Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Bah! They would never dare,” said Tassim. But he did not look as if he believed his own words.

  Men given to inventing atrocity stories end by convincing themselves, if no one else. He had turned a shade paler.

  “Bah-bah black-sheep! Same is kid stuff, proving nothing. Why are you in this place and not in jail?” Chullunder Ghose retorted. “British, scared stiff, mean to find that contraband. Pragmatically minded secret service experts, reasoning with candor logical in said circs, argue what are agonies of one man compared to destruction of Cairo and all explosives belonging to British Army of Occupation including Air Force? Can be managed secretly, and Tassim, if too seriously injured or if uncommunicative, can be dropped down disused well in courtyard and covered with stones. There is courtyard. There is well — through window. Obvious.”

  “How do you know this?” Tassim asked him.

  “Person name of Baltis overheard same. Heard Jimgrim say it. Have you heard of Jimgrim?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  “Swine, devil, U.S.A. American; in pay of British and in love with Baltis who is making big fool of him. She will stick him in gizzard doubtless, or let us hope so. However he said, and I need not say who he is: Tassim deserves fate of rat in trap for daring to get caught. Something in that, too, come to think of it. Nevertheless, important point is present whereabouts of said contraband, known to Tassim only.”

  “Why to me only?”

  “Because certain idiots went and killed themselves by making an experiment. It is true, they blew up Air Force gas tank, many other people and an ammunition wagon. But of what use is that, since no one now knows where remainder of cache is hidden? Therefore, he said, making use of Solomon-like logic: go to Tassim and let him tell you whereabouts of cache with absolute exactitude. If Tassim tells you, good. If not, not good — at least for Tassim, whom the police will torture crudely but efficaciously. Nevertheless, if he tells you, and word reaches me, not only will he not be tortured; because the cache will be in my hands and the British will very soon know it — very soon; very soon indeed they will know it. And not even the British torture people when there is nothing to be gained by it. But furthermore, said he, if Tassim tells you, then I will rescue him before the night is over, although I will never forgive him for having been caught. Henceforward Tassim may consider himself dropped and utterly unknown to any of us.”

  “Oh, thank God!” said Tassim.

  But he was not yet unsuspicious of the babu, who understood that perfectly.

  “If you are a prisoner, how are you to get word to him?” Tassim demanded suddenly. “And how do you come to be a prisoner — you and this man?”

  Chullunder Ghose assumed his blandest air of impudence.

  “Am automatic penny-in-slot astrologer, oh, yes. Can answer all questions on all subjects. But one at a time. And we have so much time to waste before the police bring in their whips and little bits of wire and God knows what else. However, I will tell you since you are curious. This babu is not unknown to notoriety as expert prestidigitator, if you know what that is.” Chullunder Ghose kicked off a slipper and began his favorite trick of catching his handkerchief between his toes. “Am also expert opportunist. This man” — with a gesture of contempt he indicated me— “is malpractitioner of disrepute but some skill. Lost his ticket. Got caught selling opium to undergraduates at college where he was teaching how to perform Caesarean operation. Hard up — betted, gambled — lost, of course, and presently wrote someone’s name on back of note. So you see how he got into our hands. And he can pull teeth very expertly, so I brought him along, because I happened to know that Sudanese ex-sergeant-major without pension who guards this place has painful abscess. So — you get that?”

  Tassim nodded. He seemed to be trying to remember whether or not the Sudanese had a toothache. Chullunder Ghose continued, giving his imagination full rein now that he saw Tassim really weakening.

  “Sudanese at gate was uncommunicative about everything except his bad tooth. Told him this man is debtor to me, who am exasperated creditor and will oblige him, for sake of humiliation, to pull tooth gratis. So he admits us inside gate. Am prestidigitator as aforesaid. While disgusting operation takes place, key of this prison discovers itself as if by accident in my hand. Easy. Open door and walk in. However, along comes British officer in uniform who bangs at outer gate. Strict orders — very strict orders to admit no one, you being what is known as incommunicado. What shall Sudanese do? Damn poor devil without pension drawing miserly pay from secret service fund, likely to lose job, sees starvation staring at him, naturally pushes him and me in here and returns to talk with officer, excusing delay on ground of accident to mouth and spitting blood in proof of same. So you see how we got here. We will get out by being let out, after officer is gone and, also, doubtless, after being searched by Sudanese who will appropriate my pounds Egyptian fifty, which is why I said there is no justice when I first entered. Having got out, I will tell him very extra damn quick just where contraband is hidden. Then, before midnight, or not much later than that, you also will find yourself out of this place. So make haste before the Sudanese comes and tell me where the stuff is.”

  Tassim Bey took his heart in his hands and told abruptly, in the same sort of way that a scared man takes a header into ice cold water:

  “In the new tomb east south east of Gizeh — the last one opened, in which nothing was found.”

  “Very well,” said the babu. “And the other Baltis woman, what about her? Why did you not meet her in the garden of your deserted villa?”

  “I was afraid of her,” said Tassim. “She looked too much like the other woman. It was uncanny. It made me creepy. But I did go to the garden, because I was afraid not to. And in the dark she looked so like the other woman that — well, I remembered that the electricity never had been disconnected at the main switch, which is in the gate house. So I turned it on. And she screamed and a fuse blew — and I saw her drop something that was white- hot.”

  “Yes, and—”

  “That is all. I went away.”

  “You let her lie there?”

  “I did not know she was lying there. How should I know it? I could see nothing. My eyes were dazzled, and it was dark. I tell you I saw nothing.”

  “When did you go to Brown’s Hotel?”

  “This morning.”

  “Did you tell the other Baltis?”

  “No. I tell you, I saw nothing. What was there to tell?”

  Chullunder Ghose got to his feet. He bowed to me.

  “Let us go, sahib. Am eloquent and unscrupulous person, but words fail me. Kindly kick that door — make much noise; my own slippers are ineffectual. Be good enough to summon keeper swiftly before I forget my immorality and slay this reptile. Did you hear him? He admitted it! He left her lying there.”

  As the door opened and we passed out he turned and hurled a Parthian shot at Tassim, who sat goggled-eyed, hardly even yet realizing how completely he had been tricked.

  “You are not even a mean white. You are not even mean. You are a maggot. May you reincarnate in the belly of a leprous jackal, which is to say, in English, damn your dirty soul to hell!”

  CHAPTER 12. “Delphic-oracle-ly minded babu spilling noncommittal verb sap.”

  The army’s precipitate flight from the scene had been strategic. As we threaded our way across Cairo again to find Grim detachments were re-entering the city from several directions, someone had taken the responsibility of letting the men have rifle ammunition, and we saw one volley fired over the heads of a mob that immediately took to its heels, and I think that was the only volley fired that afternoon.

  We found Grim at the High Commissioner’s in a big bay-windowed room where sunlight formed a golden pool on the enormous Turkish carpet. In the midst of it sat Grim. The High Commissioner was not there, but his secretary was, and so were the legal members of his council. There were also three Egyptian officials of high rank and a British Brigadier-General who was tr
ying to disguise for Grim under an air of professional incredulity. As we were ushered into the room I heard him say —

  “Of course, sometimes an amateur does contribute something useful.”

  McGowan, ahead of me, gritted his teeth, and I saw Jeff Ramsden turn the slightly deeper mahogany shade that forebodes trouble. Introductions were perfunctory and a trifle hostile. I took a chair beside Jeff. So did McGowan. Chullunder Ghose sat on the carpet close to Grim and I heard him murmur about a dozen words in Pashtu, which was a pretty safe language in that company for an interchange of confidences. Grim made no response and the Brigadier took up the cudgels again.

  “I don’t see that we’ve got any information of value from Mr. Ramsden’s prisoner. It was an absolutely illegal arrest—”

  “Hear, hear,” said an Egyptian.

  “Who arrested him?” Jeff answered. “I didn’t. I did no more to him than I would do to you if you should so far forget yourself as to say to me half what he did. I accosted him. He called me a gross name — I’ll repeat it for you if you wish — then struck me in the face and tried to run. So I invited him to run the same way I was going, and we had a difference of opinion on that point. I prevailed. And as for getting nothing out of him—”

  The Brigadier interrupted.

