Part 6

All things to all men, Routledge fell gladly into the gathering, buying seas of beer and continents of cake. Within a half-hour he had telephoned to Rupley’s for a ten-story confection, and presently many couples, shining-faced, were preening and pirouetting for the possession of it. Had he been the King’s groom, he could not have mounted higher in the estimate of the guests. His heart grew warm with the fun. It was after midnight when the new social stratum tumbled about his ears. The hard-headed little master of ceremonies approached, very white and sorrowful:

“I regrets hexceedingly to say, sir, that one as ’as been dismissed from the Harmy’s and the Noivy’s ’op, sir, cawn’t rightly be expected to find a boith ’ere.”

Routledge had a large view of the world, and a compressed notion of the personal equation, but his humor did not save him now from being stung hard and deep.

“You are quite right, of course,” he said. “I’m very sorry to have intruded, and very thankful for the good time up to now. Good-night.”

There was a murmur of sorrow from many feminine quarters when the great frieze coat was brought, but it was quickly silenced by the undertone of intelligence which spread like poison through the hall. The butler at the Army and Navy reception had told one of the drivers, who, turning up later at the celebration of his own guild, found the outcast there. Thus have empires fallen.

Routledge walked the full distance to his lodgings. Sometimes he smiled; sometimes he found himself striding forward with mad swiftness; then he would smile again, and pull up to the pace of a leisurely gentleman enjoying the night air. Entering his stairway in Bookstalls, he just avoided stumbling over a little figure curled up asleep. His heart went out to the street-waif. Here was one, at least, in London who had no hate nor insult for him. The impulse came to carry the little one up into the warmth. Without waking, the child was placed in a big chair before the grate-fire in the lodgings upstairs. Then Routledge sat down to meditate.

“This is a merry old trail--God knows I love it!” he muttered. “I have had what the good gray poet would call a night of ‘richness and variety.’... Perhaps I would be less happy did I know the breed of incubus which has fallen upon me.... I shall probably be turned out of here in the morning--perhaps be cast into stone and steel. It is strange, strange, that I, Routledge, whose business it is to tell the world the gossip of inner courts and the issue of open fields--that the point of my own fate should be buried in me before I get a look at it!... And that wondrous girl! Why did I not know her when the dust of the world had not fallen upon me; when I had not looked upon the world’s red wines--because they were red!... Routledge, old wanderer, how often has some woman arisen to save you from death--and now a woman arises to save you from your friends!”

A watcher would have thought, for a long time afterward, that Routledge dozed, with the stem of a _nargileh_ between his teeth, except for the soft bubbling in the bottle and the tiny puffs of smoke at long intervals. The dawn came in, graduated from gloomy gray to the dead-white of a sunless morning.... The bell aroused him. He arose and opened the door. Jerry Cardinegh was on the stairs.

SIXTH CHAPTER

A GRIM AND TERRIBLE TRADITION IS TOUCHED UPON FOR THE RELATION IT BEARS TO THE TREACHERY IN INDIA

Routledge stepped back from the open door. He was afraid to extend his hand, lest it be repelled. When the old man rushed across the landing and gripped him, he felt a rather novel kindling of gladness.

“God, son!” Cardinegh muttered, sinking into a chair. “I thought you had slipped London. This is the third time I’ve been here the last ten hours.”

“It must have been three this morning when I came in, Jerry, and I left about nine last night.”

“I was here between nine and ten, and again at midnight.”

“Then you didn’t stay long at the Armory? You don’t mean to say that the boys gave you an ovation--of my kind? Miss Noreen must have told you.”

“Routledge,” the other said slowly, struggling to get a tight rein upon a herd of flying faculties, “they welcomed me in the old way, but the place was disordered. You had been gone only a moment or two. Noreen was waiting for me in the ladies’ room--ready for the street. She would have gone home alone had I not arrived just then. Hurrying me away, she told me how you had been received. After that, she insisted upon coming here with me, though I told her I wanted to talk with you alone. Give me some whiskey.”

Routledge was startled by the shaking avidity with which Cardinegh carried the raw spirit to his lips.

