater length that I have told it to you in this place; winding up with a suggestion that Churton might as well throw the little box down the hill and see whether all his troubles would go with it. In ordinary ears, English ears, the tale was only an interesting bit of folklore. Churton laughed, said that he felt better for his tiffin, and went out. Pack had been tiffining by himself to the right of the arch, and had heard everything. He was nearly mad with his infatuation for Miss Hollis, that all Simla had been laughing about.

It is a curious thing that, when a man hates or loves beyond reason, he is ready to go beyond reason to gratify his feelings; which he would not do for money or power merely. Depend upon it, Solomon would never have built altars to Ashtarothand all those ladies with queer names, if there had not been trouble of some kind in his
zenana
,and nowhere else. But this is beside the story. The facts of the case are these: Pack called on Churton next day when Churton was out, left his card, and stole the Bisara of Pooree from its place under the clock on the mantelpiece! Stole it like the thief he was by nature. Three days later all Simla was electrified by the news that Miss Hollis had accepted Pack – the shrivelled rat. Pack! Do you desire clearer evidence than this? The Bisara of Pooree had been stolen, and it worked as it had always done when won by foul means.

There are three or four times in a man’s life when he is justified in meddling with other people’s affairs to play Providence.

The Man who Knew felt that he was justified; but believing and acting on a belief are quite different things! The insolent satisfaction of Pack as he ambled by the side of Miss Hollis, and Churton’s striking release from liver, as soon as the Bisara of Pooree had gone, decided The Man. He explained to Churton, and Churton laughed, because he was not brought up to believe that men on the Government House List steal – at least little things. But the miraculous acceptance by Miss Hollis of that tailor, Pack, decided him to take steps on suspicion. He vowed that he only wanted to find out where his ruby-studded silver box had vanished to. You cannot accuse a man on the Government House List of stealing; and if you rifle his room, you are a thief yourself. Churton, prompted by The Man who Knew, decided on burglary. If he found nothing in Pack’s room … but it is not nice to think of what would have happened in that case.

Pack went to a dance at Benmore – Benmore was Benmore in those days, and not an office – and danced fifteen waltzes out of twenty-two with Miss Hollis. Churton and The Man took all the keys that they could lay hands on, and went to Pack’s room in the hotel, certain that his servants would be away. Pack was a cheap soul. He had not purchased a decent cash-box to keep his papers in, but one of those native imitations that you buy for ten rupees. It opened to any sort of key,and there at the bottom, under Pack’s Insurance Policy, lay the BisaraofPooree!

Churton called Pack names, put the Bisara of Pooree in his pocket, and went to the dance with The Man. At least, he came in time for supper, and saw the beginning of the end in Miss Hollis’s eyes. She was hysterical after supper, and was taken away by her Mamma.

At the dance, with the abominable Bisara in his pocket, Churton twisted his foot on one of the steps leading down to the old Rink, and had to be sent home in a rickshaw, grumbling. He did not believe in the Bisara of Pooree any the more for this manifestation, but he sought out Pack and called him some ugly names; and ‘thief’ was the mildest of them. Pack took the names with the nervous smile of a little man who wants both soul and body to resent an insult, and went his way. There was no public scandal.

A week later Pack got his definite dismissal from Miss Hollis. There had been a mistake in the placing of her affections, she said. So he went away to Madras, where he can do no great harm even if he lives to be a Colonel.

Churton insisted upon The Man who Knew taking the Bisara of Pooree as a gift. The Man took it, went down to the Cart-Road at once, found a cart-pony with a blue bead-necklace, fastened the Bisara of Pooree inside the necklace with a piece of shoe-string and thanked Heaven that he was rid of a danger. Remember, in case you ever find it, that you must not destroy the Bisara of Pooree. I have not time to explain why just now, but the power lies in the little wooden fish. Mister Gubernatis or Max Müller could tell you more about it than I.

You will say that all this story is made up. Very well. If ever you come across a little, silver, ruby-studded box, seven-eighths of an inch long by three-quarters wide, with a dark brown wooden fish, wrapped in gold cloth, inside it, keep it. Keep it for three years, and then you will discover for yourself whether my story is true or false.

Better still, steal it as Pack did, and you will be sorry that you had not killed yourself in the beginning.

