Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Gosh! But I never saw the like of it — I, who have seen the sword-dance under Sikaram when the rival clans were showing off before the women! I’ve seen a shark, too, taking fish — left-right, left-right, and away again; and more than once I’ve seen a lion spring between the watch-fires, make his kill, and escape. But never, on all the continents, have I seen action that could hold a candle to that sword-work of Narayan Singh’s.

  He slew those five committee-men in five strokes so swift that they resembled one, and then went blazing, berserker mad in mid-room, swinging, swiping, lunging, shouting “Ho!” as his blade struck home, and driving the astonished foe in front of him as a bull clears men out of a field.

  Some of them fired, but fired and ran too quickly for straight aim, most of them facing him, but crowding backward in one another’s way; and in thirty seconds more the thing was over. Kennedy stood in the door of the anteroom in evening dress, smiling, holding a loaded pistol behind his back.

  “That will do now,” he said quietly. His voice had that peculiar penetrating quality that I had noticed in the hotel when he first came forward to meet me.

  And it did do, for behind him, and through both the other doors, his hand- picked corps of officers came surging in; and one of the most peculiar things in this cantankerous old world is the resemblance between a sudden fight and an explosion. When it’s over, it’s over — done with — nothing left of it but wreckage and the acrid smell of powder.

  Kennedy’s arrangements had been neat, and they worked in the nick of time, which of course is a sign of genius; but as Grim argued afterward, over a whisky and soda with a man whose name must not appear, if he hadn’t been so particularly careful to catch all the small fry by first surrounding the house and then having his posse enter from every side at once, he might have taken those five principals alive; and that in turn might have led to the capture of worse rascals higher up.

  But, as Kennedy suggested, it wasn’t a bad night’s work for all that. There were ambulances ready, and we had twenty-eight living prisoners including women to stow in them, all of whom had seen the committee-men killed and, no longer having them to fear, were anxious to tell all they knew.

  Some of the officers drove away with the prisoners, to see them safely under lock and key, and the rest of us, with Zelmira Poulakis, foregathered in another room to patch up wounds and compare notes.

  CHAPTER XIV. “I but acted as other men would act!”

  Zelmira Poulakis had the floor first, when old Narendra Nath had finished putting strips of plaster on her scratches. We found the old man cowering in another room, making magic under cover of a purple cloak.

  “I don’t care what happens now,” she said. “I have been a criminal ever since I was married; first because Poulakis taught me, and it seemed good fun; later on because I was compelled. I hoped this forced marriage to Mr. Meldrum Strange might prove a way of escape for me. I didn’t believe he would marry me, and yet I half-hoped he would, because there was no other hope in sight.

  “And then this Indian, Narayan Singh, said that if Major Grim and his friends had anything to do with Meldrum Strange, then Meldrum Strange was ‘pakka,’ as he called it, and he offered to wager his right hand against my slipper that if he could only talk with any of the sahibs there would be no doubt of the outcome. So it was agreed that when we reached the hotel this evening he should seize his opportunity.”

  “She speaks truth,” said Narayan Singh. “But I have told my end of the tale already to Ramsden sahib. Let Jimgrim tell the rest. Those women had orders to bring Jimgrim in their carriage, and I had orders to slay him; but old Narendra Nath, who brought the order to me, knowing well by that time that his magic took no effect on me, bade me not slay.

  “ ‘I am an old man,’ said he, ‘and I dare not wholly disobey these men; but I have seen a vision, and the stars are favorable. So I say; ‘slay not, but make believe to fall in with the plan.’

  “And so I did as he said, being minded to do so in any case, whether he so advised or not. And when we reached this house, and the men at the door disarmed Jimgrim, I seized him from behind, whispering two words in his ear; and I dragged him upstairs into a room beside that in which the women waited. There he and I held a conference, and later I did as Jimgrim bade me.”

  “Then it wasn’t true,” I asked, “that Grim was taken before the committee and examined ahead of us?”

  “No, not a word of truth in that,” Grim answered. “Narayan Singh gave me the general layout; and I knew that Kennedy had most of the facts from Ramsden, so it was a reasonable gamble, as well as our only chance, that Kennedy would act swiftly. I’ve worked under Kennedy, and know his method fairly well; I figured he’d surround the house and rush it. So the one important thing to do was to gain time. Narayan Singh had orders to produce me — dead — at a given signal. They thought he was hypnotized and were sure he’d obey. So I had him drag me into the anteroom, and he looked so wild that the fellow in there didn’t dare examine me to see whether I was properly dead. But the credit for the whole business belongs to Narayan Singh. My share in it was—”

  “Nay, nay, sahib!” the Sikh answered. “I but acted as any other man would act. I take no credit. I did no more than to scout a little, and convey my information to the proper quarter. Yet, if there is any little merit in what I did — if burra sahib Kennedy considers that the sirkar is beholden to me — then, there is a favor I might ask, if permission were granted.”

  “What is it?” demanded Kennedy. “I can’t grant requests, you know. I can only recommend that they be granted.”

  “The lady Zelmira, sahib — what is to become of her? I swore to serve her to the end of this affair. I beg, then, that she be not thrown in jail. That is surely a little thing; will the sahib grant it?”

  Kennedy laughed. Everybody laughed, except Zelmira Poulakis and Narayan Singh. The Sikh looked offended, and she miserable.

  “I suppose it must be amusing, since you all find it so,” she said, holding her chin up bravely. “But it does not seem funny to me. What do you intend to do with me? May I go home first and get some things?”

  “I humbly beg your pardon,” Kennedy answered. “We were laughing at our friend Narayan Singh’s naïveté, not at your predicament. I don’t know, Madame, what is to be done with you. My authority is limited. But if you should offer to turn State’s Evidence—”

  “Which I do!” she interrupted.

  “ — and should undertake to help the Administration in every way possible to bring the members of this gang to their deserts—”

  “Which I certainly will!” she assured him.

  “ — then I would take upon myself the responsibility of requesting you to return to your own home, where, if you will stay indoors and keep quiet, you will be subjected for the present to no other inconvenience than a trustworthy guard, who will protect you from gang-vengeance. If your evidence should be accepted by the State, you would afterward be set entirely free.”

  THE END

  MOSES AND MRS. AINTREE

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I. “We can reconstruct the whole of human history.”

  CHAPTER II. “Moses Miles.”

  CHAPTER III. “A P.O.P. original charter member.”

  CHAPTER IV. “His name was Gulad.”

  CHAPTER V. “Oh you Promis’ Lan’!”

  CHAPTER VI. “No form of abstinence. No fasts. No saints’ days.”

  CHAPTER VII. “Murdered at seven fifteen.”

  CHAPTER VIII. “He likes notes of rather large denominations.”

  CHAPTER IX. “And if they all offers me a li’l sweet’nin’, Cap’n?”

  CHAPTER X. “Res egaliter omnibus!”

  CHAPTER XI. “Man, the plate’s gone!”

  CHAPTER XII. “Feller, you were right just now!”

  CHAPTER XIII. “Lake Tahoe don’t give up her dead.”

  CHAPTER I. “We can reconstruct the whole of human history.”

  WELL, you k
now how the firm of Grim, Ramsden, & Ross had its beginnings. We have had to use all our wits to save ourselves from being used by one government against another; rivals for political power have tried to employ us for their own ends and have succeeded more than once. You’d need the brains of an arch-angel and Satan combined to see through all the proposals that get brought to us. But there’s reasonable money in it, and it’s good fun; we’ve cracked a hard-boiled egg or two, and spilled some beans.

  Strange gave Grim sole charge of the near-East end, purchased Narayan Singh’s discharge from the army, and left the two of them in Cairo, planting Jeremy in London. Strange and I went to the States, where, with the aid of his old office staff, we hammered through the organizing and incorporation; and while we were in the middle of all that, the first “view forward” came over the wires from Grim. Strange was in Washington.

  MEET JOHN BRICE NEW YORK S. S. OLYMPIC. O.K. FOLLOW UP. GRIM.

  I boarded the Olympic along with the pilot away outside Sandy Hook. It was early morning, but Brice was pacing the deck with a companion, and I observed them both for several minutes after a steward had told me who they were.

  Brice was short, with a close-clipped gray beard, wiry, dried out, and resolute-looking. He stepped forward gamely with a decided limp, and made way for other people apparently unconsciously. I guessed his age between fifty and fifty-five.

  His companion was about two inches taller, angular, and lean, a Scot whichever way you viewed him; a fellow with one of those noses that warn you not to waste persuasion on him, he’ll decide for himself. He had heavy, sandy-colored eyebrows, broad shoulders, and a sort of side-swing that went with them. He wore a heathercolored Highland tam-o’-shanter and a small leather bag slung over his shoulder by a strap. The steward told me his name was Allison, and that he had shared Brice’s stateroom on the voyage.

  I introduced myself, and Brice chose one of those leather-upholstered corners in the smoking-room, and curled himself up cross-legged, staring at me frankly and fairly. He made no effort to disguise the fact that he was making an inventory of my pros and cons. His companion, seated next to him, did the same, perhaps not quite so sympathetically.

  “We met Grim in Cairo,” Brice began at last. “Allison and I are Egyptologists; we’ve been nineteen years in Egypt on behalf of the British Museum. The Egyptian law as regards antiquities is strict, and no kind of excavating is allowed without a permit, which is only granted to representatives of such institutions as the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, and so on. All discoveries have to be reported, and nothing may be removed from the spot without permission in writing.

  “Allison and I have specialized in the period during which the Israelites were in Egypt, with particular reference to Moses. Very little is known about Moses, historically speaking. In the biblical account not even the name is given of the Egyptian princess who is said to have discovered him among the reeds. It was our purpose, if possible, to throw light on all that period, establishing as many facts as might be—”

  “And exploding a number of absur-r-d traditions,” put in Allison. “We’ve disproved more than ye’d imagine possible.”

  “We have established the fact definitely that Moses did exist,” Brice continued. “Whether or not one man wrote the Decalogue; whether or not one individual led that horde of Israelites and established the ten commandments and the law, we have proved that Moses did exist. He lived at a time that corresponds roughly with that of the Israelitish colony in Egypt. Our proofs, however, are missing.”

  “Do you expect to find them in New York?” I asked. “You’ll find Moses’ family is not extinct.”

  “Our quest has nothing to do with Jews,” Brice answered.

  “The most astonishing thing about the Jewish race is their indifference to the monuments of their own past. Allison and I discovered a temple in which Moses undoubtedly studied that ‘learning of the Egyptians’ with which he is credited. There, we found the symbols and insignia that he used in the performance of the secret rites. Those have been stolen, and it might occur to you that Jews would be the logical people on whom suspicion should rest. But Jews have nothing whatever to do with it.

  “We kept our discovery secret. It was so important, and the finds themselves were of such intrinsic value that it seemed wisest to close up everything until we could confer with the proper authorities regarding the disposal of what could be easily removed.

  “One of our staff was an Abyssinian, an individual named Gulad, who had been educated in America. He had served us faithfully for nine or ten years, and you know the proverb, ‘If a comrade in arms is what you need, buy a Nubian slave; if you want to grow rich, buy an Abyssinian.’ That fellow Gulad was the finest steward of resources that we ever had. Nothing escaped his notice. Nobody — not even a desert Bedouin — could steal from him, and he was sufficiently educated to appreciate the importance of antiquities, aside from the mere price they might bring in the open market.

