by Talbot Mundy
He came closer and stood watching Blair’s face. Then he went to the doorway, demanded water, spilled half of the contents of the little goblet on the floor and offered the rest to Blair.
“Drink,” he said. “Then answer. That is your last drink, until you and I agree together.”
Blair moistened his mouth. Then he drank and set the empty goblet on the altar beside the lingam.
“Where is Taron Ling?” Zaman Ali demanded. It was the third time he had asked that question. Blair decided not to answer it.
“Wait and see,” he said, testing his voice. It was very important to speak calmly if he possibly could. Nothing tells in the East more strongly in a man’s favor than a level voice in poignant circumstances. Nothing gives a man better command of himself. His voice came hoarsely from his throat, but it still had some quality.
Zaman Ali’s eyes glanced anxiously at the gap in the broken masonry. He seemed afraid Taron Ling might enter. His hand closed tight on his revolver butt. He even stepped to the gap, peered through and paused to listen. Then he returned and stared at Blair’s eyes.
“Did you make a bargain with him?” he demanded.
Blair clung to his resolution not to answer. The Afghan’s fear was probably more deadly than his greed, but there was a long chance, perhaps one in a thousand, that fear of Taron Ling might make him easier to manage.
“You — and that dog of a devil — agreed on — what?” Zaman Ali demanded.
“No matter what.”
That was Wu Tu’s voice — unmistakably hers. Something moved in the gloom behind Zaman Ali and the voice continued, “Trust an Afghan to flinch from a dugpa! Out of the way and let me handle him!” She was half-invisible against the stalagmite behind her. She peered through the folds of a sari that shrouded her head and shoulders, looking unexpectedly small beside Zaman Ali’s bulk — small, frail, vital. Her eyes were a determined devil’s. She kept out of Blair’s reach. “Who cares what Taron Ling did? Watch what I do! If he disobeys me, tie him and bring the salt.” She advanced a step closer. “Are you willing to obey me?”
Blair’s eyes smoldered and grew calm again. It was useless to defy her openly: Zaman Ali and his men could overwhelm him in a moment, and Wu Tu would have less compunction than a tigress. But could he deceive her? He avoided her stare for a moment and then met it suddenly, as if trying to read her mind. His own was made up.
“I made you an offer,” she said, “in Bombay. I repeat it for the last time. To the top of the tree — power — all you wish! — if you obey me. Otherwise—”
Why, if she had such secret power, did she need a mere policeman’s will in submission to hers? He was no such fool as to believe she was in love with him, but she was doing tricks with her eyes now, making them look seductive, feline-fierce and feline-amorous, darkly purposeful and moody with anticipation. Zaman Ali clucked a disapproving tongue against his teeth. He disliked any sort of magic, even for his own ends. But he was either afraid of Wu Tu or else he feared to oppose her for some other reason.
“In the name of the Nine-and-Ninety Names of the Almighty Lord of heaven and earth and all that is,” he muttered. Wu Tu, shrouded in thin silk drapery, came one step nearer, radiating perfume. “You surrender?”
There was a long pause, and then:
“Yes,” Blair answered. He felt better and knew he had acted wisely the moment he said it. It was mental ju-jitsu. The difficulty, now, would be to act that spoken lie and not to disillusion her too soon. The triumph in her eyes betrayed her. Zaman Ali muttered his doubt half-audibly. But she, in the heart of her vain heart, believed her hypnotic will had won.
“No, no, no drink for him yet!” said Wu Tu.
He of the blackjack had hurried in with a big brass jar of water, seeking to ingratiate himself by being first with it, believing Blair’s star was how in the ascendant. Blair made a mental note of the man’s craving to be important. Rebuked, he pretended he had only come to add to Blair’s discomfort. He splashed water on the floor and grinned spitefully. Zaman Ali drove him out, cursing his mother’s religion in terms of concrete imagery.