HAUNTED SUBALTERNS

So long as the ‘Inextinguishables’ confined themselves to running picnics, gymkhanas, flirtations and innocences of that kind, no one said anything. But when they ran ghosts, people put up their eyebrows. Man can’t feel comfy with a regiment that entertains ghosts on its establishment. It is against General Orders. The ‘Inextinguishables’ said that the ghosts were private and not Regimental property. They referred you to Tesser for particulars; and Tesser told you to go to – the hottest cantonment of all. He said that it was bad enough to have men making hay of his bedding and breaking his banjo-strings when he was out, without being chaffed afterward; and he would thank you to keep your remarks on ghosts to yourself. This was before the ‘Inextinguishables’ had sworn by their several lady loves that they were innocent of any intrustion into Tesser’s quarters. Then Horrocks mentioned casually at Mess, that a couple of white figures had been bounding about his room the night before, and he didn’t approve of it. The ‘Inextinguishables’ denied, energetically, that they had had any hand in the manifestations, and advised Horrocks to consult Tesser.

I don’t suppose that a Subaltern believes in anything except his chances of a Company; but Horrocks and Tesser were exceptions. They came to believe in their ghosts. They had reason.

Horrocks used to find himself, at about three o’clock in the morning, staring wide-awake, watching two white Things hopping about his room and jumping up to the ceiling. Horrocks was of a placid turn of mind. After a week or so spent in watching his servants, and lying in wait for strangers,and trying to keep awake all night, he came to the conclusion that he was haunted, and that, consequently, he need not bother. He wasn’t going to encourage these ghosts by being frightened of them. Therefore, when he awoke – as usual – with a start and saw these Things jumping like kangaroos, he only murmured: ‘Go on! Don’t mind me!’ and went to sleep again.

Tesser said: ‘It’s all very well for you to make fun of your show. You can see your ghosts. Now I can’t see mine, and I don’t half like it.’

Tesser used to come into his room of nights, and find the whole of his bedding neatly stripped, as if it had been done with one sweep of the hand, from the top right-hand corner of the charpoy to the bottom left-hand corner. Also his lamp used to lie weltering on the floor, and generally his pet screw-head inlaid nickel-plated banjo was lying on the charpoy, with all its strings broken. Tesser took away the strings on the occasion of the third manifestation, and the next night a man complimented him on his playing the best music ever got out of a banjo, for half an hour.

‘Which half hour?’ said Tesser.

‘Between nine and ten,’ said the man. Tesser had gone out to dinner at 7:30 and had returned at midnight.

He talked to his bearer and threatened him with unspeakable things. The bearer was grey with fear. ‘I’m a poor man,’ said he. ‘If the
Sahib
is haunted by a Devil, what can I do?’

‘Who says I’m haunted by a Devil?’ howled Tesser, for he was angry.

‘I have seen It,’ said the bearer, ‘at night, walking round and round your bed; and that is why everything is ultra-pulta in your room. I am a poor man, but I never go into your room alone. The bhisti comes with me.’

Tesser was thoroughly savage at this, and he spoke to Horrocks, and the two laid traps to catch that Devil, and threatened their servants with dog-whips if any more ‘shai-tan-ke-hanky-panky’ took place. But the servants were soaked with fear, and it was no use adding to their tortures. When Tesser went out for a night, four of his men, as a rule, slept inthe veranda of his quarters, until the banjo without the strings struck up, and then they fled.

One day, Tesser had to put in a month at a Fort with a detachment of ‘Inextinguishables.’ The Fort might have been Govindghar, Jumrood or Phillour; but it wasn’t. He left Cantonments rejoicing, for his Devil was preying on his mind; and with him went another Subaltern, a junior. But the Devil came too. After Tesser had been in the Fort about ten days he went out to dinner. When he came back he found his Subaltern doing sentry on a banquette across the Fort Ditch, as far removed as might be from the Officers’ Quarters.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Tesser.

The Subaltern said, ‘Listen!’ and the two, standing under the stars, heard from the Officers’ Quarters, high up in the wall of the Fort, the ‘strumpy, tumty, tumpty’ of the banjo; which seemed to have an oratorio on hand.

‘That performance,’ said the Subaltern, ‘has been going on for three mortal hours. I never wished to desert before, but I do now. I say, Tesser, old man, you are the best of good fellows, I’m sure, but… I say … look here, now, you are quite unfit to live with. ’Tisn’t in my Commission, you know, that I’m to serve under a … a … man with Devils.’

‘Isn’t it?’ said Tesser. ‘If you make an ass of yourself I’ll put you under arrest… and in my room!’

‘You can put me where you please, but I’m not going to assist at these infernal concerts. ’Tisn’t right. ’Tisn’t natural. Look here, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but – try to think now – haven’t you done something – committed some – murder that has slipped your memory – or forged something … ?’

‘Well! For an all-round, double-shotted, half-baked fool you are the …’

‘I dare say I am,’ said the Subaltern. ‘But you don’t expect me to keep my wits with that row going on, do you?’

