by Talbot Mundy
But to use physical violence would have been a bit too emphatic, although I am almost sure she was the kind of woman who is loyal only to a man who thrashes her. My problem seemed to be to trick her, somehow, into cooperation with Grim during the next few, probably intensely dangerous, minutes.
“I hate to be made ridiculous,” I said. “If Grim had sense he would confide in you.”
“That is it,” she answered. “How shall I make him listen to me?”
“Well,” I said, “I’ll tell you what I think. For tonight it’s very likely neck or nothing, and it’s too late to turn back. But Grim doesn’t trust you. I believe he actually counts on you to try to betray him. And he trusts himself to turn the tables on you. That’s his way of finally convincing you that he’s the head man; and if he once does that you’re done for, he will simply use you as a pawn in his game forever after, just as he uses me.”
“Yes — like an err-rr-and boy!”
“I want to see him win this game,” I went on, “and I don’t believe he will win it without your assistance. The thing for you to do is to convince him that he can trust you, especially if you get an opportunity tonight to do the opposite. Surprise him by your apparently blind obedience. If we all get killed, no matter. If we don’t — if we get out of this alive — he will have changed his attitude toward you, and after that I’ll be able to help you to steer him along the right line. Personally, I think you have more brains than he has.”
“I think — a leetle bit you like me?” she suggested.
“I think you’re the most intelligent woman I ever met.”
“You, too, you have intelligence,” she answered. “Good, I do it. Afterwards we help each other. But I think we go into a trap. How gor-r-rgeous if we all get killed in one sensational affaire! I adore to die that way.”
Then Grim beckoned us and we all went forward in a group, Jeff leading. He looked like a factory owner on a surprise visit of inspection at the new plant, with his fist in his right hip-pocket and his air of deliberate, punchful personality. Chullunder Ghose drew back beside me:
“Did you annoy her? Same was indicated as proper prescription. Always, sahib, always irritate a woman in any emergency whatsoever. She emerges forthwith. Verb sap. Very. Shakespeare, who I was in previous incarnation, should have said:
‘Oh woman in our hour of ease
You’re no good on a lover’s knees;
But angry you’re a lil’ — , and how!
So do get angry — do it now!’
Am terrified. A kind of yellowish-purple funk with spots on it is melting me. That is why I quote immortal poetry. Nobody treats a poet seriously. I do not wish calamity to treat me seriously. Is calamity a person? I believe she is a female. Are females persons? Let me get at that one. Let me irritate her.”
She was overtaking Grim. He followed, I close on his heels. He pushed past her roughly, although there was plenty of room on the road. She resented it:
“Cochon d’un Indien! Vache!”
“French,” he retorted, “is diplomatic language — very! Damn French! Damn you! You are interloper! You imagine you will scheme your way into Jimmy Jimgrim’s confidence and make him hate me! Bah! You haven’t brains enough! In previous incarnation you were Delilah who shaved Sampson. But Jimmy Jimgrim wears no whiskers. I bet you think, tonight, you make him love you. I bet you can’t! Pounds Egyptian fifty. Take me?”
“Silence!” Grim commanded.
The authorities have made it very easy for the tourist to invade the pyramid. There is a ramp and a system of steps, by which one reaches the opening, about fifty feet above the level of the ground on the north side. As we approached I saw somebody drop to the ground, not by the steps but by using the huge stone courses as a stairway. I don’t think he saw us, but he was in a tremendous hurry; the moment his feet were on the sand he took to his heels and ran southward. He was a big man wearing a white smock tucked into a pair of cotton knickers, but it was much too dark to identify him. Grim, quite casually, turned and stared into the darkness behind us. Almost instantly, not more than fifty yards away, there was a sudden flick from someone’s pocket flashlight. It was repeated a moment later twenty or thirty yards farther southward. McGowan’s Cockney had given chase. Grim resumed his interest in the pyramid.
In another moment we were observed from the pyramid opening. Fifty feet above us I heard voices and someone challenged, in a low voice, as if visitors were expected. The challenge was repeated in several languages — Arabic, Hindu, two that I did not recognize, and at last in English:
“Who are you?”
