by Talbot Mundy
They surely were ruthless. It didn’t matter to them whom they hit, provided they killed us in the bargain. The man I had been sitting on was shot, for I heard him yell, and the other fellow, whom Jeremy had been holding, roared out to them in French to hold their fire. They dropped him with the second volley. It didn’t seem to me to be a good gang to belong to, and I wondered whether they had drawn lots, or what, for the privilege of taking us in the rear. Anyhow, I had saved the life of my enemy, so for once I was a Christian in deed if not by intention.
Have you ever seen a diagram of the inside of the Great Pyramid? The passages bear about the same proportion to the whole bulk that a worm-hole does to an apple. There’s a long, low, straight, narrow passage leading upward at an angle of twenty-five degrees that opens into what is called the Grand Gallery, which leads upward again to the very center of the Pyramid and to what guide-books call the King’s Chamber. The authorities had laid wooden boards on the narrow floor of the ascending passage with frets across to make the ascent easier for tourists; so, once Grim had groped for the lower end in the dark, we went up at a fair pace, Jeremy falling back behind me as soon as Strange had his second wind, shooting his pistol off at random to delay pursuit.
There’s a well-shaft, leading down into a cavern in the foundations at a break in the floor, and another passage leading into the small Queen’s Chamber at the point where the ascending ramp opens into the Grand Gallery, and there we stopped to consider matters. Provided we kept back out of the line of fire we were safe there against anyone or anything unless they tried to smoke us out, which was almost an impossibility without cans of poison gas, for it would take hours and limitless fuel to produce smoke enough. Neither did running away any farther from three men, although they had rifles, seem to be the game.
“Let’s go for them!” said Jeremy, who never recommended or enjoyed Fabian tactics in all his life.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a fool at the bottom of the ramp switched on a flashlight, and the man beside him fired a shot at random. All four of us returned the shot. The flashlight fell, with the switch on, and across the pool of light it made we saw the legs of three men vanishing. I guess two of them were pretty badly hit, and Jeremy, who went down at once to get the flashlight, reported considerable blood on the stone at the foot of the ramp.
It looked rather like the end of hostilities for that night. It was dusty and hot inside that mountain of stone; we were all getting thirsty, especially Strange, and there was nothing amusing in the prospect of a vigil in there until dawn. But, as Grim remarked, we’d probably get sniped on our way out if we tried to escape before daylight.
“And besides, we’ve a prisoner.”
Jeremy turned the flashlight on him. He started to yell again as if he were being tortured.
“You’re making a noise too soon,” said Grim. “We’re going to question you, and if your statements don’t tally with what we know, we’re going to put the glowing ends of cigarettes to all the tender places we can find.”
I disliked the prospect of that nearly as much as our prisoner did. When Grim says a thing he means it, and I would not have refused to help him.
The prisoner was a good-looking fellow, a little bit too smoothly groomed and rounded off to win instant favor with any but the underworld. His silk suit was torn, but he still looked foppish. One side of his face was almost intellectual, the other obviously criminal, and both sides were impudent, his bright eyes peering at you sharply like a sparrow’s. There was a something pathetic about him that you couldn’t exactly diagnose, and he had little bits of feet encased in patent-leather shoes, and jeweled rings on three fingers of each hand.
“We’ll take you where your yells can’t be heard,” said Grim. “Where’s the King’s Chamber, Ramsden?”
You couldn’t miss the way, now that we had a light — up the Grand Gallery, climbing along the ramp on one side — under a low block that they call the Granite Leaf — through a tiny antechamber — and into the Mystery of Mysteries, the oblong room with unadorned, polished granite walls, containing a stone-sarcophagus that never held mummy nor had lid. I’ve read eight or nine books that pretend to tell the secret of that thirty-four by seventeen room in the midst of ninety million cubic feet of squared stone and don’t believe that any of them have it right. It’s still the mother of all secrets — as the Sphinx, smiling outside in the desert admits — and the very place in which to hear secrets told. We sat our prisoner down on the dusty floor with his back to the sarcophagus, and Grim, squatting down in front of him, got busy.
