Dennis Wheatley - The Rape Of Venice

'May I suggest, Sir John, that you have been ruling with the velvet glove, but without the steel hand inside it?'

The tired man on the other side of the desk nodded slowly. There is much in what you say. But my instructions from the Company…'

'Let us forget the Company,' Roger cut him short, 'and think only of what British rule should be. Justice, the freeing of the people from oppression by the native rulers, the introduction of better methods of agriculture, the stabilisation of currency, and encouragement of the exchange of goods between provinces; all this, but also death for those who foment discontent or, through personal ambition, threaten the progress of peace and prosperity.

'In the matter of Bahna, you have to your hand a situation which, if you handle it rightly, can rehabilitate you in the eyes both of your fellow countrymen and the native potentates. This vicious young Rajah owes the Company twelve lakhs of rupees. He has refused to pay it, and is confident that you will not dare to use force to collect it. I suggest that you should order Colonel Gunston to advance on Bahna and demand both the money and my wife. I go further. I suggest that you should entrust me with an order to depose Jawahir-​ul-​daula and appoint a suitable successor. For him to pay at this late date is not enough. Only by occupying his capital and making an example of him will you receive the full credit for having acted, however belatedly, with real resolution to restore your lost authority. Do this and the news of it will run round India in a week. From Kashmir to Travancore it will be realised that you are not, after all, a man to be trifled with.'

They argued the matter for another half-​hour, but in the end Roger got his way. Sir John Shore penned a despatch giving fresh instructions to Gunston, and signed and sealed for Roger a commission as an agent of the Company authorising him to make such changes in the government of Bahna as he saw fit. Apart from policy, the question of reinforcements for Gunston was outside his province, but he gave Roger a letter to the Commander-​in-​Chief, informing him of his decision to reduce Bahna to obedience, and requesting that British troops should be despatched as soon as possible to strengthen the force that Gunston was commanding on behalf of the Company.

Mentally stimulated by his triumph after this long battle, Roger took leave of the Governor and had himself carried in a chair through the noisy, crowded, smelly streets to the Red Fort, in which General Sir Alured Clarke had his headquarters.

The General kept him waiting for half an hour but then, having met him at numerous bachelor evening parties, greeted him as an old friend. Having read Sir John Shore's letter he exclaimed, 'Drat me! What can have come over that moribund cuss that, for once, he's willin' to let us chastise one of these insolent coffee-​coloured gentry?'

Tactfully, Sir Alured refrained from enquiring about Clarissa, so Roger did not use her situation to urge the necessity for acting with speed. Instead, feeling that he had let the Governor down lightly, he did not scruple to imply that if matters were delayed Sir John might change his mind; as he knew very well that the soldier would go to any lengths rather than lose this unexpected chance to re-​establish British prestige. He learned, though, to his dismay, that this question of speed raised a new and tricky problem.

Sir Alured had far fewer troops than he really needed to 'show the flag' and, if need be, help to defend the Indian States on which, since Clive's day, the Company had imposed a vague over lordship embodied in some form of alliance. Most of these, too, were stationed up in Oudh, or in the distant Carnatic, and recently he had had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for troops to make up Colonel Wesley's force that was mustering at Madras for the expedition to Manila. The only unit he could offer, which could be on the way in forty-​eight hours, was a squadron of hussars from the Headquarters’ garrison. Neither artillery nor British infantry could be made available under a fortnight, as both would have to be composite units formed from details got together in the depots.

Roger's choice, therefore, lay in either taking the cavalry only, with which he could rejoin Gunston in a week, or waiting for at least a fortnight, then making a slower march at the pace of the infantry, which meant that the best part of a month must elapse before he could hope to rescue Clarissa. As cavalry was the arm Gunston had said he needed above all else, and Roger still had faith in Rai-​ul-​daula bringing the greater part of the Bahna army over to them as soon as the British appeared in front of the city, he hesitated hardly a moment before deciding to make do with the hussars.

Knowing that Calcutta must by now be humming with the news of his return and a fresh wave of speculation about Clarissa's disappearance, he felt it would be highly embarrassing to meet their acquaintances; so he made only one visit, which was to his old friends the Beaumont’s, and poured his woes into their sympathetic ears. Moreover, the idea of returning for two nights to his own house, where he had known so much joy with Clarissa, was intolerable to him; so he rode out there only to give Chudda Gya a month's wages for the servants then went to cover for the rest of the time in the mansion of the ever hospitable Hickey.

Early on the Wednesday, still a prey to great anxiety about Clarissa, but physically again in good shape after his two days of recuperation, he set off with the squadron of hussars. They were commanded by a Captain of near his own age, named Philip Laker; a short, dark, good looking young man, with the typical slightly bow-​legged swagger of a cavalry officer. From the start they took a liking to one another and, as Roger trotted once more across the long dusty plain, with its endless vistas of ryots cultivating their fields, humped oxen drawing high-​wheeled carts and women with bundles on their heads, he told Laker the whole story of his involvement with the abominable Malderini.

As the pace had to be kept down to one which would not tire unduly the least good mounts of the squadron, instead of making the journey, as Roger had, in little over two days, it took four; so it was in the mid-​morning of Sunday that they came in sight of the camp outside Bamanghati. Much to Roger's surprise, he saw that only a remnant of it remained, and it was obvious that the greater part of Gunston's force had vacated it. A quarter of an hour later, an Ensign who had been left in charge of the sick and stores told him that the Colonel had received an urgent despatch on Thursday evening and set off in the direction of Bahna early on Friday morning.

Roger had known that Gunston would receive his new orders from Sir John Shore several days before he could rejoin him, but had not expected him to move off before he had received his reinforcements. However, that he had done so now appeared all to the good, as Laker's hussars could make the march through the hills much faster than Gunston's sepoys and artillery; so, by the latter having moved up to an advance base, a day would be gained.

As the midday heats were now increasing with the advance of spring, the track through the mountains would from ten o'clock onwards be sizzling with heat, and the glare on the bare rocks most tiring to the men; so Roger and Laker decided to rest the squadron at Gunston's old camp that afternoon, then break the back of the thirty miles they had to go by a night march. By dawn on Monday they reached the lower slopes on the far side of the range, but were much surprised to find no signs of Gunston's advance base there.

After a two-​hour halt for the men to have a meal, they moved on down into the plain. Three miles farther on they got their first distant sight of the city; but they had to ride another two before they came upon one of Gunston's pickets. A sepoy then led them along a track through a wood to a great sprawling collection of buildings the size of a hamlet, but in one irregular mass, instead of being dotted about. It was a typical dwelling under the Indian patriarchal system, by which one family, often of as many as a hundred people, all lived and farmed together.