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Caves of Terror (The Gray Mahatma):
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Caves of Terror
(The Gray Mahatma)
by
Talbot Mundy
Cover based on an image generated by Microsoft Bing
BOOK 6 IN THE YASMINI SERIES
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE FIRST BOOK EDITION
First published as "The Gray Mahatma" in
Adventure, 10 Nov 1922
First US book edition: Garden City Publishing Co., NY, 1924
First UK book edition: Hutchinson & Co., London, 1932
Reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Dec 1951
This e-book edition: Project Gutenberg Australia, 2023
"Caves of Terror," Garden City Publishing Co., NY, 1924
The music pulsated like the tramp of an army of devils...
TABLE OF CONTENTS
●Chapter I. The Gray Mahatma
●Chapter II. The Palace of Yasmini
●Chapter III. Fear Is Death
●Chapter IV. The Pool of Terrors
●Chapter V. Far Cities
●Chapter VI. The Fire-Bathers
●Chapter VII. Magic
●Chapter VIII. The River of Death
●Chapter IX. The Earthquake Elephant
●Chapter X. A Date With Doom
●Chapter XI. "Kill! Kill!"
●Chapter XII. The Cave of Bones
CHAPTER I. — THE GRAY MAHATMA
MELDRUM STRANGE has "a way" with him. You need
all your tact to get him past the quarreling point; but once that
point is left behind there isn't a finer business boss in the
universe. He likes to put his ringer on a desk-bell and feel
somebody jump in Tibet or Wei-hei-wei or Honolulu. That's Meldrum
Strange.
When he sent me from San Francisco, where I was enjoying a
vacation, to New York, where he was enjoying business, I took the
first train.
"You've been a long time on the way," he remarked, as I walked
into his office twenty minutes after the Chicago flyer reached
Grand Central Station. "Look at this!" he growled, shoving into
my hand a clipping from a Western newspaper.
"What about it?" I asked when I had finished reading.
"While you were wasting time on the West Coast this office has
been busy," he snorted, looking more like General Grant than ever
as he pulled out a cigar and started chewing it. "We've taken
this matter up with the British Government, and we've been
retained to look into it."
"You want me to go to Washington, I suppose."
"You've got to go to India at once."
"That clipping is two months old," I answered. "Why didn't you
wire me when I was in Egypt to go on from there?"
"Look at this!" he answered, and shoved a letter across the
desk.
It bore the address of a club in Simla.
Meldrum Strange,
Esq.,
Messrs. Grim, Ramsden and Ross, New
York.
Dear Sir,
Having recently resigned my commission in the
British Indian army I am free to offer my services to your firm,
provided you have a sufficiently responsible position here in
India to offer me. My qualifications and record are known to the
British Embassy in Washington, D. C., to whom I am permitted to
refer you, and it is at the suggestion of — — (he
gave the name of a British Cabinet Minister who is known the wide
world over) that I am making this proposal; he was good enough to
promise his endorsement to any application I might care to make.
If this should interest you, please send me a cablegram, on
receipt of which I will hold my services at your disposal until
your letter has time to reach Simla, when, if your terms are
satisfactory, I will cable my acceptance without further
delay.
Yours faithfully,
Athelstan King, V.C.,
D.S.O., etc.
"Do you know who he is?" demanded Strange. "That's the fellow
who went to Khinjan Caves — the best secret service officer
the British ever had. I cabled him, of course. Here's his
contract. You take it to him. Here's the whole dope about this
propaganda. Take the quickest route to India, sign up this man
King, and go after them at that end for all the two of you are
worth. That's all."
My passport being unexpired, I could make the
Mauretania and did. Moreover I was merciless to the
expense account. An aeroplane took me from Liverpool to London,
another from London to Paris.
I don't care how often you arrive in Bombay, the thrill
increases. You steam in at dawn by Gharipuri just as the gun
announces sunrise, and the dreamy bay glimmers like a prophet's
vision — temples, domes, minarets, palm-trees, roofs,
towers, and masts.
Almost before the anchor had splashed into the spawn-skeined
water off the Apollo Bunder a native boat drew alongside and a
very well-dressed native climbed up the companion-ladder in quest
of me. I had sent King a wireless, but his messenger was away in
advance of even the bankers' agents, who flock on board to tout
for customs business.
He handed me a letter which simply said that the bearer, Gulab
Lal Singh, would look after me and my belongings. So I paid
attention to the man. He was a strapping fellow, handsome as the
deuce, with a Roman nose, and the eye of a gentleman
unafraid.
He said that Major King was in Bombay, but detained by urgent
business. However, he invited me to Major King's quarters for
breakfast, so instead of waiting for the regular launch I got
into the native sailboat with him. And he seemed to have some
sort of talisman for charming officials, for on the quay an
officer motioned us through without even examining my
passport.
We drew up finally in front of a neat little bungalow in a
long street of similar buildings intended for British officials.
Gulab Lal Singh took me straight into the dining room and carried
in breakfast with his own hands, standing behind my chair in
silence while I ate.
Without much effort I could see his face in the mirror to my
right, and when I thought he wasn't noticing I studied him
carefully.
"Is there anything further that the sahib would care
for?" he asked when the meal was finished.
"Yes," I said, pulling out an envelope. "Here's your contract,
Major King. If you're agreeable we may as well get that signed
and mailed to New York."
I expected to see him look surprised, but he simply sat down
at the table, read the contract over, and signed it.
Then we went out on to a veranda that was shut off from the
street by brown kaskas tatties.
"How long does it take you to grow a beard?" was his first,
rather surprising question.
It was not long before I learned how differently he could
treat different individuals. He had simply chosen his
extraordinary way of receiving me as the best means of getting a
real line on me without much loss of time. He did not compliment
me on having seen through his disguise, or apologize for his own
failure to keep up the deception. He sat opposite and studied me
as he might the morning newspaper, and I returned the
compliment.
"You see," he said suddenly, as if a previous conversation had
been interrupted, "since the war, governments have lost their
grip, so I resigned from the army. You look to me like a kind of
God-send. Is Meldrum Strange as wealthy as they say?"
I nodded.
"Is he playing for power?"
"He's out to do the world good, but he enjoys the feel of it.
He is absolutely on the level."
"I have a letter from Strange, in which he says you've hunted
and prospected all over the world. Does that include India?"
I nodded.
"Know any of the languages?"
"Enough Hindustani to deceive a foreigner."
"Punjabi?"
I nodded.
Mind you, I was supposed to be this fellow's boss.
"I think we'll be able to work together," he said after
another long look at me.
"Are you familiar with the facts?" he asked me.
"I've the dossier with me. Studied it on the ship of
course."
"You understand then: The Princess Yasmini and the Gray
Mahatma are the two keys. The Government daren't arrest either,
because it would inflame mob-passion. There's too much of that
already. I'm not in position to play this game alone —
can't afford to. I've joined the firm to get backing for what I
want to do; I'd like that point clear. As long as we're in
harness together I'll take you into confidence. But I expect
absolutely free rein."
"All right," I said. And for two hours he unfolded to me a
sort of panorama of Indian intrigue, including dozens of
statements of sheer fact that not one person in a million would
believe if set down in cold print.
"So you see," he said at last, "there's something needed in
the way of unobtrusive inspection if the rest of the world is to
have any kind of breathing spell. If you've no objection we'll
leave Bombay to-night and get to work."
ATHELSTAN KING and I arrived, after certain hot
days and choking nights, at a city in the Punjab that has had
nine names in the course of history. It lies by a winding wide
river, whose floods have changed the land-marks every year since
men took to fighting for the common heritage.
The tremendous wall, along whose base the river sucks and
sweeps for more than a third of the city's whole circumference,
has to be kept repaired by endless labor, but there are
compensations. The fierce current guards and gives privacy to a
score of palaces and temples, as well as a burning ghat.
The city has been very little altered by the vandal hand of
progress. There is a red steel railway bridge, but the same
framework carries a bullock-road.
From the bridge's northern end as far as the bazaar the main
street goes winding roughly parallel with the waterfront. Trees
arch over it like a cathedral roof, and through the huge branches
the sun turns everything beneath to gold, so that even the
impious sacred monkeys achieve vicarious beauty, and the
scavenger mongrel dogs scratch, sleep, and are miserable in an
aureole.
There are modern signs, as for instance, a post office, some
telegraph wires on which birds of a thousand colors perch with an
air of perpetual surprise, and — tucked away in the city's
busiest maze not four hundred yards from the western wall —
the office of the Sikh apothecary Mulji Singh.
Mulji Singh takes life seriously, which is a laborious thing
to do, and being an apostle of simple sanitation is looked at
askance by the populace, but he persists.
King's specialty is making use of unconsidered trifles and
misunderstood babus.
KING was attired as a native, when we sought out
Mulji Singh together and found him in a back street with a
hundred-yard-long waiting list of low-caste and altogether
casteless cripples.
And of course Mulji Singh had all the gossip of the city at
his fingers' ends. When he closed his office at last, and we came
inside to sit with him, he loosed his tongue and would have told
us everything he knew if King had not steered the flow of
information between channels.
"Aye, sahib, and this Mahatma, they say, is a very holy
fellow, who works miracles. Sometimes he sits under a tree by the
burning ghat, but at night he goes to the temple of the
Tirthankers, where none dare follow him, although they sit in
crowds outside to watch him enter and leave. The common rumor is
that at night he leaves his body lifeless in a crypt in that
Tirthanker temple and flies to heaven, where he fortifies himself
with fresh magic. But I know where he goes by night. There comes
to me with boils a one-legged sweeper who cleans a black
panther's cage. The panther took his other leg. He sleeps in a
cage beside the panther's, and it is a part of his duty to turn
the panther loose on intruders. It is necessary that they warn
this one-legged fellow whenever a stranger is expected by night,
who should not be torn to pieces. Night after night he is warned.
Night after night there comes this Mahatma to spend the hours in
heaven! There are places less like heaven than her
palace."
"Is he your only informant?" King demanded.
"Aye, sahib, the only one on that count. But there is
another, whose foot was caught between stone and stone when they
lowered a trap-door once in that Tirthanker temple. He bade the
Tirthankers heal his foot, but instead they threw him out for
having too much knowledge of matters that they said do not
concern him. And he says that the trap-door opens into a passage
that leads under the wall into a chamber from which access is
obtained by another trap-door to a building inside
herpalace grounds within a stone-throw of that panther's
cage. And he, too, says that the Mahatma goes nightly to
her palace."
"Are there any stories of her?" King inquired.
"Thousands, sahib! But no two agree. It is known that
she fell foul of the raj in some way, and they made her
come to this place. I was here when she came. She has a household
of a hundred women — maunds of furniture —
maunds of it, sahib! She gave orders to her men-
servants to be meek and inoffensive, so when they moved in there
were not more than ten fights between them and the city-folk who
thought they had as much right to the streets. There was a
yellow-fanged northern devil who marshaled the serving-men, and
it is he who keeps her palace gate. He keeps it well. None
trespass."
"What other visitors does she entertain besides the
Mahatma?"
"Many, sahib, though few enter by the front gate. There
are tales of men being drawn up by ropes from boats in the
river."
"Is there word of why they come?"
"Sahib, the little naked children weave stories of her
doings. Each has a different tale. They call her empress of the
hidden arts. They say that she knows all the secrets of the
priests, and that there is nothing that she cannot do, because
the gods love her and the Rakshasas (male evil spirits)
and Apsaras (female evil spirits) do her bidding."
"What about this Tirthanker temple? Who controls it?"
"None knows that, sahib. It is so richly endowed that
its priests despise men's gifts. None is encouraged to worship in
that place. When those old Tirthankers stir abroad they have no
dealings with folk in this city that any man knows of."
"Are you sure they are Tirthankers?" asked King.
"I am sure of nothing, sahib. For aught I know they are
devils!"
King gave him a small sum of money, and we walked away toward
the burning ghat, where there was nothing but a mean smell and a
few old men with rakes gathering up ashes. But outside the ghat,
where a golden mohur tree cast a wide shadow across the road
there was a large crowd sitting and standing in rings around an
absolutely naked, ash-smeared religious fanatic.
The fanatic appeared to have the crowd bewildered, for he
cursed and blessed on no comprehensible schedule, and gave
extraordinary answers to the simplest questions, not
acknowledging a question at all unless it suited him.
King and I had not been there a minute before some one asked
him about the Princess Yasmini.
"Aha! Who stares at the fire burns his eyes! A burned eye is
of less use than a raw one!"
Some laughed, but not many. Most of them seemed to think there
was deep wisdom in his answer to be dug for meditatively, as no
doubt there was. Then a man on the edge of the crowd a long way
off from me, who wore the air of a humorist, asked him about
me.
"Does the shadow of this foreigner offend your honor's
holiness?"
None glanced in my direction; that might have given the game
away. It is considered an exquisite joke to discuss a white man
to his face without his knowing it. The Gray Mahatma did not
glance in my direction either.
"As a bird in the river — as a fish in the air —
as a man in trouble is the foreigner in Hind!" he answered.
Then he suddenly began, declaiming, making his voice ring as
if his throat were brass, yet without moving his body or shifting
his head by a hair's breadth.
"The universe was chaos. Hesaid, let order prevail,
and order came out of the chaos and prevailed. The universe was
in darkness. Hesaid, let there be light and let it
prevail over darkness; and light came out of the womb of darkness
and prevailed. Heordained the Kali-Yug — an
age of darkness in which all Hind should lie at the feet of
foreigners. And thus ye lie in the dust. But there is an end of
night, and so there is an end to Kali-Yug. Bide ye the
time, and watch!"
King drew me away, and we returned up-street between old
temples and new iron-fronted stores toward Mulji Singh's quarters
where he had left the traveling bag that we shared between
us.
"Is that Gray Mahatma linked up with propaganda in the U.S.A?"
I asked, wondering.
"What's more," King answered, "he's dangerous; he's sincere
— the most dangerous type of politician in the world
— the honest visionary, in love with an abstract theory,
capable of offering himself for martyrdom. Watch him now!"
The crowd was beginning to close in on the Mahatma, seeking to
touch him. Suddenly he flew into a fury, seized a long stick from
some one near him and began beating them over the head, using
both hands and laying on so savagely that ashes fell from him
like pipe-clay from a shaken bag, and several men ran away with
the blood pouring down their faces. However, they were reckoned
fortunate.
"Some of those will charge money to let other fools touch
them," said King. "Come on. Let's call on her now."
So we returned to Mulji Singh's stuffy little office, and King
changed into a Major's uniform.
"It isn't exactly according to Hoyle to wear this," he
explained. "However, she doesn't know I've resigned from the
army."
CHAPTER II. — THE PALACE OF YASMINI
NOBODY saw us walk up to Yasmini's palace gate
and knock; for whoever was abroad in the heat was down by the
ghat admiring the Mahatma.
The bearded giant who had admitted us stood staring at King,
his long, strong fingers twitching. In his own good time King
turned and saw fit to recognize him.
"Oh, hallo Ismail!"
He held a hand out, but the savage flung arms about him that
were as strong as the iron gate-clamps, and King had to fight to
break free from the embrace.
"Now Allah be praised, he is father of mercies! She
warned me!" he croaked. "She knows the smell of dawn at midnight!
She said, 'He cometh soon!' and none believed her, save only I.
This very dawn said she, 'Thou, Ismail,' she said, 'be asleep at
the gate when he cometh and thine eyes shall be thrown to the
city dogs!' Aye! Oho!"
King nodded to lead on, and Ismail obeyed with a deal of
pantomime intended to convey a sense of partnership with roots in
the past and its fruition now.
The way was down a passage between high, carved walls so old
that antiquarians burn friendship in disputes not so much about
the century as the very era of that quiet art — under dark
arches with latticed windows into unexpected gardens fresh with
the smell of sprinkled water — by ancient bronze gateways
into other passages that opened into stone-paved courts with
fountains in the midst — building joining on to building
and court meeting court until, where an old black panther snarled
at us between iron bars, an arch and a solid bronze door admitted
us at last into the woman's pleasance — a wonderland of
jasmine, magnolia and pomegranates set about a marble pool and
therein mirrored among rainbow-colored fishes.
Beyond the pool a flight of marble steps rose fifty feet until
it passed through a many-windowed wall into the panch
mahal — the quarters of the women. At their foot Ismail
halted.
"Go thou up alone! Leave this elephant with me!" he said,
nudging me and pointing with his thumb toward a shady bower
against the garden wall.
Without acknowledging that pleasantry King took my arm and we
went straight forward together, our tread resounding strangely on
steps that for centuries had felt no sterner shock than that of
soft slippers and naked, jeweled feet.
We were taking nobody entirely by surprise; that much was
obvious. Before we reached the top step two women opened a door
and ran to meet us. One woman threw over King's head such a
prodigious garland of jasmine buds that he had to loop it thrice
about his shoulders. Then each took a hand of one of us and we
entered between doors of many-colored wood, treading on mat-
strewn marble, their bare feet pattering beside ours. There were
rustlings to right and left, and once I heard laughter, smothered
instantly.
At last, at the end of a wide hall before many-hued silken
curtains our two guides stopped. As they released our hands, with
the always surprising strength that is part of the dancing
woman's stock-in-trade, they slipped behind us suddenly and
thrust us forward through the curtains.
There was not much to see in front of us. We found ourselves
in a paneled corridor, whose narrow windows overlooked the river,
facing a painted door sixty paces distant at the farther end.
King strode down the corridor and knocked.
The answer was one word that I did not catch, although it rang
like a suddenly struck chord of music, and the door yielded to
the pressure of King's hand.
I entered behind him and the door swung shut of its own weight
with a click. We were in a high-ceilinged, very long room, having
seven sides. There were windows to right and left. A deep divan
piled with scented cushions occupied the whole length of one long
wall, and there were several huge cushions on the floor against
another wall. There was one other door besides that we had
entered by.
We stood in that room alone, but I know that King felt as
uneasy as I did, for there was sweat on the back of his neck. We
were being watched by unseen eyes. There is no mistaking that
sensation.
Suddenly a voice broke silence like a golden bell whose
overtones go widening in rings into infinity, and a vision of
loveliness parted the curtains of that other door.
"My lord comes as is meet — spurred, and ready to give
new kingdoms to his king! Oh, how my lord is welcome!" she said
in Persian.
Her voice thrilled you, because of its perfect resonance,
exactly in the middle of the note. She looked into King's eyes
with challenging familiarity that made him smile, and then eyed
me wonderingly. She glanced from me to a picture on the wall in
blue of the Elephant-god — enormous, opulent, urbane, and
then back again at me, and smiled very sweetly.
"So you have brought Ganesha with you? The god of good luck!
How wonderful! How does one behave toward a real god?"
And while she said that she laid her hands on King's arms as
naturally as if he were a lover whom she had not seen perhaps
since yesterday. Plainly, there was absolutely nothing between
him and her except his own obstinate independence. She was his if
he wanted her.
She took King's hand with a laugh that had its roots in past
companionship and led him to the middle, deepest window-seat,
beneath which the river could be heard gurgling busily.
Then, when she had drawn the silken hangings until the
softened light suggested lingering, uncounted hours, and had
indicated with a nod to me a cushion in the corner, she came and
lay on the cushions close to King, chin on hand, where she could
watch his eyes.
King sat straight and square, watching her with caution that
he did not trouble to conceal. She took his hand and raised the
sleeve until the broad, gold, graven bracelet showed.
"That link forged in the past must bind us two more surely
than an oath," she said smiling.
"I used it to show to the gatekeeper."
He sat coolly waiting for her next remark. And with almost
unnecessary candor began to remove the bracelet and offer it back
to her. So she unmasked her batteries, with a delicious little
rippling laugh and a lazy, cat-like movement that betokened joy
in the danger that was coming, if I know anything at all of what
sign-language means.
"I knew that very day that you resigned your commission in the
army, and I laughed with delight at the news, knowing that the
gods who are our servants had contrived it. I know why thou art
here," she said; and the change from you to thou was not
haphazard.
"It is well known, Princess, that your spies are the cleverest
in India," King answered.
"Spies? I need no spies as long as old India lives. Friends
are better."
"Do all princesses break their promises?" he countered,
meeting her eyes steadily.
"Never yet did I break one promise, whether it was for good or
evil."
"Princess," he answered, looking sternly at her, "in Jamrud
Fort you agreed to take no part again in politics, national or
international in return for a promise of personal freedom and
permission to reside in India."
"My promise was dependent on my liberty. But is this liberty
— to be forced to reside in this old palace, with the spies
of the Government keeping watch on my doings, except when they
chance to be outwitted? Nevertheless, I have kept my promise.
Thou knowest me better than to think that I need to break
promises in order to outwit a government of Englishmen!"
"Quibbles won't help, Princess," he answered. "You promised to
do nothing that Government might object to."
"Well; will they object to my religion?" she retorted, mocking
him. "Has the British raj at last screwed up its courage
to the point of trespassing behind the purdah and blundering in
among religious exercises?"
No man in his senses ever challenges a woman's argument until
he knows the whole of it and has unmasked its ulterior purpose.
So King sat still and said nothing, knowing that that was
precisely what she did not want.
"You must make terms with me, heaven-born!" she went on,
changing her tone to one of rather more suggestive firmness. "The
Kali-Yug (age of darkness) is drawing to a close, and
India awakes! There is froth on the surface — a rising
here, an agitation there, a deal of wild talk everywhere, and the
dead old government proposes to suppress it in the dead old ways,
like men with paddles seeking to beat the waves down flat! But
the winds of God blow, and the boat of the men with the paddles
will be upset presently. Who then shall ride the storm? Their
gunners will be told to shoot the froth as it forms and rises!
But if there is a wise man anywhere he will make terms with me,
and will set himself to guide the underlying forces that may
otherwise whelm everything. I think thou art wise, my heaven-
born. Thou wert wise once on a time."
"Do you think you can rule India?" King asked her; and he did
not make the mistake of suggesting ridicule.
"Who else can do it?" she retorted. "Do you think we come into
the world to let fate be our master? Why have I royal blood and
royal views, wealth, understanding and ambition, while the others
have blindness and vague yearnings? Can you answer?"
"Princess," he answered, "I had only one object in coming
here."
"I know that," she said nodding.
"I have simply come to warn you."
"Chut!" she answered with her chin between her hands
and her elbows deep in the cushions. "I know how much is known.
This man — what is his name? Ramsden? Pouff! Ganesha, here,
is far better! Ganesha is from America. Those fools who went to
prepare the American mind for what is coming, because they were
altogether too foolish to be anything but in the way in India,
have been found out, and Ganesha has come like a big bull-buffalo
to save the world by thrusting his clumsy horns into things he
does not understand! I tell you, Athelstan, that however much is
known there is much more that is not known. You would better make
terms with me!"
"What you must understand, Princess, is that your plan to
overthrow the West and make the East the world's controlling
force, is known by those who can prevent you," he answered
quietly. "You see, I can't go away from here and tell whoever
asks me that you are observing your promise to—"
"No," she interrupted with a ringing merry laugh of triumph.
"You speak truth without knowing it! You can not go away!"
Princess Yasmini's boast was good. But we had come to solve a
problem, not to run away with it, and she looked disconcerted by
our rather obvious willingness to be her prisoners for a
while.
"Do you think I can not be cruel?" she asked suddenly.
"I have seen you at your worst, as well as at your best!" King
answered.
"You act like a man who has resources. Yet you have none," she
answered slowly, as if reviewing all the situation in her mind.
"None knows where you are — not even Mulji Singh, with whom
you left your other clothes before putting on that uniform the
better to impress me! The bag that you and Ganesha share between
you, like two mendicants emerging from the jail, is now in a room
in this palace. You came because you saw that if I should be
arrested there would be insurrection. You said so to Ommony
sahib, and his butler overheard. But not even Ommony knows where
you are. He said to you: 'If you can defeat that woman without
using violence, you'll stand alone in the world as the one man
who could do it. But if you use violence, though you kill her,
she will defeat you and all the rest of us.' Is not that what
your Friend Ommony said?"
"What kind of terms do you want me to make with you,
Princess?" King answered.
"I can make you ruler of all India!" she said. "Another may
wear the baubles, but thou shalt be the true king, even as thy
name is! And behind thee, me, Yasmini, whispering wisdom and
laughing to see the politicians strut!"
King leaned back and laughed at her.
"Do you really expect me to help you ruin my own countrymen,
go back on my color, creed, education, oath and everything,
and—"
"Deluded fools! The East — the East, Athelstan, is
waking! Better make terms with me, and thou shalt live to ride on
the arising East as God rides on the wind and bits and governs
it!"
"Very well," he said. "Show me. I'll do nothing
blindfold."
"Hah! Thou art not half-conquered yet," she laughed. "And what
of Ganesha? Is this mountain of bones and thews a person to be
trusted, or shall we show him how much stronger than him is a
horsehair in a clever woman's fingers?"
"This man Ramsden is my friend," King said.
"Are you his friend?" she retorted.
He nodded.
"You are going to see the naked heart of India!" she said.
"Better to have your eyes burned out now than see that and be
false to it afterward!"
Then, since we failed to order red-hot needles for our eyes,
she cried out once — one clear note that sounded almost
exactly as if she had struck a silver gong. A woman entered like
the living echo to it. Yasmini spoke, and the woman disappeared
again.