The banjo was rattling away as if it had twenty strings. Tesser sent up a stone, and a shower of broken window-pane fell into the Fort Ditch; but the banjo kept on. Tesser hauled the Subaltern up to the quarters, and found his room infrightful confusion – lamp upset, bedding all over the floor, chairs overturned and table tilted sideways. He took stock of the wreck and said despairingly: ‘Oh, this is lovely!’

The Subaltern was peeping in at the door.

‘I’m glad you think so,’ he said, ’Tisn’t lovely enough for me. I locked up your room directly after you had gone out. See here, I think you’d better apply for Horrocks to come out in my place. He’s troubled with your complaint, and this business will make me a jabbering idiot if it goes on.’

Tesser went to bed amid the wreckage, very angry, and next morning he rode into Cantonments and asked Horrocks to arrange to relieve ‘that fool with me now.’

‘You’ve got ’em again, have you?’ said Horrocks. ‘So’ve I. Three white figures this time. We’ll worry through the entertainment together.’

So Horrocks and Tesser settled down in the Fort altogether, and the ‘Inextinguishables’ said pleasant things about ‘seven other Devils.’ Tesser didn’t see where the joke came in. His room was thrown upside down three nights out of the seven. Horrocks was not troubled in any way, so his ghosts must have been purely local ones. Tesser, on the other hand, was personally haunted; for his Devil had moved with him from Cantonments to the Fort. Those two boys spent three parts of their time trying to find out who was responsible for the riot in Tesser’s rooms. At the end of a fortnight they tried to find out what was responsible; and seven days later they gave it up as a bad job. Whatever It was, It refused to be caught; even when Tesser went out of the Fort ostentatiously, and Horrocks lay under Tesser’s charpoy with a revolver. The servants were afraid – more afraid than ever – and all the evidence showed that they had been playing no tricks. As Tesser said to Horrocks: ‘A haunted Subaltern is a joke, but s’pose this keeps on. Just think what a haunted Colonel would be! And, look here – s’pose I marry! D’ you s’pose a girl would live a week with me and this Devil?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Horrocks. ‘I haven’t married often; but I knew a woman once who lived with her husband when he had D.T. He’s dead now and I dare say she would marry you if you,asked her. She isn’t exactly a girl though, but she has a large experience of the other devils – the blue variety. She’s a Government pension now, and you might write, y’know. Personally, if I hadn’t suffered from ghosts of my own, I should rather avoid you.’

‘That’s just the point,’ said Tesser. ‘This Devil will end in getting me budnamed, and you know I’ve lived on lemon-squashes and gone to bed at ten for weeks past.’

‘’Tisn’t that sort of Devil,’ said Horrocks. ‘It’s either a first-class fraud for which some one ought to be killed or else you’ve offended one of these Indian Devils. It stands to reason that such a beastly country should be full of fiends of all sorts.’

‘But why should the creature fix on me,’ said Tesser, ‘and why won’t he show himself and have it out like a – like a Devil?’

They were talking outside the Mess after dark, and even as they spoke, they heard the banjo begin to play in Tesser’s room, about twenty yards off.

Horrocks ran to his own quarters for a shot-gun and a revolver, and Tesser and he crept up quietly, the banjo still playing, to Tesser’s door.

‘Now we’ve got It!’ said Horrocks, as he threw the door open and let fly with the twelve-bore; Tesser squibbing off all six barrels into the dark, as hard as he could pull the trigger.

The furniture was ruined, and the whole Fort was awake; but that was all. No one had been killed and the banjo was lying on the dishevelled bedclothes as usual.

Then Tesser sat down in the veranda, and used language that would have qualified him for the companionship of unlimited Devils. Horrocks said things too; but Tesser said the worst.

When the month in the Fort came to an end, both Horrocks and Tesser were glad. They held a final council of war, but came to no conclusion.

‘’Seems to me, your best plan would be to make your Devil stretch himself. Go down to Bombay with the time-expired men,’ said Horrocks. ‘If he really is a Devil, he’ll come in the train with you.’

‘’Tisn’t good enough,’ said Tesser. ‘Bombay’s no fit place to live in at this time of the year. But I’ll put him in for Depot duty at the Hills.’ And he did.

Now here the tale rests. The Devil stayed below, and Tesser went up and was free. If I had invented this story, I should have put in a satisfactory ending – explained the manifestations as somebody’s practical joke. My business being to keep to facts, I can only say what I have said. The Devil may have been a hoax. If so, it was one of the best ever arranged. If it was not a hoax … but you must settle that for yourselves.