The Heath Hover Mystery
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The gap was significant. Knowing the state of the country and the temper of its people, Helston could supply it very well. And, indeed, his sight was not less keen than that of his shikari. He lay still and watched with interested expectation.
The band was now defiling into full view, but still advancing, head on; he could not quite distinguish the figures apart; but that they were all armed he could see plainly. Some had rifles, others the native sickle-stocked jezail, and all wore the universal fulwar, hung by a broad sabretasche from the right shoulder.
“Who – what are they?” he whispered.
“Gularzai,” breathed Hussein Khan, in reply. “See, at the head rides the Sirdar, Allah-din Khan.”
With something of a start of interest Helston recognised the man named. Now, mounted on a fine horse, looking very warrior-like and martial at the head of his wild band, was the man with whom he had tossed for right of way in the tangi but a week or two since. And then – he saw something else, and the sight sent all the blood back to his heart.
He stared, then stared again. No. It could not be.
The band, amounting to some score of horsemen, was nearly abreast of them now, riding at a foot’s pace, as indeed the rocky nature of the ground demanded. But in the midst of it rode two figures which belonged certainly not to the Gularzai, or to any known tribe or race within our Indian possessions. They were unmistakably Europeans and represented both sexes. And then Helston Varne got the surprise of his life. Indeed, he began to wonder whether he were dreaming or delirious, for there – now immediately beneath him, in the midst of this wild band of predatory mountaineers rode John Seward Mervyn and his niece.
Heavens! what did it mean – what could it mean? These two, whom he had left safe in quiet, peaceful, rural England, not so very long since – here now, in this shaggy, perilous wilderness, and for escort an armed band of savage, fanatical tribesmen. What could it mean? At all risks he would get out his binocular and scan them more closely. Yes, at all risks. And this he put to his shikari. The latter slightly shrugged one shoulder, impassively.
Under the powerful lens, Melian was brought within thirty yards, and with the sight, his heart seemed to stand still within him. The beautiful face, though calm, had a set, troubled look, even a frightened look, he told himself. But her splendid pluck was evidently standing her in good stead. Then he turned the glasses upon her uncle. Mervyn’s face was impassive, and betrayed no emotion whatever. And then, like a flash, there ran through his own mind the whole gist of his talk with Coates on the night of their arrival in the new camp – his prediction that at some time or other Mervyn would return to this strange, dim, mysterious land, and the other’s reply – ready reply at that – that if he were wise he would not. And now here he was – manifestly a prisoner, and, for what purpose? And with him, Melian.
If ever Helston Varne had run against difficulty in his life – and that he had run against and surmounted many, we have already said – he realised that he was running against the greatest – here and now. He knew enough of this wild Northern border, with its labyrinthine impenetrable chasms and fastnesses, and the fierce fanatical treachery of its indomitable tribesmen, to recognise that sheer forcible rescue was clean out of the question. If for some special reason like that hinted at by Coates, they had managed to get Mervyn into their power, it was with a long brooded upon, and settled purpose, one which involved no mere matter of ransom. And Melian? Here one ray of hope did dawn. She could have had no part in, or knowledge of, her uncle’s dealings with their inner and mysterious affairs, and as strict Mahomedans, they would not offer active insult to a woman. Here the question of ransom might come in, and if it did, he himself would find it – find it promptly and cheerfully.
In a whirl of mingled feelings the ordinarily cool-headed, hard nerved man watched the band as it receded now, for it had already passed their point of outlook, and would disappear directly round the upper bend of the valley. Then he turned to Hussein Khan.
“What does this mean?”
Again the other shrugged a shoulder.
“Who may say, Hazûr? The Gularzai are ever restless, and they love money as – Ya Allah, who does not! If they have persuaded, yonder Hazûr, and the Miss Sahib, to go with them, it is because they are worth many rupees.”
Helston looked fixedly at him, even meaningly.
“And that is all their motive – all?” he added, with emphasised meaning.
But the man’s fine face was mask-like in its lack of response. If its owner knew – suspected – any other – well, he was an Oriental.
“Allah-din Khan too, loves money,” he answered. “We are alone Hazûr, so – there are some who would be alive to-day had they been able to give him what he asked.”
