But the thought of Henrietta intruded, insisted and won. Where was
Henrietta? Had they brought her to these caverns? If so was she enduring this
silent darkness? Could he find her? He must find her. There was no other
picture than Henrietta in his mind after that—Henrietta on the rock in
moonlight— Henrietta in Bombay amid the colored garden-party
lanterns—Henrietta at Ganesha’s shrine, garlanded amid the shadows,
watching a mad hermit bless a tiger-skin—Henrietta with hands over her
eyes (but he could see the eyes through the hands) in the chair in front of
his tent—
He did not think of himself any more. He thought only of her. Gradually
the terror loosened its grip. It left him feeling weak-kneed but in command
of his senses. He began to move forward very slowly, groping his way along
the wall with his left hand, almost feeling he was not alone, because the
picture of Henrietta in his thought was so clear and persistent. There was a
weird, exciting, nervous but not too terrible sensation of following
Henrietta into the heart of a mystery. The echoes of his own footsteps almost
made him think he heard her. He remembered speculations such as all men make
at one time or another. Death, and groping one’s way into life after death,
might be like this. But he stopped after fifty or sixty careful paces and
leaned on the wall again. That mental image of Henrietta was becoming too
real. He was beginning to imagine himself dead and in the next world. He was
losing his mind. So he stood perfectly still, hardly breathing, to let the
echoes die away in silence. He tried to force himself to think. Here he was,
a policeman, with a definite job, in a bad predicament. What was the sane
thing to do? Go back? Climb those steps and try to move Ganesha’s image from,
beneath? He could not imagine himself doing it; nor could he drive the
picture of Henrietta from his mind. She was somewhere on ahead of him. She
must be. Without knowledge or reason he knew that, and felt an irresistible
impulse to go forward and find her.
Those last echoes were a long time dying; They appeared even to grow
stronger. There was something added to them—something with a slap in it
that, he knew afterward, should have instantly informed him. It was probably
more than a minute—an eternity foreshortened—before he suspected
the sound of feet in loose slippers approaching. He nearly froze then, into
immobility.
When he forced himself to move, his hand trembled so that he could hardly
get a match out of the box. However, he struck one at last. It gave him a
glimpse of a tunnel that seemed partly natural and partly hewn through onyx
or some similar formation. The sound of the approaching footsteps ceased
before the match went out. He stood still, listening, with the picture of the
weirdly colored tunnel gradually fading from his eyes.
He could hear nothing. But after a minute, or perhaps two minutes, dim
light crept toward him along the left-hand wall of the tunnel, at a point
some distance off, where it curved to the right and sloped upward. The light
was not quite steady. He felt reasonably sure it came from an electric torch
in someone’s hand. It grew no stronger, and moved no farther along the tunnel
wall; and because of the curve of the wall it left a diagonal zone of total
darkness. It might be possible to creep along that dark zone unseen, and to
peer around the curve before showing himself. He decided to make the
attempt.
But his nerves were in no shape for still hunting; it was very difficult
to move without making a noise. He tried to move on tiptoe, but his sinews
trembled. At the first sound he made, the light was switched off suddenly. He
made a dash for it then, awakening a thousand booming echoes and reaching the
opposite wall while the distance to the right-hand curve was still sharply
impressed on his mind.
By groping his way along the wall he reached the bulge of the curve almost
before the picture of it had faded from his eyes. There he waited, hardly
breathing, flattened against the wall; and after a long wait the light came
on again. There was a perceptible sound; he thought he recognized the faint
click of the switch of an electric torch. But it might be a trigger.
He lay down then, as close to the wall as he could crowd himself, and very
gradually crawled until he could see around the corner. Someone was holding a
powerful light at the top of a long slope. He appeared to be sitting and
holding the light on his knees to keep it steady. Not improbably he had a
firearm in the other hand, but it was impossible to see beyond the light; it
had a big lens and might be electric, or, even an acetylene bicycle lamp. It
revealed the floor and walls of the sharply rising tunnel in minute detail,
including a huge zigzag shadow that crossed the floor from side to side and
seemed to indicate a chasm. It looked like a split caused by an
earthquake.
