Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Do you know how to do that?” he asked.

  “No,” said Strange.

  “I know you don’t. I’ve kept that secret twenty years. Show you another.”

  “No,” Strange answered. “I get the drift of your genius. Major Grim, I understand you’re senior partner of this unusual firm.”

  “We’re ready to listen to your proposal,” said Grim.

  “Can I depend on your silence if you shouldn’t like the offer after I’ve made it?”

  “I’ve kept Government secrets for a number of years,” Grim answered. “Depend on all three of us absolutely.”

  “Suppose you all come to my room.”

  “Here’s the best place,” Grim answered. “We can see all ways, and can’t be overheard.”

  So, as happens I daresay oftener than folk suspect, a secret that had never yet passed the lips of its first guardian was trotted out, not within four walls, but in full view of the street.

  “I’ll begin at the beginning,” said Strange, biting on a new cigar. “I’m an egoist. Nothing matters to a man but what he does. Not what he gets, but what he does. That’s my religion, and the whole of it. I’ve amassed an enormous fortune. Never had partners. I regard my fortune as the product of my own use of natural gifts in compliance with universal laws. I never consciously broke a written law accumulating it, but I’ve often done things that experience has since taught me are not in the general interest, and I believe that what I do in the general interest is the only thing that counts as far as I’m concerned. I’m face to face with a fact, a question, and a condition. I have the fortune. What am I going to do with it? No good comes of doing things for people. That’s the problem. What shall I do? It’s up to me to use my money in the general interest.”

  “Why worry? Pay off a part of your national debt, and go to sleep,” suggested Jeremy.

  “Huh! I’d lie awake to curse myself if I wasted a nickel in that way,” Strange retorted. “Our government would simply buy an extra battleship. If we all refused to pay for war there would be none. I’ve finished paying for it.”

  “Oh, are you one of those men without a country?” asked Jeremy blandly. “One red flag for all of us, and a world doing lockstep in time to the Internationale.”

  Strange liked that. The question threw light on Jeremy’s own view-point. He laughed — just one gruff bark like a watchdog’s.

  “The man who doesn’t put his country first might as well neglect his own body and expect to do business,” he answered. “On the other hand, a state is composed of individuals, of whom I’m one, with an opinion. I obey the laws. There’s not even wine in my cellar. But I make use of every opening the law allows to escape paying for armaments that I don’t approve of. I lose income by it, because the tax-exempt securities come high; but that loss is part of my contribution to the general interest. That’s what I, personally, do in that particular instance, and intend to keep on doing.”

  “Do you propose to start a society or hire us to preach?” Jeremy suggested.

  “I belong to no societies. I’m an individualist, believing that what I do is my concern, and what other folk do is their concern, subject to the law as it stands on the statute books. Charity leaves me unconvinced. I don’t care to endow colleges. I paid the men who taught me what I wanted to know, with money that I earned.”

  “Well? Where are we getting to?” demanded Grim.

  “To this: I made my money all over the world. I propose to use it all over the world. Nobody can fool me with a bald statement that peoples are self- governing. They should be, but they’re not given a chance to be. They’re herded up in mobs, blarneyed, coaxed, cheated, and made fools of; and because some of them have free institutions, they’re blamed for the result, while the real culprits get away with the plunder. I’m after the real culprits. I want you men to join me.”

  Grim whistled. So did Jeremy. So did I. Three notes of a rising scale.

  “D’you suppose you’ve any right to take that on yourself?” asked Jeremy.

  “As much right as any reformer has, and more,” Strange answered, “for I intend to pay my own expenses! I’ll make it my business to fall foul of these international crooks, who are laughing behind the scenes at the world’s misery. My business is to seek those swine out, force an issue — a personal issue, mind — and swat them!”

  “You want to be a sort of international police?” suggested Grim.

  “I do not. An international police would be answerable to an international government, and there is none. These devils I’m after obey no government. Governments are tricked by them into furthering their designs. Governments are made up of individuals, each of whom can be worked, persuaded, bribed, blackmailed or deceived at some time in some way. The rascals I’m after play with kings and cabinets like pieces on a chess-board. They play crooked boss with the whole world for a stage, and they’re safe because they’ve only got to deal with the representatives of majorities. They’re persons, dealing with impersonal ministries. I’m going to make it a personal issue with them in every instance. But I have to work in secret, or I’ll last about a minute and a half. That’s how you three men happen to be the first who ever heard a word from me on a subject that I’ve been pondering for five-and-twenty years.”

  “Strange, old boy,” said Jeremy. “You altruists are all plausible; and you all turn out in the end to be feathering your own nests.”

  “My impression of you is that you’re honest,” Strange answered.

  “Honest? You don’t know me,” laughed Jeremy. “I posed as a prophet of Islam in an Arab village. They used to pay me to make the dead talk from their tombs, and I charged ’em so much extra for every ten years the corpse had been dead and buried. Sure I’m honest.”

  “You keep good company,” Strange answered. “How about you, Ramsden? Are you interested?”

  “Interested, yes,” I answered. “Grim is the senior partner. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

  “How about it, Major Grim?”

