by Talbot Mundy
Blair went straight to the cot and discovered a vanity case beneath the pillow. He recognized that instantly as Henrietta’s. Wu Tu, as quiet as a mouse, came in behind him and stood by the suitcases. He scowled as he turned and faced her. The Chinese girl, dirty, disheveled, impudent, hovered behind Wu Tu, looking like her evil genius. She leered at the bags and vanity case as if her thought possessively explored their contents. That brought Blair’s anger suddenly to the surface. Speech exploded from him:
“Get out of here, both of you!”
Wu Tu smiled. Her shoulders relaxed, as if his anger resolved a doubt. But her smile looked ghastly in the light that streamed through the opening. She looked fifty years old, with strained eyes and the suppleness gone from her limbs. Mentally as well as physically she seemed exhausted. She sat down on the cot.
“No, you get out of here,” she answered. “Find Henrietta.” She reached for the vanity case and Blair snatched it away. The suitcases were closed but unlocked; he put the vanity case inside the nearest one and reclosed the catches. Then he pushed both suitcases under the cot.
“Yes,” said Wu Tu, “you do love her. Find her. She is your woman.”
That enraged him. But Blair’s anger never governed him for more than fractions of a second. Instead it stirred his self-control and set him calculating. If Wu Tu felt so sure she had him hypnotised that she was willing he should interview Henrietta lone, why disillusion her? Besides, he did not know yet how to get out of the caverns; Wu Tu very likely did know. It was important to get that information before challenging her vindictiveness. He, too, was weary in every fiber of his being; it was easy to look beaten.
He strode to the water, drank from his cupped hands, bathed his eyes to take away the smart of sleeplessness, stared at Wu Tu as if he hardly recognized her, and walked out like a man in a dream. Behind him Wu Tu spoke in Chinese. When he glanced over his shoulder she already lay sprawled on the cot with her head on the pillow. She seemed to be failing under the strain. The girl was massaging her feet. Immediate interruption from that quarter appeared improbable.
Blinking, he walked straight toward strong daylight. Twenty feet beyond where the passage turned it came to a sudden end at a strangely carved opening with a wide stone threshold, almost exactly like the one at “the foot of the projecting steps, the thought of which still made him shudder. But this opening was much closer to the bottom of the great pit.
Looking up, he could see the other threshold, and some of the ghastly steps beyond it, like broken teeth stuck oh the smooth rock. The great cone in the midst of the pit was far above the level of his eyes and looked creamy white from that angle. It was no longer transparent and he could not see the woman. From the threshold where he stood a flight of irregular steps descended to the floor of the pit; they were like the steps higher up except that these were much less difficult. There was no other way to go.
He went down, slowly, accustoming his eyes to the light and keeping close to the wall for safety; he was so tired that he could hardly trust his sinews.
The light was not nearly as dazzling as it had been; His watch had stopped, no doubt broken, but he knew it must be long after, noon. From where he was, he could not see the sky, but it was obvious that the sun ho longer shone directly into the cavern. There was a wide shadow at the foot of the wall. The floor of the pit lay in waves of creamy stalagmite; almost like wax from a guttered candle; but farther away where the light was more direct and stronger it looked like mother-of-pearl. One gorged vulture was perched on a wave of the stuff to his left, and he could hear atrocious, echoed noises made by others that tore at dead men’s bodies out of sight in some hollow beyond. Many of the waves of stalagmite were more than head-high, but a smooth, worn, narrow track wound among them snakewise in the general direction of the central mound, on which the great cone glowed with color that changed at each step he took. The cone fascinated; it was almost a physical impossibility not to stare at it.
The echoes of his footsteps were awe-inspiring and like no sounds he had ever heard. There was an extraordinary sensation of commuting sacrilege. He felt like taking off his boots, to prevent the echoes from making his skin crawl; some of the echoes seemed to come creeping stealthily behind him. That sensation was so real that he glanced backward to see whether he was being followed. Then, in that second, he heard Henrietta’s voice so close to him that he almost jumped out of his skin.
“Blair, is there no getting away from you?”
