by Talbot Mundy
When he recovered balance, his knees trembled and felt so unsteady that he had to kneel, then sprawl on two steps. After about a minute he looked downward to test his nerve. At the bottom, seventy or eighty feet below, in the shadow of the wall, very close to the edge of the glare, he saw a man’s corpse that appeared to move in spasms.
It was nearly a minute before he could see that the body lay still and was being torn by vultures. Two of the filthy brutes had scented carrion even in that pit. While he watched, a third one circled downward from the opening, around and around the cone, its shadow splurging black on the crystal and its. wings disturbing silence with a noise like wind in a forest. Two more of the death-watch from the broken fangs of Gaglajung followed, and cast their shadows on the cone. With his head on the step, Blair thought the woman in the cone suggested then, from that angle, a figure of Despair, frozen in self-contemplation.
He crawled after that on hands and knees, hugging the wall as he groped his way downward one step at a time, until he reached a smooth, projecting stone about six feet wide that formed the threshold of an opening in the wall. But the opening was only half the width of the stone slab. It was smooth-hewn, shaped like an elongated horse-collar, with the narrowed part at the bottom. Wu Tu stood in the opening with her back to a passage that grew dim ten feet behind her.
“Now you look less like a strong savage!” she observed with a mean smile that made her look ten years older.
Blair thought of having to reclimb those steps. The thought sickened him. But it felt good to be standing on wide stone. It was good enough for the moment. Anger returned to his aid, along with primitive emotions that included a desire to kill Wu Tu and hurl her below to the vultures. She was watching his eyes and choosing words. She chose with peculiar skill, if she meant to enrage him further:
“In uniform, Blair, with all the greatness of the government’s authority, you’re one thing. But now you’re naked — and there’s, no government! How does it feel to be mere Blair Warrender without a friend or a servant? Why not blow your whistle?”
It was true, he did feel naked. Not nude, naked. His torn, soiled uniform had lost the quality which cloaks bewilderment beneath assumed official calm. He had lost self-assurance. He was nakedly scared. But the truth is a two-edged weapon. It stiffens some men, though it weakens others. He began to try to ride fear — to command it, compel it, change it into alertness. Wu Tu detected a change in his eyes.
“Look.” She pointed. He turned. There was no room to stand beside her in the opening so he leaned against the curiously carved edge and stared again at the wonderful cone, with the sweat running out of his sleeve on to the revolver in his right hand. Seen from that point the cone took a different shape. It was crystal-clear, faintly golden colored, with ruby-red and emerald and sapphire points of sunlight dancing to the beat of the observer’s pulse.
The woman within the cone appeared to stand exactly on the level of that opening in the rock-wall. She faced exactly toward it — gazed straight into it. Her eyes seemed alive and deep blue. Human, huge, incredible, unlovely, splendid, ponderous but not coarse, clothed in mystery that numbed imagination, she imposed a silence that was silvered by the echo of running water. Even thought obeyed her. Millions of years of living silence brooded in the dead, who had once lived, who had perhaps loved.
“Come and drink champagne,” said Wu Tu suddenly. “I can’t bear it. She makes me solemn. When I’m that way I want to smash things. That’s why vandals break old monuments. They can’t endure them. I’m a vandal in spite of myself. If I had some dynamite I would blow her to hell.”
She led the way into the tunnel — sharply up-hill — stifling — barely head-room. Blair pulled off his tunic. The sound of splashing water, that had emphasized the silence of the cavern, grew louder and made thirst almost maddening. There were hundreds of bats squeaking and swarming in dark fissures in the sides of the tunnel; the sloping floor had very recently been swept clean of their excreta, but its stench was in the hot air. The tunnel was shaped strangely.
It rose sharply from the entrance. Down the midst. the floor was worn in a hollow trough that forced him to walk carefully; it resembled hollows he had seen that he knew had been made by bare feet century after century.
At last a platform, pitch-dark, with a sensation, of an opening in the darkness beyond — perhaps, another tunnel. But on the left hand there was a low square opening; and light beyond it. Wu Tu ducked and passed through. The, sound of water splashed like music on his ears, so Blair followed, holding the revolver in front of him. He had to bend almost, double to avoid the low roof. It felt like, crawling into a nest of specters. Three candle-flames in red-glazed lanterns cast a blood-red glow and leaping shadows on the walls of a room, apparently a perfect cube of twenty-eight or thirty feet, hewn from the rock.
All around, except at the low opening, was a ledge about eighteen inches high and two feet, deep, forming a shelf on which golden-looking objects stood. In one far corner was a big stone cistern like the one in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. Above that was a gash in the wall, through which water, beautifully colored by the candlelight, poured into the cistern, overflowing through a deep slot in the brim to a hole in the floor, where it vanished. The Chinese girl was kneeling on the floor beside three hampers of provisions.
Wu Tu, with her face blood-red in the lantern-light, pointed to Blair’s revolver. “One shot left! Save it for Taron Ling! The fool who had Zaman Ali’s extra cartridges lies below, where he can’t be reached. Zaman Ali shot four fools. He would have shot those others, they had served their purpose and weren’t to be trusted; but he had to husband ammunition after the fool he thought he could trust fell from the steps and smashed himself. It doesn’t pay to trust fools — ever.”
Under cover of his tunic Blair opened the revolver, removed the one unused cartridge and put that in his pocket. Wu Tu started at the noise of the breech snapping shut, but she could not see what he had done.
“The safety catch?” she asked him.
“Yes.” He strode toward the water, laid, his folded tunic on the ledge beside a golden-looking vessel, stuck the revolver into a crack in the wall, put his helmet on top of the tunic — all neatly and slowly to prove to himself that he was in no haste. Then, suddenly, he plunged his head info the cistern and let the descending water splash on the back of his neck. That was heaven, if a contrast of experience is heaven or hell, as some say.
He drank very little but rinsed his mouth and throat. Then he raised his head, and pulled off his shirt. The girl on the floor beside the hampers cursed in Chinese because he had splashed her, but Wu Tu laughed and came beside him. In a moment she had dropped her sari and jumped into the cistern, ducking her head under, plunging and revelling in the cool, clean water.
“Come on, Blair, in with you!” she gasped. He had a mind to go in boots and all but thought better of that, and took them off. In a moment he was in there with her, slipping against the slimy sides and, digging hot toes into the cool, soft sediment of centuries that lay inches deep on the bottom.
“Chamber of initiation — font of baptism!” said Wu Tu, spluttering and laughing. “She got into this, I bet you! Could she get in? Was she too big? Have some champagne, it tastes good in a bath!”
Blair glanced at the Chinese girl. Her back toward him, she was emptying one of the hampers, on the floor, almost straight between him and the low, dark entrance. It was velvet-dark there — a black square blot on a wall stained dark-red by the lantern-light. But something in the blackness moved. His eye: caught it. He watched. A man’s face, spectral, almost darker than the darkness, gradually took form.
For a moment he thought it was Taron Ling returned to life and his skin crept up his: spine, but he knew that was nonsense. He decided it must be one. of the men they had left behind in the other tunnel, so he looked for the revolver in the crack in the wall. It had vanished. But the man’s face was still there, very low, near the edge of the dark, in the mouth of t
he low, square opening.
He leaped suddenly out of the cistern, with the red light like blood on his wet skin, and sent the Chinese girl sprawling. He grabbed the revolver from the hamper, where she had half-hidden it under napkins. He had no cartridge now; it was in his pocket.
He knew he was a perfect target in the lantern-light — knew, too, that the Chinese girl and Wu Tu were behind him and not likely to neglect an opportunity. So he was quick. He reached the opening in three leaps — stooped — stared, and froze motionless. There was a finger on the face’s lips. There was a signal — a very low whisper. Chetusingh, haggard, wild-eyed. and corpse-like, but unmistakably Chetusingh, crawled backward until he became one with the darkness and vanished.
“Taron Ling?” demanded Wu Tu from the cistern.
“No,” he answered. “Nerves. I thought I saw him.”.
“Why did you whisper then? I heard you.”
“If you want to know,” he said, “I was praying. I’m chattering nervous.”
