The Ruby in the Smoke (4 page)

She stepped onto the little porch, and was about to ring the bell, when the door opened and a man came out.

He put his finger to his lips and shut the door, taking great care not to make a sound.

"Please," he whispered. "Not a word. This way, quickly . . ."

Sally followed, amazed, as he led her swiftly around the side of the house and into a little glass-paned veranda. He shut the door behind her, listened hard, and then held out his hand.

"Miss Lockhart," he said, "I am Major Marchbanks."

She shook his hand. He was aged; about sixty, she supposed. His complexion was sallow, and his clothes hung loosely on him. His eyes were dark and fine, though sunk in deep hollows. His voice was familiar in some odd way, and there was an intensity in his expression that

frightened her, until she reahzed that he himself was frightened, too: much more than she was.

'*Your letter came this morning," she said. "Did my father write and ask you to see me?"

"No ..." He sounded surprised.

"Then—does the phrase 'the Seven Blessings' mean anything to you?"

It had no effect at all. Major Marchbanks looked blank.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Did you come here to ask me that? I'm so sorry. Did he—your father—"

She told him quickly about her father's last voyage, and about the letter from the East and the death of Mr. Higgs. He put his hand to his brow; he looked utterly crushed and bewildered.

There was a small pine table on the veranda, and a wooden chair by the door. He offered her the chair and then spoke in a low voice.

"I have an enemy, Miss Lockhart, and that enemy is now yours, too. She—it is a woman—is quite, quite evil. She is in this house now, which is why we must hide out here, and why you must leave very soon. Your father—"

"But why? What have I done to her? Who is she?"

"Please—I can't explain now. I shall, believe me. I know nothing of what caused your father's death—nothing of the Seven Blessings, nothing of the South China Sea, nothing of the shipping trade. He could not have known about the evil which has fallen on me, and which now ... I can't help you. I can do nothing. His trust was misplaced, yet again."

"Again?"

She saw a look of desperate unhappiness cross his face.

It was the look of a man utterly without hope, and it frightened her.

She could only think of the letter from the Elast. "Did you once live in Chatham?" she said.

'*Yes—a long time ago. But please—there's no time. Take this—"

He opened a drawer in the table and took out a package wrapped in brown paper. It was about six inches long, and sealed with string and sealing wax.

"This will tell you everything. Perhaps, since he said nothing to you about it, I shouldn't either. . . . You will have a shock when you read this. Please be ready for it. But your life's in danger whether you know it or not, and at least you'll know why."

She took the package. Her hands were trembling badly; he saw it, and for one strange moment took them both in his and bent his head over them.

Then a door opened.

He sprang away, gray-faced, and a middle-aged woman looked around the door.

"Major—she's on the grounds, sir," she said. "In the garden."

She looked as unhappy as he did, and a strong smell of drink drifted from her. Major Marchbanks beckoned to Sally.

"Through the door," he said. "Thank you, Mrs. Thorpe. Quickly, now . . ."

The woman stood clumsily aside and tried to smile as Sally squeezed past her. The Major led her swiftly through the house; she had an impression of empty rooms, bare floors, echoes and dampness and misery. His fear was catching.

"Please," she said as they reached the front door, "who is this enemy? I don't know anything! You must tell me her name, at least—"

"She's called Mrs. Holland," he whispered, opening the door a crack. He peered through. "Please—I beg you— leave now. You came on foot? You're young, strong, swift—don't wait. Go directly to town. Oh, I'm so sorry. . . . Forgive me. Forgive me."

Those words were so intensely spoken, with a sob in his voice . . .

And she was outside, and the door was shut behind her. Barely ten minutes after she had arrived, she was leaving again. She looked up at the blank, peeling wall of the house and thought: Is this enemy watching?

She set off along the weed-covered drive, past the grove of dark trees, and back onto the track by the river. The tide was coming in; a sluggish flow stirred the edges of the muddy river. There was no sign of the photographer, unfortunately. The landscape was utterly bare.

