The House of the Falcon/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
THE SELLER OF RUGS
"Once a Tartar emperor made it the heart of his kingdom, dust and ruins now. Then the tidal wave of the Osmanli Turk swept over it, and that, too, is gone. After that a Czar and his Cossacks reached out hands, greedy hands for it. Pouf! The wind of Asia, the ghost wind,—tengeri buran the beggars in the hills say—that wind blew, and now the Czar is hoist with a petard and his soldiers are either dead or farmers, my dear Miss Rand."
Fraser-Carnie reined in his horse to point with his riding crop up at the overhanging vastness of the Himalayas. Underneath the forests of the foothills—rising green shoulders, buttresses of the Titan masses above them—Srinagar, the City of the Sun, looked very tiny indeed. And compared with the great peaks that loomed behind the foothills, Switzerland itself, thought Edith, was a toylike place.
Edith's eyes were somber. She threw back her head upon her strong, white throat, looking up at the statuesque boles of the pines that were scarcely smaller than the redwoods of California. She sniffed the pungent fragrance of the deodars.
"It is a garden, after all!" she cried.
Fraser-Carnie glanced at her appreciatively. He relished their rides together. Edith was a horsewoman born, and the major liked that.
"Kashmir is the garden," he murmured. "Up there it's rather a wilderness, I fear. The law of the white man no longer holds good. Since the War, the tribes are their own masters. What poet said, 'Fate has turned a leaf in the book you and I cannot read'?" He paused to light a cigarette and tossed the match away moodily. "Up yonder, somewhere, Donovan Khan dropped out of sight"
Edith was still gazing at the snow peaks. They fascinated her. There seemed to be no life in them. They loomed against the hard blue of the sky like bulwarks of Jotunheim. What was beyond them?
"I thought at first," Edith smiled whimsically at her own fancy, "that Edouard Monsey might be Donovan Khan. He was so interested in Mr. Whittaker's story. I just wondered, because I like to play at dreaming."
"Dream, by all means, dear child. After all, is it not the stuff our life is made of? Eh, what? Monsey, though, is scarcely the Khan." He eyed her appraisingly. "Curious thing, about a year ago Donovan Khan himself dropped in at my diggings up Gilghit way for the night. He claimed he was looking for some one at Sreenugg'r. I've seldom met a man I liked more. The politicos were furious when I didn't arrest him or some such thing."
"Why?" Edith was surprised. She felt very much out of touch with all that was happening in this place. It was so different from the world in which she had lived and moved.
"Why? Well, all of India would have thanked me for delivering Donovan Khan to the army. Five years ago, just when the War began, Donovan Khan took himself off from here, to go hunting, he said. Since then we've heard of him occasionally among the tribes. Periodically he seems to vanish. He knew the tribes as no other man in India did"
The major broke off, to puff vigorously at his cigarette.
"Jain Ali Beg who went West said to me more than once that Donovan Khan, his master, had the aspect of one who hunted, although he never killed game except for the pot. Also that riders came from the hill villages—men of a race strange to Jain Ali Beg—to follow Donovan Khan; and there was much fighting. There would be."
"It's all so strange," thought Edith aloud.
"Riddles? Not altogether"—again the officer checked himself. "The Viceroy doesn't let us tell everything we hear. But this man was up to something, on his own. Up yonder, you know. He gathered power to himself, and his followers named him Khan—at any rate, until that caravan called for him at Kashgar. It looks to me as if the hillmen had sent a funeral cortège for him."
He spoke half jestingly, but Edith caught the thoughtfulness that underlay his words. Her brow wrinkled as she remembered the letter addressed to Monsey that she had seen at the Château.
A falcon. A search in the City of the Sun—Srinagar. Sheer nonsense, unless it was code. What had Fraser-Carnie said that reminded her of it? Something about searching—she could not place it.
"Have you," she asked, "a servant with a mark on his face under one eye? He frightened me once."
Fraser-Carnie glanced at her strong, young figure, erect in the saddle, at her friendly, gray eyes. "I hardly fancy you are easily frightened, my dear Miss Rand By Jove! If you should see a big hillman with a face like a dog, blind in one eye, tell me. He's a murderer, you know. The Maharaja—ruler of Kashmir—has a sense of justice. Which reminds me that I am taking you to the Maharaja's ball, in two days."
The Maharaja was giving the ball to the members of the British Residency and Fraser-Carnie was among those invited. Monsey would be there. And she had promised a dance
"Speaking of your admirers," grumbled the major, "here comes one now, unless I am mistaken. The Russian chap, Monsey."