The training of a lifetime saved him from making an hysterical exhibition of himself. If nerves had voices, his would have shrieked. Between anger, surprise, relief, astonishment, his silence congealed like something solid.
“Wu Tu sent you?”
That stung him. Anger Overwhelmed all the other emotions. Like a man in the ring taking punishment, he hid the sting, banked anger, smiled mercilessly. The change in his expression frightened her. Words died on her parted lips.
Behind her was a canvas camp-chair on which she had been sitting. She was wearing a frock like the one of the night before, that had made her look so beautiful by moonlight. The frock was quite clean. She was barefooted; her kicked-off sandals lay beside the chair. She was standing within a stone dome, like a soap-bubble, except that the film of stalagmite of which it was formed was at least a foot thick.
He saw her through an opening, three or four feet wide, eight or nine feet high, hewn wider at the top than at the bottom. A rectangular pattern of light poured through that opening, and lay on the floor like a golden carpet. Other opalescent, dim light penetrated through the thin stone; it was like light through a stained glass window, subdued and mystic. It stirred in Blair a maddening sense of beauty—the emotion that some men shout about but others cherish in excited silence.
He had never loved any girl as he did her in that moment. Never was he less inclined’ to speak of it or to reveal it, or even to confess it to himself. His tired senses yearned to her. Mind, memory, intellect all blended in a sudden recognition of her as his woman, his and his only, adorable loot of the battle of life, to be seized, had, held and cherished. But resentment burned a no-man’s land between them, and her eyes grew pained, brave, regretful as they met his, unflinching.
“Yes,” he said, forcing his voice at last. “Wu Tu did send me.” He said it cruelly, through set teeth. It hurt him. He intended it should hurt her. How could he say he loved her? She believed he was Wu Tu’s lover, or something like it. Could he deny Wu Tu had. sent him? He even perceived a ghastly possibility that Wu Tu’s influence was stronger on him than he knew.
Was he his own master? This flood of emotion— was it genuine? Was he reacting to Wu Tu’s mental influence? That was no moment to speak, think or behave as a lover. If he should ever come to take Henrietta in his arms, that should be his own, not Wu Tu’s doing. The more he loved Henrietta, the more savagely he cursed Wu Tu. His eyes glowered with indignation.
“Why have you come?” Henrietta asked. “Blair, do you know what a state you’re in? Are you hurt?” She shuddered. “I saw a vulture. Someone fell off the ledge, and—”
His stare silenced her. She stepped backward, afraid of him. But he via.‘s only wondering what the devil to say to her. Suddenly the obvious question forced its way through set teeth:
“Are you all right? Not hurt?”
“Quite all right, thanks. Blair, go away, please, for a while. Chetusingh said you would come, but I didn’t believe him.”
The policeman surged to the surface. He retorted hoarsely:
“Why didn’t you believe him?”
“Why should I? There was nothing to stop you yourself from telling me, was there? Why should you send Chetusingh with such a message less than twenty minutes after I had left your camp?”
“Very well, why did you go with Chetusingh?”
“Because I wished to come here. I didn’t trust Chetusingh, but I would have gone with almost anyone who mentioned this place, even at the risk of meeting you again and b
eing tortured with questions. But I was almost sure the message was a trap. I knew well what they wanted me for.”
“What who wanted you for?”
“Wu Tu’s agents. They had watched me in here. Wu Tu questioned me in Bombay as I told you, and her men have watched me ever since. They kept me out recently by making the Bat-Brahmin afraid to admit me.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps they thought they might make me talk. But I didn’t. I refused to bargain with them.”
Blair stepped in through the opening.—He sat down, on the floor with his back to the wall, too tired to stand any longer. He nodded to her to take the chair.
“Blair, are you ill?” He dismissed the suggestion with a shake of the head that let him realize how much his head ached.
“Look here. Henrietta, there’s been hell to pay—men murdered—God knows what else. If you’d confided in me, in the first instance none of that might have happened! Tell now.”
“Blair, there are things I can’t tell.”