An immense relief would have swept across Helston’s mind had the shikari’s answer carried conviction. For it would have cut the knot of the difficulty on the spot. He knew that Mervyn was a poor man, and realised with intense satisfaction then that he himself was not. Whatever this freebooting chieftain might ask to set his captives free should be paid. It would be a mere matter for negotiation. But, unfortunately, in the light of his talk with Coates, the answer did not carry conviction – not entirely, though he tried to buoy himself up with the hope that it did.
“Where is Allah-din Khan’s village?” he said.
“His village? It is more like a fort, Hazûr. It is away among the mountains, nearly two days journey from here. They are heading straight for it now.”
Helston’s heart sank. A fort – a hill fort! Why, it would require an expedition to reduce such, and meanwhile, what would become of the captives? The only solution he saw was that of ransom, and that was, under the circumstances, by no means a reassuring one.
“Can you guide me to it, Hussein Khan?”
The man looked strangely troubled.
“I can do so,” he said, after a pause. “But it is putting the head between the tiger’s jaws, for then will not Allah-din Khan demand the price of three instead of the price of two? And the price he will name will not be small, Hazûr.”
The matter of price would have been nothing. But more and more did Helston conjecture a deeper motive to underly. One redeeming side of it, however, was that he did not think they would be in any immediate danger, and it would be hard if he could not find some way out of the impasse.
“This needs some planning out, Hussein Khan. Meanwhile we will return to the camp.”
“Ha, Hazûr.”
“Any luck?” asked Varne Coates, coming out of the tent to meet him. He had remained at home, not feeling very fit. Then, as if the negative shake of the head constituted a matter of no importance, he went on eagerly: “You certainly have the gift of prophecy, Helston, or you must be the devil himself. Remember, when we were talking about Mervyn the other night, you predicted he’d be turning up here again?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he has. I’ve just got a ‘chit’ from him saying he’ll be here with us this evening, and he’s bringing his niece. They left Mazaran three days ago on purpose to join us. We’ll have a rare old bukh, over old times, but,” – with a shake of the head – “you remember what I was saying – that he’d be a damn fool if he did come out here again. Well, I only hope I was wrong.”
“I wish you were, but I’m afraid you’re not. Come into the tent here, and see that no one’s about who can understand us.”
Varne Coates stared at his kinsman. The concerned gravity in the latter’s tone affected him, taken in conjunction with his superhuman gift of finding out everything. He led the way into the tent in silence.
And then Helston put him into possession of the morning’s discovery. At the conclusion of the narrative Coates shook a very doleful head indeed.
“They weren’t with Allah-din Khan’s crowd of their own free will,” he declared. “Did Mervyn show any signs of having been in a scrap?”
“No. My glasses are extra powerful. He looked – normal. Well? What do you think of it – of the chances?”
“Chances? I think the chances for Mervyn are worth just that,” – with a snap of the fingers. “For the girl, it’s just possible that this budmash may give her up, at the price of lakhs of rupees, but who the devil’s going to pay it?”
“The Government?”
“No fear, Government may send an expedition, but that won’t help anybody, but it isn’t going to pay up.”
“Then I am.”
“You are?” with a stare of amazement.
“Certainly. Only too glad to get her back safe at any price, even if it costs me every damn shilling I’ve got in the world.”
Varne Coates looked at his kinsman and whistled.
“So that’s how the cat jumps, is it?”
“That’s how.”
Chapter Twenty Five
Mervyn’s Dilemma
We must glance back.
Mervyn’s camp was pitched not very far from the mouth of the Duran Tangi; that is, not very far from the scene of the sniping episode of a week or two previously, of which, of course, he was in ignorance, but far enough from the great overhanging wall of terraced cliff, to be beyond the possibility of a repetition of the same. He had been warned at Mazaran that the country was extra restless just then, and that moving about in it, in the happy-go-lucky way he proposed, was positively unsafe; but with his usual gustiness, he pooh-poohed every suggestion of the kind. No one was good enough to teach him his India, he declared. If it suited the military element to get up and foment a chronic scare, well that wasn’t going to interfere with him. It was of no use representing to him that this wasn’t India precisely, but the Northern border – whose inhabitants were a fierce, predatory set of fanatics caring for no show of authority, and that even now these were in a state of unrest – well, he knew them too. When he heard that his old friend Varne Coates – and especially the latter’s relative, and his friend, were on a shikar expedition two or three days out, that was sufficient. He only spent long enough at Mazaran to collect camp necessaries and hire servants, and at once set out to join them.
He had even demurred to the escort of four Levy sowars, which was pressed upon him. These damned Catch-em-alive-ohs, he declared, were of no – ditto – use. They couldn’t hit a haystack if it came to shooting, and even then they’d either clear or make common cause with the enemy, to whom, tribally, they as likely as not belonged. So – here he was.
They had made a very early start from their last camp, and the morning was yet young. They had not long finished breakfast, and were seated in camp chairs under the shade of a canvas awning.
“Oh, this is perfectly glorious,” Melian was saying, her eyes seeming to feed upon the sunlit wildness of the surroundings. “What a contrast to dear old Heath Hover, too. Look at that splendid mountain face, all terraced, as it were, with great cliffs; and even the openness of it all has a marvellous charm.”
Her uncle puffed meditatively at his cheroot, then looked at her, and in the result felt not unsatisfied. She had taken, with characteristic readiness, to this strange wild country and its life – and every phase of it afforded her a fresh delight. And its people, too, of every shade and type, but that which attracted her most, was the tall, turbaned, often scowling, mountaineer, with his primitive jezail and never absent and wicked looking tulwar – a very Ishmaelite in deed and in appearance.
They had come up the tangi in the early morning and she had been entranced with the vastness of the huge narrow chasm, the first of its kind she had ever seen. And now, as Mervyn contemplated the eager animated face, tinged with the golden glow of an open air life, the blue eyes clear and large in contrast, he found himself thinking satirically that it was small wonder if Mazaran had sought to throw stumbling blocks in the way of their leaving it. And then as though the mention of Heath Hover evoked a recollection she suddenly said:
“I do hope old Joe and Judy will take real care of our little black poogie, and not let it out at night to get shot, or get into a trap in the coverts – dear little pooge-pooge?”
“Oh, I’m sure they will. But – we couldn’t have done with it here, could we?”
“No, but I would like to have it all the same. Why, what’s this?”
A whirl of dust was coming down the road, and as it drew nearer, they could make out a band of horsemen, clad in the loose white garments of the mountain tribes. Through it, too, as the gleam of weapons.
“Oh, it’s some of these picturesque people, and they are so fascinating,” cried the girl. “It’ll be quite a sight to see them ride past.”
The road ran about a hundred yards below the site of the camp. For the first time some qualm of misgiving came into Mervyn’s self-sufficient mind, and he found himself actually hoping that they really would ride past. They looked a formidable gang enough, some two score strong, and armed to the teeth. It was not lessened as he saw that they were not on the road at all, and were heading straight for the camp.
Came another sight, which caused his face to pale and stiffen strangely.
“Melian, go inside the tent, and stay there till I tell you to come out,” he said sharply.
“Why? Mayn’t I see?”
“Do as I say – at once,” he repeated, with a stamp of the foot. “They may be a bit rough, but – I’ll settle them.”
She obeyed, greatly wondering. “Mayn’t I see?” she had said. Good! Then she had not seen – what he had, and he felt thankful.
Out on the plain two of his camp natives were herding the camels. He had seen several of the horsemen dart out upon these from the main body, and cut them down with their keen edged tulwars without giving them time so much as to utter a shriek. At that moment John Seward Mervyn realised that if ever he had been in a tight place in his life he was in one now, and if he did not, when too late, curse his own foolhardiness for bringing him into it, why it was only because he had not time.
The whole band rode down like a whirlwind upon the camp. The bearer and khitmutghar, and the cook, Punjabi natives, scared out of their lives, had crept into one of the tents and crouched trembling. The Levy sowars alone showed fight, and pointed their rifles, but it was plain they would have welcomed any chance offered to surrender.
“Melian, don’t move outside, do you hear,” said her uncle over his shoulder. He had risen, and stood confronting the wild array. These had now reined up, and were facing him, in a crescent formation.
“Salaam!” he said. “This is a strange welcome to a stranger in a strange land, brothers.”
A grunt broke from the fierce shaggy faces; and the gleaming, hostile eyes seemed to take on a further deepening of hate and greed.
“This is the Sirdar, Allah-din Khan,” said one, designating the man on his right.
“That is good to hear,” answered Mervyn, speaking in the Pushtu, “Salaam, Sirdar Allah-din Khan. I repeat this is a strange way of paying a friendly visit.”
“A friendly visit?” repeated the chief, in deep tones. “But what if this is not a friendly visit?”
The fierce eyes of the fanatical predatory Asiatic, and the hard, determined blue gleam in those of the European met, and there was no yielding in the glance of either.
“In that case,” replied the latter, “I invite the Sirdar to withdraw. It is not safe to stay – for him, for as the life of the Sirdar Allah-din Khan must be worth the lives of all his followers put together, it is not good policy to throw away so valuable a life.”
The tone was perfectly even, in itself containing no threat. Mervyn was at his best now, cool, desperate, therefore deadly dangerous. At his words a gasp of amazement escaped from the other side. The first thought was of a trap. Were there soldiers concealed in the tent, with rifles trained upon them through the canvas? And meanwhile Mervyn stood confronting them, calmly; one hand, however, always behind him.
“The life of so important a chief as the Sirdar Allah-din Khan must be of great value,” he went on in the same unconcerned tone. “And – he has but one.”
“And thou hast two, Feringhi,” answered the chief, darkly. “Two, and that means two deaths instead of one, lingering and painful deaths at that. One of thy ‘lives’ is behind in the tent. Good! I may fall or I may not, but I swear on the tomb of the Prophet that if thou so much as drawest the weapon now held behind thee, thou and thy daughter,” – this was a figure of speech – “shall be burnt alive. She first.”
Mervyn felt desperate. He tried not to pale as he gazed at the speaker. But his hand did not move from behind him. In that fierce, hard, set countenance, in the very words of the oath uttered, he knew there would be no going back from that sentence. He might shoot the chief dead, but no power on earth would turn the whirlwind rush of his followers. And they would be as good as their leader’s word, as to that he entertained no doubt whatever. Melian – writhing in a death of fiery torment – the bare idea was as a pictured glimpse into hell itself. A great roll of time swept over his mind in that moment or two, as he stood, confronting the man in whose power he was.
“She first,” this barbarian had said. There was a full refinement of diabolical cruelty in the words. God! the thing was unthinkable!
“I draw no weapon,” he answered. “What does the Sirdar Allah-din Khan require. Money?”
“Thyself.”
The answer was curt, deep toned, uncompromising.
“Myself?”
“Nothing else.”
“And what of my ‘daughter’ – who however is not my daughter, but my sister’s daughter?” went on Mervyn, who was puzzling hard over what took on more and more the look of a very hopeless and dreadful situation. “As believers you dare not harm a woman, the holy Koran itself forbids it. But how shall she find her way back to her people alone, she who has never before been in this land?”
“We want nothing of her,” said the chief. “She may go in peace. Two of my people here shall escort her safely to within view of the camp of yonder Feringhi,” with a nod over his shoulder in the direction of Varne Coates’ camp. “But for thyself thou must go with us.”
To say that Mervyn felt as if more than half the cloud had lifted would be to put it mildly. The awful deadly weight that had been crushing him, the consciousness to wit, that by his own foolhardy obstinacy, he had brought Melian into ghastly peril – was that which afflicted him most. He himself and his own potential fate was a matter of utterly secondary importance – and, here was a way out.
But could he trust the chief’s promises? He knew that in this instance he could. So he made answer, and that very earnestly.
“You will keep faith with me, Sirdar Sahib? My sister’s child shall be escorted to yonder camp by two of your people, and delivered there safe and unharmed either by word or deed, on condition that I go with you now? Do you swear that solemnly on the holy Koran and the tomb of the Prophet?”
“I swear it,” answered Allah-din Khan, “on the holy Koran, by the tomb of the Prophet, and on the holy Kaba.” And he raised his sword hilt to the level of his forehead. Mervyn knew that the oath would be kept.
