by Talbot Mundy
Triumph stole into her eyes. “Blair, have you ever, even for a moment, felt the strength of money — the thrill of the strength of money that obeys you? I have money! Men and women — some of them so important that they dare not risk discovery — owe me more money than you have ever dreamed of having. It is secret, unpayable debts that crack the whips of power. But to you I would not lend. To you I give!”
“Blair, why do you look at me in that way? Tell me.”
Suddenly his right hand that she fondled seized her wrist and she checked a scream, half terrified but half believing what she hoped. She tried to break his grip, but could not.
“Chetusingh,” he said, “should have been back before now. What has happened to him?”
“How do I know? You hurt me! Do you hear, you hurt me! I didn’t want that fool in here, so — you savage, let go of my wrist!” But his grip tightened. She writhed — kicked — and then struck at his face. His turban fell, revealing his crisp-curled gladiator head.
“Scream, why don’t you?”
Venom stole into her eyes. Her right hand moved toward her bosom. Suddenly she snatched out a six-inch weapon like a bodkin, dagger-handled. “Damn you?”
She struck. He caught her right wrist in his left hand — twisted it. She kicked with her naked feet. He twisted her wrist steadily until she groaned through set teeth and the loosed weapon thumped to the floor. He held both wrists in one hand then and leaned on her to prevent her from kicking his head as he reached down to recover the weapon. When he had it he let go of her.
“How many poisons, Wu Tu? Five?” he asked her, but for the moment she had no breath to answer him. He pressed the point of the knife on the gilded wood behind the divan; the hollow bodkin-blade yielded a little against a spring within the golden handle. Through an almost invisible hole in the point of the blade there oozed a colorless fluid. He sniffed it; and as he did that, the hand of the Chinese girl in the corridor parted the doorway curtain. He could see her eyes behind the hand.
“Send her for help,” he suggested. “She might bring Zaman Ali.”
Without turning her head — fixedly watching his eyes — Wu Tu dismissed the girl with a gesture.
“Damn you, Blair, what do you want?”
“Truth,” he said. “Tell it. Why are you afraid of Zaman Ali?”
“I?” She was chafing her right wrist. “You think I fear him — or you? You shall learn what fear is!”
Weird, wild music swelled and ceased, as if a door had been suddenly opened and swiftly closed. Her anger stole away behind new laughter in her dark eyes.
“Now you have a very deadly weapon,” she said. “Kill me if you dare, while you can. What are you waiting for?”
“For Chetusingh,” he answered. There was a carpet-deadened footfall in the corridor. Blair rose to his feet. Wu Tu watched him, fascinated. His eyes, unafraid but alert, were aware of peril, but the dagger in his right hand seemed to bother him. It was not his type of weapon. Suddenly he raised it shoulder high and plunged its point into the lacquered table-top between the jade vase and the golden figurine. He struck so deep that the dagger-handle scarcely quivered. Then the jangling curtains parted. Zaman Ali strode in. His were bold eyes, arrogant with triumph. But he looked wary. He was in no haste. Close, behind him. as he stood thrusting out his stomach, with his hands in a broad Bokhariot belt, the Chinese girl’s ivory hand made a signal and vanished. The Afghan’s beard, new-dyed, lent red to the glare of angered cunning in his wind-wild eyes. But his lips smiled, showing strong teeth stained with pan. His Bokhariot coat hung loosely and revealed a silk shirt that hinted at rubbery muscle beneath. His coned cap. turbaned in silk, sat jauntily. His curved, coarse nose, that spread until the curves went astray in the fierce mustache, twitched. He rubbed it — but that might have been to attract attention to the ruby in the ring on his middle finger.
“Mashallah! God’s wonders never cease!” he said in Pushtu. “Ismail ben Alif Khan is—”
“Warrender of the police. What are you doing in Bombay, Zaman Ali?”
“Praised be God, I sold my horses. Please God, I shall now learn why I was watched — from the Pass to Peshawar — to Delhi — to Umballa — to Nuklao — to Ahmedabad — to Cawnpore — to Poona — to Bombay. A Pathan I knew you were not. Had I known you are Warrender—”
His fingers, stained and calloused, closed on an imaginary weapon.
