Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Not for Mayor. Go as soon as you like to Darjeeling. Any good hotel will do. Soon after you get there call on Miss Nancy Strong, School for Hill Children. Tell her all you care to about Thö-pa-ga but show no interest in me. Everything progressing favorably. Better destroy this.

  TOM

  He mailed it, stuffed his hands into his hip-pockets, and went for a stroll.

  CHAPTER 8. “Said it was a shang-shang. Then he said it was his own soul looking at him.”

  LOGAN’S is a queer place. Its proprietor is Greek and the cooking Chinese. It stands at a corner where a busy street becomes a tributary of the Chandni Chowk and never less than thirteen nations mix into a stream that readily becomes a turbulent vortex. Any wind of politics can whip that swarm into a tantrum. In time of riot it is one of the first points that the armored lorries and machine-guns visit. European and American ladies have frequently been spat on at that corner by oriental gentlemen of prejudice and peculiar views.

  Tom Grayne, at three minutes to nine, with his hands in his pockets, was more alert than he looked, but he was almost not alert enough. As he crossed the street toward Logan’s a Ford roadster whipped around the corner, driven by a nondescript in a dirty turban. It missed him by less than an inch. As he turned his head to try to recognize the driver or take the car’s number, a second Ford, coming the same way, actually touched him as it whirled by. He stepped backward against a burly Sikh, who cursed him savagely, inviting a blow, that would have led to a fight, that would have brought the police. Tom knew better than to get himself into police toils.

  He grinned at the Sikh: “Run and tell them what you would have done if you’d dared!”

  He walked into Logan’s, where Dr. Lewis was already seated at a table. He sat down facing him and laid the box of chewing-gum on the table.

  “Doped out yet what ailed that liver you were boiling?”

  “Yes. A very rare poison, distilled from the roots of a small plant that grows in Sikkim. It takes twenty or thirty roots to yield a few drops of the stuff. It’s sure death in a couple of days — attacks the liver — and seems to break it down in a way that I don’t understand. I’m sending some of it to O’Mally. He won’t make much of it steeped in alcohol — or I think not. But he’ll enjoy the poison — three drops that would kill I don’t know how many people.”

  Eiji Sarao entered. He nodded and smiled to Tom and took a table whence he could watch without turning his head. Tom spoke to Lewis:

  “The two sticks of gum that are lying loose on top are new ones that I bought half an hour ago at Catesby and Simonds. Take one.”

  “Why? I hate the stuff.”

  Tom insisted. He took the other loose stick, broke off the paper.and chewed it. Lewis followed suit. Both chewed. They ordered dinner.

  “After dinner, take the box,” said Tom, “and have it analyzed.” He explained why, and how he had come by the box. “Eiji Sarao,” he added, “is having a whale of a good time watching us chew. Don’t look at him. He’s grinning to himself like a Chinese idol — cocksure funeral-to-morrow kind of grin. Any news at your end?”

  “Yes. Quite a bit. A man who said he had come recently from Giang-tze, showing what may have been forged credentials from the Tashi Lama of all improbable people, came to the hospital and demanded to see Thö-pa-ga.”

  “How did he know he was in there?”

  “That’s the point. I asked him. He was nonplussed for a second, but they’re quick to cover up, are those Northerners; they’re not like Indians. An Indian only thinks he’s inscrutable; whereas a trained Tibetan, is. He told me Thö-pa-ga has been expected for a long time, so he was on the lookout for him. He said that a patient who was discharged this after noon had run and told him. Lie, of course.”

  “Sure. Eiji Sarao told him, that’s a safe bet. Did your visitor interview Thö-pa-ga?”

  “No. Thought of letting him. Thought better of it. I said he’s too ill. He isn’t. Lungs are right enough. He’ll get well at a high altitude, but he has been eating the wrong kind of food — such slush as this, for instance. Altitude and monastery grub will soon put him to rights. I didn’t even tell Thö-pa-ga he’d had a visitor.”

  “Good.”

  “But he knew it.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “I was sent for in a hurry. He was sitting up in bed raving. Said he’d seen a shang-shang, so there must be some one come from Tibet.”

  “Any one else see it?”