“Will you answer questions?”
“If I do, will you leave me alone afterwards?”
She sat down, folding her hands in her lap. He stared at her in silence for about a minute. Leave her alone? Not likely! He and she were going to know less loneliness than she imagined, but it was no time to discuss that; He ignored her question.
“Have you seen Wu Tu?” he demanded.
“Yes; Wu Tu was in the cavern when I came here, just before daylight. Up on that ledge she and I saw the dawn. come through the opening. There were two men and a rope ready to help me down those steps, but heights don’t scare me. I’ve been up and down them alone at least a dozen times. I didn’t need help. And I couldn’t refuse to come down. They’d have forced me if I didn’t.
“Wu Tu was perfectly polite, but I knew what she meant. She came after me—she and her maid, and when we reached the lower cavern, there were my “suitcases, and food, and a cot. Wu Tu went away for a while then and left me alone with the Chinese maid. My frock was filthy, so I changed it, and the maid waited on me. After that I was sleepy, so I lay on the cot. I didn’t sleep very long. Wu Tu came back and tried to hypnotise me.”
“Tell me all about that,” Blair ordered.
“There is nothing much to tell. I awoke and knew at once what she was trying to do. She couldn’t possibly. I think she realized it.”
“What was she trying to get you to do?”
“To tell her the secret of Gaglajung.”
“If you know that, you’re going to tell it to me,” he said grimly.
She shook her head and made one of her exasperating answers: “When Wu Tu couldn’t hypnotise me, she asked would I tell the secret to my sweetheart? I haven’t one. I said so. Now she sends you.”
Blair’s response was more like a snarl than a laugh. He hated to have his hand forced by Wu Tu’s impudence, but there was nothing else for it, he must play his last card. He decided to do it, then, that instant. He got up and walked toward her, knowing he looked unprepossessing, to put it mildly, unshaven, in a filthy uniform.
“Henrietta,” he said. “Look me straight in the eyes. That secret’s in the line of duty. I’m going to know it whatever it costs. Last, night you said, if I were your lover, you’d try to tell me. Go ahead then and try! Goddammit, I hate to admit, I love you when there’s an obvious ulterior motive. Damn Wu Tu to hell for that! But I’m telling the truth. Don’t interrupt. I’ll not behave like a lover—not now—I’m all over bat-filth. Listen.”
There was nothing to do but listen to him. Blair, in that mood, was overwhelming, deaf to argument and blind to opposition. He stood over her. There was no avoiding his eyes.
After one swift and searching gaze she closed hers. That veil, that he had sworn the night before would cover her if she were naked, seemed almost to materialize out of the weird light. It increased his vehemence. He set to work to tear the imagined veil to shreds, with ruthless down-strokes of self-revelation, the more violent because he restrained all actual gesture.
“You want to fall out of love with me? Dammit, you can’t. I won’t let you. I’m in love with you up to the hilt. If that entitles me to know your secret, tell it. But I warn you, your lover is one thing; Blair Warrender the policeman is another, who’ll listen—and do his duty.”
Her upward glance lingered a moment. Then she looked down at her naked feet until all signs of emotion had vanished, except from her eyes. He was about to speak when she looked up again and asked him:
“Do you think the policeman would know what his duty is?”
“Try me,” he retorted.
“To oblige Wu Tu?”
He took hold of her shoulders and almost lifted her out of the chair. She stood up, facing him, and they were silent. He was furiously seeking right words. He rejected phrase after phrase as futile, unworthy, meaningless. He hated cant. Jargon at that moment would be blasphemy. But he could not make words obey him. It was she who spoke first:
“Blair, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen exactly that look in your eyes.”
“Well, what of it?” he exploded. “It’s the first time I’ve said I love you. isn’t it? You’re looking straight at the truth. And by God, if you throw Wu Tu in my teeth again I’ll go and kill her. She has been trying to hypnotise me, to make me do just what I am doing. She believes, if you’ll tell me your secret, I’ll tell it to her. I’m making love to you?”