To me the voice sounded something less than confident. However, there was no time for speculation; Grim pulled me into the deep gloom at the base of the pyramid and whispered:
“Go up with them. Your job is to be mysterious and say nothing. You’re the unknown quantity. Smile, look confident, do nothing, and don’t speak.”
There was a stone missing from the second course; he pulled himself up into the gap and sat there, perfectly invisible from a distance of two yards. It was no use asking questions. I followed the others, overtaking them just as the challenge from above was repeated:
“Who are you?”
Jeff pushed the Princess forward, holding her by the arm, and she answered:
“Baltis!”
“You come late. He is waiting.” The words were English, spoken with a turgid foreign accent. Jeff nudged her and growled something in an undertone. She spoke again:
“I send someone.”
Before there was time for the man above to answer her Jeff went on up alone, important looking, as if he meant to buy the pyramid provided it was up to sample. He climbed as if there were no such things as rifles or automatics. The darkness in the mouth of the opening was of the sort that the ancients used to sell in sealed jars to the tourists of those days, and the silence was of the same quality; one’s own heartbeats were like the noise of marching men and a wristwatch ticked like the clangor of cymbals. Looming up there against the astonishing starlight Jeff looked twice his natural size until he strode into the opening and vanished.
The Princess stepped nearer to me and I think she was going to whisper, but McGowan prevented her; and then Jeff reappeared, both hands in his pockets this time. He spoke louder than necessary, I suppose to make sure that Grim should hear him:
“All right. Come on up.”
McGowan stayed. “Might be recognized,” he whispered. He was only there to make sure that the Princess did not turn aside and hide in the impenetrable shadows. She, I and Chullunder Ghose made the ascent, in that order, and I could hear the babu daring her to try to rob him of Jimgrim’s confidence. Halfway up, when she paused for breath, he changed his tone and pleaded with her, wiping the sweat from his face in a way that almost suggested tears:
“Am lamentable babu. Sorry I spoke roughly. Please don’t steal all my credit. Give me some chance!”
She ignored him. When we reached the small level space at the mouth of the opening Jeff bowed as if he were her dragoman, and led the way in. I went last then. There were no lanterns. It was darker than death and stifling. I know that entrance intimately, but I had to grope like a blind man, and was not reassured by a hand in the small of my back that held a knife for all I knew, and by a thin voice like a eunuch’s that mewed in my ear:
“Longesa — juldee — sita — kabadar — go on — all right — I shove — ham poosh dioonga!”
I despise being “pooshed” from behind but Grim’s injunctions had been strict and permitted no speech, no resistance. Fervently, not for the first time, I cursed Grim’s modus operandi. With the sweat running into my sightless eyes, that hand at my back and that voice in my ear, my nerves seemed all short-circuited, and the noise that the others made, clambering along ahead in pitch blackness, making preposterous echoes, revived a dread of the unseen with which destiny cursed me the day I was born. Nowadays, almost always, I can conquer it; but not that night. Only they who suffer
from the same form of hysteria can gauge what mental effort it cost to climb that ascending passage and arrive at the foot of the ramp of the Grand Gallery in fit condition to remember, let alone obey, Grim’s injunctions.
That damned old pyramid invariably reduces me to speechlessness. Perhaps that is why I did obey, although I think I really had myself in hand again. At any rate, I controlled myself when someone pushed past me from behind, although the temptation was almost irresistible to hit out at him, and the next sixty seconds were a nightmare. Then suddenly someone switched on an electric lantern and the strong light caused those incredibly marvelous walls to seem to leap forth out of darkness. Even a premonition, that the man who had pushed past me might be up to deadly mischief, vanished. It always seems to me like sacrilege to stand in that place; and the sight of the names of the swine who have carved them on the immortal granite makes me capable of mayhem. The name of John Smith was about three feet away from my eyes. I turned away from it and brought up face to face with the most extraordinary person I had ever seen.