Below us the river swallowed and gurgled along the palace
wall, and we caught the occasional thumping of a boat-pole. The
thumping ceased exactly underneath us, and a man began singing in
the time-hallowed language of Rajasthan. I think he was looking
upward as he sang, for each word reached its goal.
"Oh warm and broad the plow land lies,
The idle oxen wait!
We pray thee, holy river, rise,
Nor glut thy fields too late!
The year awakes! The slumbering seed
Swells to its birth! Oh river, heed!"
"Strange time of year for that song, Princess! Is that one of
your spies?" asked King, not too politely.
"One of my friends," she answered. "I told you: India awakes!
But watch."
It was growing dark. Two women came and drew the curtains
closer. Other women brought lamps and set them on stools along
one wall; others again brought tapers and lit the candles in the
hydra-headed candelabra.
"It is really too light yet," Yasmini grumbled, as if the gods
who marshal in the night had not kept faith with her. But even
so, the shadows danced among India's gods on the wall facing the
row of stools.
Then there began wood-wind music, made by musicians out of
sight, low and sweet, suggesting unimaginable mysteries, and one
by one through the curtains opposite there came in silently seven
women on bare feet that hardly touched the carpet; and all the
stories about nautch girls, all the travelers' tales of how
Eastern women dance with their arms, not feet, vanished that
instant into the kingdom of lies. This was dancing — art
absolute. They no longer seemed to be flesh and blood women
possessed of weight and other limitations; their footfall was
hardly audible, and you could not hear them breathe at all. They
were like living shadows, and they danced the way the shadows of
the branches do on a jungle clearing when a light breeze makes
the trees laugh.
It had some sort of mystic meaning no doubt, although I did
not understand it; but what I did understand was that the whole
arrangement was designed to produce a sort of mesmerism in the
beholder.
However, school yourself to live alone and think alone for a
quarter of a century or so, meeting people only as man to man
instead of like a sheep among a flock of sheep, and you become
immune to that sort of thing.
The Princess Yasmini seemed to realize that neither King nor I
were being drawn into the net of dreaminess that those trained
women of hers were weaving.
"Watch!" said Yasmini suddenly. And then we saw what very few
men have been privileged to see.
She joined the dance; and you knew then who had taught those
women. Theirs had been after all a mere interpretation: of her
vision. Hers was the vision itself.
She was It— the thing itself — no more an
interpretation than anything in nature is. Yasmini became India
— India's heart; and I suppose that if King and I had
understood her we would have been swept into her vortex, as it
were, like drops of water into an ocean.
She was unrestrained by any need, or even willingness to
explain herself. She was talking the same language that the
nodding blossoms and the light and shadow talk that go chasing
each other across the hillsides. And while you watched you seemed
to know all sorts of things — secrets that disappeared from
your mind a moment afterward.
She began singing presently, commencing on the middle F as
every sound in nature does and disregarding conventional
limitations just as she did when dancing. She sang first of the
emptiness before the worlds were made. She sang of the birth of
peoples; of the history of peoples.
She sang of India as the mother of all speech, song, race and
knowledge; of truths that every great thinker since the world's
beginning has propounded; and of India as the home of all of
them, until, whether you would or not, at least you seemed to see
the undeniable truth of that.
And then, in a weird, wild, melancholy minor key came the
story of the Kali-Yug — the age of darkness creeping
over India, condemning her for her sins. She sang of India under
the hoof of ugliness and ignorance and plague, and yet of a few
who kept the old light burning in secret — of hidden books,
and of stuff that men call magic handed down the centuries from
lip to lip in caves and temple cellars and mountain fastnesses,
wherever the mysteries were safe from profane eyes.
And then the key changed again, striking that fundamental
middle F that is the mother-note of all the voices of nature and,
as Indians maintain, of the music of the spheres as well. Music
and song and dance became laughter. Doubt vanished, for there
seemed nothing left to doubt, as she began to sing of India
rising at last, again triumphant over darkness, mother of the
world and of all the nations of the world, awake,
unconquerable.
Never was another song like that one! Nor was there ever such
a climax. As she finished on a chord of triumph that seemed like
a new spirit bursting the bonds of ancient mystery and sank to
the floor among her women, there stood the Gray Mahatma in their
midst, not naked any longer, but clothed from head to heel in a
saffron-colored robe, and without his paste of ashes.
He stood like a statue with folded arms, his yellow eyes
blazing and his look like a lion's; and how he had entered the
room I confess I don't know to this hour, nor does Athelstan
King, who is a trained observer of unusual happenings. Both doors
were closed, and I will take oath that neither had been opened
since the women entered.
"Peace!" was his first word, spoken like one in authority, who
ordered peace and dared to do it.
He stood looking for more than a minute at King and me with, I
think, just a flicker of scorn on his thin lips, as if he were
wondering whether we were men enough to face the ordeal before
us. Then indefinably, yet quite perceptibly his mood changed and
his appearance with it. He held his right hand out.
"Will you not shake hands with me?" he asked smiling.
Now that was a thing that no sanctimonious Brahman would have
dreamed of doing, for fear of being defiled by the touch of a
casteless foreigner; so he was either above or below the caste
laws, and it is common knowledge how those who are below caste
cringe and toady. So he evidently reckoned himself above it, and
the Indian who can do that has met and overcome more tyranny and
terrors than the West knows anything about.
I wish I could make exactly clear what happened when I took
his outstretched hand.
His fingers closed on mine with a grip like marble. There are
few men who are stronger than I am; I can outlift a stage
professional; yet I could no more move his hand or pull mine free
than if he had been a bronze image with my hand set solid in the
casting.
"That is for your own good," he said pleasantly, letting go at
last. "That other man knows better, but you might have been so
unwise as to try using violence."
"I'm glad you had that experience," said King in a low voice,
as I went back to the window-seat. "Don't let yourself be
bewildered by it. There's an explanation for everything. They
know something that we don't, that's all."
CHAPTER III. — FEAR IS DEATH
AT a sign from the Gray Mahatma all the women
except Yasmini left the room. Yasmini seemed to be in a strange
mood mixed of mischief and amused anticipation.
The Mahatma sat down exactly in the middle of the carpet, and
his method was unique. It looked just as if an unseen hand had
taken him by the hair and lowered him gradually, for he crossed
his legs and dropped to the floor as evenly and slowly as one of
those freight elevators that disappear beneath the city side-
walks.
He seemed to attach a great deal of importance to his exact
position and glanced repeatedly at the walls as if to make sure
that he was not sitting an inch or two too far to the right or
left; however, he had gauged his measurements exactly at the
first attempt and did not move, once he was seated.
"You two sahibs," he began, with a slight emphasis on
the word sahib, as if he wished to call attention to the
fact that he was according us due courtesy,﹃you two honorable
gentlemen,﹄he continued, as if mere courtesy perhaps were not
enough, "have been chosen unknown to yourselves. For there is but
one Chooser, whose choice is never known until the hour comes.
For the chosen there is no road back again. Even if you should
prefer death, your death could not now be of your own choosing;
for, having been chosen, there is no escape from service to the
Purpose, and though you would certainly die if courage failed
you, your death would be more terrible than life, since it would
serve the Purpose without benefiting you.
"You are both honest men," he continued, "for the one has
resigned honors and emoluments in the army for the sake of
serving India; the other has accepted toilsome service under a
man who seeks, however mistakenly, to serve the world. If you
were not honest you would never have been chosen. If you had made
no sacrifices of your own free will, you would not have been
acceptable."
Yasmini clasped her hands and laid her chin on them among the
cushions. She was reveling in intellectual enjoyment, as sinfully
I daresay as some folk revel in more material delights. The
Mahatma took no notice of her, but continued.
"You have heard of the Kali-Yug, the age of darkness.
It is at an end. The nations presently begin to beat swords into
plowshares because the time has come. But there is yet much else
to do, and the eyes of those who have lived so long in darkness
are but blinded for the present by the light, so that guides are
needed, who can see. You two shall see — a little!"
It was becoming intolerably hot in the room with the curtains
drawn and all those lights burning, but I seemed to be the only
one who minded it. The candles in the chandelier were kept from
collapsing by metal sheaths, but the very flames seemed to feel
the heat and to flicker like living things that wilted.
"Corn is corn and grass is grass," said the Mahatma, "and
neither one can change the other. Yet the seed of grass that is
selected can improve all grass, as they understand who strive
with problems of the field. Therefore ye two, who have been
chosen, shall be sent as the seeds of grass to the United States
to carry on the work that no Indian can properly accomplish. Corn
to corn, grass to grass. That is your destiny."
He paused, as if waiting for the sand to run out of an hour-
glass. There was no hour-glass, but the suggestion was there just
the same.
"Nevertheless," he went on presently, "there are some who fail
their destiny, even as some chosen seeds refuse to sprout. You
will need besides your honesty such courage as is committed to
few.
"Once on a time before the Kali-Yug began, when the
Aryans, of whom you people are descendants, lived in this ancient
motherland, the whole of all knowledge was the heritage of every
man, and what to-day are called miracles were understood as
natural working of pure law. It was nothing in those days for a
man to walk through fire unscathed, for there was very little
difference between the gods and men, and men knew themselves for
masters of the universe, subject only to Parabrahm.
"Nevertheless, the sons of men grew blind, mistaking the
shadow for the substance. And because the least error when
extended to infinity produces chaos, the whole world became
chaos, full of nothing but rivalries, sickness, hate,
confusion.
"Meanwhile, the sons of men, ever seeking the light they lost,
have spread around the earth, ever mistaking the shadow for the
substance, until they have imitated the very thunder and
lightning, calling them cannon; they have imitated all the forces
of the universe and called them steam, gasoline, electricity,
chemistry and what not, so that now they fly by machinery, who
once could fly without effort and without wings.
"And now they grow deathly weary, not understanding why. Now
they hold councils, one nation with another, seeking to
substitute a lesser evil for the greater.
"Once in every hundred years men have been sent forth to prove
by public demonstration that there is a greater science than all
that are called sciences. None knew when the end of the Kali-
Yug might be, and it was thought that if men saw things they
could not explain, perhaps they would turn and seek the true
mastery of the universe. But what happened? You, who are from
America; is there one village in all America where men do not
speak of Indians as fakirs and mock-magicians? For that there are
two reasons. One is that there are multitudes of Indians who are
thieves and liars, who know nothing and seek to conceal their
ignorance beneath a cloak of deceit and trickery. The other is,
that men are so deep in delusion, that when they do see the
unexplainable they seek to explain it away. Whereas the truth is
that there are natural laws which, if understood by all, would at
once make all men masters of the universe.
"I will give you an example. To-day they are using wireless
telephones, who twenty years ago would have mocked whoever had
suggested such a thing. Yet it is common knowledge that forty
years ago, for instance, when Roberts the British general led an
army into Afghanistan in wintertime and fought a battle at
Kandahar, the news of his victory was known in Bombay, a thousand
miles away, as soon as it had happened, whereas the Government,
possessing semaphores and the telegraph, had to wait many days
for the news.* How did that occur? Can you or any one explain
it?
[* This is incontestably historical fact. See
Lord Robert's book, Forty-one Years in India. Author's
footnote. ]
"If I were to go forth and tell how it happened, the men who
profit by the telegraphs and the deep-sea cables, would desire to
kill me.
"There is only one country in the world where such things can
be successfully explained, and that is India; but not even in
India until India is free. When the millions of India once grasp
the fact of freedom, they will forget superstition and
understand. Then they will claim their powers and use them. Then
the world will see, and wonder. And presently the world, too,
will understand.
"Therefore, India must be free. These three hundred and fifty
million people who speak one hundred and forty-seven languages
must be set free to work out their own destiny.
"But there is only one way of doing that. The world, and India
with it, is held in the grip of delusion. And what is delusion?
Nothing but opinions. Therefore it is opinions that hold India in
subjection, and opinions must be changed. A beginning must be
made where opinions are least hidebound and are therefore easiest
to change. That means America.
"Therefore you two sahibs are chosen — one who
knows and loves India; one who knows and loves America. The duty
laid on you is absolute. There can be no flinching from it. You
are to go to America and convince Americans that India should be
free to work out her own destiny.
"Therefore follow, and see what you shall see."
He rose, exactly as he had sat down, without apparent muscular
effort. It was as if a hand had taken him by the scalp and lifted
him, except that I noticed his feet were pressed so hard against
the floor that the blood left them, so that I think the secret of
the trick was perfect muscular control, although how to attain
that is another matter.
The Princess Yasmini made no offer to come with us, but
lounged among the cushions reveling in mischievous enjoyment.
Whatever the Gray Mahatma's real motive, there was no possible
doubt about hers; she was looking forward to a tangible, material
profit.
The Gray Mahatma led the way through the door by which we had
entered, stalking along in his saffron robe without the slightest
effort to seem dignified or solemn.
"Keep your wits about you," King whispered; and then again,
presently: "Don't be fooled into thinking that anything you see
is supernatural. Remember that whatever you see is simply the
result of something that they know and that we don't. Keep your
hair on! We're going to see some wonderful stuff or I'm a
Dutchman."
We passed down the long corridor outside Yasmini's room, but
instead of continuing straight forward, the Gray Mahatma found an
opening behind a curtain in a wall whose thickness could be only
guessed. Inside the wall was a stairway six feet wide that
descended to an echoing, unfurnished hall below after making two
turns inside solid masonry.
The lower hall was dark, but he found his way without
difficulty, picking up a lantern from a corner on his way and
then opening a door that gave, underneath the outer marble
stairway, on to the court where the pool and the flowering shrubs
were. The lantern was not lighted when he picked it up. I did not
see how he lighted it. It was an ordinary oil lantern,
apparently, with a wire handle to carry it by, and after he had
carried it for half a minute it seemed to burn brightly of its
own accord. I called King's attention to it.
"I've seen that done before," he answered, but he did not say
whether or not he understood the trick of it.
Ismail came running to meet us the instant we showed
ourselves, but stopped when he saw the Mahatma and, kneeling,
laid the palms of both hands on his forehead on the stone flags.
That was a strange thing for a Moslem to do — especially
toward a Hindu — but the Mahatma took not the slightest
notice of him and walked straight past as if he had not been
there. He could hear King's footsteps and mine behind him, of
course, and did not need to look back, but there was something
almost comical in the way he seemed to ignore our existence and
go striding along alone as if on business bent. He acted as
little like a priest or a fakir or a fanatic as any man I have
ever seen, and no picture-gallery curator or theater usher ever
did the honors of the show with less attention to his own
importance.
He led the way through the same bronze gate that we had
entered by and never paused or glanced behind him until he came
to the cage where the old black panther snarled behind the bars;
and then a remarkable thing happened.
At first the panther began running backward and forward, as
the caged brutes usually do when they think they are going to be
fed; for all his age he looked as full of fight as a newly caught
young one, and his long yellow fangs flashed from under the
curled lip — until the Mahatma spoke to him. He only said
one word that I could hear, and I could not catch what the word
was; but instantly the black brute slunk away to the corner of
its cage farthest from the iron door, and at that the Mahatma
opened the door without using any key that I detected. The
padlock may have been a trick one, but I know this; — it
came away in his hands the moment he touched it.
Then at last he took notice of King and me again. He stood
aside, and smiled, and motioned to us with his hand to enter the
cage ahead of him. I have been several sorts of rash idiot in my
time, and I daresay that King has too, for most of us have been
young once; but I have also hunted panthers, and so has King, and
to walk unarmed or even with weapons — into a black
panther's cage is something that calls, I should say, for
inexperience. The more you know about panthers the less likely
you are to do it. It was almost pitch-dark; you could see the
brute's yellow eyes gleaming, but no other part of him now,
because he matched the shadows perfectly; but, being a cat, he
could see us, and the odds against a man who should walk into
that cage were, as a rough guess, ten trillion to one.
"Fear is the presence of death, and death is delusion. Follow
me then," said the Mahatma.
He walked straight in, keeping the lighted lantern on the side
of him farthest from the panther, whose claws I could hear
scratching on the stone flags.
"Keep that light toward him for God's sake!" I urged, having
myself had to use a lantern more than a score of times for
protection at night against the big cats.
"Nay, it troubles his eyes. For God's sake I will hide it from
him," the Mahatma answered. "We must not wait here."
"Come on," said King, and strode in through the open door. So
I went in too, because I did not care to let King see me
hesitate. Curiosity had vanished. I was simply in a blue funk,
and rather angry as well at the absurdity of what we were
doing.
The Gray Mahatma turned and shut the gate behind me, taking no
notice at all of the black brute that crouched in the other
corner, grumbling and moaning rather than growling.
Have you ever seen a panther spit and spring when a keeper
shoved it out of the way with the cleaning rake? There is no
beast in the world with whom it is more dangerous to play tricks.
Yet in that dark corner, with the lantern held purposely so that
it should not dazzle the panther's eyes, the Gray Mahatma stirred
the beast with his toe and drove him away as carelessly and
incautiously as you might shove your favorite dog aside! The
panther crowded itself against the side of the cage and slunk
away behind us — to the front of the cage that is to say,
close by the padlocked gate — where he crouched again and
moaned.
The dark, rear end of the cage was all masonry and formed part
of the building behind it. In the right-hand corner, almost
invisible from outside, was a narrow door of thick teak that
opened very readily when the Mahatma fumbled with it although I
saw no lock, hasp or keyhole on the side toward us. We followed
him through into a stone vault.
"And now there is need to be careful," he said, his voice
booming and echoing along unseen corridors. "For though those
here, who can harm you if they will, are without evil intention,
nevertheless injury begets desire to injure. And do either of you
know how to make acceptable explanations to a she-cobra whose
young have been trodden on? Therefore walk with care, observing
the lantern light and remembering that as long as you injure
none, none will injure you."
At that he turned on his heel abruptly and walked forward,
swinging the lantern so that its light swept to and fro. We were
walking through the heart of masonry whose blocks were nearly
black with age; there was a smell of ancient sepulchers, and in
places the walls were damp enough to be green and slippery.
Presently we came to the top of a flight of stone steps, each
step being made of one enormous block and worn smooth by the
sandaled traffic of centuries. It grew damper as we descended,
and those great blocks were tricky things for a man in boots to
walk on; yet the Gray Mahatma, swinging his lantern several steps
below us, kept calling back:
"Have a care! Have a care! He who falls can do as much injury
as he who jumps! Shall the injured inquire into reasons?"
We descended forty or fifty steps and I, walking last, had
just reached the bottom, when something dashed between my feet,
and another something flicked like a whip-lash after it. As the
Mahatma swung the lantern I just caught sight of an enormous rat
closely pursued by a six-foot snake, and after that we might as
well have been in hell for all the difference it would have made
to me.
I don't know how long that tunnel was, but I do know I am not
going back there to measure it. It was nearly as big as the New
York Subway, only built of huge stone blocks instead of concrete.
It seemed to be an inferno, in which cobras hunted rats
perpetually; but we saw one swarm of fiery-eyed rats eating a
dead snake.
There were baby cobras by the hundred — savage, six-inch
things, and even smaller, that knew as much of evil, and could
slay as surely, as the full-grown mother-snake that raised her
hood and hissed as we passed.
The snakes seemed afraid of the Mahatma, and yet not afraid of
him — much more careful to keep out from under his feet
than ours, yet taking no other apparent notice of him, whereas
hundreds of them raised their hoods and hissed at us. And though
nothing touched him, at least fifty times rats and snakes raced
over King's feet and mine, or slipped between our legs.
"This fellow has some use for us," King said over his
shoulder. "He'll neither be killed himself, nor let us be if he
can help it. This is no new trick. Lots of 'em can manage
snakes."
The Gray Mahatma, twenty yards ahead, heard every word of
that. He stopped and let us come quite close up to him.
"Have you seen this?" he asked.
There was a cobra swinging its head about two and a half feet
off the ground within a yard of him. He passed the lantern to me,
and holding out both hands coaxed the venomous thing to come to
him as you or I might coax a stray dog. It obeyed. It laid its
head on his hands, lowered its hood, and climbed until, within
six inches of his face, its head rested on his left shoulder.
"Would you like to try that?" he asked. "You can do it if you
wish."
We did not wish, and while we stood there the infernal
reptiles were swarming all around us, rising knee-high and
swaying, with their forked tongues flashing in and out, but
showing no inclination to use their fangs, although many of them
raised their hoods. At that moment there were certainly fifty of
the filthy things close enough to strike; and the bite of any one
of them would have meant certain death within fifteen
minutes.
However, they did not bite. The Gray Mahatma set down very
gently the snake that had done his bidding, and then shooed the
rest away; they backed off like a flock of foolish geese, hissing
and swaying pretty much as geese do.
"Come!" he boomed. "Cobras are foolish people, and folly is
infectious. Come away!"
CHAPTER IV. — THE POOL OF TERRORS
WE came soon to another flight of steps made of
gigantic blocks of stone older than history, and groping our way
up those we followed the Gray Mahatma to a gallery at the top, on
the other side of which was a sheer drop and the smell of
stagnant water. I could hear something sluggish that moved in the
water, and somewhere in the distance was a turning around which
light found its way so dimly that it hardly looked like light at
all, but more like filmy mist. A heavy monster splashed somewhere
beneath us and the Mahatma raised the lantern to peer into our
faces.
"Those are muggers (alligators). You may see them now
if you would rather. The same as with the snakes, the rule is you
must do them no harm."
He looked at us keenly, as if making sure that we really were
not enjoying ourselves, and then leaned his weight against an
iron door in a corner. It swung open, and we followed him through
into a pitch-dark chamber of some kind. But the door we came in
by had hardly slammed behind us when a bright light broke through
a square hole in the ceiling and displayed a flight of rock-hewn
steps. Some one overhead had removed a stone plug from the
hole.
The Mahatma motioned to King to go first, but as King refused
he led the way again, going through the square hole overhead as
handily as any seaman swinging himself into the cross-trees. King
followed him and I stood on the top step with head and shoulders
through the opening surveying the prospect before scrambling up
after him.
I was looking between King's legs. The light came from three
large wood-fires placed over at the left end of a rectangular
chamber hewn out of solid rock. The chamber was at least a
hundred feet long and thirty wide; its roof was lost in smoke,
but seemed to be irregular, as if the walls of a natural cavern
had been shaped by masons who left the high roof as they found
it.
A very nearly naked man with a long beard, hair over his
shoulders, and the general air of being some one in authority,
was walking about with nothing in his hand except a seven-jointed
bamboo cane. He was a very old man, but of magnificent physique
and ribbed up like a race-horse in training. His principal
business seemed to be the supervision of several absolutely naked
individuals, who carried in wood through a dark gap in the wall
and piled it on the three fires at the farther end with almost
ludicrous precision.
And between the three fires, not spitted and not bound but
absolutely motionless, there sat a human being, so dried out that
not even that fierce heat could wring a drop of sweat from him,
yet living, for you could see him breathe and the firelight shone
on his living, yet unwinking eyes. Every draft of air that he
drew into his lungs must have scorched him. Every single hair had
disappeared from his body. And while we watched they came and fed
him.
But he was only one of many, all undergoing torture in its
most hideous and useless forms, and all as free as he was to
deliver themselves if they saw fit. The least offensive was a man
within six feet of me who sat on a conical stone no bigger than a
coconut; that small stone was resting on top of a cone of rock
about a yard high, in such fashion that it rocked at the
slightest change of balance; the man's legs were crossed,
however, exactly as if he were squatting on the floor —
although they actually rested on nothing; and his arms had been
crossed behind his back for so long, and held so steadily, that
the fingernails of the right hand had grown through the left arm
biceps, and vice versa. He, too, was fed with drops of water and
about a dozen grains of rice — every second day, as the
Mahatma told us afterward.
Space was at a premium in that gruesome madhouse. Close beside
the fellow on the rocking stone there hung two ropes from rings
in the roof. There were iron hooks on their lower ends, and these
were passed through the back muscles of another naked man, who
kept himself swinging by touching the floor with one toe. The
muscles were so drawn by his weight that they formed loops
several inches long and had turned to dry gristle; the strain had
had some effect on one of his legs, for it was curled up under
him and apparently useless, but the other, with which he toed the
floor to swing himself, was apparently all right. His hands were
folded over his breast, and his beard and hair hung like
seaweed.
Near him again there was an arrangement like a medieval rack,
only that instead of having a wheel or a lever the cords were
drawn by heavy weights. A man lay on it with arms and legs
stretched out toward its corners so tightly that his body did not
touch the underlying strut; and he had been so long in that
position that his hands and feet were dead from the pressure of
the cords, and his limbs were stretched several inches beyond
their normal length. In proof that his torture, too, was
voluntary, he was balancing a round stone on his solar plexus
that could have been much more easily dumped than kept in
place.
The priest stared questioningly at the Gray Mahatma, glancing
from him to us and back again.
The Gray Mahatma beckoned King and me and led the way between
the shuddersome, self-immolated, twisted wrecks of humanity to an
opening in the far wall, through which we passed into another
chamber carved out of the rock, not so large as the first and
only lighted by a charcoal brazier that gave off as much fumes as
flame. The fitful, bluish light fell in a stone ledge, in a niche
like a sepulcher, carved in one wall, and on that ledge a man lay
who had every muscle of his body pierced with thorns; his tongue
protruded between his teeth, and was held there by a thorn thrust
through it.
The Gray Mahatma stood and looked at him, and smiled.
"Just a presumptuous fool!" he said pleasantly. "This was the
most presumptuous of them all, but they all suffer for the same
offense. Take warning! They could walk away if they cared to.