  “Nothing of any value, I said.”

  “Yes,” said Jeff, “I heard you. We all heard you. And you heard him admit to me that he received his orders from a woman—”

  “Who is dead, in the hospital,” the Brigadier objected. “He didn’t make one definite statement that’s of the slightest use to us.”

  “Keep that personal,” said Jeff. “If you mean no statement of the slightest use to you I’ll not dispute it. He knows at least of the existence, and perhaps of the exact whereabouts, of a big supply of those infernal machines.”

  “Rot — tommy-rot and nonsense,” said the Brigadier. “They had a few and used them. If they had had more — and if they had a leader and a definite plan, they would have wiped out Cairo.”

  Jeff talked on stolidly.

  “His boast that plenty more of the things will reach Egypt and other countries without the slightest risk of detection probably means that he knows they are smuggled in small sailing craft. We know of one consignment that reached Marseilles by dhow. Any number of dhows could discharge contraband along the Red Sea coast line.”

  “Not from now on,” said the Brigadier. “Not an unsearched dhow will reach the Egyptian coast. We’ll stop that little game. It’s stopped already.”

  “Too late,” Jeff answered, “if the stuff is already landed and carefully hidden.”

  The Brigadier snorted. “It isn’t. It’s a mare’s nest. In the first place, we haven’t a scrap of proof that these infernal machines actually exist. I know you think they do; but there’s nothing easier than to make even experienced men think they see what they don’t see.”

  “No explosions anywhere?” Jeff asked him.

  “Yes, there have been. My opinion is they were caused by Communists, acting more or less simultaneously on orders from Moscow. Dorje? Another chimera — probably invented by that Baltis woman — as imaginary as her own title of Princess. A discredited French spy — sent here for us to prosecute and save the French the inconvenience and scandal. I object to doing France’s dirty work. I say, send her back to France and let’s try using common sense for a change.”

  Grim was not listening to him; he and Chullunder Ghose were carrying on a conversation sotto voce, probably in Pashtu. The Brigadier suddenly grew aware of that and lost his temper.

  “If there’s a dump of these mysterious gadgets anywhere in Egypt, show me!” he exploded. “I’ll give you two days. After that, Major Grim, you may rely on my determined opposition to your methods.”

  The Brigadier got up and stalked out of the room. The Egyptian officials followed him, at no pains to disguise their imitation of the Brigadier’s contemptuous ill-temper. Instantly then Grim faced McGowan.

  “Do his worst at once? That’s what I played him for. If he wants to deport our Princess, can he do it?”

  “Why not?”

  “Can she be forced to return to France?”

  “Not if she pays her own fare. But that fool can send an official cable to wherever she does go and she’ll be held up at the port of entry.”

  “I have heard of cablegrams that never reached their destination,” Grim suggested. McGowan nodded. “He will deport her to annoy me. See that she goes anywhere she pleases. Now — do you know someone who would lend us one of those Army searchlights in a truck? Could they pick us all up, say, at the hospital? Good. Sorry to seem to use you as an errand boy, but I would do the same for you — I think you know that.”

  The only one of us who really understood what Grim was driving at was our babu. When he appears to read thought I believe he is exercising an extraordinary logical faculty that enables him to reason like lightning. He has absolutely no respect for anybody’s alleged ideals, conventions, prejudices or appearance, but looks beneath those for the actuality and, having recognized it, knows how that type of person will think and behave.

  Grim must have told Chullunder Ghose that he would like Jeff’s prisoner released. Obviously, to have asked that Brigadier to release the man would have produced the exactly opposite effect. The Brigadier was jealous. And McGowan was helpless, in that instance, because the Brigadier was his senior and might invoke the rules of discipline. But neither discipline, nor seniority, nor red tape was of the slightest use against the audacity of Chullunder Ghose.

