No steak and kidney ever again, though—and no Elspeth. No sunny days at Lord's or strolls along the Haymarket, no hunt suppers or skittle pool or English rain or Horse Guards or quarts of home-brewed … oh, for Elspeth bare and bouncing and a jug of October and bread and cheese by the bed! All the jewels of Golconda can't buy you that, even supposing you had the nerve to bolt with them—which I knew I had not. No, pinching Koh-i-Noor is like putting t'other side in to bat—you won't do it, but there's no reason why you shouldn't think hard about it.
"Where you aim to cross, lieutenant?" says Jassa, and I realised he'd been gassing since we left Jupindar, full of bile against Gardner, and I'd hardly taken in a blessed word. I asked him, as one who knew the country, where we were.
"About five miles nor'east of Nuggur Ford," says he.
The Sobraon ghat's less than ten miles due east—see, that smoke'll be from the Sikh lines." He pointed to our left front, and on the horizon, above the distant green, you could see it hanging like a dark mist. "We can scout the Nuggur, an' if it ain't clear, we can cast downriver a piece." He paused. "Leastways, you can."
Something in his tone made me look round—into the six barrels of his pistol. He'd reined in about ten feet behind me, and there was a hard, fixed grin on his ugly face.
"What the hell are you about?" cries I. "Put that damned thing up!"
"No, sir," says he. "Now you sit right still, 'cos I don't wish to harm you. No, don't start to holler an' tear your hair, neither! Just slip off that locket an' chain, an' toss 'em over this way—lively, now!" For a moment I'd been all at sea—I'd forgotten, you see, that he'd been there when Jeendan had shown the stone to Dalip and put it round his neck, and again when Dalip had passed the locket to me. Then:
"You confounded fool!" I yelped, half-laughing. "You can't steal this!"
"Don't bet on it! Now, you do as -I say, d'ye hear?"
I was riding Ahmed Shah's screw, with two long horse pistols in the saddle holsters, but I'd no notion of reaching for them. For the thing was wild—hadn't I been turning it over, academic-like, for the past hour?
"Harlan, you're daft!" says I. "Look, man, put up that pepperbox and see reason! This is the Koh-i-Noor—and the Punjab! Why, you'ld not get twenty miles—you'ld be running your head into a noose —"
"Mr Flashman, you can shut up!" says he, and the harsh face with its ghastly orange whiskers looked like a scared ape's. "Now, sir, you pass that item across directly, or —"
"Hold on!", says I, and lifted the tarnished silver case in my hand. "Hear me a moment. I don't know how many carats this thing weighs, or how you think you can turn it into cash—even if you get clear of the Sikhs, let alone the British Army! Good God, man, the mere sight of it and you'll be clapped in irons—you can't hope to sell —"
"You're trying my patience, mister! An' you're forgetting I know this territory, for a thousand miles around, better'n any man alive! I know Jews in every town from Prome to Bokhara who can have that rock in twenty bits quicker'n you can spit!" He threw back his puggaree impatiently and raised the pistol, and for all his brag his hand was shaking. "I don't want to shoot you out of the saddle, but I will, by the holy!
"Will you?" says I. "Gardner said you wouldn't do murder—but he was right about your being a thief —"
"That he was!" cries he. "An' if you paid heed to him, you know my story!" He was grinning like a maniac. "I've followed fortune half a lifetime, an' taken every chance I found! I ain't about to miss the best one yet! An' you can set the British an' the Punjab in a roar after me—there's a war to finish, an' more empty trails between Kabul an' Katmandu an' Quetta than anybody's ever thought of—'cept me! I'll count to three!"
His knuckle was white on the ring, so I slipped the chain over my neck, weighed the locket a moment, and tossed it to him. He snapped it up by the chain, his feverish eyes never leaving me for a second, and dropped the locket into his boot. His chest was heaving, and he licked his lips highway robbery wasn't his style, I could see.
"Now you climb down, an' keep your hands clear o' those barkers!" I dismounted, and he side-stepped in and seized my reins.
"You're not leaving me afoot—and unarmed, for God's sake!" I cried, and he backed his horse away, covering me still, and drawing my mount with him.
"You're less'n two hours from the river," says he, grinning more easy now. "You'll make it safe enough. Well, lieutenant … we had our ups an' downs, but no hard feelings my side. Fact, I'm almost sorry to part—you're my sort, you know." He gave a high-pitched laugh. "'That's why I'm not offering you a partnership in Koh-i-Noor Unlimited!"
"Did wouldn't take it. How long have you been planning this?"
'Bout twenty minutes. Here—catch hold!" He unslung the Maggie from Ahmed's saddle, and threw it towards me. "Hot day—have a drink on me!"
He wheeled his horse and was off at the gallop, making north, with my screw behind, leaving me alone on the doab. I waited until the scrub hid him, and then turned and ran at full speed in the direction of Nuggur Ford. There was a belt of jungle that way, and I wanted to be in cover. As I ran, I kept my hand cupped to my side, feeling the reassuring bulge of the Koh-i-Noor under my sash. I may day-dream occasional, but when I'm carrying price-less valuables in the company of the likes of Dr Josiah Harlan, I slip 'em out of sight in the first five minutes, you may be sure.
If he'd had the wit to open the locket—well, that would have been another story. But if he'd had that much wit, he'd not have been reduced to running errands for Broad-foot in the first place. The fact is, for all his experience of rascality, Jassa was a 'prentice hand. The Man Who Would Be King … but never was.
Only the other day my little great-niece Selina—the pretty one whose loose conduct almost led me to commit murder in Baker Street, but that's another story—remarked to me that she couldn't abide Dickens because his books were full of coincidences. I replied by telling her about the chap who lost a rifle in France and tripped over it in West Africa twenty years later,46 and added for good measure an account of my own strange experience after I parted from Harlan in the doab. That was coincidence, if you like, and damnably mixed luck, too, for while it may have saved my life it also landed me centre stage in the last act of the Punjab war.
Once I reached the jungle belt, chortling at the thought of Jassa stopping presently to gloat over his booty, I went to ground. Even when he found out he'd been diddled, he'd never dare come back to look for me, so I decided to stay put and cross the river when night fell. In my Kabuli attire I could pass for a gorrachar' well enough, but the less I was seen the better, so I planned to leave my jungly lair a couple of hours before dusk, slip down to the river, swim across—it wasn't above four hundred yards wide—and lie up on the far shore until daylight.
It began to rain heavily towards evening, so I was glad enough of my shelter, and only when the light began to fade did I venture out, onto a beaten track leading down to the Sutlej. It took me through a little wood, and I was striding boldly along, eager to catch a glimpse of the river, when I rounded a bend in the trees, and there, not twenty yards ahead, was a troop of regular Khalsa cavalry, with their beasts picketed and a fire going, It was too late to turn back, so I walked on, prepared to pass the time of day and pick up the shave, and only when I was almost on them did I notice six or seven bodies hanging from trees within the wood. I bore up in natural alarm—and that was fatal. They were already looking towards me, and now someone yelled an order, and before I knew it I had been seized by grinning sowars and hauled into the presence of a burly daffadar*(*Cavalry commander of ten.) standing by the fire, a mess-tin in his hand and his tunic unbuttoned. He eyed me malevolently, brushing crumbs from his beard.