The Devil's Die. A novel

Front matter

!¥ NEW NOVELS AT EVERY LIBRARY KING OK KNAVE ? By R. E. Francillon. 3 Vols. THE LINDSAYS. By John K. Leys. 3 Vols. THE DEEMSTER. By Hall Caine. 1 Vol. EVERY INCH A SOLDIER. By M. J. Colquhoun. 3 Vols. THE PASSENGER FROM SCOTLAND YARD. By H. F. Wood. 1 Vol. IN EXCHANGE FOR A SOUL. By Mary LlNSKILL. 3 VolS. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS. By D. Christie Murray and Henry Herman. 1 Vol. OLD BLAZER'S HERO. By D. Christie Murray. 1 Vol. FINE AND PALM. By Moncure D. Conway ■1 Vols. SETH'S BROTHER'S WIFE. By Harold Frederic. 2 Vols. A PHYLLIS OF THE SIERRAS. By Bret Harte. 1 Vol. THE HEIR OF LINNE. By Robert Buchanan. 1 Vol. RED SPIDER. By the Author of " Mehalah." 1 Vol. PASTON CAREW. By E. Lynn Linton. 1 Vol. A ROMANCE OF THE QUEEN'S HOUNDS. By Charles James. 1 Vol. London : CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly. a jftouci BY GRANT ALLEN AUTHOR OF " FHILISTIA," "STRANGE STORIES," "iN ALL SHADES," ETC IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. ILonoori CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1888 [The right of translation is reserved}

Chapter I

" Now then, Sam," the head porter muttered sulkily in an undertone to his mate ; " lend a hand here, will you, lazy, to get out the black gentleman's luggage." Dr. Mohammad Ali stood watching the porters very attentively as they disembarked the bags and boxes (with the regulation show of unnecessary vehemence) from the open van at Polperran Station on the tag-end of the Great Western Railway. Carlyle was right : immense and unsuspected depths of importance lurk unseen in mere cloth ing. At Saharanpur, in the North-West Pro vinces, where Mohammad Ali had been born and bred, and where his respected father still lived upon his means as a native money-lender, the young doctor would have pissed in the VOL. I. B crowd as a very decent Mohammedan gentle man of the stereotyped pattern. A turban and a cummerbund make all the difference.

But at Polperran Station, in the county of Cornwall, a round felt hat of the newest model, a well made cut-away tourist suit of grey homespun, a tie and collar of Bond Street perfection, and a white rosebud daintily stuck, with a sprig of maidenhair, in his topmost buttonhole, had almost transformed the handsome young Mus sulman into a genuine free-born, first-class pas senger. As he stood there, holding out a tiny scrap of official paper in his small and neatly gloved right hand, his own mother, good lady, mewed up in her zenana at Saharanpur, would hardly have recognized her metamorphosed son for a true and faithful follower of the Prophet of Islam. Dr. Mohammad Ali, was decidedly both good looking and gentlemanly. Dark, of course ; you expect a man whose parents live in the native town at Saharanpur to have a somewhat sombre cast of complexion ; but strikingly handsome and pleasing, for all that, with his keen and piercing East Indian eyes, his deli cately-moulded small features, his charming smile of perfect good-humour, and his two even rows of dainty and faultless pearl-white teeth.

Even the porters eyed him respectfully ; they saw at a glance with professional instinct that he was black, but comely — one of the right sort in fact : good for half-a-crown down any day, if he was good for a penny. " Grenelman's got a dog-ticket, Sam," the head porter muttered, with a nudge to his underling. " It's not a dog, my friend," Dr. Mohammad Ali answered, smiling, in English a great deal better than the porter's own. " It's that box over yonder — the one with the pierced holes and the stick-out handles to it. Take it gently by the handles only, and don't put your fingers too near the holes on any account. There's a snake inside it ; in fact, a rattlesnake, one of the very deadliest creatures known to science." The young man spoke in a soft, low, musical voice, and didn't seem to be at all aware that he was communicating a fact in the least out of the common ; but the effect of his speech upon the two burly Cornish porters was instantaneous and magical.