They are here of what they think is their free will. They are
moths who sought the flame, some from curiosity, some from
desire, some craving adoration for themselves, all for one false
reason or another. This fate might be yours — so take
warning!
"There is not one of these who was not warned," he said
quietly. "They were cautioned not to inquire into matters too
deep for them. They were here to be taught; but that little
knowledge that is such a dangerous thing tempted them too swiftly
forward beyond their depth, so that now — you see them.
They seek to get rid of material bodies and to satisfy themselves
that death is a delusion. You revolt at the sight of these self-
tortured fools; yet I tell you that, should you commit the same
offense, you would behave as they, even as the moth that goes too
near the flame. Take care lest curiosity overwhelm you."
"All right, lead along," King answered rather testily. "I've
seen worse than this a hundred times. I've seen the women."
The Mahatma nodded gravely.
"But not even I may lead you forward clothed as you are," he
said. "I am about to reveal such mysteries as set presumptuous
fools to seeking perfection by a too short route. Even I would be
slain, if I tried to introduce you in that garb. Undress."
He set us the example; but as we were not qualified by years
of arduously won sanctity to stand stark naked in the presence he
conceded us a clout apiece torn from a filthy length of calico
that some one had tossed in a corner. And he tore another piece
of filthy red cotton cloth in halves, and divided it between us
to twist around our heads. King laughed at me.
"You look like a fine, fat Bengali," he said.
The Mahatma called to one of the servitors to bring ashes in a
brass bowl. We watched him rake them out from under the fires,
shake water on them, and mix them into paste as casually as if
the business were part of his regular routine. The Mahatma took
the bowl from him and plastered King and me liberally with the
stuff, making King look like a scabrous fanatic, and I don't
doubt I looked worse, having more acreage of anatomy. Last of all
he put some on himself, but only here and there, as if his
sanctity only demanded a little piercing out. Then he raised a
flagstone in one corner of the chamber that swung easily on
pivots set in sockets in the masonry, and led the way again.
We were evidently in a system of caves that had been quarried
into shape centuries before the Christian era. They seemed
originally to have been bubbles and blow-holes in volcanic rock,
and to have been connected together by piercing the walls between
them. There was certainly no intelligible plan attached to their
arrangement, for we went first up, then down, then sideways,
losing all sense of elevation and direction. But we passed
through at least three score of those connected blow-holes, and
the air in some of the higher ones was so foul that breathing it
made you weak at the knees. Nevertheless, in every single one
there was an anchorite of some kind, engaged in painful
meditation. In each cave was an infinitesimal lamp made of baked
clay and fed with vegetable oil that provided more smoke than
flame, and the walls and ceiling were deep with the soot of
centuries.
Following the Gray Mahatma's example King and I took handfuls
of the soot and smeared it on our breasts, stomachs and faces, to
mingle with the ashes in a mask of holiness. By the time we had
finished that there was not much chance of any one mistaking us
for anything but two half-crazed aspirants for sanctity.
I could not possibly have drawn a tracing of our own course,
for it was rank bewildering; but we emerged at last under the
stars by the side of a great stone tank. It might have been a
bathing pool, for along each side steps disappeared into the
water. We could dimly distinguish one end on our right hand with
a row of great graven gods all reflected in the water; but the
other end vanished through a black cave-mouth. It was about a
hundred and twenty feet wide from bank to bank, and between us
and the steps that faced us on the far side, in among the
quivering star-reflections, I could count the snouts of eighteen
alligators.
"Which way now?" King asked him a shade suspiciously.
"Forward," he answered, with a note of surprise.
But if the Mahatma supposed that a coat of soot and ashes
provided either King or me with a satisfactory reason for
hobnobbing with alligators in their home pool, he was
emphatically mistaken. We objected simultaneously, unanimously,
and right out loud in meeting.
"Suit yourself," said I. "This suits me here."
"Go forward if you like," said King, "we'll wait for you."
The Gray Mahatma turned and eyed us solemnly but not
unkindly.
"If I should leave you here," he said, "a much worse fate
would overtake you than any that you anticipate, for your minds
are not advanced enough to imagine the horrors that assail all
those who lack courage. This is the testing place for aspirants,
and more win their way across it than you might suppose,
impudence of ambition adding skill to recklessness. All must make
the attempt, alone and at night, who seek the inner shrines of
Knowledge, and those creatures in the tank have no other food
than is thus provided.
"Those whose courage failed them are now such fakirs as we
have seen, who now seek to rid themselves of materiality, which
is the cause of fear, by ridding themselves of their fleshy
envelope. Follow me then."
He stepped down into the water, and at once it became evident
that to all intents and purposes there were two tanks, the
division between them lying about eighteen inches under water.
But the division was neither straight nor exactly level. It zig-
zagged this and that way like the key-track in a maze, and was
more beset with slippery pitfalls than a mussel-shoal at low
tide.
King followed the Mahatma in, and I came last, so I had the
benefit of two pilots, as well as the important task of holding
King whenever he groped his way forward with one foot. For the
Mahatma went a great deal faster than we cared to follow, so that
although he had shown us the way we were still doubtful of our
footing. At intervals he would pause and turn and look at us, and
every time he did that those long loathsome snouts would ripple
toward him like spokes of a wheel, but he took no more notice of
them than if they had been water-rats. They seemed more
interested in him than in us.
There were seven sharp turns in that underwater causeway, and
the edges of each turn were slippery slopes, up which an
alligator certainly could climb, but that afforded not the least
chance to a man whose foot once stepped too far and slid. And not
only were there unexpected turns at different intervals, but
there were gaps in the causeway of a yard or so in at least a
dozen places, and the edges of those gaps were smooth and
rounded, as if purposely designed to dump all wayfarers into the
very jaws of the waiting reptiles. It was in just such places as
that that they began to gather and wait patiently, with their
awful yellow eyes just noticeable in the starlight.
King and I were standing on one such rounded guessing-
place.
The Mahatma, twenty yards away, was taking his time about
turning to give us directions, and one great fifteen foot brute
had raised itself on the causeway behind us and was snapping its
paws together like a pair of vicious castanets.
"Nero and Caligula were Christian gentlemen compared to you!"
I called out to the Mahatma.
"You are fortunate," he boomed back. "You have starlight and a
guide. Those who are not chosen have to find their way — or
fail — alone under a cloudy sky. There is none to hold
them while they grope; there is none to care whether they
succeed or not, save only the mugger that desires a meal.
Nevertheless, there are some of them who succeed, so how should
you fail? Take a step to the left now — a long one, each
holding the other, then another to the left — then to the
right again."
"Curse you!" I shouted back, staring over King's shoulder.
"There's a mugger's head between us and the next stepping-
stone!"
"Nay!" he answered. "That isthe stepping-stone."
I could have sworn that he was lying, but King set his foot on
it and in a moment more we were working our way cautiously along
the causeway again, making for the next sharp corner where the
Mahatma had been standing to give us the direction. But he never
waited for us to catch up with him. I think he suspected that in
panic we might clutch him and offer violence, and he always moved
on as we approached, leaving us to grope our way in agonies of
apprehension.
The going did not become easier as we progressed. When the
Gray Mahatma reached the steps on the far side and stood, out of
the water waiting for us, all the monsters that had watched his
progress came and joined our party; and now, instead of keeping
to the water, two of them climbed up on the causeway, so that
there was one of the creatures behind us and two in front.
"Call off your cousins and your uncles and your aunts!" I
shouted, bearing in mind the Hindu creed that consigns the souls
of unrighteous men to the bodies of animals in retribution for
their sins.
The Gray Mahatma picked up a short pole from the embankment,
and returned into the water with it, not striking out right and
left as any ordinary-minded person would have done, but shoving
the brutes away gently one by one, as if they were logs or small
boats. And even so, they followed us so closely that they climbed
the steps abreast of us.
But I'm willing to bet that there is not an alligator living
that can catch me once my feet are set on hard ground, and I can
say the same for King; we danced up those steps together like a
pair of fauns emerging from a forest pool.
Then the Gray Mahatma came and peered into our faces, and
asked an extraordinary question.
"Do you feel proud?" he asked, looking keenly from one to the
other of us. "Because," he went on to explain, "you have now
crossed the Pool of Terrors, and they are not so many who
accomplish that. The muggers are well fed. And those who
reach to this side are usually proud, believing they now have the
secret key to the attainment of all Knowledge. You are going to
see now what becomes of the proud ones."
The Mahatma led us forward toward a long, dark shadow that
transformed itself into a temple wall as we drew closer, and in a
moment we were once more groping our way downward amid
prehistoric foundation stones, with bats flitting past us and a
horrible feeling possessing me, at least, that the worst was yet
to come.
The hunch proved accurate. We came into an enormous crypt that
evidently underlay a temple. Great pillars of natural rock,
practically square and twenty feet thick, supported the roof,
which was partly of natural rock and partly of jointed masonry.
There was nothing in the crypt itself, except one old gray-beard,
who sat on a mat by a candle, reading a roll of manuscript; and
he did not trouble to look up — did not take the slightest
notice of us.
But around the crypt there were more cells than I could count
off-hand. Some were dark. There were lights burning in the
others. Each had an iron door with a few holes in it, and a small
square window, unglazed and unbarred, cut in the natural rock.
Enough light came through some of those square holes to suffuse
the whole crypt dimly.
"None but an aspirant has ever entered here," said the Gray
Mahatma. "Even when India was conquered, no enemy penetrated this
place. You stand on forbidden ground."
He turned to the left and opened an iron cell door by simply
pushing it; there did not seem to be any lock. He did not
announce himself, but walked straight in, and we followed him.
The cell was about ten feet by twelve, with a stone ledge wide
enough to sleep on running along one side, and lighted by an oil
lamp that hung by chains from the hewn roof. There were three
bearded, middle-aged men, almost naked, squatting on one mat
facing the stone ledge, one of whom held an ancient manuscript
that all three were consulting; and on the stone ledge sat what
once had been a man before those devils caught him.
The three looked up at the Gray Mahatma curiously, but did not
challenge. I suppose his nakedness was his passport. They eyed
King and me with a butcher's-eye appraisal, nodded, and resumed
their consultation of the hand-written roll. The characters on it
looked like Sanskrit.
The Gray Mahatma faced the creature on the stone ledge, and
spoke to King and me in English.
"That," he said, "is one of those who crossed the Pool of
Terrors and became insane with pride. Consider him. He entered
here demanding knowledge, having only the desire and not the
honesty. But since there is no way backward and even failure must
subserve the universal cause, he was given knowledge and it made
him what you see. Now these, who know a little and would learn
more, make use of him as a subject for experiments.
"That thing, who was once a man, can imagine himself a bird,
or a fish, or an animal — or even an insensate graven stone
— at their command. When he is no more fit to be studied he
will imagine himself to be a mugger, and will hurry into
the tank with the other reptiles, and that will be the end of
him. Come."
I felt like going mad that minute. I sat down on the rock
floor and held my head to make sure that I still had it. I wanted
to think of something that would give me back my grip on sanity
and the good, clean concrete world outside; I don't think I could
have done it if King had not seen and applied the solution. He
kicked me in the ribs as hard as he could with his naked foot,
and, that failing, used his fist.
"Get up!" he said. "Hit me, if you want to!"
Then he turned to the Mahatma.
"Confound you! Take us out of this!"
"Peace! Peace!" said the Gray Mahatma. "You are chosen. You
are needed for another purpose. No harm shall come to either of
you. There is one more cell that you must enter."
"No!" said I, and I met his eye squarely. "I've seen my fill
of these sights. Lead the way out!"
He did not appear in the least afraid of me; merely curious,
as if he were viewing an experiment. I made up my mind on the
instant to experiment on my own account, and swung my fist back
for a full-powered smash at him. I let go, too. But the blow fell
on King, who stepped between us, and knocked nearly all the wind
out of him.
"None o' that!" he gasped. "Let's see this through."
The Gray Mahatma patted him gently on the shoulder.
"Good!" he said. "Very good. You did well!"
CHAPTER V. — FAR CITIES
THE Gray Mahatma led the way toward one of the
great square pillars that supported a portion of the roof.
In that pillar there was an opening, about six feet high and
barely wide enough for a man of my build to squeeze himself
through, but once inside it there was ample space and a stairway,
hewn in the stone, wound upward. Still swinging the lantern he
had brought with him from Yasmini's palace the Mahatma led the
way up that, and we followed, I last as usual.
We emerged through a wooden door into a temple, whose walls
were almost entirely hidden by enormous images of India's gods.
There were no windows.
The resulting gloom was punctuated by dots of yellow light
that came from hanging brass lamps, whose smoke in the course of
centuries had covered everything with soot that it was nobody's
business to remove. So it looked like a coal-black pantheon, and
in the darkness you could hardly see the forms of long-robed men
who were mumbling through some sort of ceremony.
"Those," said the Gray Mahatma, "are priests. They receive
payment to pray for people who may not enter lest their
sinfulness defile the sanctuary."
There was only one consideration that prevented me from
looking for a door behind a carved stone screen placed at the end
wall screen and bidding the Mahatma a discourteous farewell, and
that was the prospect of walking through the streets with nothing
on but a dish-rag and a small red turban.
However, the Gray Mahatma, as naked as the day he was born,
led the way to the screen, opened a hinged door in it and
beckoned us through; and we emerged, instead of into the street
as I expected, into a marvelous courtyard bathed in moonlight,
for the moon was just appearing over the roof of what looked like
another temple at the rear.
All around the courtyard was a portico, supported by pillars
of most wonderful workmanship; and the four walls within the
portico were subdivided into open compartments, in each of which
was the image of a different god. In front of each image hung a
lighted lamp, whose rays were reflected in the idol's jeweled
eyes; but the only people visible were three or four sleepy
looking attendants in turbans and cotton loin-cloths, who sat up
and stared at us without making any other sign of
recognition.
In the very center of the courtyard was a big, square platform
built of stone, with a roof like a canopy supported on carved
pillars similar to those that supported the portico, which is to
say that each one was different, and yet all were so alike as to
blend into architectural harmony — repetition without
monotony. The Gray Mahatma led the way up steps on to the
platform, and waited for us at a square opening in the midst of
its floor, beside which lay a stone that obviously fitted the
hole exactly. There were no rings to lift the stone by from the
outside, but there were holes drilled through it from side to
side through which iron bolts could be passed from
underneath.
Down that hole we went in single file again, the Gray Mahatma
leading, treading an oval stairway interminably until I daresay
we had descended more than a hundred feet. The air was warm, but
breathable and there seemed to be plenty of it, as if some
efficient means of artificial ventilation had been provided;
nevertheless, it was nothing else than a cavern that we were
exploring, and though there were traces of chisel and adze work
on the walls, the only masonry was the steps.
We came to the bottom at last in an egg-shaped cave, in the
center of which stood a rock, roughly hewn four-square; and on
that rock, exactly in the middle, was a lingam of black polished
marble, illuminated by a brass lamp hanging overhead. The Mahatma
eyed it curiously:
"That," he said, "is the last symbol of ignorance. The
remainder is knowledge."
There were doors on every side of that egg-shaped cave, each
set cunningly into a natural fold of rock, so that they seemed to
have been inset when it was molten, in the way that nuts are set
into chocolate — pushed into place by a pair of titanic
thumbs. And at last we seemed to have reached a place where the
Gray Mahatma might not enter uninvited, for he selected one of
the doors after a moment's thought and knocked.
We stood there for possibly ten minutes, without an answer,
the Mahatma seeming satisfied with his own meditation, and we not
caring to talk lest he should overhear us.
At last the door opened, not cautiously, but suddenly and
wide, and a man stood square in it who filled it up from frame to
frame — a big-eyed, muscular individual in loin-cloth and
turban, who looked too proud to assert his pride. He stood with
arms folded and a smile on his firm mouth; and the impression he
conveyed was that of a master-craftsman, whose skill was his
life, and whose craft was all he cared about.
He eyed the Mahatma without respect or flinching, and said
nothing.
Have you ever watched two wild animals meet, stand looking at
each other, and suddenly go off together without a sign of an
explanation? That was what happened. The man in the doorway
presently turned his back and led the way in.
The passage we entered was just exactly wide enough for me to
pass along with elbows touching either wall. It was high; there
was plenty of air in it; it was as scrupulously clean as a
hospital ward. On either hand there were narrow wooden doors,
spaced about twenty feet apart, every one of them closed; there
were no bolts on the outside of the doors, and no keyholes, but I
could not move them by shoving against them as I passed.
The extraordinary circumstance was the light. The whole
passage was bathed in light, yet I could not detect where it came
from. It was not dazzling like electricity. No one place seemed
brighter than another, and there were no shadows.
The end of the passage forked at a perfect right angle, and
there were doors at the end of each arm of the fork. Our guide
turned to the right. He, King and the Mahatma passed through a
door that seemed to open at the slightest touch, and the instant
the Mahatma's back had passed the door-frame I found myself in
darkness.
I had hung back a little, trying to make shadows with my hands
to discover the direction of the light; and the strange part was
that I could see bright light in front of me through the open
door, but none of it came out into the passage.
It was intuition that caused me to pause at the threshold
before following the others through. Something about the
suddenness with which the light had ceased in the passage the
moment the Mahatma's back was past the door, added to curiosity,
made me stop and consider that plane where the light left off.
Having no other instrument available, I took off my turban and
flapped it to and fro, to see whether I could produce any effect
on that astonishing dividing line, and for about the ten
thousandth time in a somewhat strenuous career it was intuition
and curiosity that saved me.
The instant the end of the turban touched the plane between
light and darkness it caught fire; or rather, I should say fire
caught it, and the fire was so intense and swift that it burned
off that part of the turban without damaging the rest. In other
words, there was a plane of unimaginably active heat between me
and the rest of the party — of such extraordinary heat that
it functioned only on that plane (for I could not feel it with my
hand from an inch away); and I being in pitch darkness while they
were in golden light, the others could not see me.
They could hear, however, and I called to King. I told him
what happened, and then showed him, by throwing what was left of
the turban toward him. It got exactly as far as the plane between
light and darkness, and then vanished in a silent flash so
swiftly and completely as to leave no visible charred
fragment.
I could see all three men standing in line facing in my
direction, hardly ten feet away, and it was difficult to remember
that they could not see me at all — or at any rate that
King could not; the others may have had some trained sixth sense
that made it possible.
"Come forward!" said the Gray Mahatma. "We three came by. Why
should it harm you?"
King sized up the situation instantly. If they intended to
kill me and keep him alive, that would not be with his permission
or connivance, and he stepped forward suddenly toward me.
"Stop!" commanded the Mahatma, showing the first trace of
excitement that he had yet betrayed, but King kept on, and I
suppose that the man who was acting showman did something,
because King crossed the line without anything happening and then
stood with one foot on each side of the threshold while I
crossed.
"There are two of us in this!" he said to the Gray Mahatma
then. "You can't kill one and take the other."
We were in a chamber roughly fifty feet square, whose
irregular corners were proof enough that it had been originally
another of those huge blow-holes in volcanic stone; the roof,
too, had been left rough, but the greater part of the side-walls
had been finished off smooth with the chisel, and hand-
rubbed.
There was a big, rectangular rock exactly in the middle of the
room, shaped like a table or an altar, and polished until it
shone. I decided to sit down on it — whereat the Mahatma
ceased to ignore me.
"Fool!" he barked. "Keep off that!"
I tore a piece off the rag I was wearing for a loin-cloth and
tossed it on the polished surface of the stone. It vanished
instantly and left no trace; it did not even leave a mark on the
stone, and the burning was so swift and complete that there was
no smell.
"Thanks!" I said. "But why your sudden anxiety on my
account?"
He turned to King again.
"You have seen the camera obscura that shows in
darkness the scenery near at hand, provided the sun is shining?
The camera obscura is a feeble imitation of the true idea.
There are no limits to the vision of him who understands true
science. What city do you wish to see?"
"Benares," King answered.
Suddenly we were in darkness. Equally suddenly the whole top
surface of the stone table became bathed in light of a different
quality — light like daylight, that perhaps came upward
from the stone, but if so came only a little way. To me it looked
much more as if it began suddenly in mid-air and descended toward
the surface of the stone.
And there all at once, as clearly as if we saw it on the
focusing screen of a gigantic camera, lay Benares spread before
us, with all its color, its sacred cattle in the streets, its
crowds bathing in the Ganges, temples, domes, trees, movement
— almost the smell of Benares was there, for the suggestion
was all-inclusive.
"But why is it daylight in Benares while it's somewhere near
midnight here?" King demanded.
That instant the sunshine in Benares ceased and the moon and
stars came out. The glow of lamps shone forth from the temple
courtyards, and down by the river ghats were the lurid crimson
flame and smoke where they cremated dead Hindus. It was far more
perfect than a motion picture. Allowing for scale it looked
actually real.
Suddenly the chamber was all suffused in golden light once
more and the picture on the granite table vanished.
"Name another city," said the Gray Mahatma.
"London," King answered.
The light went out, and there sure enough was London —
first the Strand, crowded with motor-busses; then Ludgate Hill
and St. Paul's; then the Royal Exchange and Bank of England; then
London Bridge and the Tower Bridge and a panorama of the
Thames.
"Are you satisfied?" the Gray Mahatma asked, and once again
the cavern was flooded with that peculiarly restful golden light,
while the picture on the granite table disappeared.
"Not a bit," King answered. "It's a trick of some sort."
"Is wireless telegraphy a trick then?" retorted the Mahatma.
"If so, then yes, so this is. Only this is as far in advance of
wireless telegraphy, as telegraphy is in advance of the
semaphore. This is a science beyond your knowledge, that is all.
Name another city."
"Timbuctu," I said suddenly; and nothing happened.
"Mombasa," I said then, and Mombasa appeared instantly, with
Kilindini harbor fringed with palm-trees.
I had been to Mombasa, whereas I never had seen Timbuctu.
Almost certainly none present had ever seen the place, or even a
picture of it.
The Gray Mahatma said something in a surly undertone and the
golden light turned itself on again, flooding the whole chamber.
King nodded to me.
"You can speak into a phonograph and reproduce your voice.
There's no reason why you can't think and reproduce that too, if
you know how," he said.
"Aye!" the Mahatma interrupted. "If you know how! India has
always known how! India can teach these sciences to all the world
when she comes into her freedom."
Throughout, the man who had admitted us had not spoken one
word. He stood with arms folded, as upright as a soldier on
parade. But now he unfolded his arms and began to exhibit signs
of restlessness, as if he considered that the session had lasted
long enough. However, he was still silent.
"Your honor is extremely clever. I've enjoyed the exhibition,"
I said to him in Hindustanee, but he took not the slightest
notice of me, and if he understood he did not betray the
fact.
"Let us go," said the Gray Mahatma, and proceeded to lead the
way.
The Gray Mahatma took the other turning of the passage, and
knocked on the door at the end. It was opened by a little man,
who once had been extremely fat, for his skin hung about him in
loose folds.
His cavern was smaller than the other, but as clean, and
similarly flooded with the restful golden light. But he was only
host; the Gray Mahatma was showman. He said:
"All energy is vibrations; yet that is only one fraction of
the truth. All is vibration. The universe consists of nothing
else. Your Western scientists are just beginning to discover
that, but they are men groping in the dark, who can feel but not
see and understand. Throughout what all nations have agreed to
call the dark ages there have been men called alchemists, whom
other men have mocked because they sought to transmute baser
metals into gold. Do you think they sought what was impossible?
Nothing is impossible! They dimly discerned the possibility. And
it may be that their ears had caught the legend of what has been
known in India for countless ages.
"Gold is a system of vibrations, just as every other metal is,
and the one can be changed into the other. But if you knew how to
do it, would you dare? Can you conceive what would happen to the
world if it were common knowledge, or even if it were known to a
few, how the transmutation may be brought about? Now watch!"
What followed was convincing for the simple reason that there
was nothing covered up, and no complicated apparatus that might
cause you to suspect an ordinary conjuring trick. There were
certainly strange looking boxes with hinged lids arranged on a
ledge along one side of the chamber, but those were only brought
into play when the funny little ex-fat man selected a lump of
metal from them. On another ledge on the opposite side of the
cell there were about a hundred rolls of very ancient-looking
manuscripts, but he did not make use of them in any way.
The floor was bare, smooth rock; there was nothing on it, not
even a mat. He laid a plain piece of wood on the floor and
motioned us to be seated in front of it; so we squatted in a line
with our backs to the door, King taking his place between the
Mahatma and me. There was no hocus-pocus or flummery; the whole
proceeding was as simple as playing dominoes.
Our host went to one of the peculiar looking boxes and
selected a lump of what looked like lead. It was a small piece,
about the size of an ordinary loaf of sugar and had no particular
marks on it, except that it looked as if it might have been cut
from a larger piece with shears or some such instrument. He
dropped in into the middle of the slab of wood, and squatted in
front of it, facing us, to watch.
I daresay it took twenty minutes for that lump of lead to
change into what looked like gold before our eyes. It began by
sizzling, and melting in little pits and spots, but never once
did the whole lump melt.
The tiny portions that melted and liquefied became full of
motion, although the motion was never in one place for more than
about a minute at a time; and wherever the motion had been the
lump lost bulk, so that gradually the whole piece shrank and
shrank. At the end it was not in its original shape, but had
taken the form of a miniature cow's dropping.
I suppose it was hot. Our host waited several minutes before
picking it off the slab.