  “How would it pay?” Grim asked.

  “Five thousand dollars a year for each of you, and all expenses.”

  “Would you expect us to obey you blindly? The answer is ‘No’ in that case,” Grim assured him.

  “Strict confidence, and the best judgment of all of you. Once we agree together on a course my instructions must be carried out.”

  “How about additions to the staff? I’d have to choose the men I’ll work with,” said Grim.

  “I approve of that.”

  “Very well, Mr. Strange. We three will talk it over and give you a definite answer tonight,” said Grim; and we got up together and left Strange sitting there.

  CHAPTER III. “I have sworn a vow. Henceforward I serve none but queens!”

  We had not yet made up our minds, but were dining with Meldrum Strange under a great ornamental palm by a splashing fountain, discussing anything from China to Peru that had no bearing on Strange’s offer, when a coal-black Egyptian servant, arrayed in fez, silver-laced purple jacket, and white cotton smock, brought Grim a scented envelope. The scent had a peculiar, pervading strength that commanded attention without challenging. The envelope was made from linen, stiff, thick, and colored faintly mauve, but bore no address. The seal was of yellow wax, poured on liberally and bearing the impress of a man’s thumb. No woman ever had a thumb of that size. Grim turned the thing over half a dozen times, the servant standing motionless behind his chair. When he tore it open at last the contents proved equally remarkable. In English, written with a damaged quill pen, was a message from Narayan Singh that looked as if he had held the paper in one unsteady hand at arm’s length, and made stabs at it with the other. But it was to the point.

  If the sahib will bring the other sahibs, he shall look into the eyes of heaven and know all about hell. The past is past. The future none knoweth. The present is now. Come at once. — NARAYAN SINGH.

  Grim asked the servant for more particulars — his master’s nam
e, for instance, and where he lived. He answered in harsh Egyptian Arabic that he had been told to show us the way. He absolutely refused to say who had sent him, or whose paper the message was written on; and he denied all knowledge of Narayan Singh. All he professed to know was the way to the house where we were wanted immediately. So we all went upstairs and packed repeating pistols into the pockets of our tuxedos.

  Meldrum Strange agreed to follow us in a hired auto, and to take careful bearings of whatever house we might enter; after which he would watch the place from a distance until midnight. If we didn’t reappear by twelve o’clock, it was agreed that he should summon help and have the place raided.

  Looking back, I rather wonder that we took so much precaution. Cairo was quiet. There hadn’t been a political disturbance for six weeks, which is a long time as things go nowadays. The soldiers of the British garrison no longer had to go about in dozens for self-protection, and for more than a fortnight the rule against gathering in crowds had been suspended. Nevertheless, we were nervous, and kept that assignation armed.

  A carriage waited for us in the luminous shadow in front of the hotel steps. It was a very sumptuous affair, drawn by two bay thoroughbreds and driven by another graven ebony image, in fez, blue frock-coat with silver buttons, and top-boots. There was a footman in similar livery, and behind the carriage, between the great C springs, was a platform for the enigma who had brought the message.

  We were off at a clattering trot almost before the door slammed shut, swaying through the badly lighted streets to the tune of silver harness bells and the shouts of the driver and footman.

  Mere pedestrians had to “imshi” and do it quick.

  Lord! That was a carriage. We struck matches to admire the finery. It was lined with velvet, on which an artist had painted cupids and doves. There were solid silver brackets, holding silver tubes, that held real orchids — cypropedium expensivum, as Jeremy identified them.

  The curtains that draped the windows were hand-made lace — Louis the Something-or-other — half as old as France; and the thing to put your feet on was covered with peacocks’ bosoms done in wood, inlaid with semiprecious stones. There were mirrors galore to see your face in, but no way of seeing out of the windows without tearing the lace, and we didn’t feel afraid enough to do that.

  There was nothing to remind us of the ordinary, hum-drum world, except the noisy exhaust of Meldrum Strange’s hired car closely pursuing us, and even that sounded detached, you might say, like the sounds of next-door neighbors whom you don’t yet know.

  We didn’t have to worry about what direction we were taking, since Strange was attending to that, but there seemed to be no effort made to confuse us. We kept to the straight, wide streets, and crossed an arm of the Nile by the stone bridge into the better residential quarter, where mansions stand amid palms and shrubbery behind high stone walls. Nor did we leave the Nile far behind us.

  The faintly lighted interior of the carriage grew suddenly as dark as death as we passed under an echoing arch, and out again on gravel between an avenue of trees. We caught the click behind us of an iron gate, and wondered what Meldrum Strange would do, but hardly had time to think of him before the carriage came to a stand under a portico and the door was opened with a jerk.

  We stepped out into a realm of mystery. We could see part of the outline of a great stone house, built in the semi-Oriental, barbaric style of modern Egypt; but the only light was from a Chinese paper lantern in the middle of the portico roof, throwing quivering golden shadows on a front door that was almost entirely covered with bronze Chinese dragons.

  To right and left was a silhouette of fragrant shrubs against the blue Egyptian night; and there wasn’t a sound except what we made. When the carriage drove away and the click of horseshoes vanished somewhere around a corner there was utter silence, until the man who had brought the message stepped up to the front door like a ghost and pushed an electric bell.