“We came here direct from the Armory--Noreen and I,” he said breathlessly. “When we did not find you, we drove back to Cheer Street--and tossed the rest of the night. God pity her--I couldn’t tell her! Routledge, I didn’t dare to tell her!... She begged me to assure you again and again of her faith. She will see you to-day----”

There was a faint sigh and a soft squirming from the third chair before the fire. It had been turned away from the light. Cardinegh jumped to his feet with horror in his face.

“You’re nervous, old King-maker. Why, it’s just a little London waif I picked up asleep in my stairway.”

“Do you suppose he has heard what I’ve said?” the old man demanded huskily.

“You haven’t said anything yet that the world might not hear. Sit down and smoke, Jerry. God still reigns, and we’re Home.”

Cardinegh stared at the little figure curled up before the fire, catching his breath audibly.

“I’m all shot up,” he panted. “Say, but it’s like you, son, to pick up the little outcast.”

Routledge smiled, because the last word had a big and new meaning. “Perhaps our voices will bother him. I’ll put the lad in the next room,” he said, and untangled the knotted muddy laces, placing the wet, worn shoes evenly before the fire. As he lifted the boy in his arms, the eyes opened sleepily, but Routledge could not see the face pressed against his shoulder. They were drowsy, startled eyes, wise and very shiny, like those of a mouse. Routledge laid him upon his own bed and dropped a blanket over him. “Poor little gaffer, you smell like Bookstalls Road,” he muttered. “I could pick you out blind among the odors of India. Nothing short of a riot could keep you awake, but poor old Jerry will talk easier with you here--and the door shut.”

He drew his chair close to the other, and said genially: “And now, Jerry, tell me what is good for me to know.”

“Did you have a ghastly night, son,--your first night at Home in over a year?”

“I prefer to call it an interesting night.”

“You are about to rise with cumulative glory. Do you remember our last talk in the field--the bivouac at Bhurpal?”

Routledge nodded.

“And you suggested that the spies of the Russian Bear had worked down over the hills, and looted certain startling secrets having to do with British India?”

“It was only a suggestion. The facts are not clear to me yet. There was a colossal derangement somewhere--the same, I take it, that hurled England into alliance with Japan. I appear to be the only man in London who has been denied the truth.” Routledge reached for the amber-bit of his _nargileh_.

“They say a man is last to hear what is going on in his own house.”

“What is the parallel, Jerry?”

“I’ve got to come to that. All London does not know--except that you are under a cloud for treachery. Forty men in London know exactly what has happened in India. Perhaps ten of this forty were at the reception last night. The forty believe you to be the man who turned the monster trick in Afghanistan, well-called the Buffer State. They are the exalted heads of Departments--Foreign, Home, Colonial, War, and Secret-service chiefs--men who live in the shadow of the Throne. Six, at most, of the correspondents are in the secret. The rest can’t tell what you did, but to them, just the same, you are the ranking Iscariot.... Routledge, how many men know the truth about Shubar Khan’s Lotus Expedition?”

“Possibly the same forty men.”

“And the soldiers of Colonel Hammond’s regiment?”

“That is a historical mystery,” Routledge said. “Many are dead; the rest scattered and lost. The secret was miraculously preserved. Why, this is the masterpiece of England’s department of espionage.”

“The records of Colonel Hammond’s debauch in blood were stolen last autumn,” Cardinegh whispered. “The whole story was stolen--Hammond’s confession, the testimony of his court-martial, even to the disposal of the men of his regiment--_the men who knew all_!... God! what a story for Russia to put into the hands of the thrice ten thousand sons and sons’ sons of Shubar Khan in Afghanistan!”

Cardinegh laughed in an uncontrolled way.

