‘In any case, even if he was up to something, he seemed to be only just trying the door. It was double-locked, I doubt if he could have got in.’
Purushottam crossed to the window, which was open on the balcony. The filigree of the wrought-iron railings stood out blackly against the phosphorescence of the sea, and the lambent sky that seemed to reflect its glow.
‘Come in,’ said Dominic shortly. ‘Leave the window open but draw the curtains. We’ve got our orders for the night, and we don’t want to advertise the preparations. As far as the outside world’s concerned we’re now peaceably getting ready for bed.’
Purushottam turned back into the room obediently, though he did nothing about the curtains. ‘And aren’t we?’
‘Not here, anyway.’
‘Interesting! And when did we get our orders? And from whom?’
‘From the Swami. I telephoned him this afternoon, before we went out.’ He told him exactly what had been said. Purushottam stood attentive but frowning; his respect for the Swami Premanathanand was immense, but he still found it hard to credit that so much ingenuity was being spent either on hunting him or protecting him.
‘Couldn’t we have told the others? I don’t like even the appearance of deceiving Priya.’
‘As the Swami sees it, I think what you’ll be doing is sparing her anxiety rather than deceiving her. He said, the less the innocent know, the safer they’ll be.’
Dominic crossed to the window and attacked the curtains himself. They were opaque enough to hide all light, heavy, ancient velvet, perhaps from the days when this had been the district Residency. And they must have cost a great deal when they were new, for the room was exceedingly lofty, and the windows went right up to the ceiling. Dominic tugged at the dusty velvet, and found it weighty and obstinate, moving reluctantly on huge old wooden rings. The rail was a yard and more out of his reach. He was looking round for something to stand on, when he saw the long iron rod, with a blunted hook at one end, standing propped in the corner of the window. The answer had been provided along with the problem, many years ago. He reached up with the rod, inserting the hook among the rings, and drew them across until the curtains closed.
‘All right,’ said Purushottam, making up his mind. ‘I agreed to come, so now I must keep the rules, I suppose. We’ll need coats if we’re going to sleep out. It won’t be cold, exactly, but there’ll be a chilly hour or two before dawn. And the beds… that’s easy!’
Dominic turned back into the room with the rod still in his hand, swinging it experimentally like a player trying the weight of an unfamiliar golf club, just as Purushottam laid hands on the covers of his bed at the pillow, and stripped them down in one sweep of his arm, sending his discarded shirt of the morning billowing on to the floor.
Something else flashed from between the disturbed sheets, and flew in a writhing, spiralling arabesque through the air between the two beds. Dominic saw a lightning convulsion of black and white, slender and glistening from burnished scales; and in an inspired movement which was part nervous reflex and part conscious recognition, he lashed out with the long iron rod in his hand. It was thin, rigid and murderous, and he hit out with all his strength. The fluid thing and the unyielding thing met in mid-air with the lightest and most agonising of sounds, and the one coiled about the other with electrifying vehemence and rapidity, sound and motion all one indistinguishable reaction. Blackness and whiteness span so close to Dominic’s hand that he dropped the rod in a frantic hurry, and leaped back as it fell.
On the dull brown carpet between the beds the snake lay threshing the quicksilver coils of its body and tail in feeble rage and helpless agony, tightening and relaxing about the rod, its head making only faint, jerky motions that did not move it from where it lay crippled. Its back was broken. Not quite three feet – but coiled and shrunken it looked even less than that – of black body banded with white rings, the scales on its back noticeably enlarged. Not a very big specimen, not a very spectacular species, nothing so impressive as the cobra with its spectacled hood.
Twelve
« ^ »
Purushottam had remained standing frozen in ludicrous astonishment, his hand still clutching the edge of the sheet, his face bright and blank, like a page not yet written on. But the page was rapidly, almost instantly, filled; with realisation and understanding, and a quality of horror that belonged to this death of all deaths. Everyone has his own private fears; snake-bite was Purushottam’s, a dread aggravated rather than otherwise by the very thought that the luckless creature that could kill in such a frightful way was without malice, not even aggressive except when hunting food, rather a shy and retiring being, anxious to avoid conflict rather than to go looking for it. He stood rigid, staring at the wriggling thing that both horrified him and stirred him to pity. It was the first time he had seriously contemplated the creature behind this creature, the force that must pay for the krait’s wretched end as well as for the attempt against him. He knew quite positively, at that moment, that the krait had been brought here to kill him. It could have been there by accident, having crept of its own will into a warm place to sleep; there was no way of proving the contrary. Nevertheless, he knew.
There are, of course, he thought with curious detachment, too many kraits in India, as there are too many cobras, and too many men. Their world is over-populated, like ours.
The krait still writhed feebly. A thread-like, forked tongue flickered in and out of its open mouth between the poison fangs. Its tight coils relaxed limply, quivering.
Purushottam reached out his hand almost stealthily, and slowly closed his fingers around the extreme end of the rod.
With gingerly movements he eased it out of the flaccid coils until he could draw it free. He stood back and waited for the head to be clear of the contorted body, and then struck accurately at the neck. The carpet, old and good, absorbed the sound of the blow. The krait shuddered and jerked, twitched its tail once or twice, and was still. Over the dulling body Purushottam and Dominic looked up rather dazedly at each other.
‘That’ll be twenty rupees, please,’ Dominic said inanely.
‘I’ll give you an I. O. U.,’ said Purushottam, and meant it. His knees gave under him weakly, and he sat down abruptly on the edge of his bed, and as hastily picked himself up again the next moment and stood away from it, shivering with distaste. ‘Another kind of explosive this time,’ he said grimly. ‘If I’d simply undressed and gone to bed I should almost certainly have been bitten. They’re not vicious, it takes quite a lot to make them bite, but having a
