El Borak and Other Desert Adventures (13 page)

“I want to go back to Delhi. At night I dream of the noise and smells of the streets and bazaars. I am half Indian, and all the blood of India is calling me. I was a fool. I had life in my hands and did not recognize it.”

“Why not go back, then?” asked Gordon.

She shuddered. “I cannot. The gods of Yolgan must remain in Yolgan forever. Should one depart, the people believe the city would perish. Yogok would be glad to see me go, but he fears the fury of the people too much either to slay me or aid me to escape. I knew there was but one man who might help me. I wrote a letter to you and smuggled it out by a Tajik trader. With it I sent my sacred emblem — a jeweled gold star — which would pass you safely through the country of the nomads. They would not harm a man bearing it. He would be safe from all but the priests of the city. I explained that in my letter.”

“I never got it,” Gordon answered. “I’m here after a couple of scoundrels whom I was guiding into the Uzbek country, and who for no apparent reason murdered my servant Ahmed and deserted me in the hills. They’re in Yolgan now, somewhere.”

“White men?” she exclaimed. “That is impossible! They could never have got through the tribes —”

“There’s only one key to the puzzle,” he interrupted. “Somehow your letter fell into their hands. They used your star to let them through. They don’t mean to rescue you, because they got in touch with Yogok as soon as they reached the valley. There’s only one thing I can think of — they intend kidnaping you to sell to your former husband.”

She sat up straight; her white hands clenched on the edge of the divan and her eyes flashed. In that instant she looked as splendid and as dangerous as a cobra when it rears up to strike.

“Back to that pig? Where are these dogs? I will speak a word to the people and they shall cease to be!”

“That would betray yourself,” returned Gordon. “The people would kill the strangers, and Yogok, too, maybe, but they’d learn that you’d been trying to escape from Yolgan. They allow you the freedom of the temple, don’t they?”

“Yes; with shaven-headed skulkers spying on my every move, except when I am on this floor, from which only a single stair leads down. That stair is always guarded.”

“By a guard who sleeps,” said Gordon. “That’s bad enough, but if the people found you were trying to escape, they might shut you up in a little cell for the rest of your life. People are particularly careful of their deities.”

She shuddered, and her fine eyes flashed the fear an eagle feels for a cage. “Then what are we to do?”

“I don’t know — yet. I have nearly a hundred Turkoman ruffians hidden up in the hills, but just now they’re more hindrance than help. There’s not enough of them to do much good in a pitched battle, and they’re almost sure to be discovered tomorrow, if not before. I brought them into this mess, and it’s up to me to get them out — or as many as I can. I came here to kill these Englishmen, Ormond and Pembroke. But that can wait now. I’m going to get you out of here, but I don’t dare move until I know where Yogok and the Englishmen are. Is there anyone in Yolgan you can trust?”

“Any of the people would die for me, but they won’t let me go. Only actual harm done me by the monks would stir them up against Yogok. No; I dare trust none of them.”

“You say that stair is the only way up onto this floor?”

“Yes. The temple is built against the mountain, and galleries and corridors on the lower floors go back far into the mountain itself. But this is the highest floor, and is reserved entirely for me. There’s no escape from it except down through the temple, swarming with monks. I keep only one servant here at night, and she is at present sleeping in a chamber some distance from this and is senseless with bhang as usual.”

“Good enough!” grunted Gordon. “Here, take this pistol. Lock the door after I go through and admit no one but myself. You’ll recognize me by the nine raps, as usual.”

“Where are you going?” she demanded, staring up and mechanically taking the weapon he tendered her, butt first.

“To do a little spying,” he answered. “I’ve got to know what Yogok and the others are doing. If I tried to smuggle you out now, we might run square into them. I can’t make plans until I know some of theirs. If they intend sneaking you out tonight, as I think they do, it might be a good idea to let them do it, and then swoop down with the Turkomans and take you away from them, when they’ve got well away from the city. But I don’t want to do that unless I have to. Bound to be shooting and a chance of your getting hit by a stray bullet. I’m going now; listen for my rap.”

The mute guard still slumbered on the stair as Gordon glided past him. No lights glinted now as he descended into the lower corridor. He knew the cells were all empty, for the monks slept in chambers on a lower level. As he hesitated, he heard sandals shuffling down the passage in the pitch blackness.

