Adventure Tales #4. Seabury Quinn
ve’y ni-ce piece work,” that worthy commended, throwing a cotton cloth thickly encrusted with machine embroidery over his right arm so that it swathed him from shoulder to wrist. “This made ’specially for ladies who like ni-ce t’ings.”
His stock patter swept rapidly on, detailing the manifold perfections of the luncheon cloth, but his sleepy eyes traveled round the room, glanced through the open door of the study, and rested on a tiny brass paper weight which stood on the Professor’s desk. The knick-knack was an inexpensive piece of Japanese work, executed in polished brass, and represented a diminutive monkey in the act of holding his paws before his mouth—one of the familiar “speak no evil” symbols to be found in every curio store. Just then it glittered in a ray of the afternoon sun as though it were burnished gold instead of hammered brass. The young man’s eyes shone with a sudden fierce light of jubilation as they encountered the toy, and he moved a step nearer the study door.
“Ye-es, this ve’y ni-ce cover for ni-ce lady’s table—” he drawled, fumbling in the side pocket of his overcoat beneath the cotton cloth which still draped his arm.
“Darwaza bundo!” Rosalie exclaimed shrilly.
The peddler started as though stung by a yellow-jacket, his right arm writhing under the covering of the sheet of embroidery like a snake beneath a blanket.
With a furious movement he whipped the cloth from his shoulder, wrenched something from his pocket and wheeled, backing toward the study with long, cautious steps.
“Look out, Uncle Harvey!” Rosalie’s warning came sharply. Next instant she launched herself across the room like a fury, rushing between the Armenian and the astonished Professor.
“Dog, son of filth, unworthy offspring of a he-goat and a bad smell!” she spat at the hawker in a torrent of Hindustani, her amber eyes glowing balefully, her lovely mouth distended like that of an angry cat.
There was a flash of steel in the afternoon sunlight, something like a flickering flame leaped to life in the girl’s right hand and swept forward and down like a cracking whiplash. The peddler screamed with amazement and pain and dropped the object he had half drawn from his pocket.
Rosalie’s slim, silk-and-satin-shod foot shot out, kicking the thing out of reach as she menaced the wounded huckster with a ten-inch, wavy-bladed Malay kris.
“Tie him up, Uncle Harvey,” she bade, thrusting her knife forward to within an inch of the Armenian’s belt buckle, then, to the peddler, “Stand still, grandson of a toad, or by the Three Holy Ones, I shall slit your unclean throat and pour forth your vile blood as an offering to Kali!” The peddler followed her advice to the letter, though his frightened glance turned this way and that, any direction but toward the girl’s fierce eyes and the glittering, razor-sharp blade of her dagger.
Seizing a length of lace from the open suitcase, Forrester hastily twisted it into a rope and trussed the huckster’s elbows behind him—a far more effective manner of binding than strapping the wrists together—then tore a length from one of the cotton embroideries and bandaged the fellow’s wounded wrist.
“Sit down,” he ordered curtly, motioning the captive to a chair; then to Rosalie: “I hope you know what you’re about, young woman. If you’ve run amuck, we’re in for a tidy little lawsuit, if not for a criminal prosecution.”
“Hou!” Rosalie laughed, lapsing into oriental vernacular, which she still did under the stress of excitement. “Behold, my lord, what your slave has discovered.” With a quick fillip, she removed the fez from the peddler’s head, displaying a small device in red painted on his forehead near the hairline.
It was a small crescent which nearly enclosed a tiny disc within its horns, and Forrester started at the sight. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “Why, it’s the caste mark of a follower of Siva!”
“Yes, my lord, it is nothing less,” the girl replied with a triumphant smile. “When this base-born descendant of a hyena and a mangy female monkey appeared at my master’s house, wishing to show me his detestable wares, I was about to send him on his way, but the day is warm for winter and he put up his hand to wipe his brow, so that I did behold the caste mark for an instant as he put back his cap. Many an Armenian have I seen—we had hundreds of them in Singapore—but never have I beheld one who wore the sign of Siva.
“Then I did remember, master of my life, how the villainous Chandra Roi (may the vultures devour his eyeballs!) sometimes hired these Siva fellows to do his filthy work when even the Chinamen would not, and I knew this one came to my master’s house for no good.
“Two nights ago when Milsted Sahib spoke of the loss of his image of Hanuman, the others knew not what he referred to, but you and I, my lord, knew that Hanuman is the Monkey God of the people of Hind, and though in this land the monkey dances to the music of hand organs, in India he is a very sacred beast.
“I knew, too, that Milsted Sahib was killed by someone, for did I not behold him shooting at a thing which perched in his window-place, as though Hanuman himself had come to claim his image? And was he not himself shot down? Men do not die from bullets from their own guns when those guns are pointed away from them.
“Also I knew that you went outside the house after the murder, and, though the others saw nothing when you returned, Mumtaz Banjjan dwells in the shadow of her lord’s bounty, and his every mood is as plain to her as print upon a book’s page. She could see he was excited, and also pleased by something he had found, and there was no further mention of the stolen god. Therefore Mumtaz Banjjan placed herself near the door while her master and the Doctor Sahib talked in the library, and overheard much which passed between them. She knew he had found the god and given it to the young Nesbit, and she heard of the marks of some other person’s search for that same idol in the snow. All these things Mumtaz treasured in her memory, and when she beheld the mark of Siva upon this accursed one’s brow she bethought her that he must have seen her master pick up the god and take it into the house with him. Therefore, she thought, this one had come here to steal the god back, perhaps to murder her master as he also murdered Milsted Sahib. So she did invite him into the house with fair words that she might watch him, and she saw his unholy eyes light upon the little monkey of brass in the room where my lord reads from great books and writes on paper, which he, being but a pig and an ignorant fellow, doubtless mistook for the very god he stole from Milsted Sahib. And when she saw him reach into his pocket beneath the cloth he held upon his arm she knew he sought some weapon.
“So Mumtaz cried out ‘Darwaza bundo’ which, as my lord knows, means only ‘shut the door,’ in Hindustani; but it was enough. The lowborn one recognized the words, and betrayed himself, and Mumtaz cut his wicked hand before he could do injury to the master who holds both her body and her soul as lightly in his hand as a child holds a rattle.”
“Um; so I see,” Forrester commented, “and a very neat piece of work you did, too, my dear. But you might have been shot.”
“Forrester Sahib is Mumtaz Banjjan’s master, and Mumtaz Banjjan is his slave,” the girl replied, lowering her head humbly. “He is the light of her eyes and the breath of her nostrils and the blood of her heart. What does it matter if the slave dies, so the master lives?”
“Never mind the compliments,” Professor Forrester waved his hand wearily. He had long since given up trying to convince Rosalie that she must not call herself his slave. “Just at present I require information. How is it you had that kris so handy?”
Rosalie’s—or Mumtaz Banjjan’s—face lit with a smile. “I belong to my lord, the mighty Forrester Sahib,” she announced primly, “if he chooses not to salute my lips I shall go to my grave unkissed; but there are certain young men who think not so. In Singapore I learned that the kris is a sharp tongue which argues well; therefore, when the young men urge me to do what they call ‘pet,’ if I cannot rebuff them with my laughter or my hands, I wear that which will convince them. The American clothes are clumsy for such a purpose—I cannot wear the knife at my belt—therefore I conceal it in the back of my dress, between my shoulders.”
“You