Wu Tu promptly dismissed Zaman Ali, who resented it. He had no use for being ordered to-and-fro by women, and he also resented having had Blair snatched, as it were, from the fangs of his own intention. After a muttered altercation the Afghan swaggered out, slapping his slippers on the smooth stone as a soft of obligato to scurrilous thought. Outside, he kicked someone; there was an explosion of savage oaths followed by the snarl of a fight that died unborn. In spite of thirst and exhaustion Blair began to feel decidedly less discouraged. There was a rift in the enemy’s ranks, but he masked his awareness of that.
Wu Tu stood more than the length of a stride away, confident but careful. The suffocating heat provided a good excuse to throw open the dark silk saris that shrouded her figure. Beneath those was a mere film of gauzy material, that shone like opal. It limned her figure. She was almost naked. She shook the sari from her coiled, dark hair and, possibly because the light was dim and from two directions, she looked suddenly young, but curiously Chinese. Her perfume suggested lavender, but it was something much more subtly exciting;, it stirred imagination.
“And now.” she said, “we befriend each other — Eh, Blair?”
He nodded. “You hold all the high cards.”
“But you are treacherous! You intend to learn my secret — afterwards to see me at the devil — is it not so? Eh, Blair?”
He suspected he was in the deadliest danger he had ever been in. He did not know yet what the danger was, but he did know he had to deceive her and to gain her confidence by some means. Her accurate reading of his thought might not be entirely guesswork. She intended to control him. That was obvious. She certainly believe she had hypnotised him in her house in Bombay, and to a limited extent she was right; he had been unable to banish the mental image of her eyes.
That trick was nothing wonderful. It was not nearly as wonderful as Taron Ling’s. It was as easy to explain as ineradicable memories of scenes glimpsed in an explosion and photographed.on the brain. But it might be a key to a system of thought-reading; and if so, it should work both ways. If she could read his thought by that means, or in consequence of that, then perhaps he could read her. He deliberately recalled that vision of her eyes that had been so persistent. It was quite easy; he could see them without looking away from her. At once he thought he knew what she intended.
His eyes searched her loosened sari. In one of its folds he saw the handle of a little dagger that resembled the one he had taken away from her in Bombay. It might even be the same dagger.
Nothing is swifter than thought. Not for nothing did her name in Chinese mean Five Poisons. There crossed his mind a memory of certain wasps. They capture insects, sting them, paralyze them, and devour them later. It was a blood-curdling thought. That might not after all have been alcohol within the blade of Wu Tu’s little dagger that night in Bombay. He had guessed it was alcohol, and he had told the commissioner it was, but he might have been wrong.
He had heard — who has not? — of eastern poisons that are said to paralyze a victim’s will but leave him otherwise in full possession of his senses. Everything has its opposite. Curare is a well known drug that paralyzes the motor centers, but leaves brain and nerves intensely sensitive. If Wu Tu should possess a drug that was the opposite of that? He decided to possess that dagger and he took a stride toward her, smiling. He remembered the name she had asked him to use. But his mouth was dry again. He found words difficult.
“Let’s forget what a bloody fool I was that night, Marie. I’ve thought it over. I’ll play.”
“Yes.” she answered. But she avoided his arms. She stepped back very quickly into shadow. When he followed her, he saw that Zaman Ali and three other men could now see him through the doorway. He was between two lights, whereas she was in opal gloom. He had missed.
Had she read his intention? Probably. But she disguised her motive.
“
No, no, not now! You are filthy. Your face is sooty and. dusty. Besides — no, not in this place!”
She moved like a leopard. Perfume passed between him and the monstrously figured wall. He hardly saw her until she beckoned to him from beside Zaman Ali. Far beyond her, at the end of a tunnel, daylight poured in a golden cascade, apparently into a huge circular pit: but that strong light and the weirdly colored gloom this side of it were so baffling that he could make out very little except her figure.
He strode through the opening toward her, but turned aside suddenly and made for the brass water-jar. The owner of the blackjack crouched beside it. At a sign from Wu Tu he upset it and the water became mud on the lusty floor. With almost the greatest effort of self-control he had exerted yet, Blair retrained from kicking him. The man’s capacity for treachery might prove valuable later on, and meanwhile he was not worth kicking.
“Give him the other,” Wu Tu commanded.
He who had spilled the water produced a flask labelled Fine Cognac and unscrewed the stopper. Zaman Ali grumbled:
“Wah! Wall! Do you want him frenzied? What if he has made terms with Taron Ling?”
Blair accepted the flask. With his mind on Zaman Ali but his eyes on Wu Tu, he poured the contents on the rock floor, where they mingled with the mud. The stuff looked like cognac, but its smell was not quite familiar, or he thought not.
“Damn you.” he said to Wu Tu. “Zaman Ali plays a straight game. Yours is feline treachery.”
He seized the water-jar. There were a few drops unspilled. He drank. He could not see around the big jar while he held it to his mouth but no one took advantage of his being off-guard for a moment.
“I say, risk it as he is,” Zaman Ali grumbled. “He may be better as he is. If Taron Ling has taught him anything—”
“Leave him to me,” Wu Tu retorted.
The Afghan clucked impatience: “To you! To you! He is a man, this fellow. He and I can understand each other. What did you do to the other? Spoiled him! Now spoil this one? Then what?”
Vague though it was, that might be a hint of Chetusingh’s fate. Spoiled him? What did that mean? Torture? Blair set down the water-jar and stared at Wu Tu. She was muttering at Zaman Ali, looking angrier than he had seen a human being. It was cold, malignant, calculating anger. He watched her right hand steal into the folds of her sari. Suddenly she struck with the speed of a snake at the Afghan’s liver. He shrieked — fear, agony, hatred — a yell that wailed along the tunnel. Instinct made him try to draw his own knife instead of using the revolver, but the owner of the blackjack struck him a terrific blow on the back of the head. In a spasm he fired the revolver as he fell, and missed Wu Tu by the width of the film of light that edged her bare neck. Blair was swift then. He possessed that revolver before the echo of the shot had rattled into silence. He made a dive for it. Wu Tu’s knife was in the Afghan’s liver. She was helpless to do anything but gasp excitedly.
The blackjack’s owner swung for the back of Blair’s head. Two other men rushed him. He dodged them all, kicked the revolver, dribbled it along the tunnel for a few yards and picked it up before they could overtake him. He had no need to threaten them then; they backed away, watching him like cats as he stood, now, with his back to the strong light. He examined the weapon. Its six chambers contained five cartridges, and of those, four had been used. Perhaps Wu Tu already knew that, but there was no need to inform her if she did not know. The obvious next thing to do was to search Zaman Ali’s body tor cartridges; but Wu Tu had already recovered her thin-bladed dagger and was first at the spoils. She knelt beside the Afghan, listening to him, watching, glancing once or twice at Blair but seeming undisturbed by the fact that he now had a weapon. She searched the Afghan’s clothing diligently while he stared at her with glazed eyes — groaned, gasped, made sounds that perhaps he thought were words. Apparently Wu Tu failed to find what she looked for. She glanced at Blair again and seemed about to speak. As her lips moved Zaman Ali died in a spasm of agony.
There was a sound, and Blair faced about suddenly. Behind him — close to him — almost within reach — in shoes soled with thick felt — was the Chinese girl who had opened the door at the head of the stairs in the house in Bombay. He turned just in time to see the cigarette in its long tube return to her lips. It was a half finished cigarette and there was ash on the end. Her eyes were inscrutable, her face expressionless, but he was almost sure he had seen her right hand move; four fingers of it were now in the blue-and-daffodil pyjama jacket pocket, with the long-nailed thumb outside. She looked too innocent. She made as if to pass him without a greeting.
He stood back against the wall as if to let her pass, but the moment she moved he stepped forward again, seized her left arm that was nearest to him — the one that held the cigarette. She tried to strike then, with a weapon exactly like Wu Tu’s. But its blade passed through the bottom of the pocket inside her pyjamas. Its handle caught the pocket lining. It came out awkwardly. She missed. Before she could stab a second time she was on her back on the ground, Blair’s foot was on the dagger and there was a little stream of liquid oozing from its broken blade.