  “Yes. The head nurse. Thö-pa-ga is in a small room with his bed by the open window. There’s no fire-escape there, but the wall is easily negotiable by any active person. I could climb it myself. In fact, we all suspect that window has been used to deliver forbidden drugs to patients. There’s a locked fly-proof screen, but the wire gauze was recently damaged by a violent patient who tried to commit suicide. It was repaired, but the repair was badly done — probably on purpose — and the fact wasn’t brought to my attention. It is quite easy, from outside, to detach and pull outward a whole corner of the wire gauze. Thö-pa-ga had asked for shaving tackle and a mirror. The head nurse let him have them. It’s usual, unless forbidden in special cases. She had let him have one of those nickel-framed magnifying mirrors that was left behind by a patient and never claimed. Safety razor. She had left him with the mirror against his knees, leaning back against a heap of pillows, with his back to the window, shaving him self. He started raving before she had reached the next room. She was back in the nick of time to see through the window what she said (and she may have been right) was a Tibetan devil-mask. But she said it was green, which hardly fits. She’s a good, strong, level-headed woman, but she may have been too badly frightened to observe it accurately. Thö-pa-ga had seen it in the shaving mirror, magnified and probably distorted. First he said it was a shang-shang. Then he said it was his own soul looking at him! The nurse had to keep him from cutting his throat. He had the blade out of the safety razor. So she couldn’t look out of the window; and, of course, by the time they’d sent for me the thing was gone. I raised particular hell, but no one who had any business in the yard below would admit having seen anything.”

  Tom watched Eiji Sarao get up and go. They nodded to each other.

  “If I were the Indian Government,” he said to Lewis, “I would run Mr. Eiji Sarao out of the country so fast that he’d burn the tracks.”

  “And the evidence, too!” Lewis answered. “Understand me, I’m entirely ignorant of what it’s all about or what the Government intends. I know nothing about you. Nothing. You called on me, mentioned the name of a mutual friend, and I’m living up to the Welsh reputation for hospitality.”

  “Quite so.”

  “So I’m going to introduce you, simply as an act of hospitable kindness, to a rajah. Have you eaten enough of this ullage? Like some dessert? More coffee? Let’s go then. He’s the Rajah of Naini Kol, which is a little bit of a principality tucked away in the Hills a couple of hundred miles from here.”

  “I think I’ve heard of him. Isn’t he the scientist?”

  “M-m-yes. He dabbles. He can afford it. His name is Dowlah, which it shouldn’t be. He’s a descendant on the female side of the famous Suraja-ud-Dowlah of Clive’s day. Adopted or something. Anyhow, he hasn’t inherited political ambition. He neglects his subjects, which is very fortunate for them; they’re backward, but they’re pretty decently ruled by a fat prime minister, who’s too afraid of them to try any tyranny and too honest to steal; a damned rogue but a good bloke, if you understand me. He has his points. Dowlah has traveled a good deal, but he lives most of the time nowadays in Delhi. He is one of my private patients; I had to treat him for a nervous condition induced by too much effort to become a scientist without the necessary mental training.”

  “Strange hour to call on him, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll tell you another peculiar thing. We’re going to call on him without any one knowing but you, he and I. I’m going to leave you alone with him. Come and see me in the morning at the hospi
tal and I’ll let you know what reaction I get from this chewing-gum.”

  They took a taxi to Lewis’s club, where Lewis squandered nearly two hours talking to acquaintances while Tom, on a veranda chair, sat staring at the night. But at last Lewis borrowed a friend’s auto, driven by an ex-sepoy. They were whirled after that through so many streets that Tom was hard put to it to keep his sense of direction. Obeying orders, the ex-sepoy, a Mahratta, doubled and redoubled on the course until there was no longer the slightest question of their being followed. The car stopped at last in almost total darkness, beneath neem trees, on the western outskirts of the city.

  Lewis dismissed the car. He and Tom walked to a high teak gate that opened in response to knocks and admitted them into a heavily scented garden. A fountain splashed. A path led to a front door, in a house that looked centuries old but recently modernized. An ancient, white-bearded attendant in a white smock emerged like a ghost from the shadows, greeted Lewis profoundly, and rang the bell.

  CHAPTER 9. “Tee-Hee! Isn’t she a lulu!”