Stepping into one of the cells, he waited until the unseen traveler was opposite him, then he hissed softly. The tread halted and a voice muttered a query.

“Art thou Yatub?” asked Gordon in the gutturals of the Kirghiz. Many of the lower monks were pure Kirghiz in blood and speech.

“Nay,” came the answer. “I am Ojuh. Who art thou?”

“No matter; call me Yogok’s dog if thou wilt. I am a watcher. Have the white men come into the temple yet?”

“Aye. Yogok brought them by the secret way, lest the people suspect their presence. If thou art close to Yogok, tell me — what is his plan?”

“What is thine own opinion?” asked Gordon.

An evil laugh answered him, and he could feel the monk leaning closer in the darkness to rest an elbow on the jamb.

“Yogok is crafty,” he murmured. “When the Tajik whom Yasmeena bribed to bear her letter showed it to Yogok, our master bade him do as she had instructed him. When the man for whom she sent came for her, Yogok planned to slay both him and her, making it seem to the people that the white man had slain their goddess.”

“Yogok is not forgiving,” said Gordon at a venture.

“A cobra is more so.” The monk laughed. “Yasmeena has thwarted him too often in the matter of sacrifices for him to allow her to depart in peace.”

“Yet such is now his plan!” asserted Gordon.

“Nay; thou art a simple man, for one who calls himself a watcher. The letter was meant for El Borak. But the Tajik was greedy and sold it to these sahibs and told them of Yogok. They will not take her to India. They will sell her to a prince in Kashmir who will have her beaten to death with a slipper. Yogok himself will guide them through the hills by the secret route. He is in terror of the people, but his hate for Yasmeena overcomes him.”

Gordon had heard all he wished to know, and he was in a sudden rush to be gone. He had abandoned his tentative plan of letting Ormond get the girl outside the city before rescuing her. With Yogok guiding the Englishmen through hidden passes, he might find it impossible to overtake them.

The monk, however, was in no hurry to conclude the conversation. He began speaking again, and then Gordon saw a light moving like a glowworm
in the blackness, and he heard a swift patter of bare feet and a man breathing heavily. He drew farther back into the cell.

It was another monk who came up the corridor, carrying a small brass lamp that lighted his broad, thin-lipped face and made him look something like a Mongolian devil.

As he saw the monk outside the cell, he began hastily: “Yogok and the white men have gone to Yasmeena’s chamber. The girl, her servant who spied upon her, has told us that the white devil El Borak is in Yolgan. He talked with Yasmeena less than half an hour agone. The girl sped to Yogok as swiftly as she dared, but she dared not stir until he had left Yasmeena’s chamber. He is somewhere in the temple. I gather men to search. Come with me, thou, and thou also —”

He swung the lamp about so that it shone full on Gordon, crouching in the cell. As the man blinked to see the garments of a shepherd instead of the familiar robes of a monk, Gordon lashed out for his jaw, quick and silent as the stroke of a python. The monk went down like a man shot in the head, and even as the lamp smashed on the floor, Gordon had leaped and grappled with the other man in the sudden darkness.

A single cry rang to the vaulted roof before it was strangled in the corded throat. The monk was hard to hold as a snake, and he kept groping for a knife, but as they crashed into the stone wall, Gordon smashed his opponent’s head savagely against it. The man went limp and Gordon flung him down beside the other senseless shape.

The next instant Gordon was racing up the stairway. It was only a few steps from the cell where he had hidden, its upper portion dim in the subdued light of the upper corridor. He knew no one had gone up or down while he talked with the monk. Yet the man with the lamp had said that Yogok and the others had gone to Yasmeena’s chamber, and that her treacherous servant girl had come to them.

He rounded the crook with reckless haste, his scimitar ready, but the slumping figure at the stairhead did not rise to oppose him. There was a new sag in the mute’s shoulders as he huddled on the steps. He had been stabbed in the back, so fiercely that the spinal column had been severed with one stroke.

Gordon wondered why the priest should kill one of his own servants, but he did not pause; premonition gripping his heart, he hurled himself down the corridor and in through the arched doorway, which was unbolted. The chamber was empty. Cushions from the divan were strewn on the floor. Yasmeena was nowhere to be seen.