She hurried onward, very conscious of the package in her bag. Halfway along the river bank, she stopped and looked back. What made her look she did not know, but she saw a small figure rounding the trees—a woman dressed in black. An old woman. She was too far away to see plainly, but she was hurrying after Sally. Her little black shape was the only purposeful element in all that gray wilderness.

Sally hastened on until she reached the main road, and looked back again. It was as if the little black figure was coming in with the tide; she was no farther behind, and even seemed to be gaining. Where could Sally hide?

The road to the town curved around slightly, away

from the sea, and she thought that if she were to take a side road while she was out of sight, she might—

Then she saw something better still. The photographer stood on the seafront, beside his little tent, consulting an instrument of some sort. She looked back—the little black figure was hidden by the end of the terrace of seafront houses. She ran up to the photographer, who looked up in surprise, and then grinned with pleasure.

"It's you," he said.

"Please," she said, "can you help me?"

"Of course. Glad to. What can I do.^"

"I'm being followed. That old woman—she's after me. She's dangerous. I don't know what to do."

His eyes sparkled with pleasure.

"In the tent," he said, lifting the flap. "Don't move, or you'll knock things over. Never mind the smell."

She did as he said, and he dropped the flap and laced it up. The smell was fierce—something like smelling salts. It was completely dark.

"Don't speak," he said quietly. "I'll tell you when she's gone. My word, here she comes now. She's crossing the road. Coming toward us ..."

Sally stood motionless, listening to the crying of the gulls, the clip-clop of horses and trundle of wheels as a carriage went along the road, and then the sharp, swift tread of a pair of nailed boots. It stopped only a yard or so away.

"Excuse me, sir," said a voice, an old voice that seemed to wheeze and click in an odd way.

"Mmm? What is it?" Garland's voice was muffled. "Wait a moment. I'm composing a picture. Can't come out from under the cloth till it's ready. . . . There," he said more clearly. "Well, ma'am?"

"Have you seen a young girl come this way, sir? A girl dressed in black?"

"Yes, I have. Devil of a hurry. Remarkably pretty girl—blond—would that be the one?"

"Trust a handsome gentleman like you to notice that, sir! Yes, she's the one, bless her. Did you see which way she went?"

"As a matter of fact, she asked me the way to the Swan. Said she wanted the Ramsgate coach. I told her she had ten minutes to catch it."

"The Swan, sir? Where might that be?"

He gave directions, and the old woman thanked him and set off.

"Don't move," he said in a low voice. "She hasn't turned the corner yet. 'Fraid you'll have to stay among the stinks for a while."

"Thank you," she said formally. "Though you need not have tried to flatter me."

"Oh, dear. All right, I take it back. You're almost as ugly as she is. Lx)ok, what is going on?"

"I just don't know. I'm all mixed up in something horrible. I can't tell you what it is—"

"Shhh!"

Footsteps approached slowly, passed the tent, and faded away.

"Fat man with a dog," he said. "Gone now."

"Is she out of sight?"

"Yes, she's vanished. To Ramsgate, with any luck."

"May I come out?"

He unlaced the flap and held it open.

"Thank you," she said. "May I pay you for the use of your tent?"

His eyes opened wide. For a moment she thought he

was going to laugh, but he poHtely decHned. She felt herself beginning to blush; she should not have offered money. She turned away swiftly.

"Don't go," he said. "I don't even know your name. That payment I will exact."

"Sally Lockhart," she said, staring out to sea. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult you. But—"

"I'm not insulted at all. But you can't expect to pay for everything, you know. What are you going to do now?"

She felt like a child. It was not a sensation she enjoyed.

"I'm going back to London," she said. "I expect I shall manage to avoid her. Good-bye."

"Would you like a companion? I've nearly finished here in any case, and if that old weasel is dangerous—"

"No, thank you. I must be going."

She walked away. She would have loved his company, but she would never have admitted it. She felt somehow that the pretense of helplessness, which worked so well with other men, would not take him in for a moment. That was why she had offered to pay him: she wanted to meet him on equal terms. But that had gone wrong too. She felt as if she knew nothing and could do nothing correctly, and she felt quite alone.