He was not more than five feet tall. He had an enormous head with a bulging forehead and deep-sunk eyes set wide apart. He had a thin neck that looked incapable of supporting all that weight; a big torso, with a huge stomach and extremely long arms; short, fat legs and enormous feet. He was sweating, and because of the stifling heat in there he had discarded almost all his clothing. His stance was insolent. His upturned nose, with Negroid nostrils, indicated a colossal self-esteem. The glance he gave me did more to restore my nerves than anything else could have done. It made me ache to pick a row with him. He and I hated each other instantly, and he sniffed like a dog as he turned and faced the Princess.
We were all in a group — we, that copper-bellied monster and seven others, including the leathery-looking mongrel Swahili-Somali-Hindu who had pushed me from behind. The remaining six were rather dignified-looking men and three of them might be Persians; the other three had decidedly Mongoloid features. He who had shoved me up the passage was the only one who showed a weapon, but that was a shuddersome, wave-edged knife with two blades and an ivory handle. There was no sign of Mahdi Aububah, so I supposed he was the man I had seen scramble down from the entrance and take to his heels.
In a language that I could not identify the copper-bellied captain of that strangely assorted crew angrily ordered the man with the knife to return to the entrance, and he went as if dogs were after him. I remembered to smile, and when the monster stared at me again I thought he looked vaguely disconcerted. Once more he faced the Princess.
“Baltis! Where d’yew get that garments? What-a you been doing all this long time? All gone wrong — we waiting and no message! What-a yew been doing?”
Instantly Chullunder Ghose spoke up. He gave her no time to invent a story of her own that might have upset Grim’s calculations, whatever those were. He lied like lightning, prodded by the twin horns of necessity and inspiration:
“Chupp! Be silent, you abominable bungler! Damn fool! She has had orders from Dorje. Let her tell it.”
“Dorje?” Copper-belly staggered for a moment. “Dorje is not in Egypt.” He glared at me again. I remembered to smile. He lost a part of his arrogance. His companions looked actually scared. He stared again at her: “You bring me cock or bull tale?”
I only wish I could tell what passed through her mind. Completely mystified, but certain that Chullunder Ghose had spoken as Grim had told him to, and left now to her own resources, there was nothing she could do but, as it were, follow suit. She let her lip curl.
“Bungler!” she retorted. “Where is Dorje? We were to meet Dorje here, in this place.”
He of the copper belly backed away from her. “Who has fooled yew? Yew go mad, eh? I am Dorje’s man here.”
“Where is Dorje?” she repeated.
“Yew not know, eh? Dorje get him a new woman!”
He backed farther away. I saw Jeff’s muscles tighten for a scrimmage, and I was getting awfully tired of smiling like a wise fool. I saw copper-belly make a signal with his left hand, and then out went the light. The Princess did not scream, but I heard Jeff close with someone and there was a thud as his fist hit someone else. Then a voice — up aloft at the top of the ramp — said sternly:
“Turn that light on!”
It was so sudden and dynamic that it stopped the scrimmage. It was Chullunder Ghose who answered, loud and high:
“Who are you?”
“Dorje! Turn that light on!”
It was I who found the lantern in the dark and snatched it from its owner. Luck, that — he was making for me. I switched it on. Jeff had copper-belly in a strangle-hold. Chullunder Ghose had dragged the Princess twenty feet away along the floor of the Grand Gallery to keep her out of mischief; she was struggling, not knowing who had hold of her. She had drawn a long, thin knife. The lantern saved the babu by a fraction of a second.
At the top of the ascending ramp, as calm and cool to look at as if he were the spirit of the genius who built the place — with his back to the gloom of the low arch leading to the Great King’s Chamber — incredible, because there was no hint of how he got there — turbaned, thinly smiling and alert, with folded arms, stood Jimgrim!
“Dogs! Blunderers! Idiots! I am Dorje!”
It was touch and go then. It depended absolutely, solely on the Princess. Staggered, admiring, amused, aware that for the moment the ace of trumps was in her hand, she seemed to hesitate, prolonging the suspense, enjoying it. The others stared at her. She knew; none else did; she was Dorje’s woman. Then at last:
“Lord Dorje, you are greater than even I believed. Greetings! Down on your knees, you reptiles! Bow to him — the Lord Dorje, the Daring — the King of the World!”
