CHAPTER XI.
THE RANKS ARE THINNED.
“Mr Stratford! Mr Stratford!”
The words were accompanied by an emphatic knocking at the door, and Stratford sat up in bed.
“Come in!” he shouted, recognising the voice, and Fitz Anstruther entered, shutting the door carefully behind him.
“I’m afraid there’s something wrong over at the doctor’s,” he said. “His house-door is ajar, and yet none of his people seem to be stirring. I wanted to go over and see what was the matter, but old Ismail Bakhsh wouldn’t let me pass out of the gate, and told me to call you and Major North. May I go now? I won’t be a minute.”
“No, call North, and he and I will go over,” said Stratford, beginning to dress, and Fitz, with a sense of deep disappointment, obeyed. In a very few minutes Stratford and Dick came down the steps together, and after posting Fitz at the gate in case a hurried return should be necessary, passed between the lounging forms of the Ethiopian soldiers who were occupying the street, and entered the doctor’s house. Its air of desolation surprised them, for they found the courtyard and verandah strewn with books and papers, and odds and ends of small value.
“Looks as though the place had been looted,” said Dick.
They crossed the verandah and entered the house, still without meeting a soul. Here again all was desolation. Everything of value seemed to be gone, and the furniture was broken and knocked about. The only things left uninjured were the glass bottles containing the natural history specimens, which still remained untouched on their shelves. The door into the next room was ajar, and a kerosene lamp was burning itself out on the table, filling the air with its pungent odour as the flame flickered, recovered itself, and sank again. Glancing into the semi-darkness, the intruders could make out the form of the doctor, lying half-dressed across his bed, the lamp-light gleaming on the barrel of a revolver in his hand.
Somewhat reassured by the sight, they advanced and pushed the door wide open, then recoiled precipitately. The face which met their view was that of a dead man—of one who had died in the extremest agony. The protruding eyeballs, the lips drawn back to the gums, the black and swollen tongue, all testified to the sufferer’s having endured the utmost torments of thirst.
Ashamed of their momentary panic, Stratford and Dick, putting a strong constraint upon themselves, entered the room and lifted the corpse, unclasping the rigid hand from the revolver.
“They did poison him, then!” said Dick, fiercely. “Well, we will have Fath-ud-Din’s blood for this.”
“How?” asked Stratford. “When was he poisoned? Was it at dinner last night, or had his servants poisoned the water in the filter? If young Fath-ud-Din and Hicks are both unhurt, we can never prove that it wasn’t that. It has been very smartly managed.”
“Here is a piece of paper and a pencil,” said Dick, handing them to him. “He must have been writing as he lay.”
“Look here,” said Stratford, holding out the paper after glancing through it, “the poor fellow has put down his symptoms and the remedies he tried, as a guide to us. He wrote at intervals, evidently. You see, after recording his symptoms twice, he says, ‘Servants gathered round the door watching me. Refuse to bring water.’ Then more symptoms, and then, ‘Servants are looting the house. Afraid to touch collection.’ Now you see the writing becomes much weaker. ‘Ask Miss Keeling to keep collection in memory of me. Take my mother back the Bible she gave me. Good-bye all. Take care of Miss Keeling; they will strike at her next—the only doctor left. God have mercy——’ It breaks off there, you notice, with a scrawl right across the page. The pencil must have dropped from his hand. To think what the poor fellow must have been enduring all alone in the night, with those fiends gloating over him!”
They stood up on either side of the dead man and looked at each other. Both were men who would not have flinched in the hottest fight, and yet each now saw reflected in the other’s eyes the unutterable horror of his own. What chance was there of success against a foe who fought with such weapons as this? Stratford was the first to speak.
“I must go over and get the Chief to come,” he said. “Will you stay here with—him? I won’t be longer than I can help.”
Dick nodded, and he went off swiftly. For a few moments Dick sat still, staring fixedly at the distorted face of the man who had been a true comrade and good friend to him during the last few months. Then he pushed back the box on which he had been sitting, and began to walk up and down the room, averting his eyes from the dreadful thing on the bed.
“What are we to do?” he cried in despair. “It’s not for myself—God knows it’s not for myself—but those poor women!”
Georgia’s face rose up before him—not an uncommon occurrence in these days—and he ground his teeth as he remembered the dead man’s warning. He was powerless, and he knew it. What could four Englishmen, with Kustendjian and the little handful of native servants, do against a whole nation? How could they defend the helpless women who had come to Kubbet-ul-Haj trusting in their protection?
