by Talbot Mundy
Near there a police patrol stopped them: it was only three days since some Moslems had butchered a sacred cow in that temple entrance, and there are more ways than that of defiling Hindu temple steps. But both men shelved passes, and the signature on them worked like magic. The police did not even wait to watch which way they went.
They took a rather wider street, where tired trees loomed against the stars. Near the end of the street they made peculiar signals on the door of a balconied house. There were beggars lurking in the shadows, as always near such houses: some of them stirred like graveyard ghouls, observed for a moment and then dozed again: they wasted no importunity on Pathan night-errants. But there was one near the door, all eyes, amid smelly rags, in shadow. He might be a Bauriah—one of the criminal tribe that shams asceticism to impose on poetry. He spoke:
“Protectors of the poor, nine who have entered this house gave me nothing. The Allknowing seeth. The Allseeing knoweth. Alms! Alms!”
“Allah is all around thee! Allah protect thee! Await His pleasure!” answered the Pathan who had been addressed as Ismail. He gave him nothing.
The heavy door opened inward cautiously. The two passed in, in silence, into darkness, standing still until the outer door was shut and bolted,at their backs. Then an inner door opened suddenly into an electric lighted hall, where a number of low-caste, well-dressed servants lurked around a heavy wooden stairway, and on the tiles, beside a heavy mat, was a row of slippers, some new, some old. but none of Bombay craftsmanship. Both Pathans kicked off their footgear: he knew as Ismail tripped on the mat, uncovering a pair of imported brown-and-white shoes that looked incongruous in that place, but he appeared not to notice them.
“See that I get my own again,” he ordered, scowling so fiercely that the custodian of slippers cringed. Then he led up the dark teak stairway without ceremony. But a drumstick, pulled by a cord from below, thumped on a gong up above to announce him, and a door at the stair-head opened before he reached it.
A young Chinese girl, as insolent as fate, in a jacket and trousers of blue-and-amber flowered silk, confronted him beneath a gilded dragon. Behind her, down a long corridor, there was mandarin-palace loot—jade—crystal —lacquer—gossamer curtains—rose-hued light from hidden electric bulbs—a smell of sandalwood— a haze of incense—weird, dim music. She herself looked like an antique, sloe-eyed, with a black fringe straight across her forehead. She was smoking a cigarette in a long jade tube. Her intensely intelligent eyes —no other gesture—observant, indifferent, self-assured— directed both men toward a doorway twenty steps along the corridor on the left hand. She closed the stair-head door behind them and followed, blowing smoke-rings.
The Pathans swaggered through a clattering curtain of metallic beads into a room part Indian, part Chinese, richly carpeted. There was a long, deep divan. On the floor were heaped cushions of gorgeous colors. Opposite the door a gilded dragon-screen concealed one corner: and beside that, on a mandarin’s throne, sat the woman who owned the place. Her age might not be guessed. Good humor and the full flood of physical health obeyed intelligence, concealing all but what she chose should seem: and she was lovelier to the eye than any cream-and-honey quadroon who ever maddened Paris. Forbidden knowledge, that had not wearied her, laughed forth from dark eyes and carmined lips. Eurasian, slim, so marvelously formed and subtly strong that the ease of her poise suggested motion, she was dressed in jet-black silk. The jacket, open at the throat, revealed a daffodil-yellow lining and a throat that Rodin might have thumbed from creamy meerschaum.
A big diamond flashed in her dark hair. Pearls on the lobes of her ears stole glow and color from her skin. She had jade bracelets that clashed when she moved, but no other jewelry: there were no rings on her strong hands, and her hands looked young. But even younger and more graceful were the naked feet that lazed below the black silk, which suggested rather than revealed impudently shapely legs. A hint, but no more than a hint of Chinese hovered near her eyes: they were the eyes of the devil, beautiful with love of dangerous living.
“Hello. Warrender,” she said.
“Evening, Wu Tu,” he retorted. He seemed undisturbed by being recognized, but her eyes darkened.
“Don’t you call me that—you!”
“Very well, don’t call me Warrender.”
