Complete Works of Talbot Mundy Read online

  The Complete Works of

  TALBOT MUNDY

  (1879-1940)

  Contents

  The Jimgrim Series

  The Novels

  RUNG HO!

  A SOLDIER AND A GENTLEMAN

  THE WINDS OF THE WORLD

  KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES

  HIRA SINGH’S TALE

  THE IVORY TRAIL

  THE EYE OF ZEITOON

  GUNS OF THE GODS

  THE SEVENTEEN THIEVES OF EL-KALIL

  JIMGRIM AND ALLAH’S PEACE

  THE ‘IBLIS’ AT LUDD

  A SECRET SOCIETY

  MOSES AND MRS. AINTREE

  HER REPUTATION

  THE NINE UNKNOWN

  OM: THE SECRET OF AHBOR VALLEY

  THE CAVES OF TERROR

  THE SOUL OF A REGIMENT

  TROS OF SAMOTHRACE

  THE DEVIL’S GUARD

  QUEEN CLEOPATRA

  COCK O’ THE NORTH

  THE HUNDRED DAYS

  THE MARRIAGE OF MELDRUM STRANGE

  THE WOMAN AYISHA

  BLACK LIGHT

  W. H.: A PORTION OF THE RECORD OF SIR WILLIAM HALFAX

  KING OF THE WORLD

  JUNGLE JEST

  THE LOST TROOPER

  WHEN TRAILS WERE NEW

  THE LION OF PETRA

  C.I.D.

  THE KING IN CHECK

  THE MYSTERY OF KHUFU’S TOMB

  THE RED FLAME OF ERINPURA

  CAESAR DIES

  FULL MOON

  EAST AND WEST

  PURPLE PIRATE

  THE THUNDER DRAGON GATE

  OLD UGLY FACE

  The Shorter Fiction

  PAYABLE TO BEARER

  TOLD IN THE EAST

  MISCELLANEOUS SHORT STORIES

  The Short Stories

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Non-Fiction

  THE MIDDLE WAY

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2016

  Version 1

  The Complete Works of

  TALBOT MUNDY

  By Delphi Classics, 2016

  COPYRIGHT

  Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2016.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  ISBN: 978 1 78656 053 7

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

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  The Jimgrim Series

  In order of publication:

  THE SEVENTEEN THIEVES OF EL-KALIL

  JIMGRIM AND ALLAH’S PEACE

  THE ‘IBLIS’ AT LUDD

  A SECRET SOCIETY

  MOSES AND MRS. AINTREE

  THE NINE UNKNOWN

  THE CAVES OF TERROR

  THE DEVIL’S GUARD

  THE HUNDRED DAYS

  THE MARRIAGE OF MELDRUM STRANGE

  THE WOMAN AYISHA

  KING OF THE WORLD

  THE LOST TROOPER

  THE LION OF PETRA

  THE KING IN CHECK

  THE MYSTERY OF KHUFU’S TOMB

  The Novels

  Talbot Mundy was born as William Lancaster Gribbon on 23 April 1879 at 59 Milson Road, Hammersmith, West London.

  RUNG HO!

  OR, FOR THE PEACE OF INDIA

  Published in America in 1914 by Charles Scribner, this novel — Mundy’s first — was praised by critics and quickly sold 2,500 copies and a second edition was commissioned, bringing the total books printed up to 4,000. The story had previously been serialised in three parts in Adventure magazine under the title For the Peace of India. It is thought that Mundy always preferred his original title. In Britain, Cassells, who had already published some of Mundy’s shorter tales in their magazines, arranged to release the novel in Mundy’s birth country. Paramount films bought the rights to Rung Ho! and in November 1936, a script for the renamed Fifty-Seven was even the subject of debate in Parliament in 1938, where concerns were raised that the scenario as outlined may cause Anglo-Indian friction. The character Rosemary McLean was modelled on Mundy’s third wife.

  The story is set against the backdrop of the 1857 Indian mutiny, so in that sense it could be classed as an historical novel. It opens with the determined young British woman, Rosemary McLean, venturing out into Howrah, the filthy and poverty-stricken city in which she and her missionary father live and strive to bring Christianity to the locals. One local practice that Rosemary dearly wishes she could eradicate is that of suttee, the voluntary death of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre. To her dismay she encounters Jaimihr, the scheming younger brother of the local Maharajah. Jaimihr is infatuated with her, but she despises him and once again spurns him in front of his retinue — this only serves to intrigue and excite him more. Underneath the British Raj and their veneer of control simmers a deep resentment, not aimed solely at the British, but also directed at all those who had grown rich and powerful by exploiting local people through the regime. The British rule was also weakened by the fact that many of the army officers were ageing and new, younger and more vigorous men were needed; men like Cunningham Junior, who arrived in India as a soldier after his father had been killed by a tiger. Twenty-one year old Ralph “Chota” Cunningham is reserved, softly spoken, gentlemanly and has the bearing and attitude of a true soldier, instantly winning the respect of his late father’s Indian comrades. Under the watchful and admiring eye of Mohammed Gunga, his father’s old comrade and friend, Cunningham takes charge of a small mounted troop of soldiers, their remit being to help restore and maintain order in the area and under Cunningham’s gifted command, they does just that. Ralph’s superior officers are jealous of his success and decide to promote him to a similar role in Howrah, which has a reputation for serious disorder.

  Meanwhile, in Howrah, Rosemary and her father are arrested following a confrontation with the Rajah, but as full scale rebellion breaks out they are able to escape from the city and it is at this point that they meet Ralph Cunningham. On hearing the Mclean’s accounts of what is happening in Howrah, Cunningham starts to develop a strategy to put things in order again, but he and Rosemary have very different views on how matters should be resolved and their disagreement is bitter. Who is right and can the two young Britons ever be reconciled?

  Mundy’s building of tension as India moves inexorably towards
revolt is impressive — the simmering heat and the resentments of the Indian population, the contrast between British and Indian cultures, the rumours and half truths circulating (and believed), all help to bring matters to a head. The ancillary characters are very well drawn and there are also some lovely little details that will appeal to anyone whether they have experienced India or not — how a dinner was prepared, the way the sun goes down very suddenly, plunging the area into dark as if at once, the descriptions of fakirs and how they were treated by others. This novel gives a colourful picture of an India that Mundy was too young to know and yet it could be drawn from his own experiences of the country and the tales of the mutiny taken from accounts he heard whilst there. Rung Ho! is certainly regarded as one of Mundy’s more evocative novels.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CHAPTER XXIX

  CHAPTER XXX

  CHAPTER XXXI

  CHAPTER XXXII

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  CHAPTER I

  Howrah City bows the knee

  More or less to masters three,

  King, and Prince, and Siva.

  Howrah City pays in pain

  Taxes which the royal twain

  Give to priests, to give again

  (More or less) to Siva.

  THAT was no time or place for any girl of twenty to be wandering unprotected. Rosemary McClean knew it; the old woman, of the sweeper caste, that is no caste at all, — the hag with the flat breasts and wrinkled skin, who followed her dogwise, and was no more protection than a toothless dog, — knew it well, and growled about it in incessant undertones that met with neither comment nor response.

  “Leave a pearl of price to glisten on the street, yes!” she grumbled. “Perhaps none might notice it — perhaps! But her — here — at this time—” She would continue in a rumbling growl of half-prophetic catalogues of evil — some that she had seen to happen, some that she imagined, and not any part of which was in the least improbable.

  As the girl passed through the stenching, many-hued bazaar, the roar would cease for a second and then rise again. Turbaned and pugreed — Mohammedan and Hindoo — men of all grades of color, language, and belief, but with only one theory on women, would stare first at the pony that she rode, then at her, and then at the ancient grandmother who trotted in her wake. Low jests would greet the grandmother, and then the trading and the gambling would resume, together with the under-thread of restlessness that was so evidently there and yet so hard to lay a finger on.

  The sun beat down pitilessly — brass — like the din of cymbals. Beneath the sun helmet that sat so squarely and straightforwardly on the tidy chestnut curls, her face was pale. She smiled as she guided her pony in and out amid the roaring throng, and carefully refused to see the scowls, her brave little shoulders seconded a pair of quiet, brave gray eyes in showing an unconquerable courage to the world, and her clean, neat cotton riding-habit gave the lie and the laugh in one to poverty; but, as the crowd had its atmosphere of secret murmuring, she had another of secret anxiety.

  Neither had fear. She did not believe in it. She was there to help her father fight inhuman wrong, and die, if need be, in the last ditch. The crowd had none, for it had begun to realize that it was part a of a two-hundred- million crowd, held down and compelled by less than a hundred thousand aliens. And, least of all, had the man who followed her at a little distance the slightest sense of fear. He was far more conversant with it than she, but —unlike her, and far more than the seething crowd—he knew the trend of events, and just what likelihood there was of insult or injury to Rosemary McClean being avenged in a generation.