They had been preparing to swing out the box, live stock and all, with the usual generous and effusive recklessness of the suborned luggage-smasher ; but at the sound of that talismanic name, " rattlesnake," they laid down the handles gingerly with pro found firmness, and respectfully, but very distinctly declined to proceed further with the act of clearing the entire compartment. " The company are not and don't undertake to be common carriers of rattlesnakes, sir," the head porter observed abstractedly ; " and, what's more, at my time of life, it ain't to be expected as I'm going to take to 'em." At that very moment the sudden apparition of a rapidly vibrating forked tongue, protruded like lightning through one of the drilled holes in the box, and showing an ominous vista behind of two grooved fangs, surmounted by a pair of watchful beady-black eyes in the dim background, gave added point and fresh em phasis to the head porter's decided protest.

Dr. Mohammad Ali observed the apparition of the tongue and fangs with evident relish. " Ha ! that's right, old girl," he said, tapping the cover gently with his gloved finger, " so you're lively, are you ? lively, lively ! None the worse for your long journey down from Paddington, eh, my beauty ? That's a good girl ! Softly, softly ! Put back your head now, and go to sleep again. You shall rest in peace to-night in your furnished apartments, your own hired house, my lady. Do you happen to know where a gentleman by the name of Dr. Chichele lodges ? Ah, there you are at last, my dear fellow ! Delighted to see you. I've brought down the Begum as you see, for your behoof and instruction ; but your porters here in this remote district appear to harbour an incomprehensible prejudice against venomous reptiles.

They seem to be afraid the Begum '11 bite them. Lend me a hand with her highness, will you, Harry, and mind she doesn't get a chance with her fangs at you for all the universe ? " The young Englishman in boating flannels who had just come up took one of the handles firmly in his grasp, while Mohammad himself held the other daintily in his gloved fingers. Between them they lifted the box with gentle caution out of the luggage-van, and laid it down on the platform safely in front of them. " Now, then ! " shouted the station-master, with some asperity ; " look alive, there, will you ! Any more for the Penzance train ? Got that vermin safe out of the van ? All right ! Go ahead, then, Bill ! " And he sounded his whistle. " And you, sir," turning to the smiling East Indian, "you can't take that beast back to London again, you know.

The Great Western Railway Company hereby give notice that they are not and will not be " " I know, I know," Mohammad Ali answered, with a good-natured smile and wave of his hand. " But the Begum doesn't propose going back to town at all, Mr. Station-master. It's ber highness's intention, as at present advised, to spend the short remainder of her days in observing nature here at Polperran. She's in splendid poison, Harry ; in magnificent poison. I never saw a rattlesnake in finer fig anywhere in India. Rich and rare were the germs she wore — every germ of them all a deadly virus. If she was to bite you this moment — hi presto, before you could say the usual ' Jack Robinson,' it'd be all up with you." And he seated him self carelessly sideways upon the box, drew off his glove, and tapped at one of the round holes with his thumb and fore-finger,. as if on pur pose to excite and stimulate the half-dormant creature coiled up inside.

The Begum answered by darting her tongue out viciously as he withdrew his finger, and endeavouring to bury her fangs deep in the naked flesh of her ardent admirer. " Naughty girl, naughty girl, be quiet now, will you ? " the young Mussulman murmured playfully, in the voice in which one usually addresses a toy terrier. " Would she bite her master, then, would she ; would she ? She was a naughty, ungrateful, wicked, bad serpent, and she deserved to be taken straight home, and well whipped, and sent to bed supperless. How shall we get her up to your lodging, Harry ? " " There's a sort of cab or omnibus somewhere in the place," the Englishman answered, laugh ing ; " but the 'busmau will certainly decline to carry her, so we'd better borrow a truck aud wheel it up with her. But you can't go along through the streets of Polperran wheeling a truck in that hat, and coat, and buttonhole, Ali.

YTou look for all the world, with your fine clothes, as if you were going to a fete or a flower show." Ali lighted a cigarette carelessty, " When I come into a fresh world," he said, puffing it out in white clouds, " I dress myself in my best accordingly. I have come to explore the world of Cornwall. There will behouris in Polperran. Even the despised black man likes to do him self justice in the presence of houris. Am I not a man and a brother ? " And he looked up into his English companion's fair face with a comical expression of appealing humanity which made Harry Chichele laugh heartily. '• Well," the Englishman said, " at any rate, Ali, we'd better take the beast up— I beg your pardon, I mean the Begum. By the way, why do you call her such an odd name ? She's handsome enough and vicious enough for it in all conscience, anyhow."