“At any rate,” said Dick, clenching his fist involuntarily, “if they strike at her they shall strike me first!”
Presently Stratford came back with Sir Dugald, to whom he had explained hastily the doctor’s suspicions of the night before. Sir Dugald’s arrival and his immediate grasp of the situation did something to lessen the tension in the minds of the two younger men, an effect which was enhanced by the prompt and decisive orders which he proceeded to give.
“I shall send you to the Palace with Kustendjian, Stratford, to tell the King exactly what has happened, and to insist that it shall be inquired into immediately. There is no such thing as an inquest here, of course, but I suppose we had better leave the body for the present as you found it, in case they send some one to see how things were.”
“But what about punishing the murderers, sir?” asked Dick, eagerly.
“Who are the murderers?” responded Sir Dugald.
“What is your opinion, sir?”
“My opinion is the same as yours and Stratford’s—that poor Headlam was poisoned at Fath-ud-Din’s dinner; but you must see for yourself that it is absolutely impossible for us to prove it. Fath-ud-Din will say that the servants murdered their master in order to steal his property. Why otherwise should they have looted the place and decamped?”
“Because they were afraid of being suspected,” suggested Dick.
“Possibly; although in that case it was an insane idea for them to meddle with the poor fellow’s things. Besides, three of them came with us from Khemistan, and were not like these Ethiopians here. They were British subjects, and would have known that we should protect them and give them a fair trial. No; my opinion is that the servants had been got at, and were in league with Fath-ud-Din. He was to administer the poison, and they were to loot the house and disappear, in order that suspicion might rest upon them. No doubt he guaranteed their escape, and provided a safe refuge for them. But, if this is the case, you see we are powerless. Nothing but a direct confession from one of those immediately concerned could enable us to bring the crime home.”
“Then you will not even charge Fath-ud-Din with it?”
“My dear North”—Sir Dugald laid his hand not unkindly on Dick’s shoulder—“pull yourself together, and consider what our position here is. Don’t let your eagerness to avenge poor Headlam blind you to the fact that we are in an enemy’s country, with several women to protect, and four guns (I don’t count Kustendjian) to do it with. At present Fath-ud-Din is bound to work against us secretly, but if we brought such an accusation against him it would be open war. The King could not give him up for punishment if he would, and it would be far easier, in any case, to get rid of us than of him. You may put me down as cold-blooded and calculating—in fact, I know you do—but it is my duty to try to bring the Mission out of this most unfortunate business with as little loss of life as possible.”
“I quite see that, sir; but when I look at the poor chap lying there——”
“You must not look at the dead, North, but at the living. If it should so happen that I were to die as the doctor has died, my last care would be to give Stratford a solemn charge to get the rest of you safely out of the country before he hinted at suspicion or said a word about avenging me. I don’t deny that we ought never to have brought the ladies here, but, hampered as we are by their presence, we have given hostages to fortune. Heaven helping me, I mean to have that treaty signed yet, before we leave Kubbet-ul-Haj; but, if that is not to be, then I shall turn all my thoughts to getting the ladies across the frontier in safety. I hope I may feel assured that my staff will do all in their power to co-operate with me, and to take my place should I be removed.”
“You may count on me, Sir Dugald,” said Dick, slowly. “I hope you will forgive what I said just now. I was so much upset that I did not consider things properly.”
Before Sir Dugald could answer, Stratford, who had gone back to the Mission to prepare for his visit to the Palace, returned with Kustendjian, and received his orders. He was on no account to enter the Palace, merely to stand without and demand justice; and he was to be satisfied with nothing less than a royal proclamation denouncing the murderers, and ordering an immediate search for the fugitive servants. Little success as could be hoped for from this measure, such an edict would at least vindicate the prestige of the Mission.
“Now,” said Sir Dugald to Dick when Stratford and the interpreter had taken their departure, “we will get two or three of the servants over here, and set them to work to knock together a coffin. We must make it out of some of these packing-cases, I suppose. It will only be a rough affair. And then we must see about a burial-ground and a grave. It is sad to leave behind one you have liked and trusted in a country like this!”
Sir Dugald’s iron face twitched as he spoke, and he stooped over the corpse.
“Can you find a pair of scissors, North? I must cut off a lock of his hair for Lady Haigh to take to his mother, for I will not allow either her or Miss Keeling to come over and see him like this. I must break the news to them presently, but they shall know as little of the truth as I can manage to tell them.”
Dick found a pair of scissors in the dead man’s medicine-chest, and Sir Dugald cut off a lock of hair and placed it carefully in his pocket-book. Then he went across to the Mission, returning in a short time with two servants, whom he set to work at their mournful task, and leaving Dick to superintend them, went back to break the news to his wife and Georgia. Presently he was summoned again to the doctor’s house to meet the official who had returned with Stratford from the Palace, and who bore assurances of the grief and wrath felt by the King on account of the crime which had been committed. Stratford brought word that the monarch’s utterances seemed to be really sincere, and that it was probable that even if the murder was justly attributed to Fath-ud-Din, his master had no share in it. He had come to the door of the Palace to meet Stratford, finding that he would not enter, and to all appearance was struck with surprise and horror at his news. The thought that the Queen of England might suspect that he had plotted the murder of her officer seemed to impress him particularly, and he was ready to order every possible step to be taken that could lead to the detection of the criminals. At the same time, he was persistent in fastening the guilt upon the runaway servants, and refused to listen to the hint thrown out by Stratford that they might have been instigated to their deed by some one higher in position; and neither Sir Dugald nor his subordinates could resist the conclusion, that although it was in all probability true that the King knew nothing of the crime before it had taken place, yet he had now no difficulty in assigning it to its true perpetrator, whom he was, moreover, determined to shield.
Short of allowing any real inquiry into the manner of the doctor’s death, however, the King was ready to do all he could in the painful circumstances. The desired proclamation was already being published in the different quarters of the town, and a price had been set on the heads of the servants. With regard to the funeral, as there was no Christian burial-ground anywhere in Ethiopia, Sir Dugald might choose a spot in the royal gardens outside the city, and that spot should be fenced off and held sacred. Deputations from the Ethiopian army and council should be present at the ceremony, and Rustam Khan should also attend it as his father’s representative. In the meantime, to show the King’s deep regret for the misunderstanding which had existed during the last few days between himself and Sir Dugald, the guard of soldiers would be removed from the front of the Mission, and the country-people informed that they might bring their produce to sell as usual.
It was Stratford and Fitz to whom fell the task of riding out to the King’s garden and selecting the site of the first Christian cemetery in Ethiopia. They chose a spot on the border of the estate, which could be easily marked off from the rest, and the official who had accompanied them gave the necessary orders to the workmen. The funeral was to take place in the late afternoon, and there was need for haste. Fitz and Stratford had ridden out almost in silence; but as they mounted their horses for the return journey to Kubbet-ul-Haj, Fitz looked back at the garden and shuddered.
“I wonder how many of us will lie there before this business is over!” he said, only to be annihilated by Stratford’s reply—
“Shut up, you young fool, and don’t croak. Your business is to obey orders, and not to wonder.”
The boy relapsed into sulky silence at once, and brooded all the way home over the disgusting state of Stratford’s temper, never guessing that it was with this very end in view, of detaching his thoughts from the tragedy of the morning, that the rebuke had been administered to him. In the courtyard of the Mission they found Dick engaged in superintending the preparations for the funeral, and Stratford noticed at once that among the riding-horses, which were those presented by the King a few days before, there were two hired mules carrying a curtained litter.
“Surely the ladies are not going?” he said to Dick.
“They are, indeed. Lady Haigh declared that she could never face the doctor’s mother if she was unable to tell her in what kind of place he was buried, and what the funeral was like, and it struck the Chief that it was just possible they might be safer with us than left behind here under Kustendjian’s charge. Our force is none too large now, you know.”
And thus it happened that Lady Haigh and Georgia formed part of the mournful procession that accompanied the doctor’s rude coffin to its resting-place in the King’s garden. The streets and house-tops were crowded with people, who gazed eagerly and in silence at the British flag which covered the remains, and at the little group of Englishmen, sad-faced and stern, who followed. Many of those in the crowd owed relief from disease, or even life itself, to Dr Headlam’s skill, yet no sign of grief was exhibited by any one. But neither was there any attempt at mockery or sign of unfriendliness; the people seemed to watch the proceedings with intense and absorbing curiosity, much, thought Georgia, as the inhabitants of Mexico might have contemplated a religious ceremony performed by Cortes and his Spaniards. The same interest was shown at the cemetery, where another crowd had assembled, that listened expectantly to the unfamiliar accents as Sir Dugald read the Burial Service, and pressed forward eagerly to see what was happening when Lady Haigh and Georgia came to the grave-side and threw their flowers upon the coffin. The party from the Mission remained beside the grave until it was filled up and a rough wooden tablet erected, bearing the doctor’s name and the date of his death, and then returned sadly home, parting from Rustam Khan and his attendants as soon as they reached the city gate.
