The red glow of barracks burning—an ayah from whom a dagger has been taken locked in another room—the knowledge that there are fifty thousand Aryan brothers, itching to rebel, within a stone's throw—and two lone protectors of an alien race intent on torturing a High Priest, each and every one of these is a disturbing feature. No woman, and least of all a young woman such as Ruth Bellairs, can be blamed for being nervous under the stress of such conditions or for displaying a certain amount of feminine unreasonableness.
She stood shivering for a minute and watched spellbound while Mahommed Khan held the hot coal closer and even closer to the High Priest's naked foot. The priest writhed in anticipation of the agony and turned his eyes away, and as he turned them they met Ruth's. High priests of a religion that includes sooth-saying and prophecy and bribery of gods among its rites are students of human nature, and especially of female human nature. Knowledge of it and of how it may be gulled, and when, is the first essential of their calling. Her pale face, her blue eyes strained in terror, the parted lips and the attitude of tension, these gave him an idea. Before the charcoal touched him, he screamed—screamed like a wounded horse.
“Mahommed Khan, stop! Stop this instant! I won't have it! I won't have my life, even, on those terms! D'you hear me, sir!”
“Have courage, heavenborn! There is but one way to force a Hindu priest, unless it be by cutting off his revenues—he must be hurt! This dog is unhurt as yet—see! The fire has not yet touched his foot!”
“Don't let it, Mahommed Khan! Set that iron down! This is my room. I will not have crime committed here!”
“And how long does the heavenborn think it would be her room were this evil-living pig of a priest at large, or how long before a worse crime were committed? Heavenborn, the hour is late and the charcoal dies out rapidly when it has left the fire! See. I must choose another piece!”
He rummaged in the brazier, and she screamed again.
“I will not have it, Risaldar! You must find another way.”
“Memsahib! Thy husband left thee in my care. Surely it is my right to choose the way?”
“Leave me, then! I relieve you of your trust. I will not have him tortured in my room, or anywhere!”
Mahommed Khan bowed low.
“Under favor, heavenborn,” he answered, “my trust is to your husband. I can be released by him, or by death, not otherwise.”
“Once, and for all, Mahommed Khan, I will not have you torture him in here!”
“Memsahib, I have yet to ride for succor! At daybreak, when these Hindus learn that the guns will not come back, they will rise to a man. Even now we must find a hiding-place or—it is not good even to think what I might find on my return!”
He leaned over the priest again, but without the charcoal this time.
“Speak, thou!” he ordered, growling in Hindustanee through his savage black mustache. “I have yet to hear what price a Hindu sets on immunity from torture!”
But the priest, it seemed, had formed a new idea. He had been looking through puckered eyes at Ruth, keen, cool calculation in his glance, and in spite of the discomfort of his strained position he contrived to nod.
“Kharvani!” he muttered, half aloud.
“Aye! Call on Kharvani!” sneered the Risaldar. “Perhaps the Bride of Sivi will appear! Call louder!”
He stirred again among the charcoal with his tongs, and Ruth and the High Priest both shuddered.
“Look!” said the High Priest in Hindustanee, nodding in Ruth's direction. It was the first word that he had addressed to them. It took them by surprise, and the Risaldar and his half-brother turned and looked. Their breath left them.
Framed in the yellow lamplight, her thin, hot-weather garments draped about her like a morning mist, Ruth stood and stared straight back at them through frightened eyes. Her blue-black hair, which had become loosened in her excitement, hung in a long plait over one shoulder and gleamed in the lamp's reflection. Her skin took on a faintly golden color from the feeble light, and her face seemed stamped with fear, anxiety, pity and suffering, all at once, that strangely enhanced her beauty, silhouetted as she was against the blackness of the wall behind, she seemed to be standing in an aura, shimmering with radiated light.
“Kharvani!” said the High Priest to himself again, and the two Rajputs stood still like men dumfounded, and stared and stared and stared. They knew Kharvani's temple. Who was there in Hanadra, Christian or Mohammedan or Hindu, who did not? The show-building of the city, the ancient, gloomy, wonderful erection where bats lived in the dome and flitted round Kharvani's image, the place where every one must go who needed favors of the priests, the central hub of treason and intrigue, where every plot was hatched and every rumor had its origin—the ultimate, mazy, greedy, undisgorging goal of every bribe and every blackmail-wrung rupee!
They knew, too, as every one must know who has ever been inside the place, the amazing, awe-inspiring picture of Kharvani painted on the inner wall; of Kharvani as she was idealized in the days when priests believed in her and artists thought the labor of a lifetime well employed in painting but one picture of her—Kharvani the sorrowful, grieving for the wickedness of earth; Kharvani, Bride of Siva, ready to intercede with Siva, the Destroyer, for the helpless, foolish, purblind sons of man.
