by Talbot Mundy
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He counted them, using the light from Lewis’s microscope:
4.15.23.12.1.8.
D. O. W. L. A. H.
He nodded to Lewis. “Thanks,” he said. “I get you.”
CHAPTER 15. “What are you looking peaked about, Mr. Grayne?”
THERE was a railway time-table on Lewis’s desk. Lewis drew attention to it by picking it up and tossing it down again. That looked like a pretty straight hint.
“That blasted shang-shang,” he remarked, “has left a trail all over Delhi. Some of my confrères are deducing, from the shape of its bite, that a new sort of human Jack the Ripper is at large.”
“Maybe there’s a pack of ’em loose and lighting for home,” Tom suggested.
Lewis seemed to wish to know nothing about it. He shook his head.
“If it weren’t for an efficient censorship,” he said, “there’d be a thousand of them in the morning paper, plus a score of Tibetans escaped from the observation ward! I shall have to report this poisoned chewing-gum to the police. If you’re in Delhi, they’ll interrogate you.”
Tom smiled. Lewis didn’t. He looked worried.
“Good-by,” said Tom.
“Good-by. Take care of yourself.”
“Thanks for your hospitality.”
Lewis merely stared. Tom held out his hand. Lewis shook it. Tom walked out.
He refused the first and second taxi that offered themselves, got into the third one, drove around a bit to make sure he wasn’t being followed and then went to the hotel. The door porter was asleep. So was the clerk behind the desk. He was only seen by a nondescript sweeper, who was at no pains to pretend not to notice him and therefore probably wasn’t a spy.
He bathed and packed the little zipper suit-case that contained all his belongings. It had been searched in his absence; even his socks had been unfolded and refolded differently. The stitching of the case had been unpicked at one corner and something — probably a sliver of split bamboo — had been inserted between the lining and the leather. However, that might not mean much. It might have been done to find out whether he was the sort of idiot who carries codes or any other important information in a zipper suit-case. Or one of Eiji Sarao’s agents might have done it. If so, he hadn’t learned much.
Tom awoke the desk clerk, paid his bill and left no for warding address. He carried his own bag to a taxi, pitched it in and told the man to drive around the corner and wait for him there. Then he walked in the opposite direction around the block. All sorts of people up at daybreak on all sorts of business. A strong smell of streets being cleaned and watered. Nobody seemed interested in his movements. He drove to the station, fairly sure he hadn’t been observed or followed.
Typical Indian railway-station crowd. Usual din. Usual smelly droves of natives who had slept on the platform all night for fear of losing the morning train, or perhaps to save money. Notice board. No need to ask questions. Express train at 8 A.M. making connections for Darjeeling. Ticket. Reservation — lucky he was early — good seat and no trouble at all — didn’t even have to bribe the reservation clerk. Corner table in the restaurant, with a full view of door and windows. Strong tea and boiled eggs — the best pick-me-up in the world after a sleepless night. Into a corner seat, in a front-end compartment, with a good view of the entire length of the platform, half an hour before starting time. A bit heavy-eyed now, but alert. No Elsa. No one who looked even remotely like her.
She should be headed for Darjeeling. This was the first train she could have caught. True, Eiji Sarao had stolen the letter that instructed her to do that. But Tom had signaled the message to her in Dowlah’s library when he recovered the letter from Eiji Sarao’s pockets. Eiji Sarao might already have had it copied, but it wasn’t likely that any one could break that code, without almost incredible luck, short of a couple of weeks of hard work. The code was based on an almost unknown Tibetan poem. Names of people and places would be particularly baffling for a code-breaker, however expert, because each syllable referred to a different syllable in a different Tibetan word.
So it was at least a million to one that no one had under stood the message in time to prevent Elsa from taking Thö-pa-ga to Darjeeling. According to Lewis, Elsa had taken Thö-pa-ga away in a carriage. Whose carriage? Five minutes to go. No sign of Elsa.
Four minutes before starting time came Nancy Strong, in a plain print frock, walking down the platform like a teacher on her way to school, making no fuss, followed by a string of porters who also made no fuss because they knew they would get exactly what was coming to them, neither more nor less. Nancy Strong got into a compartment midway down the train.
Two minutes to go. The train already crowded, and no one yet but Nancy Strong whom Tom even knew by sight. Then suddenly, in a hurry, Abdul Mirza, in a turban and gray alpaca frock-coat. Six servants, all running and making a fuss. Ten or twelve porters. Two long strings of jasmine buds looped over Abdul Mirza’s shoulders. One servant with a whole basket full of books and magazines. The end of Abdul Mirza’s turban unavailingly employed to hide part of his face. No platform farewells — into the train like a shot, midway between Nancy Strong’s and Tom’s compartment, and more than sixty seconds to spare. Why the hurry? About two compartments-full of turbaned secretaries — people of that type anyhow — scrambled into the train after him in such a hysterical hurry that Tom couldn’t even count them. They were either six or seven, all in one another’s way.
Three last-minute passengers — running — porters ahead and following. Conductor’s whistle. Engine whistle. And away — out into fierce white sunshine. No Thö-pa-ga. No Elsa.
Swell train. All the fancy novelties — cool air — ice water — glare-proof glass — a better dining-car than any pre-war king ever had — lots too many men to ask if you needed anything. White man’s burden hell, it was a white man’s shocking waste of other people’s money, grudgingly, not too politely shared with the duskier gentry who were taxed to pay for the extravagance.
That wouldn’t do. Thinking that kind of tripe is what keeps a fellow from minding his own business. No risk of being murdered on the train in daylight. Tom leaned back and was fast asleep in less than two minutes.
It was several hours before he awoke and strolled along the corridor. The door of Abdul Mirza’s compartment was closed and the curtains down. Further down the train Nancy Strong sat by the open door of a compartment that contained three other people. One was an Indian lady who couldn’t endure life very well with her feet on the floor. Nancy Strong had made room for her to get her feet up and looked as if she wished she hadn’t. She nodded to Tom, got up and followed him into the corridor.
“What are you looking peaked about, Mr. Grayne?”
“Am I?”
“How is your sick friend?”
“Which one?”
“The other. Not the one who wanted chewing-gum.”
“I don’t know.”
A train corridor is a perfectly safe place for confidences. Two in conversation can look both ways. They can’t be overheard above the noise of the train, unless they have screech-owl tourists’ voices. Nancy Strong — graying, forty-five or fifty years old, humorous, was inviting confidence. Her experienced, sensible eyes conveyed that information without a word said. But Tom’s eyes were as intelligible as hers. She understood — laughed:
“What a job your mother must have had! Excuse me, won’t you. My business in life is getting suspicious youngsters to tell me their troubles.”
“Do I look suspicious?”
“No, of course not. And you’re not exactly a youngster. But you wouldn’t tell me anything I don’t know, would you?”
“Probably I don’t know anything you don’t know,” Tom answered.
“Now, now. I didn’t mean to insult you. Our mutual acquaintance spoke of you, over the phone, with such terse approval that I’m more than curious.”
“So am I,”
said Tom. “I listen like a hole in the ground.”
“My informant said something about a girl.”
Tom froze.
Matter-of-factly, Nancy Strong applied the necessary heat to thaw him.
“India is a wonderful country for a girl who isn’t cursed with too good looks, or too much money, or too many brains. She can find a satisfactory husband in almost any place she visits, if she is properly introduced. But without the proper introduction, India is almost the worst country to come to. And for a girl who hasn’t introductions, but who has more than normal intelligence, it’s the most dangerous country on earth.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I know it. A really bright girl’s curiosity will lead her into danger that she hasn’t the experience to deal with. At the same time, it will keep her away from the good, kind, stupid people who don’t ever know that such dangers exist, because their lives are too humdrum.”
“Your life humdrum?” Tom asked.
“I am neither good, kind nor stupid,” she answered. “If I were good, those little devils of Hill children wouldn’t like me. If I were kind, the Almighty would give me a villa at Nice, with nothing more cruel to do than cut the flowers in the garden. And if I were stupid, I shouldn’t be talking to you.”
“I’m all alone, up forward,” said Tom.
“Very well.”
They went and sat facing each other in Tom’s compartment, silent for about five minutes, just as if they were old friends, with the wheels beneath them thumping a monotonous refrain that suggested, as train wheels always do suggest, that life rolls onward as a river, torn by the rocks that it leaves behind, and healed by distance. Tom spoke first:
“So they’ve passed the ball to you, have they?”
“No,” she said. “I think it’s your ball. But I can tell you what no one else will. I am unofficial. Nothing whatever that I say has the slightest authority. I’m a gossip. If you should quote me, you would be quoting a garrulous, middle-aged spinster who was a victim of her own romantic imagination.”
“Shoot,” said Tom. “I get you.”
“Don’t shoot me, if I say a few things that you won’t like.”
“Say what you please,” he answered. “I’ll listen. I won’t quote you. I won’t ask questions. But I won’t answer ’em either, unless I see fit.”
She nodded. “Yes, I think we understand each other. Well, by way of gossip, I learned of your bringing Thö-pa-ga to India. Curiously enough, my advice was asked about it. I suggested Mu-ni Gam-po in Darjeeling. My advice was asked because it happens that Thö-pa-ga was lodged in my house in Darjeeling for several weeks, some years ago, when he was on his way to Oxford for an English education. Would you believe I have lived in Tibet?”
Tom stared. “Tell what you care to,” he said. “I won’t ask.”
“And you won’t quote me?”
“All right. No. I promise.”
He was studying her skin. Any woman nowadays can buy almost any complexion except the kind you have to go and fight for on frozen and dust-laden plateaux, sixteen thousand feet or so above sea level. He had noticed it when he first met her. Funny he hadn’t recognized it. Reasonable, though. In all history there haven’t been half a dozen white women in Tibet.
“Thö-pa-ga,” she said, “was a rather precocious boy suffering from a severe case of persecution complex. Has he recovered from it?”
“Not to speak of. He’s as superstitious as a Kokonor yak-herd. But they gave him a B.A. degree at Oxford.”
“He was very suspicious of me,” said Nancy Strong. “To ease his homesickness I had made the mistake of talking only Tibetan to him. The poor young persecuted runaway — for that is what he actually was — associated me, because I was a woman speaking Tibetan, with a woman they were going to make him marry if they could ever force him to return. At the end of four weeks, when at last I understood that, I began to disillusion him about me. But by the time I had found the one femininely friendly angle from which he could be reached, the money had come and he had to resume his journey toward Europe.”
She paused, but Tom made no comment. So she shot a question at him:
“Have you brought Miss Burbage with you to exploit that femininely friendly angle?”
Tom wasn’t to be caught off-guard as easily as that. He answered matter of factly:
“So far as I know, they met for the first time on the plane from London to Karachi. Thö-pa-ga appears to like her.”
“Does she like him?”
“Honest to God, I don’t know,” he answered.
“But she loves you?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“Never mind why I ask. Tell me.”
“How should I know? Why should she? Elsa Burbage is a girl with unusual gifts, who has had a very unusual education and opportunities. So far as I know, she is not in love with any one.”
“But you love her?”
“Never been in love in my life,” Tom answered. “Don’t know what it feels like.”
“Well, of course, you realize, don’t you, that such a person as you are, can’t bring an unusual girl to India without arousing comment.”
“I had hoped to escape that,” said Tom.
