Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Any one could play it,” said Tom. “It’s one, two, three. Noropa is a fanatic, with a certain narrow intelligence, who obeys orders from high up. He’s a Number One man’s factotum. Turned loose, he’ll behave like a dog that you can count on absolutely to betray his owner by his effort to protect him. He has a one-track mind, and it’s a bad track. That’s why some one sent him to London to scare Thö-pa-ga back to Tibet. That’s why the British Foreign Office let him fly to India; they turned him loose just to see what he’d do. I want him locked up, talked to, and helped to escape.”

  “Who’s to talk to him?” asked Dowlah.

  Tom glanced at Elsa. Dowlah’s eyes studied her thought fully. He nodded.

  “Noropa must be given to understand,” said Tom, “that Eiji Sarao has a secret and tremendously important message that he absolutely must deliver to the personage who came from Tibet to take charge of Thö-pa-ga. Noropa wounded Eiji. How should he know the wound isn’t serious?”

  “The personage from Tibet isn’t, so to speak, notorious for simple-minded incompetence or, let us call it complacency,” Abdul Mirza remarked.

  “Take it or leave it,” Tom answered. “I have said what I want.”

  Some one knocked on the door.

  Abdul Mirza seemed suddenly to wake up. He stared over the top of his pince-nez.

  “Answer the door,” commanded Dowlah. “If it’s Dr. Lewis, let him in.”

  Lewis breezed in. He had the half-comical air of a physician who has competently dealt with a disaster that he foresaw — a sort of “well, boys, what next?” expression.

  “Grayne, your chewing-gum kills rats,” he said cheerfully. Then he looked hard at Dowlah. “I have just taken five stitches in the neck of that Gurkha.”

  “Quarrelsome people, Gurkhas,” said Abdul Mirza.

  “Yes, and reticent,” said Lewis. “He didn’t tell me his name, or how it happened. Pour me a drink, Dowlah. Nothing serious. The Gurkha will be all right in a day or two. What a striking resemblance they bear to the Japs. Oh, by the way, your shang-shang has been celebrating her escape. There are two snake-bite cases, one man, one woman, miles apart, both of ’em bitten in bed on a roof, both paralyzed and speechless — dying, of course — probably dead already. Thirty or forty people swear they have seen the devil and at least one mosque is full of Moslems praying to be saved from it. A police officer saw the thing. He tried to shoot it. He described it as three times the size of a goat, and he’s at the club now, getting drunk and rather tired of being laughed at.”

  “Dr. Lewis, Miss Burbage,” said Dowlah.

  Lewis ceased looking at her sideways. He stared.

  “How d’you do. Are you the lady who befriended a Tibetan named Thö-pa-ga, on the plane from London? He keeps asking for you.”

  “How is he?”

  “Oh, I think he’s coming along all right. He should be fit to travel in a few days. If you’ve time, I wish you’d call and see him. New to India?”

  “Yes. My first visit.”

  “Take care what you eat.” Lewis glanced at Tom Grayne.

  “Miss Burbage tells me she’ll be going to Darjeeling,” said Tom.

  “Oh. That so? Uh-huh. Well, I’ll tell you. Perhaps it would be better, after all, not to call on Thö-pa-ga. Drop me a line instead — to Dr. Morgan Lewis, Edith Cavell Hospital, and let me know when you’re off. I’ll try to get him off by the same train. I’m sure that any kindness you can show him will be a godsend to him. He’s lonely. Not homesick. Quite the reverse. The poor devil doesn’t want to go home.”

  “Glad to do whatever I can,” said Elsa.

  “Careful what you eat, remember!”

  “Thank you for the warning.”

  “Heart all right? Can you stand high altitudes? Darjeeling, you know, is a great many thousand feet higher than Delhi. How’s the blood-pressure? Care to have me test that?”

  Tom’s fingers moved.

  “How awfully kind of you,” said Elsa.

  “Come into the other room,” said Lewis. “It’ll only take a minute or two.”

  Elsa uncurled her legs from the arm-chair and followed Lewis out into the hall.

  “Damn his eyes,” said Dowlah. “Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief, Taffy came to my house and stole a girl from under both our noses! He’s a rotten doctor, but he’s good at learning more than anybody tells him.”