At last he took the nugget off the slab and tossed it to King.
King handed it to me. It was still warm and it looked and felt
like gold. I laid it back on the slab.
"Do you understand it?" asked the Gray Mahatma.
CHAPTER VI. — THE FIRE-BATHERS
OUR little wrinkly-skinned host did the honors
as far as the door, and I thanked him for the demonstration; but
the Gray Mahatma seemed displeased with that and ignoring me as
usual, turned on King in the doorway almost savagely.
"Do you understand that whoever can do what you have just seen
can also accomplish the reverse of it, and transmute gold into
baser metal?" he demanded. "Does it occur to you what that would
mean? A new species of warfare! One combination of ambitious
fools making gold — another unmaking it. Chaos! Now you
shall see another science that is no fit pabulum for fools."
We came to a door on our right. It was opened instantly by a
lean, mean-looking ascetic, whose hooked nose suggested an
infernal brand of contempt for whoever might not agree with him.
Just as the others had done, he met the Gray Mahatma's eyes in
silence, and admitted us by simply turning his back. But this
door only opened into another passage, and we had to follow him
for fifty feet and then through another door into a cavern that
was bigger than any. And this time our host was not alone. We
were expected by a dozen lean, bronze men, who squatted in a row
on one mat with expressionless faces. They were not wearing
masks, but they looked as if they might have been.
This last cavern was certainly a blow-hole. Its round roof,
blackened with smoke, was like the underside of a cathedral dome.
No effort seemed to have been made to trim the walls, and the
floor, too, had been left as nature made it, shaped something
like a hollow dish by the pressure of expanding gases millions of
years ago when the rock was molten.
The very center of the vast floor was the lowest point of all,
and some work had been done there, for it was shaped into a
rectangular trough thirty feet long by ten wide. That trough
— there was no guessing how deep it might be — was
filled almost to the brim with white-hot charcoal, so that
obviously there was a means of forcing a draft into it from
underneath.
"Now," said the Mahatma, turning to King as usual and ignoring
me, "your friend may submit to the test if he wishes. He may walk
on that furnace. He shall walk unscathed. I promise it."
King turned to me.
"What d'you say?" he asked. "I've seen this done before.* It
can be done. Shall we try it together?"
[* See the newspaper accounts of fire-walking
in the presence of the Prince of Wales and about a thousand
witnesses mostly European. Author's footnote. ]
I did not hesitate. There are times when even such a slow
thinker as I am can make up his mind in a flash. I said "No" with
such emphasis that King laughed. The Mahatma looked at me rather
pityingly, but made no comment. He invited the two of us to sit
down, so we squatted on the floor as close to the trough as we
could go without being scorched. There were no screens or
obstructions of any kind, and the only appliance in evidence was
an iron paddle, which the man who had admitted us picked up off
the floor.
He took that paddle, and without any preliminary fuss or
hesitation walked straight on to the bed of white-hot charcoal,
beginning at one end, and smoothed the whole glowing surface with
the paddle, taking his time about it and working with as little
excitement as a gardener using a rake. When he had finished the
end of the paddle was better than red-hot — a good cherry-
red.
The hairs on his legs were unscorched. The cotton cloth of
which his kilt was made showed not the slightest trace of
burning.
As soon as he had sat down the other twelve advanced toward
the fire. Unlike him, they were stark naked. One by one they
walked into the fire and traversed it from end to end with no
more sign of nervousness than if they had been utterly
unconscious of its existence. Then they turned around and walked
back again.
"Is it the men or the fire?" King demanded.
"Neither," the Mahatma answered. "It is simply knowledge. Any
one can do it, who knows how."
One of the men approached the fire again. He sat down on it,
and went through the motions of bathing himself in the white-hot
flame, turning his head repeatedly to grin at us. Then, lying
down full-length, he rolled from end to end of the furnace, and
walked away at last as casually as if he had come out of a bath.
It was perfectly astonishing stuff to watch.
"If this isn't superstition, or mesmerism, or deception of
some kind, why do you insist on all this mummery of soot and
ashes for my friend and me?" King demanded. "Why do you use a
temple full of Hindu idols to conceal your science, if it is a
natural science and not trickery?"
The Gray Mahatma smiled tolerantly.
"Can you suggest a better way of keeping the secret?" he
answered. "We are protected by the superstition. Not even the
Government of India would dare arouse the superstitious wrath of
a people by inquiring too closely into what goes on beneath a
temple. If we were to admit that what we know is science, just as
wireless telegraphy is a science, we would not be safe for an
hour; the military, the kings of commerce, the merely curious,
and all the enemies of mankind would invent ten thousand excuses
of investigating us."
"Where did you learn English?" King demanded.
"I am a Ph.D. of Johns Hopkins," the Gray Mahatma answered. "I
have traveled all over the United States seeking for one man who
might be trusted with the rudiments of our science. But I found
none."
"Suppose you had found the wrong man — and trusted him?"
King suggested.
"My friend," said the Gray Mahatma, "you are better known to
us than we to you. You are a man incapable of treachery. You love
India, and all your life you have striven to act always and in
all things like a man. You have been watched for years. Your
character has been studied. If our purpose had been to conquer
the world, or to destroy the world, we would never have selected
you. There is no need to speak to you of what would happen if you
should commit treachery. There is no risk of your explaining the
secret of our science to the wrong individual, for you are not
going to be taught it."
"Well, what of my friend Ramsden?" King asked him.
"Your friend Mr. Ramsden, I think, will never again see the
United States."
"Why?"
"He has seen too much for his own good. He lacks your
mentality. He has bravery of a kind, and honesty of a kind; but
he is — not — the right — man — for
— our — purpose. He made a mistake when he came with
you."
King looked straight into the eyes of the Gray Mahatma.
"You think you know me?" he asked.
"I know you better than you know yourself!"
"That's possible," said King. "Do you suppose I would tell you
the truth?"
"I know it. I am sure of it. You have too much integrity to
deal in lies."
"Very well," King answered quietly, "it's both of us or
neither. Either we both go free, or you do your worst to us both.
This man is my friend."
The Gray Mahatma smiled, and thought, and smiled, and looked
at King, and then away again.
"It would be a pity to destroy yourself," he said at last.
"Nevertheless, you are the only chance your friend has. I have no
enmity against him; he is merely unsuitable; he will be the
victim of his own shortcomings, unless you can rescue him. But if
you make the attempt and fail, I am afraid, my friend, that that
will be the end of both of you."
It was rather like listening to your own autopsy! I confess
that I began again to feel horribly afraid, although not so much
so that I cared to force King into danger on my account, and once
more I made my mind up swiftly. I reached out to seize the Gray
Mahatma by the throat. But King struck my hand up.
"We're two to their many," he said sternly. "Keep your hair
on!"
The Mahatma smiled and nodded.
"A second time you have done well," he exclaimed. "If you can
keep the buffalo from blundering — but we waste time.
Come."
King put his hands on my shoulders, and we lock-stepped out of
the cavern behind the Mahatma, looking, I don't doubt, supremely
ridiculous, and I for one feeling furiously helpless.
We entered another cave, whose dome looked like an absolutely
perfect hemisphere, but the whole place was so full of noise that
your brain reeled in confusion. There were ten men in there,
naked to the waist as all the rest had been, and every single one
of them had the intelligent look of an alert bird with its head
to one side. They were sitting on mats on the floor in no
apparent order, and each man had a row of tuning forks in front
of him, pretty much like any other tuning forks, except that
there were eight of them to each note and its subdivisions.
Every few minutes one of them would select a fork, strike it,
and listen; then he would get up, dragging his mat after him with
all the forks arranged on it, and sit down somewhere else. But
the tuning forks were not the cause of the din. It was the roar
of a great city that was echoing under the dome — clatter
of traffic and men's voices, whistling of the wind through
overhead wires, dogs' barking, an occasional bell, at intervals
the whistle of a locomotive and the rumble and bump of a railroad
train, whirring of dynamos, the clash and thump of trolley cars,
street-hawkers' cries, and the sound of sea-waves breaking on the
shore.
"You hear Bombay," said the Mahatma. Then we all sat down in
line.
It was actual physical torture until you were used to it, and
I doubt whether you could get used to it without somebody to
educate you — some scientist to show you how to defend your
nerves against that outrageous racket. For the sounds were all
out of adjustment and proportion. Nothing was in key. It was as
if the laws of acoustics had been lifted, and sound had gone
crazy.
At one moment, apropos of nothing and disconnected from all
other sounds, you could hear a man or a woman speaking as
distinctly as if the individual were up there under the dome;
then a chaos of off-key notes would swallow the voice, and the
next might be a dog's bark or a locomotive whistle. The only
continuously recognizable sounds were a power station and the
thunder of waves along the harbor front, and it sounded much more
thunderous than it should have done at that season of the
year.
The tuning of an orchestra does not nearly approximate the
confusion; for the members of the orchestra are all trying to
find one pitch and are gradually hitting it, whereas every sound
within that cavern seemed to be pitched and keyed
differently.
"This is our latest," said the Mahatma. "It is only for two or
three hundred years that we have been studying this phenomenon.
It may possibly take us two or three hundred years more before we
can control it."
I wanted to ask questions, but could not because the cursed
inharmony made my senses reel. Nevertheless, you could hear other
sounds perfectly. When I struck my hand on the rock floor I could
hear the slap at least as distinctly as normal; possibly a little
more so. And when the Gray Mahatma spoke, each word was separate
and sharp.
"Now you shall hear another city," he said. "Observe that the
voices of cities are as various as men's. No two are alike. Sound
and color are one and the same thing differently expressed, and
the graduations of both are infinite."
He caught the eye of one of the men.
"Calcutta!" he said, in a voice not exactly of command, yet
certainly not of deference.
Without acknowledging the order in any other way, the man got
on his knees and picked up an enormous tuning fork, whose prongs
were about three feet long, and he made some adjustment in the
fork of it that took about five minutes. He might have been
turning the screw of a micrometer; I could not see. Then, raising
the fork above his shoulder, he struck the floor with it, and a
master-note as clear as the peal of a bell went ringing up into
the dome.
The effect was almost ridiculous. It made you want to laugh.
Everybody in the cavern smiled, and I daresay if the truth were
known we had discovered the mother-lode of comedy. That one note
chased all the others out of the dome as a dog might chase sheep
— as the wind blows clouds away — as a cop drives
small boys off the grass. They actually scampered out of hearing,
and you couldn't imagine them hiding close by, either; they were
gone for good, and that one, clear master-note — the middle
F — went vibrating around and around, as if scouring out
the very smell of what had been there.
"That is the key-note of all nature," said the Mahatma. "All
sounds, all colors, all thoughts, all vibrations center in that
note. It is the key that can unlock them all."
The silence that followed when the last ringing overtone had
gone off galloping in its stride toward infinity was the most
absolute and awful silence I have ever had to listen to. The very
possibility of sound seemed to have ceased to exist. You could
not believe that there could be sound, nor remember what sound
was like. A whole sense and its functions had been taken from
you, and the resultant void was dead — so dead that no
sense could live in it, unless fear is a sense. You could feel
horribly afraid, and I'll tell you what the fear amounted to:
There was a feeling that these men were fooling with the force
that runs the universe, and that the next stroke might be a
mistake that would result like the touching of two high-tension
wires, multiplied to the nth. You could not resist the
suggestion that the world might burst in fragments at any
minute.
Meanwhile the fellow with the tuning fork fiddled again with
some adjustment on the thick portion of its stem, and presently
whirling it around his head as the old-time warriors used two-
handed swords, he brought it down on one of a circle of small
anvils that were arranged around him like the figures on a clock-
face.
You could almost see Calcutta instantly! The miracle was the
reverse of the preceding one. The ringing, subdivided, sharp,
discordant note he struck was swallowed instantly in a sea of
noise that seemed not only to have color but even smell to it;
you could smell Calcutta! But that, of course, was mere
suggestion — a trick of the senses of the sort that makes
your mouth water when you see another fellow suck a lemon.
You could even hear the crows that sit on the trees in the
park and caw at passers-by. You could hear the organ in a
Christian church, and the snarl of a pious Moslem reading from
the Koran. There was the click of ponies' hoofs, the whirring and
honk of motor-cars, the sucking of Hoogli River, booming of a
steamer-whistle, roars of trains, and the peculiar clamor of
Calcutta's swarms that I can never hear without thinking of a
cobra with its hood just ready to raise.
In the sea of noises in the dome one instantly stood out
— the voice of a man speaking English with a slightly babu
accent. For exactly as long as the reverberations of those two
tuning forks lasted, you could hear him declaiming, and then his
voice faded away into the ocean of noise like a rock that has
shown for a moment above the surface of a maelstrom.
"That is a member of the legislature, where ignorant men in
all-night session make laws for fools to break," said the Gray
Mahatma.
Signing to King and me to remain seated, he himself crossed
the floor to where the master-tuner sat, and squatting down
beside him began picking up tuning forks and striking one against
the other. Each time he did that some city sound or other
distinguished itself for a moment, exactly as the theme appears
in music; only some of the vibrations seemed to jar against
others instead of blending with them, and when that happened the
effect was intensely disagreeable.
At last he struck a combination that made me jump as
effectually as sudden tooth-ache. Some of the other sounds had
affected King more, but that particular one passed him by and
tortured me. Watching with his head a little to one side the Gray
Mahatma instantly began striking those two forks as rapidly as if
he were clapping hands, increasing the vehemence with each
stroke.
If I had stayed there I would have been stark mad or dead
within five minutes. I felt as if I were being vibrated asunder
— as if my whole body were resolving into its component
parts. I lay on the floor with my head in both hands, and I
daresay yelled with agony, but I don't know about that.
At any rate King understood and acted instantly. He seized me
under the arms and dragged me face-downward to the door, where he
had to drop me in order to find how to open the thing. Having
accomplished that, he dragged me through into the passage, where
the agony ceased as instantly as the ache does when a dentist
pulls an abscessed tooth. No one sound reached us through the
open door. However immature that particular branch of their
science might be, they had learned the way of absolutely
localizing noise.
The Gray Mahatma came out smiling, and ignoring me as if I was
not there.
He opened another door, not requiring to knock this time, and
led the way along another passage that wound through solid rock
for what can hardly have been less than a quarter of a mile.
King had dragged me out of that dome of dins in the nick of
time, and my head was recovering rapidly. By the time we reached
a door at the end of that long passage I could think clearly, and
although too weak to stand upright without holding on to
something, was sufficiently recovered to know that the remainder
would be only a matter of minutes. And we spent three or four of
the minutes waiting for the door to open, which it did at last
suddenly.
A man appeared in the opening, whose absolutely white hair
reached below his shoulder-blades, and whose equally white beard
descended to his middle. He wore the usual loin-cloth, but was
usual in nothing else. He looked older than Methuselah, yet
strong, for his muscles stood out like knotted whip-cords; and
active, for he stood on the balls of his feet with the immobility
that only comes of ableness. The most unusual thing of all was
that he spoke. He said several words in Sanskrit to the Gray
Mahatma, before turning his back on us and leading the way
in.
CHAPTER VII. — MAGIC
WE went into a cavern whose floor was cup-
shaped. Nearly all the way around the rim of the cup was an
irregular ledge averaging twenty feet in width; with that
exception, the whole interior was shaped like an enormous egg
with its narrow end upward. The bottom was nowhere less than a
hundred feet across, and was reached by steps cut irregularly
downward from the rim.
At intervals around the ledge were seated about a score of
men, some solitary, some in groups of three; some were naked,
others wore loin-cloths; all were silent, but they all took an
obvious interest in us, and some of them were grinning. A few of
them squatted, with their legs tucked under them, but most of
them let their legs hang over the edge, and they all had an air
of perfect familiarity with the surroundings as well as what can
be best described as a "team look." You see the same air of
careless competence around a well-managed circus lot.
King and I followed the Gray Mahatma down into the bowl, and
under his directions seated ourselves exactly in the middle, King
and I back to back and the Mahatma a little way from us and also
with his back turned. In that position my back was toward the
door we had entered by, but I was able to see nine narrow
openings in the opposite wall about twenty feet higher than the
ledge, and those openings may have had something to do with what
followed, although I can't prove it.
Old gray-beard, who had admitted us, stood on the ledge like a
picture of St. Simon Stylites, folding his arms under his flowing
beard and looking almost ready to plunge downward, as if the bowl
were a swimming tank.
However, he suddenly filled his great scrawny breast with air
and boomed out one word. The golden light ceased to exist. There
was no period of going, as there is even with electric light. He
spoke, and it was not. Nothing whatever was visible. I held a
finger up, and poked my eye before I knew it.
Then all at once there began the most delicious music, like
Ariel singing in mid-air. It was subdued, but as clear as the
ripple of a mountain stream over pebbles, and there was
absolutely no locating it, for it seemed to come from everywhere
at once, even from underneath us. And simultaneously with the
music there began to be a dim light, which was all the more
impossible to locate because it was never the same color in two
places, nor even in one place for longer than a note of music
lasted.
"Observe!" boomed the Gray Mahatma's solemn voice. "Color and
sound are one. Both are vibration. You shall behold the color
harmonies."
Presently the connection between sound and color began to be
obvious. Each note had its color, and as that note was sounded
the color appeared in a thousand places.
It was Eastern music. It filled the cavern, and as the pulse
of it quickened the light danced, colors shooting this and that
way like shuttles weaving a new sky. But there were no drum-beats
yet, and the general effect was rather of dreaminess.
When the old gray-beard's voice boomed out at last from the
ledge above us, and light and music ceased simultaneously, the
effect was nauseating. It went to the pit of your stomach. The
instantaneous darkness produced vertigo. You felt as if you were
falling down an endless pit, and King and I clutched each other.
The mere fact that we were squatting on a hard floor did not help
matters, for the floor seemed to be falling too and to be turning
around bewilderingly, just as the whorls of colored light had
done. The gray-beard's voice boomed again; whereat there was more
music, and light in tune to it.
This time, of all unexpected things, Beethoven's Overture to
Leonore began to take visible form in the night, and I would
rather be able to set down what we saw than write Homer's Iliad!
It must be that we knew then all that Beethoven did. It was not
just wind music, or mere strings, but a whole, full-volumed
orchestra — where or whence there was no guessing; the
music came at you from everywhere at once, and with it light,
interpreting the music.
To me that has always been the most wonderful overture in the
world anyhow, for it seems to describe creation when the worlds
took form in the void; but with that light, each tone and semi-
tone and chord and harmony expressed in the absolutely pure color
that belonged to it, it was utterly beyond the scope of words. It
was a new unearthly language, more like a glimpse of the next
world than anything in this.
The combination of color and music was having a highly
desirable effect on me. Nothing could have done more to
counteract the effects of the godless din that bowled me over in
the other cavern.
But King was having a rotten time. He was heaving now as he
tried to master himself. I heard him exclaiming —
"Oh my God!" as if the physical torture were unbearable.
The Gray Mahatma was not troubling about King. He had shifted
his position so as to watch me, and he seemed to expect me to
collapse. So I showed as little as possible of my real feelings,
and shut my eyes at intervals as if bewildered. Then he cried out
just as the gray-beard on the ledge had done.
The overture to Leonore ceased. The colors gave place to the
restful golden light. King had not collapsed yet, and his usual
Spartan self-mastery prevented him then from betraying much in
the way of symptoms. So I clutched my head and tried to look all-
in, which gave me a chance to whisper to King under my arm.
"Can you hang on?"
"Dunno. How are you doing?"
"Fine."
The Gray Mahatma seemed to think that I was appealing to King
for help. He looked delighted. Between my fingers I could see him
signaling to the gray-beard on the ledge. The golden light
vanished again. And now once more they gave us Eastern music,
awful stuff, pulsating with a distant drumbeat like the tramp of
an army of devils. The colors were angry and glowering now. The
shapes they took as they plaited and wove themselves into one
another were all involuted, everything turning itself inside out,
and the end of every separate movement was blood-red.
King groaned aloud and rolled over on his side, just as the
stuff became so dim and dreadful that you could hardly see your
hand before your face, and a noise like the rushing of the wind
between the worlds made every inch of your skin prickly with
goose-flesh. Low though the colors were, when you shut your eyes
you could still see them, but I could not see the Gray Mahatma,
and I was sure he could not see me. He would not know which of us
was down and out.
So I seized King and dragged him across the floor to the point
where the irregular stone steps provided the only way of escape.
There I hove him like a sack on to my shoulders. In that drunken,
throbbing twilight it would have been easy for some of the gray-
beard's crew to lean from the ledge and send me reeling back
again; the best chance was to climb quickly before they were
aware of me.
When I reached the ledge it was deserted. There was nothing
whatever to indicate where the gray-beard and his crew were. I
could not remember exactly the direction of the entrance, but
made for the wall, intending to feel my way along it; and just as
I started to do that I heard the Gray Mahatma climbing up behind
me.
He made hardly more noise than a cat. But though the Mahatma
was stealthy, he came swiftly, and in a moment I felt his hand
touch me. That was exactly at the moment when the music and
colors were subdued to a sort of hell-brew twilight — the
kind of glow you might expect before the overwhelming of the
world.
"You are as strong as the buffalo himself," he said, mistaking
me for King. "Leave that fool here, and come with me."
My right hand was free, but the Gray Mahatma had plenty of
assistance at his beck and call.
So I put my hand in the small of his back and shoved him along
in front of me. If he should learn too soon that King, and not I,
was down and out he might decide to have done with us both there
and then. My task was to get out of that cavern before the golden
light came on again.
The Gray Mahatma led the way to the door, and it was just as
well that he did, for there was some secret way of opening it
that I should almost certainly have failed to find. I pushed him
through ahead of me.
And then we were in pitch darkness. There was neither light,
nor room to turn, and nothing for it but for the Mahatma to lead
the way along, and I had to be careful in carrying King not to
injure him against the rock in the places where the passage
narrowed.
However, he began to recover gradually as we neared the end of
the long passage, regaining consciousness by fits and starts like
a man coming out of anesthesia, and commencing to kick so that I
had hard work to preserve him from injury. When his feet were not
striking out against the walls his head was, and I finally shook
him violently. That had the desired effect. It was just as if
fumes had gone out of his head. His body grew warmer almost in a
moment, and I felt him break out into a sweat. Then he groaned,
and asked me where we were; and a moment later he seemed to
understand what was happening, for he struggled to free
himself.
"All right," he whispered. "Let me walk."
So I let him slip down to his feet in front of me, and holding
him beneath the armpits repeated our lock-step trick with
positions reversed; and when we reached the outer door that gave
on to the narrow main passage he was going fairly strong. The
Mahatma opened the door and stepped out into the light; but it
was the strange peculiarity of that light that it did not flow
beyond its appointed boundaries, and we continued to be in
darkness as long as we did not follow him through the door.
So when King stepped out ahead of me, the Mahatma had no means
of knowing what a mistake he had been making all along. He
naturally jumped to the conclusion that King had been carrying
me.
When I stepped out of the pitch blackness he looked more than
a little surprised at my appearance, and I grinned back at him as
sheepishly as I could manage, hoping he would not see the red
patch on my shoulder caused by the pressure of King's weight, or
the scratches made by King's fingernails when he was beginning to
recover consciousness. Nevertheless, he did see, and
understood.
"Lead on, MacDuff!" I said in plain English, and perhaps he
did not dislike me so immensely after all, for he smiled as he
turned his back to lead the way.
We passed, without meeting anybody, out through the narrow
door where the first tall speechless showman had admitted us,
into the cave where the lingam reposed on its stone altar; and
there the Mahatma resumed the lantern he had left.
When we climbed the oval stairway and emerged on the platform
under the cupola the dawn was just about to break. The Gray
Mahatma raised the stone lid with an ease that betrayed
unsuspected strength and dropped it into place, where it fitted
so exactly that no one ignorant of the secret would ever have
guessed the existence of a hidden stairway.
Swinging his lantern the Mahatma led into the temple, where
the enormous idols loomed in quivering shadow, and made straight
for the biggest one of all — the four-headed one that faced
the marble screen. I thought he was going to bow down and worship
it. He actually did go down on hands and knees, and I turned to
King in amazement, thus missing my chance to see what he was
really up to.
So I don't know how he managed it; but suddenly the whole
lower part of the idol, including the thighs, swung outward and
disclosed a dark passage, into which he led us, and the stone
swung back into place at our backs as if balanced by weights.
At the far end the Mahatma led into a square-mouthed tunnel,
darker if that were possible than the vaulted gloom we had left,
and as we entered in single file I thought I heard the splashing
of water underneath.
About a minute after that the Mahatma stopped and let King
draw abreast; then, continuing to swing the lantern he started
forward again. I don't know whether it was fear, intuition, or
just curiosity that made me wonder why he should change the
formation in that way, but quite absurdly I deduced that he
wished King to walk into a trap. It was that that saved me.
"Look out, King!" I warned.
Exactly as I spoke I set my foot on a yielding stone trap-door
— felt a blast of cool air — and heard water
unmistakably. The air brought a stagnant smell with it. I slid
forward and downward, but sprang simultaneously, managing to get
my fingers on the edge of the stone in front. But the balanced
trap-door, resuming its equilibrium, caught me on the back of the
head, half-stunning me, and in another second I would have gone
down into the dark among the alligators. I just had enough
consciousness left to realize that I was hanging over the covered
end of the alligator tank.
