The Heath Hover Mystery

Chapter Twenty Six

The Dim, Mysterious East

The way in which the two accepted the situation was characteristic of both. Mervyn took it apparently as all in the day’s work, though he had reason to believe that his days were surely numbered. He conversed equably with his captors – or escort, as though he were accompanying them of his own free will, to pay a visit to their village for instance, for any other pacific purpose. Yet he knew that in coming to this country again he had deliberately – as Hussein Khan had put it – placed his head between the tiger’s jaws.

Even this, strange to say, did not perturb him, perhaps he had imbibed a large proportion of Oriental fatalism during his lifelong acquaintance with the strange peoples of the East. If his time had come – it had, and there was no more to be said. It had nearly come, he knew full well, when the cry through the winter midnight had led him to drag the perishing man forth from the icy death. Now, if it really had come, why – “it was written;” and in that case that he had returned to this land at all, and of his own free will – was part of the scheme. Thus he looked at it.

But – what of Melian? Had he not drawn her into peril? No – for he did not believe they would harm her. For himself, if what he suspected should prove true – why then his hours were certainly numbered. Well, what then? Until she had come to Heath Hover he had not been in love with life. He was often, in fact, honestly and genuinely sick of it. The brightening which her coming had shed upon it could not be other than temporary. In the due and ordinary course of things she was bound to leave him again sooner or later – and then, how could he return to the old solitude, the old depression of day in, night out? There was nothing to look forward to, and precious little to look back upon. So it mattered little enough now whatever happened to himself. All of which of course, he did not impart to Melian.

She for her part, seemed infected with his unconcern, and looked upon the whole affair as a decidedly interesting adventure. It had its inconvenient side – for instance the commissariat department was to her civilised tastes, abominable, and sleeping out among the rocks was chilly of a night. But she was allowed to come and go as she liked. No watch was set upon her, for in the first place she had volunteered to go with them rather than separate from her relative, and in the next where would she be in the midst of this craggy, and, to her, entirely unknown wilderness, even if she did change her mind, and take it into her head to try and escape. At night they would make her up a couch of mats in some cleft or hollow among the rocks and shelter off the entrance, and she would declare laughingly to her uncle that it was only an experience of camping out, after all.

Yet there were times when her efforts at keeping up her spirits would sorely fail her. Mervyn himself could not consistently find comfort in cold fatalism, and she would read in the gloom of his knitted brows that he was by no means so easy in his mind as he would have had her believe. And as they journeyed on, through the awful wildness of this savage, rock built region; threading gloomy gorges where the very light of the sun would not penetrate, or traversing a drear waste of desert where the friable soil rose and gyrated in “dust devils” and the sun blazed down as from the reflection of an opened furnace; wending the while, whither they knew not – her spirits began to droop. In short the situation was getting upon her nerves – and that badly.

The shaggy, turbaned horsemen, whom at first she had found fascinating in their picturesqueness, began to appear in her eyes more and more the predatory, merciless beings they really were. The wild savagery of the surroundings – which at first she had pronounced absolutely faultless in their fantastic chaos of rock and crag and chasm, now took on a Dantesque and hope-chilling aspect. Where would it all end?

Either Hussein Khan’s estimate of the distance to be travelled to arrive at the Gularzai chieftain’s stronghold had been very much under-rated, or they were bound for some other destination, for two nights had passed, and they seemed no nearer to any fixed ending of their journeyings. And then when her spirits had reached their lowest ebb, came a thought to Melian’s mind like the breaking of sunlight through a thick mist.

Helston Varne was at Coates’ camp, which had been their objective when their plans had been thus roughly and suddenly deflected. She would hardly own to herself how greatly she had been looking forward to meeting him again, and now it seemed to her that he, of all human agencies, would be the one to come to their aid and bring matters right. How on earth he was going to do it she had not the ghost of an idea, but that he would contrive to do it somehow, she felt assured – almost. For the very name of Helston Varne seemed to her now as before, a tower of refuge. And something of this she imparted to her uncle.

But he shook a gloomy head. A network was around him – around them both – which even Helston Varne’s acumen and infinite resource would be powerless to rend asunder. This he knew, but she did not, and – he could not tell her.

He had been very careful in his conversations with her, and had enjoined upon her like caution. It was highly probable, but still not absolutely safe to assume, that no one amid their captors understood English. She suggested French, but then Mervyn’s education, though excellent for purposes of passing through a crammer’s hands in his salad days, comprised no working knowledge of that courtly and useful tongue, so that fell through, and unless now and again, and then by dark hints, they were compelled to avoid any reference to the motive of their capture, and the ultimate chances of its satisfactory termination. And then it befell that the merest chance – a piece of overheard conversation – sufficed to throw him into the last stage of gloomy, hopeless despair.

It was during one of their noontide halts. The routine of prayer and prostration – which Melian had at first found so picturesque, even admirable, but now had wearied of – was over, and the men were scattered about in twos or threes, looking after the horses and other things. Two of them were chatting together in a drowsy undertone, and Mervyn, unnoticed by them, was just within earshot, and the substance of what they were saying was this. He himself must die, his time had come. That night they would reach the place —the place. Well, this as a personal consideration troubled him not much, he had only expected it. But the woman with the sun-tinged hair, they went on to say, she, unless the Sirkar at Mazaran paid the lakh of rupees which would be asked for her restoration – or made any move against them because of what had been done – why there were those over the Persian border who would give nearly if not quite as much for such an addition to their harîm.

In frozen horror he took in this, but it was essential to show no sign that he had heard. Would such a sum be paid, and if it were, would not official delay and official bungling be such as to render even compliance of none effect? Moreover, could the authorities responsible for the peace of the border allow so flagrant an act of dacoity to pass without retaliative measures? In either case – Good Heavens! He knew enough about the conditions of a vast tract of hardly penetrated country, and its inscrutable inhabitants, to realise that once Melian disappeared entirely she would be as completely swallowed up, as though the whole Indian army, and the official mechanism, from the Viceroy downwards, were not in existence. And this was the fate to which his own foolhardiness had consigned her. And she was as much to him as ever child of his own could have been!

He knew the two speakers as near kinsmen of Allah-din Khan, and that as such that they were not talking at random. He himself was to die that night, that was settled. That was nothing. “It was written.” But how to save Melian from the unutterable ghastliness of the fate mapped out for her? That was everything. No amount of fatalism would come to his aid there. In the hot swelter of noontide – for with all the keen chill of the nights on these high lands, the sun at noonday threw off from the rocks and arid ground in waves of glowing heat – his brain seemed to bubble. One weltering thought seethed through it – that of taking her life and his own at the same time, but as against this he remembered that he was unarmed. They had insisted upon his giving up everything in the shape of a weapon at the time of his surrender. Then again, she had the one chance in her favour, what right had he to deprive her of it? Well, there remained still some hours —some hours only– which he had left to him, and yet his reason told him that they could bring nothing. Of his own death, or even the manner of it, he did not think – so wrapped up was he in the desperation of extremity as the situation affected her.

“Why, Uncle Seward, buck up. You are looking dreadfully down,” she remarked, as they resumed their journey. “And you were the one who was always trying to hearten me.”

“Yes darling, I was, but – perhaps I am not quite the thing. Got a touch of the sun, or something. But I’ll be all right when it gets cooler. A tough old campaigner like me is never affected that way for long.”

He noticed that she herself was far from cheerful, and that her spirits were forced. But – great God! if she only knew what he had learned. In sheer desperation he ranged his horse alongside that of Allah-din Khan, and began to talk, haply in hope that the other might let fall some hint which should give him an idea. It even seemed to him that he himself was talking wildly and at random, for he surprised the chief looking at him more than once in a restrained and curious manner. Yet they had often talked together during their enforced march.

“I should not have consented to the Miss Sahib accompanying me,” he ventured. “I fear it has been too much for her. Could you not return her to her people, brother? It would be of great advantage to all concerned?”

He made the remark in sheer desperation, and emphasising the last words. But nothing came of it.

“We have come far,” replied Allah-din Khan, tranquilly, “but in time she will return. The teachings of the Prophet enjoin patience, but women – Feringhi women especially – have none of it. Let this one learn to acquire it.”

This was uncompromising, but Mervyn thought to see a loophole.

“In time she will return,” he repeated. “That is the word of a Sirdar of the Gularzai?”

To this the chief made no reply. He was looking straight in front of him as he rode, and his dark, clear-cut face was as impassive as a mask. He might, indeed, not have heard for all the sign he gave.

In the light of what he had overheard it was significant to Mervyn that a glance at the sun showed that they were travelling due west. What curious dash of wild hope was it that caused him to recall that this had brought them a great deal nearer to Mazaran than they were when at the point of their start? And yet, even if chance offered, there were ranges of craggy, tooth-like crests between them and the garrison station, and he himself was totally unacquainted with this part of the country. But what chance could offer? None. Absolutely none.

An hour before sundown they halted at a small, squalid looking village – and then the regulation performances of prayer were gone through. He did notice that several strangers had joined with Allah-din Khan’s band in this – presumably people from the squalid, mud-walled village. That one of them was a man of extra fine stature and presence, he also noticed, but barely so. For instance he overlooked the fact that this one was bowing down, and repeating the prescribed words with extra fervour, and a fanatical ecstasy in his dark eyes and swarthy countenance, and that the others were stealing at him glances of furtive veneration.

As they resumed their march he ranged his horse alongside that of Melian. No restriction was put upon such movements as this. The band was riding anyhow and in open order now – straggling order would be the better term for it, for some were quite far behind. In the first place their captives were mounted on inferior steeds, in the next the Gularzai were perfectly well aware that in such country as they now were in, any attempt at escape would meet with not the ghost of a chance.

“My child, I have brought you into a dreadful corner,” he said, and the dead note of hopelessness in his tone struck a chill into his hearer. “I ought never to have consented to your accompanying me, but now it’s too late. Listen. If anything should happen to me, you will still be set free on a ransom. The Government will pay it, I have very little in the world, but such as it is I have left it to you – and now but for me being such a fool as to bring you here we might have gone on in our old quiet, happy life; not necessarily at Heath Hover. Well, what I wanted to say, and I must say it quickly, is this, If anything should happen to me, ask to be taken to the Nawab Shere Dil Khan. He is the head chief of the Gularzai, and this one is under him. I’ll write the words down for you in Hindustani, and you can learn them by heart – and keep on asking – keep on asking.” He felt in his pocket, and even wrote in his pocket, on an envelope he found there. “And don’t show any fear, keep on steadfastly requiring the Nawab Shere Dil Khan – have you got the name, well, I’ve put it down here, only it’s not very distinct. Well now, take the bit of paper – That was well done. And – there’s another thing.”

Melian looked at the speaker and her eyes filled. Her nerves had begun to go, and she was feeling utterly helpless and overwrought. Now this strong foreboding of danger aggravated this.

“Darling Uncle Seward, what should be going to happen to you?” she urged. “There now, you have been trying to keep me up; now I must try and keep you up. Surely they won’t harm you – us – if they expect to be paid for letting us go?”

“Yes. That’s right, little one. They won’t harm – us,” he answered. “Still, it’s best to be on the safe side. Once you get to the Nawab you’re safe. He’s a straight and square man, but unfortunately, these sub-tribal chiefs are virtually almost independent of the head, or it’s certain we should not be here.”

“I’ll remember,” she answered. “But,” – as though a sudden and illuminating idea had struck her. “Why don’t you appeal to him – now, before we go any further. Why leave it to what – isn’t going to happen – and me?”

Here was a question which it was impossible for him to answer, though to all appearances, nothing could have been more pertinent. He could not tell her that in his case the head sirdar of the Gularzai would be every whit as merciless as would Allah-din Khan and his followers. But her case was different. And that ghastly plan which he had overheard had resolved him to an even more hazardous course on her behalf – hazardous because one of sheer sink or swim.

