The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [259]
Leaving the track he walked towards it, and once there, squatted down native-fashion to wait. The moon would not be up for well over half an hour, and as Biju Ram was unlikely to leave the camp until there was enough light to see by (and once started would take at least forty-five minutes to cover the distance) the wait promised to be a long one.
Ash had learned patience – painfully –but he would never find it easy to practise, and tonight proved to be no exception. For although he had been careful to memorize the place where he had thrown that piece of material, and would have said that he knew to within a yard or two where it lay, the islands of grass seemed to have taken on different shapes in the starlight, so that now he was less sure. And there was no way of telling whether it was still there or if a hawk or a prowling jackal had carried it away, and no point in searching for it in the darkness. If it was there Biju Ram would find it soon enough, while if it had gone it would not matter, because the mere fact that he had come in search of it would be proof enough. But when at last the moon came up over the plain he saw the thing itself, lying near a clump of pampas grass some ten paces to his left.
The moonlight also betrayed his own position, for now the palm tree no longer provided any shelter, and he rose and went over to the pampas grass, and having trodden out a rough-and-ready hide from where he could watch unseen, settled down once more to wait.
It proved to be an uncomfortable hiding place, as any unguarded movement made the grass rustle and the night was so still that the smallest sound was sharply audible. Yet the silence was to his advantage, for it meant that he would be warned of Biju Ram's approach long before he came in sight. But as the slow hours crawled by and nothing stirred, Ash began to wonder if he had made a mistake, not as to the ownership of the grey coat - he knew it to be one of Biju Ram's but in the manner in which he had discarded it. Had he thrown it away too quickly and without allowing enough time for it to be recognized? Or so casually that the gesture had not even attracted a disinterested glance? Or had he overplayed the scene, so it rang false…?
Biju Ram was no fool, and if he suspected a trap he would take no chances, no matter how alluring the bait. On the other hand, if he had been deceived by that performance this morning and accepted it at its face value, then nothing would keep him away; nor would he send a deputy or bring anyone with him. He would come alone or not at all. Yet by now the moon had been up for well over two hours and still there was no sign of him and no sound of anyone approaching. If he failed to appear it might well mean that he suspected a trap, in which case the likelihood of walking into an ambush on the way back to camp could not be disregarded.
Ash stirred restlessly and was tempted to abandon the vigil and return to his tent by a circuitous route, and go to bed. It must have been close on one o'clock by then, and in little more than three hours' time the camp would be astir in preparation for another early start. Besides it was not as if he needed any further proof that it was Biju Ram who had fired at him and whose coat had torn in his hands as they struggled together in the dark. Or, for that matter, that it was Biju Ram, on behalf of the Nautch-girl, who had engineered the disappearance of Hira Lal and the death of Lalji, and was now, at the bidding of a new master, striving to dispose of Jhoti as well. There was surely no need for anything more, and this quixotic conviction