  “We had entered the temple through a hole in one corner of the wall after tunneling through sand for more than a hundred yards, shoring up the tunnel with timber as we went. Most of the important finds were in a great stone chest weighing several tons, almost the exact counterpart of the so-called sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid, only having a lid that fits tightly in place. The chest in the Great Pyramid has no lid.

  “Whatever had been found outside the stone chest we placed inside it except for one small item. Then, with the aid of Gulad and ten men, we lifted the lid back, cemented up the breach we had made in the temple wall, pulled down about a dozen cross-pieces of timber from the roof of our tunnel, so as to let the sand fall in and close the passage against thieves, and came away, leaving Gulad on the spot in charge.”

  “You understand,” put in Allison, “we never mistrusted Gulad for a minute.”

  “Never for a minute,” Brice agreed. “He was as enthusiastic as ourselves. He used to sit and talk with us in the evenings, displaying an intricate knowledge of Bible history. He had theories of his own on a number of things that have puzzled antiquarians. He could read hieroglyphics. We used to give him worn and broken inscriptions to decipher, and he had a fair average of success with them.”

  “Aye, we were well taken in,” said Allison. “We might ha’ known it’s not in the nature of an honest black man to be receiving letters from all quarters of the globe.”

  Brice laughed.

  “It never occurred to us to ask what his voluminous correspondence was about. Now and then we’d see him writing until long after midnight in his tent by candle-light.”

  “We’d see his shadow on the side of the tent, ye understand,” put in Allison. “We respected his privacy exactly as if he were a white man like ourselves.”

  “Well,” Brice continued, “we left Gulad in charge, and took the train for Cairo. That meant a day on camel-back before we reached the railway, and a day and a night in the train. When we reached Cairo Galbraith, the official we had to see, was away; and we had to wait three days for him.

  “When Galbraith returned — he arrived at midnight, and we kept him up all that night talking, though he was tired out — he thought our news so important that he made up his mind to return with us and have our find uncovered in his presence. That meant more delay. One way and another, it was eleven days after our departure before we arrived with Galbraith at sunset, tired and hungry on the scene of our excavations. The camp had completely disappeared! There did not remain one trace of it!”

  “Nothing to eat! Nowhere to go!” said Allison.

  “No lanterns or candles — nothing but a box or two of matches — no servants, except the two Arabs who had come with us to look after the camels we rode — no firearms — not a word of explanation. Nothing but Egyptian darkness, and the black mouth of a tunnel leading underground! We slept in the tunnel that night.”

  “Speak for yourself!” remarked Allison dryly.

  “When morning c
ame there was a little dim light down the tunnel, for it points due eastward, and for a short while the rising sun penetrates almost to the end. We saw then that the tunnel was not as we had left it. The overhead beams had been replaced, the loose sand carried out, and then three beams had been removed again to let sand once more block the tunnel. In other words, somebody had paid a visit to our find.

  “It was three more days before we could get together another gang and dig through to our temple. The digging took another whole day, and then we saw that whoever had paid the visit in our absence hadn’t taken the trouble to reset the masonry. The hole yawned as wide as if we’d never blocked it up, and nearly all the stones were pushed inside the building.”

  “I examined the cement at once,” said Allison. “The masonry had been broken down before our backs were turned. That put outside conspir-racy out of the question. There was only one man who knew enough and had intelligence enough to dig straight to the spot and use crow-bars before the cement was dry. It was Gulad’s doing.”

  “Be that as it may,” said Brice, “we proceeded to examine the temple. It’s a wonderful temple—”

  “Per-r-fect!” exclaimed Allison. “The pattern and inspiration of the chastity of later Greek. design! But we’ll not bore ye with technicalities. Proceed.”

  “Nothing in the main hall had been touched,” said Brice. “We entered the smaller priests’ chamber at the rear, in which we had discovered the great stone chest; and I told you how we had replaced the lid. That lid weighed a ton. It was set leaning against a wall. The stone chest was empty. Absolutely empty!”