  “Rot!” Tom answered. “Pretty decent of him.”

  “Oh, yes?” Dowlah stared in assumed amazement. “Are you such a cuckoo as all that? Do you think any one but she and you will give a damn if either of you dies in Tibet?”

  Tom didn’t answer. He was as curious as Dowlah, at least as curious, to know what Lewis and Elsa were talking about. However, Elsa would tell him soon enough, whereas she wouldn’t tell Dowlah. He had the edge on Dowlah.

  Dowlah knew it; he finished his drink and poured himself another.

  CHAPTER 13. “Young man, you remind me of a bomb with the fuse ignited.”

  ABDUL MIRZA’S pudgy, but somehow competent-looking fingers were interlocked on his belly. He leaned back in the arm-chair, looked over the top of his pince-nez, coughed to call attention to himself and spoke:

  “It is my duty to advise Your Highness. You are what is called a semi-independent ruler. You are now, however, semi- so-to-speak menaced by three antagonistic elements — Tibetan, Japanese, British — to say nothing of the Indian police, who are not students of extenuating circumstances. As Your Highness well knows, the police and the secret intelligence are mutually exclusive, and to each other incomprehensible necessities of state. To be foul of the police is not a signal for help from certain quarters that I need not name. Call that semi-independence, or if it suits you better, call it a dilemma — a predicament — a—”

  “You are a sententious mule,” Dowlah interrupted. “Cut the prologue.”

  But Abdul Mirza was not to be hurried. He was conceivably talking for Tom’s benefit; else why lecture the Rajah in Tom’s presence? He continued:

  “It is true that Your Highness possesses a certain gift for sub-diplomatic, I might say almost subterranean intrigue. But unless the Japanese have changed their character within the last hour or two, they will presently learn that you have double-crossed them. And unless they have changed their religion, they will know what to do about that. Will the British Government protect you? Or will it moralistically make a gesture to the Japanese by strafing you for having done what it knew you were doing and what it secretly but non-committally approved? Answer me that one. As for the Tibetans, there is no need to remind you that the Thunder Dragon Gate is not a source of abstract homiletics. Nobody knows much about it except that it is certainly a source of fanatical ferocity controlled by Bön tutored Tibetan shamans, who will presently discover it was you who stole their shang-shang.”

  “I will tell them you did that,” said Dowlah.

  “Then I fervently hope that the indescribable felicity of being Your Highness’s prime minister may descend upon more competent shoulders. As for me, I shall learn what eternity is — if it is.”

  Tom listened, but he was watching the open ventilator. One of the shang-shang’s green legs kept appearing. Just the tip of it. A spidery web-spinning motion. No sign of a web. Dowlah seemed unaware of it. The prime minister’s back was toward it. Perhaps Dowlah had lied about the cowl on the roof being missing. Maybe he knew the monster couldn’t possibly escape. Perhaps he knew how to recapture it uninjured. There were some phials of chloroform and cans of ether on the shelf where the cyanide stood; he might intend to try those. The possession of a living shang-shang would be worth almost any risk, to a man of Dowlah’s temperament.

  But didn’t it mean that there must be more than one shang-shang in Delhi? Otherwise, what about the people who, according to Lewis’s account, had been bitten to death? What about the police officer who had seen a shang-shang and had tried to shoot it?

  Abdul Mirza went on talking like a rather sleepy lectur
er to a class of theological students:

  “There are reasons beyond Reason’s comprehension. It is sometimes wise to act unreasonably, simply because all the reasonable actions will be used or foreseen by one’s opponent. There isn’t any reasonable reason for employing Miss Elsa Burbage. Therefore—”

  “You didn’t think of that,” said Dowlah.

  Abdul Mirza bowed. “I thank Your Highness for the compliment. You and Mr. Grayne thought of that. I have only called attention to the fact that the thought is irrational and therefore at the moment — ah—”

  He perked up suddenly, glanced at Tom and then looked straight at Dowlah. In a surprisingly sharp voice he added:

  “Can’t you recognize Nemesis? Cover your tracks!”

  Dowlah walked out of the room. Tom took the pole and closed the ventilator. Abdul Mirza nodded approval:

  “As it happens, quite unnecessary, Mr. Tom Grayne. No one could overhear us through that ventilator.”

