by Talbot Mundy
“Congratulations!” said Tom. “Good staff work! You must need Noropa pretty badly, though, to spirit him so quickly from a jail in London. Looks like a miracle.”
Eiji Sarao smiled. He raised his shoulders in a deprecating gesture.
“I am sorrow for you,” he said gently. “You are found out. You are American Government spy. It is better you go home.”
Tom’s voice was equally restrained, but less silky:
“Mr. Eiji Sarao, I want both your hands over your head — now — quickly! Up with them!”
“You’d better do it, Eiji!” said the Rajah. “I don’t want him killed in my house. Better humor him.”
The Japanese didn’t obey, but he took his hands out of his pockets, probably to protect himself. He was obviously puzzled. Tom’s hands were into his pockets before he could turn to glare at Dowlah. One hip-pocket and the inside jacket-pocket. Quick work. Eiji Sarao sprang away and struck very smartly at Tom’s forearm, but he just missed paralyzing the muscle he aimed at. The crack of his heel on Tom’s instep didn’t hurt much because Tom was ready for that — all Japanese know that dodge, and it’s quite a trick to counter it.
Eiji Sarao’s inside pocket tore. Tom had what he wanted. Eiji Sarao glared, straightening his jacket, ruffled, indignant, dignified, bewildered, savage, but still in command of his manners.
“I am no longer sorrow for you. It is your fault that you shall be liquidated.”
That was a strange word for a Japanese to select. But what was more significant was Eiji Sarao’s glare at Dowlah. He expected support, protection. He didn’t get it. He was baffled. Tom, on the other hand, noticed that Dowlah was looking well pleased with the turn of events.
Tom examined his find. Three documents that Eiji Sarao had not had time or opportunity to stow safely away. One was his own memorandum about the dinner engagement with Lewis, and the chewing-gum. The second was the coded message he had mailed to Elsa. Stolen from the mail. Not so easy to do. It meant a thoroughly well-organized spy-system. Tom’s fingers told Elsa its contents. The third was a cablegram in French, from Paris, signed “Jeanne Marcel,” enclosed in an envelope with a Pondicherry postmark and addressed to Eiji Sarao in Delhi. That one he translated aloud into English: “Harley has wired from Moscow warning some one to tell Barley you are in charge of negotiations.”
“Some one” might be Ambleby. “Harley” was undoubtedly Sir Horace O’Mally, who lived and performed his miracles of doctoring in Harley Street. “Barley,” equally undoubtedly, was Tom Grayne. It was just the kind of message that gets by the censors without arousing suspicion.
“Swell network,” said Tom. “Moscow to London — by way of Finland? — phoned to Paris — cabled to Pondicherry — innocent-looking envelope from Pondicherry to your hotel — and you a perfectly innocent piece-goods salesman! Clever. You Japs are up against it, aren’t you, what with Russia watching you as well as Great Britain and the British Indian Government. To use your own phrase, I am sorrow for you. Care to come with me to Tibet?”
Eiji Sarao’s expression changed. He looked maliciously amused.
“You,” he answered, “you are going nowhere.”
Tom retorted: “Well, it’s pretty obvious that Dowlah is liaison man between Japan and certain Indian seditionists. Your dilemma is that Dowlah fears you’ll double-cross him. Almost any one could guess that in the dark. He feels he has gone a bit too far. He can’t afford to be caught with the goods.”
“Can any one afford that?” the prime minister asked. He was sitting like a bishop in an arm-chair, next to Elsa; it appeared he liked them young, small, with a wind-blown bob. She did look good. Her frock was obviously bought that afternoon in Delhi, but it suited her. The old chap’s taste in women evidently wasn’t as eccentric as his figure.
“Take a seat, Mr. Sarao. You’ll get tired standing,” said Tom. He was watching Elsa’s fingers. It didn’t matter that the prime minister was also watching them; even if he could read that rapid shorthand code, it didn’t matter. And if Eiji Sarao, as seemed possible, could read at any rate some of it, that didn’t matter either, because his back was toward her. He sat down, dignified but as comfortless as a suspicious cat, on a chair near Noropa. Tom could look straight at him and, at the same time, watch Dowlah in the mirror. At the moment he didn’t need any more information from Elsa, she had told him enough.
Dowlah’s face was dramatic — amused, amazed, alert — a mask of semi-imbecility, a bit too transparent; beneath it was almost savage excitement. Tom resumed the offensive. Spur-of-the-moment guesswork. Hammer-blows of downright statement. He was like a man in the ring, slugging his opponent to compel him to reveal his weakness.
“Mr. Eiji Sarao, the Russian, British and Indian Governments all know what your game is. You’re no mystery. The British Home Office allowed Noropa to leave England at his own expense. That’s obvious. He took the plane to Paris, flew from there to Damascus, and made connections with a fast special plane that happened to be leaving for Karachi. That’s equally obvious. Surely, even you must realize you’re being watched. Do you, or does the Japanese Foreign Office want it known that Rajah Dowlah has been their secret agent for Lord knows how long?”
“As for me, rather than face that, I would bump myself off,” said the prime minister. “They would send me to the Andamans. Have you ever seen the Andamans? Have you heard of them? Ugh!”
Tom hadn’t expected support from him; he looked too bovine to be a conspirator. Eiji Sarao said nothing. Tom continued:
“You have made some bad breaks, Mr. Eiji Sarao. In the first place you behaved suspiciously in London. On the journey you were too damned inquisitive. Here, you walked straight into a couple of my traps. You tried to have me poisoned with chewing-gum. You tried to have me killed in the street. You robbed the mail. Why are you here to-night?”
No answer.
“All right. Hold your tongue and listen. Your grip on Rajah Dowlah is the old one, that all secret services use: if he doesn’t obey orders, he’ll be tipped off to his own government. That would be the end of Dowlah. Or so you think. But how about the end of your own rope? Your Foreign Office won’t ask questions if you’re not heard from for a while. Not official questions. Nothing through diplomatic channels. You’re not going to be heard from. Would you care to come with me to Tibet?”
“Say more,” said Eiji Sarao. His face was a mask.
“Some one has come to Delhi to take charge of Thö-pa-ga? Who is he?”
Eiji Sarao’s expression changed. It became vacant. He shook his head. He didn’t know. But he overplayed it; it was clear enough that he did know.
“Well, you’ve a minute or two to refresh your memory,” said Tom. “This afternoon you very kindly showed Miss Burbage where to do her shopping. Why did you introduce her, in the back room of a clothing shop, to an alleged Chinese, allegedly from Turkestan, to whom, however, you spoke Japanese? And why did you explain to him what sympathy she feels for Thö-pa-ga, and how gratefully he reacts to it?”
“I didn’t. You are guessing,” said Eiji Sarao. “No one can have told you such a—”
He shut up suddenly. It possibly had occurred to him that Elsa might have signaled the information.
Tom glanced at Dowlah. With the corner of his eye he had detected signs that Dowlah wasn’t as amused or confident as he wished to appear.
“Tell him what you think, Dowlah.”
Dowlah rose nobly to the occasion. No man possibly could have looked more embarrassed, more silly, more incompetent to carry his end of a dilemma. He even pulled off his turban, ran his fingers through his black hair and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.
“I am frightened!” he said, after several seconds. “Double-dammit and to hell with all this, do I pay a minister to sit still and fold hands on his belly? Curse you, Abdul Mirza, all this comes of listening to you! You talked me into it. Get me out of it! Hurry up now! Wake up! Tell him what I think — or what I ought to think — or, if you’re w
orth your salary, what I will think!”
The prime minister rose out of his chair. He was a tall man. Standing, he carried his big belly with dignity. He stroked his hennaed beard with both hands, parting it in the middle. His mildly intelligent dark eyes, behind ridiculous pince-nez, looked at each face in turn but dwelt longest on Elsa’s. His little gold-embroidered skullcap, slightly awry, suggested a caricature of the pill-box caps that British cavalrymen used to wear for the delight of French cartoonists.
“To discuss the modesty of my emolument, and to compare it with the nature of my services, seems inappropriate at this time,” he began. “I think it also inappropriate to enter into details of an alleged — ah — foreign entanglement that, if it did in fact exist, would be — ah — deadlier to handle than a — ah — cobra. I am for simple solutions, though they may appear — ah — complicated.”
“Cut all that!” said Dowlah. “Tell us.”
“Fortunately Mr. Grayne wants something, which only we are willing to supply. I am informed that he wishes to go to Tibet for a secret purpose. Only we can help him. Then it follows that a basis exists, whereupon—”
“You may cut that, too,” said Dowlah. “This isn’t my birthday. You’re not honeying the tax-payers. Talk sense.”
“Sense is this,” said the prime minister. “Neither Tibet nor Japan would welcome Mr. Grayne: Tibet simply from a habit of excluding visitors — Japan in order not to let the light of curiosity expose a beautiful intrigue.”
“You blimp, you talk like an unpaid radio performer,” Dowlah interrupted.
The prime minister wiped his pince-nez.
“It appears to me,” he said, “that we should first assure ourselves of secrecy, and next decide who shall accompany Mr. Grayne. If Mr. Eiji Sarao, or Mr. Grayne, or this extremely beautiful young lady, should betray by the merest accident our motives, our intentions or our — ah — secret affiliations — that would be a catastrophe comparable to the fate of the Czar of Russia.”
“Cut that, too!” said Dowlah. “You make me shudder. Do you understand him, Eiji? The fat fool means we’re in a fix. I’m through. No more of this sort of game for me. I know the ropes; you’d ruin me by tipping me off to the British, if I gave you half a chance. But I won’t. You and that fellow Noropa go with Tom Grayne to Tibet, where I hope you all get bitten by a shang-shang!”
Abdul Mirza sat down, drooped his eyelids and appeared to lapse into a dream. Tom resumed the offensive, for Eiji Sarao’s benefit:
“Miss Burbage came here to dinner on Eiji Sarao’s invitation, but at your suggestion, Dowlah. Why?”
Dowlah didn’t hesitate a second. He exploded like a petulant weakling, found out and blurting the truth:
“Why? Damn you, because Eiji said she’s with you. So she is! She and you are prisoners! You don’t believe it? Show them, Abdul Mirza! Get up, you fat loafer! Go and show them!”
The prime minister hove himself out of the arm-chair with a sigh. He wiped his pince-nez, put his feet into his slippers, walked to the door, listened, unlocked it, opened it wide and stepped backward. Armed men!
There was no longer a light in the hall. But the light from the room shone on the faces of at least a dozen men — dark-skinned, turbaned, cummerbunded, bearded — six in the front row. There were faces behind them, and more heads in the shadow beyond.
“Prisoners!” said Dowlah. He strode to the door, pushing Abdul Mirza back toward the middle of the room. Without a word of explanation or warning he switched out the lights.
In pitch-black darkness Tom took one step sideways and five forward, reached Elsa’s chair and groped for her hand. She could touch-read; there was no need for her to see his fingers.
“Well done. Just what I wanted to know.”
“But on whose side is Dowlah?”
“His own, you cuckoo!”
There was a sudden cat-fight exclamation in the darkness from about the spot where Tom was standing when the lights went out.
“Keep your hair on!” Tom signaled. Those were ten tough seconds for a girl who was new to the game. He could feel Elsa as taut as a violin-string. Something fell to the floor. Dowlah turned the lights on.
Blood ran from Eiji Sarao’s neck. Not much blood; the blow had missed his jugular. Noropa’s knife lay on the floor. Noropa stood near Eiji and gaped like a ghost that saw a super-ghost and couldn’t understand. Not even a Mongolian terrorist can see in total darkness. Noropa had stabbed the wrong man.
Dowlah laughed. The armed men hadn’t moved in the doorway. There was an altogether new, dynamic note in Dowlah’s voice:
“I thought you’d try that, Eiji! You fool, how dare you try to kill a man in my house?”
“I didn’t! “said Eiji.
“Liar!” Dowlah answered. “You meant to use jiu-jitsu!”
Dowlah went to a nest of drawers on a shelf and pulled out medicated cotton — gauze — bandages — tossed them to Eiji Sarao. Then he turned fiercely on Abdul Mirza. It was clear enough now that Dowlah was covering almost hysterical nervousness under a cloak of insolence.
“You should be at Geneva, you should! When you’ve finished thinking up some resolutions, go and phone for Dr. Lewis! Care to lie down, Eiji? Very well then, they’ll show you a bed.”
He gestured like a conductor coaxing woodwind through a waning tumult of the brass. Four men armed with sabres marched in. Two of them hustled Noropa pretty roughly. The other two politely led out Eiji Sarao, supporting him between them.
Dowlah came near and stood grinning at Tom and Elsa. He had to grin for thirty seconds before he could speak with an air of being rather scornfully amused. He was only calm on the surface. There was an expression in his eyes that suggested almost terror. It was certainly not less than anxiety.
“Don’t you wish,” he said, “you had a private army! I’m allowed two hundred and twenty-four men, but I’m supposed to keep ’em all at Naini Kol. I’d get hell if it were known I have a few of ’em in Delhi. However, you don’t do badly, you two. I’ll have to work up such a system of signals as you use — it’s a dandy. Damned if I can read it.”
“Miss Burbage would like a drink. Can she have one?” Tom asked.
Dowlah turned away to unlock the liquor cabinet. Tom’s fingers signaled:
“Admit nothing. Tell him nothing until he tells us.”
CHAPTER 12. “Your chewing-gum kills rats.”
DOWLAH pressed a button on the wall and spoke into a telephone that looked like a small brass ventilator:
“Barraff!”
Ice arrived on a dumb-waiter, along with syphons. He poured two drinks and glanced at Tom.
“You?”
“No thanks.”
Dowlah drank deep, watching Elsa sip hers. “Got me to look away, didn’t you! Well, you’re a smart pair. I admit it. Both of you shall go to Tibet. I don’t envy you. I wouldn’t go there for a fortune. Frost-bite at eighteen thousand feet. Holy murder stalking you at every turn of the road. Tibetans are jolly people. I’ve seen ’em flog a girl as pretty as you, Elsa Burbage, and then leave her naked to die of cold in the night.”
For about fifteen minutes he described the tortures that Tibetans and their neighboring semi-Chinese cousins use on foreigners.
“Mr. Grayne has told me all about it,” Elsa interrupted at last.
“Dowlah, you’re wasting time,” said Tom. “If you’ve a card up your sleeve, either play it or call the game. Make up your mind to do one or the other.”
Dowlah giggled again. “I am not your nurse,” he answered. “Think you’re very clever, don’t you! If you are, you’ll have to prove it. Show your own hand.”
“Very well,” Tom answered. “If it’s my lead, lock up Eiji Sarao and loose Noropa.”
“Do you want him with you in Tibet?” Dowlah could ask a silly question with the earnest innocence of a really artful attorney.
“No, you ass. But I’m going to have your confidence, or else your enmity, right now.”
D
owlah chuckled. He sat down on the arm of a chair and crossed his legs. The giggle had gone, like the moisture from the outside of a glass.
“Which do you prefer?” he asked.
“Frankly, I don’t give a damn. I’d rather buck you than count on you and be let down. My guess is that you’re in a corner. You don’t act like a man who can please himself what he’ll do next. What use are you to me?”
“What do you want?” asked Dowlah.
There was a knock at the door. Dowlah went and unlocked it. Abdul Mirza entered, a bit too meek looking and benevolent to be innocent of mischief. He wiped his pince-nez, to get a better look at Elsa.
“Dr. Lewis is here,” he remarked. “He is stitching up Eiji Sarao. I have not told Dr. Lewis how it happened.”
Dowlah seemed relieved to have some one to brow-beat.
“Sit down, you bag of platitudes! Listen to what this man wants.”
Abdul Mirza looked over the top of his pince-nez at Tom.
“I think he will demand too much,” he answered. “Such men usually do. What is it?”
“I want Eiji Sarao under lock and key. Turn Noropa loose to make his own mistakes. Eiji Sarao won’t talk, and I don’t think you’ll find any information in his wallet—”
“Not a thing, not a thing,” said Abdul Mirza. “Nothing but a correctly visaed passport and some money.”
“ — but to hold him incommunicado may throw the whole Japanese system out of gear between here and Tibet, for the time being.”
Dowlah nodded. Abdul Mirza readjusted his pince-nez, belched, and addressed a remark to the ceiling:
“Naini Kol is not a resort for tourists. We had the runaway wife of a twenty-one gun maharajah there for two years, and no one knew it.”
“No one would know it now, if you weren’t such a clapper-tongued ass,” said Dowlah. “Go on, Tom Grayne. What else?”