But the faint outer circle of light cast by the Mahatma's
lantern just reached me, and as King turned his head to
acknowledge my warning he saw me fall. He sprang back, and seized
my wrists, just as my fingers began slipping on the smooth stone;
but my weight was almost too much for him, and I came so near to
dragging him through after me that the stone trap got past my
head and jammed against my elbows.
Then I heard King yelling for the Mahatma to bring the lantern
back, and after what seemed an interminable interval the Mahatma
came and set one foot on the stone, so that it swung past my head
again, nearly braining me in its descent. I don't know whether he
intended that or not.
"There is more in this than accident," he said, his voice
booming hollow as he bent to let the light fall on me. "Very
well; pull up your buffalo, and you shall have him!"
It was no easy task for the two of them to haul me up, because
the moment the Mahatma removed his foot from the lid of the trap
the thing swung upward and acted like the tongue of a buckle to
keep me from coming through. When he set his foot on it again,
the other foot did not give him sufficient purchase. Finally King
managed to pull his loin-cloth off and pass it around under my
armpits, after which the two together hauled me clear, minus in
the aggregate about a half square foot of skin that I left on the
edge of the stone.
Off the Mahatma went alone again, swinging his lantern, and
apparently at peace with himself and the whole universe.
Thereafter, King and I walked arm-in-arm, thinking in that way
to lessen the risk of further pitfalls. But there was no more.
The Mahatma reached at last what looked like a blind stone wall
at the end of the tunnel; but there was a flagstone missing from
the floor in front of it, and he disappeared down a black-dark
flight of steps.
We followed him into a cellar, whose walls wept moisture, but
we saw no cobras; and then up another flight of steps on the far
side into a chamber that I thought I recognized. He disappeared
through a door in the corner of that, and by the time we had
groped our way after him he was sitting in the old black
panther's cage with the brute's head in his lap, stroking and
twisting its ears as if it were a kitten. The cage door was wide
open, and the day was already growing hot and brassy in the
east.
King and I hurried out of the cage, for the panther showed his
fangs at us; the Mahatma followed us out and snapped the door
shut. Instantly the panther sprang at us, trying to bend the bars
together. Failing in that, he lay close and shoved his whole
shoulder through, clawing at us. It was hardly any wonder that
that secret, yet so simply discoverable door between Yasmini's
palace and the temple-caverns was unknown.
We swung along through the great bronze gate and into the
courtyard where the shrubs all stood reflected along with the
marble stairway in a square pool. We plunged right in without as
much as hesitating on the brink, dragging the Mahatma with us
— not that he made the least objection. He laughed, and
seemed to regard it as thoroughly good fun.
We splashed and fooled for a few minutes, standing neck-deep
and kicking at an occasional fish as it darted by, stirring up
mud with our toes until the water was so cloudy that we could see
the fish no longer. Then King thought of clothes. He stood on
tiptoe and shouted.
"Ismail! O — Ismail!"
Ismail came, like a yellow-fanged wolf, bowed to the Mahatma
as if nakedness and royalty were one, and stood eyeing the water
curiously.
"Get us garments!" King ordered testily.
"I was not staring at thee, little King sahib," he
answered. "I was marveling!"
But he went off without explaining what he had been marveling
at, and we went on with our ablutions, the job of getting ashes
out of your hair not being quite so easy as it might appear. I
daresay it was fifteen minutes before Ismail came back carrying
two complete native costumes for King and me, and a long saffron
robe for the Mahatma. Then we came out of the water and the Gray
Mahatma smiled.
"I said there were no more traps, and it seems I spoke the
truth," he said wonderingly. "Moreover, I did not set this trap,
but it was you yourselves who led me into it."
"Which trap?" we demanded with one voice.
"You have stirred the mud, my friends, to a condition in which
the mugger who lives in that pool is not visible. But the
mugger is there, and I don't know why he did not seize one
of you!"
In the center of the pool there was a rockery, for the benefit
of plant-roots and breeding fish. I walked around it to look, and
there, sure enough, lay a brute about twenty feet long, snoozing
with his chin on a corner of the rock. I picked up a pole to prod
him and he snapped and broke it, coming close to the edge to
clatter his jaws at me. Prodding him a last time, I turned round
to look for the Mahatma. He had vanished — gone as utterly
and silently as a myth. King had not seen him go. We inquired of
Ismail. He laughed.
"There is only one place to go — here," he answered.
"To the Princess?"
"There is nowhere else! Who shall disobey her? I have orders
to unloose the panther if the sahibs take any other way
than straight into her presence!"
CHAPTER VIII. — THE RIVER OF DEATH
DRESSED now in the Punjabi costume with gorgeous
silk turbans, we walked side by side up the marble steps and
knocked on the brass-bound, teak front door at the top. Exactly
as when we arrived on the previous day, the door was immediately
opened by two women.
The Mahatma was in there ahead of us, and had evidently told
Yasmini sufficient of our adventures to make her laugh. She
squealed with delight at sight of us.
"Come! Sit beside me in the window, both of you! My women will
bring food. Afterward you shall sleep — poor things, you
look as if you need it! O, what is that, Ganesha-ji? Blood on
your linen? Were you hurt?"
Her swift, restless fingers drew the cloth aside and showed a
few inches of where my bare skin should have been.
"It is nothing. My women shall dress it. They have oils that
will cause the skin to grow again within a week. A week is
nothing; you and Athelstan will be here longer than a week! And
you crossed the Pool of Terrors? I have crossed that too! we
three are initiates now!"
"Ye are three who will die unless discretion is the very law
ye live by!" said the Gray Mahatma. He seemed annoyed about
something.
"Old Dust-and-ashes!" laughed Yasmini, snapping her fingers at
him. "Hah!" She laughed delightedly. "They have seen enough to
make them believe what I shall tell them!"
"Woman, you woo your own destruction. None has ever set out to
betray that secret and survived the first offense!" he
answered.
"It was you who betrayed it to me," she said,
with another golden laugh. Then, turning to King again:
"I have sought for that secret day and night! India has always
known of its existence; and in every generation some have fought
their way in through the outer mysteries to the knowledge within.
But those who enter always become initiates, and keep the secret.
I was puzzled how to begin, until I heard how, in England, a
woman once overheard the secrets of Freemasonry, and was made a
Freemason in consequence.
"Now behold this man they call the Gray Mahatma! He does as I
tell him! You must know that these Knowers of Royal Knowledge, as
they call themselves, are not the little birds in one nest that
they would like to be; they quarrel among themselves, and there
is a rival faction that knows only street-corner magic, but is
more deadly bent on knowing Royal Knowledge than a wolf is
determined to get lamb."
The Gray Mahatma saw fit to challenge some of that
statement.
"It is true, that there are wolves who seek to break in," he
said quietly, "but it is false that there are quarrels among
ourselves."
"Hah!" That little laugh of hers was like the exclamation of a
fellow who has got home with his rapier point.
"Quarrels or not," she answered, "there is a faction that was
more than willing to use the ancient passage under my palace
grounds, and to hold secret meetings in a room that I made ready
for them."
"Faction!" The Gray Mahatma sneered. "Faithful seniors
determined to expel unfaithful upstarts are not a faction!"
"At any rate," she chuckled, "they wished to hold a meeting
unbeknown to the others, and they wished to make wonderful
preparations for not being overheard. And I helped them —
is that not so, Mahatma-ji? You see, they were scornful of women
— then."
"Peace, woman!" the Mahatma growled. "Does a bee sting while
it gathers honey? You spied on our secrets, but did we harm you
for it?"
"You did not dare!" she retorted. "If I had been alone, you
would have destroyed me along with those unfortunates on whose
account you held the meeting. It would have been easy to throw me
to the mugger. But you did not know how many women had
overheard your secrets! You only knew, that more than one had,
and that at least ten women witnessed the fate of your victims.
Is that not so?"
"Victims is the wrong word. Call them culprits!" said the Gray
Mahatma.
"What would the Government call them?" she retorted.
The Gray Mahatma curled his lip, but made no answer to that.
Yasmini turned to King.
"So I knew enough of their secrets to oblige them either to
kill me or else teach me all. And they did not dare kill me,
because they could not kill all my women too, for fear of
Government. So first they took me through that ordeal that you
went through last night. And ever since then I have been trying
to learn; but this science of theirs is difficult, and I suspect
them of increasing the difficulty for my benefit. Nevertheless, I
have mastered some of it."
"You have mastered none of it!" the Gray Mahatma retorted
discourteously. "The golden light is the first step. Show me
some."
"They thought they were being too clever for me," she went on.
"They listened to my suggestion that it might be wise to show
Athelstan King the mysteries, and send him to America to prepare
the way for what is coming. So we set a trap for Athelstan. And
Athelstan brought Ganesha with him. So now I have two men who
know the secret, in addition to myself and all my women. And I
have one man who has skill enough to learn the secret, now
that he knows ofit. Perhaps both men can learn it, and I
know full well that one can."
"And then?" King suggested.
"You shall conquer the world!" she answered.
King smiled and said nothing.
"I am uncertain yet whether or not I shall choose to be queen
of the earth!" she said. "Sometimes I think it would be fun for
you and me to be absolute king and queen of everywhere. Sometimes
I think it will be better to make some stupid person — say
Ganesha here, for instance — king, and for ourselves to be
the power behind the throne. What do youthink,
Athelstan?"
"I think," he answered.
"And you observe that the Gray Mahatma likewise thinks!" said
she. "He thinks what he can do to thwart us! But I am not afraid!
Oh dear no, Mahatma-ji, I am not at all fearful! Your secret is
not worth ten seconds' purchase unless it is of use to me!"
"Woman, is your word worth nothing?" asked the Gray Mahatma.
"You can not use what you know and keep the secret too. Let those
two men escape, and the secret will be blown to the winds within
the hour."
She laughed outright at him.
"They shall not escape, old raven-in-a-robe!"
Just then some of her women brought a table in, and spread it
with fruit-laden dishes at the far end of the room. Yasmini rose
to see whether all was as she wished it, and I got a chance, not
only to look through the curtains, but also to whisper to King.
He shook his head in reply to my question.
"Could you manage for two, do you think?" he asked; and by
that I knew him for a vastly more than usually brave man.
Consenting to what you know is sure to destroy you, if the other
fellow fails, calls for courage.
"Makes a two to one chance of it," I answered.
"Very well, it's a bet. Give your orders!" said King.
The Mahatma sat rigid in mid-room with closed eyes, as if
praying. His hands were crossed on his breast, and his legs
twisted into a nearly unimaginable knot. He looked almost
comatose.
The shutters and the glass windows were open wide to admit the
morning breeze. Nothing was between us and freedom but the
fluttering silk curtains and a drop of about seventy feet into an
unknown river.
"Hold my hand," I said, "and jump your limit outward!"
The Gray Mahatma opened one eye and divined our intention.
"Mad!" he exclaimed. "So then that is the end of them!"
He believed what he said, for he sat still. But Yasmini came
running, screaming to her women to prevent us.
King and I took off together, hand-in-hand, and I take my
Bible oath that I looked up, and saw Yasmini and the Gray Mahatma
leaning out of the window to watch us drown!
Of course, seventy feet is nothing much — provided you
are used to the take-off, and know the water, and have a boat
waiting handy to pick you up. But we had none of these
advantages, and in addition to that we had the grievous handicap
that King could not swim a stroke.
We took the water feet-first, close together, and that very
instant I knew what we were up against. As we plunged under, we
were whirled against a sunken pole that whipped and swayed in the
current. King was wrenched away from me. When I fought my way to
the surface I was already a hundred yards beyond the palace wall,
and there was no sign of King, although I could see his turban
pursuing mine down-stream. We were caught in the strongest
current I had ever striven with.
I don't know what persuaded me to turn and try to swim against
it for a moment. Instinct, I suppose. It was utterly impossible;
I was swept along backward almost as fast as I had been traveling
before. But what the effort did do was to bring me face-up-
stream, and so I caught sight of King clinging to a pole and
being bobbed under every time the weight of water caused the pole
to duck. I managed to cling to a pole myself, although like King
it ducked me repeatedly, and it was perfectly evident that
neither of us would be alive in the next ten minutes unless a
boat should come or I should produce enough brawn and brain for
two of us. And there was no boat in sight.
So between ducks I yelled to King to let go and drift down
toward me. He did it; and that, I believe, is the utmost test of
cold courage to which I have ever seen any man subjected; for
even a strong swimmer becomes panic-stricken when he learns he is
no longer master of his element. King had the self-control and
pluck to lie still and drift down on me like a corpse, and I let
go the pole in the nick of time to seize him as his head went
under.
Followed a battle royal. Fight how I might, I could not keep
both of our heads out of the water more than half the time, and
King very soon lost the little breath that was left in him.
Thereafter, he struggled a bit, but that did not last long, and
presently he became unconscious. I believed he was dead.
The choice then seemed to lie between drowning too or letting
go of him. I did not dare try the shallows, for ninety per cent.
of them are quicksands in that river, and more than one army has
perished in the effort to force its way across. The only possible
safety lay in keeping to mid-stream and sweeping along with the
current until something should turn up — a boat — a
log — possibly a backwater, or even the breakwater of a
bridge.
So I decided to drown, and to annoy the angels of the
underworld by taking as long as possible in the process. And I
set to work to fight as I had never in my whole life fought
before. It was like swimming in a millrace. The current swirled
us this and that way, but everlastingly forward.
Sometimes the current rolled us over and over on each other,
but for fifty per cent. of the time I managed to keep King on top
of me, I swimming on my back and holding him by both arms, head
nearly out of the water. I can't explain exactly why I went to
all that trouble, for I was convinced he was dead.
I remember wondering what the next world was going to be like,
and whether King and I would meet there, or whether we would each
be sent to a sphere suited to our individual requirements —
and if so, what my sphere would be like, and whether either of us
would ever meet Yasmini, and what she would be doing there. But
it never occurred to me once that Athelstan King might be alive
yet, or that he and I would be presently treading mother earth
again.
I remember several terrific minutes when a big tree came
whirling toward us in an eddy, and my legs got tangled up in some
part of it that was under water. Then, when I managed to struggle
free, King's cotton loin-cloth became wrapped in a tangle of
twigs and I could neither wrench nor break him free; whenever I
tried it I merely sent myself under and pulled his head after
me.
However, that tree suggested the possibility of prolonging the
agony a while.
I seized a branch and tried to take advantage of it, using all
my strength and skill to keep the tree from rolling over on King
and submerging him completely. I can remember when we whirled
under the steel bridge and the tree struck the breakwater of the
middle pier; that checked us for a moment, and instead of sending
us under, dragged King half out of the water, so that he lay
after that on top of a branch.
Then the stream got us going again, and swung the butt end of
the tree around so that I was forced by it backward through the
arch of the bridge; and after that for more than a mile we were
waltzed round and round past sand-banks where the alligators lay
on the look-out for half-burned corpses from the burning ghats
higher up.
At last we swung round a curve in the river and came on a
quiet bay where they were washing elephants. The current swung
the tree inshore to a point where it struck a submerged sand-bank
and stuck there; and there we lay with the current racing by, and
King bobbing up and down with his head out of water, and I too
weak by that time to break off the twig around which his loin-
cloth was wrapped.
Well, there we were; but after a few minutes I raised enough
steam for the whistle at all events. I yelled until my own ear-
drums seemed to be bursting and my lungs ached from the pressure
on the water in them, and after what seemed an eternity one of
the mahouts on shore heard me.
Hope surged triumphant! I could see him wave his arm, and
already I saw visions of dry land again, and a disappointed Yama!
But I was overlooking one important point: we were in India,
where rescues are not undertaken in a hurry.
He called a conference. I saw all the mahouts gather together
in one place and stare at us and talk. They swung their arms as
they argued. I don't know what argument it was that finally
appealed to the mahouts, but after an interminable session one of
them fetched a long rope and nine or ten of them climbed on the
backs of three big elephants. They worked their way a little bit
upstream, and then came as close as the elephants dared. One of
the big brutes felt his way cautiously to within twenty yards,
and then threw up his trunk and refused to budge another
inch.
At that a lean, naked, black man stood up on his rump and paid
out the rope down-stream. He had to make nine or ten attempts
before it finally floated within reach of my hand. Then I made it
fast to the tree and, taking King in my right arm, started to
work my way along it. It was just as well I did that, and got
clear of the branch; for the mahouts passed the rope around the
elephant's neck and set him to hauling; he rolled the tree over
and over, and that would surely have been the end of King and me
if we had been within reach of the overturning branches. As it
was I clung to the rope and the elephant hauled the lot of us
high and dry.
CHAPTER IX.— THE EARTHQUAKE ELEPHANT
AT the end of a minute's examination I began to
suspect that King was not quite dead, so I recalled the old life-
saver's drill and got to work on him. It took time. As King came
more and more to his senses, and vomited a bit, and began to
behave in all ways like a living man again, I had a chance to
talk to the mahouts; and they were just like the members of any
other union, preferring conversation to alleged hard labor any
day of the week. They told me why the elephants were being washed
so early and we enjoyed a regular conversazione on the
beach.
It appeared the elephants were wanted to take part in a
procession, and for a while they let me guess what sort of a
procession. But at last they took compassion on my ignorance.
"She has issued invitations to a party for princesses
in her panch mahal!"
Who was she? Everybody knew who she was!
"The Princess Yasmini?" I suggested.
Whereat they all chuckled and made grimaces, and did
everything except acknowledge her name in public.
And then suddenly Athelstan King decided to sit up and spat
some more water out and tried to laugh. And they thought that was
so exquisitely funny that they all laughed too.
Then, when he had coughed a little more —
"We're going to attend that party!"
"Why?" I asked him.
"Two reasons." But he had to cough up more water before he
could tell them. "One: The Gray Mahatma will never rest until he
knows we're dead, or done for, and the safest place is close to
the enemy; and, two: I never will rest until I know the secret of
that science of theirs!"
"How in thunder are we going to get back?" I objected.
"Ride!" he suggested.
"How — when — where?"
"Elephant — now — to her palace," he answered.
"They're not her elephants."
"So much the better! She'll think the Maharajah knows all
about us. She'll have to accord us protection after
that."
He asked a dozen more questions, and finally struggled to his
feet.
"My friend," he said then to the chief mahout, "if you propose
to take us two sahibstoher palace, and be back at
your master's stables in time to get ready for the Bibi-
kana, you'll have to hurry!"
"But I did not propose it!" the mahout answered.
"Nay, the gods proposed it. Which is your fastest
elephant?"
"That great one yonder — Akbar. But who is giving
orders? We are a maharajah's servants."
"The gods are ordering all this business!" King assured him.
"I wish to ride to her palace."
"By her leave?"
"By the gods' leave."
"Will the gods pay me?"
"Doubtless. But she will pay first — setting the gods a
good example."
The native of India finds it perfectly convenient to ride on a
six-inch plank, slung more or less like a house-painter's
platform against an elephant's bulging ribs, and it does not seem
to make much difference to him when more weight is on one side
than on the other. But King and I had to stand and hold each
other's hands across the pad; and even so we were by no means too
secure, for Akbar resented being taken away from the herd and
behaved like a mutinous earthquake.
It was not so far to the city by road, because the river wound
a good deal and the road cut straight from point to point. But it
was several miles, and we covered it at pretty nearly the speed
of a railroad train.
In spite of his rage, Akbar had perfect control of himself.
Having missed about half his morning swim, and the herd's
society, he proposed to miss nothing else, and there was not one
cart, one ekka, one piled-up load in all those miles that
he did not hit and do his utmost to destroy. There was not one
yellow dog that he did not give chase to and try to trample
on.
He stopped to pull the thatch from the roof of a little house
beside the road, but as the plying ankus made his head
ache he couldn't stay long enough to finish that job but scooted
uproad again in full pursuit of a Ford car, while an angry man
shoved his head through the hole in the roof of the house and
cursed all the rumps of all the elephants, together with the
forebears and descendants of their owners and their wives.
It seemed that Akbar was fairly well-known thereabouts. The
men in the Ford car shouted the news in advance of his coming,
and the road into the city began to look like the track of a
routed army. Every man and animal took to his heels, and Akbar
trumpeted wild hurrahs as he strained all tendons in pursuit. He
needed no second wind, because he never lost his first, but he
took the whole course as far as the city gate at a speed that
would have satisfied Jehu, son of Nimshi, who, the Bible says,
made Israel to sin.
That particular city gate consisted of an arch, covered with
carvings of outrageous-looking gods, and as a picture display it
was perfect, but as an entrance to a crowded city it possessed no
virtue. It was so narrow that only one vehicle could pass at a
time, and the whole swarm jammed between it and us like sticks in
front of a drain.
And not even Akbar's strength was so great that he could shove
them through, so the ancient problem of an irresistible force in
contact with an immovable object was presented, and solved by
Akbar after a fashion of his own.
He picked the softest spot, which was a wain-load of cotton
bales, and upset it, cannoning off that cushion so swiftly as to
come within an ace of scattering his four passengers across the
landscape; and discerning, with a swift strategic eye that would
have done credit to the dashingest cavalry general, that that
rout was complete and nothing could be gained by adding to it, he
headed for the river and the women's bathing place, took the
broad stone steps at a dead run, and plunged straight in.
No ship was ever launched with more perfect aplomb, nor
floated more superbly on an even keel than did Akbar at the
women's bathing ghat. For a moment I thought he proposed to lie
down there and finish his interrupted toilet, but he contented
himself with squirting water on the sore spot caused by the
thumping ankus of the driver's and set out to swim
upstream.
It was not until he had reached the second ghat and climbed
the steps there that Akbar put himself in Napoleon's class. When
he reached the top of the steps no amount of whacking with the
ankus could make him turn to the right and follow the city
street. He turned to the left, tooted a couple of wild hurrahs
through his newly wetted whistle, and raced to meet the traffic
as it struggled through the gate in single file!
There was ruin ripe for harvest and it looked like the proper
time to jump. But suddenly — with that delightful wheeled
panic at his mercy, the big brute stopped, stood still and looked
at them, muttering and gurgling to himself. Instantly the mahout
began petting him, calling him endearing names and praising his
wisdom and discretion. I can't swear that the beast understood
what was said to him, but he acted exactly as if he did. He
picked up dust from the street with his trunk, blew a little of
it in the general direction of the defeated enemy, blew a little
more on himself, and turned his rump toward the gate, as if to
signify that hostilities were over!
As he did that, a man who was something of an athlete swung
himself up on the off-side footboard, and a second later the
proud face of the Gray Mahatma confronted me across the saddle-
pad alongside King's!
"You are heavy enough to balance the two of us," he said, as
if no other comment were necessary. "Why did you run away from
me? You can never escape!"
Well, of course anybody could say that after he had found us
again.
"Was it you who checked this elephant?" I asked him,
remembering what he had done to the black panther and the snakes,
but he did not answer.
"Where do you think you are going?" I asked.
"That is what the dry leaves asked of the wind," he answered.
"An observant eye is better than a yearning ear, and patience
outwears curiosity!"
Suddenly I recalled a remark that King had made on the beach
and it dawned on me that by frightening the mahout into silence
the Mahatma might undo the one gain we had made by that plunge
and swim. As long as the Maharajah who owned the elephant was to
hear about our adventure, all was well. News of us would reach
the Government. Most of the maharajahs are pro-British, because
their very existence as reigning princes depends on that
attitude, and they can be relied on to report to the British
authorities any irregularity whatever that comes under their
notice and at the same time does not incriminate themselves.
The same thought probably occurred to King, but he was rather
too recently recovered from drowning to be quick yet off the mark
and besides, the Mahatma was between him and the mahout, whereas
I had a free field. So I tugged at the arm of the second mahout,
who was sitting behind his chief, and he scrambled down beside
me.
The Mahatma tried to take immediate advantage of that, and the
very thing he did made it all the easier for me to deal with the
second mahout, who had made the trip with us and who stared into
my face with a kind of puzzled mistrust. The Mahatma, as active
as a cat, climbed up behind the chief mahout and sat astride the
elephant's neck in the place where the second mahout had been,
and began whispering.
"What is your Maharajah's name?" I asked my neighbor on the
plank.
"Jihanbihar," he answered, giving a string of titles too that
had no particular bearing on the situation. They sounded like a
page of the Old Testament.
"You observe that his favorite elephant is about to be stolen
with the aid of the Gray Mahatma!"
The fellow nodded, and the expression of his face was not
exactly pleased; he may have been one of a crowd that got cursed
by the Mahatma for asking too many impertinent questions.
"He has a reputation, that Mahatma, hasn't he?" I suggested.
"You have heard of the miracles that he performs?"
He nodded again.
"You see that he is talking to the chief mahout now? Take my
word for it, he is casting a spell on him! Would you like to have
him cast a spell on you too?"
He shook his head.
"Run swiftly then, and tell the Maharajah sahib to get
a Brahman to cancel the spell, and you will be rewarded. Go
quickly."
He dropped from the plank and went off at a run just as the
Mahatma turned and saw him. The Mahatma had been whispering in
the mahout's ear, and as his eye met mine I laughed. For a moment
he watched the man running, and then, as if to demonstrate what a
strange mixture of a man he was, he laughed back at me. He
acknowledged defeat instantly, and did not appear in the least
annoyed by it, but on the contrary appeared to accord me credit
for outwitting him, as undoubtedly I had.
India is not a democratic country. Nobody is troubled about
keeping the underworld in its place, so mahout or sweeper has the
ear of majesty as readily as any other man, if not even more so.