“Blair—eh?”
“I am Ismail ben Alif Khan.”
“But why the masquerade? Why don’t you come alone to see me? Why bring Chetusingh? Why do you choose to dress like Orakzai Pathans? They fight like dogs and love like pigs, except when they are drunk with hasheesh; then they sleep like stuffed pythons.”
“Let me see behind that screen,” said Blair.
But Chetusingh forestalled him—too late by a stride; as he reached it, a low door hidden by the screen thumped shut and a bolt clicked. She seemed indifferent. “You have at least the manners of Pathans.”
Chetusingh moved one wing of the screen away from the wall, so that he could watch the low door. Then he and Blair sat on the divan, drawing their feet up under them. Blair said something in a low voice and Chetusingh went to the curtained door, glancing into the passage both ways, returned and sat down again.
“You are as stupid as Pathans,” said Wu Tu. “You know well, Chetusingh, that men are not murdered in my house. I don’t permit it. Otherwise, why do you think that a Rajput Chr-r-ristian” (she filled the words with venom) “was here night after night—and no knife in his liver? Tell me.”
There was no impatience in her voice—no anger in her eyes, even when Chetusingh smiled without answering. She was only making conversation while she eyed Blair Warrender. It was his smoldering gaze that amused her. She mocked him:
“Take care! Beware of my merry widows!”
Weirdly half-heard chords of eastern music from another room counter-pointed the inflection of her voice. “Ismail ben Alif Khan the Orakzai” (her voice and her smile were almost a caress) “is no concern of mine. But Blair—”
She lingered on the word. Her sinuous ease, giving scented heat and mellow light wove and again rewove imagined calm; but its weft and its woof were danger, beyond guessing.
“My merry widows shed humility and meekness and all those vices when they left home. Do they care for a Pathan’s dignity? What if one of them should pull that turban off and laugh at an Englishman’s clipped head?”
“There are nine men here to whom I wish to speak,” said Blair abruptly.
“Set a new spy at the outer door! There are ten men. I would not describe them as your bodyguard!” Then she added in the vernacular, “Diwaza bund hai.”
The news that the outer door was locked made Chetusingh stir uncomfortably. Wu Tu drew some paper money from her bosom and without glancing at it tossed it into Chetusingh’s lap.
“Go and play with the little widows!”
Chetusingh was well taught. He examined the money before he tossed it back to her. Then he glanced at Blair, who nodded. Chetusingh walked out into the corridor and turned left. The Chinese girl parted the curtains, making the beads jingle to attract attention; at the hardly noticeable movement of Wu Tu’s hand she withdrew and followed Chetusingh.
“Now you are not afraid to talk to me,” said Wu Tu.
“No,” he answered.
She drew her legs up under her and arranged a cushion so that she could loll back comfortably.
“Would you like a drink? Smoke? No? Let us be frank with each other.”
He smiled. “Jenny, are you ever frank with anybody?”
“Always! But don’t you call me Jenny. I am that to the fools whom I entertain in my house, and who borrow money from me secretly, and who slip—slip—slip into my power—it would surprise you to know—”
“It wouldn’t. You needn’t brag about it. I could give you a partial list of your creditors.”
“To the Sikhs and the men from the North I am Soonia.”
He nodded. “Soonia Singh in Berlin, Paris, New York, Brussels?”
“You know too much. I am Wu Tu to my enemies. To you, Blair—”
“Suit yourself. If you prefer it, I will call you Marie.”
“That is my true name—Marie d’Alençon. It is on my passport. Let us talk truth to each other. Why have you stayed away? And, why send Chetusingh? Do you think that nine-and-eighty nights ago I let you sketch me— sat to be stared at by your eyes, that torture because they see so much, and burn, and tell me little—do you think I did that for Chetusingh’s sake?”
“Do you suppose I came here to make love to you?” he retorted. “Chetusingh was spying on you. You know that.”
“Why him? That convert-puritan so careful of his soul that he draws in his breath when he tells unavoidable lies! I tortured him. He would have bored me to death if I had not made trouble for him. I let his bishop know that he has been dealing in unchristian plans.”