“Peace! Not in my house!” Wu Tu warned in a sharp voice. She. too, spoke in Pushtu. Blair answered in English, “Don’t be a damned fool, Zaman Ali. The door’s locked,, and you’ve nine men. But did Chetusingh tell you the house is surrounded? You didn’t expect that, did you?”
“What of it?” Zaman Ali shrugged his shoulders. Then he swaggered to the divan and sat beside Wu Tu, drawing his legs up under him. Almost imperceptibly she shrank away; and almost he contrived to look as if he owned the place. But there was something lacking. He was not quite at his ease.
“Where did you come from to Peshawar?” Blair demanded. “You didn’t bring your string of horses down the Khaiber. They were a blind. You picked them up in Peshawar. I know who sold them to you.”
The Afghan stared, not answering.
“What did you do in Rajputana?”
“Allah! Where I was not, what did I? That is a good conundrum!”
“When did you last see Brigadier-General Frensham?”
Insolently, Zaman Ali called to the Chinese girl in the corridor to fetch his water-pipe. Then: “I never heard of him.” he answered.
“Do you think in the jail you might remember?”
“Allah!” Zaman Ali glanced at Wu Tu. but she avoided his eyes. She glanced at the door behind the screen. Blair strode to the door and kicked the panel. The door opened inward a few inches, struck something or someone and shut with a thud. A bolt clicked.
“Where is Chetusingh?” he demanded.
“Dead,” said Zaman Ali. “Where did you suppose he is?”
Wu Tu laughed at that. The wolf-yelp overtone was nearer than it had been. She lighted a cigarette and looked straight at Blair, then leaned back lazily, blowing smoke-rings.
“Dead.” she said. “Perhaps. But you prove it!”
“Prove it, yes,” said Zaman Ali. “That will be a piece of work for the police!”
“You surround my house,” said Wu Tu. “Don’t you think I knew that?”
“There’s a secret passage from your cellar to the yard behind Grish Lal’s godown. Did you know I knew it?” Blair retorted. “That’s blocked.”
Wu Tu looked slightly startled, but the look in her eyes changed to clouded cunning. She shrugged a bit further away from Zaman Ali.
“I’m going to look for Chetusingh,” said Blair. He reached the doorway in three strides, turned facing them and backed through the curtain, colliding with the Chinese girl. He groped for her — he was watching for a move by Wu Tu or Zaman Ali. His hand closed on her neck and she offered no resistance. When he glanced at her she blew cigarette smoke in his face.
He shoved her along in front of him and tried the door of the next room, twenty feet along giving passage. It appeared to be locked, but he could hear laughter and music. The Chinese girl suddenly thrust at his eyes with her lighted cigarette. He grabbed her wrist and then almost lost consciousness in a blaze of agony as something struck him on the back of the head from behind.
“The commissioner was right. It’s a trap, and I’m in it,” was his first thought. “Now what?”
The pain was welcome; he knew he could not have felt it if he had been - knocked out. He let his knees yield under him, and as he fell, amid the fire that flashed in his eyes he saw the Chinese girl!s face smoking the cigarette in the jade tube, calmly indifferent. He closed his eyes again and lay still. He felt himself being searched by experienced hands; the police pass that he had shown to the patrol crackled as someone took it from its envelope. He heard Wu Tu’s voice:
“You dog! If you killed him—”
Then Zaman Ali’s, speaking Pushtu: “Wah, wah — dogs’ names on a woman’s tongue — death in her heart! Nay, tie him. Tie his hands behind him. Bring him back here.”
Someone seized his arms. Some other man tied his wrists unmercifully tight. Then he was dragged by the feet, face downward. He contrived to raise his head an inch or two to save his face from being skinned, but the Chinese girl set her foot on it promptly, not pressing, however, as hard as she might have done. He took that for a hint and guessed she was obeying Wu Tu’s order.
Once in the room, they turned him on his back and he glimpsed that the door behind the screen was opened wide. He could feel blood on his face and he suspected he looked a pretty bad casualty, so he kept his eyes shut and lay still. He could hear Wu Tu’s voice arguing in whispers, but could not distinguish words, until at last she said in English angrily:
“You heard me say no! You have got what you wanted. Now go to the devil and I will take what I want!”