And it would not make the slightest difference now what kind of
cock and bull story the mahout might tell to the Maharajah.
However wild it might be it would certainly include the fact that
two white men had ridden to Yasmini's palace on the Maharajah's
favorite elephant after having been fished out of the river by
mahouts at the elephant's bathing ghat.
It was the likeliest thing in the world that representations
would be made that very afternoon by telegraph to the nearest
important British official, who would feel compelled to make
inquiries. The British Government can not afford to have even
unknown white men mysteriously made away with.
The Gray Mahatma took all that for granted and nodded
comprehendingly. His smile, as we neared Yasmini's palace gate,
appeared to me to include a perfect appreciation of the
situation. He seemed to accept it as candidly as he had
acknowledged my frequent escapes the night before.
Ismail opened the gate without demur and Akbar sauntered in,
being used to palaces. He passed under the first arch into the
second courtyard, coming to a halt at a gate on the far side that
was too small for his enormous bulk where he proceeded to kneel
without waiting for instructions.
"Do you feel proud?" the Mahatma asked me unexpectedly as he
climbed off Akbar's neck.
Suspecting some sort of verbal trap I did not answer him.
"You are like this elephant. You are able to do irreparable
damage if you see fit. She was as apt as usual when she
dubbed you Ganesha!"
He was working toward some point he intended to make, like one
of those pleasant-tongued attorneys flattering a witness before
tying him up in a knot, so I was careful to say nothing whatever.
King came around the kneeling elephant and joined us, leaning
back against the beast and appraising the Mahatma with his eyes
half-closed.
"You're dealing with white men," King suggested. "Why don't
you talk in terms that we understand?"
It seemed difficult for the Mahatma to descend to that. He
half-closed his eyes in turn and frowned, as if hard put to it to
simplify his thoughts sufficiently — something like a
mathematician trying to explain himself to the kindergarten
class.
"I could kill you," he said, looking straight at King.
King nodded.
"You are not the kind of man who should be killed," he
went on.
"Did you ever hear the fable of the fox and the sour grapes?"
King asked him, and the Mahatma looked annoyed.
"Would you rather be killed?" he retorted.
"'Pon my soul, I'm inclined to leave that to the outcome,"
King answered. "Death would mean investigation, and investigation
discovery of that science you gave us a glimpse of."
"If I was to let you go," the Mahatma began to argue.
"I would not go! Forward is the only way," King interrupted.
"You've a reason for not having us two men killed. What is
it?"
"I have no reason whatever for preserving this one's life,"
the Mahatma answered, glancing at me casually. "For reasons
beyond my power of guessing he seems to bear a charmed existence,
but he has my leave to visit the next world, and his departure
would by no means inconvenience me. But you are another
matter."
"How so?" King asked. "Mr. Ramsden is the man who would be
inquired for. The Indian Government, whose servant I no longer
am, might ignore me, but the multi-millionaire who is Mr.
Ramsden's partner would spend millions and make an international
scandal."
"I am thinking of you, not of him. I am thinking you are
honest," said the Gray Mahatma, looking into King's eyes.
"So is he," King answered.
"I am wondering whether or not you are honest enough to trust
me," said the Gray Mahatma.
"Why certainly!" King answered. "If you would commit yourself
I would trust you. Why not?"
"But this man would not," said the Mahatma, nudging me as if I
were the elephant.
"I trust my friend King," I retorted. "If he decides to trust
you, I stand back of him."
"Very well then, let us exchange promises."
"Suppose we go a little more cautiously and discuss them
first," suggested King.
"I will promise both of you your life, your eventual freedom,
and my friendship. Will you promise me not to go in league with
her—"
"I'll agree to that unconditionally!" King assured him with a
dry smile.
"—not to try to learn the secret of the
science—"
"Why not?"
"Because if you should try I could never save your
lives."
"Well, what else?"
"Will you take oath never to disclose the whereabouts of the
entrance to the caverns in which you were allowed to see the
sciences?"
"I shall have to think that over."
"Furthermore, will you promise to take whatever means is
pointed out to you of helping India to independence?"
"What do you mean by independence?"
"Self-government."
"I've been working for that ever since I cut my eye-teeth,"
answered King. "So has every other British officer and civil
servant who has any sense of public duty."
"Will you continue to work for it, and employ the means that
shall be pointed out to you?"
"Yes is the answer to the first part. Can't answer the second
part until I've studied the means."
"Will you join me in preventing that princess from throwing
the world into fresh confusion?"
"Dunno about joining you. It's part of my business to prevent
her little game," King answered.
"She has proven herself almost too clever, even for us," said
the Mahatma. "She spied on us, and she hid so many witnesses
behind a wall pierced with holes that it would be impossible for
us to make sure of destroying all of them. And somewhere or other
she has hidden an account of what she knows, so that if anything
should happen to her it would fall into the hands of the
Government and compel investigation."
"Wise woman!" King said smiling.
"Yes! But not so altogether wise. Hitherto we fooled her for
all her cleverness. Her price of silence was education in our
mysteries, and we have made the education incomprehensible."
"Then why do you want my help?"
"Because she has a plan now that is so magnificent in its
audacity as to baffle even our secret council!"
King whistled, and the Mahatma looked annoyed — whether
with himself or King I was not sure.
"That is what I have been hunting for three years — your
secret council. I knew it existed; never could prove it," said
King.
"Can you prove it now?" asked the Mahatma with even more
visible annoyance.
"I think so. You'll have to help me."
"I?"
"You or the Princess!" King answered. "Shall I join you or
her?"
"Thou fool! There was a sheep who asked, 'Which shall I run
with, tiger or wolf?' Consider that a moment!"
King showed him the courtesy of considering it, and was silent
for perhaps two minutes, during which the mahout judged it
opportune to whine forth his own demands. But nobody took any
notice of him.
"You seem check-mate to me," King said at last. "You daren't
kill my friend or me. You daren't make away with us. You daren't
make away with the Princess. The Princess and several of her
women know enough of your secret to be able to force your hand;
so do my friend Mr. Ramsden and I. Mr. Ramsden and I have seen
sufficient in that madhouse underneath the temple to compel a
Government inquiry. Is it peace or war, Mahatma? Will you
introduce me to your secret council, or will you fight to a
finish?"
"I would rather not fight with you, my young friend."
"Introduce me, then," King answered, smiling.
"You don't know what you ask — what that involves."
"But I propose to know," said King.
The Mahatma never seemed to mind acknowledging defeat.
"I see you are determined," he said quietly. "Determination,
my young friend, combined with ignorance, is a murderer nine
times out of ten. However, you do not understand that, and you
are determined, I have no authority to make such terms as you
propose, but I will submit the matter to those whom you desire to
meet. Does that satisfy you?"
King looked immensely dissatisfied.
"I would rather be your friend than your enemy," he
answered.
"So said light and darkness each to the other when they first
met! You shall have your answer presently. In the mean time will
you try not to make my task even more difficult than it already
is?"
King laughed uncomfortably.
"Mahatma, I like you well enough, but no terms until I have
your answer! Sorry! I'd like to be friends with you."
"The pity of it is that though you are honestly determined you
are bound to fail," the Mahatma answered; and at that he
dismissed the whole subject with a motion of one hand, and turned
toward Ismail, who was lurking about in the shadows like a
wolf.
The Mahatma sent the man to the door of the panch mahal
with a message that money was needed; and the mahout spent the
next ten minutes in loud praises of his kneeling elephant,
presumably on the theory that "it pays to advertise," for it is
not only the West that worships at that shrine.
When Ismail came back with a tray on which were several little
heaps of money the mahout went into abject ecstasies of mingled
jubilee and reverence. His mouth betrayed unbelief and his eyes
glinted avarice. His fingers twitched with agonied anticipation,
and he began to praise his elephant again, as some people recite
proverbs to keep themselves from getting too excited.
The various heaps of money on the tray must have amounted to
about fifty dollars. The mahout spread out the end of his turban
by way of begging bowl, and the Mahatma shook all the money into
it, so that Ismail gasped and the mahout himself turned up his
eyes in exquisite delirium.
"Go or you will be too late!" was all the Mahatma said to him,
and the mahout did not wait for a second command, but mounted his
elephant's neck, kicked the big brute up and rode away, in a
hurry to be off before he should wake up and discover that the
whole adventure was a dream.
But he could not get away with it as easily as all that.
Ismail was keeper of the gate, and the gate was locked. Akbar
doubtless could have broken down the gate if so instructed, but
even the East, which is never long on gratitude, would hardly do
that much damage after receiving such a royal largesse. Ismail
went to unlock the gate, and demanded his percentage, giving it,
though, the Eastern name, which means "the usual thing."
And the usual argument took place — I approached to
listen to it — the usual recriminations, threats,
counterclaims, abuse, appeals to various deaf deities, and
finally concession — after Ismail had made the all-
compelling threat to tell the other mahouts how much the gift had
amounted to. I suppose it was instinct that suggested that idea.
At any rate, it worked and the mahout threw a handful of coins to
him.
Thereat, of course, there was immediate, immense politeness on
both sides. Ismail prayed that Allah might make the mahout as
potbellied and idle as his elephant; and the mahout suggested to
a dozen corruptible deities that Ismail might be happier with a
thousand children and wives who were true to him. Whereat Ismail
opened the gate, and Akbar helped himself liberally to sugar-cane
from a passing wagon; so that every one was satisfied except the
rightful owner of the sugar-cane, who cursed and wept and called
Akbar an honest rajah, by way I suppose of expressing his opinion
of all the tax-levying powers that be.
There happened to be a thing they call a "constabeel" going
by, and the owner of the sugar-cane appealed to him for justice
and relief. So the "constabeel" prodded Akbar's rump with his
truncheon, and helped himself, too, to sugar-cane by way of
balancing accounts. And while the owner of the sugar-cane was
bellowing red doctrine about that, Ismail went out and helped
himself likewise, only more liberally, carrying in an armful of
the stuff, and slamming the gate in the faces of all concerned.
In cynical enjoyment of the blasphemy outside he sat down then in
the shadow of the wall to chew the cane and count the change
extorted from the mahout.
"Behold India self-governed!" I said, turning to beckon
through the arch between the two courtyards.
But the Mahatma was gone! And unlike the Cheshire cat, he had
not even left a smile behind him — had not even left
Athelstan King behind him. The two had disappeared as silently
and as utterly as if they had never been there!
CHAPTER X. — A DATE WITH DOOM
I HUNTED about, looked around corners, searched
the next courtyard, and drew blank. Then I asked Ismail, and he
mocked me.
"The Mahatma? You are like those fools who pursue virtue.
There never was any!"
"That mahout named you rightly just now," said I. "He knew
your character perfectly."
"That may be," Ismail answered, rising to his feet. "But he
was on an elephant where I could not reach him. You think you are
a strong man? Feel of that then!"
He was old, but no mean adversary. Luckily for him he did not
draw a knife. I hugged the wind out of him, whirled him until he
was dizzy and threw him down into his dog's corner by the gate,
not much the worse except for a bruise or two.
"Now!" I said. "Which way went King sahib and the Gray
Mahatma?"
"All ways are one, and the one way leads to her!"
That was all I could get out of him. So I took the one way,
straight down through the courtyards and under the arches, past
the old black panther's cage — the way that King and I had
taken when we first arrived. But it seemed like a year since I
had trodden those ancient flagstones side by side with King
— more than a year! It seemed as if a dozen lifetimes
intervened. And it also occurred to me that I was growing
famished and desperately sleepy, and I knew that King must be in
even worse condition. The old, black panther was sleeping as I
went by, and I envied him.
There was a choice of two ways when I reached the panch
mahal, for it was feasible to enter through the lower door,
which was apparently unguarded, and climb the stone stairway that
wound inside the wall. However, I chose the marble front steps,
and barked my knuckles on the door at the top.
I was kept waiting several minutes, and then four women opened
it in place of the customary two; and instead of smiling, as on
previous occasions, they frowned, lining up across the threshold.
They were older women than the others had been and looked
perfectly capable of showing fight; allowing for their long pins
and possible hidden weapons I would not have given ten cents for
my chance against them. So I asked for King and the Mahatma.
They pretended not to understand. They knew no Hindustani. My
dialect of Punjabi was as Greek to them. They knew nothing about
my clothes, or the suitcase that King and I shared between us and
that, according to Yasmini, had been carried by her orders to the
palace. The words "King" and "Mahatma" seemed to convey no
meaning to them. They made it perfectly obvious that they
suspected me of being mad.
I began to suspect myself of the same thing! Feeling as sleepy
as I did, it was not unreasonable to suspect myself at any rate
of dreaming; yet I had sufficient power of reasoning left to
argue that if those were dream-women they would give way in front
of me. So I stepped straight forward, and they no more gave way
than a she-bear will if you call on her when she is nursing cubs.
Two more women stepped out from behind the curtains with long
slithery daggers in their hands, and somehow I was not minded to
test whether those were dream-daggers or not.
It was a puzzle to know what to do. The one unthinkable thing
would be to leave King unsought for. Suddenly it occurred to me
to try that door underneath the steps; so I kissed my hand
irreverently to the quarterguard of harridans, and turned my back
on them — which I daresay was the most unwise move that I
ever made in my whole life. I have done things that were more
disastrous in the outcome, but never anything more deserving of
ruin.
Have you ever been tackled, tripped and hog-tied by women? Run
rather than risk it!
They threw a rope over my shoulders from behind, and I felt
the foot of one termagant in the small of my back as she hauled
taut. I spun round and stepped forward to slacken the noose and
free myself, and two more nooses went over my head in swift
succession. Another caught my right foot — another my right
hand! More women came, with more ropes. It was only a matter of
seconds before they were almost dragging me asunder as they
hauled, two hags to a rope, and every one of them straining as if
the game were tug-of-war.
There was nothing else to do, and plenty of inducement, so I
did it. I yelled. I sent my voice bellowing through those echoing
halls to such tune that if King were anywhere in the place he
would have to hear me. But it did me no good. They only produced
a gag and added that to my discomfort, shoving a great lump of
rubber in my mouth and wrapping a towel over it so tightly that I
could hardly breathe.
Then came Yasmini, gorgeously amused, standing at the top of
the steps where the inner hall was raised a few feet above the
outer, and ordering me blindfolded as well as rendered dumb.
"For if he can see as well as he can roar he will presently
know too much," she explained sarcastically.
So they wrapped another towel over my eyes and pinned it with
a cursed export safety-pin that pierced clean through my scalp.
And the harder I struggled, the tighter they pulled on the ropes
and the louder Yasmini laughed, until I might as well have been
on that rack that King and I saw in the cavern underneath the
temple.
"So strong Ganesha-ji!" she mocked. "So strong and yet
so impotent! Such muscles! Look at them! Can the buffalo hear, or
are his ears stopped too?"
A woman rearranged the head-towel to make sure that my ears
were missing nothing; after which Yasmini purred her
pleasantest.
"O buffalo Ganesha, I would have you whipped to death if I
thought that would not anger Athelstan! What do you mistake me
for? Me, who have been twice a queen! That was a mighty jump from
my window; and even as the buffalo you swam, Ganesha! Buffalo,
buffalo! Who but a buffalo would snatch my Athelstan away from
me, and then return alone! What have you done with him? Hah! You
would like to answer that you have done nothing with him —
buffalo, buffalo! He would never have left you willingly, nor you
him — you two companions who share one foolish little bag
between you!
"Does he love you? Hope, Ganesha! Hope that he loves you! For
unless he comes to find you, Ganesha, all the horrors that you
saw last night, and all the deaths, and all the tortures shall be
yours — with alligators at last to abolish the last traces
of you! Do you like snakes, Ganesha? Do you like a madhouse in
the dark? I think not. Therefore, Ganesha, you shall be left to
yourself to think a little while. Think keenly! Invent a means of
finding Athelstan and I will let you go free for his sake. But
— fail — to think — of a successful plan
— Ganesha — and you shall suffer in every atom of
your big body! Bass! Take him away!"
I was frog-marched, and flung face-downward on to cushions,
after which I heard a door snap shut and had leisure to work
myself free from the ropes and gag and towels. It took time, for
the hussies had drawn the cords until they bit into the muscles,
and maybe I was twenty minutes about getting loose. Then, for ten
minutes more I sat and chafed the rope-cuts, craving food,
examining the room, and wishing above all things that conscience
would let me fall asleep on the feathery, scented pillows with
which the floor was strewn, rather than stay awake on the off-
chance of discovering where King might be.
It was practically a bare room, having walls of painted wood
that sounded solid when I made the circuit of the floor and
tapped each panel in turn. But that proved nothing, for even the
door sounded equally solid; the folk who built that palace used
solid timber, not veneer, and as I found out afterward the door
was nearly a foot thick. On the floor I could make no impression
whatever by thumping, and there was no furniture except the
pillows — nothing that I could use for a weapon.
But there were the cotton ropes with which they had bound me,
and before doing anything else I knotted them all into one. I had
no particular reason for doing that beyond the general principle
that one long rope is usually better than a half-a-dozen short
ones in most emergencies.
There was only one window, and that was perhaps two feet high,
big enough, that is, to scramble through, but practically
inaccessible, and barred. The only weapon I had was that infernal
brass safety-pin that had held the towel to my scalp, and I stuck
that away in my clothes like a magpie hiding things on general
principles.
I began to wonder whether it would not be wisest after all to
lie down and sleep. But I was too hungry to sleep, and it was
recognition of that fact which produced the right idea.
Beyond doubt Yasmini realized that I was hungry. She had
threatened me with tortures, and was likely to inflict them if
she should think that necessary; but nothing seemed more unlikely
than that she would keep me for the present without food and
water. It would be bad strategy, to say the least of it. She had
admitted that she did not want to offend King.
The more I considered that, the more worth while it seemed to
bet on it; and as I had nothing to bet with except will power and
personal convenience, I plunged with both and determined to stay
awake as long as human endurance could hold out.
There was only one way that food could possibly be brought
into the room, and that was through the massive teak-wood door.
It was in the middle of the wall, and opened inward; there were
no bolts on the inside. Anybody opening it cautiously would be
able to see instantly all down the length of half that wall, and
possibly two thirds of the room as well.
It would have been hardly practical to stand against the door
and hit at the first head that showed, for then if the door
should open suddenly, it would strike me and give the alarm.
There was nothing else for it but to stand well back against the
wall on the side of the door on which the hinges were; and as
that would make the range too long for quick action I had to
invent some other means of dealing with the owner of the first
head than jumping in and punching it.
There was nothing whatever to contrive a trap with but the
cotton rope and the safety-pin, but the safety-pin like
Mohammed's Allah, "made all things possible." I stuck that
safety-pin in the woodwork and hung the noose in such position
that the least jerk would bring it down over an intruding head
— practised the stunt for ten or fifteen minutes, and then
got well back against the wall with the end of the line in hand,
and waited.
I have read Izaak Walton, and continue unconvinced. I still
class fishing and golf together with tiddledywinks, and eschew
all three as thoughtfully as I avoid bazaars and "crushes" given
by the ladies of both sexes. The rest of that performance was too
much like fishing with a worm to suit my temperament, and
although I caught more in the end than I ever took with rod and
line, the next half-hour was boredom pure and simple, multiplied
to the point of torture by intense yearning for sleep.
But patience sometimes is rewarded. I very nearly was asleep
when the sound of a bolt being drawn on the far side of the door
brought every sense to the alert with that stinging feeling that
means blood spurting through your veins after a spell of
lethargy. The bolt was a long time drawing, as if some one were
afraid of making too much noise, and I had plenty of time to make
sure that my trap was in working order.
And when the door opened gingerly at last, a head inserted
itself, my noose fell, and I hauled taut, I don't know which was
most surprised — myself or the Gray Mahatma! I jerked the
noose so tight that he could not breathe, let alone argue the
point. I reckon I nearly hanged him, for his neck jammed against
the door, and I did not dare let go for fear he might withdraw
himself and collapse on the wrong side. I wanted him
inside, and in a hurry.
He was about two-thirds unconscious when I seized him by his
one long lock of hair and hauled him in, shutting the door again
and leaning my weight against it, while I pried the noose free to
save him from sure death. Those cotton ropes don't render the way
a hemp one would. And while I was doing that a sickening, utterly
unexpected sound announced that somebody outside the door had
cautiously shot the bolt again! The Mahatma and I were both
prisoners!
I sat the old fellow down on a cushion in a corner and chafed
his neck until the blood performed its normal office of
revivifying him. And as he slowly opened first one eye and then
the other, instead of cursing me as I expected, he actually
smiled.
"The quality of your mercy was rather too well strained," he
said in English, "but I thank you for the offer
nevertheless!"
"Offer?" I answered. "What offer have I made you?"
"A very friendly offer. But the penalty of being in the secret
of our sciences is that we may not die, except in the service of
the cause. Therefore, my friend, your goodwill fell on barren
ground, for if you had succeeded in killing me my obligation
would have been held to pass to you, and you would have suffered
terribly."
"Who locked the door on us just now?" I asked him.
"I don't know," he answered, smiling whimsically.
"Very well," I said, "suppose you work one of your miracles!
You and King disappeared a while ago simply perfectly from right
alongside me. Can you repeat the process here and spirit me
away?"
He shook his head.
"My friend, if your eyes had not been fixed on things unworthy
of consideration such as an elephant's rump and the theft of
sugar-cane, you would have seen us go."
"How did you persuade King to leave me standing there without
a word of warning?" I demanded.
"How were you persuaded into this place?" he retorted.
"You mean you gagged and bound him?"
He smiled again.
"Your friend was weak from having so nearly been drowned;
nevertheless, you overestimate my powers!"
"When I first met you, you gripped my hand," I answered. "I am
reckoned a strong man, yet I could not shift your hand a fraction
of an inch. Now you suggest that you are weaker than a half-
drowned man. I don't understand you."
"Of course you don't. That is because you don't understand the
form of energy that I used on the first occasion. Unfortunately I
can only use it when arrangements have been made in advance. It
is as mechanical as your watch, only a different kind of
mechanics — something, in fact, that some of your Western
scientists would say has not yet been invented."
"Well, where's King?" I asked him.
"Upstairs. He asked me to bring you. Now how can I?"
He smiled again with that peculiar whimsical helplessness that
contrasted so strangely with his former arrogance. He who had
looked like a lion when we first encountered him seemed now to be
a meek and rather weak old man — much weaker in fact than
could be accounted for by the red ring that my noose had made on
his neck.
"Is King at liberty?" I demanded.
"And what do you call liberty?" he asked me blandly, as if he
were really curious to know my opinion on that subject.
"Can he come and go without molestation?"
"If he cares to run that risk, and is not caught. Try not to
become impatient with me! Anger is impotence! Explanations that
do not explain are part and parcel of all religions and most
sciences; therefore why lose your temper? Your friend is free to
come and go, but must take his chance of being caught. He pursues
investigations."
"Where?"
"Where else than in this palace? Listen!"
Among all the phenomena of nature there is none more difficult
to explain than sound. Hitherto in that teak-lined room we had
seemed shut off from the rest of the world completely, for the
door and walls were so thick and the floor so solid that sound-
waves seemed unable to penetrate. Yet now a noise rather like
sandpaper being chafed together began to assert itself so
distinctly as to seem almost to have its origin in the room. In a
way it resembled the forest noise when a breeze stirs the tree-
tops at night — irregular enough, and yet with a kind of
pulse in it, increasing and decreasing.
"You recognize that?" asked the Mahatma.
I shook my head.
"Veiled women, walking!"
"You mean the princesses have come?"
"A few, and their attendants."
"How many princesses?"
"Oh, not more than twenty. But each will bring at the least
twenty attendants, and perhaps a score of friends, each of whom
in turn will have her own attendants. And only the princesses and
their friends will enter the audience hall, which, however, will
be surrounded by the attendants, whose business it will be to see
that no stranger, and above all no male shall see or
overhear."
"And if they were to catch Athelstan King up there?"
"That would be his last and least pleasant experience in this
world!"
That was easy enough to believe. I had just had an experience
of what those palace women could do.
"She, who learned our secrets, will take care that none shall
play that trick on her," the Mahatma went on confidently.
"These women will use the audience hall she lent to us. Their
plan is to control the new movement in India, and their strength
consists in secrecy. They will take all precautions."
"Do you mean to tell me," I demanded, "that as you sit here
now you are impotent? Can't you work any of your tricks?"
"Those are not tricks, my friend, they are sciences. Can your
Western scientists perform to order without their right
environment and preparations?"
"Then you can't break that door down, or turn loose any
magnetic force?"
"You speak like a superstitious fool," he retorted calmly.
"The answer is no."
"That," said I,﹃is all that I was driving at. Do you see
this?﹄And I held my right fist sufficiently close to his nose to
call urgent attention to it. "Tell me just what transpired
between you and King from the time when you disappeared out there
in the courtyard until you came in here alone!"
"No beating in the world could make me say a word," he
answered calmly. "You would only feel horribly ashamed."
I believed him, and sat still, he looking at me in a sort of
way in which a connoisseur studies a picture with his eyelids a
little lowered.
"Nevertheless," he went on presently, "I observe that I have
misjudged you in some respects. You are a man of violent temper,
which is cave-man foolishness; yet you have prevailing judgment,
which is the beginning of civilization. There is no reason why I
should not tell you what you desire to know, even though it will
do you no good."