  It appeared that the prisoner — Mahdi Aububah by name, a Somali of sorts — had been turned over to the red-faced subaltern for safekeeping pending a decision as to what should be done with him. As we passed out to the portico that subaltern approached us, evidently hell-bent on another altercation with Chullunder Ghose; he had probably thought up lots of things that he might have done. He was haughty, hot-tempered and ignorant of the fact that Grim was not an Arab; and he made the crass mistake of thinking that Chullunder Ghose was an obese, unwarlike person suitably to be admonished with a kick. Personally I would rather take my chance of kicking a champion wrestler, who might be all beef and no brains.

  As a non-Egyptian Arab he might be expected to get out of the way of a British officer in uniform. At any rate, that youngster expected him to. There was a collision in which the subaltern had the worst of it, although Grim was polite in fastidious Arabic which the subaltern did not understand. Chullunder Ghose, noisily chatting to me about nothing as an excuse for not looking where he was going, bumped into the subaltern, who lost his balance and fell backward into a flower bed. Chullunder Ghose did not apologize. The subaltern got up and kicked him. Grim was just in time, with a word in Arabic, to prevent Jeff Ramsden from interfering, and Jeff’s out-thrust arm stopped me.

  Chullunder Ghose, who is nothing if not a surprising person, slapped the subaltern, suddenly, noisily, shamefully, straight in the face; and all the inflammable indignation of about a dozen generations of English squires, now concentrated into one young, peppery descendant, burst into action. “Did you see that, by God — he hit me!”

  The second kick missed. Chullunder Ghose — portly, enormous, ridiculous, but remarkably swift in short spurts, as an elephant is or a hippopotamus — took to his heels, and the subaltern after him. With a judgment of speed worthy of a race-course jockey he timed his spurts so as to keep the subaltern exasperated but encouraged. And instead of making for the main gate he elected to follow a path between shrubbery and flower beds toward a building that looked like a garage. At one end of it four Egyptian soldiers stood on guard before a door that seemed to have been left partly open for ventilation, since the room into which it opened had no windows. The subaltern shouted to the four soldiers to stop the babu. They hesitated and then ran toward him. One of them tripped him by shoving a rifle butt between his legs, and all of them, babu included, went down in one whale of a roughhouse.

  Gar
deners, servants, chauffeurs, grooms, all sorts of people came on the run from everywhere, but kept their distance when they saw the subaltern in charge of operations. And behind the screen that they formed, Mahdi Aububah, Jeff’s erstwhile prisoner, slipped through the partly opened cell door and rather casually trotted through an open gate to the highway and freedom. I don’t know whether or not Chullunder Ghose had shouted to him, but I think not: I believe the man had been watching his chance and took advantage of it when it came.

  That subaltern was almost precious as a maker of mistakes. Jeff Ramsden, who can out-sprint me by almost two to one, was in time to prevent him from trying to thrash Chullunder Ghose with a stick that he snatched from a gardener. He almost struck Jeff, he was so beside himself with temper. But Jeff’s deep voice and quiet manner had a somewhat soothing effect.

  “Dammit, he hit me in the face — didn’t you see him? I’ll have him—”

  “No, no, no,” said Jeff. “Too many witnesses. Look to your prisoner. He’s gone. You’d better catch him.”

  The rest was merely pitiable. The youngster tried to save his face by abusing the Egyptian soldiers in astonishingly bad Arabic, and two or three minutes were lost while they talked back to him. By the time he had come to his senses and hurried them off in pursuit of the prisoner there was no longer a chance in a thousand of overtaking him, and not one in a hundred even of learning which way he had gone. Chullunder Ghose, limping and rubbing his shin, returned along the path toward where Grim was standing. Jeff turned to me.

  “Tell Grim I’ll join you at the hotel. I’ll overtake that young fool and see if I can’t save the day for him. He doesn’t deserve it, but if I don’t he’ll make trouble for us. He’ll get court-martialed, and he’ll accuse the babu. We’ll get called as witnesses. No percentage in that. I’ll tell him Mahdi Aububah had not been legally arrested — no warrant, not even a verbal order — so he can’t be court-martialed for letting him escape. He probably can be; but if he thinks I’m a possible friendly witness he’ll think twice before he sticks a spoke in our wheel.”