by Talbot Mundy
“Why?”
“B-because of the plates,” she stammered. “I am totally discredited.”
“You’ve made arrangements to show those plates at secret meetings of the P.O.P.?”
She nodded.
“Hadn’t they been shown, to anybody yet?”
“Gulad wouldn’t show them. He was afraid of losing them. He was difficult to manage. He seemed to think that he was being jockeyed out of his proper place at the head of the movement. He had extraordinary fits of jealousy, and I sent for Bh—”
“Yes,” I said. “Go on; you sent for Bhopal Gosh. What for?”
“I had to have advice. Bhopal Gosh was my teacher — the most resourceful man I ever knew. He came — interviewed Gulad — told me that he would manage him for me — and went away again, leaving Gulad more unmanageable than before. So I sent for another man from Boston — Pananda — a man who was my teacher formerly. But all he did was to advise me to abandon the P.O.P. I shall have to abandon it. I can’t help myself.”
“Pananda gave you good advice,” I answered, “but you’re going to undo some of the harm you’ve done before you just step back! You’re going to help catch Bhopal Gosh!”
“I can’t! I daren’t!”
“Very well; come with me to police headquarters. My firm will turn its information over to the police.”
“Mr. Ramsden, you don’t know what you ask.”
“Better than you do! I’m better able to judge the amount of harm you’ve done already all over the world.”
“It was Bhopal Gosh, not I. Every move we made, every detail of our propaganda, has all been thought out and directed by him in advance. He had an intellect that I sometimes think is godlike, and — look at Gulad, for instance — poor Gulad, who, I suppose, refused to do his bidding! I tell you, Mr. Ramsden, that man Bhopal Gosh will get you, and get me too, if he isn’t let alone! Leave him to the police! Leave me out of it!”
“You’re in it already,” I answered.
“Have you no pity or respect for womanhood?” I laughed at that. I couldn’t help it. Pitiable or respectable womanhood is far from the picture she presented.
“I’ll protect you from Bhopal Gosh,” I answered. “The point is: Will you or won’t you help willingly? My time is limited.” I pulled my watch out, and I stood up. She was still hesitating.
“I must consult a lawyer.”
“They’ll let you see one at police headquarters. There’s an officer down-stairs, who’ll call a taxi if you—”
“No, no, don’t do that! I’m innocent. I can prove it. Very well, Mr. Ramsden, I’ll do all I can.” I sat down again and tossed my hat onto the floor.
“Have you severed your connection with the P.O.P.?” I asked.
“Not yet. There wasn’t time.”
“Several white members beside yourself?”
“Yes. Can’t always rely on colored people to keep the real end in view. Besides, whites are quite essential when it comes to hiring halls and things like that.”
“Admit three more white members.”
“Who are they?”
“Brice, Allison, and myself.”
“My nomination is all that would be necessary. But what is your idea?”
“Have you called off future arrangements — canceled dates for meetings — anything like that?”
“There hasn’t been time. Gulad and I were scheduled to go on tour with those plates and show them in secret session to all the members everywhere.”
“Don’t call that off. Brice and Allison have the most important of the gold plates — the only one that wasn’t stolen. You can show it and say the others are in safe-keeping. Admit some more colored members, too. I’ll give you a list of their names. When are you scheduled to go on tour?”
“Wednesday of next week.”
“Give me a list of the places and dates.”
She took a list from her writing cabinet, and I put it in my pocket.
“I suppose your word is absolute among your followers?” I asked.
She nodded, a bit shamefacedly. It was the first sign I had seen in her of any really decent feeling.
“Contradict officially, then, any rumors about those plates having been stolen. The story will be kept out of the newspapers if possible. If it should leak out, contradict it.”
“Very well.”
“And report to me instantly any effort on the part of Bhopal Gosh to get in touch with you. If he writes, don’t answer him without consulting me. Will you do that?”
“Yes. But he won’t try. He’s far too clever.”
“We’ll see. Answer no questions from outsiders.”
“I surely won’t. I’ve enough trouble already.”