  RAJAH DOWLAH of Naini Kol, to put it mildly, did not stand on ceremony. Some one had opened the front door by mechanical means; there wasn’t a servant in sight as he came like a dancing master down the hall to greet his guests. The hall was severely furnished in the latest modern fashion — metal chairs — one astonishing oil painting — indirect light — imported travertine — a long strip of gloxinia-hued hand-woven carpet. There were two full-length mirrors, framed in chromium; the one at the end that faced the front door made the hall seem twice as long as it actually was, and you seemed to walk toward yourself.

  The Rajah was in a European dinner-jacket and canary-colored silk turban. He didn’t walk, he pranced. He didn’t smile, he giggled. He didn’t hold out his hand, he flourished it. He didn’t shake hands, he shook himself, offering a hand to either guest and using theirs for leverage.

  “Lewis, old thing, how are you? Who is your friend? Not a patient, I hope?”

  He had very intelligent eyes. Beneath an air of triviality and gush he seemed to have the coldly concentrated, alert attention of a gambler, in a game where the stakes are big and the opponents not notorious for fair play.

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Lewis! No, no, I won’t listen to you! You must have a drink and a smoke. You must stay at least until after I’ve shown you my latest!”

  “Perpetual motion?” asked Lewis.

  Dowlah giggled at Tom. “He’s jealous! He’s afraid they will make me an F.R.S.! — Lewis, you incredulous old Taffy, I have a shang-shang! Alive! In captivity! Come along and I’ll show you.”

  “You’re a damned liar,” said Lewis. “I’ll look.”

  The Rajah led the way. The library, as he called it, was as full of scientific instruments as books. It was a big room, lined with travertine. There was another full-length chromium-framed mirror, its effect spoiled by a cabinet that stood against it, draped with a huge embroidered silk shawl. There were microscopes, cameras, retorts, but none of the dirt and disorder that usually accompany amateur nights into physics. There were also three big easy chairs, a table, decanters, syphons. The Rajah offered whisky and cigars. Lewis accepted both, Tom neither; Tom had a way of declining, without excuse or apology, that left nothing to argue about. Then, suddenly:

  “I can’t wait, Lewis! I simply must show you!”

  “Go ahead, Dowlah, you idiot. Show us!”

  Dowlah led, on excited tiptoes, toward the glass cabinet that stood in front of the mirror. He jerked off the silk shawl and revealed a glass case, six feet long, four wide, standing on a heavy teak table.

  “Hold your breath! Sssh-sh! Take a look! Take a look!”

  On the floor of the glass case was a brute like a huge green spider with a body as big as a quart pot, spiked like a horned toad’s. Its legs were two or three times as long as a spider-crab’s and had projecting bristles. It was emerald green. It had a face like a shrunken devil-mask — a blind malignant face. Its real eyes were on top. They were opal colored. Its mandibles moved continually, as if it were feeding itself on something that it couldn’t see. There was a big, dead rat near one corner of the cage, caught in a network of web as thick as sewing silk, and sucked dry.

  “Weighs seven pounds, six ounces and a half,” said Dowlah. “Angry! Mad angry! She’s from the Hills. The heat here maddens her. But isn’t she a beauty! Lewis, my boy, that’s a genuine shang-shang. She’s a young one. They say they grow to be twice her size. That’s the beast you said doesn’t exist! That’s the killer-spider of the Himalayas that can thrive up near the snow line. That’s the origin of half the Tibetan legends, and of nearly all the superstition, about murder by magic! Death? Hah! There’s death for you, Lewis my boy! How’d you like that on a dark night! Devilish death! Painful! Worse than a hamadryad! If the tales are true, that creature’s bite sets every nerve in its victim’s body aflame with agony. But you can’t scream. You can’t move. You die speechless. Would you like to see her kill another rat now?”

  “No,” said Lewis. “How d’you know it’s a shang-shang and how did you get it?”

  Dowlah didn’t answer the questions. “How would you like her loose in your bedroom?” he retorted. “That’s her job! That’s what the shamans catch ’em for! They’re a thousand times as dangerous and difficult to catch as cobras or panthers. I’ll show you. This brute can jump clear across the room, so keep out of its way! Out of her way! She’s the female of the species. The male is small, dark red, non-poisonous. She invariably kills and eats him. However, I’ll let her loose and show you what she’s good for.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Lewis.

  “Oh, yes. It’s quite simple. If you don’t get between her and where she’s going, you’ll be quite safe until after she gets there. I’ll trap her all right. You watch. I’ll show you how it’s done. She has a one-track mind, like any other spider — always does the same thing in the same way. She’s almost human in that respect. Stand over there by the wall.”

  It was a very long room. On another table, against the wall at the far end, there was a glass case similar to the one that contained the shang-shang, similarly covered with a silk drape. Its hinged top was raised and held open by a string suspended from a pulley on the wall; it could be opened and shut from half a room away. Dowlah took a small stick like a conductor’s baton, tied a wad of cloth to the end, dipped the wad in something in a saucer —

  “Warm meat extract. Blood is better. But when she’s very angry warm meat extract does the trick.”

  He opened a small slide at one end of the glass case and proceeded to irritate the shang-shang with the rag on the end of the stick. The thing’s ferocity was horrible. It flew at the stick. It bit the rag. Its leg movements were so swift and powerful that it seemed to fly. The interior of the six-foot-long case became a whirl of something vividly green that moved too swiftly for the eye to follow. Dowlah removed the stick and closed the slide. The monstrous insect crouched itself over the slide and appeared to be trying to force it open.

  “Now!” said Dowlah. “Watch this! Arichnida ferox shang-shang Dowlah! They will hardly be so jealous as to deny it the use of my name, will they? I’m its discoverer. I’m the first to have a captive shang-shang under observation.”

  He began to touch the floor, tables, furniture, even the books on the shelves, with the rag on the end of the stick. He laid a zigzag scent that led all over one half of the room, until he finally came to the open glass case, untied the rag and dropped it in. Then he removed the saucer of meat extract into the hall, closed the door again, locked it to prevent a servant from entering unannounced, switched off the two electric ceiling-fans, attached the end of a cord to a ring on the lid of the case, stood back ten feet away — pulled the cord — opened the lid.

  Out came the shang-shang, swiftly, with a sidewise spider movement. It crouched on the glass on the top of the cabinet. Seen against the mirror, in three dimensions, it was nauseating — an emerald horror.

  �
��God!” exclaimed Lewis.

  Tom Grayne noticed a bottle of cyanide on a shelf in a case behind him. It might be better than no weapon in a pinch.

  The Rajah giggled: “Tee-hee! Isn’t she a lulu! Find her an adjective, Mr. Grayne — lulu is already antique — isn’t she entitled to a new word? You’re an American. You invent it!”

  “Shut up! For God’s sake, watch the brute!” Lewis said irritably. “Here, give me that window-pole. I warn you, I’m going to swat your shang-shang if it heads my way.”

  “Don’t you worry. She won’t. But I bet you couldn’t hit her — not with that,” said Dowlah.

  Lewis reached down the brass-hooked pole from the ring on the ventilator window up high on the wall.

  The shang-shang began to move again, crabwise, with its legs spread wide. It looked like three different things, all horrible: crab, spider, octopus. It moved like none of them — like all three of them — raising its body up and down. Suddenly it leaped to the floor, soundless — crouched there, swaying as if ready for a spring — then dashed in a sudden, absolutely silent zigzag course from point to point that had been touched by the rag on the end of the stick. Almost lightning speed, effortless.

  From the time it started it seemed less than a second before Dowlah let go the cord that shut the lid of the cage at the end of the room.

  “Phew!” Lewis leaned on the window-pole and wiped his forehead. “The damned thing scared me. I admit it.”

  “Now you know,” said Dowlah, “how the shamans kill a victim. First find a shang-shang. Where to find them is a secret that’s been well kept. Next, catch a female. If you can do that without being killed, you’re a magician! After that, contrive to touch your victim with something smelly that excites a shang-shang’s anger. Blood! Human blood, if you have it. Make a trail back to your shang-shang. Let her go. And you’ve one more mysterious murder!”

  “Can they catch ’em again?” asked Lewis.

  “I don’t know, but I doubt it. Mrs. Shang-shang, I imagine, makes tracks for the Hills. She likes high altitudes. Her natural food is mice, snakes, birds — and her unfortunate husband.”