Part 20 (1/2)

The darwan was clearly vexed at the prospect of losing a feast. Ahmed, on his part, was the more desirous of gaining admittance to the house now that he knew what was going on there. Perhaps this was the very opportunity he had been seeking, of learning something about the rebels'

plans that should escape even Fazl Hak. So he took quick advantage of the darwan's hesitation.

”Maybe I might come in for a short time,” he said. ”Never would I interfere with thy duties, and if thou art summoned I can take up my shoes and depart quietly. And I mind me of a saying of my country: 'Better sheep's trotters now than a leg of mutton a year hence.'”

”A true saying, and a wise. Well, come in, banijara. Allah is good!”

Ahmed entered, and the darwan led him to his own little shed in the compound; and, making themselves as comfortable as the bare chamber admitted, they began to talk in low tones, and to dispose of the eatables which Ahmed had brought. If the darwan had been observant, he would have noticed that his companion was scarcely so attentive to his conversation as he had been on the previous day. Indeed, Ahmed's imagination was busy all the time with the meeting upstairs. What was being discussed between the commander-in-chief and Minghal Khan? How would he find out? He wished that the darwan would be called away, so that he might make an attempt to look in upon them and, if possible, to hear something of what they were saying. In view of the possibility, he got from the darwan by discreet questions a description of the apartments.

”The great ones are in the room where the English hakim--may his father's grave be defiled!--took his meals. Opposite is the room where he kept his medicines. And the khitmutgar told me of a strange happening. A little while ago the exalted one, being athirst--he had drunk of the Feringhi's strong liquor, but that must not be told--being athirst, I say, he took one of the hakim's bottles, thinking it contained a grateful draught. But lo! when he lifted the stopper, straightway he was bitten by terrible devils that caught him by the nose and throat, and some of the liquor was spilt upon his foot and smote him with very lively pains. And now he goes but rarely into that room, and he sniffs even at milk before he tastes it.”

Time pa.s.sed; the materials of the feast had disappeared; and the darwan, at length becoming alive to the apparent tedium of his guest, heartily wished that he would go. He threw out hints--the hour was getting late; the early sleep was best. Ahmed feigned obtuseness; he was determined not to go while there was any chance of gaining his end. But he had almost given up hope when the darwan was at last summoned to attend his master. Ahmed at once rose.

”It would be ill to stay longer, good darwan,” he said. ”I will even let myself out and close the door behind me when I know that the way is clear.”

”Do as thou sayest, and G.o.d be with thee,” replied the darwan, hastening away. Ahmed at once slipped out and opened the gate a little way, to give the impression that he had gone and forgotten in his haste to close it behind him. Then he ran into the house, and had just hidden behind a long curtain in the hall when he heard the darwan's voice addressing some one as he descended the stairs.

”The exalted one calleth for drinks, khansaman,” he said. ”He bade me tell thee as I pa.s.sed, for he sends me an errand, and the khitmutgar also. What an evil is the lack of money! Here am I, a darwan, bid to do chaprasis' work! Well, thou, khansaman, must turn darwan while we are gone. I go to summon the ill.u.s.trious prince, Mirza Mogul, to attend the general. Have good care of the door.”

He was evidently in very ill-humour at having to turn out. It was raining; he growled again as he went out into the street, glancing in at his shed as he pa.s.sed to see whether his visitor was gone. Ahmed heard the khansaman close the door, and then pa.s.s by into the kitchen to fetch the drinks. Instantly he slipped out, and ran lightly up the staircase to the first floor. The wide landing was lit by two lamps hanging from the ceiling. Right and left were two doors, the one on the right slightly ajar, the one on the left wide open. Looking through this latter, Ahmed saw the medicine-room of which the darwan had spoken; the bottles stood in array on the shelves of a large almirah. From the other door came the sound of voices: it was here that Minghal Khan and his guest were conversing. Ahmed was resolved to learn the subject of their discourse. It was probably of importance; almost certainly it was concerned with military affairs, for the darwan had gone to summon the adjutant-general. To learn the matter of their deliberations might be of vital moment to the English. Yet how was he to do so? He could not listen at the door; the servants might pa.s.s at any moment. Even as he stood in a tremor of excitement, he heard the clinking of drinking-vessels from below; the khansaman was returning. To hide from him was his first concern. At the other end of the landing was a pa.s.sage; he might take refuge there. Yet, ignorant of that part of the house, he might only run into greater danger. There was no time for calculation. In another moment he would be seen, and then his fate was sealed. He slipped into the surgery, and stood behind the door, hoping that the khansaman, after carrying the drinks to his master, would not enter the room opposite. If he did--Ahmed fingered his knife: a Pathan has a short way with his enemies.