Grim is an expert. He goes at his man as if unraveling a knot, picking out the key-snarl cannily. I would have asked what the fighting meant, beginning at the loose end, as it were, but not so he. He began by requesting us all to light cigarettes, so we leaned with our backs against the wall facing the entrance and smoked, although the sweat was streaming from us and tobacco tasted like salt fish; but the hint wasn’t lost on our prisoner.
“You gentlemen wouldn’t do such a thing as that?” he whined in English. “You look like decent men, surely you wouldn’t demean yourselves by burning a little man like me? You’re not seriously injured, and it wasn’t I who—”
“Answer me!” Grim commanded. “On what terms may Mr. Meldrum Strange surrender, and to whom?”
If he had turned and shot me, I wouldn’t have been more astonished. The face of Meldrum Strange was good to see.
“Why — to Madame Poulakis — he must marry Madame Poulakis — that is understood. He must marry her and make settlement.”
Strange coughed explosively, too contemptuous for words.
“Maybe I’d do instead?” Jeremy suggested. “I’d settle a rosy future on her. Strange, old boy, why not hire me to act substitute?”
“It’s not too late to surrender?” demanded Grim.
Our prisoner answered excitedly:
“Why no; no, no; of course not! Our people would be quite satisfied — only we all have to commit ourselves, you know, or there’d be no loyalty.”
“Your people, eh? What’s your name? Quick! Out with it!”
“Oh, I don’t mind telling you Poulakis is my name. I’m a nephew of the great Poulakis; everybody knows that. Ask anyone in Cairo, and they’ll tell I’m mixed up in all the Hig’ Lif’. But you can’t get evidence against me; that’s where the rub comes in! I’ve been tried lots of times. I’ve even been court-martialed. Hee!”
He was recovering his vanity, which is what some men pack instead of pluck. It’s often hard to tell the difference, until you prick the container.
“Suppose we take off one of those silk socks and a pretty patent-leather shoe. They say there’s a place between a man’s toes where fire hurts horribly,” said Grim.
Mr. Poulakis junior sat on both feet at once like a Turk and shuddered. Jeremy held the spotlight on him steadily and he hadn’t a private emotion left — couldn’t glance timidly sidewise at us without Grim knowing it.
“What proof have we,” demanded Grim, “that if Mr. Meldrum Strange surrenders he won’t be murdered?”
“No proof. Absolutely none. We never offer proof. We simply keep our promises. Never fail to do that. Never, never. That’s all the trouble with that man Strange; we promised we’d get him if he didn’t accept the offer that was made him, and we’ll do it; you needn’t doubt that for a minute. We’ll certainly do it. If we broke promises there’d be no fear of us or faith in us.”
“Are you authorized to make promises?” Grim asked him.
“Oh, no, not at all. I’m working my way in, you know. I’m what we call a gentleman cadet. You see, I had influence of the best sort, being the great Poulakis’s nephew.”
“Knew awkward secrets I suppose?” Grim suggested.
“Oh, yes. I knew a thing or two. But that wouldn’t have helped. It was even a disadvantage. But the family connection helped to offset that. Oh, that’s no secret; everyone in Cairo knows my influence. I get more practice than
perhaps you’d think.”
“Practice?”
“Oh yes. I’m a lawyer. Believe me, I win cases for the right people. If the people who are slated to lose bring a case to me, I tell them I’m too busy and send them elsewhere.”
“Why should Mr. Meldrum Strange marry Madame Poulakis?” Grim demanded. “Wouldn’t settlements be enough without that?”
“Oh dear no. We find wives for all the big fish that come into our net. They’ll make me marry, when I’m strong enough to be dangerous. The rule is that you mustn’t trust a man without a woman to keep him from turning honest. So many men, you know, get sentimentally moral as they grow successful.”
“Madame Poulakis is considered strong enough to manage Mr. Meldrum Strange?”
