by Talbot Mundy
“I am all ears.”
She wasn’t. She had remarkably well-shaped ears, half hidden in a wind-blown bob of curly dark hair, under a Cossack kaftan. She was so small, and full of naturally ready laughter, that she looked almost Tom Grayne’s opposite, except for a similar, equally hard to define but quite evident vigor of being. She might be twenty-two or twenty-three, but looked younger. She had small, strong, sun-browned hands. Her feet were tucked under her, in the big red leather arm-chair. Doby’s downstairs fireplace was living up to its reputation; it was about the most comfortable fireside in London in rainy weather. There were a lot of luncheon tables, but no one ever came there much before twelve-thirty. The waiter had brought tea, taken his cue from the size of the tip, and left them alone. The tea was untouched.
“You take the airplane bus to Hendon,” said Tom, “day after to-morrow. I take a taxi. There’ll be a messenger with flowers for you and some fruit and chocolates, in the name of oh, any old name I think of when I order ’em. We’re just nodding acquaintances, you and I. We get to know each other a bit on the journey, and after that, you use your wiles on Thö-pa-ga. Worm your way into his confidence.”
“I’ve never been in a plane. I want to make enormous noises on a B-flat saxophone.”
“You understand now, don’t you, how all this happened? Or shall I repeat it?”
“No, no. I have understood you. I understand that Thö-pa-ga is being hounded back to Tibet, and that he doesn’t guess what we’re after, or know you except for last night’s happenings, or trust you or trust any one else.”
“Thö-pa-ga,” said Tom, “needs friends. He needs them badly. He needs some one to whom he can talk. He has a persecution complex, and I don’t blame him, poor devil. He’s a particularly sensitive type of oriental. He would instantly detect an unsympathetic motive. He suspects Mayor. He suspects me. He mustn’t suspect you, and there’s only one possible way to fix that. You must make up your mind to be his friend, no matter what he does or what happens to him. You must be absolutely on the level with him. Never tell me his secrets without his full permission. Gradually get him to trust me.”
“And then what?”
“I told you: he needs friends, not enemies. We can’t get what we’re after on a basis of something for nothing. Thö-pa-ga comes first, or we’ll be fooled badly. All of us will be.”
“How about Uncle Clarence?”
“Not one word to him! Not a hint! Not a word to a soul except Emily Foster, and nothing to her except to repeat instructions, from a public phone booth, if you think it necessary — but don’t go near her. She is simply to put any thing you send to her into another envelope and mail it to Professor Clarence Mayor. Your Uncle Clarence doesn’t know our private code. It would be a mistake if he did. The idea is this: you know the code by heart — you’re sure? Word perfect?”
“I can say it backwards. I can signal it faster than you can read it.”
“Okay. If I should write from India to Professor Mayor in London, my letters would be read in transit, even if they should never reach him, which they very likely wouldn’t. But if I send something to you, by mail or messenger, in code, and you decode it and mail it to Emily Foster — an innocent, middle-aged lady who lives at Dorking — and she re-mails it to your Uncle Clarence, he will safely receive an unsigned communication that can’t easily be traced back.”
“Then you and I won’t be together in India?”
“Not noticeably, to begin with. Certainly not in the same hotel. You’re a tourist, remember. You’ll have to play that part carefully; tourists, as a rule, don’t visit India in the hot season. Don’t let on that you can read Tibetan, or that you know anything about Tibet. Don’t even let Thö-pa-ga know that, if you can help it. But if you get caught knowing more than girls of your age usually know, you can admit that you’ve studied a bit at the British Museum and that you picked up odds and ends from Thö-pa-ga on the journey.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Better be. If you make even one bad break, the Indian Government, of course, would simply ask us to leave India. But the Tibetan gang would give us the works. Very likely poison.”
“I don’t see why I can’t tell Uncle Clarence. Isn’t he in on it?”
“No, you chucklehead! He doesn’t even guess that the deaf-and-dumb loony, who files away the notes I send him, copies them and passes them along.”
“Tom, that poor old thing?”