Then, for a fraction of a second, Wu Tu betrayed nervousness. She glanced about her swiftly and her own right hand crept to the folds of her sari. But there was Blair’s revolver, and her eyes considered that. There were three men between her and Blair; she seemed to doubt them more than him. They were Zaman Ali’s followers. True, one of them had blackjacked Zaman Ali, but her glance showed how little she trusted him. She rose slowly from her knees, and age seemed to have stolen a march on her; but she overcame that in a moment, and when she smiled the telltale years had already vanished like a shadow that had passed over a young face.
“You and I befriend each other, eh, Blair? Let that girl up. What did you do with Taron Ling?”
“You will find out.” he answered. “Where’s Henrietta Frensham?”
The Chinese girl tried to wrench the broken dagger from under his foot. Failing to do it, she crawled away from him, then rose to her feet and walked toward Wu Tu with perfectly assumed indifference. She had not lost her cigarette tube; she stuck in a fresh cigarette and lighted it very slowly, walking past the owner of the blackjack, answering his leer with a stare that made him change it into a grin like a starved wolf’s; he glanced from her to Blair and back again.
Wu Tu gave her little dagger to the Chinese girl, who wiped it carefully on Zaman Ali’s turban. Wu Tu took it back without glancing, at it and hid it away in, a fold of her sari.
“Now you and I can be really friendly! Are you thirsty? You shall drink now. There is no need any longer to defer to a dog of an Afghan.”
Her slipper came off as she kicked dead Zaman Ali. The Chinese girl returned it to her.
CHAPTER NINE
The test of strength is silence. Remember: I said strength, not goodness. I know not the measure of goodness. But the strong love silence, in which the weak reveal weakness by clamor and boast and lament. The test of character is mystery. Integrity, in presence of a mystery, awaits imagination’s touch that, like the dawn upon the darkness, solves night’s riddle. But the vain revile all mystery. And why not? For it challenges, their vanity, that might lie longer hidden if it could endure the strain of silence in the presence of truth dimly seen but not yet known or understood.
— From the First of the Nine Books of Noor Ali.
BLAIR walked slowly toward Wu Tu, wondering whether she or any of the others knew there was only one shot left in the revolver. Midway toward her he confronted the owner of the blackjack who stepped forward smiling. He was not obsequious, but polite; he salaamed with one hand to his forehead, holding the blackjack in the other.
“You appear to be master of the situation, sahib,” he said in English.
“Quite so. Give me your weapon.”
The man glanced at Wu Tu. She watched Blair.
“Shoot him,” she suggested.
Two other men slunk away into the gloom where th
e wall projected and cast deep shadow. Suddenly they took to their heels. They scampered like scared rats through the temple and out through the gap in the broken wall into the ash-floored cavern where the bones of burned women lay. A third man went and stood near Wu Tu. He of the blackjack hesitated.
“You should know me,” he said. “I am well known to the police. I am from Dur-i-Duran Singh of Naga Kulu. I am Grish Singh. I am Dur-i-Duran sahib’s agent. I know all about this, I assure you. I will tell everything. But you should shoot her.”
Blair kept his eyes on the man’s face. He expected treachery and cobra-suddenness. He was ready for it. But if he could, he proposed to save that one bullet. He could deal with this beast with his fist if necessary.
“Did you hear me? Hand over your weapon.”
Instead of obeying, the man took a step backward. Blair still hesitated to use that one remaining bullet. Grish Singh, as he called himself, began talking at top speed:
“Don’t be unwise — listen to me — let me show you — Dur-i-Duran Singh of Naga Kulu is my master — he will—”
Suddenly he, too, tried to bolt for it, but he did not get far. As he turned he screamed and threw up both hands. With his back toward Blair he beat at someone’s brains. In that weird, mixed light it was difficult to tell what happened. That other man. who had slunk away into the gloom, had evidently taken Zaman Ali’s long knife. Perhaps Wu Tu gave it to him. He had crept up from behind and used it. Grish Singh tell writhing, with blood blubbering and foaming from his mouth. The other, with blackjacked brains on his face, lay still beneath him. It was all over in a moment. Grish Singh’s life sobbed out of him as he wrenched at the knife that was into him almost hilt-deep.
Wu Tu’s voice came out of shadow. “So then, are they both dead? That means Dur-i-Duran Singh is out of it as well as Zaman Ali. Taron Ling next! Where is he?”