He heard the khansaman go into the dining-room with his clinking vessels. Voices; then silence; then the shuffling feet of the khansaman as he went downstairs again. Had he shut the door behind him? If he had, all hope of hearing the conversation in that room was gone. Ahmed peeped out. The door was fast closed. He slipped out stealthily, crossed the landing, and put his ear against the door. The sound of talking came to him m.u.f.fled and indistinct. But it seemed to be approaching: were the great men coming from the room? He heard a laugh, and in Minghal's loud tones the word ”almirah.” Instantly it occurred to him that the bringing of the liquors had reminded Minghal of his mishap, and he was about to show his guest the room in which it had happened, and the almirah from which he had taken the fatal bottle. In a flash Ahmed saw a chance of taking advantage of their temporary absence from the dining-room. No longer hesitating, he ran to the dark pa.s.sage at the end of the landing, and shrank into a corner until the two men had crossed from room to room. Then he stole back on tiptoe, and peeped round the door of the surgery to make sure that he could not be seen as he entered the room opposite. The men had their backs to him; Minghal was pointing out the bottle which had all but killed him. Ahmed slipped into the dining-room, and looked around for some means of concealment. He had but a moment; if he did not discover a suitable hiding-place he must get back to the dark pa.s.sage before Minghal Khan returned.

The eyes of the Guides were trained to observe quickly. This is what he saw in an instant of time: at one end of the room, a pianoforte--he had seen such in the officers' quarters at Hoti-Mardan; in one corner a number of European chairs pushed back out of the way; in the centre, four cus.h.i.+oned seats grouped about a little foot-table on which were cups and bottles and the remains of a meal; along the wall at right-angles to the door, a wide low divan, with flounces touching the floor. In a moment he made his deductions and took his resolution. Two of the four cus.h.i.+oned seats had been occupied by Minghal Khan and the general; the other two were for the officers whom the darwan and the khitmutgar had gone to summon. The divan probably would not be used; beneath it, screened by the flounce, he might lie and hear all that was said. If other officers came, and the divan were required, it would be pulled out and rolled across the floor. In that case he must crawl with it. The chances of discovery by the officers were slight; there was greater risk of discovery by the servants when the meeting broke up; but the Guides were accustomed to take risks.

These considerations pa.s.sed through Ahmed's mind in a flash. A few seconds after he entered the room he was under the divan, with the flounce pulled down, not a movement of it to betray that anything had happened during the men's absence. He wondered whether the beating of his heart could be heard; it was thumping much more violently now than when he was deciding what to do. The officers stayed in the surgery some time; Ahmed heard Minghal Khan talking and laughing; and by the time they came back his pulse had quietened.

They returned to their seats, and drank, and talked--of the weaknesses of the king, the vices of the princes, the temper of the queen, the desperate straits of the English at Lucknow, the glorious future before them when the English had been annihilated. Ahmed wondered whether all the risks he had dared were to be rewarded with no better pribble-prabble than this. But by and by the Mirza Mogul was announced, and a few minutes after him Khuda Baksh Khan, one of the chief sirdars of the rebel forces, and then the conversation took a turn which engaged the listener's attention to the uttermost.

At first he had difficulty in making it out. The speakers referred to matters which had previously been discussed at the king's palace. But gradually he was able to piece things together; allusions became clear; he grasped the whole. That very night, a brigade of four thousand men, horse, foot and artillery, was to march out secretly, slip by the right of the British position, and move on to the village of Alipur, several miles in the rear. The villagers had proved loyal to the British; they constantly supplied the camp with provisions; and General Barnard had recently established there a small post of some sixty Sikhs. The first object of the proposed night attack was to destroy the village with its guard, and carry off a great amount of stores which was believed to be there.

But it had a second object. While the attention of the British was diverted to this movement, twenty thousand men were to parade under arms at dawn near the mosque, in readiness for a sortie. Bakht Khan meant to signalize his elevation to the post of commander-in-chief by a tremendous stroke against the besiegers. The men would issue in two great columns from the Kashmir and Lah.o.r.e gates. Outnumbering their enemy by nearly four to one, they would overwhelm them.

This was the general scheme. About the details the officers proceeded to wrangle. Mirza Mogul resented the promotion of a mere artillery officer to the chief command, and had innumerable objections to urge against the views of Bakht Khan. Minghal sided with his superior; Khuda Baksh with the prince. Ahmed could not forbear smiling as he listened. What would all their boasts of a glorious victory come to, if they were thus disunited? He felt a certain respect for Bakht Khan, the st.u.r.dy plain-spoken warrior who believed in drill; for the prince, who had bragged for a month of what he meant to do, and had done nothing, he had only contempt. But the important matter was, how to convey information of these designs to Hodson Sahib? The gates of the city had long been shut; to pa.s.s out by one of them would be impossible. Should he go to Fazl Hak and ask his advice? He dismissed that idea at once; he would do without Fazl Hak; the maulavi should learn that he was not indispensable. He must trust to his own wits. First of all he had to get safely from the house, and that might prove difficult and dangerous enough. He was a prisoner under the divan until the meeting broke up; when the visitors had gone the door would be bolted; Ahmed began to feel alarmed lest he should have to remain all night in the house, and be prevented from giving the sahibs warning.