“He’s a Polak, whose father was an interpreter at the U.S. consulate in Warsaw for twenty-five years. Draw your own conclusions, but keep them under your hat. The system is run on a basis of never letting one agent know another agent, or what the other agent is doing if it can be helped, and never letting any one agent know more than necessary. Your Uncle Clarence is a useful man, in his particular line. They’d can him in a second if they guessed his deaf-and-dumb clerk is my go-between. If they thought Mayor guessed what you’re up to, they’d never trust him again. It’s an unforgivable offense to have a private iron in the fire, and an almost unthinkable thing for a girl like you to try to enter Tibet. If you should tell Mayor, he’d be furious. He’d warn Ambleby. That would be the end of me. They’re only using me because there’s no one else who fits the problem at the moment. If they guessed you are in my confidence, they’d have no use for me whatever. I’m only using them because it’s the best chance in sight. They haven’t okayed me yet. The man in Delhi may not like my guts. They’re touchy, the Indian Government crew; they like the Foreign Office outfit about as much as I like being told what to believe. The India Office people, here in London, love me like a Bolshevik.”
Elsa looked puzzled. Curled in the chair, she suggested a terrier, aching to be taken hunting, absolutely confident that any hunting, under Tom’s direction, would be first rate. Some women, even to-day, have that excellent faith in a man. But it was not as simple as all that evidently.
“Then, if we get into Tibet—”
“When we get there,” he corrected.
“All right, when! You will — you say we’re merely making use of them — you will ditch all this and—”
“Don’t believe that for a second,” he answered. “Nothing for nothing in this world. Make your bargain, settle clearly in your own mind what the bargain is, then deliver the goods or bust. It isn’t only the British Empire that is vitally interested in knowing who is planning what in China. I’m as interested in the Thunder Dragon Gate as they are. If I weren’t, I’d find some other way of getting into Tibet. Pay as you go. Then you get what you’re after. Speaking of which, you’d better go and buy yourself a letter of credit. Have it drawn on a bank in Delhi. If you’ve anything to say to me at the hotel, talk deaf-and-dumb and use the code. Don’t phone my room if you can avoid it. Store your trunk. Twenty-eight pounds of luggage. Burn your boats. Hernando Cortez had nothing on you and me.”
“I know it. Tom, do you guess how thoroughly I’ve burned my boats? They’re ashes. If I don’t make good, I’m done for.”
“Scared?”
“No, Tom, are you? Please don’t be. I won’t let you down. I’m little to look at, but — d’you think I’m—”
He interrupted: “Don’t talk piffle. You’re game, all right. You’re on the level. But some jobs are too tough for some people. Even now it’s not too late to call it off. I’d trust you to hold your tongue.”
“I have burned my boats!” she answered. “Tibet!”
Tom scowled. He hated to have to explain himself.
“You’re full of enthusiasm,” he said, “so you believe what you wish to believe. I’m reminding you for the last time—”
“Don’t, Tom, you don’t need to.”
She might as well have tried to stop a steam-roller.
“You’ve no rating. None. I’ve no authority from any one to tell you my secrets — let alone to try to get you into Tibet.”
“Tom, I know all that. You’re being generous beyond the dreams of—”
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��Generous nothing. If you’ll keep your head you can be useful. There isn’t another girl on earth who has your special ability. But remember, I turned you down flat in the first instance, and I told you why.”
“Yes, Tom.”
“Certain people trust me because they know I don’t get tangled up with any woman who might soften me or blurt out what I’m doing. I have trained you as well as I could in the little time we’ve had. But we’re taking a whale of a long chance. Both of us. If it were known I married you to give you a certain amount of possible legal protection in case I’m bumped off, they’d rate me from then on as a sentimentalist. In my profession that’s the zero rating.”
Elsa nodded. “They should rate you AAA One hundred plus.”
“That’s the point. They rate a fellow by results. You can’t look to me for the slightest recognition of anything but your personal value to me as an assistant, strictly on your merits — and a secret assistant at that.”
“I expect nothing else.”
“Not now, you don’t. But you don’t know what’s ahead. No matter how tight the jam you’re in, you’ve got to stick to the agreement. Your only value to me is your intelligence, obedience and pluck. I want nothing else from you. Your marriage certificate simply entitles you to the key to my strongbox if I’m bumped off. Your marriage is so secret, and so otherwise meaningless, that you mayn’t even get a divorce without my permission — and I won’t give permission until secrecy no longer matters.”
“Yes,” she said. “I agree. I understand perfectly.”
“I’m trying to get you into Tibet simply and solely because I think you’ll be useful.”
“I will deserve it,” she answered.
“Damn!” he said suddenly, sotto voce.
The Jap had come in. The same Jap. Because of the high chair-back Tom hadn’t noticed him until he slipped into a chair in the corner by the row of pegs, on which they had hung their overcoats. The Jap ordered tea. When the waiter had brought it he sat sipping and studying something that he took from an envelope. He didn’t stare noticeably.
“Get your coat,” Tom signaled with the fingers of one hand. “What is he reading?”
Elsa went and powdered her nose before she lifted her coat from the peg. She used a rather large square mirror. She was less than six feet away from the Jap. There was not a lot of light in that corner of the room; the manipulation of the mirror was quite plausible.
“Airplane ticket,” she announced, when she returned to the fireside.
“Where to?”
“Couldn’t read it, but it looks like Karachi.”
CHAPTER 6. “Have your meals with me while you’re in Delhi.”
EIJI SARAO, the Japanese merchant, made himself altogether too agreeable. He was very widely traveled. He could talk the colloquial peasant speech that passes muster along the Chino-Tibetan border, and he missed no opportunity, on the long flight from London to Karachi, to get in conversation with Tom, Elsa and Thö-pa-ga.
However, Thö-pa-ga was ill — not plane-sick but becoming feeble from some obscure ailment that was aggravated, if not produced by his mental depression. It had been very difficult indeed to talk to Thö-pa-ga. He was an aristocrat; he resented that peasant dialect, and besides, he had partly for gotten it, or said he had. Mr. Eiji Sarao had not learned much from Thö-pa-ga.
But he made it almost impossible for Tom and Elsa to exchange confidences. His bright little eyes watched them continually. He detected their use of finger signals. He tacitly assumed that they were traveling together. At every pause in the long journey, he tried to get them into a three-cornered conversation.
At Karachi he had no trouble at all with the immigration authorities. Tom, on the other hand, had to enter an office near the hangar and answer searching questions. His passport, visaed in red ink by the India Office, merely stated that he was accompanying Mr. Thö-pa-ga as far as Delhi. The immigration officer, a gray-mustached ex-soldier, referred to a little indexed memorandum-book.
“You have visited India before, Mr. Grayne. Weren’t you invited to leave?”
“Yes. But do you recognize that visa?”
“That isn’t the point. For what reason, two years ago, were you told to get out?”
“I wasn’t. As you put it the first time, I was invited to leave. You can get the facts from your files, can’t you? If you choose to disregard that visa, take the consequences. I have no idea what they’ll be. For all I know, you may have authority to override the India Office. If so, do it and let’s see what happens.”
The officer smiled. He had very intelligent brown eyes. “What is the nature of your relationship with Mr. Eiji Sarao?” he asked after a moment.
“You mean that Jap who traveled on the same plane? None whatever. I don’t know him. Never spoke to him or heard his name before he boarded the plane at Hendon.”
“I am informed that you and he made frequent use of the deaf-and-dumb alphabet during the journey.”
Tom laughed. “That airplane steward probably has one glass eye. Did he say he saw the Jap doing it?”
“Very well, to whom were you signaling?”
“To myself, for practise.”
“Mm! Have you designs on Tibet this time?”
“Delhi.”
“Nothing beyond Delhi? Are you willing to agree to do your business in Delhi, and to leave India within a reasonable time — say, three weeks?”
“No.”
“Understand me, Mr. Grayne: I have no information that suggests you should be classed with what are commonly called undesirable aliens. But it might put the Indian Government to a very great deal of trouble and expense if you should attempt to repeat your former indiscretion. Tibet is a closed frontier. To bring you back from the border of Tibet would be a thoroughly unnecessary episode, that might have awkward diplomatic consequences, and is well to guard against.”
“Okay. Guard against it.”
