A Gentlemen's Agreement

I

CARSTAIRS was lying in a ‘long chair’ on the lawn in front of his bungalow. On his right, the softly rounded masses of a great tamarind tree outlined themselves against the blue sky; wild bees hummed harmlessly in its feathery foliage. On the left, a line of poinsettias thrust their scarlet leaves, like thin spear points, into the warm air. Orange trumpet lilies bloomed, in a belt of color, against the low shrubbery that shut off the vegetable garden from the lawn; and water ran with pleasant gurgles in the hidden channels of that little kingdom where the head mali ruled supreme.

Carstairs was working on the record of an intricate murder case, where the sessions judge had, in his view, sinned against the light in acquitting the accused, charged with a peculiarly atrocious crime. He had been hard at work since five that morning; he had had a long day in court disposing of complicated rent appeals; the murmur of the bees, the creak of the well wheel, the gurgle of the water, the warm softness of the air, proved too much for him; and he dozed off lightly, chin on shoulder. He was awakened by the soft slur of a bicycle on the near-by path.

‘It’s you, Doctor. Sun’s just going down — and by all the rules a peg is allowable.’

They talked of the customary nothings while the bearer fetched another long chair and provided them with cigars and drinks; when he had padded off silently, the doctor explained why he had come.

‘You won’t think I’m getting the wind up unnecessarily, but I’m worried about Dallu. The execution is fixed for the fifteenth. He is a terrific chap physically, as you know; never saw a better-developed native, even among the professional wrestlers; and I have been hearing all sorts of vague rumors — you know the kind of thing — that he intends to give trouble when it comes to the bit.’

‘What kind of trouble?’

‘Well, nothing very definite. But everyone in the jail is quite jumpy about it. The head darogha — who gets to hear, or senses, most of what is going on — tells me Dallu has been boasting that he will provide them with a tamasha of sorts. The armed guards over the condemned cell are funky of him already. I have talked to one or two of the best of the convict overseers — let them talk to me, you understand — and they all seem to think that Dallu means to give heavy trouble. The guards see most of him, naturally; and they feel the same way.’

‘Did n’t any of them get down to something clearer?’

‘The darogha has been very uneasy about it for several days. Just before I came to you, he told me Dallu had been telling the guard this afternoon — he can’t keep from boasting — that when he went to the scaffold he’d pick up the dom and break the man’s back across his knee. He could, too, easily enough. That dom comes from Lucknow. There are none here — or none who’d take on the job, anyhow. You see? And it would n’t stop with the dom, either, once Dallu got excited. It ’ud be a hell of a mess, all round; and the Lord only knows what would happen before it got straightened out. I need n’t go into that, need I? We could hang him in fetters, of course, — leg and arms, — but that’s against the rules. And it does seem to me rather a measly way of dealing with him — and the situation.’

The doctor meditated for a bit, and added: I don’t mind hanging him, — I’m glad to hang him, in fact, — but I’d hate to see even him turned off draped with all that ironmongery.’

II

Dallu was to be hanged for dacoity with murder. The police had selected their three best cases against him, and had proved them all to the hilt; the cases had run their normal course before the committing magistrate, the sessions judge, and the High Court. All were in agreement that he was guilty; and everyone knew that, had anything gone wrong with any of these cases, there were dozens more to fall back on.

For about three years Dallu — a chamar, or leather worker, one of the lowest of all the castes — had, in association with a brahman who supplied the brains as he supplied the energy, the physical force, and the daring, terrorized that district, and the surrounding districts. He had murdered, raped, tortured, and robbed with impunity, here to-day and gone to-morrow. When pursuit got too hot, he retired to the forests of Nepal; sometimes he disappeared altogether — just melted into the countless millions of India. From first to last, he must have been responsible for the death of something like a hundred people. Both the men knew the full story, in all its details: the long list of foul crimes; the hairbreadth escapes; the final capture in a Nepalese swamp; the human sacrifice of a helpless traveler, pressed into the service of the two dacoits, which had preceded that capture.

