Part 37 (1/2)

From where he sat at Boelke's flat desk, Foley looked upon a wall of the room that was panelled in richly carved teakwood, and from a bra.s.s rod hung heavy silk curtains. On the panel that immediately fronted his eyes was Ganesha, a pot-bellied, elephant-headed G.o.d; a droll figure that caught the captain's fancy, especially when it reeled groggily to one side to uncover an opening through which a dark, brilliant eye peered at him. The captain's face held placid under this mystic scrutiny, but his right hand gently pulled a drawer of the desk open, disclosing a Mauser pistol.

When the whole panel commenced to slide silently, he lifted the pistol so that its muzzle rested on the desk. Through the opening created in the wall a handsome native stepped into the room, salaamed, and, turning, closed the aperture; then he said: ”I am Nawab Darna Singh, the brother of Rajah Ananda's princess. May I close the door, sahib?”

Foley lifted the Mauser into view, drawling: ”If you wish; I have a key here to open it, if necessary.”

Darna Singh closed a door that led from the front hall to the room, and, coming back to stand just across the desk from Foley, said: ”The major sahib and the captain sahib are prisoners of Doctor Boelke; they are below in a cell--they will be killed.”

In answer to a question, Darna Singh related how the two men had been captured and how he, not observed, had slipped away, and, knowing all the pa.s.sages, had made his way to the stone steps that led from the tunnels to Doctor Boelke's bungalow.

Foley in his cold, unimpa.s.sioned voice asked: ”What do you want me to do?”

”Save them.”

The captain's eyes narrowed. ”They are not friends of mine; they searched me to-day, and if I play this silly game I chuck in the sea two thousand quid. It's a d.a.m.n tall order.”

Darna Singh's voice throbbed with pa.s.sionate feeling: ”I am a rajput, sahib, and we look upon the sahibs as white rajputs. We may hate our conquerors, but we do not despise them as cowards. I never knew a sahib to leave a sahib to die; I never knew a rajput to leave a brother rajput to die.”

Foley puffed at his cigar, and behind his set face went on the conflict the rajput's appeal to his manhood had stirred.

Darna Singh spoke again: ”The sahib will not live to be branded a coward, for his eyes show he has courage. And we must hurry or it will be too late, for these two sahibs have risked their lives to save the British raj against Prince Ananda's, who is a traitor to the sahib's king; he is a traitor to his wife, the princess, for to-morrow he will force into the palace the white mem-sahib who is here with Doctor Boelke.”

”By gad!” At last the cold gambler blood had warmed. His daughter Marie, eh? That was different! And to funk it--let two Englishmen die! One an Irishman, even! No doubt it was true, he reasoned, for that was why Darna Singh was in revolt against the prince.

”What chance have we got?” Foley asked.

”There will be a guard at the cage.”

”A German?”

”Yes, sahib.”

”They have seen me with Doctor Boelke; perhaps we can turn the trick.

But,” and his hard grey eyes rested on Darna Singh's face, ”if, when we go down there is no chance, I won't play the giddy goat; I'll come back.” He handed Boelke's Mauser to the rajput, saying: ”I have a pistol in my belt.”

Darna Singh slid the panel, and they pa.s.sed from the room to a landing and down a dozen stone steps to a dim-lighted pa.s.sage. Here the rajput whispered: ”I can take the sahib by a dark way to where he can see the cage in which the two sahibs will be.”

”Hurry!” Foley answered, for he was thinking ruefully of his money.

The underground place was a cross-hatch of many tunnels, and Darna Singh led the way through a circuitous maze till they came to a bright-lighted cross pa.s.sage, and, peeping around a corner, Foley saw, fifty feet away, a solitary German leaning against the wall, a rifle resting at his side.

Raising his voice in the utterance of Hindustani words, Foley rounded the corner at a steady pace, followed by Darna Singh. The sentry grasped his rifle, and, standing erect, challenged. In German Foley answered: ”We come from the Herr Doctor.”

The sentry, having seen Foley with Doctor Boelke, was unsuspicious, and, grounding his rifle tight against his hip, he clicked his heels together at attention.

”The two prisoners are wanted above for examination,” Foley said. ”You are to bind their arms behind their backs and accompany us.”

”The one sahib is a giant,” the other answered, when this order, percolating slowly through his heavy brain, had found no objection.