Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

Then Grim came, in a hurry. “Are you hurt? Sure? Put some stinkum on it, anyhow. Who did the killing?”

  I told him. He seemed to be listening to me, as it were, with one ear and with the other to be alert for footsteps. But suddenly he concentrated on me.

  “Listen, Crosby. This is my fault. I ought to have made things clearer to you. I wanted those men in here. That’s why we left the entrance unwatched.”

  I objected. “How could you have tackled them? Eleven armed men — and on top of that other gang?”

  “Easy. They’d have had to duck to get into the Great Chamber. Jeff would have disarmed them one by one. If they had turned back they would have had to deal with McGowan behind them.”

  “What if they had tackled McGowan first?”

  He shrugged. “Still easier! Mac would have acted bellwether and led ’em straight into the trap. Was Aububah among them?”

  “No,” I said, “but that was what I feared. He might have been, and he’d have recognized you. He’d have told them you’re not Dorje.”

  “That might have been a good thing. When that copper-bellied fool discovered what an ass he’d made of himself he might have blabbed all he knows. He hasn’t told it all yet, by a long shot, but we have the signal, and we know as much as he does about Dorje’s headquarters. We can get to Chak-sam on the Tsangpo without his help. I know now how Dorje transmits his orders, although we’ve work to do on that yet. And we have the key to his code. But I need to find out whether his agents can communicate with Dorje, and if so who does it, and how.”

  “Doesn’t Baltis know that?” I suggested.

  He nodded.

  “Yes, undoubtedly. But what a chance for her to get the whip hand, if I had to depend on her!”

  “Then why not let her go to prison?”

  “Because I count on her to do the wrong thing at the right time, and to give us the break that we’ll need as thirsty men need water.”

  I sighed.

  “Then we’re off for Chak-sam?”

  “Yes. The authorities can deal with Dorje’s agents easily enough. They’re fine-tooth-combing Cairo now, and the same thing is going on in a dozen countries. We go after Dorje.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?”

  We were gazing through darkness that was the shadow of the pyramid — ponderous — seeming almost as heavy and solid as Gizeh herself. Beyond that zone of gloom the desert was made vaguely luminous by starlight. Away in the distance there were what looked like enormous fireflies, of which, however, there are none in that bone-dry land. The long cordon of troops was at ease; men were lighting their pipes.

  Grim did not answer, so I asked again: “What are we waiting for?”

  “For those men, who just now ran from you, to do something. I don’t think they will dare to leave that dead man lying there; they’ll want to bury him or dump him in the Nile. And they won’t dare to wait until morning. If we’ve any luck they’ll send Aububah to investigate. And if we’re awfully lucky — just plain dog-lucky and my hunch is right — the man they may have come to meet may possibly be on his way to meet them.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. But I suspect it could hardly be that copper-bellied fool, who I think was chosen for his job because he has a certain sort of mental receptivity.”

  “Shush!” said McGowan. “Here comes someone!” And we ducked back into the total darkness within the entrance.

  CHAPTER 18. “Eight-six-four-one-nine-seven-five-three-two.”

  It was not Aububah. It was someone in the pink of condition, who could spare the breath to whistle softly to himself as he climbed in the oppressive heat radiated by the pyramid. It was someone who knew the way perfectly, to whom almost total darkness presented no obstacle whatever. And it was someone either utterly devoid of caution or else so sure of himself as to feel that caution would be out of place.

  The moment his head reached about the level of our feet Grim flashed a light full in his face, but he took no notice of it. He was a white man, wearing dark, smoked spectacles. He had a short brown beard, carefully trimmed, and was very neat in his whole appearance. His hands were in the hip-pockets of a suit of tussore silk, well tailored. Except for the spectacles he looked like one of those athletes who refuse to grow old and retire; a man of means, perhaps, who delighted in mountain climbing, or perhaps an explorer. He looked like a man whose self-assurance was the result of the achievement.

  “Bertolini!” McGowan whispered.