  He polished his pince-nez furiously. Tom waited. He noticed he hadn’t slammed the ventilator tight enough. The brass latch hadn’t caught in the socket.

  “Young man, you remind me of a bomb with the fuse ignited. I have seen one. It looked as patiently potent as you. It was dealt with by removing the fuse.”

  Tom said nothing.

  “You are an American citizen?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is known that the United States State Department is very interested in the efforts being made by Japan to get control of China.”

  “Yes,” said Tom. “I’ve read a lot about that in the daily papers.”

  “If I thought you were an agent of the United States’ secret service, I would trust you more than I could other wise,” said Abdul Mirza. His manner more than vaguely suggested a father-confessor explaining the essential difference between cardinal and venial sin. He placed his finger-tips together and continued:

  “Not that American secret agents are so specially competent or reliable, but because I should then understand your — ah — real motive. It is men’s motives that — ah — govern probable behaviour in — ah — circumstances that demand discretion. There are no witnesses. Tell me.”

  Tom laughed. “Hell. I know nothing about that. But do you suppose a secret agent would admit he was one? My goal is the Thunder Dragon Gate. I couldn’t find it last time. If my efforts this time have any particular value to your intelligence department, hitch your trailer to my tow-bar. Okay with me. I’ve no secrets.”

  “But you have a mistress?”

  “Me? No. Can’t afford it. I have nothing to offer the kind of woman who could interest me. Besides, women have a way of becoming too important. A man can’t have his cake and eat it. Liquor, tobacco and women are off the menu.”

  “Why, then, did Miss Elsa Burbage, tactfully and with charming discretion, but nevertheless plainly admit, this evening at dinner, that her relationship with you is of a special nature?”

  “She didn’t,” Tom answered. “You guessed it — after dinner.”

  “You are very clever with your signals to each other.”

  Silence from Tom. The ventilator fell forward on its chain, wide open. Four of the shang-shang’s legs, and then part of its hideous, blind face appeared. It couldn’t possibly see, because its eyes were on top of its back. It might be listening, smelling, or using some extra sense that humans can’t imagine.

  “An intelligent, competent, daring young lady is your Miss Elsa Burbage!” Abdul Mirza was watching Tom’s face, but Tom’s expression didn’t make him glance up at the ventilator. He continued speaking, quite unconscious of the green monster that moved its mandibles beneath a snout like a Tibetan devil’s.

  “A personage from Tibet, who has been reported to me to be eager to talk with Eiji Sarao, is here in Delhi. It is probable that the personage was concealed, and listened, perhaps even saw Miss Burbage in the back room of a shop to which she was escorted by Eiji Sarao this afternoon.”

  “He can’t have learned much,” Tom answered. “He is probably the Number One man from whom Noropa gets his orders.”

  “Correct. And let us hope that he did not learn too much. He expects Eiji Sarao to tell him more.”

  The shang-shang retreated until only the tip of one leg was visible. Abdul Mirza continued:

  “For the moment we have Eiji Sarao — ah — fortunately in disposed. Dr. Lewis gave him a — ah — sedative. Noropa, in another room, has been permitted to believe that Eiji Sarao is dying. Noropa is not afraid of us. He cares nothing for Eiji Sarao. He understands our predicament. He knows it would be inconvenient for us to hand him over to the police. Because such people as Noropa have been trained from early infancy to more than Jesuitical obedience, they dread, beyond anything that you and I can imagine, the anger of their master — the anger of him whom they obey. Do you follow me?”

  “Sure. Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Very well then, Mr. Tom Grayne, your success or failure now depends on our convincing the Number One personage that Miss Elsa Burbage means nothing to you, but that she is indispensable to Thö-pa-ga, who otherwise will rather die than go to Tibet and become the so-called Keeper of the Thunder Dragon Gate.” Abdul Mirza looked over the top of his pince-nez. “She is not your mistress? Not your wife? Sweetheart?”

  “I already told you,” Tom answered. “No, she isn’t.”

  “That,” Abdul Mirza remarked, “is what I mean by removing the fuse from the bomb.”

  Tom kept the corner of one eye on the shang-shang.