“Oh certainly. But, if you want my candid opinion, she’s a bit of a handful for them as things are. She’s inclined to be romantic, and that’s the deuce. All Cairo has heard of her goings-on. She believes in esoteric foolishness. Keeps an Indian magician to study the stars and do hocus-pocus. I’ve heard a story about her being in love with Meldrum Strange. No doubt she wants to be the wife of an American millionaire, and that would suit our people finely. We’re invading the United States this year, you know.”
“You want Mr. Meldrum Strange to go back there and work for you?”
“Yes, that’s it. He’d be heavy artillery, wouldn’t he! Of course, as I told you, I’m not in the inner council, only a gentleman cadet. We have cadets, too, who aren’t gentlemen, but they never learn anything except how to do the rough work. The five who were with me tonight were Plain cadets. They just do what they’re told. The highest promotion they can get is to be master-craftsmen; except that there’s said to be one grand-master-craftsman who is on the inner council. But I don’t really know about that; only members of the inner council know who the inner council really are.”
“Fortunate we caught you, isn’t it!” said Grim.
“For me, yes. Not for you, unless you’re sensible. Your only chance of escaping with your lives is to be sensible and yield. We never fail to keep our promises.”
“How d’you make it out fortunate for you that we caught you?” Grim demanded.
“Well, you see — that’s obvious, isn’t it? I was sent out tonight to get you. If I’d gone back with a failure against me, I expect that would have been the end of my prospects. But if I deliver you alive they’ll consider me for a more important post. I’m glad to have this chance to talk with you. You can kill me, but that won’t help you. You can take me back with you to Cairo, perhaps, and lodge me in the jail — also perhaps; but I think you would never reach Cairo. If you do reach Cairo, you can report all I’ve said; somebody will write down your statement with his tongue in his cheek, and you can all four solemnly swear to it. Unofficially quite a number of people will believe you, because you will be telling what quite a number of people know. But the newspapers will say you are mad, and officially your story will be described as a mere mare’s nest. Also, you will die. Our agents are everywhere.”
“Whereas, if Mr. Meldrum Strange surrenders?” Grim suggested.
“Ah! Then it is equally simple. If he surrenders and gives proper guarantees, there will then be initiation. Once initiated, he may recommend you others. If recommended, you will be given a chance to prove your availability. But if he prefers not to recommend you, you will be killed, of course, in order to protect him.”
“What is the use of listening to you, if you’re not allowed to make promises?” Grim asked him.
“I am allowed to accept the surrender of Meldrum Strange.”
At that he raised his voice, and his eyes sought those of Meldrum Strange among the shadows.
“Let Meldrum Strange take a leaf out of our book,” he said slowly. “Let him remember promises. I’m told that once in New York he kissed Madame Poulakis and said to her, ‘When you’re tired of your crook of a husband, come to me. I’m single.’ They tell me Meldrum Strange has never married. What a romance for him! What an adventure! I wish I were in his shoes!”
Grim thought a minute, in the way a man studies a chess-board, taking his chin in his left hand.
“Give me that torch, and take him out of earshot, Jeremy,” he said at last.
So Jeremy took our prisoner by the shoulder and shoved him out under the Granite Leaf, through the so-called anteroom into the Grand Gallery, whispering out of the corner of his mouth as he handed the torch to Grim —
“Cast my vote, Jim.”
Grim waited until Jeremy’s whistle announced that he had reached the farther end of the Grand Gallery; but he had already made his mind up, and his face as he went and leaned his back against the sarcophagus was a picture of satisfied amusement. “How about it, Strange?” he asked. “If Grim, Ramsden, and Ross agree to join this hunt with you, are you game to surrender to that gang and track things down to a conclusion?”
CHAPTER VIII. “Indiscreet subjected to sympathy.”
Meldrum Strange hesitated palpably. He didn’t like handing over to Grim the direction in general, which was what Grim’s proposal amounted to. I don’t think he was afraid of being killed; but he didn’t enjoy the possibility of being found with proof on his person of connection with crooks. Obviously, if ever the crooks should begin to suspect him, their simplest course would be to expose him and leave the law to take its course.