Edith turned in her saddle and saw Monsey cantering after them, well mounted and well dressed as he always was. Fraser-Carnie looked at her quizzically.
"I owe him," she confided quickly, almost defensively, "a debt."
"Then, my dear young lady, pay it"—her companion spoke sharply—"and wipe the slate clean."
"Why?" she whispered under the beat of the nearing hoofs.
But the major was silent and greeted Monsey with a curt nod. As if by general consent the three quickened their pace, the two men taciturn, the girl smiling. It was clear to her that Fraser-Carnie did not like Monsey. She wondered why.
And then, abruptly, her horse shied. Edith, clever horsewoman that she was, had him under control in a moment and looked to see the cause of the animal's fright.
At the roadside lay an ugly sight, the half-decayed body of a sheep from which a half dozen wide-winged, bald-headed birds had soared up at their approach, startling the horses.
"What are they?" Edith asked, nodding at the carrion birds that were circling now overhead, waiting for their departure. There was something foul and evil in their slow movements.
"Vultures," responded the major briefly. But the girl barely heard. She had seen Monsey's eyes widen and his lips twitch.
"Birds of prey of the basest sort," repeated Fraser-Carnie and this time he, too, glanced at Monsey.
"Are they called falcons sometimes?" She turned to the major.
"Rather not. Falcons, my dear young lady, are a sort of hunting bird, used by the natives hereabouts, especially in the north. An old custom, you know, favored by the hill chiefs."
At the door of the bungalow Fraser-Carnie made his adieus, saying that work claimed him at his quarters. Monsey, however, lingered. Miss Rand, Edith learned from the boy who took their horses, was out. Monsey accompanied her up the porch steps. Here Edith halted, stifling an involuntary exclamation of surprise.
In the shadows of the veranda a white figure rose before her. It salaamed respectfully and revealed itself as a turbaned Mussulman.
"O, will the mistress of the house see what her servant brings?" the figure said in fair English. "I am Iskander, seller of rugs."
Edith seized this pretext to avoid being alone with Monsey and ordered Iskander to bring his wares to the upper porch. As she passed through the drawing-room she could not resist stealing a glance at the window seat where the box containing the belongings of Donovan stood. She saw her companion follow her gaze and eye the box inquiringly.
Iskander, rejoicing in the favor of the white woman, lost no time in showing his goods. Rugs of every species from Persian to Chinese and rare silk objects were spread on the floor of the veranda as if by magic.
The Russian, who plainly had something on his mind, seemed determined to outstay the merchant; but when Edith purchased a small rug and began trying on the soft gray and blue Kashmiri shawls, he rose, knowing that the Mussulman would remain as long as there was a prospect of further sales. Edith, intent on her selection, nodded farewell. Monsey, however, took her hand and held it.
"I will claim," he whispered, "the promised dance. I will ask it, at the ball."
"Yes," she responded quietly, withdrawing her hand. Iskander glanced from one to the other with veiled curiosity.
"In the garden of the palace I will show you the beauty of our paradise," he smiled, and was gone.
She listened to his departing footsteps, as he strode down the stairs to the floor below and out on the lower porch. When he had disappeared under the trees, Iskander rose from where he had been squatting on the floor.
Edith, trying a fabric of the finest Kashmir wool on her slender shoulders, felt the Mussulman draw nearer. Iskander towered over her. His servile attitude had been flung from him like a discarded cloak as he stretched out a lean hand toward her swiftly. She was surprised to see the costliness of his white silk vest sewn with pearls and the jewels that gleamed under the dark throat.
A strange merchant, she thought fleetingly. Then she saw that Iskander had stooped over the scattered rugs—again a soft-tongued barterer of his wares.
For the first time she noted that Rawul Singh stood in the doorway. He spoke authoritatively to Iskander. The merchant departed with many compliments and effusive thanks, wishing her the happiness of pleasurable dreams.
A moment later when Edith descended to the drawing-room to look for a book she found that the box containing the belongings of Donovan Khan was no longer in its place. Rawul Singh said that no one of the household had removed it.
The girl thought of Iskander who might have conveyed the box from the bungalow wrapped in some of his rugs. Still, it did not seem reasonable that the seller of rugs would have stolen such a valueless thing when articles of silver plate and the collection of weapons had been left untouched.
Had Major Fraser-Carnie sent for the box? Rawul Singh said not, adding that the house servants, though of insignificant worth, were faithful to their salt. They would not steal.