“Routledge, my son,” he went on nervously, “when the Pathans and the Afridis turn to war, British India forgets her polo and her billiards and her forestry.... It all dates from the Kabul massacre--you remember, sixteen thousand white men and women and children killed. Colonel Hammond’s father and mother were among the dead. He was but a mite of a boy then, but it drove him mad when he became a man and was sent back to the same service as a colonel. You are one of the forty, Routledge. You know the story. The Khyber Hills and the same old trail where his parents were slain started a leak in Hammond’s skull. He was a good officer before that, or he wouldn’t have been a colonel. That leak grew into the torrent _which washed away the mountain that fell upon Shubar Khan’s twenty-five hundred--men, women and children--down below in the valley_----”

“That’s a nice figure of speech,” Routledge said soothingly. “But, Jerry, the facts, as I heard them were these: Colonel Hammond lost his mother and father on the same trail he was leading his troops over that night. That he had gone mad, everybody grants--from much brooding on the old Kabul massacre. He was out after Shubar Khan with his regiment, and just before dusk discerned the bivouac of the Pathans thousands of feet below in a valley. Shubar Khan had fifteen hundred soldiers, and a thousand women and children had joined their men in camp.

“Hammond’s original idea was to meet the Pathans in battle, but he happened to see this cliff hanging precariously over the steep slope. Now Hammond was a famed engineer. Mad as he was, he did not forget his craft. As for the women and children whom his scouts reported below--this only made the madman more keen. Remember, his mother had died just there.... He looked at the slope, and saw that if he could start the cliff, he could send an avalanche upon the crowded camp. It wasn’t fighting. England wouldn’t have done it, but we’re dealing with the insanity of a single leader. Hammond had dynamite. Also the Pathans didn’t know that the English regiment was above. The cliff was aimed at the camp. The blast worked. Falling rock dug a trench in the mountain, gaining tons of power every foot of slide. What happened has been kept secret by the British, but you and I know. Twenty-five hundred Pathans--including a thousand women and children--were buried alive. If Hammond had been able to keep his remnant of a brain, it would never have come out, but he was raving when he brought his outfit back to headquarters, and this started his men to thinking. A little thinking and they understood all. The towering atrocity, no one denies, but it was done by a madman--not by England, Jerry.”

“The Pathans thought it a natural landslide--until last autumn,” Cardinegh remarked, and there was exultation in his eyes.

A chill swept over Routledge for an instant, as if he had been in the presence of a human without a soul. The colossal havoc wrought decades ago by an insane Englishman was not a thing to be talked about as Cardinegh talked--his eyes gleaming with triumph. Even the Afghans had never learned the truth, so perfect was the British management. They looked upon the avalanche as a dreadful chastisement of the gods. They had gone back to scratch their rocky fields and raise their scrawny lambs with a growing belief that the gods wanted the English in their land, and that gods who could turn loose mysterious landslides knew best.

The ghosts of Shubar Khan’s twenty-five hundred--trooping through the monster hills on the darkest nights--they could not speak. The soldiers of the mad colonel--had they not all been divided, sent to fill the loneliest posts and the most hazardous fore-fronts, under the eyes of the secret-service men who see all and say nothing?... It was not England’s fault, this work of a crazed Englishman who undertook to avenge the massacre of the sixteen thousand. It was a thing to be hidden deep in the hearts of a few--this grim and terrible history.

To have Russia get it now--the indisputable documents--would enable her to start Afghanistan boiling again. The Border States and all India would be embroiled. More than all, the British troops serving in India would be lashed into mutiny by the story of what happened to the men of Colonel Hammond’s regiment--the men who knew all. Yes, Russia could build her great war upon it--the long-prophesied war--and drive her puppets against England for the possession of northern India.

Routledge was filled with shuddering by these thoughts of war, and by the man before him, laughing softly, insanely, and drinking raw whiskey--another Colonel Hammond in the flesh!

“Let me get this straight, Jerry,” he said lightly. “One man steals the documents which tell the whole truth about Shubar Khan, and puts the story in the hands of the Russians----”

“And at what a time!” Cardinegh exclaimed passionately. “When did Abduraman die?”

“Last October. He was a valuable man for the British,” Routledge added thoughtfully. “He held the Pathans and the Afridis from fighting the English, and at the same time managed to avoid angering Russia. He was the man for the Buffer State.”

“His sons are not so valuable.” Cardinegh chuckled. “Abduraman died of a _stroke_, as the newspapers said. It was a stroke!... When was Cantrell, the British Agent in Kabul, murdered?”

“A month later.”

