The Mating of the Blades/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
The governor of the western marches “gets religion.” Mr. Warburton gives bakshish to Baluchi ruffians! Hector rushes off! And the old nurse decides that the little princess should marry a man who beats her—not too much!
When the confidential messenger returned to the rebel camp and delivered Hector's instructions to Koom Khan, the latter shrugged his massive shoulders resignedly and observed, with a painful effect after casualness, that Al Nakia might have saved himself the trouble since an elephant was an elephant on low ground as well as on high, while a coward was a coward with or without a weapon.
A cryptic saying which the messenger was presently able to decipher by listening to the rumors, the babble and gossip and laughter, that swept through the camp, causing the Arabs to scream with amusement after the manner of their kind, causing the Persians to make impromptu and mostly indecent puns, causing the renegade Tamerlanis to slap their stout thighs in an abandonment of mirth—causing, furthermore, Mr. Preserved Higgins to curse fantastically and the Sheik-ul-Islam to declare, with hypocritical, pontifical unction, that Allah was indeed most great, and that there was shining truth in the sura of the Koran where it said that 'Verily repentance will be accepted by Allah from those who do evil ignorantly, and then repent speedily; unto them Allah will turn with forgiveness; for He is knowing and wise and merciful!”
For it appeared that, suddenly, without any known reason, both Abderrahman Yahiah Khan and his friend and ally, “The Basin,” had—to put it vulgarly—“got religion.”
At first, when early that morning the governor of the western marches mentioned that he and Musa Al-Mutasim were going toward the Afghan border on a pious pilgrimage to the shrine of a certain canonized doctor of Koranic theology, called Syyed Ahmet el-Tachfin the Clarified-Butter Seller, and to go there through many intricate religious rites and ceremonies, Mr. Preserved Higgins and Tollemache Wade treated it in the light of a rather crude jest. For it was a notorious fact that, of all the bad Moslems in Central Asia, Abderrahman Yahiah Khan was the worst, with Musa Al-Mutasim running him a close second. From gambling to drinking fermented spirits, from refusing alms to the poor to robbing the orphans of their portion, from practicing usury to neglecting their prayers, there were few Koranic laws which they did not break, almost daily, and with a sort of sneering bravado.
“Right-oh!” said Mr. Higgins, the Babu interpreting. “That's wot you need—religion—bloomin' fine joke!”
But the other turned on him a stony and reproachful eye.
“Saheb,” he said, “it is not fitting to make a mock of a man's honest repentance. I have been a sinner of sins. So has Musa Al-Mutasim. And now we go to the shrine of the Clarified-Butter Seller to cleanse our souls and to make our peace with Allah and his blessed Prophet!”
Then, suddenly, it dawned upon Tollemache Wade that the man was in earnest, and so he tried to argue with him, told him to defer his sacred pilgrimage until after the coming campaign against Tamerlanistan.
The governor shook his head.
“No, no,” he said. “For too many years have I broken the blessed laws of the Prophet Mohammed—”
“On whom Peace!” chimed in “The Basin” sonorously and mendaciously.
“And last night, in my dreams, the Prophet spoke to me and told me that ill luck would follow my enterprise unless I repent my sins and follies and evil deeds.”
“But—look here—what about …?”
“Do not worry, saheb. It will be months yet before we will be ready to attack Tamerlanistan and put thee on the throne as the 'Expected One.' Do thou continue drilling the troops, while I and Musa Al-Mutasim prostrate our ignoble bodies before the sainted spirit of the Clarified-Butter Seller!”
Practically the same thing he said to Koom Khan, who fumed and raged.
“Thou art a fool, Abderrahman Yahiah Khan! First thou shouldst cut the saheb's throat—then thy prayers will rise the more sweetly to Allah's nostrils!”
Abderrahman Yahiah Khan heaved a sigh of hypocritical resignation.
“Heart of my heart,” he said, gently, “thou, too, art a sinner of sins, a deceiver of deceits, a curser of curses. Come with me and Musa Al-Mutasim. Prostrate thy unworthy self before … ”
“Coward!” screamed Koom Khan, who saw that his pet scheme, the murder of Tollemache Wade by the governor's hands, was slipping away. “Fool! Drunkard! Jew! Christian! O thou abuser of the salt! O thou cold of countenance! O thou son of a burnt father! O thou spawn of exceeding filth! O thou whose back should be slippered with many slipperings! O thou …”
“I am all that,” said the governor, inclining his head with a fine show of humility, “and a great and wicked sinner. Thus, too, is Musa Al-Mutasim,” pointing at “The Basin,” who stood motionless, though he was choking with inward laughter. “And that is just why we go on pilgrimage to cleanse our souls …”
“Curse your filthy souls!”
“Peace, brother Moslem! Peace and patience!” said the governor, making a mental note of the insults the other had heaped on his head and promising to repay them later on with interest. There was no hurry.
And, half an hour later, he and the renegade Arab were off, astride swift sowarri racing dromedaries, toward the southeast, away from the Darh-i-Sultani, skirting Tamerlanistan's southern frontier, in the direction of the Persian Gulf.
They drove their grunting, protesting animals mercilessly, at top speed, through an arid land spotted with sweet-scented shih grass and dwarf acacia, and torn by dry, rock-strewn watercourses that had once been used for irrigation purposes—watercourses on which both Mr. Preserved Higgins and Mr. Warburton were figuring in their hunt after “concessions”—water courses the eastern end of which an Afghan guide was just then pointing out to the American as the caravan which had brought him and his daughter from India, was reaching the eastern plains of Tamerlanistan.
On they rode, the robber chief's immense bulk bobbing up and down like a meal sack, the governor perched on his peaked saddle like a lean, ironic monkey, and as they rode, they talked, and as they talked they laughed—riotously, exaggeratedly.
Yet, had Koom Khan or the Cockney millionaire taken the precaution of having them followed, they would have noticed that, a few days later, the two repentant sinners seemed suddenly to forget all about their pilgrimage to the shrine of the canonized Clarified-Butter Seller.
For, a day's journey from the Afghan border where it dips toward the Persian Gulf, they turned due north, through an alluvial plain studded with basalt rocks and jagged green stone; above, a sky like polished, blue steel, with a tremendous blaze of orange sunlight that glared down without the thinnest veil of mist cloud.
There were few signs of life, and they were glad of it, as their plan depended as much on secrecy as on speed; only once in a while a carrion kite poised high in the parched heavens, or, silently, sulkily jogging along, an Afghan or Baluchi camel rider, whose jaws and brows were bound mummy fashion against the stinging sand of the desert; and late one afternoon they overtook a gigantic cotton wain that was drawn by twenty bullocks about the size of Newfoundland dogs—a sign that they were drawing nearer to the capital.
A few words with the driver of the wain elicited the information that the weekly caravan from India was due in twenty-four hours, and so, having decided, for reasons of their own, to go to the capital; having furthermore decided, for reasons connected with the safety of their heads, that it would be unwise to do so in their characters of rebel leader and robber chief, they kept on to the north, and, the following day, reached the Darb-al-Sharki, the highway that enters Tamerlanistan from the east, having made a sweeping detour around the city and debouched on a spot far removed from the direction of the western marches.
There they dismounted, took off their clothes, opened their saddle-bags, and, inside of half an hour, faced each other looking for all the world like a couple of ruffianly Afghan charpadars, drovers, with their beards shaved off, their mustaches well trimmed, their heads crowned with immense fur caps that came down over their brows, their bodies in tattered shirts, indigo-dyed, and girt with twisted camel-hair ropes, their legs sheathed in loose muslin trousers, their feet protected from the stones of the road by sandals of thick leather kept in place by narrow thongs tied to the ankles, great iron spurs strapped to their naked heels, and appropriately armed with cheray daggers and pistols.
Then, having hobbled their dromedaries, they sat down by the side of the road, filled their mouths with finely cut pan, chewed and spat contentedly, and smiled at one another as Greek is said to smile at Greek.
“They”—said Musa Al-Mutasim, pointing in the general direction of Tamerlanistan and giving the Arab equivalent for swallowing the bait, hook, line, and sinker—“will climb the thorn tree and wish they had not forgotten their loin-cloths.”
“Yes. For who would recognize the great brigand chief, Musa Al-Mutasim, in a lousy Afghan charpadar?” inquired Abderrahman Yahiah Khan.
“And who,” countered “The Basin,” “would recognize in even such a one the haughty and renowned governor of the western marches?”
“Not Al Nakia, I hope!”
“Nor that Armenian son of a pig!”
“Nor Ayesha Zemzem!”
“Nor Wahab al-Shaitan!”
“Nor,” said the governor with a wink and a leer, “the little, little princess until …”
“Yes,” smiled the Arab as the other paused, “until thy strong arms crush her against thy breast!”
And they talked for a long time, with frequent allusions to Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh, the old prime minister who had gone to the far places shortly before the Ameer's death, and to a certain ancient Tartar castle which, judging from the Arab's gestures, was situated somewhere, vaguely, in the southwest and was named Jabul-i-Shuhada, “The Place of the Martyrs,” after a handful of Moslem braves who had once defended it, for over two years, against an army of savage, heathen Turkis.
“It is a stout place, easy to defend,” said the Arab, “and it is always in readiness. Often have I found there asylum and safety.”
“Good!”
And then they smiled and were silent again, and waited patiently, until, late in the afternoon, when a faint, silvery tinkle of camels' bells and a neighing of horses warned them that the caravan which they were expecting was approaching.
Not long afterwards it came into view, the camels jogging along Indian file, tied head to tail, looming up on the sky line like a grotesque scrawl of Arab hand writing. At the head of the caravan, followed by half-a-dozen mounted, armed tofanghees, irregular soldiers, rode the leader, a gigantic Baluchi. At the very end a shugduf litter was carried between two swaying, pacing dromedaries.
It was made of wicker and carved and painted deodar wood, elaborately ornamented with silk cord age and covered with a splendid Daghestan rug in heliotrope and rose. The curtains were open, giving a glimpse of the occupant, a young girl, fair haired, brown eyed; and by its side rode a man on a fiery Kabuli stallion that he found difficulty in controlling.
It may have been the fault of the saddle—an American McClellan, and not the huge, peaked affair to which Central Asian horses are used—and it was this saddle which first attracted Musa Al-Mutasim's special attention.
“A foreigner,” he said. “A saheb—yes!” His gray eyes lit up as they roamed to the glimpse of golden hair and milky skin between the curtains of the litter. “And a foreign woman—a mem-saheb!”
“We are in luck!” laughed Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, “for it is easy to lie to a saheb. Too easy!" he added, almost regretfully, like a man who is wasting his God-given talent on an unappreciative audience.
And, a few minutes later, he and “The Basin” salaamed before the foreigner, their arms folded across their breasts in sign of fealty and humility, and imploring the saheb for permission to join his caravan as far as the capital. For, to quote Abderrahman Yahiah Khan's words, a wise man “muddies his trail.”
The Baluchi, who was the leader of the caravan and who had a fair knowledge of English, acted as dragoman, and it is a moot question whether it was through intention or accident that Musa Al-Mutasim let him see the bulging middle of a well-filled purse.
At all events, the Baluchi, whose name was Nureddin Zaid, seconded the prayers of the two men.
“They are poor, Warburton saheb,” he said. “They ask you for your protection. They say that you are their father and their mother …”
“How gorgeously thrilling, dad!” came a soft voice from the litter, and Jane looked down. “Why, I always thought that I was all the family you had—and here you are father and mother to …”
Mr. Warburton made an impatient gesture.
“No, Nureddin,” he said to the Baluchi. “Tell them I'm sorry, but …”
“Why not, dad?” asked the girl. “Do let them come with us. They are such picturesque ruffians—and I simply dote on local color!”
Mr. Warburton grumbled.
“I can't do it, Jane,” he said. “Sir James Rivet-Carnac was very particular about strangers not joining our caravan.”
For Sir James, the day before the Warburtons had left Calcutta, had had a confidential message from Mr. Preserved Higgins.
The latter had received cabled advice from a certain sandy-haired gentleman who had an office in Upper Thames Street, London, that the mysterious old Oriental in Coal Yard Street, off Drury Lane, had left England; and Mr. Higgins, thinking that the Oriental, if he came to Tamerlanistan, might, for certain reasons which he talked over with the Babu, seriously interfere with his plan of proclaiming Tollemache Wade as the “Expected One”; knowing that it would be very difficult to shadow the old man once he had disappeared in India's brown swirl; and believing, finally, in sweeping and ruthless methods when big things were at stake, had requested Sir James that, temporarily, all caravans from India to Tamerlanistan be stopped.
Sir James had tried to obey. But Mr. Warburton had been obdurate, had used counter-influences with the India Office, and had received his passports. Finally Sir James had compromised by endeavoring to make sure that nobody except the Warburtons and their guide and servants should leave India for Tamerlanistan; and so, with the help of mendacious warnings about some mysterious Russian political intrigue, he had asked the American to let no stranger attach himself to his caravan at any time of the journey.
“I cant do it, Jane,” repeated Mr. Warburton. “It wouldn't be fair to Sir James.”
“I don't care!” the girl exclaimed. “Fair to Sir James—indeed! Why, he's a dreadful person. Remember how he boasted about refusing a passport to Hector—and yet I wager Hector got away all right, otherwise I would have heard from him or seen him … Dad!” she went on, “haven't I been nice about Hector?”
“Nice? What do you mean?”
“Well—I didn't nag you about him, did I? I've hardly ever mentioned him these last weeks.”
“That's true,” admitted her father, rather grudgingly.
“Well—then you really might be a dear and do that little thing for me!”
“What little thing?”
“To let these two men join our caravan.”
“But why, child?”
“Oh—they are so funny—the thin one who looks like an Asiatic Don Quixote, and the fat one who looks like a wicked Pickwick! They'll lend such a bully spice of romance to our trip!”
“Oh … romance! This is a business trip, daughter.”
“Don't rub it in, dad—and don't you dare play the tired business man 'steen thousand miles away from Wall Street!”
And, seeing her father smile in spite of himself and interpreting it as his permission for her to do as she pleased, she turned to the Baluchi and told him the two strangers were welcome to join them.
Whence many salaams, flowery thanks, and Musa Al-Mutasim's gray, piercing eyes resting admiringly on this strong-willed mem-saheb who—as he whispered into his friend's ear—“drives the passion of a man as the east wind drives a sheet of flame!”
Thus rebel governor and robber chief accompanied the Warburton party in their rôles of simple Afghan charpadars, speaking little, but listening attentively to the gossip of the servants and soldiers; they traveled at a good speed; and they had already drawn within sight of the capital, with its terrace roofs stretching white, the palm gardens that bordered the suburbs lifting their feathery fronds coquettishly, and the elaborate dome of the Gengizkhani palace arrogantly rising to the tight, sapphire-blue heaven, when Musa Al-Mutasim, seeing that his friend, the governor, was deeply in conversation with a village girl who had approached the caravan offering fruit and milk for sale, slipped over to the side of the Baluchi guide and, as before, showed him his bulging purse.
Came a whispered conversation, the Arab's hand bending to the other's with a pleasant tinkle of gold, and, not long afterwards, the Baluchi approaching Mr. Warburton and remarking humbly that he was the saheb's slave, and that the saheb was the light of his countenance and the stone of his everlasting contentment.
Mr. Warburton was familiar with certain phases of the Orient.
“Let's take all that for granted,” he replied, brutally. “How much are you going to overcharge me?”
Nureddin Zaid, the Baluchi, looked at the American reproachfully.
“Saheb,” he said, “this is not a question of money. It is a question of my affection and loyalty to you.”
“Yes?” Mr. Warburton looked up, surprised, a little suspicious.
“Yes. You have been kind and generous. So has the little mem-saheb”—pointing at Jane who, well out of hearing, was amusedly watching Abderrahman Yahiah Khan's flirtatious conversation with the village girl. “And thus I would like to repay you, saheb!”
And he talked long and earnestly to Mr. Warburton, with the result that the latter, a few minutes afterwards, told his daughter that she would stay here, at the village outside the city walls, under the protection of half-a-dozen soldiers, until he sent for her.
“I want to go with you, dad.”
“No, Jane. It isn't safe. Nureddin Zaid told me that the prime minister of Tamerlanistan, the chap they call Al Nakia is … oh …” he coughed.
“A Don Juan?” she laughed. “Why, dad, I can take care of myself. I've played around New York and Paris and London, you know.”