“With your thumbs? Blair, you’re—”
“By God, I’m sorry. Did I hurt?” He took her in his arms, hugged her to him, kissed the red marks where his thumbs had pressed her shoulders. “Journey’s end!” he said. “And only God knows why it didn’t happen sooner!”
“Blair, yours feel like everlasting arms!”
“So they should. It’s forever.”
“Blair—”
“Wait. I’ve something else to say now. Keep your secret. Do you hear me? I’m not buying it. Until you’re satisfied that Wu Tu hasn’t put this over on me. I’d as soon you didn’t tell me. You, and I—dammit, I won’t spoil this. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I understand you. Blair, there’s nothing I won’t tell you—nothing. But if you don’t understand, you mustn’t blame yourself or me. I love you. I believe you. And I will trust you to the end of the world, but—”
He was about to interrupt. Words were obeying him at last. Emotion, as he held her in his arms; broke down the dam that normally restrained his speech. Words that he had never used to any woman marched before his mind in splendid sequence. But she tried to push him away. She stiffened suddenly. He held her tight and glanced, from instinct, over-shoulder in the direction she was facing. Then he, too, stiffened.
Wu Tu stood in the entrance. Her eyes glinted avarice. There was fight in her. Her smile was Borgian—sly, ingratiating, ruthless. She was stooping slightly forward, with a hand on each side of the narrow opening. She looked horribly old, as if Time, in the last hour, had overtaken her and stripped her of all but her determined will to live. It was several seconds before she spoke:
“Tricked me, did you? Too full of Taron Ling for Marie to control you? Oh, yes?”
Wu Tu came in. The Chinese girl appeared then, behind her, standing in the entrance. Wu Tu removed the electric torch from the chair-seat and sat down uninvited. The Chinese girl squatted in the entrance, lit a cigarette and smoked it insolently; she achieved a gesture with her cigarette-tube that almost shouted aloud of secret and insuperable resources.
“Well? What?” Blair demanded.
“She will tell you now,” said Wu Tu. “She is your woman. Didn’t I say it?” She nodded to herself, watching his eyes, and when she spoke again there was a hard, unfamiliar note in her voice: “But you won’t tell me—eh? You thought you fooled me, did you? Well, I’ll tell you something! Chetusingh is dead. Taron Ling killed him. I have spoken with Taron Ling. He killed him. He waits! There is no way. out except the way we came in, and the other—the Secre
t way! Let her tell it or take the consequences! Deal with me or Taron Ling! We four against Taron Ling, or you lose Henrietta!”
She had something beneath a fold of her sari, but Blair could not see what it was. Henrietta nudged him to call his attention to it. He suspected a weapon; she might easily have had one cached somewhere and have fetched it as soon as his back was turned. There was no mistaking the glitter in her eyes. She was desperate, determined—quite probably mad. The Chinese girl looked over-confident but alertly on guard. The look of confidence changed to alarm when suddenly, through the opening, there came a sound that might be an echoing footfall. She stood up— stood on tiptoe, craning her neck.
“Taron Ling!” said Wu Tu, and got out of the chair. Her expression became ghastly. Her voice, too, seemed to have grown old in a moment.
“You or Taron Ling!” she exclaimed and whipped out a nickel-plated small-bore automatic.
“Poisoned bullets! What now?”
The Chinese girl produced another automatic and covered Blair with it. She handled the weapon nervously, but it was a range at which even a duffer could hardly miss, and the nervousness made her doubly dangerous. Blair stepped in front of Henrietta and stood still, listening. Wu Tu was too full of purpose to listen; she ground out words like a panther’s snarls:
“Show your hand, Blair! Which? I’m shooting you or Taron Ling! Which is it?”
Henrietta whispered. Blair could not hear what, but he noticed she was frightened; until then, although she had detested Wu Tu she had not seemed in the least afraid of her. The worst of it was that he, too, felt afraid. Wu Tu was mad. He was sure of it. At one and the same moment he had to watch Wu Tu, speculating as to what her next move might be, and try to listen to that sound outside. It resembled a footfall, but it seemed to come no nearer. It might be a signal.