Читать книгу Caravans By Night - Harry Hervey - Страница 9

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Several days after Muhafiz All delivered the imitation Pearl Scarf to the sahib in Indore, the young woman who was marked of Destiny sat in a first-class carriage of the East Indian Railway, her attention divided between a green vellum volume propped against a gray-clad knee and the sun-blistered scenery that unreeled past the window.

An elderly gentleman from Devonshire who occupied the same carriage found himself wondering why his eyes invariably returned to the girl. This particular gentleman was past youthful sentimentalizing and not yet in those riper years when age casts regretful glances over its shoulder; therefore, being no psychometric, it puzzled him that this girl should compel his gaze. Was it the hair, in whose bronzen waves a slantwise ray of sunlight ignited little glints of red-gold? Or the white throat, full with young maturity? Suddenly she looked up, and he fathomed the secret of magnetism. Brown eyes that brought to mind a deep, rich wine held to the light—or poplar leaves just before snow. He felt something of cathedral-largeness behind those eyes, something vital and alive yet intensely spiritual. The warm strength of sunlight in great forests; tapers in altar-gloom. These things were there. And the gentleman from Devonshire thought of a daughter in Britain and smiled to himself, and forgot hot, heart-aching India.

The lights which he had glimpsed in the girl's eyes were the very beacons that had drawn her across leagues of water—lights that were first kindled in some voyaging ancestor whose frigate dropped anchor off old New Orleans, in the gilded days of Bienville; that grew dim in the tiresome process of heredity, and flamed anew, generations later, in this girl who sat in the railway carriage—lights that were almost smothered by the snuffers of Aristocracy and Tradition.

For Dana Charteris came of a Louisiana family whose name was as old as the state itself, and who lived in a great, pillared house and had black servants and drank blacker coffee. Custom and pride and chivalry were the goddesses of the family penetralia, and debt maintained the vestal-fires. Her father was called "Colonel" for the same reason that no less than one third of the gentlemen of his plane were given that title. Her mother, who carried an air of fragrant and faded aristocracy, read Cable and regarded him as some subaltern's wives in India regarded Kipling. And her brother, Alan—Dana hardly knew Alan. When his name was spoken in the house, it was in a hushed voice. They called him "black sheep," but Dana could never associate dark fleece with the slim boy she remembered. Alan ran away when little more than fifteen—ran away to sail the Seven Seas and to find the end of the rainbow. Every few months letters came from him, bearing post-marks that were, to her, stamps of glamour.

In her eyes her brother wore the mantle of Jason. He rambled in all manner of weird places in his quest for the golden prize. This, while she grew in an atmosphere of sweetly-musty traditions! Before she went off to boarding-school her days were divided between the piano, paddling indolently in warm bayous—sometimes alone, sometimes not—and riding a black mare. But in the quiet, breathless nights when an army of stars thronged the sky, and from down the river came the soft crooning of a Creole song, she dreamed of enchanted lands beyond the horizon.

But the voyaging ancestor and the argonaut-brother were only partly responsible for her unrest. There was Tante Lucie, down in New Orleans. (Tante Lucie, who made one think of star-jasmines and all the romantic things that aura the Old South.) She had stories to tell, for a lover-husband had taken her adventuring. She had seen the Shwe Dagon and looked upon the Taj by moonlight. Her lover-husband was only a memory, as were the temple and the Tomb; but she loved to talk of them, sitting in her little court where the perfume of magnolias swam in the air.

Dana's father died just before her eighteenth birthday. In the years following, her mother no longer read Cable; she sat and dreamed of her argonaut-son and of the "Colonel." And Dana almost stifled her desire to cross the seas. For ominous sounds disturbed the quiet of Bayou Latouche; there were bandages to be made and books and boxes to be shipped to camps. During that period the letters from Alan were infrequent and from Mesopotamia.

But the interlude of khaki passed, and Bayou Latouche sank back into its stupor. Again in the starry silences Dana listened to the crooning of Creole songs down by the river and dreamed of a world beyond the dawns and dusks. She was alone then; her mother went during the interlude, and Tante Lucie no longer sat in her court and talked of foreign lands. There were no ties; except money, as always. To keep up the house she taught music.

Then, one day, she heard from Alan. Burma, this time. He held a post with the Inspector of Police at Rangoon. He had a bungalow in the cantonment, he said, and any number of servants to wait on her, if she would sell the house at Bayou Latouche and come to him. In a short time he would have a "leave." They could meet in Calcutta and "do" India together.

India—together! Those words opened the dream-portals. After she read the letter she consulted a mirror and told herself that she was twenty-three and already in demand as a chaperone for the younger set. She went into the library and stood before the portraits of her father and her mother. She cried. And then, aware that the shades of the Charteris family had stern gazes fixed upon her, she sent a cablegram to Alan.