“I would fain bid farewell to the child, and prepare her for the journey,” he said. “I, too, make oath, that nothing will be done inside the tent but that.”
It seemed strange, but to this the chief made no objection, nor did he require that one of his followers should be present. He merely bent his head in assent.
“Well, what has happened? You have been talking long enough, dear,” said the girl, as he entered the tent.
“Melian darling, you will have to go on to Coates’ camp a little ahead of me. The fact is – I must go with these people for a bit – but I’ll rejoin you soon. The chief is going to tell off two of his men as an escort for you, and you will be quite safe – quite safe. Tell Coates I’ll join him later.”
He tried to speak jauntily – to force a smile. But Melian was not to be taken in – not for a moment. She shook her head.
“I am not going to Mr Coates’ camp,” she said, “at least, not without you. If you have got to go with these people I go too.”
Mervyn had not reckoned upon this. He tried to reason with her, pointing out that a forced march with a gang of wild tribesmen and a sojourn in their more or less uncomfortable villages, was no fit experience for her. Of any clement of peril he purposely said nothing, knowing full well that to do so would be simply to rivet her opposition the closer. But he might as well have argued with the tent walls, or have tried to turn the Gularzai chieftain from his fixed purpose.
“Now be reasonable, my little one,” he concluded. “Say good-bye to me here, and I’ll see you started off all comfortably.”
But Melian set her lips, and those very pretty lips of hers could set very firmly indeed on occasion.
“I shall do no such thing,” she answered. “I’m going with you. We came here together, and I’m not going to leave you.”
She was clinging to him now, firmly, and kissing him.
“You won’t go to Coates’ then?” he said helplessly.
“No. I’m going with you. So now, let’s go out and tell them so.”
The chief might have been excused if he had grown impatient, but he had not. With true Oriental impassiveness he and his wild followers sat their horses, waiting – incidentally the camp servants crouching in their tent, went through the bitterness of death many times over during that period of waiting. Then Mervyn came out and announced that they would have to take two with them instead of one. But Allah-din Khan received the statement without great demur; it may have been that he scented advantage to himself in this addition to his own programme.
In not much longer space of time than it took them to bring in the two horses, and hurriedly put together a few necessaries, were they ready to start. The syce, who was ordered out on the first errand, showed no great concern. He was a Pathan and a believer, and stood in no fear of the scowling horsemen. But the bearer, who had perforce been convened for purposes of the latter, had wilted and cowered before the lowering glances darted at him from under fierce shaggy brows, as a Hindu dog and an idolater. But it did not suit their purpose to shed more blood on that occasion, else would he and the others have felt the tulwar’s edge there and then. The two already slain had been victims to a sudden, unthinking blood lust.
Again we must glance back.
Since the last visit of Helston Varne to Heath Hover, and the boding manifestation that same evening, of the opening door, an unaccountable and evil influence seemed to pervade the place. There was no gripping it, but it was there, and on Melian especially, it seemed to take a firm hold. All her bright sunny spirits, her joyousness in life, seemed to leave her, and that with a suddenness and rapidity that was little short of alarming. She grew pallid, and lost her appetite. She grew nervous, too, and would start at any and every sound; and when night time came, and with it solitude, she shrank from it with a very horror of shrinking. Nothing had happened, according to the tradition of that boding presage, but the fit grew upon her, and it affected Mervyn too, though differently. At last he took her to task about it, and she owned up to the whole thing.
“This’ll never do, little one,” he had said, looking at her with very grave concern. “We must go away for a change.”
The relief which sprang into her face confirmed her former revelation. Still she made protest.
“Why should I break up your peace and quiet, Uncle Seward?” trying to smile, but the smile was a wan one. “You have given me a home, when I had none – such a happy home, too – but somehow now, I don’t know what it is that has come over me. I seem to be always frightened – of something – or nothing.”
Yes, he had noticed that, but had hoped it would pass. But it had not.
“Where shall we go then? Where would you like?” he said.
“Anywhere you like, dear. It’s all the same to me.”
“H’m! How should you like to go to – India?”
“To – India? Oh, Uncle Seward, I should just love it,” and all the old animation returned, as if by magic.