Nancy Strong smiled. “Mr. Grayne, one of the funniest things in life is the occasional disingenuousness of otherwise hard-headed, intelligent men! Did you really think she wouldn’t be checked back to the day of her birth? How much money do you suppose the Indian Government spends in a month on cables, just for a leetle more information than is written on the face of a passport? Even I, a mere gossip, know this much: Elsa Burbage is a niece of Dr. Clarence Mayor of the British Museum, where she has had the run of the oriental department. Her father, Colonel of a Fusilier regiment, was killed in action in 1917. Her mother, an ex-actress of considerable reputation in her day, died in 1929, of heart-failure following an attempt to climb the Matterhorn. Elsa Burbage has an inherited income of eight hundred pounds a year; an honor degree from London University; a junior teacher’s certificate for oriental languages and oriental art; a good seat in a saddle; a little house in Dorking rented to a friend; dark hair; very beautiful eyes; a slightly pert nose; a ready laugh; a quiet conversational voice; and she sings high soprano. I have never seen her, and never heard of her until yesterday. Now what?”
“You tell me,” Tom answered.
“I intend to tell you.”
“Let me order tea first. Fruit — crackers — jam? I’ll have some with you.”
He rang the service bell. He needed an interruption. So far as he knew, he hadn’t betrayed what he felt. But he was feeling rather as if some one had suddenly punched him in the wind.
He gave the order to the waiter.
“So they know all that, do they?” he asked when the waiter had gone.
“They know a lot more than that,” said Nancy Strong.
CHAPTER 16. “I had no right to exact that promise.”
“I AM going to Dutch aunt you,” Nancy Strong resumed when the waiter had removed the tea things.
“Very well. I’ll play Dutch nephew.”
“You’re a man in a million, Mr. Grayne, or you wouldn’t be secretly approved by certain people who can’t afford to make mistakes.”
Tom smiled. “That’s the formula. Praise ’em and then swat ’em! I can take it.”
“But there isn’t a known exception, is there, to the rule that geniuses all have blind arcs, which cause them to behave like lunatics, or savages, or children? A genius is never stupid in his own field. But there is always a zone where his genius, with its natural self-confidence, invades what is to him a no-man’s land. For instance, a poet will try farming. That is an extreme instance. Virgil and Horace did it. Horace’s farm was stocked chiefly with wine and women. Virgil tells us, in beautiful language, how the bees get honey from carrion. They were both good poets. Bad farmers. Aren’t you trying to make a steel tool out of honey?”
Tom rested his jaw
on a fist whose sinews resembled moulded bronze. He didn’t answer. He wasn’t going to until he knew the answer.
Nancy Strong continued: “No one but a genius would ever have thought of employing a twenty-three-year-old girl as a secret accomplice on such an expedition as yours. It bears the genius-stamp of unexpectedness. Elsa Burbage must be a very competent girl, or you would never have considered her. She may be old enough. I was twenty-four when I went to Tibet. If I could stand the conditions, probably she can. I lived there, secretly — and it’s still a rather close secret — as the mistress of a Tibetan nobleman. His wealth has supported my school in Darjeeling for the past twenty-one years.”
That was a staggerer. And yet, come to think of it, it wasn’t. Nancy Strong had obviously said yes to experience. Her eyes said it. She had made the yes good. She had side-stepped nothing that could be tackled, and licked, and turned to account.
“Is he still living?” Tom asked, searching memory of people he had known in Tibet. She might be giving him an important clue.
She ignored the question.
“So I know what I’m talking about, Mr. Grayne, when I say that Elsa Burbage isn’t in safe hands.”
“How d’you mean — safe?”
“I mean you.”
“She’s in no kind of danger from me,” Tom answered.
“That, Mr. Grayne, is what I daresay you believe. Iron-man though you probably are, if you were secretly in love with her, you couldn’t possibly keep your secret in the face of what she will almost certainly experience. That is why I asked whether you are in love with each other. Would you care to know why I left Tibet?”
“If you choose to tell. I won’t quote you.”
“Because my nobleman, who was in love with me, couldn’t endure the indignities from which even he couldn’t protect me. There were Chinese Ambans in Tibet in my day. Their malice was almost incredibly ingenious.”
Tom wanted to ask her whether she loved her nobleman. She knew he wanted to. She paused long enough to let him ask. But he could see in her eyes the iron answer ready. No sense in inviting a snub.