“But this is the Orient, my dear, and things are different. Nureddin Zaid told me you'd be perfectly safe the moment Al Nakia gives me his solemn oath—but not before. So, my dear, I'd much rather you stay here—won't you please?”
Thus the mild and meek American parent whose words, when he talked to men of millions on Wall Street or on the Stock Exchange, popped sharp and dry like machine-gun bullets; and Jane smiled.
“Certainly, dad,” she said. “I don't want to worry you.”
“Thanks, my dear. I'll send for you just as soon as Al Nakia promises me.”
A few hours later, Abderrahman Yahiah Khan and “The Basin,” whom the Tamerlani officials at the eastern gate had passed in without question as evidently belonging to the saheb's retinue, had disappeared in the packed, greasy wilderness of houses that ran from the Bazaar of the Mutton Butchers to the Ghulan River where stood the dead Ameer's mausoleum, while Mr. Warburton whose Baluchi guide had left the moment he had been paid his wages and a handsome bakshish in appreciation of his loyal warning about Al Nakia, was sitting on a rickety, three-legged chair in the chapar-khanah, the official rest house for distinguished travelers, trying to convince a bored, bearded major-domo by sign language that goat stewed in honey and spiced with asafoetida, badly cooked brinjal, unripe melons, underdone bread, and luke-warm licorice water were not the right sort of diet for a dyspeptic stomach.
Finally he gave up in despair, and contented himself with a simple repast consisting of a glass of milk and a fat, black cigar, and sat down on the open veranda, watching the scene outside on the market place: the low line of shops overflowing with vegetables, grains, cloths, slippers, ropes, household utensils, brasses, and whatever else measured the scale of the natives modest wants; a dozen or so desert men squatting around little fagots of brush wood spread on the ground, and beyond them the gaunt, sneering, huddled shapes of their dromedaries; a butcher's shop, his fly-blown stock-in-trade of beef and mutton quarters hanging from the limbs of a dead tree; turbaned and fur-capped people of every tint and costume, picturesque and swaggering alike in their bright silks and their worn, tattered rags, all haggling, laughing, babbling, shouting, all typical of Asia, that most disconcerting continent—disconcerting, that is, to professional Occidental psychologists—which, somehow, blends an ancient wisdom with an eternal, perversely childlike simplicity of soul.
There he sat and watched, slightly homesick, slightly discouraged, not with the eventual success of his enterprise, but with the brooding thought that success in Asia meant nothing after all; for, even suppose he was granted his “concession,” developed the western province, reaped a benefit for himself and his backers, and increased the standard of living of the natives … what then? Asia was too big, too big to grasp even mentally, and a local success … why, it was like shooting at an elephant with a pea-shooter!
And so he thought, while he waited for the return of the messenger whom he had sent to the Babu Chandra, local agent of the Cable Company and his own more or less trusted representative, with word that he was in town and wished to see him at once.
The Babu came not long afterwards, coquettish as to attire, with his patent leather pumps and open-work silk socks, his gaudy umbrella and the freshly varnished, crimson caste mark on his low forehead, his sagging lips bubbling florid, frothy greetings, protestations of undying loyalty, mendacious statements that he, his wife, his mother, and his cow were dying of starvation, and complaints against the Babu Bansi and Mr. Preserved Higgins, whose ancestors, it appeared, had been born noseless and devoid of shame for untold generations … a stream of words cut short by Mr. Ezra Warburton's “All right. Let's take all that for granted.”
“But—Higgins saheb is making mischief in the West. He is …”
“That's why I am here. I want an audience as soon as possible with that—what's his name—the fellow who seems to be ace high here …”
“Al Nakia?”
“Yes. I want to see him, right away. Can you fix it up?”
“Yes, Heaven-Born.”
“When?”
“At once. At least—this afternoon. About two hours from now he receives in open durbar, saheb.”
“Good. You'd better come along and play interpreter, Bansi.”
At which the Babu smiled.
“Heaven-Born,” he said, “Al Nakia speaks English.”
“Educated abroad, I guess?”
“No. He is a saheb, like yourself!”