She climbed out. “Have some champagne.”
Red light glowed all over her.
“You look like a devil in hell!” he said laughing. The laugh sounded nervous and seemed to convince her. He made a show of recovering self-control — pulled out serviettes from the hamper — tossed her several of them — rubbed himself dry with two others, and put his sweat-wet tunic on again. Even that disgusting anticlimax could not lower his spirits now. Chetusingh had told him Henrietta was not in immediate danger. He had time for what the commissioner called “facts, not fireworks.” He dressed swiftly and reloaded the revolver.
There was a sudden pop, then, like a cannon going off. The Chinese girl poured champagne into a big cut-glass tumbler. Wu Tu gulped half of it down. That at any rate was not poisoned. Blair took the tumbler from her hand and drank the other half. It was warm, but good dry wine; it found his nerves and seemed to pour along them.
“What next?” he demanded.
“Food,” said Wu Tu, who was wrapping her sari around her.
CHAPTER TEN
Good? Bad? Those are relative. I have not seen one without the other; they are two sides of the same thing, and the thing is integrity, which has no opposite. Treachery may have integrity and may do good, as when a traitor betrays a devil. Integrity may ruin thousands, as when nations go to war for a principle, which may be right or wrong. The wrong may have the more integrity! Integrity is a thing in itself. It is a middle way between good and evil. It serves best him who has it, but he has it not unless he use it. And he has it not if he should try to use it for a momentary profit. Good? Bad? Neither of those affects the balance of the Infinite. But Integrity? That is the length, breadth, depth, weight, essence and proof of Character, which is Quality. And Quality is the goal of evolution. Aim ye at that, and ye aim at eternal life.
— From the Ninth (unfinished) Book of Noor Ali.
THE food was warm, unappetizing tinned stuff, hard-boiled eggs, fruit, and some leathery looking chupatties. Eggs and fruit might have been drugged. That was even probable. Wu Tu tried to force them on him, so Blair chose a tin of sardines, which he could open for himself; they were unappetizing without bread, but the chupatties were a too obvious trick. He refused more champagne; there had been time for the Chinese girl to doctor what remained in the bottle. Wu Tu drank none and she did not order a second bottle to be opened. She ate seated on one of the hampers, looking like the devil in the red light, with her hair wet and the Chinese girl trying to rearrange it.
Blair walked up and down examining the golden objects on the low hewn shelf. He was in no hurry now — none whatever. Impatience might slam the door on a secret that seemed on the verge of revealing itself. The next move should be Chetusingh’s. But Wu Tu might have a card up her sleeve, and the thing to do was to discover that, if possible without letting her suspect its discovery. She was talkative, attempting to conceal excitement, and a bit too evidently eager to feel her way toward an exchange of confidences.
“Guess the value of that gold, Blair. It is gold. Every bit of it’s gold. But it’s hard. It can’t even be marked with a hammer.”
“How do you know it’s gold?” he demanded. He tapped the barrel of the revolver against a molded, massive thing that his utmost strength could not move; it was in the form of two big pythons coiled on one another. It sounded solid.
“When it’s melted the bullion merchants buy it as gold,” she answered. “Two or three times’ melting takes away its hardness, but the difficulty is to get it out of here without people knowing. All the small stuff has gone, except that bowl that we use to carry water. Why did you spill the water? Did you think I’d poison you? I need you.”
“Who took all the small stuff?”
“Zaman Ali. There were eighteen gold blocks and fifty figurines; he melted all but two gold blocks that General Frensham took, and one figurine that I have. I believe you saw it.”
“How do you know Frensham took them?”
“Oh, I know lots of things. One of the two that he took found its way into the police commissioner’s hands in Bombay. Taron Ling tried to get it. His magic wouldn’t work because the commissioner hasn’t the right sort of imagination. Two of Zaman Ali’s men recovered the other block from Frensham’s suitcase at the time when he disappeared. Zaman Ali shot those thieves last night. They swore it had been stolen from them and he knew that was a lie, but he was so afraid of magic that he couldn’t wait for Taron Ling to make them tell where they’d hidden it. Now I suppose it’s lost forever.”