“One more point. Until further notice, Mrs. Aintree, the power behind the throne as you have described it, of the P.O.P., will be Grim, Ramsden, and Ross! You understand me? The control has passed.”
She looked daggers, but said nothing. She was not in the least convinced that she had done wrong, but regarded herself as a martyr, whose failure was due to meddlers and to circumstances over which she had no control. But she hadn’t the martyr’s courage, for she surrendered utterly.
I had a talk down-stairs with the man we had posted on watch, and went from there to the office on Lexington Avenue where the clerical business of the P.O.P. was done. The police had been there ahead of me, but I was permitted to make copies of the lists of foreign correspondents. There was no trace of any secret code. But there were letters that suggested a secret headquarters and an unnamed individual to whom all questions of importance, and most financial matters, were referred.
I had the lists of correspondents typed out, and mailed a copy of each to Grim and Jeremy, together with a long letter of instructions.
* * * * *
HAVING mailed those, the next thing was to track down as many pupils of Bhopal Gosh as possible. So I hurried back to Boston, and with some difficulty persuaded the Indian Pananda to supply me with another dozen names. The pupils whom I interviewed turned out to be in all sorts of professions. Several were extremely well-to-do. The more prosperous they were, the more highly they still seemed to think of Bhopal Gosh; a lawyer in particular was loud in his praises.
“Bhopal Gosh is a profound philosopher,” he said. “He understands the law of sequence and consequence. He is a great logician. He sees behind the trivial pretenses of so-called morality, and shows those whom he teaches how to avail themselves of universal laws, in business and in other ways.”
“He has made money for you?” I suggested.
“My prosperity is due to his teaching.”
“Have you made any money for him?”
The lawyer hesitated. “I may say I’ve had several dealings with him — eminently satisfactory, all above board and, from a financial standpoint, amazing.”
“Do you know his present whereabouts?”
“No. He has discontinued teaching. Things he taught went to the heads of immature individuals, some of whom got into serious trouble; but that was not his fault. I haven’t heard from him for weeks.”
I found three of the ex-pupils in the penitentiary.
“I’m a crook,” said one of them. “I pleaded guilty. But I wouldn’t have been a crook except for that man. I paid him two hundred and fifty dollars for a course of lessons in how to be dishonest without being found out. That’s all it amounted to. I was found out. I’m glad I was caught before it got worse.” The other two were even more indignant. One of them stated his intention of “laying for” Bhopal Gosh as soon as he was free again.
“The man taught what isn’t so. He had two hundred and fifty dollars of my money, and I got five years. He’s going to get eternity when I get out of this — you watch!”
The prosperous pupils were all full of his praises. The disappointed ones — and there were several — all swore he was an archimpostor who taught dishonesty as other men teach chemistry or mathematics.
“And it’s the har
dest thing in the world to forget his teachings,” one of them asserted. She was, a woman, by the way.
“He makes you believe that black is white by calling it gray and then leading you on by one step at a time. You catch yourself forever afterwards hesitating between right and wrong, wondering whether wrong really is as bad as it’s painted.”
None of them knew Bhopal Gosh’s present whereabouts, not even the prosperous ones, all of whom admitted having let their teacher “stand in” with them from time to time in some successful deal or other.
“Why not?” was their invariable comment.
Bhopal Gosh had run no risks. He had taught a sort of hairline course of crookedness, and left his pupils free to follow it. When they succeeded he fattened on their sense of gratitude. When they failed he let them go to jail. Until he murdered Gulad apparently he had let others take the whole responsibility while he shared profits only. From that time on the chase began to assume a new phase. Hitherto it had been a sort of intellectual problem, but now all my old hunter’s instincts came to the surface, and I set out to finish Bhopal Gosh as personally keen on the job as if he had been a man-eating tiger. I made no bones about it. Didn’t deceive myself. Gold plates or no gold plates, I was out to get my man.
* * * * *
THAT he wasn’t going to be easy to get became more and more evident as I looked over the latest reports of the case in the New York office. Inquiries had revealed the fact, for instance, that he had no passport in the name of Bhopal Gosh, but that for more than three years a Bengali named Lajpat Shuddi had constantly renewed one, and the photograph attached to Lajpat Shuddi’s application blank bore a striking resemblance to that of the alleged negro Simon Borrow. Ergo, Lajpat Shuddi, Simon Borrow, and Bhopal Gosh were one and the same individual, and likely to prove an uncommonly elusive trinity.
That he was at large and in full possession of self-confidence was made clear while I was reading that dossier. The man I had left on duty phoned in to say that Mrs. Aintree had just had a longdistance call from Chicago. He had been interfered with while trying to listen in; some of her “meek ones” had come down-stairs and practically driven him away from the switchboard. However, he had found out that the call came from a public pay-station somewhere within the Loop.
I hurried around. Mrs. Aintree lied sturdily at first — said the call was from a friend in Springfield, Massachusetts, who was sick and wanted to borrow money. But she wilted when I threatened her with the police again.
“I’m not guessing,” I assured her. “I know you had a call from Chicago. Was it Bhopal Gosh?”
She nodded.
“What did he say?”
“Mr. Ramsden, I won’t — I daren’t repeat it.”
“Why not?”
“He forbade me!”
“Very well. You’re helping him to escape the clutches of the law. I’ll call in the police.”
“Mr. Ramsden, I am not helping him! He is not guilty! He called up to tell me about the murder. He said it was unfortunate that the plates had been stolen, and that the murderer was probably too smart for the police. However, he said he is confident of finding the man, and meanwhile he himself feels that it will be wisest to lie low, both because suspicion may rest on him mistakenly at present, and also because he will stand a better chance in that way of catching the real culprit.”
“Did you tell him there’s a warrant out against him?”
“Yes.”
“You promised me you wouldn’t answer any communication from him without consulting me first!”
“I couldn’t help it,” she answered with rising anger. “You don’t know that man! I do know him! I have a perfect right to tell him there is a warrant out for his arrest. Perhaps he will surrender to the police. Who knows!”
“My ye-e-es! Who knows! Did you tell him anything about the other gold plate?”
“No. He asked whether the P.O.P. members knew that the plates had been stolen, and I told him ‘no.’ Then he said a little ingenuity would show me some way out of the predicament of having no plates to show to the members, and that he might send me a suggestion before long.”
“What else?”
“No more. He rang off then.”
“Has he ever sent you any money?” I demanded.
“Once. A sum to cover expenses.”
“How did he send it? Check — draft — money-order — letter of credit?”
“In hundred-dollar bills by registered mail.”
“From what postoffice?”
“I don’t know. I threw the envelope away.”
“When was it that he sent you money?”
“About three weeks ago.”
“Have you ever seen his check?”
“Never. All the payments I have ever seen him make were in bills.”
“Have you ever paid money to him?”
“Often. I have turned over contributions to him.”
“Cash or check?”
“Cash, always. He likes notes of rather large denominations.”
“Are those transactions shown on any book?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. He keeps the secret books himself.”
“Don’t you know where he banks the money?”
“No.”
That closed another avenue of search effectually. The banks are thoroughly organized among themselves for mutual protection, and more crooks are caught with their aid than in any other way, but it was safe to say that we would have to run down Bhopal Gosh without the banks’ assistance.
CHAPTER IX. “And if they all offers me a li’l sweet’nin’, Cap’n?”
DOWN on the southern deserts of this country there is a reptile they call the Sidewinder. He’s a rattlesnake by habit, history, and profession, and seems to like it, not having changed his habits since the first Conquistadores came. His chief characteristic is that he invariably heads south when traveling west. Besides, he carries a rattle on his tail, packs a murderous disposition and has all the other rattlesnake peculiarities.
We became Sidewinders. We had Mrs. Aintree, basking hardly in the sun but in the limelight of importance. She would have been happy on the gallows if only a fair-sized crowd were there to stare at her. We carried that gold plate along, with the idea of rattling it until every darky and most of the white folks in the towns we visited should be aware of it, and us. Our party pretty nearly filled a Pullman car, which made a fine long snake of us, of assorted colors. And we headed south while traveling west. The murderous disposition was a poor thing, but mine own; and by way of fangs we had some Smith & Wessons straight from the factory in Springfield.
The car that we engaged, and that Meldrum Strange paid for, was one of those steel composite affairs with sets of drawingrooms at either end and regulation Pullman berths in the middle.
So there was plenty of accommodation for Mrs. Aintree and her party at one end, Brice, Allison, myself and three other white men at the other, and our dusky confraternity amidships, so to speak. They were about as fine a collection of U.S. darkies as you could assemble anywhere. Some had been to college; some had worked for banks and suchlike institutions; some had been the rounds of vaudeville, and half a dozen of them had rustled soft coal in the bowels of foreign-going ships. We knew all about every one of them from the day he was born; more than they thought we knew in certain instances — for example, that our middle-weight prize-fighter and cleverest corner-man had served a term in jail — and we had every one deeded up as a full-fledged member of the P.O.P. They ranked as “aspirants,” in good standing, subscription paid, and knew the secret ritual by heart; in fact they invented quite a lot of new stuff on the train, for the benefit of small-town hicks who hadn’t yet received the latest light.
Brice turned out to be a splendid traveling companion, and Allison a tolerable one, although Allison could see no humor in the business, and was much more exercised over the expense than Meldrum Strange, who had to stay in New York but was paying for it all.
“M
an, the ineequity upsets ma’ mind. It’s a blasphemous and beastly or-r-ganization run by the very hoore o’ Babylon hersel’. That’s bad enough. But we add the offense o’ squanderin’ dollars as if money weren’t the verra blood that should be cir-r-culating in the veins o’ ‘ceevilization!”
He regarded every man with us as a religious renegade, and himself as the worst of all.
“Brice is a pagan — I’ve long had ma doots o’ Brice — a good, brave little body but a her-r-etic in matters o’ rel ee gion. I rue the day I said I’d go with ye on this exped-ee-tion, but a man’s wor-r-d is his wor-r-d, and there’s no takin’ it back. But Lord forgie us!”
He was the sort of man who would have endured the rack a couple of centuries ago rather than yield on the interpretation of some obscure Greek particle in one of Paul’s Epistles — the kind of man who came over to this continent and founded a new nation out of guts, resource, and pure pig-headedness. He went in fear of Hell that whole long journey, solely from a sense of duty and determination not to be outdone by Brice. He reminded us of our sins a little too frequently, but he kept us awake by preaching when we should have been asleep, and that, as it happened, provided us with the clue that solved the problem in the end.
* * * * *
ONE of the members of Mrs. Aintree’s party — the meekest of them all and the most obsequious in looking after her — was a man named Carter. According to Brice he was the individual who had told Grim too much in Jerusalem and so had started our investigation rolling. He had made up for it since by the most painstaking discretion; in fact, he. seemed afraid to comment on the weather without getting Mrs. Aintree’s permission first. He was a silver-haired man, somewhere between fifty and sixty, who always wore a black morning coat and carefully creased trousers, but economized on pocket-handkerchiefs.
He had a way of walking about the car, treading cat-wise, making no noise, and if ever we left the door of our drawing-room open he would trip past two or three times, glancing in, smiling and saying something pleasant if we noticed him, but, if we didn’t notice him, only too glad to get by without saying anything at all. I won’t say he aroused our suspicions, because after the event you always think you were suspicious from the first; that’s human nature. We told one another we had suspected him, but I’m inclined to believe that we fooled ourselves on that score. Allison refused to sleep in a compartment by himself because he had the gold plate in his satchel, and Brice, being rather tired of him in some ways, begged me to take turns sharing the responsibility. So the first night out Allison and I slept together, and Brice alone; but there was a door between the two compartments that we left unlocked. Brice, having nothing to worry about, and not being a nervous sort of man, forgot to lock the other door of his compartment leading into the corridor. Brice was in compartment A, in which the three of us had sat talking all the afternoon. I had the upper berth in compartment B, and Allison the lower, with the satchel under his pillow; and for a long time after we put the lights out Allison lay underneath, me, quoting pessimistic verses from the Book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah.