The Achmed Abdullah MEGAPACK ®. Achmed Abdullah

      “No. Not love. But life—and death. And perhaps—” He was silent. There was again the giant whirring of wings. Then he went on: “Perhaps again life! Who knows?”

      “Allah knows!” piously mumbled Youssef. “He is the One, the All-Knowing. Come with me, child,” he went on, lifting a brown-striped curtain that shut off the zenana. “Sitt Kumar will help you—a little dancing-girl whom”—he coughed apologetically—“I recently encountered, and whose feet are just now very busy crushing my fat, foolish old heart. Wait here, O babu-jee!” he said to the babu, while he and the Englishman disappeared behind the zenana curtain.

      There was a moment’s silence. Then a woman’s light, tinkly laughter, a clacking of bracelets and anklets, a rapid swishing of linen and silk.

      Again the woman’s light laughter. Her words:

      “Keep quiet, sahib, lest the walnut-dye enter thy eye!” And ten minutes later the zenana curtains were drawn aside to admit once more the Afghan, arm in arm with a middle-aged, dignified Brahman priest, complete in every detail of outer sacerdotal craft, from the broidered skull-cap and the brilliant caste-mark on his forehead to the patent-leather pumps, the open-work white stockings, and the sacred volume bound in red Bokhara leather that he carried in his right hand.

      “Nobody will recognize you,” said Youssef.

      “Good!” said the Brahman in Thorneycroft’s voice. “And now—can you lend me a couple of horses?”

      “Surely. I have a brace of Marwari stallions. Jewels, child! Pearls! Noble bits of horseflesh! Come!”

      He led the way to the stable, which was on the other side of his house, and sheltered by a low wall. He lit an oil-lamp, opened the door, soothed the nervous, startled Marwaris with voice and knowing hand, and saddled them.

      He led the horses out, and Thorneycroft and the babu mounted.

      “Where to?” asked the Afghan. Thorneycroft waved his hand in farewell.

      “To Oneypore!” he replied. “To interview a dead raja’s soul!” He turned to the babu. “We must hurry, O babu-jee! Every minute counts!”

      And he was off at a gallop, closely followed by the other.

      Chapter IV

      The night was as black as pitch, but Thorneycroft rode hard.

      He figured back.

      The Maharaja of Oneypore had died on the fifteenth of January. Today was the tenth of February. Twenty-five days had elapsed since the raja’s death.

      Would he be in time?

      “Come on, babu-jee!” he cried, and rode harder than ever.

      Once his stallion reared on end and landed stiffly on his forefeet, nearly throwing him. But that night he could not consider the feelings of a mere horse. He pressed on the curb with full strength and brought his fist down between the animal’s ears; and, after a minute or two of similar reasoning, the Marwari stretched his splendid, muscled body and fell into a long, swinging fox-trot.

      The road to Oneypore was as straight as a lance and fairly good. They rode their horses alternating between a fast walk and a short hand gallop.

      Thorneycroft had not eaten since noon of the preceding day, and was tired and hungry. But he kept on. For there was something calling him, calling him, from the ragged hills that looped to the east in carved, sinister immensity; and through the velvety gloom of the night, through the gaunt shadows of the low, volcanic ridges that trooped back to Deolibad and danced like hobgoblins among the dwarf aloes, through the click-clanketty-click of the stallions’ pattering feet, there came to him again the whirring—like a tragic message to hurry, hurry.

      * * * *

      Morning blazed with the suddenness of the tropics. The sun had hardly risen, but already it was close and muggy. A jaundiced heat veiled the levels—foretaste of the killing, scorching heat of March and April—and the birds, true weather prophets, the parrots and the minas, the tiny, blue-winged doves and the pert, ubiquitous crows, were opening their beaks with a painful effort and gasping for air—another week, and they would be off for the cool deodars of the higher hills.

      In the distance a dark mass was looming up: Oneypore—and the horses were about to give in. Their heads were bowed on their heaving, lathering chests, and they breathed with a deep, rattling noise.

      Thorneycroft dismounted and stretched his cramped legs.

      “Ride down there,” he said to the babu, pointing at a narrow valley to the west, black with trees and gnarled shrub, that cleft the land. “Wait until you hear from me. I fancy you’ll find some brother babu in the valley fattening his pouch and increasing his bank-account at the expense, of the Rajput villagers. He will give you food and drink and a roof over your head. Tell him anything you wish as long as you don’t tell him the truth.”

      “Of course I shall not tell him the truth,” replied the babu, slightly hurt. “Am I a fool or—”

      “An Englishman?” Thorneycroft completed the sentence. “Never mind. I am English. But I learned the art of deceit in Kashmere, the home of lies, and Youssef Ali, too, gave me some invaluable lessons.”

      And while the babu rode off to the valley, leading the other horse, Thorneycroft set off at a good clip toward Oneypore, which was becoming more distinct every minute as the morning mists rolled up and away like torn gauze veils. It was seven o’clock when he reached the western gate, an ancient marble structure, incrusted with symbolistic figures and archaic terra-cotta medallions, and topped by a lacy, fretted lotus-bud molding.

      Beyond, the city stretched like a flower of stone petals.

      Oneypore!

      The sacred city of Hindustan! The holy soil where the living descendants of the gods had ruled for over five thousand years—and one of them dead, on unclean, foreign soil—buried in unclean, foreign soil!

      An outcast! He, the descendant of Rama, an outcast!

      Oneypore! And it was a fascinating town, with crooked streets and low, white houses, cool gardens ablaze with mangoes and mellingtonia and flowering peepul-trees and, in the distance, a gigantic palace, built out of a granite hillside, and descending into the dip of the valley with an avalanche of bold masonry.

      Toward it, without hesitation, Thorneycroft set his face.

      He had to cross the Oneypore River, only second in holiness to the palace: the river which, for centuries, had been the last resting-place of thousands of Afghans and Rajputs massacred in the narrow streets of the city or slain in fierce combats outside its brown, bastioned walls. Sorrowing widows, in accordance with the marriage vows of their caste, had sought the solace of oblivion beneath its placid surface. Faithless wives and dancing girls had been hurled into the waters from the convenient battlements and windows of the palace.

      The river’s sinister reputation, in spite of its holiness, was such that though the natives bathed in its limpid depth they never, knowingly, allowed a drop of it to pass their lips. River of grim tragedies—and its hour of grim glory came when a Maharaja of Oneypore died, and when his corpse, attired in its most magnificent costume, the arms encircled by jeweled bracelets, shimmering necklaces of pearls and moonstones and diamonds descending to the waist, and a huge, carved emerald falling like a drop of green fire from the twisted, yellow Rajput turban, was carried out of the palace, through the streets of the town, sitting bolt upright on a chair of state, and back to the banks of the Oneypore River, where the body was burnt and its ashes thrown into the waters—while the women wailed and beat their breasts, while white-robed priests chanted longwinded litanies, while the conches brayed from the temples, and while the smoke from many ceremonial fires ascended to the sky in thick, wispy streams and hung in a ruddy, bloodshot cloud above the glare of the funeral pyre that lit up the palace and told to all the world that another one of the divine race of Oneypore had gone to join Brahm, his kinsman.

      Brahm, his kinsman!

      And