“You see,” said Grim, making the flashlight dance on the ancient wall in front of him, “the only possible way to destroy this organization is from the inside. Their strength must lie in having accomplices in government departments. So if we join them and try to protect ourselves at the same time by informing the authorities, some spy in a high place is sure to give our game away. It’s the whole hog or nothing. Either quit, and escape with our lives — which I think I can show you how to do; or turn our backs on society and plunge right in, trusting to clear ourselves at the proper time. My advice to you, Strange, is to back out of it and run for cover. That’s personal; man to man.”
“I won’t do that,” Strange answered, beginning to chew one of his cigars. “I suppose we could take the High Commissioner into our confidence.”
Grim laughed.
“He’d put the hat on the whole thing right away. Imagine yourself High Commissioner. Imagine an American millionaire coming to you with any such proposal. Think what a fix you’d be in if he should get scuppered, with the U.S. newspapers roaring for your blood, and the members of this secret gang working to prove that the dead millionaire was really responsible for all the sins of Egypt! You would tell the millionaire to get out of the country quick. You made a bad break consulting him yesterday, if you don’t mind my talking frankly.”
“Then you propose to join this gang?”
“Exactly. There has got to be a point of contact. You can’t catch fish on dry land. You can’t squelch crime from an armchair. You’ve got to dig down in.”
“Good enough, but Hell, you heard what was said about guarantees. They’ll expect me to commit a murder, or something like that.
“They’ll know you wouldn’t take to murder. They know human nature. They’ll have everything arranged. Depend on it, if you accept their terms, they’ll take a first mortgage on your freedom, as well as considerable cash. And after that, if one of us makes one false step, ‘Mafeesh — finish!’ as the Arabs say. Watch your step, Strange!”
We discussed the pros and cons for half an hour; and little by little, what with the ancient mystery of the place with its four smoke-blackened, hand-rubbed granite walls that have stood for five thousand years without as much as hinting at their purpose, the excitement of fighting in that ancient place, and all his determination that had brought him as far as Egypt on a quixotic mission, Strange did what was inevitable.
“I’ll go you, Grim,” he said at last. “I’ve no family to speak of; only distant relatives, who’ll contest my will if I don’t outlive them. There are clubs I belong to that — oh, well, all that looks rather small from
this distance. Call your friend Jeremy. I’ll go you.”
So I whistled and Jeremy drove Poulakis junior along in front of him, taking the flashlight back from Grim and turning it on each of our faces. He didn’t need to ask questions. Neither did Poulakis.
“How should I communicate with Madame Poulakis?” Strange demanded.
“Easily!” Poulakis answered perkily. “Send me. If you were to leave this pyramid without sending me in advance, you would never reach Cairo alive, you know. Even if I were with you, that wouldn’t help. They’d kill me too! The only thing is for me to let the right people know that you’ve surrendered at discretion.”
“How do you propose to return to Cairo?” Strange demanded.
“Well, I shall not use your car, for it will not be there. By the way, you owe me for the hire of that car. I paid the man two pounds and sent him off, so as to get him out of the way. I expected to recoup myself out of your pockets after we had shot you. I have saved you three pounds; you had agreed to pay him much too much. Suppose you liquidate the obligation; honor between thieves, you know!”
It was as good as a show to see Strange battle with emotion as he peeled two 1-pound notes off a wad and passed them over. He enjoyed it about as much as a missionary would like putting wood under a cannibal’s cooking pot, and Grim turned his face away to hide a smile. But Jeremy jumped to the occasion, establishing himself firmly in the good opinion of Poulakis junior.
“Match you for it!” he said instantly. “Come on. I’ll toss you for the two pounds!”
Jeremy’s silver coin hung in the air. Poulakis cried “Heads!” and Jeremy gave him two more pounds, hardly glancing at the coin as he caught it.