“Will you give your promise, in writing?”
“You mean not to enter Tibet?”
“Not to try to enter Tibet. You could never do it again, I can assure you. But not to try to do it.”
“If a promise is all you want,” said Tom, “I’ll make one. How’s this: I promise faithfully, on my word of honor, to do everything humanly possible to get into Tibet as soon as I can.”
The officer grinned.
“Well, you’re frank about it! Any friends in Delhi?”
“Dozens.”
“To whom do you intend to deliver Mr. Thö-pa-ga?”
“To the first good doctor I can find. The man’s sick.”
The officer scribbled a name and address on a slip of paper.
“Dr. Lewis has had a lot of experience with Tibetan cases. He was stationed for a long time at Darjeeling. Try him. Very well, Mr. Grayne, I shall have to report you as dangerous.”
“Deadly!” Tom answered. “Obviously in league with a Japanese cotton-goods salesman to bring about a communist revolution led by shamans from Tibet!”
The officer stood up to shake hands. “I enjoyed your article on Tibetan magic in the Asian Review,” he remarked.
“I didn’t write it,” said Tom.
“Isn’t your nom de plume Bloomsbury?”
“No.”
“Will you give my regards to Dr. Lewis?”
“Yes.”
It had been almost on the tip of Tom Grayne’s tongue to say that P.K. Bloomsbury was Dr. Clarence Mayor’s nom de plume. Not that that mattered. Dozens of people knew it. But if Tom had confessed that he knew it, that might have had disastrous consequences. As he had drummed into Elsa’s consciousness on every possible occasion, there is no knowing who has been told to discover, by means of apparently innocent questions, whether or not you can be trusted not to mention names or claim acquaintance with men on the inside.
And now, the Jap even invaded the same compartment on the train. He was very courteous. He offered aspirin to Thö-pa-ga, who seemed to suffer tortures from the he
at and lolled back limply in a corner. Eiji Sarao knew all about Delhi hotels; he recommended one to Elsa — told her, too, of shops where she could buy whatever clothes she might need. Elsa, observing Tom’s signal, accepted the Jap’s advice about where to stay. Tom remarked he would probably stay with a friend; leading questions only led to more and more evasive answers.
When they reached Delhi at last, and the heat under the station roof almost made Thö-pa-ga collapse, the extremely friendly Mr. Eiji Sarao was rather evidently puzzled by the farewell between Tom and Elsa.
“Good-by. Thanks for all your kindness.”
“Kindness nothing. I enjoyed your company. Hope you’ll enjoy India. Perhaps we’ll meet again some day, somewhere. Who knows? Good-by.”
Tom took a taxi with Thö-pa-ga to Dr. Lewis’s office. That address had not been given him for nothing. No one — absolutely no one was going to take responsibility for his entering Tibet. They wanted him to do it, off his own bat, at his own risk. No one was going to tell him anything, of any importance, in so many plain words. If he hadn’t enough intelligence to understand hints, then he was the wrong man for the job and the usual governmental agencies would easily stop him in the course of the usual day’s work. If he hadn’t wits enough, he would be stymied without being able to say that any one had even as much as suggested to him that it might be possible to cross the Tibetan border.
That immigration officer wasn’t the regular man; he hadn’t even known where to look for the switch to regulate the force of the electric-fan in the office. But he had done his job pretty well. He had served warning to Tom to look out for the departmental mechanism that prevents the unwise, wishful wanderer from breaking bounds. He had warned him, too, against Eiji Sarao — as if that were necessary!
In the taxi, whirling through the crowded Delhi semi-modern streets that reeked of hot humanity and sprinkled pavement, he didn’t have to bother about Thö-pa-ga. The man was almost comatose, although Tom was pretty sure he wasn’t as ill as he looked; he was suffering from a sort of psychic blue funk. It was probably true, as he had declared suddenly in the shed that night, that he would rather die than return to Tibet. Perhaps Dr. Lewis could fix that. If not, a high elevation would do it. Meanwhile, Eiji Sarao? Noropa? The mysterious Noropa had had time to phone to half the Japanese in London in the interval between the Bow Street incident and his arrest that night at Kew.