“When were we all called in from the field and Bhurpal forgotten?”

“A month later still.”

“What a God-given time it was!” the old man exclaimed.

Routledge saw the need of holding Cardinegh together until he could get the whole story. “I can see clearly how one man might use these documents to start war in Afghanistan,” he capitulated; “how Russia could spread the hell all along the border, supplying powder and guns, and getting a formidable enemy launched against England, before taking the field herself. I can even see how all India, ‘seething with hatred for her white child, the British foundling’--I always liked that sentence--might arise and say, ‘This is the accepted time.’ More than that, I can see how the story of Colonel Hammond’s lost regiment might start a contagion of mutiny patches over the British army----”

“Some work for one man.”

“Big work, Jerry,” Routledge agreed. “I can see it all so far, but you will have to pardon me for having a little interest left in the fact, that I was practically ejected from the Armory last night.”

The old man fell silent and his fears whipped him again. “Don’t murder me until I am through, son. You are supposed to be the man who gave the story to the Russian spies.”

“Ah!” said Routledge. “I am supposed to be the man, and yet no one consulted me upon the matter. If I were merely _supposed_ to be the man--would I have been turned out?”

“The forty who know the story--have no doubt about you.”

Here a great light was thrown upon the recent activity of the White Mustache. “Why am I not arrested, Jerry?”

“The Government does not dare.”

“Publicity?”

“Exactly. The truth about Afghanistan to-day is a secret guarded with men’s lives. Arbitration is afire between here and Petersburg. If India and Russia saw the British people aroused, the chances are that they would be forced to strike at once. Soldiers are being rushed secretly toward Khyber Pass. Troop-ships are embarking suddenly and without ostentation from England this moment. To make this story public--and this would be in danger by your arrest--would start the Indian sympathizers around the world. The mere name of Shubar Khan brings old England to her knees. This has been a pregnant day in the Inner Circle, my son. No, you will not be arrested.”

“Why am I not murdered quietly?”

“The same reason, with another. I attended to that. Every one who knows this story of Shubar Khan must be reckoned with. I told them that you must be kept alive--that I could secure your written confession. They believe that I am at it now.”

Routledge was throwing the whole strength of his concentrated faculties into the eyes of the old man. Cardinegh’s face was like death.

“Where did you meet the secret agents?”

“At Naples. They had me on the carpet almost before I left ship.”

“This is the most absorbing tale I have ever encountered, Jerry. I am to give you a written confession of how I fell in with the Russians and gave them the documents concerning Shubar Khan, which I had stolen. Why did you choose me to make this confession--because I am your best friend?”

“Yes,” Cardinegh answered hoarsely; “because you are my best friend. Not another man in the world would have carried the burden for me. They would never have let me reach London.”

Routledge bent forward and spoke with lowered voice: “Then it was you who fell in with the Russians----”

“Yes.”

Routledge couldn’t help it--the presence of the other put a poisoned look into his face for an instant. The last fifteen minutes he had endured every phase of astonishment and horror. The revelation shook the psychic roots of his being.

“For the love of God, son--don’t look at me that way! Wait till I have told you all. I thought you were already in London--with Noreen. I was in Italy, and they never would have let me reach here. I never could have seen her--or Cheer Street again.”

Pity came to Routledge. He looked down upon the wreck of Jerry Cardinegh. He caught up his own nerve-ends and bound them together, smiled, and placed his hand upon the old man’s knee.

“How often I have found it,” he said musingly, “that a day like yesterday portends great events. I had the queerest sort of a day yesterday, Jerry. Hour after hour I sat here, neglecting things which needed doing, thinking, thinking. I have found it so before in my life--days like yesterday preceding a crisis.... Weren’t any of the other boys suspected, or any of the soldiers? Why was it that the finger of the episode pointed to you or me?”

“Since October the whole occult force of the Empire has been upon the case,” Cardinegh answered. “It was a civilian job on the face of it. That was incontrovertible. All the other boys fell under the eyes of the service. They didn’t know it, of course, but each day of the past four months we have been covered, our pasts balanced. One after another, the process of elimination vindicated them--all but you and me. Your infernal habit of campaigning alone was against you, your being an American, your Brahmin affiliations, your uncanny knowledge of the Great Inside. Still, they took nothing for granted. At Naples two agents drew me to cover, demanding what I knew. It was you or I. They knew it, and I knew it. The bulk of suspicion leaned your way. I shaped more evidence against you, hinted that I could secure your confession, if they only let me alone until I could get to you.”

“Tell me again just why, Jerry.”

“Because I wanted a day--just one day! I hadn’t seen Noreen for nearly a year. I wanted a day with her. I needed to arrange her affairs. God help me, Routledge, I wanted her to love the old man--one more day! I couldn’t cable you. I thought--I thought you would hold the weight one day--for old sake’s sake!”

“And what do you propose to do, Jerry?”

“I have had my day. I am going to the War Department with the facts this morning!”

“And then?”

“Vanish.”

“And your daughter--Miss Noreen?”

Cardinegh swallowed with difficulty. His unsteady fingers fumbled at the place where a man in the field carries a bit of ordnance. The ghost of a smile shook itself out on his face.

“Don’t think I am sorry,” he said. “I joggled the seats of the mighty. It was a life’s work. I’ve got my joy for it. It’s not what I expected--but it’s done. I can’t see the good of it clear as I did--but it’s done. Only I wanted to look it in the face like the old Jerry Cardinegh might have done--not sick, shaking, and half-drunk. I should have done it when the little house in Cheer Street only meant to me a sweet resting-place between wars. I burned out before the end, my son.”

“But Noreen----”

“In the name of God, don’t drive that home again! She’ll never know what the forty know. She’s provided for. I have had my day--thanks to you. They’ll let me clear from England. I’m accustomed to take short-notice trips, and to stay long. She will hear--as she always feared some time to hear--oh, typhoid in Madagascar, a junk murder up the Yangtse--potted somewhere!... Blessed little Noreen. In tears she told me what had happened to you at the Armory. Think how I felt, son. She loves you, Routledge. What--what I’ve done doesn’t affect her value--in your eyes?”

“Jerry, how did you get away with this thing in India?”

“Nobody knows but me. I suppose I’d better tell you. Before my last short trip home, there was a rumor of fighting in Afghanistan. You remember, eight or nine British correspondents gathered there, including you and me. Cantrell and I were rather close; and old Abduraman, I think, trusted me more than any of the others, on account of my age and service. He was an insatiable listener, and a perfect, an improved, double-action pump. I think it was one of the elements of his greatness--the wily old diplomat.

“Any way, I was closeted with him many times. You would come in at night after studying the strategic points of that devil’s land; no doubt, from Kabul to the Pass. For once in my life, I was content with office work. I mean Abduraman’s court and his _thoughts_. Then, too, I was much with Cantrell, who was a sort of secret-service chief in that district, as you well understand. From time to time the different agents would come in for a night--the men who do the dirty work for England.”

Cardinegh’s eyes blazed again. With a few admirable sentences, Routledge steadied him and regained the continuity....

“It was a still night, hot as hell,” Cardinegh went on. “Kabul can be hot when the winds die down from the mountains--but you were there that night. You know. I was in Cantrell’s house. Three of the Nameless who serve England with their lives, and are satisfied with a cipher message or a whispered word of praise from some head of department----”

“I’ve studied the secret service, Jerry,” Routledge ventured mildly. “It is interesting, but I’m more interested to know what happened.”

“We all proceeded to relax. The devil in me would not be burned by the fieriest wines. Remember, Cantrell was a weak man, but sincere. The other three had been studying Afghanistan against towering odds. They knew more about the inner life of the Buffer State than any three white men, not excepting Cantrell and yourself, between Persia and British India. They were sure of Cantrell. As for old Jerry Cardinegh--why, they took me for granted.

“Presently--it was very late--everybody but old Jerry had the bars down and soaked. Then I ventured to open the question of Colonel Hammond. It was an old story to Cantrell and to the three--not a new story to me, but a strange one. I was fascinated by the inside talk. Here were men who had kept the secret for years; the men--at least, two of them--who had helped to scatter the British troops of Colonel Hammond.