“Come along,” he said presently, forcing his voice. He did not trust
himself to add one more word.
Blair led. He was unaware that his back, and the poise of his head, and
his shoulders, and the resolute swing of his stride in the smoky torchlight,
pained Henrietta almost beyond endurance. The foot-track along the dry bed of
the stream was narrow and winding; it was easier to walk one by one. To have
followed her might have saved him the strain of imagination.
To his mind’s eye she seemed lovelier than she really was;, no woman could
be quite as beautiful as he imagined her. And she seemed to him more
defenseless than a woman of her high character possibly could be in his
hands. He knew she loved him; she had said so. He was tremendously attracted
to her and he was not sure he was not really in love with her.
Was it true that he had behaved like Ranjeet Singh of the legend? Had he,
even unintentionally, by his conduct, given her the right to believe he loved
her? Probably. Had he played her false? Had he tried to buy his liberty with
the price of her honor? He could not see how. He was going to have to be
brutal to her now, at any rate, so he denied himself the luxury of even one
backward glance at her. He strode like a Roman.
The tent glowed with lamplight. There were two chairs under the awning,
with a table between. He had forgotten the garlands on his shoulders; his
servant removed those when he reached the tent. Then he turned deliberately,
giving Henrietta time to control herself before their eyes met. Mellow
moonlight— lamp glow—garlands, and the simple line of her
frock—stillness and purple shadows—
“Damn!” he said. “You look like a Madonna.” But he used the word at
random; she was pagan and looked like temptation itself.
“Sit down, won’t you? Drink? I’ve whisky and soda. Tea then?”
“Nothing.”
The servant put the cigarette box on the table and Blair dismissed him.
Little groups of people standing in the shadows vanished. A pony, somewhere
in darkness, snorted and strained at his picket; a
sais
reproved him,
and after that there was no other noticeable sound. The stillness, that is
made of infinitely tiny voices, waited, and the stars seemed to wait too.
Blair’s voice, when he forced himself to speak, was almost deadly
restrained:
“What’s the use, Henrietta?”
Her voice sounded hopeless. “Nothing’s any use, Blair, not between
us.”
“Anyhow, making a mystery isn’t,” he answered. “If you were worried about
your father—”
“I am.”
“Are you? Either you know where he is, or you’ve heard from him, or he has
told you not to worry and has given a reason. If not,, you’d behave
differently. I’ve to find him. Is it sensible to put yourself to the damned
indignity, and me to the indecency of having you watched? I can do that. I’d
rather go to hell than do it.”
“You must do as you please.”
“I can’t do as I please. Neither can you.”
“No,” she said, “I know that.”.
“Do you realize that whatever you have in your tent, that you refused just
now to let me see, would be known to me in detail before daylight,
if—”
“Well, why don’t you? Oh, Blair, can’t you understand? Are you the only
person in the world who’s loyal? And to what?” (He remembered that Wu Tu had
said almost the same thing.) “Would you tell me any official secrets, that
you nevertheless discuss with underlings? Would you even tell me Wu Tu’s
secrets? If you weren’t a policeman—”
“Let’s not
if
ourselves into a metaphysical maze,” he interrupted.
“I am a policeman. I’ve had easier duties than this, I don’t mind telling
you.” Without changing his voice; without the slightest gesture to betray
that he had chosen a new angle of attack, he went on:
“Chetusingh”—he watched her, and her eyes revealed nothing, but the
ends of her fingers flattened slightly on the chair-arm—“has also
vanished.”
He had not even been sure that she knew Chetusingh, but he saw her guard
go up. Her answering sarcastic smile was a moment too late: “Did you propose
to search my tent for him?”
“No,” he answered; “I hadn’t thought of it.”
She waited.
He paused, very carefully selecting from the inquisition pincers.
“You haven’t told me,” he said, “all that Wu Tu told you.”
“No, Blair, I haven’t. Why not ask
her
?”
“Why are you willing,” he demanded, “to sit here and be questioned, when
its obviously painful? You didn’t have to come here with me. There were
plenty of people up there on the hill who could have seen you safely back to
Graynes’ camp.”