Some time elapsed before the three officers rose to depart. Minghal Khan accompanied them to the door; Ahmed heard the bolts shot, the voice of Minghal giving the servants orders for the morning, then the shuffling of his feet as he ascended the staircase and pa.s.sed along the pa.s.sage to his bedroom. Presently the khansaman came in, lifted the remains of the repast from the table, put out the light, and went away. Ahmed lifted the edge of the flounce to watch him. From his position he could see across the landing, through the door which the khansaman had left open, into the opposite room, where a lamp still burned. He saw the khansaman cross the room with the tray in his hand and set it down on one of the shelves of the almirah. Then a strange thing happened. The khansaman pushed aside a panel in the back of the almirah where there were no shelves, and the wall behind opened inwards, as of itself. He went into the hole, turned round and replaced the panel, and was shut from view.

What did this mean? What was the explanation of the stealthy, furtive manner in which the khansaman had acted? Ahmed would have liked to follow him; it crossed his mind that the man might have a secret h.o.a.rd of valuables belonging to his late master; but the urgency of his duty to Hodson Sahib forbade any delay. He was in a quandary. How was he to get out of the house? He had heard the bolt of the front door shot; it was too much to hope that he could descend the stairs, draw back the bolt, and open the door without attracting the attention of the darwan, whose shed was close by, and who might not yet be asleep. There was no doubt a back entrance; could he discover that without making a noise?

This seemed the only course.

He crept from his hiding-place, stole to the door, listened: all was silent. Then he tiptoed along the landing until he came to the dark pa.s.sage at the end. It ran across the breadth of the house. He went along it, past a closed door which might be the door of Minghal Khan's bedroom, and reached a staircase. Without doubt this would bring him to the back door. He went down, pa.s.sed the kitchens, which were in darkness, and came to a door which a rapid inspection a.s.sured him was neither bolted nor locked. Opening it just enough to allow him to squeeze through, he gently closed it behind him, and found himself in a walled-in garden, with a circular fountain in the middle. A colonnade ran along three sides of it, supported on slender pillars. There was a door on the fourth side, but this he soon proved to be securely locked.

It was an easy matter to swarm up one of the pillars, climb the roof of the colonnade, and from that gain the top of the wall a little below.

Then dropping on the outer side he alighted in a narrow lane. It was pitch dark; he could not see his way, and knew not whether to turn to the right hand or to the left; but choosing the left at random, he groped his way along, through puddles and heaps of ill-smelling refuse, following the erratic windings of the lane until he came, as he had hoped, to the street in which the house was situated. Here he got a little light from a few smoky oil-lamps that hung at irregular intervals from brackets on the walls. From the sounds he heard before him he guessed that the street led into the Chandni Chauk, and in less than a minute he came to that thoroughfare. There were many people about; though the gates of the city were shut, the hour was not yet late; and he judged from the laughter proceeding from many half-open doors that some of Bakht Khan's soldiers were being entertained by the residents.

He walked slowly, and no one paid him any attention. Should he go at once to the walls, he asked himself, and try to find some way of quitting the city? He bethought himself of his goods in the serai. If he left them, without any word of explanation, the bhatiyara might become suspicious. Even if that gave rise to no immediate danger, he thought it unwise to make any difficulties for himself when he should return to the city, as no doubt he would do. So he went back to the serai, and told the keeper that he had met an old acquaintance (which happened to be literally true), and proposed to spend the night with him at the other end of the city. But it would be a pity to disturb his bales at this time of night; he might safely leave them in his friend the bhatiyara's care.

”It is understood that you will make some little charge for the storage,” he said, ”and I know I leave them with an honest man.”

”True, O banijara: I will gladly keep them for you: and as to a charge for storage, I can without doubt trust to your sense of justice.”

In reality the honest innkeeper reflected that in these troublous times there was always a chance that a stray bullet, or a round shot from the Feringhis' batteries, might end his customer's career--an unfortunate matter for the customer, but likely to be very profitable to himself, with the goods left on his hands. This being satisfactorily arranged, Ahmed dismissed his coolie, ordered a meal, and while he ate it pondered the difficult problem--his escape from the city.