Ali helped him lift the box tenderly on to the trolly which the porter lent him. " She is," he said, removing his cigarette from his mouth for a moment, " wicked enough, and vicious enough, no doubt, or at least nearly. For she couldn't quite come up in wickedness and cruelty to the amiable old lady after whom I've ventured to call her." " And who was that ? " Harry Chichele asked carelessly, as they wheeled the truck between them away from the station. " Oh, it's only a strange weird story of our own parts, but you'd better hear it, both because you're going in future to be the Begum's master, and because — well, because the Begum's story is somehow connected with certain English families of some social and domestic importance. I called her after Begum Johanna of Deoband." " And who was Begum Johanna ?

" Harry Chichele asked, with that faint show of interest which we all feebly pretend to feel in things Indian before the faces of those to whom they are living realities. " I seem to remember the name, I fancy. My father often spoke of her, I think. Perhaps he had something to do with her in India." Mohammad Ali coughed. It was a dry cough with a peculiarly arid and Arab signi ficance about it. " He had," he answered. " Your grandfather knew her. She was the wife of a French soldier of fortune in the wild freebooting days in the Punjaub. And it's about her they tell that terrible story of the buried slave-girl. Of course you know the story of the slave-girl ! " " We English are dreadfully ignorant of Indian affairs," Harry Chichele replied with obliquely apologetic confession of ignorance.

" Well, this is the story, and you ought to know it, Harry. It — it has some interest for some of the great Anglo-Indian families. Begum Johanna had once a beautiful slave girl whom she suspected of having intrigued with her husband, the Frenchman. Whether she had intrigued with him, or whether she hadn't I can't tell you; but at any rate she was a very lovely girl from Cashmere, and the French man admired her, and that alone was quite enough to rouse Begum Johanna's deadliest jealousy. So one night, when she imagined her husband had been talking with the girl, she got her bricklayers suddenly to excavate a great hole under her own bedchamber, and built a small brick vault, and put a trap door to it leading from her bedroom. Then she had the girl brought before her and flogged till she was almost insensible ; and after that, a couple of servants lowered the poor creature down into the vault, with a jar of water but no food, and closed the trap door down tight, and put Begum Johanna's bed on the top of it.

For nine days and nine nights that unhappy slave lay there, starving and dying slowly in the vault ; and for nine days and nine nights Begum Johanna lay on her couch listening to the terrified creature's frantic shrieks, and gloating over her agony as they subsided at last till she died by inches. Harry, it's a terrible thing even to feel one belongs to a race in which such devilry as that was ever possible." He said it earnestly and very sadly, as if the feeling of his kinship with that awful woman oppressed and weighed down his inmost spirit. Harry Chichele instinctively felt the genuineness of his black friend's expression, and answered hurriedly, as if to put him more at his ease, " Well, you know, after all, we ourselves, Ali, here in Europe, aren't so very much better either. It's not so very long ago, when one comes to think of it, that we, too, burnt and tortured our witches and our criminals ; and I can re member myself the time when Lord Tom Noddy, and others of his caste, made parties of pleasure and hired rooms at vast expense to go and see a man die in his boots."

" Ah, yes," the Indian answered, with a faint toss of his head and a curl of his lip, " that's true enough, of course, my dear fellow ; we're both in pretty much the same box. There's a great deal of human nature in all of us. The ape and tiger are only half bred out of us anywhere as yet. But the awful fact remains none the less awful because we all of us share in it alike. Rather is it only all the more awful, if it comes to that. The wider the condemnation, the worse for humanity. I regret that my ancestors only a generation or two back, were hideous fiends in human form, and you console me by assuring me, with your graceful English condescension, that about tbe same time your own progenitors, too, were devils incarnate. A poor sort of topsy-turvy, ' You're another ! ' ' Father Confessor, I am dreadfully wicked.' ' Yes, dear son, but all the rest of us are really every bit as bad as you are.' There, there, old girl ; keep quiet, keep quiet.