Now that the last honours had been paid to the dead, it was time, as Sir Dugald had said to Dick, to think of the living, and the four Englishmen and Kustendjian met on the terrace to discuss the state of affairs. The latest cause for anxiety arose from the fact that Rustam Khan had shown a strong disposition to emphasise the truth that he attended the funeral merely as the representative of his father. He had declined to ride side by side with Sir Dugald after the coffin, and had displayed a determination, which under less painful circumstances would have been almost ludicrous, to avoid direct communication with any of the party.
“The moral of which is,” said Sir Dugald, “that we are by no means out of the wood yet, but rather deeper in it than before, if possible. If Rustam Khan is afraid to be seen speaking to us, or even to show the friendly feeling the occasion might seem to demand, it looks to my mind as though he knew that he had been accused to his father of plotting with us to deprive him of the throne, and wished to assert his innocence.”
“It strikes one that such a very pointed change of manner would be calculated to awaken suspicion rather than to lull it,” said Stratford—“though, of course, Rustam Khan must be the best judge of that. But we are singularly destitute of information to-day. Even Hicks would be better than no one.”
“Mr Hicks came here after you had started,” said Kustendjian, who had been left in charge of the Mission during the funeral. “He would have wished to attend the ceremony at the grave, but he had only just heard what had happened, since all the morning he was suffering from a fit of indigestion, induced by the dishes at the Vizier’s dinner last night.”
“Well, it’s evident that he was not poisoned,” said Dick, “for Fath-ud-Din would have done his work more effectually, for one thing; and again, I know that I have invariably had the same experience myself after a big native dinner in India or Khemistan. But he seems to be no better provided with news than we are. I wonder what has become of Jahan Beg.”
“That is just the question that has occurred to me,” said Sir Dugald. “It is possible that his house is watched, and that he does not dare to come here. But I hope his silence may mean merely that he has found a good opportunity for sending off his messenger, and that he did not wait for despatches or further directions from me, but packed him off at once.”
“But supposing you hear, in the course of the next two or three weeks, that the force you want is awaiting your orders at Fort Rahmat-Ullah, what action do you propose to take, sir?” asked Dick.
“Simply to inform the King that I am about to withdraw the Mission. If he will send troops to escort us to the frontier, as he did when we came, it will be all right; but, if not, I shall order a sufficient force to march to our assistance. It would not be a military expedition, of course—merely a baggage-train with an armed escort—but the King could not refuse it passage without open war. That would necessitate his throwing himself into the arms of Scythia, which he is very shy of doing; and it is my impression that when he discovers we have the help we need at no great distance, he will change his mind, sign the treaty, and allow us to take back to Khemistan peace with honour.”
“But he would naturally begin a war, if he did decide upon one, by wiping out the Mission,” suggested Dick, “or he might provide us with an escort which had instructions to murder us all on the way. It would come to pretty much the same thing in either case, so far as we were concerned.”
“Risks of that kind one must take in the course of business,” said Sir Dugald. “We can’t very well remain permanently at Kubbet-ul-Haj on our present footing, but we will do our best to avoid playing the part of victims in another Kurd-Cabul disaster.”
“Do you think they will make any further attempts to induce us to accept their treaty, Sir Dugald?” asked Stratford.
“I think it is fairly certain that they will, believing that we have been thrown off our guard by their friendliness to-day. As soon as Fath-ud-Din is about again, we shall probably have him here, trying his old tricks once more; but I have a pleasant little surprise in store for him. I shall make it clear that all negotiations are to be carried on at this house, and that neither I nor any of you will go to the Palace on any business whatever connected with the treaty. I am not going to risk the loss of any more lives by dividing our force, but I shall not tell him that. It will be a disagreeable shock to him to find that we only become stiffer in our demands as our position grows more precarious, and he will think we possess some sort of moral support behind the scenes of which he is ignorant.”