“‘Why?’” he repeated. “‘Why?’ Always a woman’s query – Why?” And he looked at her with a very loving but very sad smile. “I can only tell you this, child, that you must leave that part of it to me, and do exactly as I tell you I know– and you don’t. That must be sufficient. This is the dim, mysterious East, remember, and I’ve spent the best years of my life in it.”

The sun was drooping now to the craggy, serrated ridge beyond the valley, flaming in red gold upon the cliffs beneath which they were riding. The figures of the wild, turbaned horsemen were picked out in the clear glow – the strange, fierce East indeed. Melian thought it was a picture that would remain stamped in her memory until her dying day. There were signs too, that the said figures showed an inclination to abandon their straggling order and to close up. Mervyn saw this – and at the same time came the thought that this was the last sun whose setting he would ever see.

“Quick, now, Melian,” he said. “Take this, but carefully. Watch your chance. No one must see. When you have it, hide it upon you. Don’t even look at it again. If you do, it must be at the very last extremity. You are more than ordinarily quick witted, and will be able to follow. If anything happens to me – no, don’t interrupt – and after a reasonable time has gone, say a month, and you are not restored, and especially if Allah-din Khan should attempt to pass you on to strangers – then produce it. Do you follow?”

“Yes – but – what – where – is it?” said the girl, her wide open, serious eyes upon his face.

“Take my pouch and pipe, and fill it, as they have often seen you do,” and he handed it to her. Wondering, she obeyed. Then as he reached forth his hand to take it, he slipped something into hers. One look at this, and she almost let it fall, but refrained, just in time.

For what she held in her hand was a tiny facsimile of the strange, star-shaped disc, which she had picked up on the sluice path at Heath Hover that lovely cloudless June morning, and the sight of which, in her grasp, had struck her uncle with such a terror of trepidation.

And he knew that she was possessed of that which upon production would entail upon her two alternatives – restoration, to liberty or death – the latter, swift, painless, unconscious. But the other ghastly fate, to which he had overheard allusion made, could now never be hers.

“Only in the very last extremity,” he reminded her, in an earnest undertone, for the band was now closing up around them. And she bent her head in grave, silent comprehension, and assent.

Chapter Twenty Seven

The Vault of Doom

The red fires shot up against shining rock reflection, throwing out exaggerations or silhouettes of the shaggy figures moving about. Wild, fantastic, as the surrounding crags were, thus thrown out into fitful light, yet the place was an ideal one for a snug and sheltered camp, where the keen mountain air struck chill at night, for it was sheltered on three sides by rock and cliff, while the fourth gave out on a steep drop into the valley beneath. To one, at any rate, the topographical situation did not fail in significance. Not by sheer accident, not for mere purposes of shelter had the situation been chosen.

In hanging clusters the stars shone brightly in the clear sky, but there was no moon. The two Europeans, seated in their own camp a little apart, had finished their evening meal – Mervyn incidentally, had been allowed to go out, under escort, and shoot a few chikor (the large red-legged hill partridge), early that morning, so they had fared better than heretofore. Now he had lighted a pipe, and was striving to conjure up all the stoicism of the dim mysterious East to his aid, the while keeping up the conversation with Melian, and doing so in such wise as to convey no apprehension to her mind. And the keeping up of ordinary conversation within an hour or so of one’s own death is not an easy undertaking; but then, John Seward Mervyn was not quite an ordinary man.

A few months ago, he would not greatly have concerned himself over this situation. But within that time, life had changed and brightened for him. It was more valuable up to date than it had been then. He turned the talk on to Heath Hover and their time together there, and for a little, the girl forgot their precarious and now depressing situation and surroundings, and was responsive, brightening up with this and that homely touch.

“Why, the heather must be flaming out in perfectly gorgeous crimson up above the Plane woods,” she said, “and we are not getting the benefit of it this time. And that bit, down below Chiltingford, where we took Violet the day before she left – that must be too ripping for anything. And the jolly old battered mill, standing out on the open – I wish we were there again, don’t you, dear? Say you do.”