He memorized its position carefully, estimating the number of steps he
should take to reach it. He judged there would be a jump of about for or five
feet to be made, up-hill, at the narrowest part of the chasm near where it
touched and split the right-hand wall. It would be a desperate jump to have
to take if the man should switch the’ light off.
“Koi hai!”
he shouted, and then hugged the floor, pressed flat,
half expecting a bullet. He could not catch a word of the answer because it
was all confused by echoes. He could not even tell what language it was
spoken in, although it was certainly not English. It was a short
answer—six or eight words; Then the light was switched off, and when it
reappeared it had grown dim in the distance.
He got to his feet in a hurry; he coy Id no longer see the chasm in the
middle of the upward slope of the tunnel floor; there was merely an unsteady
pale light up above and beyond, to show that someone who carried the light
was moving away rapidly. If he was expected to follow, there was no time to
waste.
He started to climb up the slope on his hands and knees. It was quite dark
when he reached the chasm; he had to feel for it. Groping for the far edge
with his riding-whip he discovered that the gap was wider than he had
estimated. He could just touch the edge with the end of the whip, and it was
three or three-and-a-half feet higher than the place where he must jump off.
Measuring again and feeling about in the dark for a narrower place, he
dropped the riding-whip. It seemed like an eternity before the echo of its
fall came cracking upward, and the very echo seemed to stink of death.
To hesitate then would be fatal, he knew that. Thirst was beginning to
torture him, and he knew his nerve would give way if he gave it half an
opportunity. He set both feet on the brink of the chasm and sprang so
violently that his feet slipped backward, reducing the impetus. He fell
waist-high on the upper ledge with his fingers scrambling madly at smooth
rock and his legs dangling in the chasm. He could touch nothing with his
feet; they seemed to weigh a ton apiece and to be dragging him downward, but
his fingers found a crack in the rock and he held on.
Little by little he worked himself upward until he lay panting with his
feet on solid rock. He lay there until pain in his fingers, knees and elbows
grew more acute than the imagination of the danger he had just escaped. He
had broken nothing but he was skinned and bruised. He crawled on upward,
rising to his feet before he reached the summit, because near the top of the
slope he could see the light again, very dim in the distance. It occurred to
him then to wait there and see what happened. But the suffocating heat,
emotion, and his own effort had dried his mouth and throat until the thirst
was almost unendurable. Like all men who have had previous experience of
thirst, he dreaded that more than any other form of torment.
He caught himself wondering what he would pay for a drink—to what
extent he would betray himself, his friends and his principles in order to
get one. Had he any principles? He would sell his soul for a drink, and no
bones about it. Could a man sell his own soul under torture? Would the
bargain hold? He would have to find that out. And Henrietta? Damn all
intuition! What had the commissioner called it—eye-washed lazy
thinking! He had pursued a mirage of Henrietta.
He was glad it was a mirage. He did not wish to find her—not now.
Why not? Because what damned right had she to see him in this condition? She
was only entitled to see him as he chose to show himself—Blair
Warrender, determined, resolute, secretive, captain of his soul and master of
his fate within the limits imposed by the Indian Penal Code, his oath of
service and the various acts and decrees of the viceroy in council.
He would much rather parade himself naked in the Byculla Club and take the
consequences than let Henrietta see him lacking in self-control. Why? Damned
if he knew why. Forward—feeling slightly, better, more angry, less
bewildered, very angry indeed with Henrietta. Damn her, why couldn’t she have
told him what she knew, or what she guessed, when he gave her the
opportunity?