Once aboard the great ship, she felt no regrets; to look back upon the great, pillared house was like lifting the lid of a rose-jar: it brought the fragrance of things very old and very faded. When she reached Calcutta, a young captain met her at Chandpal Ghat. He had a note from Alan. It explained that an urgent matter had taken him to Indore; he begged her to forgive him for not meeting her, but assured her she was in good hands. The second day in Calcutta she received a telegram from him.

"Meet me Delhi Friday," it ran. "Take express. Plan trip to Khyber."

To the Khyber!... She left Calcutta that same day, and now, after a long journey through the prickly-hot United Provinces, she was speeding into the North. India, with its contrasts of filth and grandeur, had not tarnished under the touch of reality; the nearest she came to disillusion was in smoky, modern Calcutta. Now Tundla Junction lay behind in a shimmering heat-haze; ahead, beyond the roaring, sweating engine, was Delhi—Delhi, key to perished dynasties.

The engine's whistle shrieked. It sent a charge of excitement through her and she looked eagerly out of the window. Iron wheels rumbled across a bridge. Another shriek of the whistle. Brakes screamed, and the train drew up, panting, in the clamor and writhing heat of the railway station.

The gentleman from Devonshire opened the carriage door, and Dana, a grip in each hand, her heart fluttering against her breast, smiled at him and stepped into a torrid swarm. Her eyes searched the crowd. What would he look like? Suppose she did not recognize him! Vaguely nervous, yet happy, she allowed herself to be carried with the human surge.

"Hello, there!" said a voice in her ear, and she turned quickly to look into a clean-shaven tanned face. (And the gentleman from Devonshire, who was passing, saw the brown eyes acquire a deeper, richer glow.)

"Alan!"

He was tall and slim, and the eyes that looked into hers were intensely blue, the blue of sapphires.... The same boy, she told herself joyously, only more tanned and grown-up!

"Oh, Alan!" she gasped, as he held her at arm's-length, despite the crowd, then drew her to him and kissed her.

"Great Lord, how you've grown!" he exclaimed.

She remembered saying something about not being a little girl always; remembered being led through the throng. Then they were in the street. Heat and noise and colorful confusion.

"I've reserved rooms at a quiet place beyond the Kashmir Gate," he told her as he helped her into a carriage. "From the terrace outside your room you can look upon the battlements and the river." Then, with another smile, "I can't believe it's you! Why, you're positively beautiful! Lord, it seems a century, a whole century, since I was in Bayou Latouche!"

He removed his topi as they wheeled off and she saw that his hair was shot with gray above the temples. They seemed so absurd, those gray hairs. And how his eyes lighted when he spoke of Bayou Latouche! She realized suddenly, with a tightening of the cords in her throat, that the search for the golden fleece hadn't been all pleasant. In his voice, in his face and manner, was a thirst for home-talk. She understood how he needed her, there in his bungalow in Rangoon.

"Bayou Latouche is just the same," she said, placing her hand upon his. (She spoke with a faintly slurring accent that was unmistakable.) "Except, of course, so many have gone ... the war...." Pause. "I don't believe you've changed a bit, Alan—you're like that last picture you had taken before you left. Mother—how she adored you! If you could have seen the way she looked at that picture! Father, too."

He smiled soberly. She could see her father in certain of his features. A sudden fierce joy of possession ran through her. He was hers, this bronzed brother!

"I'm glad you've come, Dana." This solemnly. "It's been rather lonely out here. You know the climate has a way, once it gets a hold, of sapping up the energy and mummifying a fellow before his time."

Her hand closed tighter about his. "And there hasn't been a girl, Alan?"

He smiled. "You're the only one, Dana.... I was sorry I wasn't in Calcutta when you landed, but this game of sleuthing has its unexpected twists. That's why I like it. Nothing very exciting ever really happens; it's usually humdrum thievery and dacoity. A French rogue put in his appearance in Rangoon about a month or so ago—an international character; only goes in for big loot. Don't know where he was before he turned up in Rangoon, but he vanished as queerly as he'd come. The day I reached Calcutta I was in the station and I recognized him. He'd peroxided his beard and hair! Heard him ask for a ticket to Indore, and I scented trouble in the wind. Of course, I should have had him arrested there, but I wanted to see what he was up to. I left the note with Bellingrath and took the next train."

Adventure! And he was talking of it in a matter-of-fact way!

"You caught him?" she urged.

"Has anybody ever caught Chavigny? No, he slipped through the net. And the nerve of him! He had letters to the Maharajah and the Agent! Used the name of Leroux. I dressed up in a Punjabi's garb—wanted to snoop around without arousing suspicion. I tracked Chavigny to a jeweller's shop the day I reached Indore and overheard him commission the merchant to make an imitation copy of the Maharajah Holkar's Pearl Scarf. After that I watched the jeweller, too. He—but I'm boring you."

"Boring me!" She laughed. "My own brother masquerading as a native and shadowing a notorious thief! Go on!"

"Well, I waited, and the expected happened, only on a larger scale than I anticipated. The treasury was looted—looted! Thousands' worth of jewels! Why, the Pearl Scarf alone is valued at a crore of rupees, which is about three million, three hundred thousand in our money. And the Peacock Turban, too, cost a fabulous sum! Yet, confound it, Chavigny didn't go near the palace the night of the robbery! Nor had he taken the copy of the Pearl Scarf from the bazaar! The night after the theft, I followed him to the shop. Gad, how it rained that night! He got the imitation scarf—but I lost him. We had a tussle and I snatched the beastly imitation, which I'm keeping as a souvenir of my colossal blunder in not taking the local police into my confidence. Departmental jealousy; that's the death of justice. Chavigny left Indore by automobile or carriage—don't know which—and boarded a north-bound train at Mhow garrison. The station-babu described him and said his ticket read to Delhi. And here I am."

"You've notified the police that—Chavigny, isn't it?—is in the city?"

He smiled. "I didn't have to. About two hours after I arrived, I heard that Kerth—he's the Director of Central Intelligence's best man—had got wind of Chavigny's presence and was trying to ferret him out. That relieved me of the responsibility of reporting Chavigny."

"And you still have the copy of the Pearl Scarf?"

"Yes."

"But is it right to keep it?" This with a flickering deep in the brown eyes.

"Oh, I'll not keep it; only for a while. If I can get Chavigny, then—well, there's no telling what might happen. Too, I'd like to beat that devilishly clever Kerth. You see, Dana, this is a big affair, much bigger than I thought at first. The Secret Service is trying to keep the lid on it, but of course it's leaked out. On the same night the robbery occurred at Indore, similar robberies took place in several other cities. And in every instance it was royal loot! The Gaekwar of Baroda has one of the finest collections of diamonds in India, the famous 'Star of the Deccan' among them—and a rug, a rug, Dana, ten by six, made of pearls and rubies and diamonds! Think of it—and stolen! Scindia of Gwalior, the Rajah of Alwar, the Nawab of Bahawalpur, and, oh, others, too! And they all happened on the same night. Does it mean there's a band of thieves at work, with Chavigny at the head? If so, why, great Scott, it's the most colossal thing that's ever been staged! But I can't understand how they intend to get away with the booty. The borders and the coast are closed as tight as a drum, and they can't dispose of the jewels in India."

Dana sighed. "To think of all that happening, Alan, just as I arrive! Wouldn't it be marvelous if—"

"If what?" he encouraged, smiling.

"Well, if I were to wake up and find myself in the midst of something of that sort; one of the players, not just an onlooker." Another sigh. "I'd like to see a really notorious thief, Alan."

He laughed. "You may; for Chavigny's in a close quarter now. But here we are at the hotel."

The carriage drew up and a turbaned porter took her bags. The proprietor, an Eurasian, met them under the great front arch of the building and conducted them to their rooms.

"Oh!" gasped the girl, drawing aside the bamboo blinds.

The casement opened upon a stone terrace flush with the city walls, and out of the green and white chaos of Shahjehanabad, or modern Delhi, rose the gilded bubbles of several domes. Beyond a dark green jungle area, the Jumna shone dully.

"India!" she exclaimed. "Moguls and howdahs and mosques!"

"India! Thugs, snakes and abominable hotels!" scoffed her brother from the adjoining room. "Here's the copy of the Pearl Scarf, if you care to see it."

As she turned, he stepped through the communicating doorway and extended a shallow box. When she lifted the cover a little gasp of astonishment left her lips. The cream-luster of pearls; red and blue gleams from paste diamonds!

"Why, they look genuine!" she cried; then shuddered. "There's a terrible fascination about jewels, Alan. They always have a story. Murder and pillage!"

"Grease and dirt usually, in India," he interpolated with a smile, taking the box. "But let's forget Chavigny and the round dozen Rajahs that are wailing over their stolen jewels. I promised Gerrish—he's an old friend—we'd dine with him this evening. Eight o'clock."

A few minutes later Dana unpacked her grips. Dear Alan! Her brother. After all those years. She wondered if it were not a dream, if presently she wouldn't wake up back at Bayou Latouche, or in Tante Lucie's court, down in New Orleans, with Tante Lucie talking of foreign lands....