Water was dashed in his face, again and again, so he opened his eyes. The Chinese girl was dipping water in a cup from a crystal bowl. She seemed quite uninterested and kept on splashing until he sat up. Then he almost betrayed astonishment, because Chetusingh stood staring at him, smiling and apparently awaiting orders.
“Loose my hands!” he commanded. “Look sharp!”
“There!” said Wu Tu’s voice. Someone else exclaimed “Allah!” Wu Tu again: “Does that satisfy you?”
Then he knew the man was not Chetusingh, but someone remarkably like him who was dressed in Chetusingh’s clothes and had studied the Rajput’s mannerisms.
“He will do in the dark,” said Wu Tu.
She was on the divan beside Zaman Ali. Three men who might be Punjabis stood near them, but they were dressed in bazaar-made English suits, with brass watch-chains. They looked like deadly-respectable merchants on a night out.
Near them was an Afghan in silver-rimmed spectacles, who looked like a teacher of the Koran. And there was another man who might be anything — Sikh, Dogra, Mahratta — in a well cut blue serge suit, who had an undefinable look of being well educated; but he looked silly in striped socks. His must be the brown-and-white shoes under the mat downstairs. He had a blackjack in his hand and the sight of that made Blair realize that his head ached. He could feel a big bruise swelling where the blackjack had hit him.
“Why do you wait?” asked Wu Tu. It was a command. There was much more than a hint of a threat in her voice and the man who looked like Chetusingh made a gesture toward the curtained doorway, flourishing Chetusingh’s police pass. All five men followed him through the curtain. Other men — Blair could not see how few or how many — joined them in the corridor. The Chinese girl went and let them out by the door at the stair-head, while Zaman Ali sat gloating over Blair’s police pass.
“Mashallah!” he remarked. “It is signed by the commissioner! The great — the wise commissioner, whom none mistrusts but all obey! ‘Pass bearer on government duty!’ Wah! Wah!”
He produced a fat wallet and discovered, after groping in its crowded pockets, a photograph of himself, about passport size. The Chinese girl brought paste; he pasted the photograph on to the pass. She brought Chinese ink; he impressed his thumb-print on the photograph. The killer-grin hardened the rims of his eyes and the sides of his mouth.
“May God reward thee!” he said, staring at Blair. “Soon!” he added. “If I give thee choice of knife or bullet—”
Blair’s voice sounded strangely far off to himself, because his head throbbed and it was very difficult to keep the room from seeming to whirl around him.
“Save yourself from the noose if you can, Zaman Ali!” he answered. “Why do you hesitate?”
Wu Tu spoke up, “It is to me you owe that you are not dead.”
Zaman Ali stuck the pass into his wallet and rubbed the palms of his hands together.
“Never a woman yet told more than half a truth,” he said. “Ye hold each other’s lives in trust. Let up oh me! If not, she and you shall learn together — the feel of the finger of death!” He said that slowly.
Wu Tu, also speaking slowly, added, “Honorably — now — you have to save my life, too.”
Blair glanced at the knife he had stuck in the table-top, and noticed that the golden figurine was missing. “Rot!” he answered. “What are you afraid of, Zaman Ali?”
The Afghan grinned. “If there is a truth under heaven,” he said, “it is this, it is this: that a fish stinks from the head first. Like officer, like rank and file. Now that I know who tracked me from Peshawar, shall I doubt who should die first, if the police make any trouble?”
“Tell where Frensham is. That’s the only way to save trouble,” Blair retorted. “That stolen pass may get you out of Bombay, but it won’t save your neck in the long run.”
There was a north-wind look in Zaman Ali’s eyes: it was weirdly out of place in that hot, exotic room.
“Frensham?” he asked. “Who is he?”
The door at the stair-head thudded shut and the Chinese girl spoke through the curtain in Chinese to Wu Tu, who translated tor Zaman Ali’s benefit:
“They have escaped the police, who thought it was Chetusingh and obeyed him. The police went away.”
“The police are fools, and their mothers were wild she-swine,” said Zaman Ali. “I will go before they come back, furious to regain whatever pride such pigs have.”