Your Highness's troubles will soon be over. You'll find yourself now after ten minutes at Chichele's room in a congenial atmosphere of all the diseases and all the poisons." " But, Ali, you don't mean to say you're descended yourself from Begum Johanna ? " Tbe black doctor gave a sudden start of unfeigned horror. " Me ? " he cried. " Me, did you say, Chichele ? Heaven forbid it. No, not descended from her ! Thank God, not a drop of that terrible woman's cursed blood flows in a single vein of mine, Harry. You forget her name — she was a Christian — Johanna. A converted Hindoo, I mean, not a Mohammedan. All my people are Moslems of the purest type, descendants of the Arab missionaries to India. But the Hindoos, who believe in transmigration, you know, have a strange story that the Begum's soul took up its abode after death in the body of a rattlesnake.

A very appropriate dwelling-place, indeed ! She was that, and worse than it. So that's why I call our lady here the Begum. I sometimes fancy vaguely to myself — you know we Indians are an imaginative race— that the Hindoo theories are right after all, and that Begum Johanna's bloodthirsty soul lives to this day in my treacherous snake here. Look at her eyes ! How deadly ! how jealous ! Look at her fangs ! How sleek and cruel. Quiet, your highness ; quiet, quiet ; you're nearly home now." They had reached the middle of the one long grey street of Polperran, and, as Ali spoke, a pony-carriage drove lightly past them, with a dark Cornish girl holding the reins. She smiled in much amusement at the incident of the truck, and bowed a hasty bow as she passed to Harry Chichele. " Pretty girl, isn't she ?

" Harry Chichele said, raising his sailor's cap with a graceful movement. " That's Miss Tregellas, the rector's daughter. She's the belle of Polperran. Renders existence here endurable for the present. Otherwise, I'm sure I don't know bow I should have ever got through the summer without yon, Ali." " She's more than pretty," Mohammad Ali answered, his voice dropping to a chivalrous undertone. " She has a sweet face ; good as well as beautiful. Your English women are goddesses, Harry. Why was I born in India, I wonder ? Just fancy me marrying an Indian woman — a doll of a creature taken straight from the zenana to Middlesex Hospital ! The idea's grotesque. I could never dream of it. An Englishwoman's the only woman fit for me. And yet no Englishwoman would ever for a moment think of takingme.

Strange that a mere distinction of cuticle should so completely cut a man off from all his natural peers and helpmates ! Brain and soul and spirit may be civilized and European as you please ; but none of them will weigh one grain in the scales against a wrong sort of epidermis ! I wonder, now, why tbe epidermis should be considered, socially speaking, such a very important part of human anatomy ! " Harry Chichele laughed an unconcerned laugh. " My dear fellow," he said, in a good humoured tone, " your mistake lay in ever divorcing yourself from your natural surround ings. Yrou ought to have stopped in India, you know, and then you'd have been satisfied, like all your ancestors, with the good women of your own country. Now you've come to Eng land, of course you won't put up with the type of beauty usually admired by the faithful of Islam."

" Never ! " Mohammad Ali cried with a shudder. " Heaven forbid so great a degra dation ! But, for all that, I'm glad I came to England. To stop in India is to starve one's own moral and mental nature. To come here is growth, development, emancipation, freedom ! " And he stroked his moustache medita tively with his dusky hand, as he stooped down once more to inspect in her close cage the now quiet and slumbering Begum.

Chapter II

The next morning was a glorious English August day, calm and clear, with bright blue sky and glassy sea ; and Harry Chichele took Mohammad Ali out for a walk along the beau tiful weather-worn cliffs of Polperran. The two young men had been students together at the Middlesex Hospital, where Harry Chichele was employed as junior house physician. Some months had passed, how ever, since they had last met, and Moham mad Ali, at the end of his medical course in London, had gone out to spend the winter in India, on a visit to his parents, and had only just returned to England, bringing with him an appropriate present for his old fellow student, in the shape of the Begum. For Harry Chichele was allowed to be the greatest rising authority in England on germs and poisons, and he was just then engaged on a series of minute researches into the bite of a common English viper as compared with that of various other venomous snakes and poisonous reptiles.

