by Talbot Mundy
“Do you realize the risk?” Grim smiled — nodded.
“It would be safer to pose as the Pope, or as the Viceroy of India,” said the general. “At least five hundred million people, to whom religion means more than food and drink, await the coming of the Lord Maitreya under one name or another. It’s the strongest and most dangerous undercurrent in the world today, and it includes all Asia — even China and Japan. Dorje has stirred that undercurrent so adroitly that the whole of Asia awaits the new dispensation — expects it. These political disturbances are symptoms. They’re ready — on tip-toe — listening and looking for the new Messiah. Look what they did to Gandhi — almost deified him. I tell you, if Gandhi hadn’t been a man of iron will and decent spirit they’d have done it! And they’d have killed him if he had lost his head for half a minute! Dorje — you play Dorje and they’ll mob you. They’ll demand a miracle. Fail, and they’ll tear you to tatters!”
“I will take that chance if you permit,” said Grim.
“I couldn’t think of it. I forbid it absolutely.” The general glanced at Jeff and me. “I want you all to understand me. I forbid that. I would like to talk to Grim privately, if you two excuse us.”
So Jeff and I returned to the waiting-room, where I sat discouraged. But Jeff understood the situation rather better.
“The old game,” he said, grinning genially. “Now there are no witnesses, he’ll give Grim carte blanche. If Grim fails, Grim can get it where the chicken got the axe. If Grim succeeds, all honor to the Secret Service! That’s how bureaucracies work; their promises are so evasive that they’re not worth breaking, but their hints mean ‘help yourself and pass the bottle!’ Wait and see.”
We waited — endlessly. If we had known that Grim and the general were going over Dorje’s cipher and the code book that we found in Bertolini’s cavern, we might have gone for a walk and returned in a couple of hours. However, Jeff continued genially patient until Chullunder Ghose smiled his way in through a door that opened into secretaries’ offices. Then Jeff became suddenly ill-tempered.
“You damned fool!” he exploded, sounding all the more violent because he kept his voice low. “Why the devil did you insult the general?”
“Sahib. I bet you pounds Egyptian fifty. Have not yet had time to see a money-changer; otherwise would bet you rupees.”
“What do you bet?”
“Rammy sahib, I bet you I got out of that room very neatly, and that you can’t think of any other way I could have done same and appear to have a message from the general to someone else. Am fish in water hereabouts. Know all the holes and corners. Lend me a thousand rupees.”
“What for?”
“I wish to bet you handsomely. I wish to bet you that I know how Dorje has been getting news of world events. He did until several days ago, but now he does not.”
“What the devil do you mean?”
“Now he knows only Indian events, unless he has another intermediary.”
“Not so loud,” said Jeff, “that man on duty at the door might overhear.”
“Have personal old friend in this department — very friendly person — name of Hari Kobol Das — he did me out of good job once and got me sent to prison, but he never knew I knew who did it. Was at one time teacher of a class in Sanskrit, which was cover-up job for an undercover study of the Sanskrit sciences. Had to get money somehow, and it takes a long time to make dummy replicas of ancient manuscripts and substitute same for the real ones stolen from the temple libraries. Hari Kobol Das and this babu experimented with thought transmission, which is intricately but not too lucidly explained in certain ancient books. I stole them, which is how he had me put in prison, but no matter.”
“Where are the books now?” Jeff asked.
“Back in the temple library. He did not have me put in prison until he had translated the books and had begun to study the translation, and grew jealous and began to fear that I might learn something. He was like a man who has discovered gold; he wanted all of it.
“Just now I went through that door. As I passed through I was halted, but I said the general sent me; and before the man could ask to whom had the general sent me, I saw Hari Kobol Das sitting all alone at a desk in a little office at the end of the corridor. So I replied that I was sent to Hari Kobol Das, and he pretended he was very glad to see me, though he feared I came to ask a favor. So I told him I was prosperous and came from Europe; and I did not ask him why a man who knows as much as he, should be satisfied with such an unimportant place in such an office. He had scissors and a paste-pot. He was clipping items from the Indian daily papers and pasting them into a scrap-book.
“When he learned I was from Europe he began to ask me for the latest news. I pretended to wonder at that. I said, surely you have all the news in this place. He said, yes, until recently I clipped the bulletins decoded from the secret cablegrams from Europe, but now no longer; they have put me to this task, which is not so interesting. And he began to question me. But I denied that I had any news; I said the ship on which I came was not equipped with radio except for purposes of S.O.S. But he knew that was a lie, because I told him I traveled first-class on a P. & O. liner. So he reminded me that he and I are old friends who can trust each other. And at that I let him understand that I had come straight to him from the general’s office. So he supposed I am one of the general’s secret agents.
“Presently he hinted news is valuable. There is money to be picked up, he said, buying and selling rupee paper, which goes up or down according to the world news. If there were disasters all over the world, for instance, it would go down as soon as the news was known, and if I had advance information I could sell high and buy low. Do you know of any such disasters? Such, for instance, as this business at Cawnpore?
“So I told him he should learn that by thought-transference, and left him. But as I turned away he begged me not to repeat our conversation. And of course I said I would not. But I bet you pounds Egyptian fifty that if anyone possessed of faculties should search the dwelling place of Hari Kobol Das, he would discover there a code book showing how he thinks the news to Dorje over thought-waves of a certain length.”
Then Grim came through the general’s private door. And by the look in Grim’s eyes it was easy to see that what had been said in confidence to one man was as different as what had been told to three as chalk is from the cheese on tasters’ tables.
CHAPTER 29. “But you must kill him!”
Grim calls his own sudden feats of induction “following the Middle way.” Jeff calls it tight-rope walking. And Chullunder Ghose describes it as “the inside-out-ishness of paradox pursued to ultimate improbability, which is the essence of the quest for truth.” But then, Chullunder Ghose claims he can understand Einstein.
The babu was too cock-a-hoop with his discovery of Hari Kobol Das, and a bit too pleased with his own astuteness. As we drove in the general’s car to an address that Grim whispered to the chauffeur, Jeff aired his view of it:
“No one of Dorje’s caliber would be such a damned fool as to trust a man of that type. If Hari Kobol Das has brains enough to wring the juice out of a Sanskrit treatise on thought-wave-lengths, and not guts enough to make himself a power in the land on the strength of it, then Hari Kobol Das is a piker. Pikers can do nothing but a piker’s job, and anyone of Dorje’s weight must know that. The nearer we get to Dorje, the more power you’ll find his real captains have. They won’t be pasting clippings in a scrap-book.”
“There are traitors,” said Grim, “in every camp.” But it was not clear at the moment what he meant by that remark. He appeared excited. I imagine we all would have been if we had known what he was contemplating.
We went where I hoped we were going — to the Chandni Chowk — to Benjamin’s, where anyone may go without exciting comment. Nineteen expeditions out of twenty buy their second-hand stores from Benjamin, and get their information from him, too, if they want it dependable. His great dim store is like a mausoleum of the memorie
s of caravans. The smells of Asia live there. Camel-saddles, reeking with the sweat from Samarkand, lie heaped between the stacks of canned provisions, blankets, overcoats and boots. Tibetan devil-masks scowl from the walls between tulwars, spears, Persian knives and all sorts of obsolete weapons. There is a pervading smell of musk. There is some of everything, from saddle soap to coral nose-studs for Zenana ladies. And whatever you buy from Benjamin is what he says it is — exactly that. They say he is as rich as Croesus. But he is disconsolate because he has no sons, and even his son-in-law Mordecai died in a storm in the throat of the Zogi-la on the way from Tibet.
Benjamin met us — old — old — bearded — in a little skullcap — red-rimmed around the eyes — wearing spectacles nowadays, down on his nose; he looked at us over them. And he was as pleased to see Grim and Jeff as if they had been his own sons returned from the grave. He almost ran ahead of us into the windowless lamp-lit office at the rear, where receipts and letters hung on long, old-fashioned filing hooks and a portrait of the Tashi Lama, looking like Elihu Root in a bathrobe, stared from an ebony frame on the wall above a roll-top desk. There he embraced them — kissed them — and then looked at me. He took no notice of Chullunder Ghost until he had examined me from head to foot, blinking as he peered at me above his glasses.
“Jimgrim!” he said. “Jimgrim! And you, Jeff! It is better than meat and drink to see you two again before I die! And who is this one? Is he one of you? Well, you know best. You trust him? That is a recommendation. And you still trust that one?”
He stared at the babu, shook his head, showed him a box in a corner to sit on and then offered us the bentwood chairs.
“Food presently — my daughter shall spread her best for us. Hey-yeh, what memories. Well, Jimgrim, what now? What is it this time? For you never come to see me unless your nose is up-wind like a lean dog’s: Either you seek Shambala, or you hunt some devil. What now?”
“Dorje,” Grim answered.
“Yeh-yeh, I might have known it! Seven years ago I said that Dorje must be reckoned with sooner or later — just as I told them that Mustapha Kemal would get a grip they can’t break. It was I who told them that the Dalai Lama would be driven out of Lhasa. And that was Dorje’s doing — I said so. I told them also about the Tashi Lama; and that, too, was Dorje’s doing. But they laughed. Was I right, Jimgrim, or was I wrong? They only listen to me after it is too late. Dorje has stolen the wind in the sail of the myth of the Lord Maitreya. It is likely your last journey if you think of hunting Dorje.”
“We are on our way,” Grim answered. “May we camp here? May we use your subway?”
“Kek-kek-keh! Subway! What a name for it! You may use everything I own, Jimgrim. You will stay here? You will sleep in my house?”
Grim nodded. “Who are the most expert prostitutes in Delhi?” he asked.
“Hey-yeh-what now? There are three important ones. Sumroo, Damayanti and Vasantasena. But Vasantasena grows old.”
“Who is Hari Kobol Das?”
“That rat? Never trust him, Jimgrim! I believe Vasantasena uses him to spy on them. And they use him to spy on her. She tells him things to say to them. They tell him things to say to her. Tss-ss-a cheap one, making here and there a little blackmail money, which he loses at the quail fight or at Ganji’s gaming house. He thinks he has a system. It is based on sending thought into another’s head. It was from him, they say, Vasantasena got the copies of the Sanskrit books that Babu Jamsetji translated for her — and then died, it was said, of a sting of a scorpion. But there are more ways than one, Jimgrim, of increasing a scorpion’s venom. I have heard of gangrene being painted on the claws and on the sting. They say, too, that Vasantasena herself made secret copies before she surrendered those books to a temple because the priests were after her. But who knows? All I know is that she buys from me the musk that I get from Kulu, for the perfumes that her maid makes. So I took some to her, myself in person. And I am old, Jimgrim, but I am neither blind nor deaf.”
Grim made no comment. He apparently knew Benjamin too well to interrupt him with unnecessary questions. And after a minute’s stroking at his beard the old man went on:
“Nine. Is nine the residue of nine from nine?”
Grim nodded. “Forty-five is four and five — that’s nine. And forty- five from forty-five is—”
“Eight, six, four, one, nine, seven, five, three, two,” said Benjamin.
“Which are forty-five — four and five — nine again.”
“You have it, Jimgrim. Nowadays Vasantasena loses customers to Sumroo and Damayanti. But there are others who come in their place. I noticed that if one should say nine to the man at the outer door in any language, he asks how many are left if nine are taken; and whoever answers nine may pass into the courtyard, where the inner guard stand — she who slew the younger son of Poonch-Terai in ‘17 and hid the body in a sweeper’s cart, so that none knew who had done it, except those who have ears to the ground. And if he should ask such a question as how many miles has your honor come, the answer should be forty-five miles, whereat he will probably ask how many hours that journey took? And if the answer should be forty-five hours, then that person is admitted to the stair-head, where a maid asks other questions in a voice so low I could not overhear. There come strange people to Vasantasena.”
“Hari Kobol Das among them?”
“Often.”
“Does he come here?”
“Sometimes. He comes to spy on me. I humor him by paying him a little money now and then to tell me lies about the European news. And I tell him other lies because I know he will repeat them to a certain general to whom I do not choose to seem too well informed. They have a way, those generals, of dealing harshly with a man like me, if I should know too much.”