She hesitated, thought a moment, and then answered with a smile that
mocked her own torment:
“It seemed a possible opportunity to fall out of love with you,
Blair.”
“Why?” he asked brutally.
“I fell in.”
“Are you out now?”
“Does it matter?”
“You’ve no intention of telling me anything?”
“Blair, it isn’t you, it’s the policeman I can’t tell.”
“So you. do know.”
“I don’t admit that.”
“Well, Henrietta, is isn’t I, but the policeman who’s asking questions.
Personally I wouldn’t probe your secrets. If I did dream of doing it because
they’re interesting and you’re you, I wouldn’t do it in this way. But I’m
obliged to be impersonal and insist.” “It’s no use insisting—not the
slightest use, Blair. But go on being impersonal.”
“Why?”
“It helps me,”
“You mean, if I were to put this on a personal basis you’d find it easier
to tell me?”
“How should I know? You haven’t tried it. I might find it much more
difficult to ask. I don’t know what would happen.”
He got out of his chair and stood in front of her, holding his left wrist
in his right hand behind his back, there being some emotions that demand more
than mental restraint. He knew she would not resist if he should throw his
arm around her. She was almost openly inviting him to do it. But he was one
of those men whom temptation makes more obstinate the more it tortures. His
shadow darkened her. Her gaze met his. Beyond or within her violet eyes he
seemed to see Wu Tu’s. He remembered what Wu Tu wanted him to do. If
Henrietta had been any other woman—
“Are there terms on which you would tell?” he demanded suddenly.
“No. None.” Her voice broke and he felt like a devil, so he spoke to her
gently, not appreciating that the only merciful thing he could have done
would have been to unleash anger and act like a cad. Then, perhaps, she might
have ceased to love him.
“You’re tired,” he said. “Perhaps in the morning you’ll feel able to talk.
I’ll order the ponies saddled.
“Not yet.”
He supposed she wanted time to recover self-control, so he walked to and
fro in the moonlight, keeping his face averted each time he turned. When he
stopped and stood in front of her again she was holding her hands before her
eyes, but she was not sobbing.
“I wish to God you weren’t you,” he said grimly. “If you were any other
woman—”
“Yes, I know,” she answered. She was dry-eyed. “If I were any other woman
you would make love and coax me to tell what I know. I wish you had tried
that, so that I could despise you. But you’re an honorable brute. Why are you
here, not some other man?”
“Damned if I know.”
“I will tell you. You can no more help yourself than Pontius Pilate could.
There are forces that—”
He interrupted with a gesture of anger.
“See here, Henrietta. We had all that out a year ago. Your mysterious
forces are not what I’m here to talk about. I don’t believe in them. You may
keep all those secrets. Tell me what has happened to your father.”
“But I don’t know.”
“Tell me what you think has happened to him.”
“No. You wouldn’t understand me.”
Nothing enrages a man more than to be told that by a woman. But
self-control was almost automatic with Blair; he answered quietly, in a
gloved voice that had no resonance:
“Very well.
You’ll
have to take the consequences. You and I will
both regret that. I’ll order the ponies.”
She stood up: “Blair, I’d rather not ride, if you don’t mind. Mayn’t your
servant see me home? I don’t want to talk to you any longer. I couldn’t bear
it.”
“I won’t talk.”
“I would rather go alone, but you may send as many servants as you
please.”
“Oh, all right.”
All the servants were asleep, or pretending to sleep. None answered his
shout. He strode savagely around the tent and awakened them—gave his
orders—eight men and four lanterns.
He did not return to Henrietta until they were all near the tent in a
sleepy group, staring and silent.
“Protection?” she asked. “So many? Or is it—”
“They make the good-by less embarrassing.” he said stiffly. “Good night.
Henrietta. I am sorry I had to ask questions—much more sorry you didn’t
answer them.”
“Good night, Blair.” They did not even shake hands. She walked away, two
tall men with lanterns leading, two men on either side of her armed with
ancient Rajput swords, and two more men with lanterns bringing up the rear.
She looked like a prisoner, and the garlands hanging in long loops from her
shoulders unexplainably increased the effect. Her hands, clasped behind her,
might have been tied. Her fair hair, loose and untidy, shone where the
moonlight sprayed its straying ends.
Blair took hold of the pole of the tent awning, and his eyes followed her,
even after she had vanished in the gloom beyond a veil of moonlit dust, until
he realized that the pain in his hand came from squeezing the pole. Then he
swore and sat down.
He sat for two hours, almost without moving, trying to ponder the problem
but thinking about her all the time, until the servants returned and reported
her safe in her tent in the Graynes’ camp.
“Did she say anything?”
“No, sahib.”
“No message for me? Are you sure?”
“No, sahib. She entered her tent and came out again to give each of us a
little money. Then we asked permission to return hither and she nodded. It is
your honor’s pleasure that we return now to our beds?”
“Yes.”
Blair sat still, watching the purple shadows lengthen and grow darker as
the, moon descended toward the high hills on his left hand. He felt lonely
and weird. His anger, long ago evaporated, had left a sense of mental
emptiness and futility. Gaglajung, on the right, became a soot-black, solemn
fang upreared against the stars. After a while it resembled an enormous
woman’s face in profile—coarse nose pointed skyward—coarse,
impudent lips.
The stars grew brilliant on the darkening sky. Blackness crept into the
shadows. The sparse trees grew one with the night. Then, in front of him,
again he saw Wu Tu’s eyes, but he marked a change. They seemed farther away
than usual—less human—more real— larger—too large and
too high from the ground to be hers or an animal’s. They became pale green,
moving against a background of impenetrable gloom. He had not before seen
them move in that way, independently of the movement of his own eyes. They
made him shudder.
He felt for the bruise on the back of his head, suspecting that the blow
received at Wu Tu’s might have affected his vision: he had heard of that
happening to a man. But the bruise had healed, and his eyes felt all right.
Then he reached for a cigarette, but instead of lighting it he went into the
tent and brought out a service revolver. He sat down again and examined the
loading. Then he looked again for those eyes in the dark. They were
there.
They were enormous—no longer in the least like Wu Tu’s. Their
movement was irregular. It was stealthy. They were coming toward
him—high up—twenty feet from the ground. He could see nothing
beneath them—no head —merely eyes, of a luminous, disgusting,
cruel green, like a light he had once seen in a cavern where a fakir wrought
obscene miracles. They suggested a dank smell, but he knew that was
imagination because he could smell the good earthy scent of the dew on the
dust.
He could hear nothing except ordinary night sounds, such as the wing-whirr
of insects and the high, excited, almost inaudible squeak of bats. An owl
hooted two or three times. The eyes came nearer. He began to feel deathly
afraid and thought of summoning the servants, but dismissed that thought the
moment it crossed his mind.
The moon vanished beyond the hump of a hill and utter darkness swallowed
the last shadows. Then the pale light of the monstrous eyes increased. He
could see they were set in a man’s head—or a head like a man’s—a
giant’s, but too small for a man twenty feet high. It seemed to be suspended
in air. Its movement was slow, elastic, partly from side to side with a
swaying effect.
The face was thin, mean, livid. It had a straggling beard. It resembled
the face of a tortured and decapitated hillman he had seen near Quetta, its
beard matted with blood; only this one was alive and moved haggard lips. It
drew nearer. The eyes glared malign intelligence of unintelligible horrors;
their loathsome irises looked dull blood-red; but it was difficult to tell
their real color because the ghoulish green predominated. Presently the gloom
beneath the head grew vaguely luminous, and then horror crept up Blair’s
spine until his short hair rose and he sat rigid, not breathing, with his
heart thumping.
He could see the thing’s body. It resembled a slimy black bag, shaped like
a stomach. The thing was an octopus. It walked on six snake-like tentacles of
prodigious length. There were suckers on them that opened and closed with
rhythmic movement, each one separately. The two foremost arms reached and
writhed slimily green through the dark. He could feel one of them stirring
the air within ten paces. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t take his eyes off the
face. It seemed to see him and yet not to see him—to be conscious of
him—to be feeling for him. Perhaps it was blinded by the light of the
tent, but it stared like a ghoul in the depths of a dark sea.