Even so two hours later—two hours pregnant with motley happenings, with the clash of swords, the cries of dying men, the lust of a Tamerlani, and the greed of an Arab—Mr. Ezra Warburton was utterly surprised when, ushered into the presence of Al Nakia, he discovered that the latter was Hector Wade.
And the surprise was mutual. Too, it was typical of American and Briton.
“I'll be jiggered!” exclaimed the former.
“How d'ye do?” said the latter, extending a limp and gawkish hand.
Came an embarrassed silence, until finally the financier, with the abrupt directness of his nation, decided that the past was the past and, as such, must be left to take care of itself; that, whatever the truth or untruth as to the disgraceful card scandal which had banished Hector Wade from the society of decent people, and whatever the methods through which he had reached his present eminent position, that position itself was a fact—and he was here on business.
Business! The sacred Grail of his life!
And business he would talk, and did talk.
“About those land development concessions,” he began. “I guess I can make you a pretty fair offer—an offer you won't be able to refuse.”
He went on to say that he knew about the rebellion which had broken out in the western marches and about Mr. Preserved Higgins part in it, but that he himself …
“Well, Mr. Wade, you know that I've quite a little pull with the British government. What you need is rifles and ammunition and supplies, and I'll make it my affair to see that you get them. On the other hand—well—I am a business man, not an altruist, and so …”
And he talked on, outlining his plan.
But Hector was hardly listening. Loverlike, he saw in Mr. Warburton's gray, ascetic features a shadowy and sentimental resemblance to a little oval of a face, crowned by a mass of hair that was like curled sunlight; he wondered about Jane, and, with single-minded, self-centered English tactlessness, he voiced his wonder the next moment, cutting through Mr. Warburton's intricate sentence, which was filled to the brim with rates of interest and difficulties of transportation and unearned increment and sinking fund and similar financial details.
“How is your daughter, Mr. Warburton?”
And, suddenly, Mr. Warburton smiled.
It was not that he had forgotten about Jane. He couldn't very well, for her personality was too femininely insistent. But, momentarily, her picture had become rather blurred in the mazes of dollars and cents.
So he smiled, just a little guiltily.
“The joke is on me,” he said. “That infernal Baluchi guide of mine told me that you were—oh—all sorts of a gay and festive dog.”
Hector flared up.
“I … what?”
“I had no idea you were Hector Wade. I thought you were some Oriental Don Juan. That's what my Baluchi told me. Told me—oh, well—that a girl wasn't safe with you unless she was accompanied by half-a-dozen chaperons armed to the teeth, and so he persuaded me to leave Jane in a little village oasis—the last, one the other side of the eastern gate.”
“What did he do that for?” Hector was puzzled, faintly uneasy.
“Oh—just to work me for a tip, I suppose. And he worked me all right. That final bakshish I gave him is going to make history in Central Asia.”
And he laughed again. For he was a shrewd business man who believed in the rhythmic law of human equation, the personal element, and as frequently, in New York and London, he had discovered that the roseate geniality due to a dry Martini, a lavish display of ambiguous hors d'œuvres, ornamental ices in frilled pink papers, and the right sort of coffee and liqueur, were of valuable help in directing a man's judgment and fountain pen; thus the flash of Jane's dark eyes through the center of this prosy business discussion might help in influencing the young Englishman.
“I'll send for her as soon as we're through with our little talk,” he said. “She'll be all right at the village, in the meantime.”
“I suppose so,” said Hector, still with that same faint uneasiness; and once more the financier launched forth upon the roaming, treacherous sea of dollars and cents which he knew so well how to navigate.
“As to those land concessions,” he began again, “my proposition is fair and square …”
Hector Wade jerked himself back into the reality of things.
“Mr. Warburton,” he said, “I do not doubt it in the least. Fair and square. Of course. But only fair and square according to the limits of your understanding!”
“The—limits of my …?” Mr. Warburton stammered. An angry red flushed his lean cheeks. He did not like to have his probity impugned, even in a roundabout way; and it was that which the other was evidently trying to do.
“According to the limits of your understanding—exactly!” Hector went on. “But not according to the understanding of Asia.”
“Is this an ethical discussion or a business discussion?” demanded the financier with a faint sneer.
“Both—as it ought to be. You see, your ideas on progress and happiness …”
“Interchangeable terms!”
