The Faraway Drums. Jon Cleary
‘Of course.’ The Baron, heavily-built and one-armed, also had to be helped down to the ground.
Then the Nawab came back. ‘Shouldn’t be long. I’m having my chaps take everything down to the cart road – Hello, Mala old girl. Where are you going?’
‘She’s going down to Kalka by road, so she says.’
‘I say, what a topping idea! Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘Bertie, for God’s sake – ! It’ll take four or five days at least, those blighters could take pot-shots at you all the way –’
‘Perhaps, old chap. But what’s the alternative? Leave everything here and have them pick my chaps off one by one and then steal the lot? What sort of show would I be able to put on down at the Durbar then?’
But Farnol saw behind the smile, knew that Bertie was concerned for something more than his vanity, his image as a prince in the parade of princes. He looked to the rear of the train, saw the first of the elephants already being led back between the railway tracks to the path that led down to the narrow road cutting through the trees several hundred feet below.
‘All right, get everything down there. See that your guards have their rifles loaded, keep two of them on the alert all the time. I’m coming with you.’
‘I hoped you’d say that,’ said the Ranee right behind him.
‘Be jolly glad to have you,’ said the Nawab.
‘You’ll be excellent company, Major,’ said the Baron.
Farnol looked at the three of them, suddenly uneasy again; but this time he was not looking for some distant rifleman to take a shot at him. He was surrounded by hospitable smiles, but all at once he trusted none of them. Especially the Ranee’s, the widest smile of all.
‘Get everything down to the road, Bertie. I’ll join you as soon as I’ve got the train under way.’
But his arguments were not over yet. Bridie O’Brady and Lady Westbrook were on the platform of the Nawab’s carriage and as soon as Farnol told them what was happening they said they would be travelling down to Kalka by road.
‘Miss O’Brady and I can ride in the Ranee’s coach. For twenty years I travelled up and down this road by tonga – I know every bump and dip in it. We’ll go down in style, Miss O’Brady, pretending we’re princesses. We may even throw a penny or two to the peasants –’
‘Lady Westbrook –’
‘No more discussion, Clive. Just see that my bearer gets my things off the train. What is going on, anyway?’
Farnol was unaccustomed to arguing with women. He came of a long line of Farnol men who looked upon women as one of God’s more pleasant afterthoughts, like rainbows and other trivia of nature. His own father had never quite accepted Queen Victoria as his sovereign and had been surprised the Empire had survived under her. He himself had progressed to the extent that he allowed women equal rights in the bedroom; at least in a bedroom there was no other man, one’s true peer, to see him occasionally playing second fiddle. In public he took it for granted that a woman knew her proper place.
‘Viola, there are dacoits covering the railway line and the road. If you persist in going down that road, you could be shot. You, too, Miss O’Brady. I’m ordering you both to get back on the train.’
Lady Westbrook sniffed, looked at Bridie. ‘Do you allow the men in America to talk to you like that?’
‘No,’ said Bridie. ‘I’m sorry, Major Farnol. I’m accompanying Lady Westbrook.’
‘Damn!’ said Farnol and didn’t apologize.
Twenty minutes later the wagons and flat-cars were empty. The elephants and horses were down on the road, the elephants saddled with their howdahs; half a dozen of the Ranee’s men were struggling with her coach as they eased it down the steep path to the road. There had still been no more shots and Farnol had the feeling he was working in a vice that would close as soon as the train had disappeared. But he knew he had to stay with the party going down by road, more for his own reasons than for theirs. Somehow he had to get on the telegraph to Colonel Lathrop. He was certain that Lathrop would take heed of his warning of a plot against the King’s life.
He spoke to the sergeant of the escort. ‘When you get back to Simla tell Captain Weyman I suggest he has everyone on twenty-four-hour stand-by. I’ll have the telegraph line repaired as soon as possible.’
‘You think they’ll try coming up to Simla, sir?’
‘I doubt it. This isn’t some sort of uprising, sergeant – we’d have heard about it before this if anything had been stewing. I think they are just dacoits and nothing more.’
‘Puzzles me why they haven’t opened up on us. Them buggers usually don’t waste no time.’
‘It puzzles me, too, sergeant.’
‘You think they’re waiting to pop them off down there?’ The sergeant nodded down at the small caravan gathering on the road below. ‘Maybe I’d better give you some of my blokes, sir –’
‘No, they’re needed to guard the train, just in case. Hop aboard, sergeant, there’s the whistle.’
The train creaked its iron joints, the wheels gave faint squeals, then it started to ease slowly backwards up the slight incline. Farnol stood beside the track, nodding to the heads hanging out of the windows as they went by above him. The stout woman would have fallen out of her window if she could have squeezed through; she could see the social climax of her life disappearing as the train took her backwards away from it, all the unwritten letters to her less fortunate friends in England never to be written at all; her tirade at Farnol drifted back, harder on the ear than the clang and screech of the iron wheels. Two little girls hung out of a window crying, deprived of the biggest picnic they would ever have seen. Finally the engine went past, puffing and grunting and wheezing like an old bull elephant coaxed out of retirement to push its way through a teak forest; the conductor stood on the step, ready to drop off and take cover further up the line where he could hide and wait for the arrival of the relief train, if and when it came. The engine went by, Farnol waved to the driver, then turned to walk down the path to the road. And stopped.
On the other side of the line, between the tracks and the steeply rising hillside, stood a man and a woman, two suitcases beside them.
3
‘Awfully sorry to trouble you, Major.’ It was the long-nosed, long-jawed man who had spoken to Farnol earlier. He had put on a deer-stalker cap and it only seemed to accentuate the long thinness of his face. ‘My name is Monday. This lady is my wife.’
She was pretty in a vague sort of way, as if her looks came and went with shifts of light. She was dressed in a brown travelling suit and brown hat and she reminded Farnol of a good-looking field mouse. She smiled sweetly.
‘We’re coming with you, Major. I’m sure you’ll be able to find room for us.’
All at once Farnol suspected she might be a field mouse with very sharp teeth. ‘Sir, just who are you that you think you can invite yourself to travel with me?’
‘Please don’t misunderstand me, sir. We are not forcing ourselves on you.’ For the first time Farnol noticed that the man had a slight accent. ‘Perhaps we should not have got off the train without requesting your permission. But here we are and I trust you will not leave us here.’
‘I may do just that, sir. You still haven’t told me who you are.’
‘I am the Asian representative for Krupps.’ Both he and his wife stood very still, as if the name Krupp sounded like the single note of a leper’s clapper bell even in their own ears.
‘You have