“Yes. When it appeared that the British were determined to make my country a colony, I decided it might be a useful language to know.”
Westphalen put down his anger at the smug arrogance of this heathen and concentrated on the matter at hand. He wanted to find the jewels and leave this place.
“We know you are hiding rebel Sepoys here. Where are they?”
“There are no Sepoys here. Only devotees of Kali.”
“Then what about this?” It was Tooke. He was standing by a row of waist-high urns. He had slashed through the waxy fabric that sealed the mouth of the nearest one and now held up his dripping knife. “Oil! Enough for a year. And there’s sacks of rice over there. More than any twenty ’devotees’ need!”
The high priest never looked in Tooke’s direction. It was as if the soldier didn’t exist.
“Well?” Westphalen said at last. “What about the rice and oil?”
“Merely stocking in provisions against the turmoil of the times, Captain,” the high priest said blandly. “One never knows when supplies might be cut off.”
“If you won’t reveal the whereabouts of the rebels, I shall be forced to order my men to search the temple from top to bottom. This will cause needless destruction.”
“That will not be necessary, Captain.”
Westphalen and his men jumped at the sound of the woman’s voice. As he watched, she seemed to take form out of the darkness behind the statue of Kali. She was shorter than the high priest, but well-proportioned. She too wore a robe of pure white.
The high priest rattled something in a heathen tongue as she joined him on the dais; the woman replied in kind.
“What did they say?” Westphalen said to anyone who was listening.
Tooke replied: “He asked about the children; she said they were safe.”
For the first time, the priest admitted Tooke’s existence by looking at him, nothing more.
“What you seek, Captain Westphalen,” the woman said quickly, “lies beneath our feet. The only way to it is through that grate.”
She pointed to a spot beyond the rows of oil urns and sacks of rice. Tooke hopped over them and knelt down.
“Here it is! But”—he jumped to his feet again—“whoosh! The stink!”
Westphalen pointed to the soldier nearest him. “Hunter! Watch those two. If they try to escape, shoot them!”
Hunter nodded and aimed his Enfield at the pair on the dais. Westphalen joined the rest of the men at the grate.
The grate was square, measuring perhaps ten feet on a side. It was made of heavy iron bars criss-crossing about six inches apart. Damp air, reeking of putrefaction, wafted up through the bars. The darkness below was impenetrable.
Westphalen sent Malleson for one of the lamps from the dais. When it was brought to him, he dropped it through the grate. Its copper body rang against the bare stone floor twenty feet below as it bounced and landed on its side. The flame sputtered and almost died, then wavered to life again. The brightening light flickered off the smooth stone surfaces on three sides of the well. A dark, arched opening gaped in the wall opposite them. They were looking down into what appeared to be the terminus of a subterranean passage.
And there in the two corners flanking the tunnel mouth stood small urns filled with colored stones—some green, some red, and some crystal clear.
Westphalen experienced an instant of vertigo. He had to lean forward against the grate to keep himself from collapsing. Saved!
He quickly glanced around at his men. They had seen the urns, too. Accommodations would have to be made. If those urns were full of jewels, there would be plenty for all. But first they had to get them up here.
He began barking orders: Malleson was sent out to the horses for a rope; the remaining four were told to spread out around the grate and lift it off. They bent to it, strained until their faces reddened in the light filtering up from below, but could not budge it. Westphalen was about to return to the dais and threaten the priest when he noticed simple sliding bolts securing the grate to rings in the stone floor at two of the corners; on the far side along one edge was a row of hinges. As Westphalen freed the bolts—which were chained to the floor rings—it occurred to him how odd it was to lock up a treasure with such simple devices. But his mind was too full of the sight of those jewels below to dwell for long on bolts.
The grate was raised on its hinges and propped open with an Enfield. Malleson arrived with the rope then. At Westphalen’s direction, he tied it to one of the temple’s support columns and tossed it into the opening. Westphalen was about to ask for a volunteer when Tooke squatted on the rim.
“Me father was a jeweler’s assistant,” he announced. “I’ll tell ye if there be anything down there to get excited about.”
He grasped the rope and began to slide down. Westphalen watched Tooke reach the floor and fairly leap upon the nearest urn. He grabbed a handful of stones and brought them over to the sputtering lamp. He righted it, then poured the stones from one hand to the other in the light.
“They’re real!” he shouted. “B’God, they’re real!”
Westphalen was speechless for a moment. Everything was going to be all right. He could go back to England, settle his debts, and never, never gamble again. He tapped Watts, Russell, and Lang on the shoulders and pointed below.
“Give him a hand.”
The three men slid down the rope in rapid succession. Each made a personal inspection of the jewels. Westphalen watched their long shadows interweaving in the lamplight as they scurried around below. It was all he could do to keep from screaming at them to send up the jewels. But he could not appear too eager. No, that wouldn’t do at all. He had to be calm. Finally they dragged an urn over to the side and tied the rope around its neck. Westphalen and Malleson hauled it up, lifted it over the rim, and set it on the floor.
Malleson dipped both hands into the jewels and brought up two fistfuls. Westphalen restrained himself from doing the same. He picked up a single emerald and studied it, outwardly casual, inwardly wanting to crush it against his lips and cry for joy.
“C’mon up there!” said Tooke from below. “Let’s ’ave the rope, what? There be plenty more to come up and it stinks down ’ere. Let’s ’urry it up.”
Westphalen gestured to Malleson, who untied the rope from the urn and tossed the end over the edge. He continued to study the emerald, thinking it the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, until he heard one of the men say:
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“A noise. I thought I ’eard a noise in the tunnel there.”
“Yer daft, mate. Nothing in that black ’ole but stink.”
“I ’eard something, I tell you.”
Westphalen stepped up to the edge and looked down at the four men. He was about to tell them to stop talking and keep working when the priest and the woman broke into song. Westphalen whirled at the sound. It was like no music he had ever heard. The woman’s voice was a keening wail, grating against the man’s baritone. There were no words to the song, only disconnected notes, and none of the notes they sang seemed to belong together. There was no harmony, only discord. It set his teeth on edge.
They stopped abruptly.
And then came another sound. It rose from below, seeping from the mouth of the tunnel that terminated in the pit, growing in volume. A grumbled cacophony of moans and grunts and snarls that made each hair on the nape of his neck stand up one by one.
The sounds from the tunnel ceased, to be replaced by the dissonant singing of the priest and priestess. They stopped and the inhuman sounds from the tunnel answered, louder still. It was a litany from hell.