And here, before them, stood Kharvani—to the life!
“What of Kharvani?” growled Mahommed Khan.
“'A purblind fool, a sot and a Mohammedan,”' quoted the priest maliciously, “'how many be they, three or one?'”
The Risaldar's hand went to his scabbard. His sword licked out free and trembled like a tuning-fork. He flicked with his thumbnail at the blade and muttered: “Sharp! Sharp as death itself!”
The Hindu grinned, but the blade came down slowly until the point of it rested on the bridge of his nose. His eyes squinted inward, watching it.
“Now, make thy gentle joke again!” growled the Risaldar. Ruth Bellairs checked a scream.
“No blood!” she exclaimed. “Don't hurt him, Risaldar! I'll not have you kill a man in here—or anywhere, in cold blood, for that matter! Return your sword, sir!”
The Risaldar swore into his beard. The High Priest grinned again. “I am not afraid to die!” he sneered. “Thrust with that toy of thine! Thrust home and make an end!”
“Memsahib!” said the Risaldar, “all this is foolishness and waste of time! The hour is past midnight and I must be going. Leave the room—leave me and my half-brother with this priest for five short minutes and we will coax from him the secret of some hiding-place where you may lie hid until I come!”
“But you'll hurt him!”
“Not if he speaks, and speaks the truth!”
“Promise me!”
“On those conditions—yes!”
“Where shall I go?”
The Risaldar's eyes glanced toward the door of the inner room, but he hesitated. “Nay! There is the ayah!” he muttered. “Is there no other room?”
“No, Risaldar, no other room except through that door. Besides, I would rather stay here! I am afraid of what you may do to that priest if I leave you alone with him!”
“Now a murrain on all women, black and white!” swore Mahommed Khan beneath his breath. Then he turned on the priest again, and placed one foot on his stomach.
“Speak!” he ordered. “What of Kharvani?”
“Listen, Mahommed Khan!” Ruth Bellairs laid one hand on his sleeve, and tried to draw him back. “Your ways are not my ways! You are a soldier and a gentleman, but please remember that you are of a different race! I can not let my life be saved by the torture of a human being—no, not even of a Hindu priest! Maybe it's all right and honorable according to your ideas; but, if you did it, I would never be able to look my husband in the face again! No, Risaldar! Let this priest go, or leave him here—I don't care which, but don't harm him! I am quite ready to ride with you, now, if you like. I suppose you have horses? But I would rather die than think that a man was put to the torture to save me! Life isn't worth that price!”
She spoke rapidly, urging him with every argument she knew; but the grim old Mohammedan shook his head.
“Better die here,” he answered her, “than on the road! No, memsahib. With thirteen blades behind me, I could reach Jundhra, or at least make a bold attempt; but single-handed, and with you to guard, the feat is impossible. This dog of a Hindu here knows of some hiding-place. Let him speak!”
His hand went to his sword again, and his eyes flashed.
“Listen, heavenborn! I am no torturer of priests by trade! It is not my life that I would save!”
“I know that, Mahommed Khan! I respect your motive. It's the method that I can't tolerate.”
The Risaldar drew his arm away from her and began to pace the room. The High Priest instantly began to speak to Ruth, whispering to her hurriedly in Hindustanee, but she was too little acquainted with the language to understand him.
“And I,” said the Risaldar's half-brother suddenly, “am I of no further use?”
“I had forgotten thee!” exclaimed the Risaldar.
They spoke together quickly in their own language, drawing aside and muttering to each other. It was plain that the half-brother was making some suggestion and that the Risaldar was questioning him and cross-examining him about his plan, but neither Ruth nor the High Priest could understand a word that either of them said. At the end of two minutes or more, the Risaldar gave an order of some kind and the half-brother grunted and left the room without another word, closing the door noiselessly behind him. The Risaldar locked it again from the inside and drew the bolt.
“We have made another plan, heavenborn!” he announced mysteriously.
“Then—then—you won't hurt this priest?”
“Not yet,” said the Risaldar. “He may be useful!”
“Won't you unbind him, then? Look! His wrists and ankles are all swollen.”
“Let the dog swell!” he grunted.
But Ruth stuck to her point and made him loosen the bonds a little.
“A man lives and learns!” swore the Risaldar. “Such as he were cast into dungeons in my day, to feed on their own bellies until they had had enough of life!”
“The times have changed!” said Ruth.
The Risaldar looked out through the window toward the red glow on the sky-line.
“Ha! Changed, have they!” he muttered. “I saw one such burning, once before!”
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg