by Talbot Mundy
Chanda Pal called in an actuary who possessed a compound geometrical imagination, and sent in a bill to the government that is still unpaid; and, having failed to collect immediately, he wrote to a friend who was an undergraduate at Oxford, with the result that a Member of Parliament for one of the Welsh constituencies asked at Question Time whether it was true that the Viceroy of India in person had high-handedly confiscated without compensation all the drugs in the Punjab;* and if so, why!
The answer from the Treasury Bench was “No, sir;” but the foreign correspondents omitted to mention that, so the French, Scandinavian and United States newspapers had it in headlines that “British in India inaugurate new reign of terror. Goods confiscated. Revolution threatened.” A bishop in South Africa preached a sermon on the subject; thirty-seven members of the I.W.W., who were serving a term in San Quentin, went on a sympathetic hunger strike and were locked up in the dungeon; and a Congressman from somewhere in the Middle West wrote a speech that filled five pages of the Record. Stocks fell several points. Jenkins stepped into Willoughby’s official shoes.
However, clocks continued ticking. Roosters crowed. The sun appeared on schedule time. And Willoughby’s funeral was marked by dignified simplicity.
Except that he hugely regretted his friend Willoughby, Cottswold Ommony cared for none of these things. He sat near the electric fan in a corner of the club smoking room, aware that he was being discussed, but also quite sure that he did not mind it. He had been discussed, on and off, ever since he came to India. He looked quite unlike Hypatia, whatever Willoughby may have thought of his character.
“Willoughby overrated him,” said somebody. “You can’t tell me Ommony or any other man is such a mixture of marvels as Willoughby made out. Besides, he’s a bachelor. Socrates wasn’t.”
“Oh, Ommony’s human. But — well — you know what he’s done in that forest. It was raw, red wilderness when he was sent there. Now you can stand on a rock and see ninety miles of trees whichever way you care to look. Besides, dogs love him. Did you see that great dog of his outside? You can’t fool that kind of dog, you know. They say he knows the tigers personally, and can talk the jungle-bat; there was only one other man who ever learned that language, and he committed suicide!”
“All the same — he’s not the only man who’s done good work — and I’ve heard stories. Do any of you remember Terry — Jack Terry, the M.D., who married Ommony’s young sister? One of those delightful madmen who are really so sane that the rest of us can’t understand ’em. Had weird theories about obstetrics. Nearly got foul of his profession by preaching that music was an absolute necessity at child-birth. Wanted the government to train symphony orchestras to play the overture to Leonora while the birth takes place. Perfectly mad; but a corking good surgeon. Always dead broke, from handing out his pay to beggars — broke, that is, until he met Marmaduke. Remember Marmaduke?”
“Dead too, isn’t he? Wasn’t he the American who endowed a mission somewhere in the Hills?”
“Yes, at Tilgaun. Marmaduke was another — ab-so-lutely mad — and as gentle as sunrise. Quiet man, who swore like a trooper at the mention of religion. Made his money in Chicago, slaughtering hogs — or so I heard. Wrote a book on astrology, that only ran to one edition. I sold my copy for ten times what I paid for it. I tell you, Marmaduke was madder than Gandhi. They say he left America to keep the elders of the church he belonged to from having him locked up in an asylum. The mission he founded at Tilgaun caused no end of a stir at the time. Surely you remember that? There were letters to the Times, and an archbishop raised a shindy in the House of Lords. Marmaduke’s theory was that, as he couldn’t understand Christianity, it was safe to premise that people whose religion was a mixture of degraded Buddhism and devil-worship couldn’t understand it either. So he founded a Buddhist mission, to teach ’em their own religion. No, he wasn’t a Buddhist. I don’t know what his religion was. I only know he was a decent fellow, fabulously rich, and ab-so-lutely mad. He persuaded Jack Terry to chuck the service and become the mission medico — teach hygiene to men from Spiti and Bhutan — like teaching drought to the Atlantic! Jack Terry married Ommony’s sister about a week before leaving for Tilgaun, and none of us ever saw them alive again.”
“Now I remember. There was a nine days’ scandal, or a mystery, or something.”
“You bet there was! Terry and his wife vanished. Marmaduke was carpeted, but couldn’t or wouldn’t explain, and he died before they could make things hot for him. Then they gave Ommony long leave and sent him up to Tilgaun to investigate — that was — by gad! that was twenty years ago — Good lord! how time flies. Ommony discovered nothing; or, if he did discover anything, he said nothing — he’s a great hand at doing that, by all accounts. But it leaked out that Marmaduke had appointed Ommony a trustee under his will. There was another trustee — a red-headed American woman — at least I heard she’s red-headed; maybe, she isn’t — named Hannah Sanburn, who has been running the mission ever since. She was not much more than a girl at the time, I remember. And the third trustee was a Tibetan. Nobody had ever heard of him, and I’ve never met a man who saw him; but I’m told he’s a Ringding Gelong Lama;* and I’ve also heard that Ommony has never seen him. The whole thing’s a mystery.”
“It doesn’t seem particularly discreditable to Ommony. What are you hinting at?”
“Nothing. Only Ommony has influence. You’ve noticed, I dare say, he always gets what he goes after. If you asked me, there’s an even chance he may ‘get’ Jenkins, if he cares to.”
“That’s notorious. Whoever goes after Ommony’s scalp gets left at the post. What’s the secret?”
“I don’t know. Nobody seems to. There’s Marmaduke’s money, of course. Ommony handles some of it. I don’t suggest fraud, or any rot like that; but money’s strange stuff; control of it gives a man power. Ommony’s influence is out of all proportion to his job. And I’ve heard — mind you, I don’t know how true it is — that he’s hand-and-glove with every political fugitive from the North who has sneaked down South to let the clouds roll by during the last twenty years. They even said Ommony was on the inside of the Moplah business.* You know the Moplahs didn’t burn his bungalow, they say he simply asked them not to — can you beat that — and it’s a fact that he stayed in his forest all through that rebellion.”
Ommony was restless over in his corner. His obstinate jaw was only half- concealed by a close-clipped, graying beard, and there was grim humor on his lips. Having done more than any living man to pull the sting out of the Moplah rebellion, hints to the contrary hardly amused him. He was angry — obviously angry. However, one man claimed casual acquaintance and dropped into the next chair.
“Expecting to stay long in Delhi?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
“Care to sell me that wolf-hound?”
Ommony’s reserve broke down; he had to talk to somebody:
“That dog? Sell her? She’s the sum total of twenty-years’ effort. She’s all I’ve done.”
The inquisitor leaned back, partly to hide his own face, partly to see Ommony’s in a more distinct light; he suspected sunstroke, or the after-effects of malaria. But Ommony, having emerged from his reserve, continued:
“I don’t suppose I’m different from anybody else — at least not from any other reasonably decent fellow — made a lot of mistakes, of course — done a lot of things I wish I hadn’t — been a bally ass on suitable occasion but I’ve worked — damned hard. India has had all the best of me and — damn her! — I haven’t grudged it. Don’t regret it, either. I’d do it again. But there’s nothing to show for it all—”
“Except a forest. They tell me—”
“A forest, half-grown, that corrupt politicians will play ducks and drakes with; a couple of thousand villagers who are now being taught by those same politicians that everything they’ve learned from me is no good; a ruined constitution — and that dog. That’s all I can show for twenty years’ work —
and like some others, I’ve had my heart in it. I think I know how a missionary feels when his flock walks out on him. I’m a failure — we’re all failures. The world is going to pieces under our hands. What I have taught that dog is all I can really claim by way of accomplishment.”
That particular inquisitor lost enthusiasm. He did not like madmen. He withdrew and considered Ommony in a corner, behind a newspaper, sotto voce. Another not so casual acquaintance dropped into the vacant chair, and was greeted with a nod.
“You’ve been absent so long you ought to see things with a fresh eye, Ommony. D’you think India’s breaking up?”
“I’ve thought so for twenty years.”
“How long before we have to clear out?”
“The sooner the better.”
“For us?”
“I mean for India!”
“I should have thought you would be the last man to say that. You’ve done your bit. They tell me you’ve changed a desert into a splendid forest. D’you want to see it all cut down, the lumber wasted and—”
Ommony pulled out his watch and tapped his finger on the dial.
“I had it cleaned and repaired recently,” he remarked. The man charged me a fair price, but after I had paid the bill he didn’t have the impudence to keep the watch for fear I might ruin it again. India has a perfect right to go to hell her own way. Surgery and hygiene are good, but I don’t believe in being governed by the medical profession. Cleaning up corrupted countries is good; but to stay on after we’ve been asked to quit is bad manners. And they’re worse than breaking all ten commandments. Besides, we don’t know much — or we’d have done much better.”
“You think India is ripe for self-government?”
“When things are ripe, they fall or decay on the tree,” said Ommony. “There’s a time to stand aside and let ’em grow. There’s such a thing as too much nursing.”
“Then you’re willing to chuck your forest job?”
“I have chucked it.”
“Oh! Resigned? Going to draw your pension?”
“No. Pension wouldn’t be due for two years yet, and I don’t need it. India has had the use of me for twenty-three years at a fair price. I’d be satisfied, if she was. But she isn’t. And I’m proud, so I’ll be damned if I’ll accept a pension.”
Ommony was left alone again. That news of his resignation was too good to be kept, even for a minute. Within five minutes it was all over the club, and men were speculating as to the real reason, since nobody ever gives anyone credit (and wisely, perhaps) for the motives that he makes public.
“Jenkins has succeeded Willoughby. Ommony knows jolly well that Jenkins has it in for him. He’s pulling out ahead of the landslide — that’s what.”
“I don’t believe it. Ommony has guts and influence enough to bust ten Jenkinses. There’s more than that in it. There never was a man like Ommony for keeping secrets up his sleeve. You know he’s in the Secret Service?”
“That’s easy to say, but who said so?”
“Believe it or not — I’ll bet. I’ll bet he stays in India. I’ll bet he dies in harness. I’ll bet any money in reason he goes straight from here to McGregor’s office. More than that — I’ll bet McGregor sent for him, and that he didn’t resign from the Forestry without talking it over with McGregor first. He’s deep, is Cottswold Ommony — deep. He’s no man’s fool. There’s no man alive but McGregor who knows what Ommony will do next. Anybody want to bet about it?”
The remainder of the conversation at the club that noon rippled off into widening rings of reminiscence, all set up by Ommony’s arrival on the scene, and mostly interesting, but to stay and listen would have been to be sidetracked, which is the inevitable fate of gossips. There was a story in the wind that, if the club had known it, would have set all Delhi by the ears.
CHAPTER II. Number One Of The Secret Service
He who would understand the Plains must ascend the Eternal Hills, where a man’s eyes scan Infinity. But he who would make use of understanding must descend on to the Plains, where Past and Future meet and men have need of him.
— from The Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup
OMMONY did go straight to McGregor but he and Diana, his enormous wolf-hound, walked and club bets had to be called off because there was no cab-driver from whom the chuprassy* could bludgeon information.
Neither his nor Diana’s temper was improved by the behavior of the crowd. The dog’s size and apparent ferocity cleared a course, but that convenience was not so pleasant as the manners of twenty years ago, when men made way for an Englishman without hesitation — without dreaming of doing anything else.
The thrice-breathed air of Delhi gave him melancholia. It was not agreeable to see men spit with calculated insolence. The heat made the sweat drip from his beard on to the bosom of a new silk shirt. The smell of over- civilized, unnaturally clothed humans was nauseating. By the time he reached an unimaginably ugly, rawly new administration building he felt about as sweetly reasonable as a dog with hydrophobia, and was tired, with feet accustomed to the softness, and ears used to the silence, of long jungle lanes.
However, his spirits rose as he approached the steps. He may have made a signal, because the moment the chuprassy saw him he straightened himself suddenly and ran before him, upstairs and along a corridor. By the time Ommony reached a door with no name on it, at the far end of the building, the chuprassy was waiting to open it — had already done the announcing — had already seen a said-to-be important personage shown out with scant excuses through another door. The chuprassy’s salaam was that of a worshiper of secrets, to a man who knows secrets and can keep them; there is no more marrow-deep obeisance in the world than that.
And now no ceremony. The office door clicked softy with a spring-lock and shut out the world that bows and scrapes to hide its enmity and spits to disguise self-conscious meanness. A man sat at a desk and grinned.
“Sit. Smoke. Take your coat off. Sun in your eyes? Try the other chair. Dog need water? Give her some out of the filter. Now—”
John McGregor passed cigars and turned his back toward a laden desk. He was a middle-sized, middle-aged man with snow-white hair in a crisp mass, that would have been curly if he had let it grow long enough. His white mustache made him look older than his years, but his skin was young and reddish, although that again was offset by crow’s-feet at the corners of noticeably dark-gray eyes. His hands looked like a conjurer’s; he could do anything with them, even, to keeping them perfectly still.
“So you’ve actually turned in your resignation? We grow!” he remarked, laughing. “Everything grows — except me; I’m in the same old rut. I’ll get the ax — get pensioned someday — dreadful fate! Did you have your interview with Jenkins? What happened? I can see you had the best of it — but how?”
Ommony laid three letters on the desk — purple ink on faded paper, in a woman’s handwriting. McGregor laughed aloud — one bark, like the cry of a fox that scents its quarry on the fluke of a changing wind.
“Perfect!” he remarked, picking up the letters and beginning to read the top one. “Did you blackmail him?”
“I did.”
“I could have saved you that trouble, you know. I could have ‘broke’ him. He deserves it,” said McGregor, knitting his brows over the letter in his hand. “Man, man, he certainly deserves it!”
“If we all got our deserts the world ‘ud stand still.” Ommony chose a cigar and bit the end off. “He’s a more than half-efficient bureaucrat. Let India suck him dry and spew him forth presently to end his days at Surbiton or Cheltenham.”
McGregor went on reading, holding his breath. “Have you read these?” he asked suddenly.
Ommony nodded. McGregor chewed at his mustache and made noises with his teeth that brought Diana’s ears up, cocked alertly.
“Man, they’re pitiful! Imagine a brute like Jenkins having such a hold on anyone — and he — good God! He ought to have been hanged — no, that’s too good
for him! I suppose there’s no human law that covers such a case.”
“None,” Ommony answered grimly. “But I’m pious. I think there’s a Higher Law that adjusts that sort of thing eventually. If not, I’d have killed the brute myself.”
“Listen to this.”
“Don’t read ’em aloud, Mac. It’s sacrilege. And I’m raw. It was at least partly my fault.”
“Don’t be an idiot!”
“It was, Mac. Elsa wasn’t so many years younger than me, but even when we were kids we were more like father and child than brother and sister. She had the spirituality and the brains; I had the brute-strength and was presumed to have the common sense; it made a rather happy combination. As soon as I got settled in the forest I wrote home to her to come out and keep house for me. I used to trust Jenkins in those days. It was I who introduced them, Jenkins introduced her to Kananda Pal.”
“That swine!”
“No, he wasn’t such a swine as Jenkins,” said Ommony. “Kananda Pal was a poor devil who was born into a black art family. He didn’t know any better. His father used to make him stare into ink-pools and all that devilment before he was knee-high to a duck. He used to do stunts with spooks and things. Jenkins, on the other hand, had a decent heritage and ditched it. It was he who invited Kananda Pal to hypnotize Elsa. Between the two of them they did a devil’s job of at. She almost lost her mind, and Jenkins had the filthy gall to use that as excuse for breaking the engagement.”