The eager, retrospective tone had lapsed into seriousness. There was no difficulty in replying as she wanted, and that with perfect truth and candour. Mervyn, looking back on those fair scenes, spent with this child; marking and treasuring all her golden joyousness and appreciation of every sound and sight around her; thought that for a repetition of just that time alone he would have faced the fate in front of him a hundred times over. It was little enough of such sweet wholesome happiness he had known in the course of a hard, rugged, bizarre life, and that time about comprised it all.

Two wolves howled at responsive intervals away down in the valley beneath, and the red glow of the camp fires played upon the bronzed, hook-nosed faces, and fierce eyes, of the wild marauders of the desert, squatted around, smoking their hookahs, and conversing in a deep rumbling undertone. The owls would be softly hooting in the woods which dipped their edges into Plane Pond at this moment, and the bell-like plash of rising fish ring out on its starlit surface. Contrast indeed! Here in this savage wilderness death was to be his at any hour, at any moment. And now and thus, for the first time in his life, death seemed hard to face.

“You have – what I gave you – safe, child?” he broke in, as though moved by a sudden impulse. “Recollect, it is only to be produced in the very last extremity, if the appeal to Shere Dil Khan should fail.”

“Don’t,” she answered, startled by the solemnly spoken irrelevance of the remark, and thrusting a hand into his. “You must really shake off these dismal forebodings, dear – and yet, how can I undertake to lecture you —you– on things that this weird country may hold out?”

And then, as if to give point to her words, a tall figure seemed to grow out of the earth beside them. A murmured sentence or two, and as in response to it he rose.

“Sit still, darling, and wait for me,” he said. “I have to go and talk with some of them, and it will be wearisome – especially as it interrupts our talk about good old times.” He rested one hand lovingly upon the gold-crowned head, and then passed out with the man who had come to summon him. He would not even take a real, long farewell of her, if only that it might prove the reverse of advantageous to her, for he must still keep up the pretence of ignorance, and yet it was the last time he should behold her in this world, and he had but a shadowy belief in any other. For John Seward Mervyn knew as well as did the man he was accompanying that he was going to his doom.

It was a strange place, that in which he found himself but two or three minutes later – a cavernous hall, yet walled around by solid rock, and of some vastness. And yet, it seemed somehow as though it were not entirely the work of Nature, even here, where Nature ran riot in the production of wild freaks of her own masonry. It bore a look as though ages and ages of gradual working had wrought it to such a pitch of symmetry. In the centre a fire burned, the smoke escaping upwards somehow and somewhere, for the atmosphere of the place was quite clear of it.

Seated about this were some half dozen figures. Only one did Mervyn recognise as that of Allah-din Khan. The others all looked strangers to him. Stay. Only one? No, there was another; for in the one seated on the right of the chief Mervyn recognised the tall, somewhat remarkable looking man who had joined the rest at prayer. This one sat eyeing him, an embodiment of Eastern stateliness, in snowy flowing garments, the folds of his turban arranged round the conical kulla which just peeped above it, with an almost mathematical nicety. Mervyn took note of something else. Behind him, two tall, ferocious looking Gularzai had drawn up, standing so as to bar effectually the way by which he had been ushered in. So this was to be his death chamber, he thought? Well, the sooner it was over the better.

“Salaam, brothers,” he began, but only by way of saying something.

“It is not ‘salaam,’” (“salaam” – Peace) answered the distinguished looking stranger, speaking in a very deep chested tone. “You joined the Brethren of the Night whose sign is the Five Pointed Star – were made blood-brother with them, and – were false to them.”

“Therein is not truth,” answered Mervyn, who had expected this as an opening of the proceedings.

“Not truth?” went on the speaker. “In thine English home the Sign was delivered to thee; in thine English home – the long house with the cornering wings which shelter the centre, and which stands beneath the broad end of the water.”