The Mutiny

There was no sign of the old woman at the sta-tion. The only other passengers were a parson and his wife, three or four soldiers, and a mother with two children. Sally found an empty compartment without difficulty.

She waited until the train was out of the station before she opened the parcel. The knots were carefully buried in sealing wax, and she broke a fingernail trying to scrape it away.

Finally she had it open and discovered a book.

It looked like a diary of some sort. It was quite thick, and the pages were covered in close writing. It had been roughly bound in gray cardboard, but the stitching was loose, and one whole section fell out in her hand. She replaced it carefully and began to read.

The first page bore this inscription: A Narrative of the Events in Lucknow and Agrapur, India^ i S^d-y; with an account of the disappearance of the Ruby of Agrapur^ and the part played by the child known as Sally Lockhart.

She stopped and read it again. Herself! And a ruby—

A hundred questions rose suddenly like flies disturbed

at a feast, and filled her head with confusion. She closed her eyes and waited for calm, then opened them and read on.

In 1856, I, George Arthur Marchbanks, was serving with the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, the Thirty-second Foot, at Agrapur in the province of Oudh. Some months before the outbreak of the mutiny, I had occasion to visit the Maharajah of Agrapur in company with three of my brother officers, namely Colonel Brandon, Major Park, and Captain Lockhart.

The visit was ostensibly a private one for the purpose of sport. In fact, however, our main purpose was to conduct certain secret political discussions with the maharajah. The content of these discussions need not concern this account, except insofar as they contributed to the suspicion in which the maharajah was held by one faction of his subjects—a suspicion which led, as I shall show, to his fate during the terrible events of the following year.

On the second evening of our visit to Agrapur, the maharajah gave a banquet in our honor. Whether or not it was his intention to impress us with his wealth, that was certainly the effect; for I had never set eyes upon so prodigal a display of splendor as that which met us that evening.

The banquet room was set about with pillars of marble exquisitely carved, and bearing at their capitals representations of the lotus flower, lavishly covered in gold leaf. The floor we trod on was set with lapis lazuli and onyx; a fountain in the comer tinkled with rose-scented water, and the ma-harajah's court musicians played their strange, languid melodies behind a screen of inlaid mahogany. The dishes were of solid gold; but the centerpiece of the display was the ruby, of incomparable size and luster, which gleamed at the mahara-jah's breast.

This was the famous Ruby of Agrapur, about which I had heard a good deal. I could not help gazing at it—I confess that something in its depth and beauty, in the blood-red liquid fire that seemed to fill it, fascinated me and held my attention, so that I stared more than was strictly polite; in any event, the maharajah noticed my curiosity and told us the story of the stone.

It had been discovered in Burma six centuries before, and been given in tribute to Balban, King of Delhi, from whom it had descended to the princely house of Agrapur. Throughout the centuries it had been lost, stolen, sold, given in ransom countless times, and had always returned to" its royal owners. It had been responsible for deaths too many to list— murders, suicides, executions—and once it had been the cause of a war in which the population of an entire province had been put to the sword. Less than fifty years before, it had been stolen by a French adventurer. He, poor wretch, thought to escape detection by swallowing it, but in vain: he was torn open while still alive, and the stone plucked warm from his belly.

The maharajah's eyes met mine as he recounted these tales.

"Would you care to examine it, Major.^" he asked. "Hold it close to the light and look inside. But take care that you do not fall!"

He handed it to me, and I did as he suggested. As the lamplight fell on the stone, a strange phenomenon took place: the red glow at the heart of it seemed to swirl and part like smoke, to reveal a series of ledges and chasms—a fantastic landscape of gorges, peaks, and terrifying abysses whose depth was impossible to plumb. Only once have I read of such a landscape, and that was in a work on the delusions and horrors of opium addiction.

The effect of this extraordinary sight was what the ma-

harajah had predicted. I swayed, suddenly struck by the most dizzying vertigo. Captain Lockhart caught my arm, and the maharajah took back the stone, laughing. The incident was passed off with a joke.