He gave the Chinese girl some silver money, which she accepted without a murmur of thanks, although she glanced at the money. Then he stared at Wu Tu, and she nodded. Turning his back then, and without another glance at Blair, he swaggered through the jingling curtain. The Chinese girl let him out by the stair-head door. Wu Tu smiled.
“Do you understand, Blair?” she asked. “You are to forget this. Zaman Ali needed passes. Now he has them it is all right.”
“Loose my wrists,” he answered. With an effort that made his head surge with pain he struggled to his feet and waited for her. Wu Tu hesitated, listening. There was an opened window somewhere, perhaps on a higher floor. Muffled by intervening passages and curtains came the familiar riot-roar of Moslems pursuing Hindus.
“Ya Allah! Din! Din!”
It was like a squall of wind smiting the hot night — sudden — over in a moment — vanishing along a dark street in silence.
“Thus,” said Wu Tu, “if the oh-so-sly police did not really go away, Zaman Ali had been swept out of their clutches. He will keep the pass for later on. Will you sit still if I loose you?”
“No. Where’s Chetusingh? They’d have killed me it they’d killed him.”
“Murder,” she answered, “isn’t done in my house. Chetusingh isn’t here any longer.” She began to unfasten his wrists, picking at the tight knots, swearing at them, until the Chinese girl brought a knife. Warrender held out his freed wrists for the girl to chafe. Her hands were strong, but so small that he laughed and turned to Wu Tu.
“You do it.”
He sat beside her on the divan, setting his teeth because movement brought surges of pain to his head. Wu Tu chafed his wrists and ordered ice, which the Chinese girl brought in the crystal bowl and applied skilfully. Then, at a glance from Wu Tu, the Chinese girl carried out the lacquered table, in which the poisoned dagger was sticking upright, and brought in a silvered brazier from which there oozed an erotic symphony of blended perfume — soundless music that lazed on the air, half-visible as green gray smoke. She washed the blood then from Warrender’s forehead.
“Better now?” Wu Tu asked him.
He reached over her lap, took the knife that she had laid beside her on the divan and, without glancing at it, sent it spinning through the open door beyond the screen.
“Much better,” he answered.
“Then listen—”
He interrupted. “Tell me what you know of Frensham.”
She looked straight in his eyes. “Blair — better make friends with me, hadn’t you? You’re a fool if you don’t. You can’t
make trouble for me. All you have had from me is first aid, after coming here disguised and getting into a brawl. Line up all my little widows if you like and see what they say! Two or three of them might even lodge a claim against you, for hitting them when you were drunk. Could you deny it? What would you say to the magistrate?”
Blair recalled instructions: “Walk straight into the trap and use your wits!” His wits suggested that it might be wise to walk in looking not too confident. He sat silent, letting his face express a medley of emotions. Wu Tu talked on:
“People don’t love the police. And I have influence. If you were publicly charged with a drunken assault in my house, could you keep it quiet? Half a million Indians would seize that opportunity to make a scandal and to be more bitter than ever against the British. Your commissioner would let you be a scapegoat. And then what?”
“What do you suggest?” he asked after a moment.
“Let us be friends, you and I. I will make you famous!”
It went against the grain to nibble that bait, but he did it. “Will you tell me about Frensham?”
“Yes! You think that perhaps I know. Perhaps I do know. Little widows learn big secrets — sometimes. That is why I have them.”
“Where’s Chetusingh?” he asked suddenly.
“Hah! You saw him leave my house with a police pass! How should I know where he went? And what if Chetusingh is my man? Eh? What of it? Didn’t he turn Christian? Can’t he turn a coat again? I could afford to buy a thousand of him!”
“Well — what of Frensham?”
“If I show you how to find him — if I give you that pig Zaman Ali to hang, and all his riff-raff with him — are we friends, you and I?”
She lay back on the cushions, inbreathing the perfumed smoke. Her eyes were excited. Her limbs, that were really tensely still, stole movement from the fan-blown silk of her clothing. Even the whirring of the electric fan contributed something to the sensuous effect; and through the open door behind the screen came slow strains of half-smothered music. The trap was plain enough. And Blair’s head ached. Wu Tu knew that, so he closed his eyes — lay back lazily, dreading a prick from a poisoned dagger — drugs — perhaps chloroform — glad that his head ached, since it helped him cling to consciousness.