  Everyone who knows Egypt at all has heard of Walter Sandro Bertolini, the blind antiquarian so cordially hated by the dealers in antiques because he could tell the age of things by touch; well hated, too, by Egyptologists because of his irreverence for their opinions, and because of the intolerant originality of his own. There is hardly an important newspaper in any country that has not printed his vitriolic comments on the findings of men whose judgment is regarded as authoritative. His own book on the pyramids of Egypt has been condemned by almost every important critic in the world. The sort of man who would rather be wrong all by himself than right in good company, and yet who had the mortifying gift of being right so often that it was impossible to ignore him. He had never told how he was blinded — never mentioned it — resented questions on the subject — prided himself on being able to dispense with eyesight. Certainly he had abnormally sharp ears; he heard McGowan’s whisper.

  “Yes,” he said, “Bertolini. Forty-five years old this morning.”

  Grim answered him: “So that forty-five years ago you were—”

  “Forty-five!” he remarked. “What silly piffle! If you know who I am, why go through all that rigmarole? I’m Bertolini. Who are you?”

  “I’m Number One,” Grim answered, “sent to warn you. However, put me through the rigmarole. I might be a spy.”

  “Very well. How do you count nine?”

  “Eight-six-four-one-nine-seven-five-three-two,” Grim answered, “and the date being the thirtieth, the key is two-two.”

  “Which would that be?”

  “Second volume of McClaughlin’s Dictionary.”

  “All right. Who is with you?”

  “Baltis — among others.”

  “She is dead. I know it. Died in hospital. Not hearing from her I naturally supposed there had been an accident. I made my own enquiries. They were so secretive at the hospital that I knew she must be in there. I got the story from the nurse, who used to be a friend of Isadore Toplinsky, who works with Rothov.”

  I always carry a pencil clipped to the edge of my handkerchief pocket. I felt McGowan reach for it and I heard an old envelope crackle as he wrote down both names.

  “I told her to tell that story,” Grim answered.

  “Let me get my hands on you,” said Bertolini.

  Grim pushed me. I stepped between them. Bertolini fingered me with the uncanny supersensitive blind man’s touch that suggests a portrait painter’s stare and a surgeon’s exploring finger-tips combined in one.

  “H-m! Medical? Military? What name?”

  Grim, from behind me, rested his chin on my shoulder.

  “Major Robert Crosby,” he answered.

  “I’d have known if you’d given your wrong name. But what does it mean? I advised Dorje to let the military alone. The time to undermine the armies is when the panic sets in. Army men always go off half-cocked. I suppose it’s you who brought on this wretched fiasco in Cairo. I warned Dorje to let natural unrest take care of things, and let the Communists — reds — radicals take the blame. Has Dorje lost his wits? Here’s Egypt rotten with nationalism — India seething — China committing suicide — the Kurds boiling over and being massacred by Mustapha Kemal so thoroughly that all Persia will go hysterical — Mussolini with a million Italians in prison — England, Germany, the United States with millions of unemployed — native unrest in South Africa — religious strife in Malta — civil war in Brazil and Bolivia — Russia reducing bread rations in order to buy machinery with which to stave off a
bsolute bankruptcy — Australia flat broke — Japan so worried by internal politics that she’s even willing to reduce her Navy — Spain on the edge of a revolution — the French war party, Poland and Yugoslavia abetting them, itching to thrash Germany before Germany gets too strong — all Germany drilling under the guise of athletics — an almost perfect situation, not quite ripe but ripening faster every minute. And that damned fool Dorje spoils it by this penny fireworks policy of blowing up cruisers and burning a bit of cotton in a warehouse!”

  Grim pushed me aside, which was a relief. There is something horrible about fencing with a blind man; it was made worse, not better, by his confidence that no one would do him violence, and by the obvious fact that some of his faculties were amazingly developed.

  “I was sent,” said Grim, “to call a halt. The signals have not been coming through.”

  “Stuff and nonsense! They have. I’ve had ’em all,” he answered. “I’ve relayed ’em. Effectively, too. Do you know of the riots in Alexandria? Caught the authorities napping — perfect! Scores of young students all over the world are learning to pick ’em up better and better. You say Baltis is here? Let me talk to her.”

  Grim nudged me. “Do you mind bringing her?” But Bertolini heard that and objected.

  “None of your inspired conversations, thanks!” He pushed past Grim and vanished into the dark passage, going much faster than a man with eyesight could have done; he evidently knew every inch of the way intimately. McGowan remained in the entrance. Grim and I followed, hurrying with the aid of the flashlight; but we did not overtake the blind man until we found him kneeling beside the dead body of the Harlem Negro. He spoke as if he could see us with his shoulder-blades.

  “Who killed Honey Foxman? Shot in the back. What had he done? Scared you? Good tough nigger, and no harm in fifty of him! I could handle Honey like a pet dog! Counted on him, too, to do a lot of good in the United States; he was the sort that can start a riot in no time. Who shot him?”

  “I did,” Grim answered. “He was bragging too loud about his friend Bertolini.”

  “Is that so? Mentioned me by name? I wonder how he knew my name? He had never seen me. He knew me as the spirit of Ramses. I never spoke to him except in a dark room.”

  “How did you know it was dark?” Grim objected. “You can’t even feel light.”

  “Idiot! There aren’t windows in a tomb! Why do you suppose I’ve preached, day in, day out, for years, that there isn’t a tomb worth hunting for on the site of Cairo? I’ve a marvel of a place. I’m the voice in the tomb. I had Honey Foxman studying to be Master-magician of Osiris, reincarnation of Hamarchis and Captain of the Cohorts of the King of the World in the United States!”

  Grim took one of his intuitive long shots: “Too many people know about that tomb. Honey Foxman bragged about it — one more reason why I shot him. I could walk right to it.”

  “Smart, aren’t you!”

  “Yes. It’s my job to be. You were blaming Dorje just now. I’m not sent here to blame anyone, but to straighten out this mess if it can be straightened. Blame will be apportioned afterwards. Is there room for fifty people in that tomb of yours?”

  “Fifty? Five hundred.”

  “All right. Take my man there. He’s a greater expert than even you are. There’s no co-ordination. You’re running one department — someone else another — and so on. Send out a call for your men — I mean the head men, not the rank and file. We’ll have a conference. Does Mahdi Aububah know the place?”

  “That idiot? No. Baltis was supposed to get in touch with me, so that I could tell her to tell him where to deliver the thunderbolts. They should have been in my place long ago. If they had been, there would have been none of this premature rot and nonsense.”

  “How are we to get them in there now without being caught?”

  “I don’t know,” Bertolini was fingering the dead man’s body. Grim was watching him. “Perhaps after all we’d better blot out Cairo and have done with it.”

  “Maybe,” Grim answered. “Let’s find out first what Dorje has to tell us. Dorje sees things on a big scale.”

  “All right.” Bertolini had found what he was looking for. It was in the dead man’s amami, which is a sort of turban. Whatever it was, he slipped it into his pocket. Then he started forward. He had not gone more than a dozen paces before Grim said:

  “Half a minute, there’s blood on you, off Foxman. Take your coat off.” Grim pulled the coat down over his back by the collar so that his arms were pinioned. “No, it’s not blood after all — mere innocuous dirt. Go ahead.” He jerked the coat back in position.

  “Damn you!” Bertolini remarked, without emphasis but with a coldly vicious intonation. “I will have you understand I don’t like being touched!”

  “I sympathize,” said Grim. “I hate it, too. But blood on your coat, at a time like this—”

  “You have picked my pocket!”

  Bertolini faced us, livid with indignation. I turned the full light in his face but he seemed not to know it. Rage changed his entire expression; he was no longer a handsome man; he looked like a maniac, and he thrust his lower jaw and neck so far forward that almost a hump appeared between his shoulders.

  “Hand that thing back!”

  “What thing? Perhaps you dropped it?” Grim held what he had toward the rays of the flashlight, so that I saw it, too. It was a tiny, blue memorandum book of the kind that expensive jewelers give away as an advertisement. There were only a few words on each page in fine Italian handwriting; but beneath them, and sometimes over them, Foxman had scrawled other words in pencil.

  “I never drop anything!”

  “If it’s important I advise you to go back and look,” Grim answered. He pulled out his own notebook and I held the flashlight while he copied the entries, doing it as swiftly as some illustrators draw. And Bertolini, needing no light, retraced his steps fretfully, stooping to feel the granite floor with fingers that were as good as another man’s eyes; it took him several minutes because he left no inch unfingered; Grim had finished copying before the blind man reached the corpse. He passed the memorandum book to me. I followed Bertolini and said: “There — is that what you’re looking for?”