‘I expect your information is right enough, Doctor. Bit of a mess, is n’t it? I’m not wasting any sympathy on Dallu, either; but I don’t want to hang him in fetters, all the same. We may have to come to that, of course — rules or no rules. And if we have to, I’ll stand the racket, naturally, if there is any racket. But we need n’t go out of our way officiously to advertise the fact. First things first. The first thing is to get Dallu hanged; the second thing is to get him hanged comfortably, without trouble or scandal. I won’t risk the life of anyone, merely to escape the ironmongery and to keep within the rules. But the best plan will be for me to see him. Let’s see! To-morrow is Sunday; I’ll be going round the jail as usual that morning. And I’ll have a talk with Dallu myself.’

‘Thanks; it’ll be a great relief to me. There is one thing I forgot to tell you. In addition to the usual searches, I had Dallu searched twice, before me, during the last week. I was getting so windy about him I thought it safer. On each occasion we found he had some opium — not much, but enough for a dose or two.’

‘That means that the guards, at least, probably the convict overseers, and possibly some of the others also, have been got at. How do they get the stuff in?’

‘Frankly, I don’t know. I can’t even guess. He’s inside three thirty-foot walls, guarded inside and outside; and the armed guard is always on the cell. There is the usual control — and I’ve tightened it up — at the gate. But I feel sure Dallu gets whatever he wants. He’s a sort of Robin Hood, as you know; in their hearts they admire him; and their livers melt when they see him, from sheer funk. He must have bags of money, too; and his friends outside are spending it freely for him. With not a single white man in the whole place, I’m getting more and more uneasy. If they can get opium in, can’t they manage to get Dallu out? I wake up at night now, sweating, and wondering if Dallu is still there.’

‘Nothing to get rattled about, Doctor Sahib. But if I were you I’d arrange with Rendall to change the armed guards at once, and to keep changing them, too. And I’d tell the darogha to go round all the walls, inside, before the prisoners are let out of barracks each morning. Everybody concerned knows that his own particular head is on this, as it were; they may quite likely go on getting Dallu what he wants, in reason; but I’m cocksure they won’t let him escape. Much too risky.’

III

Carstairs rode down to the jail on the Sunday morning as usual; tradition in India demands that the head of the district should pass his unruly sheep in review on that day.

The guard at the gate — a formidable affair of immensely thick timber, reënforced with great balks and studded with nails — looked commendably smart and workmanlike. The warder inside had a look at the deputy commissioner through the Judas hole before he opened the narrow wicket in the main gate, through which alone entrance could normally be obtained. Carstairs thought the great flaring wall looked reassuringly safe — and everyone was evidently very much on the qui vive. All the prescribed precautions were being scrupulously observed; each gate was locked, and tested, before the next was opened.

He met the doctor in the stuffy office, and walked with him into the main entrance corridor — long, dead straight, flanked with high smooth mud walls that glowed dully in the morning light. The jail smell caught them by the throat: an indescribable mélange of tar, disinfectants, hot sun on baking mud walls, packed humanity, and thrice-breathed air, though the deep corridor was open to the sky. Carstairs felt depression weigh on him, like a heavy pack, as they tramped slowly between the ochre-colored walls. Again after the observance of all the prescribed ritual, the big iron gate at the end of the corridor opened, and they were in the main sector of the jail. In front was the well, the mouth of which stood twenty feet or so above the ground level, at the top of an earth mound covered with heliotrope in bloom.

‘Cherry pie! The one decent spot in your whole blasted estate, Doctor.’

Pigeons swung round them, wheeling dexterously; there were perhaps four hundred men within fifty yards of where they stood, yet the silence was so deep that they heard nothing but the ‘flick-flick’ of the wings.

‘Will you see Dallu now?’

‘No. We’d better stick to the usual routine; I don’t want Dallu — or anyone else — to get exaggerated ideas of his importance.’

So Carstairs went from enclosure to enclosure; saw the under-trial prisoners, and made sure that their cases were being disposed of with all due expedition; heard their complaints, if any, and passed orders on the spot; inspected the cook house, and munched, unappreciatively, the chapattie which the brahman cooks passed out to them through the bars. They could not enter there; their presence would have defiled the food.

‘Any dysentery, Doctor? It seems to me mighty gritty. But I’m no expert. I feel like Nebuchadnezzar chewing the unwonted food — it may be wholesome, but it is not good.’

‘No, we’ve had no dysentery — though the usual season for it is about due. We have been running in some new grinding mills, and I expect it’s that. And, whatever they say, stuff ground in hand mills is always gritty. But it’s better anyhow than they’d get in their own homes. ’

They walked slowly about, watched silently by hundreds of eyes that took in every movement. The prisoners, clad in rough jail-spun and jail-woven garments, each man with a light tally hung from his neck that gave, in cabalistic figures burned into the wood, his crime and his sentence, were ranged in one long line, in the shade. As they approached, a convict warder — distinguished only by his orange pork-pie cap — struck with a little stick a small brass plate hung from two strings that he held in his hand. The men rose with military precision and stood behind their folded blankets and their polished metal food dishes, all scrupulously ranged in meticulous order. Carstairs and the doctor walked slowly down the line, stopping every now and then to question some man.

As they turned off, Carstairs said to the doctor, who is always head of the jail in addition to his other duties: —

‘Did you notice that that convict warder picked up his gong from the corner of the barrack shed, beside the door? I’d watch that. I was in charge temporarily of the big jail at Baranpore in my first year of service; the work was so new, and the responsibility so heavy, that I just dithered with funk all the time. But what put the lid on was that I was wakened one morning, before dawn, by the news that one prisoner had just murdered another. I tore off to the jail, and found that one chap — watching his opportunity for months — had spotted that a convict warder had put down his gong just outside the barred door of the barrack. He got up in the dark from his bed in the barrack; managed to get hold of the gong through the bars; leaped on the bed where his enemy lay asleep — and smashed that fellow’s head into fine splinters with the gong, held edgeways, with the strings twisted in his hand. It was not a pleasant sight, especially in the gray dawn, before breakfast! And now let’s have a look at Dallu.’

IV

The guard — tall men in khaki, with red turbans — presented arms outside the condemned cell. The bayonets flickered in the sun.

‘Did you remember about changing the guard, Doctor?’

‘Yes. This lot have been on the job for one day only.’

The gate, of open iron bars, was unlocked by the assistant jailer, and they entered the cell. It was clean as a hospital ward. There was no place where anything could possibly be hidden; the floor was cemented; the walls were ochre-washed and without projections of any kind; the bed platform was in one solid built-up block; the whole interior could be seen easily from either of the gates of open iron bars.

As they entered, Dallu rose smartly to his feet, and stood at attention.

‘Any complaints, Dallu?’ Carstairs asked.

‘No complaints, Sahib.’

Carstairs looked attentively round the cell, and turned again to Dallu. ‘I am going to have you searched,’ he said.

‘Very good, Sahib,’ was the reply. The tone was quite natural, and there was no trace of irritation or sullenness.

The search, expertly performed, resulted in the discovery of a ball of opium, about the size of an ordinary apple.

‘Hell’s bells!’ said the doctor. ‘And I had him searched before me this morning, not two hours ago!’

‘What work will that ball come into?’ Carstairs nodded at the lump which had been placed on the bed.

‘The habit has happened,’ said Dallu.

‘With it will you do self-killing?’

Dallu laughed with open-throated enjoyment. ‘Why should I do selfkilling, Sahib? Here the air is good; the water is good; the food is good. I do no work, and I can see others working. Self-killing? Never!’

‘With difficulty that ball came here. Into what work will it come?’

‘I have the habit. A little opium is pleasant to me.’

Carstairs looked into the tawny yellow eyes. ‘You know there is a prohibition. If I cause it to be taken away, what will happen?’

‘Some more will be met with, Sahib.’ Dallu seemed faintly amused.

‘Not if this affair is taken into my hand — you know that.’ Carstairs met the tawny eyes again, with a challenge in his own.

‘I know that, Sahib,’ was the reply,

‘Till when will that ball remain?’

Dallu glanced at t he lump on the bed. ‘Three weeks — perhaps a month.’ He had six more days to live. Then he added: ‘I began to take it when in the forest. I take little — I am no opium eater. But up there’ — he waved his hand toward the north — ‘ the water and the air were bad. Also, I was many times wet and tired. There was much fever. Here, after eating it, I feel pleased, and my heart becomes light.’

Carstairs leaned against t he built-up platform which was Dallu’s bed. ‘And what is this wind I hear of trouble when the time of hanging comes?’

Dallu grinned cheerfully. ‘Now and then it has come into my mind that there might be a tamasha when the time of hanging came. I am a man of power’ — he smote his bare thigh like a professional wrestler, and there was a ‘clunk’ that reverberated through the vaulted cell. ‘My arms are not the arms of a woman. My chest is great; my legs are full of force. Yes, Sahib, sometimes the thought comes that there might be a tamasha.’

Carstairs heaved himself up, and stood again in front of Dallu. The tawny yellow eyes challenged his. ‘Listen, Dallu. It is the order of the Government that to you hanging must come. It will come on the appointed day. Further, there will be no tamasha. It is I who say so, and as I say, so it will be. Nor will there be any more opium — again it is I who say so: so it will be. There will be no tyranny to make sure of all these things; but for you there will be great trouble. You understand?’

Dallu’s eyes looked straight into Carstairs’s, fearlessly but questingly. What he saw there made him reply, tonelessly, ‘I understand, Sahib.’

‘Listen again, Dallu. To you few days remain. I do not want hanging to come to you in fetters; I do not wish you to have these few days that are left too troubled. If you give your word, there will be no fetters, and the trouble will not come into being. If you promise to me that there will be no self-killing, and that there will be no tamasha when the time comes, then hanging will come to you unfettered, and that ball of opium can remain beside you. I promise to you that your body will be given to your folks in three hours after the time, with permission to take away. If you and they desire that, they will be permitted to be there when the time arrives. If you give your word, I accept it. Is it a bargain ?’

‘This is a good thing, Sahib, a very good thing. I speak a true word. There is a promise between the presence and me.’

‘Good,’ said Carstairs, and turned to leave the cell. ‘Salaam, Sahib’; ‘Salaam, Dallu’; and Carstairs and the wondering doctor walked back again into the blinding glare of the jail yard.

V

‘Doctor, if the great and good Government which we serve knew of this morning’s work, you’d be earning your living as a violinist in a cheap cinema in Calcutta in a fortnight, and I’d have my promising career blasted forevermore.’

‘Do you think he’ll stick to his bargain, Carstairs?’

‘Well, I’ve gambled quite a lot on that! I feel practically sure he will. But I admit I’ll be a considerably happier man when I know he has.’

Six days later Carstairs, returning from a morning tour of inspection, noticed a crowd of about two hundred people on the police parade ground, near the jail. Acting on the sound rule that it was always just as well to know what had brought any crowd together, he pushed his horse at a trot toward the group. It divided, as he pulled up to a walk close beside it, and a tortuous lane opened up. He put his horse into it. Just round the last corner at the end of the swaying line, he stopped suddenly, and backed out as quickly as he could. He trotted on soberly to his bungalow, where he found the doctor waiting.

‘I thought you’d be back about now, so I came over and waited. You have n’t seen Dallu since that morning in the jail. Everything went all right. He behaved very well, all the time; gave no trouble of any kind. When he passed me on his way to the scaffold, he said, “I am going, Doctor Sahib,” and added, “Tell the big Sahib I kept my word, and speak to him my salaams.” And that was all. I thought you’d like to know.’

‘You’re wrong, Doctor. I’ve just seen Dallu — and I wish I had n’t.’