"I listen," I answered, trying to achieve that air of humility
with which chelas listen to their gurus.
That was partly because I really respected the man in a way;
and partly because there was small harm in flattering him a
little, if that could induce him to tell me the more.
"Know then," he began, "that it was my fault that the Princess
Yasmini was able to play that trick on us. It was to me that she
first made the proposal that we should use her audience hall for
our conference. It was I who conveyed that proposal to those whom
it concerned, and I who persuaded them. It was through my lack of
diligence that the hiding-place was overlooked in which she and
certain of her women lay concealed, so that they overheard some
of our secrets.
"For that I should have been condemned to death at once, and
it would have been better if that had been done.
"Yet for fifty years I have been a man of honor. And although
it is one of our chief requirements that we lay aside such
foolishness as sentiment, nevertheless the seeds of sentiment
remained, and those men were loath to enforce the penalty on me,
who had taught so many of them.
"So they compromised, which is inevitably fatal. For
compromise bears within itself the roots of right and wrong, so
that whatever good may come of it must nevertheless be ruined by
inherent evil. I bade them use me for their studies, and have
done with compromise, but being at fault my authority was gone,
so they had their way.
"They imposed on me the task of making use of the Princess
Yasmini, and of employing her by some means to make a beginning
of the liberation of India. And she sought to make use of me to
get Athelstan King into her clutches. Moreover, believing that
her influence over us was now too great to be resisted, she
demanded that Athelstan King and yourself should be shown
sciences; and I consented, believing that thereby your friend
might be convinced, and would agree to go to the United States to
shape public opinion.
"Thereafter you know what happened. You know also that,
because the seeds of compromise were inherent in the plan, my
purpose failed. Instead of consenting to go to the United States
Athelstan King insisted on learning our sciences. You and he
escaped, by a dive from the upper window of this palace that
would not have disgraced two fish-hawks, and although you never
guessed it, by that dive you sentenced me to death.
"For I had to report your escape to those whom it most
concerned. And at once it was obvious to them that you were
certain to tell what you had seen.
"Nevertheless, there was one chance remaining that you might
both be drowned; and one chance that you might be recaptured
before you could tell any one what you had seen. And there was a
third chance that, if you should be recaptured, you might be
persuaded to promise never to reveal what little of our secrets
you already know. In that case, your lives might be spared,
although not mine.
"So it was laid upon me to discover where you were, and to
bring you back if possible. And on the polished table in that
cave in which you saw Benares and Bombay and London and New York,
I watched you swim down the river until you were rescued by the
elephants.
"So then I went to meet you and bring you back."
"What if we had refused?"
"That elephant you rode — hah! One word from me, and the
mob would have blamed you for the damage. They would have pulled
you from the elephant and beaten you to death. Such processes are
very simple to any one who understands mob-passions. Just a word
— just a hint — and the rest is inevitable."
"But you say you are under sentence of death. What if you
should refuse to obey them?"
"Why refuse? What good would that do?"
"But you were at liberty. Why not run away?"
"Whither? Besides, should I, who have enforced the penalty of
death on so many fools, disloyal ones and fanatics, reject it for
myself when I myself have failed? There is nothing unpleasant
about death, my friend, although the manner of it may be
terrible. But even torture is soon over; and the sting is gone
from torture when the victim knows that the cause of science is
thereby being advanced. They will learn from my agonies."
"Suit yourself!" I urged him. "Each to his own amusement. What
happened after I turned to watch the elephant at the gate?"
"Those on whom the keeping of our secret rests considered that
none would believe you, even if you were to tell what you have
seen. But Athelstan King is different. For many years the Indian
Government has accepted his bare word. Moreover, we knew that we
can also accept his word. He is a man whose promises are as good
as money, as the saying is.
"So after you turned aside to watch an elephant, those who
were watching us opened a hidden door and Athelstan King was made
prisoner from behind. They carried him bound and gagged into a
cavern such as those you visited; and there he was confronted by
the Nine Unknown, who asked him whether or not he will promise
never to reveal what he had seen."
The Mahatma paused.
"Did he promise?" I asked him.
"He refused. What was more, he dared them to make away with
him, saying that the mahout who had accompanied us hither would
already have informed the Maharajah Jihanbihar, who would
certainly report to the Government. And I, standing beside him,
confirmed his statement."
"You seem to have acted as prosecuting attorney against
yourself!" I said.
"No, I simply told the truth," he answered. "We who calculate
in terms of eternity and infinity have scant use for untruth. I
told the Nine Unknown the exact truth — that this man
Athelstan King might not be killed, because of the consequences;
and that whatever he might say to certain officers of the
Government would be believed. So they let him go again, and set
midnight to-night as the hour of the beginning of my death."
"Did King know that his refusal to promise entailed your
death?" I asked.
He shook his head.
"Why didn't you tell him?"
"Because it would not have been true, my friend. I had already
been sentenced to death. His promise could make no possible
difference to my fate. They let him go, and ordered me to present
myself at midnight; so I went with him, to preserve him from the
cobras in a tunnel through which he must pass.
"I brought him into this palace by hidden ways, and after I
had shown him the audience hall, where these princesses are to
meet, he asked me to go and find you — that being easier
for me than for him, because none in this palace would be likely
to question me, whereas he would be detected instantly and
watched, even if not prevented. And when I had found you —
and you nearly killed me — some one, as you know, locked
the door and shut us in here together. It is all one to me," he
added with a shrug of the shoulders; "I have only until midnight
at any event, and it makes small difference where I spend the
intervening hours. Perhaps you would like to sleep a little? Why
not? Sleep, and I will keep watch."
But, badly though I needed sleep, that sort of death-watch did
not quite appeal. Besides, gentle, and honest and plausible
though the Gray Mahatma now seemed, there was still something
within me that rebelled at trusting him entirely. He had been all
along too mysterious, and mystery is what irritates most of us
more than anything else. It needs a man like Athelstan King to
recognize the stark honesty of such a man as that Gray Mahatma;
and Athelstan King was not there to set the example. I preferred
to keep awake by continuing to question him.
"And d'you mean that those devils will deliberately torture
you to death after you surrender voluntarily?" I asked.
"They are not devils," he answered solemnly.
"But they'll torture you?"
"What is called torture can hardly fail to accompany the
process they will put me through — especially if I am to be
honored as I hope. For a long time we have sought to make one
experiment for which no suitable subject could be found. For
centuries it has been believed that a certain scientific step is
possible; but the subject on whom the experiment is tried must be
one who knows all our secrets and well understands the
manipulation of vibrations of the atmosphere. It is seldom that
such an one has to be sentenced to death. And it is one of our
laws that death shall never be imposed on any one not deserving
of it. There are many, myself included, who would cheerfully have
offered ourselves for that experiment at any time, had it been
allowed."
"So you're really almost contented with the prospect?" I
suggested.
"No, my friend. I am discontented. And for this reason. It may
be that the nine unknown, who are obliged by the oath of our
order to be stern and devoid of sentiment, will discover how
pleased I would be to submit myself to that experiment. And in
that case, in place of that experiment they would feel obliged
merely to repeat some test that I have seen a dozen times."
"And throw your body to the alligators afterward?"
"In that case, yes. But if what I hope takes place, there will
be nothing left for the alligators — nothing but bones
without moisture in them that will seem ten centuries old."
CHAPTER XI. — "KILL! KILL!"
THE Gray Mahatma sat still, contemplating with
apparent equanimity his end that should begin at midnight, and I
sat contemplating him, when suddenly a new idea occurred to
me.
"You intend to surrender to your executioners at midnight?" I
asked him.
He nodded gravely.
"Suppose she keeps us locked in here; what then? You say you
can't use your science to get out of here. What if you're late
for the assignation?"
"You forget," he said with a deprecating gesture, "that they
can see exactly where I am at any time! If they enter the cavern
of vision and turn on the power they can see us now, instantly.
They know perfectly well that my intention is to surrender to
them. Therefore they will take care to make my escape from this
place possible."
Five minutes later the door opened suddenly, and six women
marched in. Two of them had wave-edged daggers, two had clubs,
and the other two brought food and water. It was pretty good
food, and there was enough of it for two; but the women would not
say a word in answer to my questions.
They set the food and water down and filed out one by one, the
last one guarding the retreat of all the rest and slipping out
backward, pulling the door shut after her. Whereat I offered the
Mahatma food and drink, but he refused the hot curry and only
accepted a little water from the brass carafe.
"They will feed me special food to-night, for I shall need my
strength," he explained; but the explanation was hardly
satisfying.
I did not see how he could be any stronger later on for having
let himself grow weaker in the interval. Nevertheless, I have
often noticed this — that the East can train athletes by
methods absolutely opposite to those imposed by trainers in the
West, and it may be that their asceticism is based on something
more than guesswork. I ate enormously, and he sat and watched me
with an air of quiet amusement. He seemed to grow more and more
friendly all the time, and to forget that he had made several
attempts on my life, although his yellow eyes and lionlike way of
carrying his head still gave you an uncomfortable feeling, not of
mistrust but of incomprehension.
I began to realize how accurately King had summed him up; he
was an absolutely honest man, which was why he was dangerous. His
standards of conduct and motives were utterly different from
ours, and he was honest enough to apply them without compromise
or warning, that was all.
I was curious about his death sentence, and also anxious to
keep awake, so I questioned him further, asking him point blank
what kind of experiment they were going to try on him, and what
would be the use of it. He meditated for about five minutes
before answering:
"Is it within your knowledge that those who make guns seek
ever to make them powerful enough to penetrate the thickest
armor; and that the men who make armor seek always to make it
strong enough to resist the most powerful guns, so that first the
guns are stronger, and then the armor, and then the guns and then
the armor again, until nations groan beneath the burden of
extravagance? You know that?
"Understand, then, that that is but imitation of a higher law.
A fragment of the force that we control is greater than the whole
power of all the guns in the world, and forever we are seeking
the knowledge of how to protect ourselves against it, so that we
may safely experiment with higher potencies. As we learn the
secret of safety we increase the power, and then learn more
safety, and again increase the power. Perpetually there comes a
stage at which we dare not go forward — yet — because
we do not yet know what the result of higher potencies will be on
our own bodies. Do you understand me? So. There will be an
experiment to-night to ascertain the utmost limit of our present
ability to resist the force."
"You mean they'll try the force on you?"
He nodded.
"Why not use an alligator? There are lots of creatures that
die harder than a human being."
"It must be one who understands," he answered. "Not even a
neophyte would do. It must be one of iron courage, who will
resist to the last, enduring agony rather than letting in death
that would instantly end the agony. It must be one who knows the
full extent of all our knowledge, and can therefore apply all our
present resources of resistance, so that the very outside edge of
safety, as it were, may be measured accurately."
"And how long is the process likely to last?" I asked him.
"Who knows?" he answered. "Possibly three days, or longer.
They will feed me scientifically, and will increase the potencies
gradually, in order to observe the exact effects at different
stages. And some of the more painful stages they will repeat
again and again, because the greater the pain the greater the
difficulty of registering exact degrees of resistance. The higher
vibrations are not by any means always the most painful, any more
than the brightest colors or the highest notes are always the
most beautiful."
"Then you are to use your knowledge of resistance against
their knowledge of force — is that it?"
He nodded.
"Isn't there a chance then that you may hold out to a point
that will satisfy them? A point, I mean, at which you'll be more
useful to them alive than dead? Surely if you should live and
tell them all about it that would serve the purpose better than
to have you dead and silent forever?"
He smiled like a school teacher turning down a promising
pupil's suggestion.
"They will vibrate every atom of flesh and every drop of
moisture from my bones before they have finished," he answered,
"and they will do it as gradually as possible seeking to
ascertain exactly the point at which human life ceases to
persist. My part will be to retain my faculties to the very end,
in order to exercise resistance to the last. So a great deal
depends on my courage. It is possible that this experiment may
carry science forward to a point where it commences a new era,
for if we can learn to survive the higher potencies, a whole new
realm will lie before us awaiting exploration."
"And if you refuse?"
"A dog's death!"
"Have they no use for mercy?"
"Surely. But mercy is not treason. It would be treason to the
cause to let me live. I failed. I let the secret out. I
must die. That is the law. If they let me live, the next
one who failed would quote the precedent, and within a century or
so a new law of compromise would have crept in. Our secrets would
be all out, and the world would use our knowledge to destroy
itself. No. They show their mercy by making use of me, instead of
merely throwing my dead carcass to the alligators."
"If you will tell me your real name I will tell them at Johns
Hopkins about your death, and perhaps they will inscribe your
record on some roll of martyrs," I suggested.
I think that idea tempted him, for his eyes brightened and
grew strangely softer for a moment. He was about to speak, but at
that moment the door opened again, and things began to occur that
drove all thought of Johns Hopkins from our minds.
About a dozen women entered this time. They did not trouble to
tie the Mahatma, but they bound me as the Philistines did Samson,
and then threw a silken bag over my head by way of blindfold. The
bag would have been perfectly effective if I had not caught it in
my teeth as they drew it over my shoulders. It did not take long
to bite a hole in it, nor much longer to move my head about until
I had the hole in front of my right eye, after which I was able
to see fairly well where they were leading me.
Women of most lands are less generous than men to any one in
their power. Men would have been satisfied to let me follow them
along or march in front of them, provided I went fast enough to
suit them, but those vixens hardly treated me as human. Perhaps
they thought that unless they beat, shoved, prodded and kicked me
all the way along those corridors and up the gilded stairs I
might forget who held the upper hand for the moment; but I think
not. I think it was simply sex-venom — the half-involuntary
vengeance that the under-dog inflicts on the other when positions
are reversed. When India's women finally break purdah and enter
politics openly, we shall see more cruelty and savagery, for that
reason, than either the French or Russian terrors had to
show.
I was bruised and actually bleeding in a dozen places when
they hustled me down a corridor at last, and crowded me into a
narrow anteroom, where the two harridans who had handled me
hardest had the worst of it. I gave them what in elephant stables
is known as the "squeeze," crushing them to right and left
against projecting walls; whereat they screamed, and I heard the
reproving voice of the Mahatma just behind me:
"Violence is the folly of beasts. Patience and strength are
one!"
But they were not sticking pins into his ribs and thighs to
humiliate and discourage him. He was being led by either hand,
and cooed to softly in the sort of way that members of the Dorcas
Guild would treat a bishop. It was easy enough for him to feel
magnanimous. I managed to tread hard on one foot, and to squeeze
two more women as they shoved me through a door into a vast
audience hall, and the half-suppressed screams were music in my
ears. I don't see why a woman who uses pins on a prisoner should
be any more immune than a man from violent retaliation.
When they had shut the door they stripped the silk bag off
over my head and holding me by the arms, four on either side,
dragged me to the middle of a hall that was at least as large as
Carnegie Hall in New York, and two or three thousand times as
sumptuous.
I stood on a strip of carpet six feet wide, facing a throne
that faced the door I had entered by. The throne was under a
canopy, and formed the center of a horseshoe ring of gilded
chairs, on every one of which sat a heavily veiled woman. Except
that they were marvelously dressed in all the colors of the
rainbow and so heavily jeweled that they flashed like the morning
dew, there was nothing to identify any of the women except one.
She was Yasmini. And she sat on the throne in the center,
unveiled, unjeweled, and content to outshine all of them without
any kind of artificial aid.
She sat under a hard white light directed from behind a
lattice in the wall that would have exaggerated the slightest
imperfection of looks or manner; and she looked like a fairy-book
queen — like the queen you used to think of in the nursery
when your aunt read stories to you and the illustrated Sunday
supplements had not yet disillusioned you as to how queens wear
their hats.
She was Titania, with a touch of Diana the Huntress, and
decidedly something of Athena, goddess of wisdom, clothed in
flowing cream that showed the outlines of her figure, and with
sandals on her bare feet. Not a diamond. Not a jewel of any kind.
Her hair was bound up in the Grecian fashion and shone like
yellow gold.
Surely she seemed to have been born for the very purpose of
presiding. Perhaps she was the only one who was at ease, for the
others shifted restlessly behind their veils and had that vague,
uncertain air that goes with inexperience — although one
woman, larger looking than the rest, and veiled in embroidered
black instead of colors, sat on a chair near the throne with a
rather more nervy-looking outline. There were more than a hundred
women in there all told.
Yasmini's change of countenance at sight of my predicament was
instantaneous. I don't doubt it was her fault that I had been
mistreated on the way up, for these women had seen me bound by
her orders and mocked by her a couple of hours previously. But
now she saw fit to seem indignant at the treatment I had
suffered, and she made even the ranks of veiled princesses
shudder as she rose and stormed at my captors, giving each word a
sort of whip-lash weight.
"Shall a guest of mine suffer in my house?"
One of the women piped up with a complaint against me. I had
trodden on her foot and crushed her against a door-jamb.
"Would he had slain you!" she retorted. "She-dog! Take her
away! I will punish her afterward! Who stuck pins into him?
Speak, or I will punish all of you!"
None owned up, but three or four of them who had not been able
to come near enough to do me any damage betrayed the others, so
she ordered all except four of them out of the room to await
punishment at her convenience. And then she proceeded to
apologize to me with such royal grace and apparent sincerity that
I wondered whom she suspected of overhearing her. Wondering, my
eyes wandering, I noticed the woman veiled in black. She was an
elderly looking female, rather crouched up in her gorgeous shawl
as if troubled with rheumatism, and neither her hands nor her
feet were visible, both being hidden in the folds of the long
sari.
The next instant Yasmini flew into a passion because the
Mahatma and I were kept standing. The Mahatma was not standing,
as a matter of fact; he had already squatted on the floor beside
me. The women brought us stools, but the Mahatma refused his.
Thinking I might be less conspicuous sitting than standing I sat
down on my stool, whereat Yasmini began showering the women with
abuse for not having supplied me with better garments.
Considering the long swim, the dusty ride on an elephant, and two
fights with women, during which they had been ripped nearly into
rags, the clothes weren't half-bad!
So they brought me a silken robe that was woven all over with
pictures of the Indian gods. And I sat feeling rather like a
Roman, with that gorgeous toga wrapped around me; I might have
been bearing Rome's ultimatum to the Amazons, supposing those
bellicose ladies to have existed in Rome's day.
But it was presently made exceedingly clear to me that Yasmini
and not I was deliverer of ultimatums. She had the whole future
of the world doped out, and her golden voice proceeded to herald
a few of the details in mellifluous Punjabi.
"Princesses," she began, although doubtless some of them were
not princesses, "this holy and benign Mahatma has been sentenced
to die to-night, by those who resent his having trusted women
with royal secrets. He is too proud to appeal for mercy; too
indifferent to his own welfare to seek to avoid the unjust
penalty. But there are others who are proud, and who are not
indifferent!
"We women are too proud to let this Gray Mahatma die on our
account! And it shall not be said of us that we consented to the
death of the man who gave us our first glimpse of the ancient
mysteries! I say the Gray Mahatma shall not die to-night!"
That challenge rang to the roof, and the women fluttered and
thrilled to it. I confess that it thrilled me, for I did not care
to think of the Mahatma's death, having come rather to like the
man. The only person in the hall who showed no trace of the
interest was the Mahatma himself, who squatted on the carpet
close beside me as stolid and motionless as a bronze idol, with
his yellow lion's eyes fixed on Yasmini straight ahead of
him.
"These men, who think themselves omnipotent, who own the
secret of the royal sciences," Yasmini went on, "are no less
human than the rest of us. If I alone had learned the key to
their secrets, they might have made an end of me, but there were
others, and they did not know how many others! Now there are
more; and not only women, but men! And not only men, but known
men! Men who are known to the Government! Men whom they dare not
try to make away with!
"It is true that if they should destroy the Gray Mahatma none
would inquire for him, for he left the world behind him long ago,
and none knows his real name or the place he can from. But that
is not so in the case of these other men, one of whom sits beside
him now. Already Maharajah Jihanbihar has inquired by telegraph
as to their names and their business here, and the Government
agents will be here within a day or two. Those two white men must
be accounted for. Let them, then, account to us for the Gray
Mahatma's life!"
I glanced sideways at the Gray Mahatma. He seemed perfectly
indifferent. He was not even interested in the prospect of
reprieve. I think his thoughts were miles away, although his eyes
stared straight ahead at Yasmini. But he was interested in
something, and I received the impression that he was waiting for
that something to happen. His attitude was almost that of a
telegraphist listening for sounds that have a meaning for him,
but none for the common herd. And all at once I saw him nod, and
beckon with a crooked forefinger.
There was nobody in that hall whom he was beckoning to. He was
not nodding to Yasmini. I saw then that his eyes, although they
looked straight at her, were focused beyond her for infinity. And
there came to mind that chamber in the solid rock below the
Tirthankers' temple in which the granite table stood on which
whoever knew the secret could see anything, anywhere! I believe
that I am as sane as you, who read this, and I swear that it
seemed reasonable to me at that moment that the Gray Mahatma knew
he was visible to watchers in that cavern, and that he was
signaling to them to come and rescue him — from life, for
the appointed death!
But Yasmini seemed not to have noticed any signaling, and if
she did she certainly ignored it. Perhaps she believed that her
hornet's nest of women could stand off any invasion or
interference from without. At any rate, she went on unfolding her
instructions to destiny with perfectly sublime assurance.
"It is only we women who can arouse India from the dream of
the Kali-Yug. It is only in a free India that the Royal
sciences can ever be stripped of their mystery. India is chained
at present by opinions. Therefore opinions must be burst or
melted! Melting is easier! It is hearts that melt opinions! Let
these men, therefore, take this Gray Mahatma with them to the
United States and let them melt opinions there! Let them answer
to us for the Mahatma's life, and to us for the work they do
yonder!
"And lest they feel that they have been imposed upon —
that they are beggars sent to beg in behalf of beggars —
let us pay them royally! Lo, there sits one of these men beside
the Gray Mahatma. I invite you, royal women, to provide him with
the wherewithal for that campaign to which we have appointed him
and his friend!"
She herself set the example by throwing a purse at me —
a leather wallet stuffed full of English banknotes, and the
others had all evidently come prepared, for the room rained money
for about two minutes! Purses fell on the Mahatma and on me in
such profusion that surely Midas never felt more opulent —
although the Mahatma took no notice of them even when one hit him
in the face.
There were all kinds of purses, stuffed with all kinds of
money, but mostly paper money; some, however, had gold in them,
for I heard the gold jingle, and the darned things hurt you when
they landed like a rock on some part of your defenseless anatomy.
Take them on the whole, those women made straight shooting, but
not even curiosity was strong enough to make me pick up one purse
and count its contents.
I rose and bowed acknowledgment without intending to commit
myself, and without touching any of the purses, which would have
been instantly interpreted as signifying acceptance. But I sat
down again pretty promptly, for I had no sooner got to my feet
than the woman in black got up too, and throwing aside the
embroidered sari disclosed none other than Athelstan King
looking sore-eyed from lack of sleep and rather weak from all he
had gone through, but humorously determined, nevertheless.
Yasmini laughed aloud. Evidently she was in the secret. But
nobody else had known, as the flutter of excitement proved. I
think most of the women were rather deliciously scandalized,
although some of them were so imbued with ancient prejudices that
they drew their own veils all the closer and seemed to be trying
to hide behind one another. In fact, any one interested in
discovering which were the progressives and which the
reactionaries in that assembly could have made a good guess in
that minute, although it might not have done him much good unless
he had a good memory for the colors and patterns of saris.
A woman veiled in the Indian fashion is not easy to identify.
But before they could make up their minds whether to resent or
applaud the trick that King had played on them with Yasmini's
obvious collaboration, King was well under way with a speech that
held them spellbound. It would have held any audience spellbound
by its sheer, stark manliness. It was straighter from the
shoulder than Yasmini's eloquence, and left absolutely nothing to
imagination. Blunt, honest downrightness, that was the key of it,
and it took away the breath of all those women used to the
devious necessities of purdah politics.
"My friend and I refuse," he said, and paused to let them
understand that thoroughly. "We refuse to accept your money."
Yasmini, who prided herself on her instantly ready wit, was
too astonished to retort or to try to stop him. It was clear at a
glance that she and King had had some sort of conference while
the Mahatma and I were locked up together, and she had evidently
expected King to fall in line and accept the trust imposed on
him. Even now she seemed to think that he might be coming at
concession in his own way, for her face had a look of expectancy.
But King had nothing in his bag of surprises except
disillusion.
"You see," he went on, "we can no longer be compelled. We
might be killed, but that would bring prompt punishment.
Maharajah Jihanbihar has already started inquiries about us, by
telegraph, which, as you know, goes swiftly. We or else our
slayers will have to be produced alive presently. So we refuse to
accept orders or money from any one. But as for the Mahatma
— we accord him our protection. There is only one power we
recognize as able to impose death penalties. We repudiate all
usurpation of that power. If the Mahatma thinks it will be safer
in the United States, my friend and I will see that he gets
there, at our expense.
"It was in my mind," he went on, "to drive a hard bargain with
the Mahatma. I was going to offer him protection in return for
knowledge. But it is not fair to drive bargains with a man so
closely beset as he is. Therefore I offer him protection without
terms."
With that he tossed the black sari aside and strode
down the narrow carpet to where the Mahatma sat beside me, giving
Yasmini a mere nod of courtesy as he turned his back on her. And
until King reached us, the Mahatma squatted there beckoning one
crooked forefinger, like a man trying to coax a snake out of its
hole. King stood there smiling and looked down into his eyes,
which suddenly lost their look of staring into infinity. He
recognized King, and actually smiled.