“What a fire-eater the Chief is!” said Stratford later to Dick. “He ought to have commanded one of Nelson’s line-of-battle ships, and engaged a whole French fleet before he went down with guns double-shotted and colours flying.”
“A regular old fighting-cock!” said Dick, affectionately. “If we hadn’t had the ladies with us, we should have seen him bearding the King in the Palace itself, and defying Fath-ud-Din and the whole Ethiopian army to their faces, I’m convinced. As it is—well, our prospects don’t look particularly brilliant just now, but I feel that if there is a man on earth who can get us out of this fix, it’s the Chief.”
They were superintending the removal of the collection from Dr Headlam’s desolate house to the Mission, and gathering together such poor scraps of personal property as the marauders had overlooked or left behind as worthless, to take home to his mother. When the place was cleared they locked the door and delivered the key to the landlord, who received it with a gloomy face, remarking that he never expected to be able to find another tenant. Dick thought that he was attempting to gain an increase of the substantial rent (as things go in Ethiopia), which had already been paid him, but the landlord had gauged correctly the character of his fellow-citizens. The house stood empty for a long time, gaining a bad reputation without any tangible reason; but at last, for an ample remuneration, a man was found bold enough to sleep there, in order to prove that there was nothing wrong about the place. But that bold man let himself down over the wall into the street in the middle of the night by means of his turban, leaving his mattress behind him; and the next day he told his friends that he had been awakened by hearing the well-known clink of a medicine-bottle against the measuring-glass, and, cautiously uncovering his head, had looked out to see the ghost of the English doctor standing at a phantom table and mixing immaterial drugs. That was enough, and the house was left desolate until it ultimately fell into decay.
But this is anticipating, and we must return to the days when the presence of a British envoy was an abiding reality in Kubbet-ul-Haj, and not the shadowy tradition which it has since become. For a day or two the party at the Mission were left undisturbed, although the absence of any message from Jahan Beg robbed their tranquillity of some of its attractiveness. The enforced seclusion within the walls of the house could not fail to tell on the spirits of most of them; but it was a point of honour with all to maintain an appearance of cheerfulness for the sake of the rest, and those who possessed hobbies found them a great help in this endeavour. Stratford studied Ethiopian, Dick laboured at the map of the country which he had begun during the journey from the frontier to the city, and Fitz, who was the unresisting victim of a camera which accompanied him wherever he went, photographed everything and everybody. Georgia had an object of interest peculiarly her own in the perplexing conduct of Dick, who had changed his place at meals, and contrived always to secure a seat between Lady Haigh and herself, so that he could appropriate the first cup of tea or coffee poured out, which it was naturally his duty to pass on to Miss Keeling. Georgia pondered over this behaviour of his for some little time without gaining any light upon it, and at last opened her mind to her usual confidante.
“Lady Haigh, have you noticed the queer way in which Major North behaves at meals? He won’t pass things, and I am sure it isn’t through absence of mind, for he apologises at the time, and looks so dreadfully confused.”
“Well, my dear child, I am sure there is nothing in all this for which to blame him. Certainly you ought to be the very last person to complain.”
“I, Lady Haigh?”
“Is it possible that you don’t guess his reason, Georgie?”
“Really and truly I haven’t an idea what it can be.”
“Then I think you ought to be enlightened. You remember that paper which the poor doctor left, in which he warned us that you would probably be the next of us to be attacked? Well, Major North doesn’t mean you to be poisoned if he can prevent it. That’s all, and it explains his eccentric behaviour fully.”
“Oh!” Georgia sat silent, a vivid crimson spreading over her face. “But it isn’t fair that he should be allowed to risk his life in that way, Lady Haigh,” she said at last.
“Very well, my dear; tell him so.”
“But that would sound so ungrateful. Couldn’t you tell him?”
“I could say that you would prefer to be poisoned rather than to be helped after him, certainly.”
“Oh, Lady Haigh, you are unkind; you know it isn’t that! It is that I can’t bear him to be always running the risk of being poisoned instead of me.”
“Well, if you want my opinion, I should say that was a matter for Major North to decide for himself.”
“Excuse me—I think it is a thing for me to decide.”
“My dear Georgie, you are very persistent. I can only repeat—settle it yourself with Major North.”
But as Lady Haigh had foreseen, Georgia decided that it was not advisable to broach the subject to Dick, and the matter was therefore left untouched.