“Why?”
“Because ‘I know how he feels toward that bishop—as a chela toward his guru. Yet he might not explain to the bishop, who feels toward him as guru to his chela. Are there hotter hooks than that on which to draw a convert?”
“Probably not. What I asked you is, why did you do it?”
“To bring you here. Why else? I could have had him beaten to death in the streets, and none the wiser, but I wanted you here. It wasn’t easy” (her eyes smiled reminiscently) “to reach the bishop’s ear and make him think he thought of that. But why didn’t you come alone? I want you!” She leaned back on the cushion, put her arms behind her head, smiled —and her smile seemed all surrender. “Don’t I look good? Don’t you like me?”
“Yes. I can like without smashing and grabbing. There are ten men here. What are they doing?”
“People come here for amusement.”
“Murder amuse them?”
“Not in my house, if they murder one another, sometimes—elsewhere—that is not strange. When was murder anything but a natural consequence of”—she spoke slowly, almost purring—“intruding—unwisely—amid emotions not understood?”
He got up. “You may as well come with me,” he said. “I am going to interview those men.”
“Wait!” Her dark eyes suddenly grew liquid with excitement. There was a change in her voice. Beyond, or beneath, or around its luring, lazy sensuousness there was an unguarded overtone of danger, like a wolf’s yelp very far off, coming nearer. “Three months ago, when you sketched me, I said—”
“Yes, I know what you said.”
“You savage! Blair, your cruel heart glows through your eyes! You love strength. You love nothing else. You are on the side of the law by accident. You have no morals—none, I tell you! You are only loyal. And to what are you loyal? England? You would dread to live in England. You would leave India unless it were a battle-ground for all your talents. You love battle, because it makes you feel your strength, and you are drunk with strength! So to what are you loyal?”
“To the job,” he answered.
“Not you! You are loyal to your hunger, just like any other savage! Duty? That is nothing to you except that it means to be strong—stronger—strongest—and then stronger again beyond the dream of devils! That is why you love danger.”
“Do I? Well, what of it?”
“Love me! I am danger!”
“You love strength in order to corrupt it, Wu Tu.”
“Call me Marie! Are you incorruptible? You dare me? Think a minute! I can snap my fingers, Blair, and ruin you.”
“Try it,” he answered.
“You policeman!” She stood up and faced him, laughing. With a naked toot she kicked his shin, triumphant, daring him. She wasn’t afraid of his strength; she craved it. “Love me, you savage! I will give you the keys of India—of Asia! You devil, love me!”
“Savages don’t love,” he answered. “Give me a cigarette and don’t be silly.”
He returned to the divan. She followed and sat beside him, curling up at one end with her naked feet toward him. She tossed him her platinum cigarette case.
* * *
CHAPTER THREE
Abide thou the time and the tide of events, lest strength go wasted and thy skill, in vain exerted, fall in to the scales against thee. Silence is the arsenal of Wisdom.
—From the First of the Nine Books of Noor Ali.
BLAIR examined the cigarette case, pressed the diamond catch, sniffed the cigarettes, selected one and gave the case back. He did not take the first, nor the last, nor the middle one; and before he touched it to his lips he tapped it on the little lacquered table, on which there were a jade vase and a small but monstrous figurine that looked like molded gold.
Wu Tu promptly chose a cigarette at random, lighted it, blew a smoke-ring, laughed and leaned toward him, proffering the lighter. Their eyes met above it. The scent of her reached his nostrils. For a moment she looked older than he did, but that look vanished.
“It is fear of me that poisons you.” she murmured. “Not to trust me is as dangerous as not to trust yourself. Blair?”
“Who was behind that screen?” he asked her.
She shrugged indifference. “Probably someone. I have many servants.”
“Why did you call me Warrender so promptly when I came in?”
“I was so glad to see you. I should have said Blair, shouldn’t I?”
“Somebody behind that screen was listening and passed the news to someone else,” he answered.
“Why were you scared when I started for the next room?”