Somewhat worried, Edith asked the orderly to report the incident to his master. It was a trifling matter—one of those details that vex because they defy explanation.
And the worthy Miss Catherine Rand was still more vexed the next day when she decided she had a headache and sought her cherished medicine pail for a remedy. None was forthcoming: the pail and its medicines had disappeared from her room.
Convinced that some native maffia had designs upon herself and Edith—who had just left for a boating tour with Monsey on the lagoon of Srinagar—Catherine Rand dispatched a house boy for the major, requisitioning her three words of Hindustani for the occasion.
"The burra sahib, you stupids! Ghee!" And the boy, notwithstanding her request for clarified butter (ghee), read the mind of the mem-sahib with the intuition peculiar to Orientals and brought Fraser-Carnie posthaste.
The major questioned his servants briefly and turned to Rawul Singh, speaking in Kashmiri.
"So, the hillman, blind in one eye, has been seen near the bungalow again even while you were seeking him in the bazaar."
The orderly bent his head.
"Then, sahib, I have blundered. Yet, who can separate one sheaf of grain from many, or one drop of water from a stream? It is in my mind that he is a caravaneer of an upland caravan that has been seen within a few days near Gilghit. More I know not"
"Then give over the search to the native police, and whenever I am not with the young mem-sahib do you accompany her. Her safety I give you as a duty. This is understood?"
Rawul Singh salaamed. Hereafter, should any harm fall to the lot of Edith Rand, the Garhwali, corporal in the Siwalik Rifles, would be as a man without honor.
That night after Edith had retired to her room she could hear the orderly pacing the veranda. She did not go to sleep at once. Her aunt had kept her up late discussing the matter of the missing medicine chest.
The memory of the native with the scar stooping over the kit of John Donovan was strong upon her. The major had called him a caravaneer, and a caravan had taken Donovan Khan away. To the hills.
The events of the day had tired her; the continued absence of her father filled her with misgivings. Monsey had proposed to her on the lagoon; and, as he spoke, her dislike of the man had grown upon her, as at Quebec.
He had said that he loved her, needed her. Her refusal seemed to affect him strongly. His savage anger at her words had aroused Edith's rebellious spirit.
Drowsily Edith smiled at her own musing and fell into a troubled sleep. Vivid dreams thronged in upon her.
Visions of the splendors of the carpets of Iskander ibn Tahir passed before her unconscious eyes. The white-garmented Arab salaamed to her, rising abruptly, after the manner of dreams, from the piles of his own goods. Then Iskander's swarthy face grew black—as black as the storm clouds that passed over the city of the hills.
The Arab seized her in an iron clasp. Edith had the tormenting sensation, familiar in a nightmare, of wanting to cry out and of being unable to utter a sound. Quite as a matter of course the veranda of the bungalow faded from her vision and the bare slopes of the Himalayan foothills took its place. The carpets of Iskander lay stretched before her, and each one seemed to be a shroud.
Edith, still held by the Arab's remorseless hand, stared at the carpets. Under them veiled forms lay motionless. She felt very helpless.
Then she saw the sharp face of Monsey, smiling at her in friendly fashion. Again, the girl tried to articulate—to tell him that she was held a captive above the carpets. In the queer fantasy of the dream, Monsey bowed politely and passed on, unheeding. Sheer terror gripped the girl, and she fell to weeping—not so much, she thought, on her own behalf as because of what lay under the carpets. She was very, very sorry for the things, whatever they were.
She could no longer see Iskander, although his hands still held her. But the face of the tall native of Baramula peered into hers. He spoke, and never had Edith felt such utter distress as at the sounds of his heavy words.
"These are no longer alive!"
And at the words, the man with the scar pointed to the forms covered by the rugs. Edith felt that in some manner he was kin to the passive figures. Then he stooped to raise one of the rugs with a gigantic hand, and Edith cried out frantically
She was awake, her forehead moist, and her thin nightgown cold with perspiration. Huddled, the girl brushed back the damp hair from her brow and stared up into the blackness of her room.
The nightmare had been very real. She still heard the terrific words—so they seemed to her—of the strange native ringing in her ears. With a whimper of subsiding fear the girl cuddled down in her bed, listening to the stentorian breathing of the sleeping Miss Rand.
Awake in the dark, Edith was thankful to hear the quiet footsteps of Rawul Singh on the veranda below her, and to know that the orderly was keeping his nightly post.