It was the vipers, in fact, that had brought him for his summer holiday into Corn wall ; for the wild heather-covered moors that surround Polperran on every side supply the very spots where the sun-loving adders delight to bask, and the lizards to bathe themselves in the broad sunshine on the sandy banks and open patches. " The sea looks magnificent this morning," Harry Chichele said, as they reached the summit of a jagged and pinnacled granite crag, that jutted out boldly into the deep emerald-green bay below. " What a lovely purple on the distant horizon, and what a perfect calm over the whole Channel. Not a ripple breaks the surface anywhere ! Not a breath of wind dimples its cheek ! I love to see it, vast and illimitable and silent like that ! Some people say the sea is always so changeable.

For my part, Ali, it's rather the grand monotony and infinity of the ocean that makes it most sublime and beautiful to me." " Ugh, don't speak of it, my dear boy," Mo hammad Ali cried with a sudden shudder. "If VOL. I. c you had been tossed about helpless upon the bosom of Biscay, as I've been for the last ten days or so, you'd never want to rhapsodize again about the sea as long as you live, I can tell you. Monotonous, indeed ! I wish it was monotonous ! It's the want of repose about it that / object to. Heaving and plunging and raving and dashing all the time, as if the human digestion was a cast-iron boiler, and the human nerves were entirely composed of brazen fibres. No, no, I want no more of the sea, thank you. That's a pretty sight that schooner over yonder, under full sail. Hand me your field-glass : I'd like to have a good look at her."

"A lovely morning," Harry Chichele went on musingly. " So still and breathless. Glorious weather for a rousing epidemic. How the con queror germ would float and fatten on the stag nant air ! How he'd spread and revel in this basking sunshine ! What splendid chances one would have to watch the growth and development of a good popular plague, wouldn't one ? " Mohammad Ali levelled the glass and swept the horizon rapidly for a moment; then he said, in a quieter and more subdued voice, " There's a yacht over yonder I don't quite understand. She's only got a single sail spread. Everything else in sight is under all canvas. There's hardly a breath of air stirring. Why on earth should she have no more canvas on ? " Harry Chichele took the glasses as Ali handed them, and looked intently at the shadowy yacht upon the dim horizon.

" By George ! " he murmured, " it's certainly curious. She hardly seems to be moving at all. And she's got her sail set most oddly. I don't understand what the dickens she's driving at. There seems to be something or other wrong about her." Mohammad Ali raised the glasses to his eyes once more. " She gives one a creepy feeling, anyhow," he said, scanning her close. " The rigging looks all so bare and skeleton-like. I can make her out a great deal better now. She isn't drifting. She's not a derelict. There's a man at the tiller ; a single man. I don't see anybody else on board. Let's go and have a look at her with the coastguard's telescope. I feel convinced there's something serious the matter." The coastguard on the summit of the neighbouring peak was sweeping the sea idly with his glass, and evidently had not yet noticed this particular very suspicious-looking yacht, away to westward.

As soon as Mohammad Ali called his attention to her, however, he gave a sudden low whistle, and gazed at her long and curiously through his small pocket telescope. " There's something up," he exclaimed at once. " She ain't lost any of her masts or sails, that's clear. They're all reefed up quite regular and proper, and everything ship-shape as you'd wish to see it. But she's got the rummiest-looking sail set I ever clapped eyes on, and there's only one man visible anywhere aboard of her. Yacht o' that size and tonnage, I take it, ought to have at least three of a watch to manage her. He's single-handed, that's where it is. I can make him out now. He's holding the tiller and keeping a tight hand on the sheet at the same time. Seems as if he was master and mate and cabin boy, all rolled into one.

She ain't flying no distress signals neither : that's odd. But there's a red handkerchief flapping on the sheet — looks as if it was meant to attract attention." Harry Chichele focussed the telescope on the doubtful yacht, and raked her over, fore and aft, with a close scrutiny. " She's in distress," he said at last, decisively. " Not a doubt in the world about that. The man's holding the tiller in one hand, and the sheet in the other. There's a red handkerchief tied to the sheet, as you say, and he gives it a shake every now and again on purpose to be noticed. He's trying to signal us — I'm sure of that. Ha, now he's waving a handkerchief in his hand. He sees us, he sees us ! He's making signs to us." " Better go back to Polperran at once," Mo hammad Ali suggested, hastily, " and put out a boat to see what's the matter."

They walked back at their best speed to the little cove — a bay of white sand, hemmed in on every side by granite cliffs — and hired a row boat from a man on the beach. Two stalwart fishermen manned the boat for them, and took the oars. Harry Chichele and Ali leaned back in the stern, and kept their eyes fixed on the yacht with her one sail making slowly but steadily across the water towards them. The men rowed hard, and the vacht sailed sluggishly on before the faint and almost im perceptible breeze until they had got nearly within hailing distance. Mohammad Ali held the field-glass in his hand. " There's only one man, sure enough," he said in a grave voice, eyeing him closely, " and even he seems scarcely fit to work a vessel. He's ghastly pale, and very feeble-looking. He totters about when he moves on the deck.

It's about the most myste rious ship I ever saw. Never a sign of life about her. She looks, somehow, like a plague stricken city." " Perhaps," Harry said, " the owner's trying to navigate her alone. You know people will go in for these foolhardy adventures." They drew closer and saw the yacht, with all her sails, save that one solitary triangular piece of canvas, furled and reefed on the yards in due order — a bare hull, drifting slowly, slowdy, slowly on, before that breathless and motionless air of August. Nothing but the current was bearing her along. The hot sun poured down from overhead. No breeze or quiver shook the silent sail. A sultry stillness held the cloudless expanse of heaven. Not a sound or a movement came from the yacht. The water hardly sheered off from her bows as she glided imperceptibly on.

She seemed to slacken even as they approached, and to lie idle at last in perfect inaction upon the calm surface of that unruffled sea. " I can make out her name," Mohammad Ali mused aloud. " The Seamew, of London. A pretty little craft, but deathly still. There must be some curious mystery about her." " Mutiny, perhaps," one of the fishermen suggested, leaning upon his oar. " Crew may have gone off' and left her on the high seas ; or deserted, might be, in the last port touched at." " It certainly looks uncanny," Harry Chichele answered, with languid curiosity. " So much the better. I love an adventure. And this one has an element of the supernatural hanging about it vaguely, somehow." As he spoke, Mohammad Ali laid down the field-glass with a cry of surprise. " The man's ill," he cried ; " deadly ill.

He looks almost as if he were dying. He can hardly hold himself up on the deck. Pull alongside, quick, will you? There, that'll do. Seamew, ahoy ! ahoy ! ahoy, there ! " The one occupant of the deserted yacht flung up his hands with a wild shout, and let go at once both sheet and tiller. " Ahoy ! ahoy ! ahoy ! " he answered, in a hollow voice, with convulsive eagerness. " What's up ? " Mohammad Ali shouted, between his hands. " Hold off," the stranger hailed back, in a terrible tone of tremulous warning, his hands held open deprecatingly before him. " Cholera ! cholera ! " At the sound of that awful and dreaded word, the two fishermen dropped their oars at once, as if by magic, and let the boat float idly of herself upon the glassy water. " The Lord preserve us!" one of them murmured, with sudden horror.

"Stop where you are.' Not another stroke! We can't go near her! We mustn't go near her! " " Go on ! " Mohammad Ali cried, in a tone of command. " The man's dying. We can't stop here. If you don't go on, you'll be too late to save him." " Not another stroke," the first fisherman answered, doggedly. " You're a coward," the Indian cried, seizing the oar, with a sudden burst of fiery indignation, and showing his pearl-white teeth like a dog in the heat of his anger. " Come along, Harry. Take the oars from them, quick, will you. We must pull alongside and help this poor fellow. Coward, I say ! Cowards, both of you ! I never knew before that seafaring men could be so cowardly." " I'm not afraid of the worst storm that ever blew out of God's heaven," tbe fisherman answered, holding tight to his oar and disputing its possession ; " but hang me if I'm ever going for you or for no man to bring the cholera home to Polperran."