Ye who are proudly intellectual declare with scorn that
there is no such thing as sorcery. Like bell-wethers, that again and again
unharmed have smelt and seen the shambles, ye mislead multitudes. On your
heads be it. ye who know so much, yet know not how, for instance, courteous
and kindly men are maddened to make war on one another; or how panic is
imposed upon the bold and generous. Ye admit ye know not. Chemistry and
electricity were sorcery aforetime. Was sorcery then in those days nothing,
until a few inquired into the secrets, and then many learned and it became
not sorcery? Is whatever ye know not, therefore nothing? Superstition is fear
of unknown forces. Sorcery is the use of unknown forces. Unknown forces are
the means by which a few deceive a multitude; and ye proud mockers of the
ignorant, who say that sorcery is nothing, ye were better busied seeking what
it is, instead of lazily neglecting to destroy that veil of ignorance behind
which sorcerers, I tell you, labor vigilantly.
—From the Second of the Nine Books of Noor
Ali.
BLAIR’S EYES began to grow accustomed to the dimness as he
followed the man with the light, not attempting to overtake him. He did try
to shout to him once, but his parched throat made only unintelligible sounds
and it seemed stupid to repeat the effort, much wiser to reserve his
remaining energy. His thirst was increased by a weird sensation of being
under water at great depth. His clothes and riding-boots felt like a heavy
diving-suit. There should be no sound under water, but the hollow echoes
somehow or other increased the suggestion. Bats, occasionally glimpsed, were
like swift fish swimming.
The tunnel wound like a snake. It was certainly hewn out and widened in
places, but it appeared to follow what originally was a watercourse in the
heart of the mountain, although there was not a trace of dampness. There
began to be a lot of stalagmite formation that took fantastic shapes like the
faces of monstrous men and animals. The floor of the tunnel was filthy with
bats’ excreta. The dust was stifling; it made breathing difficult. The dust
kicked up by the man ahead hung suspended in air, and the light appeared
through that as dim as moonlight on the sea floor.
He had lost all sense of time, distance and direction when the light at
last began to grow stronger. It was still dim with dust, but more golden and
suggested daylight. Presently he felt fresher air on his face. That revived
him a little, although the air was dry and hot and if anything it increased
his thirst. There was such a singing in his cars that he could hardly hear
his own footsteps.
When he stood still for a moment he could hear nothing ahead of him in the
tunnel. When he went on again he discovered the tunnel made two sharp turns,
which might account for his not hearing the other man’s footsteps. The second
turn brought him face to face with brilliant sunlight that poured through a
huge fanged break in the mountain wall, like a monster’s mouth, two or three
hundred feet away and fifty feet above him.
Dazzled by the glimpse of blue sky, he could see almost, nothing else tor
a moment. There was a big boulder almost blocking the mouth of the tunnel; he
stood in the shadow of that and leaned against it, protecting his eyes with
both hands. The fierce light looked liquid where it met the floor—a
layer of liquid silver on soot-black ink. Dust particles in the air increased
the suggestion of sediment formed on the floor of a pond. After a while he
traced a winding track across the soot-black floor; it led from the tunnel
out of which he had come, toward what looked like blackened masonry on the
far side. The track had evidently been made by human footsteps. But why did
it curve?
Some of the blackness changed to ash-gray as he stared at it. He began to
be able to see the discolored walls of a cavern. Soon after that he
discovered that his hands were blackened by something resembling soot. So was
his clothing. The walls of the cavern took shadowy shape, and though he could
not see the roof he could guess at the size of the place, it was not
enormous—perhaps sixty or seventy feet long by a hundred wide.
Something hung from the roof; apparently it was a blackened chain, with
rust-red showing through a covering of soot; it suggested a trapdoor up
there, or at any rate some kind of, opening.
Almost suddenly it occurred to him that he might be beneath the keep of
Gaglajung. This might be the place where munitions—more probably
firewood—had been stored. Such a fortress would need enormous
quantities of fuel in case of siege. If the legend were true; if Ranjeet’s
consort actually had immolated herself and her women rather than surrender
the place, what easier way had she than to set fire to the store of fuel?
That would have served a double purpose by preventing the three kings from
forcing an entrance through the secret tunnel, supposing it were true that
Ranjeet under torture had betrayed its secret.