“So you say! Your ideas and those of the Orient do not happen to dovetail. You say that money, and the progress which money buys, is happiness; and the Orient replies that poverty can often be a far greater happiness—if poverty brings contentment.”
“Poverty—brings—contentment?” Here was a revolutionary theory which nettled the financier.
“Poverty from your point of view,” smiled Hector, “and not from the point of view of the Orient. My Tamerlanis”—and he dwelt just a little on the “my”—“ are rich—and happy—when they have three square meals a day, a handful of brittle Latakia tobacco leaves and …”
“But you are a European!” interrupted Mr. Warburton. “You are an Englishman, the descendant of a nation of shopkeepers.”
“Yes. But I am also the regent of this country. And I have not been here very long. Perhaps a measure of development may do Tamerlanistan a whole lot of good. I don't know—yet.”
“I can prove to you that …”
“You can prove to me exactly nothing—at least about Tamerlanistan. I must learn by myself, and I am rather slow. I take one step at a time, and my present step is over yonder”—he pointed west, through the window where brilliant wedges of sunlight misted the town with golden gauze. “I must pacify the border province. Nothing else counts.”
“Right there I can help you. I tell you I have a great deal of pull with the British-Indian government.”
“Oh, yes. You told me. Rifles and bullets and all that sort of thing. But I fancy I shan't need them. I have rather a different plan. Anyway, there'll be no talk of concessions until either I know more about Tamerlanistan than I do know, or until the former prime minister, Hajji Akhbar Khan, returns from abroad. He and the late Ameer had certain ideas about these concessions.”
“I remember,” said Mr. Warburton, with rather a grim smile. “They wouldn't even listen to the propositions I made them through the Babu Chandra—”
“And perhaps they were right. From all I hear about Hajji Akhbar Khan …”
And then, with utter, dramatic suddenness, the name of the Hajji was echoed by a shrill voice that drifted through the curtains which separated the audience hall from the women's quarter.
“Hajji Akhbar Khan—didst thou say?” It was the old nurse's screaming voice. “And dost thou mean to tell me that the princess—that little, little fool of a princess—went there, without telling me? Why didst thou not tell me, O daughter of a noseless she-camel?”
The next moment she burst into the audience hall, like a miniature whirlwind of passion, her wizened, berry-brown features distorted with rage and grief, dragging after her a weeping slave girl whom she cuffed and kicked as a sort of accompaniment to the tale which she poured into Hector's ear.
“Zid! Zid!—Hurry! Hurry!” she wound up, and Hector, pale, slightly trembling, turned to the American.
“Pardon my abruptness,” he said, “I have to go …”
“Has anything happened? Can I help you?”
“I don't know. No time to explain. Awfully sorry.”
And he picked up the ancient Oriental blade from a low taboret and ran out of the audience hall and into the outer court.
A splendid stallion was there, champing at his bit, saddled, gayly caparisoned, belonging to some courtier who had come for audience.
Hector threw his leg across the saddle, and was off at a gallop, while the old nurse looked after him, trembling, crying … and presently turned again to the slave girl.
“Why didst thou not tell me, daughter of a wart?”
“I couldn't—the princess never thought that the Hajji wasn't …”
"She has less sense even than thou! A husband—that is what she needs! A husband who beats her—but not too much—or may Allah help him!” she wound up in a disconcerting mingling of defiance and gentleness.
“What has happened?” Mr. Warburton asked Babu Chandra, who had come into the audience hall, fully as excited as the nurse had been.
“The Princess Aziza Nurmahal fell into a trap. And so—so did …”
“Who?”
“Your daughter, Heaven-Born!”
And, like the nurse, he told a jerking, hysterical tale, at the end of which the financier, even as Hector had done, rushed out of the palace, into the outer court, and mounted the first horse he saw.
And off and away, toward the eastern gate, toward the open country that rose slowly, gradually, to a far horizon of soft curves and blue vapors, slashed with silver and nicked with livid purple, while Hector was urging his stallion toward the West, where the Ghulan River laid a shining ribbon across the town's straggling suburbs, and where the turrets and bulbous domes of the dead Ameer's mausoleum swept to the sky in a stony abandon.