“Could you get word to Hari Kobol Das?” Grim asked him.
“Could you bring him here without arousing his suspicion?”
“Why not? I can pretend I have secret news.”
“I want him to learn that Dorje is in Delhi.”
“You are mad! Jimgrim, of all the madness—”
“Call me any name you care to, Benjamin, but—”
“Jimgrim, if I say that Dorje is in Delhi—”
Strong old fingers like a sculptor’s began combing at the long beard. Red- rimmed, scandalized, and it seemed to me terrified eyes scanned each face swiftly and the babu’s turn came.
“Jimgrim, send that one away!”
“No,” Grim answered. “Chullunder Ghose is as much my friend as you are. A general told me this afternoon that you paid the lien on the dhow of Haroun ben Yahudi, months ago, so that he could clear from Karachi, for Marseilles, with a mixed cargo, including scrap brass.”
“What of it? Eh? What of it? Is my money not mine?”
“And that you sold that fleet of dhows that you used to send each year to Zanzibar.”
“True. True enough. As you said, Jimgrim, I am old. It was time I should get rid of that liability. Dhows were profitable once, but not so nowadays. It is no secret that I sold them.”
“But it is a secret that Dorje’s thunderbolts were shipped in dhows from Karachi to the coast of the Red Sea, and to Egypt, and to Marseilles, and to other places.”
“What do I know of Dorje’s thunderbolts?”
“Or of Dorje — eh, Benjamin? Or of the fact that Dorje used your ‘underground,’ as Mordecai called it, for the transportation of his thunderbolts from Chak-sam to Karachi?”
“It is a lie, Jimgrim!”
“So the general supposes. But the thunderbolts did reach Karachi. And I have traveled by your ‘underground,’ so I know it exists and how carefully Mordecai planned and perfected it. If Mordecai had lived, that secret chain of hand-to-hand communication would have reached Siberia.”
“True, Jimgrim. True enough.”
“And the Gobi desert.”
“Eh? Eh?”
“So that whatever was found in the Gobi could be smuggled either north or south? Why did you a
nd Mordecai devise that ‘underground’?”
“Before I helped you into Tibet I explained that, Jimgrim. Has the government not a secret service network, like a spider-web that reaches in all directions? And what a government can do well, an intelligent man can do better. Their system is expensive. Mine has been a source of revenue to me.”
“Yes. Has been. When did Dorje steal it?”
“How do you know he stole it, Jimgrim?”
“Because I know you, Benjamin. The general told me that you are no longer a problem — no longer suspected — no longer watched, except as a matter of routine.”
“Tschuh-tschuh! Hari Kobol Das — that imbecile!”
“He remarked that since Mordecai died you have lost ambition and that you finally abandoned your ‘underground,’ at just about the time when he had clapped a hundred men on to the job of tracing it.”
“Well? What if I washed my hands of it? What of it? There was nothing illegal, except a little matter of some customs duty now and then. But at my age should I make myself trouble?”
“Benjamin, men like Mordecai, and you and I, and Jeff, and Crosby, and Chullunder Ghose, don’t quit because old age creeps on us. We die with our boots on. And if someone steals the boots, we try to steal ’em back. We don’t squeal. And we don’t have change of heart. And if we know of buried cities in the Gobi Desert, we don’t give up scheming. But if we grow old, we possibly look for a partner. And we sometimes trust the wrong man. Why did you trust Dorje?”
“Jimgrim—”
“And when Dorje stole your system, as I have no doubt he did, why did you — yourself — in person, as you told me just now, put yourself to the humiliation of delivering musk to Vasantasena? Benjamin — the richest man in Delhi—”
“Not the richest, Jimgrim. I have had losses.”
“And the proudest — too proud to go to a general and reveal the system that has baffled the Indian secret service all these years — delivering an ounce or two of perfume to a prostitute! And memorizing numbers! Trying to trap Dorje, Benjamin? Well, so am I. And I don’t betray old friends — not on any terms, or for any reason. So if you wish, you may hold your tongue. I won’t humiliate you.”