  He caused more comment than she, and of a different kind. His rose-pink pugree, with the egret and the diamond brooch to hold the egret in its place — his jeweled sabre — his swaggering, almost ruffianly air — were no more meant to escape attention than his charger that clattered and kicked among the crowd, or his following, who cleared a way for him with the butt ends of their lances. He rode ahead, but every other minute a mounted sepoy would reach out past him and drive his lance-end into the ribs of some one in the way.

  There would follow much deep salaaming; more than one head would bow very low indeed; and in many languages, by the names of many gods, he would be cursed in undertones. Aloud, they would bless him and call him “Heaven-born!”

  But he took no interest whatever in the crowd. His dark-brown eyes were fixed incessantly on Rosemary McClean’s back. Whenever she turned a corner in the crowded maze of streets, he would spur on in a hurry until she was in sight again, and then his handsome, swarthy face would light with pleasure — wicked pleasure — self-assertive, certain, cruel. He would rein in again to let her draw once more ahead.

  Rosemary McClean knew quite well who was following her, and knew, too, that she could do nothing to prevent him. Once, as she passed a species of caravansary — low-roofed, divided into many lockable partitions, and packed tight with babbling humanity — she caught sight of a pair of long, black thigh boots, silver-spurred, and of a polished scabbard that moved spasmodically, as though its owner were impatient.

  “Mahommed Gunga!” she muttered to herself. “I wonder whether he would come to my assistance if I needed him. He fought once — or so he says — for the British; he might be loyal still. I wonder what he is doing here, and what — Oh, I wonder!”

  She was very careful not to seem to look sideways, or seek acquaintance with the wearer of the boots; had she done so, she would have gained nothing, for the moment that he caught sight of her through the opened door he drew back into a shadow, and swore lustily. What he said to himself would have been little comfort to her.

  “By the breath of God!” he growled. “These preachers of new creeds are the last straw, if one were wanting! They choose the one soft place where Mohammedan and Hindoo think alike, and smite! If I wanted to raise hell from end to end of Hind, I too would preach a new creed, and turn good-looking women loose to wander on the country-side! — Ah!” He drew back even further, as he spied the egret and the sabre and the stallion cavorting down the street — then thought better of it and strode swaggering to the doorway, and stood, crimson-coated, in the sunlight, stroking upward insolently at his black, fierce-barbered beard. There was a row of medal ribbons on his left breast that bore out something at least of his contention; he had been loyal to the British once, whether he was so now or not.

  The man on the charger eyed him sideways and passed on. Mahommed Gunga waited. One of the prince’s followers rode close to him — leaned low from the saddle — and leered into his face.

  “Knowest not enough to salute thy betters?” he demanded.

  Mahommed Gunga made a movement with his right hand in the direction of his left hip — one that needed no explanation; the other legged his horse away, and rode on, grinning nastily. To reassure himself of his superiority over everybody but his master, he spun his horse presently so that its rump struck against a tented stall, and upset tent and goods. Then he spent two full minutes in outrageous execration of the men who struggled underneath the gaudy cloth, before cantering away, looking, feeling, riding like a fearless man again. Mahommed Gunga sneered after
him, and spat, and turned his back on the sunshine and the street.

  “I had a mind to teach that Hindoo who his betters are!” he growled.

  “Come in, risaldar-sahib!” said a voice persuasively. “By your own showing the hour is not yet — why spill blood before the hour?”

  The Rajput swaggered to the dark door, spurs jingling, looking back across his shoulder once or twice, as though he half-regretted leaving the Hindoo horseman’s head upon his shoulders.

  “Come in, sahib,” advised the voice again. “They be many. We are few. And, who knows — our roads may lie together yet.”

  Mahommed Gunga kicked his scabbard clear, and strode through the door. The shadows inside and the hum of voices swallowed him as though he were a big, red, black-legged devil reassimilated in the brewing broth of trouble; but his voice boomed deep and loud after he had disappeared from view.

  “When their road and my road lie together, we will travel all feet foremost!” he asserted.

  Ten turnings further away by that time, Rosemary McClean pressed on through the hot, dinning swarm of humanity, missing no opportunity to slip her pony through an opening, but trying, too, to seem unaware that she was followed. She chose narrow, winding ways, where the awnings almost met above the middle of the street, and where a cavalcade of horsemen would not be likely to follow her — only to hear a roar behind her, as the prince’s escort started slashing at the awnings with their swords.

  There was a rush and a din of shouting beside her and ahead, as the frightened merchants scurried to pull down their awnings before the ruthless horse-men could ride down on them; the narrow street transformed itself almost on the instant into a undraped, cleared defile between two walls. And after that she kept to the broader streets, where there was room in the middle for a troop to follow, four abreast, should it choose. She had no mind to seek her own safety at the expense of men whose souls her father was laboring so hard to save.