To get her to talk, and to gain time was Blair’s immediate problem. If he appeared not particularly interested, she might reveal more in an effort to get his attention. So he took one of the red-glazed lanterns and examined the golden objects on the hewn shelf. To become competent in his profession he had had to make himself familiar with Indian religions, but these things reminded him of no religion he had ever studied.
There were forty-nine pieces. They might be idols or religious symbols. They excited imagination. But except for that one example of coiled serpents, they suggested nothing he had ever seen and no answer to the riddle they presented. They were not Hindu. They were not Buddhistic. They were as weirdly-shaped as the most fantastic designs of a Futurist sculptor in rebellion against three-dimensional limitations. They had a motive;, that much was obvious. They had rhythm. But neither rhythm nor motive was intelligible.
“How long have you known of this place?” he demanded.
“Two years.” Wu Tu was watching him intently, but he behaved as if unaware of that. Her attitude and expression were lynx-like. She appeared to be judging his mood and her chance. She went on, “Frensham knew about it first — I don’t know how. long ago. He was only a,major when he met that Bat-Brahmin who calls himself the Guardian of Gaglajung. Somehow he persuaded the Bat to talk. Most Bats are drunkards. Probably he gave him whisky. That Bat is a superstitious fool who only knows the legend. He has never dared to enter the caverns. He has never been into the tunnel. Generations of Bat-Brahmins have known of this place without ever daring, to enter it.
“The hermit guided Frensham in — and went mad. Did you see him? Frensham took two of the blocks, which was all he could carry. He meant to return for the others, but the Bat-Brahmin threatened to have him broke out of the army for sacrilege. That was no joke either. He could have done it. Frensham didn’t dare show those blocks to anyone. But I found out about them.”
She paused, weighing the effect of her words. Blair decided she needed some encouragement. He set the lantern down and walked slowly toward her.
“You’re a wonderful woman,” he said with admiration in his voice.
Her eyes betrayed a hesitating triumph. She was not quite sure of him. But she said something in Chinese, and the Chinese girl withdrew to a little distance, picking up the lantern he had set down and putting it back beside the two others. That produced a shadow into which she sidled, Blair almost lost sight of her; but with the corner of his eye he coul
d just catch the color of her daffodil pyjamas. There was treachery coming.
“You’re a great woman,” he repeated. He was standing almost over Wu Tu, looking down at her.
“No, not great yet. I propose to be,” she answered. “Will you help me to it?”
“You need my help? Rot!” he retorted. “How about helping me? You said you would. You’re unbeatable. How do you do it? How did you discover all this?”
The Chinese girl had moved away from the lanterns. She was hovering behind him now, and he had to watch Wu Tu’s eyes. The water pouring into and out of the cistern filled the place with sound; his ears had grown accustomed to it, but he had to depend on his ears and listen to Wu Tu at the same time, without betraying his alertness.
“Frensham’s wife died eighteen years ago,” said Wu Tu.
“Well? What of it?”
“Men need women.”
“I get you.”
“Frensham is a learned simpleton,” she went on. “He was learned and intelligent enough to know he had stumbled on a priceless secret if he could only interpret it. He was too reverent to play the vandal, and too afraid for his own reputation to admit he had trespassed into a forbidden sanctuary. But he was jealous, too. He didn’t want to share the secret with anyone — jealous and simple-minded. He wanted somebody to open those blocks without injuring the contents. They’re hollow and he suspected they contain tablets or something like that, with some kind of writing on them. Why he trusted Dur-i-Duran Singh of Naga Kulu I can’t tell you; I would sooner trust a cobra. But I think Dur-i-Duran Singh had done him some financial favors. Unbusinesslike people such as Frensham are easily psychologised in that way.
“He asked Dur-i-Duran Singh to find him an expert metallurgist who could be trusted to keep secrets. Dur-i-Duran Singh consulted me. I got a clever girl to entertain Frensham and find out the secret. Frensham is a fatherly old thing, and he liked to talk to her. He didn’t say much, but he told her enough to make me more than interested.”