"Well spoken!" he said rather patronizingly. "You are brave
and honest. Your Government is helpless, but you and your friend
shall live because of that offer you just made to me."
Yasmini was collecting eyes behind King's back, and it needed
no expert to know that a hurricane was cooking; but King, who
knew her temper well and must have been perfectly aware of
danger, went on talking calmly to the Mahatma.
"You're reprieved too, my friend."
The Mahatma shook his head.
"Your Government is powerless. Listen!"
At that moment I thought he intended us to listen to Yasmini,
who was giving orders to about a dozen women, who had entered the
hall through a door behind the throne. But as I tried to catch
the purport of her orders I heard another sound that, however
distant, is as perfectly unmistakable as the boom of a bell, for
instance, or any other that conveys its instant message to the
mind. If you have ever heard the roar of a mob, never mind what
mob, or where, or which language it roared in, you will never
again mistake that sound for anything else.
"They have told the people," said the Mahatma. "Now the people
will tear the palace down unless I am released. Thus I go free to
my assignation."
We were not the only ones who recognized that tumult. Yasmini
was almost the first to be aware of it; and a second after her
ears had caught the sound, women came running in with word from
Ismail that a mob was thundering at the gate demanding the
Mahatma. A second after that the news had spread all through the
hall, and although there was no panic there was perfectly
unanimous decision what to do. The mob wanted the Mahatma. Let it
have him! They clamored to have the Mahatma driven forth!
King turned and faced Yasmini again at last, and their eyes
met down the length of that long carpet. He smiled, and she
laughed back at him.
"Nevertheless," said the Mahatma, laying a hand on King's
shoulder, and reaching for me with his other hand, "she is no
more to be trusted than the lull of the typhoon. Come with
me."
And with an arm about each of us he started to lead the way
out through the maze of corridors and halls.
He was right. She was not to be trusted. She had laughed at
King, but the laugh hid desperation, and before we reached the
door of the audience hall at least a score of women pounced on
King and me to drag us away from the Mahatma and make us
prisoners again. And at that the Mahatma showed a new phase of
his extraordinary character.
I was well weary by that time of being mauled by women.
Suddenly the Mahatma seized my arm, and gave tongue in a
resounding, strange, metallic voice such as I never heard before.
It brought the whole surging assembly to rigid attention. It was
a note of command, alarm, announcement, challenge, and it carried
in its sharp reverberations something of the solemnity of an
opening salvo of big guns. You could have heard a pin drop.
"I go. These two come with me. Shall I wait and let the mob
come in to fetch me forth?"
But Yasmini had had time now in which to recover her self-
possession, and she was in no mood to be out-generaled by any man
whom she had once tricked so badly as to win his secrets from
him. Her ringing laugh was an answering challenge, as she stood
with one hand holding an arm of the throne in the attitude of
royal arrogance.
"Good! Let the mob come! I, too, can manage mobs!"
Her voice was as arresting as his, although hers lacked the
clamorous quality. There was no doubting her bravery, nor her
conviction that she could deal with any horde that might come
surging through the gates. But she was not the only woman in the
room by more than ninety-nine and certainly ninety-nine of them
were not her servants, but invited guests whom she had coaxed
from their purdah strongholds partly by the lure of curiosity and
partly by skilful playing on their new-born aspirations.
Doubtless her own women knew her resourcefulness and they
might have lined up behind her to resist the mob. But not those
others! They knew too well what the resulting reaction would be,
if they should ever be defiled by such surging "untouchables" as
clamored at the gate for a sight of their beloved Mahatma. To be
as much as seen by those casteless folk within doors was such an
outrage as never would be forgiven by husbands all too glad of an
excuse for clamping tighter yet the bars of tyranny.
There was a perfect scream of fear and indignation. It was
like the clamor of a thousand angry parrots, although there was
worse in it than the hideous anger of any birds. Humanity afraid
outscandals, outshames anything.
Yasmini, who would no more have feared the same number of men
than if they had been trained animals, knew well enough that she
had to deal now with something as ruthless as herself, with all
her determination but without her understanding. It was an
education to see her face change, as she stood and eyed those
women, first accepting the challenge, because of her own
indomitable spirit, then realizing that they could not be
browbeaten into bravery, as men often can be, but that they must
be yielded to if they were not to stampede from under her hand.
She stood there reading them as a two-gun man might read the
posse that had summoned him to surrender; and she deliberately
chose surrender, with all the future chances that entailed,
rather than the certain, absolute defeat that was the
alternative. But she carried a high hand even while
surrendering.
"You are afraid, all you women?" she exclaimed with one of her
golden laughs.﹃Well — who shall blame you? This is too
much to ask of you so soon. We will let the Mahatma go and take
his friends with him. You may go!﹄she said, nodding regally to
us three.
But that was not enough for some of them. The she-bear with
her cubs in Springtime is a mild creature compared to a woman
whose ancient prejudices have been interfered with, and a typhoon
is more reasonable. Half-a-dozen of them screamed that two of us
were white men who had trespassed within the purdah, and that we
should be killed.
"Come!" urged the Mahatma, tugging at King and me. We went out
of that hall at a dead run with screams of﹃Kill them! Kill them!
Kill them!﹄shrilling behind us. And it may be that Yasmini
conceded that point too, or perhaps she was unable to prevent,
for we heard swift footsteps following, and I threw off that
fifteen thousand dollar toga in order to be able to run more
swiftly.
The Mahatma seemed to know that palace as a rat knows the runs
among the tree-roots, and he took us down dark passages and
stairs into the open with a speed that, if it did not baffle
pursuit, at any rate made it easier for pursuers to pretend to
lose us. Yasmini was no fool. She probably called the pursuit
off.
We emerged into the same courtyard, where the marble stairs
descended to the pool containing one great alligator. And we
hurried from court to court to the same cage where the panther
pressed himself against the bars, simultaneously showing fangs at
King and me, and begging to have his ears rubbed. The Mahatma
opened the cage-door, again using no key that I could detect,
although it was a padlock that he unfastened and shoved the brute
to one side, holding him by the scruff of the neck while King and
I made swift tracks for the door at the back of the cage.
But this time we did not go through the tunnel full of rats
and cobras. There was another passage on the same level with the
courtyard that led from dark chamber to chamber until we emerged
at last through an opening in the wall behind the huge image of a
god into the gloom of the Tirthankers' temple — not that
part of it that we had visited before, but another section
fronting on the street.
And we could hear the crowd now very distinctly, egging one
another on to commit the unforgivable offense and storm a woman's
gates. They were shouting for the Gray Mahatma in chorus; it had
grown into a chant already, and when a crowd once turns its
collective yearnings into a single chant, it is only a matter of
minutes before the gates go down, and blood flows, and all those
outrages occur that none can account for afterward.
As long as men do their own thinking, decency and self-
restraint are uppermost, but once let what the leaders call a
slogan usher in the crowd-psychology, and let the slogan turn
into a chant, and the Gadarene swine become patterns of conduct
that the wisest crowd in the world could improve itself by
imitating.
"Think! Think for yourselves!" said the Gray Mahatma, as if he
recognized the thoughts that were occurring to King and me.
Then, making a sign to us to stay where we were, he left us
and strode out on to the temple porch, looking down on the street
that was choked to the bursting point with men who sweated and
slobbered as they swayed in time to the chant of "Mahatma! O
Mahatma! Come to us, Mahatma!"
King and I could see them through the jambs of the double-
folding temple door.
The Mahatma stood looking down at them for about a minute
before they recognized him. One by one, then by sixes, then by
dozens they grew aware of him; and as that happened they grew
silent, until the whole street was more still than a forest. They
held their breath, and let it out in sibilant whispers like the
voice of a little wind moving among leaves; and he did not speak
until they were almost aburst with expectation.
"Go home!" he said then sternly. "Am I your property that ye
break gates to get me? Go home!"
And they obeyed him, in sixes, in dozens, and at last in one
great stream.
CHAPTER XII. — THE CAVE OF BONES
THE Gray Mahatma stood watching the crowd until
the last sweating nondescript had obediently disappeared, and
then returned into the temple to dismiss King and me.
"Come with us," King urged him; but he shook his head, looking
more lionlike than ever, for in his yellow eyes now there was a
blaze as of conquest.
He carried his head like a man who has looked fear in the face
and laughed at it.
"I have my assignation to keep," he said quietly.
"You mean with death?" King asked him, and he nodded.
"Don't be too sure!"
King's retort was confident, and his smile was like the
surgeon's who proposes to reassure his patient in advance of the
operation. But the Mahatma's mind was set on the end appointed
for him, and there was neither grief nor discontent in his voice
as he answered.
"There is no such thing as being too sure."
"I shall use the telegraph, of course," King assured him. "If
necessary to save your life I shall have you arrested."
The Mahatma smiled.
"Have you money?" he asked pleasantly.
"I shall'nt need money. I can send an official telegram."
"I meant for your own needs," said the Mahatma.
"I think I know where to borrow a few rupees," King answered.
"They'll trust me for the railway tickets."
"Pardon me, my friend. It was my fault that your bag and
clothes got separated from you. You had money in the bag. That
shall be adjusted. Never mind how much money. Let us see how much
is here."
That seemed a strange way of adjusting accounts, but there was
logic in it nevertheless. There would be no use in offering us
more than was available, and as for himself, he was naked except
for the saffron smock. He had no purse, nor any way of hiding
money on his person.
He opened his mouth wide and made a noise exactly like a
bronze bell. Some sort of priest came running in answer to the
summons and showed no surprise when given peremptory orders in a
language of which I did not understand one word.
Within two minutes the priest was back again bearing a tray
that was simply heaped with money, as if he had used the thing
for a scoop to get the stuff out of a treasure chest. There was
all kinds — gold, silver, paper, copper, nickel — as
if those strange people simply threw into a chest all that they
received exactly as they received it.
King took a hundred-rupee note from the tray, and the Gray
Mahatma waved the rest aside. The priest departed, and a moment
later I heard the clash and chink of money falling on money; by
the sound it fell quite a distance, as if the treasure chest were
an open cellar.
"Now," said the Gray Mahatma, placing a hand on the shoulders
of each of us. "Go, and forget. It is not yet time to teach the
world our sciences. India is not yet ripe for freedom. I urged
them to move too soon. Go, ye two, and tell none what ye have
seen, for men will only call you fools and liars. Above all,
never seek to learn the secrets, for that means death — and
there are such vastly easier deaths! Good-bye."
He turned and was gone in a moment, stepping sidewise into the
shadows. We could not find him again, although we hunted until
the temple priests came and made it obvious that they would
prefer our room to our company. They did not exactly threaten us,
but refused to answer questions, and pointed at the open door, as
if they thought that was what we were looking for.
So we sought the sunlight, which was as refreshing after the
temple gloom as a cold bath after heat, and turned first of all
in the direction of Mulji Singh's apothecary, hoping to find that
Yasmini had lied, or had been mistaken about that bag.
But Mulji Singh, although fabulously glad to see us, had no
bag nor anything to say about its disappearance. He would not
admit that we had left it there.
"You have been where men go mad, sahibs," was all the
comment he would make.
"Don't you understand that we'll protect you against these
people?" King insisted.
For answer to that Mulji Singh hunted about among the shelves
for a minute, and presently set down a little white paper package
on a corner of the table.
"Do you recognize that, sahib?" he asked.
"Deadly aconite," said King, reading the label.
"Can you protect me against it?"
"You're safe if you let it alone," King answered
unguardedly.
"That is a very wise answer, sahib," said Mulji Singh,
and set the aconite back on the highest shelf in the darkest
corner out of reach.
So, as we could get nothing more out of Mulji Singh except a
tonic that he said would preserve us both from fever, we sought
the telegraph office, making as straight for it as the winding
streets allowed. The door was shut. With my ear to a hole in the
shutters I could hear loud snores within. King picked up a stone
and started to thunder on the door with it.
The ensuing din brought heads to every upper window, and rows
of other heads, like trophies of a ghastly hunt, began to
decorate the edges of the roofs. Several people shouted to us,
but King went on hammering, and at last a sleepy telegraph babu,
half-in and half-out of his black alpaca jacket, opened to
us.
"The wire is broken," he said, and slammed the door in our
faces.
King picked up the stone and beat another tattoo.
"How long has the wire been broken?" he demanded.
"Since morning."
"Who sent the last message?"
"Maharajah Jihanbihar sahib."
"In full or in code?"
"In code."
He slammed the door again and bolted it, and whether or not he
really fell asleep, within the minute he was giving us a perfect
imitation of a hog snoring. What was more, the crowd began to
take its cue from the babu, and a roof-tile broke at our feet as
a gentle reminder that we had the town's permission to depart.
Without caste-marks, and in those shabby, muddy, torn clothes, we
were obviously undesirables.
So we made for the railroad station, where, since we had
money, none could refuse to sell us third-class tickets. But,
though we tried, we could not send a telegram from there either,
although King took the station babu to one side and proved to him
beyond argument that he knew the secret service signs. The babu
was extremely sorry, but the wire was down. The trains were being
run for the present on the old block system, one train waiting in
a station until the next arrived, and so on.
So, although King sent a long telegram in code from a junction
before we reached Lahore, nothing had been done about it by the
time we had changed into Christian clothes at our hotel and
called on the head of the Intelligence Department. And by then it
was a day and a half since we had seen the Gray Mahatma.
The best part of another day was wasted in consulting and
convincing men on whose knees the peace of India rested. They
were naturally nervous about invading the sacred privacy of Hindu
temples, and still more so of investigating Yasmini's doings in
that nest of hers. There were men among them who took no stock in
such tales as ours anyhow — hard and fast Scotch
pragmatists, who doubted the sanity of any man who spoke
seriously of anything that they themselves had not heard, seen,
smelt, felt and tasted. Also there was one man who had been
jealous of Athelstan King all his years in the service, and he
jumped at the chance of obstructing him at last.
After we had told our story at least twenty times, more and
more men being brought in to listen to it, who only served to
increase incredulity and water down belief, King saw fit to fling
his even temper to the winds and try what anger could accomplish.
By that time there were eighteen of us, sitting around a mahogany
table at midnight, and King brought his fist down with a crash
that split the table and offended the dignity of than one
man.
"Confound the lot of you!" he thundered. "I've been in the
service twenty-one years and I've repeatedly brought back scores
of wilder tales than this. But this is the first time that I've
been disbelieved. I'm not in the service now. So here's my
ultimatum! You take this matter up — at once — or I
take it up on my own account! For one thing, I'll write a full
account in all the papers of your refusal to investigate. Suit
yourselves!"
They did not like it; but they liked his alternative less; and
there were two or three men in the room, besides, who were
secretly on King's side, but hardly cared to betray their
opinions in the face of so much opposition. They did not care to
seem too credulous. It was they who suggested with a half-
humorous air of concession that no harm could be done by sending
a committee of investigation to discover whether it were true
that living men were held for experimental purposes beneath that
Tirthanker temple; and one by one the rest yielded, somebody,
however, imposing the ridiculous proviso that the Brahmin priests
must be consulted first.
So, what with one thing and another, and one delay and
another, and considering that the wire had been repaired and no
less than thirty Brahmin priests were in the secret, the outcome
was scarcely surprising.
Ten of us, including four policemen, called on the Maharajah
Jihanbihar five full days after King and I had last seen the
Mahatma; and after we had wasted half a morning in pleasantries
and jokes about stealing a ride on his elephant, we rode in the
Maharajah's two-horse landaus to the Tirthanker temple, where a
priest, who looked blankly amazed, consented at once to be our
guide through the sacred caverns.
But he said they were no longer sacred. He assured us they had
not been used at all for centuries. And with a final word of
caution against cobras he led the way, swinging a lantern with no
more suggestion of anything unusual than if he had been our
servant seeing us home on a dark night.
He even offered to take us through the cobra tunnel, but an
acting deputy high commissioner turned on a flashlight and showed
those goose-neck heads all bobbing in the dark, and that put an
end to all talk of that venture, although the priest was cross-
examined as to his willingness to go down there, and said he was
certainly willing, and everybody voted that "deuced remarkable,"
but "didn't believe the beggar" nevertheless.
He showed us the "Pool of Terrors," filled with sacred
alligators that he assured us were fed on goats provided by the
superstitious townsfolk. He said that they were so tame that they
would not attack a man, and offered to prove it by walking in.
Since that entailed no risk to the committee they permitted him
to do it, and he walked alone across the causeway that had given
King and me such trouble a few nights before. Far from attacking
him, the alligators turned their backs and swam away.
The committee waxed scornful and made numbers of jokes about
King and me of a sort that a man doesn't listen to meekly is a
rule. So I urged the committee to try the same trick, and they
all refused. Then a rather bright notion occurred to me, and I
stepped in myself, treading gingerly along the underwater
causeway. And I was hardly in the water before the brutes all
turned and came hurrying back — which took a little of the
steam out of that committee of investigation. They became less
free with their opinions.
So we all walked around the alligator pool by a passage that
the priest showed us, and one by one we entered all the caves in
which King and I had seen the fakirs and the victims undergoing
torture.
The caves were the same, except that they were cleaner, and
the ashes had all been washed away. There was nobody in them; not
one soul, nor even a sign to betray that any one had been there
for a thousand years.
There were the same cells surrounding the cavern in which the
old fellow had sat reading from a roll of manuscript; but the
cells were absolutely empty. I suggested taking flashlight
photographs and fingerprint impressions of the doors and walls.
But nobody had any magnesium, and the policemen said the doors
might have been scrubbed in any case, so what was the use. And
the priest with the lantern sneered, and the others laughed with
him, so that King and I were made to look foolish once more.
Then we all went up to the temple courtyard, and descended the
stairs through the hole in the floor of the cupola-covered stone
platform. And there stood the lingam on its altar at the foot of
the stairs, and there were the doors just as we had left them,
looking as if they had been pressed into the molten stone by an
enormous thumb. I thought we were going to be able to prove
something of our story at last.
But not so. The priest opened the first door by kicking on it
with his toe, and one by one we filed along the narrow passage in
pitch darkness that was broken only by the swinging lantern
carried by the man in front and the occasional flashes of an
electric torch. King, one pace ahead of me, swore to himself
savagely all the way, and although I did not feel as keenly as he
did about it, because it meant a lot less to me what the
committee might think, I surely did sympathize with him.
If we had come sooner it was beyond belief that we should not
have caught those experts at their business, or at any rate in
process of removing the tools of their strange trade. There must
have been some mechanism connected with their golden light, for
instance, but we could discover neither light nor any trace of
the means of making it. Naturally the committee refused to
believe that there had ever been any.
The caverns were there, just as we had seen them, only without
their contents. The granite table, on which we had seen Benares,
London and New York, was gone. The boxes and rolls of manuscript
had vanished from the cavern in which the little ex-fat man had
changed lead into gold before our eyes. The pit in the center of
the cavern in which the fire-walkers had performed, still held
ashes, but the ashes were cold and had either been slaked with
water, or else water had been admitted into the pit from below.
At any rate, the pit was flooded, and nobody wanted the job of
wading into it to look for apparatus. So there may have been
paraphernalia hidden under those ashes for aught that I know. It
was a perfectly ridiculous investigation; its findings were not
worth a moment's attention of any genuine scientist.
Subsequently, newspaper editors wrote glibly of the gullibility
of the human mind, with King's name and mine in full-sized
letters in the middle of the article.
About the only circumstance that the investigating committee
could not make jokes about was the cleanliness of all the
passages and chambers. There was no dust, no dirt anywhere. You
could have eaten off the floor, and there was no way of
explaining how the dust of ages had not accumulated, unless those
caverns had been occupied and thoroughly cleaned within a short
space of time.
The air down there was getting foul already. There was no
trace of the ventilation that had been so obvious when King and I
were there before. Nevertheless, no trace could be found of any
ventilating shaft; and that was another puzzle — how to
account for the cleanliness and lack of air combined, added to
the fact that such air as there was was still too fresh to be
centuries old.
One fat fool on the committee wiped the sweat from the back of
his neck in the lantern light and proposed at last that the
committee should find that King and I had been the victims of
delusion — perhaps of hypnotism. I asked him point blank
what he knew about hypnotism. He tried to side-step the question,
but I pinned him down to it, and he had to confess that he knew
nothing about it whatever; whereat I asked each member of the
committee whether or not he could diagnose hypnotism, and they
all had to plead ignorance. So nobody seconded that motion.
King had lapsed into a sort of speechless rage. He had long
been used to having his bare word accepted on any point whatever,
having labored all his military years to just that end, craving
that integrity of vision and perception that is so vastly more
than honesty alone, that the blatant unbelief of these
opinionative asses overwhelmed him for the moment.
There was not one man on the committee who had ever done
anything more dangerous than shooting snipe, nor one who had seen
anything more inexplicable than spots before his eyes after too
much dinner. Yet they mocked King and me, in a sort of way that
monkeys in the tree-tops mock a tiger.
Their remarks were on a par with those the cave-man must have
used when some one came from over the sky-line and told them that
fire could be made by rubbing bits of wood together. They
recalled to us what the Gray Mahatma had said about Galileo
trying to make the Pope believe that the earth moved around the
sun. The Pope threatened to burn Galileo for heresy; they only
offered to pillory us with public ridicule; so the world has gone
forward a little bit.
"Let's go," said somebody at last. "I've had enough of this.
We're trespassing, as well as heaping indignity on estimable
Hindus."
"Go!" retorted King. "I wish you would! Leave Ramsden and me
alone in here. There's a cavern we haven't seen yet. You've
formed your opinions. Go and publish them; they'll interest your
friends."
He produced a flashlight of his own and led the way along the
passage, I following. The committee hesitated, and then one by
one came after us, more anxious, I think, to complete the fiasco
than to unearth facts.
But the door that King tried to open would not yield. It was
the only door in all those caverns that had refused to swing open
at the first touch, and this one was fastened so rigidly that it
might have been one with the frame for all the movement our blows
on it produced. Our guide swore he did not know the secret of it,
and our letter of authority included no permission to break down
doors or destroy property in any way at all.
It looked as though we were blocked, and the committee were
all for the air and leaving that door unopened. King urged them
to go and leave it — told them flatly that neither they nor
the world would be any wiser for anything whatever that they
might do — was as beastly rude, in fact, as he knew how to
be; with the result that they set their minds on seeing it
through, for fear lest we should find something after all that
would serve for an argument against their criticism.
Neither King nor I were worried by the letter of the
committee's orders, and I went to look for a rock to break the
door down with. They objected, of course, and so did the priest,
but I told them they might blame the violence on me, and
furthermore suggested that if they supposed they were able to
prevent me they might try. Whereat the priest did discover a way
of opening the door, and that was the only action in the least
resembling the occult that any of us saw that day.
There were so many shadows, and they so deep, that a knob or
trigger of some kind might easily have been hidden in the
darkness beyond our view; but the strange part was that there was
no bolt to the door, nor any slot into which a bolt could slide.
I believe the door was held shut by the pressure of the
surrounding rock, and that the priest knew some way of releasing
it.
We entered a bare cavern which was apparently an exact cube of
about forty feet. It was the only cavern in all that system of
caverns whose walls, corners, roof and floor were all exactly
smooth. It contained no furniture of any kind.
But exactly in the middle of the floor, with hands and feet
pointing to the four corners of the cavern, was a grown man's
skeleton, complete to the last tooth. King had brought a compass
with him, and if that was reasonably accurate then the arms and
legs of the skeleton were exactly oriented, north, south, east
and west; there was an apparent inaccuracy of a little less than
five degrees, which was no doubt attributable to the pocket
instrument.
One of the committee members tried to pick a bone up, and it
fell to pieces in his fingers. Another man touched a rib, and
that broke brittlely. I picked up the broken piece of rib and
held it in the rays of King's flashlight.
"You remember?" said King in an undertone to me. "You recall
the Gray Mahatma's words? 'There will be nothing left for the
alligators!' There's neither fat nor moisture in that bone, it's
like chalk. See?"
He squeezed it in his fingers and it crumbled.
"Huh! This fellow has been dead for centuries," said somebody.
"He can't have been a Hindu, or they'd have burned him. No use
wondering who hewas; there's nothing to identify him with
— no hair, no clothing — nothing but dead bone."
"Nothing! Nothing whatever!" said the priest with a dry laugh,
and began kicking the bones here and there all over the cavern.
They crumbled as his foot struck them, and turned to dust as he
trod on them — all except the teeth. As he kicked the skull
across the floor the teeth scattered, but King and I picked up a
few of them, and I have mine yet — two molars and two
incisors belonging to a man, who to my mind was as much an honest
martyr as any in Fox's book.
"Well, Mr. King," asked one of the committee in his choicest
note of sarcasm, "have you any more marvels to exhibit, or shall
we adjourn?"
"Adjourn by all means," King advised him.
"We know it all, eh?"
"Truly, you know it all," King answered without a smile.
Then speaking sidewise in an undertone to me:
"And you and I know nothing. That's a better place to start
from, Ramsden. I don't know how you feel, but I'm going to track
their science down until I'm dead or master of it. The very
highest knowledge we've attained is ignorance compared to what
these fellows showed us. I'm going to discover their secret or
break my neck!"
Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Dec 1951, with
"The Gray Mahatma".
THE END
Project Gutenberg Australia