  “What? Where? Where is it?”

  I dropped the little book on to the dead man’s back (he was face downward), and at the same time made a noise on the stone with my foot so that his ears should not catch the sound of the book falling. Then I told him what I saw. He pounced on it — fingered it.

  “Hot!” he remarked. “You had it in your fingers!”

  I answered: “I would have, if I’d seen it first. What is it?”

  “None of your business!” he snapped and turned back toward where Grim waited for us. But he did not pause when he reached Grim. He hurried forward, muttering, and because he knew the way so well he soon outdistanced us, so that Grim had opportunity to whisper:

  “Now we’re all set! That’s a list of the names and addresses of nineteen people. French — Greek — German — Italian — English — Egyptian. Bertolini seems to be the kingpin; Foxman was his messenger, among other things. Have you got that gun? Whatever you do, don’t shoot Bertolini. We need him.”

  Grim whistled — three notes on an ascending scale. The babu, carrying a lighted candle and looking like a pot-bellied Roman senator, came waddling down the grand ramp and met Bertolini midway. He was an utterly impassable obstruction and exceedingly polite about it:

  “Salaam, sahib. You are King of England, doubtless. How is Her Majesty? Yes? No? Thank you, I am very well. And if, as your Majesty says, I am damned, I am at least damned pleased to meet you. No, am obesity made manifest and cannot make room for you or anyone. No, you are mistaken. I am not that fool who is the temporary tenant. I came to count the money in the gas-meter. It was not there. I suspect Queen Cleopatra of having come to life to collect more revenue for one of her gentleman friends. Are you the landlord?”

  One can always count on Chullunde
r Ghose to clown through anything to gain time. He has been known to hold up the Bombay-Calcutta train for an hour in order to prevent a Maharajah from keeping an appointment with a banker; he got thirty days in jail for it, and in the jail he made the acquaintance of a man with whom he cheerfully agreed to bomb the Viceroy; so that the Viceroy is still in the land of the living. He gave us plenty of time to overtake Bertolini. And then:

  “We would like to talk to the Princess,” said Grim.

  Bertolini objected: “No, no. I will see her alone.” But Chullunder Ghose had already grasped the essentials of the situation; he had turned and scurried back ahead of us, and Grim said:

  “Careful, Bertolini! Watch your step. There’s been some oil spilled here and the ramp’s as slippery as ice. Let me walk ahead of you.”

  “Oil?” he retorted. “Nonsense! I could smell oil fifty feet away if there was any.”

  But, as luck would have it, there had been some cooking done and someone actually had spilled oil within smelling distance. Bertolini sniffed, detected it and became a shade more gracious.

  “No, no. I don’t need help. Don’t touch me. I tell you, I hate it.”

  However, he let Grim go ahead of him and Grim went slowly. By the time we reached the head of the ramp Chullunder Ghose had had ample time to use his fertile imagination.

  As those who know the pyramid will not need telling, at the top of the Grand Ramp there is a low passage about three and a half feet high that leads into a small ante-chamber, from which there is another short, low passage into the Great Chamber. Bertolini, negotiating the slippery summit with the ease of a cat, ducked exactly at the right moment without groping, stood upright the moment he reached the ante-chamber, crossed it, ducked again without groping and passed through the second passage. Grim remained in the ante-chamber, motioning to me to follow Bertolini.

  The candles were all lighted, and someone had produced two oil lanterns as well. Jeff, with his back to the wall near the entrance, jerked his head to call my attention to two men who were not in the Chamber at the time I left. There could only be one possible explanation of that. Above the Great Chamber there are so-called chambers of construction, very difficult of access by means of notches cut in the south-east angle of the Grand Gallery. They must have been in hiding up there; and the fact that Jeff now had two revolvers, one in each hip-pocket, was good enough evidence that he had disarmed them as they entered. They looked like Hindus, and they were filthy with bat manure. One wore spectacles; the other was dressed as a European; and they both looked like young intellectuals of the kind who make the rounds of the universities before returning to India to envenom politics in the name of spiritual vision. Excitable, but not excitingly attractive men.