“Love me—and be safe,” she said, smiling. “Don’t I look good? I am even better than I look. Seize the nettle—strongly—”
“And the cobra by the throat!” he added.
“Blair, I warn you—you strong, leopard-eyed devil! India isn’t safe for one whom—”
He finished the sentence for her: “—Zaman Ali fears! Zaman Ali suspected me as Ismail ben Alif Khan. But now he knows I am Blair Warrender. He knows I am here, and the is outer door locked. He knows now who has been watching him. Nine of his accomplices are here to-night, and he knows that Chetusingh, and consequently I, know all their names. He is probably not such a fool as to murder me here, supposing he could do that. But—”
“You don’t even know why he is in Bombay,” she retorted calmly. “I could tell you. How else can you find out? I can give you Zaman Ali! That pig—” Her eyes flashed.
“Blair, you may have for the taking what he craves but is too much of a sot to imagine! Power! You understand me?”
He nodded.
“There isn’t a guilty secret worth knowing in all India that I can’t tell you.”
He nodded again. His eyes did not reveal that he doubted her, if he did.
“Do you understand, too, that you are alive because I wished it? Any crazy failure of a student with a cheap revolver could have shot you and not known who directed him or why he did it. Isn’t life good?” She leaned toward him. “You don’t guess how good it can be!”
Her hand touched his. He let his lie still.
“What can you do to Zaman Ali? Arrest him? What would that accomplish? You have no proofs against him that a court would look at.. He would soon be at liberty. But you? Death’s arm is longer than life’s desires! Nobody but I can save you now from Zaman Ali and his gang. But what if I give them to you?”
“When?”
“Love me.”
He knocked the ash from his cigarette into the jade vase on the lacquer table, using his left hand. She was fingering his right hand; on the divan. He stared at the golden figurine, whose monstrous, sub-human face seemed wise beyond all emotion; whoever had made it, knew neither love nor hate but only irony.
“Look at me, not at that! You catch sprats, you policemen, but the sharks escape you, because of the laws of evidence, and because you seek peace, not power. I don’t seek power. I already have it!”
“And you’re wealthy,” he suggested, not withdrawing his hand when she raised it to her lap with both hers.
Triumph stole into her eyes. �
��Blair, have you ever, even for a moment, felt the strength of money—the thrill of the strength of money that obeys you? I have money! Men and women—some of them so important that they dare not risk discovery—owe me more money than you have ever dreamed of having. It is secret, unpayable debts that crack the whips of power. But to you I would not lend. To you I give!”
“Blair, why do you look at me in that way? Tell me.”
Suddenly his right hand that she fondled seized her wrist and she checked a scream, half terrified but half believing what she hoped. She tried to break his grip, but could not.
“Chetusingh,” he said, “should have been back before now. What has happened to him?”
“How do I know? You hurt me! Do you hear, you hurt me! I didn’t want that fool in here, so—you savage, let go of my wrist!” But his grip tightened. She writhed—kicked —and then struck at his face. His turban fell, revealing his crisp-curled gladiator head.
“Scream, why don’t you?”
Venom stole into her eyes. Her right hand moved toward her bosom. Suddenly she snatched out a six-inch weapon like a bodkin, dagger-handled. “Damn you?”
She struck. He caught her right wrist in his left hand—twisted it. She kicked with her naked feet. He twisted her wrist steadily until she groaned through set teeth and the loosed weapon thumped to the floor. He held both wrists in one hand then and leaned on her to prevent her from kicking his head as he reached down to recover the weapon. When he had it he let go of her.
“How many poisons, Wu Tu? Five?” he asked her, but for the moment she had no breath to answer him. He pressed the point of the knife on the gilded wood behind the divan; the hollow bodkin-blade yielded a little against a spring within the golden handle. Through an almost invisible hole in the point of the blade there oozed a colorless fluid. He sniffed it; and as he did that, the hand of the Chinese girl in the corridor parted the doorway curtain. He could see her eyes behind the hand.
“Send her for help,” he suggested. “She might bring Zaman Ali.”