  Abdul Mirza insisted: “You assure me she is not your property in any way? Is she free to behave as she pleases?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  “Thö-pa-ga, when he returns to Tibet, will find a woman waiting for him,” said Abdul Mirza. “She has been well trained, by Bön magicians, who are very expert. She is of a tribe whose women have been accustomed for many centuries to discipline a number of husbands. Polyandry. The reverse of polygamy. Dual moral code reversed and votes for men unthinkable. The inferiority of the male so well established that the women beat their husbands. The women are the sorcerers and priestesses. This one is to control Thö-pa-ga. The magicians control her. Japan proposes to control them.”

  “Yes? Well?”

  “Eiji Sarao, when the effect of the — ah — sedative wears off, may suspect that the Japanese secret service has — ah — overestimated the — ah — affection of Rajah Dowlah. But — Dr. Lewis has ordered Eiji Sarao kept quiet. We can provide for him, I assure you, a more than monastic retreat. It will — ah — as we will explain to him — preserve him from the — ah — undiplomatic attentions of the police who will wish to know more about some poisoned chewing-gum. Having made an unprovoked attack upon a guest in Rajah Dowlah’s house, he is, moreover, in no position to make any protest that would cause police investigation.”

  Tom nodded. “Sure thing. He’d be canned by his own people, right off the bat.”

  “Very well then, Mr. Tom Grayne, some one has made the bright suggestion that if Miss Burbage should — from — ah — sheer young feminine excitement — compromise herself a bit with Thö-pa-ga, something might come of it.”

  “For instance?”

  “She might be believed, if she should carry a secret message from Eiji Sarao.”

  “To whom?”

  “To the Number One man.”

  “Better fetch her in and ask her.”

  “She has gone already.”

  “Alone?”

  “No. Noropa took her.”

  Tom didn’t have to restrain his voice or control his eyes. The shang-shang gave him all the excuse he needed for using words like punches:

  “Don’t move suddenly! You hear me? Get out of your chair quietly and pussy-foot for the door! The shang-shang’s coming down the wall!”

  “Oh, Allah!”

  “I said, move slowly!”

  The prime minister’s slippers were off. He held his breath and tiptoed barefoot, with his
hands high, like a man balancing himself along a wall. Tom picked up one of the slippers. He hurled it and hit the shang-shang at the same moment that Abdul Mirza jumped out of the room and slammed the door behind him. The slipper fell to the floor.

  The shang-shang spread out like a huge green crab, shot down the wall — pounced on the slipper — bit it — worried it — carried it — dropped it and fled to the end of the room. It made no sound. Midway up the end wall it spread itself again and crouched, dancing a little, like a livid green octopus, staring with huge opal eyes. Its mandibles moved continually. It was head downward, if that sickening blind mask was its head.

  Tom reached for the window-pole. He put the hook into the slipper and drew it toward him. It had been torn by the shang-shang’s jaws. There was slimy liquid on it. There was just one chance that the brute had spilled all her poison — might want to creep away like a teased snake, and hide, and brew more. Pretty slim chance, that. But he had to do something. The monster was watching him. It wouldn’t stay long where it was. No use trying to hit it with a bottle or with Noropa’s knife; its eyes were on top; it could see a missile coming. Safer to try to catch the damned thing.

  He went and opened the glass cage, the one by the mirror. Keeping an eye on the shang-shang, he covered the cage with the shawl to make it look like a nice dark hiding-place. The cord that passed through a pulley to hold the lid open was a long one. Taking care to keep the poison off his fingers he tied the free end of the cord to the slipper. It was a fool’s chance, but it might work. Probably the shang-shang hadn’t any brains to speak of. Probably, as Dowlah had said, it always did the same thing in the same way. Question was, what would it do? Which same thing? Perhaps its habit was to spring at people. It could jump like a flash of green light, without apparent effort. No use waiting for it to do that.

  Tom threw the slipper on the end of the cord as far as it would reach. It fell about five feet away from the wall, directly underneath the shang-shang. The brute didn’t move. Probably hadn’t seen the slipper coming. Eyes on top, like a spider’s that can’t see a marauding wasp until it’s close enough for a fight to the death. The worst part of the brute was its silence — that and its moving mandibles that seemed to be stuffing invisible food into its blind face. It pulsed on the tips of its long legs as if pruning itself for a spring off the wall.