  Did it ever strike you that sound has color? The din that bell made was dazzling, diamond white, reflecting all the colors of the prism in its facets. When I spoke of it afterwards I found that Grim had noticed the same thing.

  It was about two minutes before the door opened. Two black six-footers, who looked smug enough to be eunuchs, swung both leaves of the door wide open suddenly, and stood aside with chins in the air to let us pass.

  * * * * *

  We entered a restfully lighted hall that might have belonged to a monastery, for it was all white stone without an ornament except simplicity. The ceiling was supported by plaster stone arches, and the whole effect was so unexpectedly different from that outside that it froze you into silence. It was like looking forward to the circus and finding yourself in church. There was even dim organ music descending from somewhere out of sight.

  The stairs were on our right hand, of stone, severely plain, with a hand- forged iron balustrade that might have been plundered from an old New England mansion. The same black-visaged minion who had brought the note and rung the bell led the way up them, we following abreast, in step and silent until Jeremy whistled the first few bars of the “Dead March” from Saul.

  “This feels like kissing a fish,” he exclaimed. “There’s no afterglow. Let’s warm things up!”

  But there was no need. We passed into yet another world before the echo of his words had died. I hardly mean that figuratively either. Through a high, warm gray-and-silver curtain at the stair-head we stepped into a nearly square, enormous room at the back of the house. Four, high-arched, open windows along one side overlooked the Nile.

  Maybe you’ve seen the Nile through a window at night, with the curved spars of boats as old as Moses motionless against the purple sky and the moonlight bathing everything in silver silence? It’s worth the trip.

  The light within the room was of several colors, shining through stained- glass shades and causing all the rich furniture to glow in a sort of opalescent mystery. Simplicity was as much the key-note here as below; but this was simple extravagance. The carpet alone — one piece of old rose hand-work reaching from wall to wall — was likely worth the High Commissioner’s year’s salary; and the tapestry that covered the long wall facing the windows probably contributed to the fall of Marie Antoinette by helping bankrupt the poor devils who had to pay for it.

  There was an Oriental touch, produced by long divans with silken cushions ranged against the walls. A door at the far end was hidden by a curtain of amber beads — old amber, each piece polished into ripeness on a woman’s breast; I walked over and examined them.

  We sat down facing the windows, sinking a foot deep into silken cushions — and sniffed; there was the same scent that was on the envelope — jasmine, I think, mixed with some subtler stuff — and still the same far-away chords of organ music.

  “Let’s sing hymns!” suggested Jeremy. “Or shall I do tricks? I know a dandy one with cushions.”

  “Please do both. I would love to watch you!” said a woman’s voice; and though we hadn’t heard the door move, we could see her behind the amber curtain. She came forward at once.

  “Zelmira Poulakis,” she announced, when we had told our names.

  I may as well say right now, and have done with it, that I know nothing about women of her kind. My mother was a wrinkled old gray-haired lady with nothing subtle about her, but rather a plain straight-forwardness that made you understand; and somehow, she has always stood for Woman in my memory, most of the other types being incomprehensible — welcome to anything if they will let me alone in the smoking-room.

  I suppose Zelmira Poulakis is a type, although I’ve never seen another like her. She is Levantine, and those she-Levantines while they are still young are supple, vivacious, with eyes that say more than their lips, and lips that can kiss, curse or coax with equal genius. She had on a frock all stitched with glittering beetles’ wings, that just a little more than reached her shins, and they were very shapely shins; it was charity and art to show them.

  She had
the poise and ease and grace that go with the sort of education women get, who are “presented” at the smaller European courts, and her jewels, which were few, were splendid, but hardly more so than her eyes.

  Jeremy — you can’t put him out of countenance — drew up a sort of throne made of elephants’ tusks, and she sat down facing us, laughing, speaking English with only trace enough of accent to make it pretty.

  “You look rather bewildered and I can’t blame you,” she began. “What must you have thought! But I’ve heard such wonderful accounts of you that I couldn’t resist the temptation. Will you forgive me?”

  “Not we!” laughed Jeremy. “Forgiveness would imply that we didn’t like being here. If Narayan Singh is in your hands he’s all right.”

  “But he isn’t! Oh, he isn’t! If only he were!” she exclaimed with a comical grimace.

  “Suppose you shut up, Jeremy, and let her tell us,” Grim suggested.

  Well, she told us. She was good at telling things, and a beautiful woman in a gorgeous setting is hypnotic, mistrust her how you will. We three listened to the end without interrupting to challenge her statements.

  “Last night,” she began, “there was a ball at the Greek Legation. My husband was Greek, although I am not. I was returning from the ball in my carriage with a friend at about half-past four this morning, and had stopped at the door of my friend’s house about a mile from here to set her down; in fact, she had already left the carriage and my footman was in the act of closing the carriage door, when he was suddenly thrust aside by an enormous Indian dressed in a turban and a blue serge suit. My footman is a giant, but the Indian flung him aside with one hand with hardly an effort, and I’m afraid I screamed.”