Gordon stood like a statue in the center of the room, his scimitar in his hand. The blue sheen of the light on steel was no more deadly than the glitter
of his black eyes. His gaze swept the room, lingering no longer on a slight bulge in the hangings on the rear wall than anywhere else.

He turned toward the door, took a step — then wheeled and raced across the chamber like a gust of wind, slashing and hacking at the tapestry before the man hiding there realized he was discovered. The keen edge ribboned the velvet arras and blood spurted; out of the tatters a figure toppled to the floor — a shaven monk, literally cut to pieces. He had dropped his knife and could only grovel and moan, clutching at his spurting arteries.

“Where is she?” snarled Gordon, panting with passion as he crouched over his hideous handiwork. “Where is she?”

But the man only whimpered and yammered and died without speaking.

Gordon ran to the walls and began ripping the hangings away. Somewhere he knew there must be a secret door. But the walls showed blank, resisting his most violent efforts. He could not follow Yasmeena by the route her abductors had obviously carried her. He must escape from the city and hasten to the cave, where the servants were hidden, and to which the Englishmen would undoubtedly return. He was sweating with the violence of his rage, which almost submerged caution. He ripped off the camel’s hair robe, feeling in his frenzy that it cramped and hampered him.

But the action brought a thought born of cold reason. The garments of the senseless monks in the corridor below would furnish him a disguise which would aid him to pass unhindered through the temple, where he knew scores of shaven-headed murderers were hunting him.

He ran silently from the chamber, passed the sprawling corpse, rounded the turn of the stair — then he stopped short. The lower corridor was a blaze of light, and at the foot of the stairs stood a mass of monks, holding torches and swords. He saw rifles in the hands of a dozen.

Details sprang out in startling clarity in the instant that the monks yelled and raised their rifles. Beyond them he saw a round-faced slant-eyed girl crouching by the wall. She grasped a rope which hung down the wall and jerked, and Gordon felt the stairs give way beneath him. The rifles roared in a ragged volley as he shot down the black opening which gaped beneath his feet, and the bullets whined over his head. A fierce cry of triumph rose from the monks. His instinctive throwing up of his arms as he fell was much like the action of a man struck by flying lead.

After Gordon left her, Yasmeena made fast the door and returned to her divan. She idly studied the big pistol he had left with her, fascinated by the blue gleam of the light on its dully polished steel.

Then she tossed it aside and lay back with her eyes closed. There was a certain sophistication or innate mysticism in her which refused to let her put much faith in material weapons. Hers was that overrefinement of civilization which instinctively belittles physical action. With all her admiration for Gordon, he was, after all, to her, a barbarian who put his trust in lead and steel.

She undervalued the weapon he had left with her, and so it was out of her reach when the noise of a swishing tapestry roused her. She turned and stared at the rear wall with eyes suddenly dilated. Behind the hanging she knew — or thought she knew — was solid stone wall, built hard against the sheer mountainside.

But now that hanging lifted, grasped in a yellow clawlike hand. The hand was followed by a face — an evil, leering, grayish face, with slanted eyes and lank hair falling over a narrow forehead. A thin gash of a mouth gaped, revealing pointed teeth.

She was so astounded that she sat frozen, unable to supply the simple explanation of the phenomenon, until the man entered the room with a slithering silence repulsively suggestive of a snake. Then she saw that a black opening gaped in the wall behind the lifted arras, and two faces were framed in it — white men’s faces, hard and inexorable as stone.

She sprang up then and snatched for the revolver, but it was at the other end of the divan. She ran around for it, but the slant-eyed man, with a motion incredibly quick, was before her and crushed her cruelly in his lean arms, clapping a hand over her mouth. He heeded the twisting and writhing of her supple body no more than the struggles of a child.

“Swift!” he ordered in harsh gutturals. “Bind her!”

The white men had followed him into the chamber, but it was a monk who obeyed, adding a velvet gag. One of the white men picked up the pistol.

“See to the mute who slumbers on the stairs,” her captor ordered. “He is not our man, but a creature set by the people to guard her. Even a mute can speak by gestures sometimes.”