CHAPTER 16. “Can’t make brain empty. Can’t listen.”
Dared by Grim and nagged by Chullunder Ghose; perhaps, too, with my argument at the back of her mind, Baltis had reacted perfectly. Grim’s gamble — a throw of life’s dice in the dark — was too bold and too suddenly done not to delight her.
When, on the spur of that moment, she acknowledged herself as her dead twin sister, and acknowledged Grim as Dorje, she did it recklessly, thrilled by the danger and almost drunk with the daring of the idea. The drama of it had us all by the throat. Grim — turbaned, laconic, inscrutable — suddenly seen in the glare of an electric lantern standing at the top of that agelessly ancient ramp in the heart of Gizeh, would have astonished almost anyone into at least momentary obedience. Grim had gambled on the possibility that Dorje’s men had never seen their master; although, when he explained it afterwards, that part of his strategy turned out to have been closely reasoned and at least in line with probability. Baltis almost exactly resembled her sister and Dorje’s men had no conceivable reason for supposing she was not the woman who, to their probably certain knowledge, did know Dorje intimately. Grim had gambled on her convincing them. She might have wrecked Grim’s chances by denying him before those men, but the really deadly risk Grim took was that he made her the key to the future. If he was going to pretend to be Dorje, Baltis would be in a position to betray him whenever she pleased. She fully realized it. And she showed it instantly by trying to humiliate and score off us.
“Down on your knees, you reptiles!”
Dorje’s men did not obey the order, I suppose because I held the light steadily on Grim and as long as I did that the rest of us were in almost total darkness. Grim spoke again:
“Baltis! Come forward into the light!”
She obeyed. I have seen nothing, anywhere, more graceful than her movement as she stood near the foot of the ramp and bowed to him with outstretched arms. I think the feel of that splendid shrine had hold of her and she was acting as Bernhardt used to, her imagination for the moment making real the unreality she played.
“Lord Dorje,” she began.
“Silence! Every order I have given has been ignored or bungled in the doing. I blame you.”
It was crafty. Inflection of voice a
nd attitude were indescribably suggestive of a swordsman’s way of tempting an opponent into indiscretion. She realized it, as he intended that she should. No word, no gesture indicated that she was not his real target. One sensed rather than perceived an invitation to the others to join in and blame her for everything that had gone wrong. He of the monstrous head and copper-colored belly went into the trap without a second’s hesitation, swaying forward into the stream of light; I let him have its full strength, leaving Grim for the moment dimly outlined by the outer rays that made him look more like a ghost than a man.
Torrents of words, in a language I did not recognize. Eloquence killing its own effect by too much emphasis that conjured hollow echoes from the womb of Gizeh and changed it to cavernous sounds like a thunder of waves in an underworld. Stopped by Grim’s voice, like a cracked whip:
“Dunderhead! Speak English!” He pronounced the words as if he were using a familiar but not his own native language.
“Lord Dorje, I wished only you to understand!”
“Since when do your wishes overrule mine?”
“Then I speak English. Yes, she is wholly to blame. She has bewildered us. She left us here — huh — so long time in this place — and no water — none here — none now left. So I sent Aububah. And he came back; and he said she is making love in Cairo. Huh! Kill her! Say it. I wring her neck!”
It became evident that Grim had assumed the rights and title of an autocrat as absolute as Bluebeard, although the secret of his sway was not yet uncovered. Knowing Grim by that time moderately well, I doubted that his strategy could possibly succeed. He is almost the last man whom one could imagine dealing out sentences of death for disobedience. Determination personified, he is, nevertheless, no killer. Men used to a bloody tyranny are the first to revolt when death and disobedience are no longer synonymous terms. Either they would know he was not Dorje because cruel discipline was lacking; or they would believe Dorje had weakened. Either way Grim was in peril. However, he carried a high hand thus far. His quiet, cold voice was much more effective than vehemence might have been: