"I'll do my best, " Sharpe grunted.
"I knew you would! " Torrance seemed relieved.
"Do it now, Sharpe, and perhaps you could join me for a late dinner? Say at half past one?"
Sharpe nodded, then went back into the sunlight to wait for Sajit.
Kendrick and Lowry had vanished, presumably with Hakeswill. Ahmed had found a bucket of water and Stokes's mare was drinking greedily.
"You can stay here, Ahmed, " Sharpe said, but the boy shook his head.
"You're my bleeding shadow, " Sharpe grumbled.
"Shadow?"
Sharpe pointed to his own shadow.
"Shadow."
Ahmed grinned, all white teeth in a grubby face. He liked the word.
"Sharpe's shadow! " he said.
Sajit emerged from the house with a pink silk parasol that he offered to Sharpe. Sharpe refused, and the clerk, who had discarded his apron, gratefully shaded himself from the fierce midday sun.
"I am sorry to be troublesome to you, sahib, " he said humbly.
"No trouble, " Sharpe said dourly, following the clerk. Ahmed came behind, leading the Major's mare.
"The boy need not come, " Sajit insisted, glancing behind at the horse which seemed to alarm him.
"You tell him that, " Sharpe said, 'but don't blame me if he shoots you. He's very fond of shooting people."
Sajit hurried on.
"I think I know, sahib, which is the bad man who is cheating us. He is a fellow from Mysore. He gave me many chitties and swore you signed them in front of him. If you would be so kind as to confirm or deny his story, we shall be finished."
"Then let's find the bugger and be done with it."
Sajit led Sharpe through the bullock lines where the wealthier herdsmen had erected vast dark and sagging tents. Women slapped bread dough beside small ox-dung fires, and more piles of the fuel dried in the sun beside each tent entrance. Sharpe looked for Naig's big green tents, but he could not see them and he assumed that whoever had inherited Naig's business had packed up and gone.
"There, sahib, that is the bad man's tent." Sajit nervously led Sharpe towards a brown tent that stood slightly apart from the others. He stopped a few paces from the entrance and lowered his voice.
"He is called Ranjit, sahib."
"So fetch the bugger, " Sharpe said, 'and I'll tell you if he's lying or not."
Sajit seemed nervous of confronting Ranjit for he hesitated, but then plucked up his courage, collapsed the parasol and dropped to the ground to crawl into the tent which sagged so deeply that the doorway was scarce higher than a man's knee. Sharpe heard the murmur of voices, then Sajit backed hurriedly out of the low fringed entrance. He slapped at the dust on his white robes, then looked at Sharpe with a face close to tears.
"He is a bad man, sahib. He will not come out. I told him a sahib was here to see him, but he used rude words!»
"I'll take a look at the bastard, " Sharpe said.
"That's all you need, isn't it? For me to say whether I've seen him or not?"
"Please, sahib, " Sajit said, and gestured at the tent's entrance.
Sharpe took off his hat so it would not tangle with the canvas, hoisted the tent's entrance as high as he could, then ducked low under the heavy brown cloth.
And knew instantly that it was a trap.
And understood, almost in the same instant, that he could do nothing about it.
The first blow struck his forehead, and his vision exploded in streaks of lightning and shuddering stars. He fell backwards, out into the sunlight and someone instantly grabbed one of his ankles and began pulling him into the deep shadow. He tried to kick, tried to push himself against the tent's sides, but another hand seized his second leg, another blow hammered the side of his skull and, mercifully, he knew nothing more.
"He's got a thick skull, our Sharpie, " Hakeswill said with a grin. He prodded Sharpe's prone body and got no reaction.
"Fast asleep, he is."
The Sergeant's face twitched. He had hit Sharpe with the heavy brassbound butt of a musket and he was amazed that Sharpe's skull was not broken. There was plenty of blood in his black hair, and he would have a bruise the size of a mango by nightfall, but his skull seemed to have taken the two blows without splintering.
"He always was a thick-headed bugger, " Hakeswill said.
"Now strip him."
"Strip him?" Kendrick asked.
"When his body is found, " Hakeswill explained patiently, 'if it is found, and you can't rely on bleeding blackamoors to do a proper job and hide it, we don't want no one seeing he's a British officer, do we?
Not that he is an officer. He's just a jumped-up bit of muck. So strip him, then tie his hands and feet and cover his eyeballs."
Kendrick and Lowry jerked and tugged Sharpe's coat free, then handed the garment to Hakeswill who ran his fingers along the hems.
"Got it! " he exulted when he felt the lumps in the cloth. He took out
H3
a knife, slit the coat and the two privates stared in awe as he eased the glittering jewels out of the tightly sewn seam. It was dark in the shadowed tent, but the stones gleamed bright.
"Get on with it! " Hakeswill said.
"The rest of his clothes off!»
"What are you doing?" Sajit had sidled into the tent and now stared at the jewels.
"None of your bleeding business, " Hakeswill said.
"You have jewels?" Sajit asked.
Hakeswill slid out his bayonet and stabbed it at Sajit, checking the lunge a fraction before the blade would have punctured the clerk's neck.
"The jewels ain't your business, Sajit. The jewels are my business. Your business is Sharpie, got it? I agreed to give him to your bleeding uncle, but I gets what he carries."
"My uncle will pay well for good stones, " Sajit said.
"Your Uncle Jama's a bleeding monkey who'd cheat me soon as fart at me, so forget the bleeding stones. They're mine." Hakeswill thrust the first handful into a pocket and started searching the rest of Sharpe's clothes. He slit open all the seams, then cut Sharpe's boots apart to discover a score of rubies hidden in the folded boot-tops. They were small rubies, scarce bigger than peas, and Hakeswill was looking for one large ruby.
"I saw it, I did. The bloody Tippoo had it on his hat.
Large as life! Look in his hair."
Kendrick obediently ran his fingers through Sharpe's blood-encrusted hair.
"Nothing there, Sarge."
"Turn the bugger over and have a look you know where."
"Not me!»
"Don't be so bloody squeamish! And tie his hands. Fast now! You don't want the sod waking up, do you?"
The clothes and boots yielded sixty-three stones. There were rubies, emeralds, sapphires and four small diamonds, but no large ruby.
Hakeswill frowned. Surely Sharpe would not have sold the ruby? Still, he consoled himself, there was a fortune here, and he could not resist putting all the stones together on a mat and staring at them.
"I do like a bit of glitter, " he breathed as his fingers greedily touched the jewels. He put ten of the smaller stones in one pile, another ten in a second, and pushed the two piles towards Kendrick and Lowry.
"That's your cut, boys.
Keep you in whores for the rest of your lives, that will."
"Perhaps I will tell my uncle about your stones, " Sajit said, staring at the jewels.
"I expect you will, " Hakeswill said, 'and so bleeding what? I ain't as dozy as Sharpie. You won't catch me."
"Then maybe I shall tell Captain Torrance." Sajit had positioned himself close to the entrance so that he could flee if Hakeswill attacked him.
"Captain Torrance likes wealth."
Likes it too much, Hakeswill thought, and if Torrance knew about the stones he would make Hakeswill's life hell until he yielded a share. The Sergeant's face juddered in a series of uncontrollable twitches.