by Talbot Mundy
“At the moment you’re headed straight for it,” said Nancy. “Why do you wish to return to Tibet?”
“Because it feels like the right thing to do, and I can think of nothing else to do.”
“Does it feel like running away? Or like going forward?”
Elsa pondered that for a moment, then answered: “It feels like a fight.”
“Against what? Kicking against what St. Paul called the pricks?”
“Damn St. Paul! I like him even less than Jesus. I’m not the least afraid of Tibet. I can endure anything — anything except the feeling that life’s meaningless and I’m useless. Perhaps it’s me that I’m fighting. I don’t know. But why should my baby have died? All that agony for nothing — not that the agony mattered one bit, if only something worth while had come of it. Waste! Faith, hope, charity — all wasted!”
“Whose charity?”
“Andrew Cunning’s.”
“I don’t believe it!” said Nancy. “If I thought Andrew Gunning really guilty of charity I would forbid him the door.”
“You? You of all people?”
Nancy Strong chuckled: “Yes, I’m a rich hater — a poor pitier. I detest and despise strong hypocrites. There’s some excuse for the weak ones. Andrew Gunning is strong. But I think he isn’t guilty. Do you know any Greek?”
“Yes. Some. Forgotten most of it. Why?”
“Agape is the word that St. Paul used in Thirteenth Corinthians. It doesn’t mean charity. That was a lazy mistranslation of a word that needs thinking about. Charity is sheer insolence. It always begins as an imposition on the meek, and it’s all that the meek deserve. At first they like it. They experience the kind of gratitude that means a craving for more. They suck it dry, like ticks on a sick cow. It works both ways. It enlarges the insolence. And it makes the recipients greedy — pig — meek until it becomes old-fashioned slavery and destroys itself, dies of its own corruption, like smallpox and degeneracy and any other disgusting thing you can think of — eats itself up.”
“Nancy, I supposed you were a charitable woman.”
“God forbid!”
“Isn’t this school a charity?”
“Over my dead body! ‘Ayarn’ [greek script], in the sense that St. Paul used the word, means milk of human kindness.”
“What’s the difference?”
“All the difference between plus and minus, good and evil, truth and untruth. Charity is sometimes a line of least resistance, sometimes a form of social blackmail, sometimes superstition, but never better than a substitute for kindness.”
“Aren’t you splitting hairs?” Elsa suggested.
“I’ve never split a hair, nor lied to a child like you, nor told the truth to a fool if I could possibly help it.”
“You’re in a strange mood, Nancy. Have I upset you by coming here?”
“No. Quite the contrary. Put some more wood on the fire.”
Elsa heaped on wood and prodded with the poker until the sparks flew upward. She stared at the fire. Nancy Strong waited until she sat down. Then:
“What did you see?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie. Time’s too precious, Elsa. We have only tonight. Save the lies for the hypocrites. Tell me.”
“It didn’t mean anything.”
“Never mind what it meant or didn’t mean. If I tell you correctly what you saw, will you admit it?”
“Try me. I’m not good at being naked-minded. If I told it, it would sound like nonsense.”
“You saw a cavern — Tom Grayne — Andrew Gunning — yourself — two strangers — and Lobsang Pun, facing one another around some loads on the cavern floor.”
“Yes. I saw that. But how do you know?”
“What did you hear?”
Elsa stared, hesitating, tense, almost frightened.
Nancy followed up: “Shall I tell you what you heard?”
“If you think you know.”
“Lobsang Pun was saying that the sun belongs to everybody; so whoever buys its light is a fool, and whoever sells it is a scoundrel.”
“Yes, he was saying that. Nancy! Have you the same affliction I have?”
“I used to be meek about it, too,” Nancy answered.
“But how could you see my picture? It was just a daydream like the ones I get when I’m translating Tibetan.”
“That wasn’t a daydream. — What language was Lobsang Pun using?”
“None that I recall. I expect it was thought-language. It was real, and at the same time unreal.”
“You saw color, form, substance, movement.”
“Yes.”
“Did you smell anything?”
“Smoke.” Elsa glanced at the fire.
“Child, don’t fool yourself. Don’t run away from it. Deodar knots don’t smell like yak-dung.”
“Nancy, were you playing tricks? Are you a hypnotist? Were you making me see and hear and smell things?” “No. I don’t hypnotize people. That’s wicked. Can you see what I’m seeing now?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Let yourself look — to oblige me:”
“I can’t see anything.”
“‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’! Look again. What do you see?”
“Nancy, please don’t insist. I hate it. Tell me how not to see things. Then I’ll bless you forever.”
“That,” said Nancy Strong, “is what I mean by meekness. It’s a nom de guerre for the subtlest and deadliest sort of conceit.”
“I didn’t know I had any vanity left. I thought it was all gone, along with my baby and everything else.”
“Conceit and vanity are opposites,” said Nancy Strong. “We can’t get along without vanity. That’s consciousness of what we are and can do. Conceit is pretending to be something we’re not, or else pretending to be not what we are.”
“You seem to be a bigot about definitions.”
“I despise them. But you need prodding with something sharp to make you vain and humble. Turn your meekness inside-out!”
“Is that what you teach children?”
“Yes, child. It is what experience has taught me.”
Elsa sighed. “Well, let me tell you my side of it, Nancy. I won’t whine, but I feel like confidences. If you can see things the way I do—”
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“Will you let me say it?”
“Yes. Telling it may help you. Go ahead.”
“I’ve been clairvoyant ever since I can remember.”
“Most people are, if they only knew it,” said Nancy.
“When I was quite young I was whipped for telling lies, because I said I could hear voices, like the Bible people and like Joan of Arc. I did hear voices. But I wasn’t believed. So I learned to cover up. There were governesses and people like that who spied continually and tried to make me feel guilty. But there were sometimes months when I wasn’t clairvoyant at all, and oh, how good those times were! But the times between kept getting shorter. So I was known as a problem child. That isn’t anything to be vain about. It’s something to try to forget.”
“What sort of child do you think I was?” Nancy asked.
“Oh — did you get punished? Well, you’ll understand at least some of it.”
“I will make you understand, too, or else die in my tracks,” said Nancy. “Go on, tell me.”
Elsa shrugged her shoulders. “Doctors. Psychologists. School-teachers. Inquisition, and no end to it. Even the vicar, talking about the Witch of Endor and the devils that Jesus cast out of people. And I knew what every one of them was going to say before he said it. They were all stupid. Some of them were cruel. And some weren’t even trying to be honest.”
“Neither were you,” said Nancy Strong.
“I was! I was honest at first. I was even happy about it and felt important. But I learned to tell lies later on to protect myself, if that’s what you mean. Once I was in danger of being certified insane because I said the house w
as going to be broken into by thieves, who would poison the dog and steal the silver. Luckily the thieves did it. That saved me. But I was heartbroken about the dog. After that I was sent to boarding school. And there I was accused of cheating because I sometimes knew the answers without having to work them out.”
Nancy Strong chuckled: “How did you try to explain it away?”
“How could I explain? Sometimes I was perfectly normal, as they called it, for weeks at a time. Then I was called stupid and sullen. And when they really did begin to be convinced that I could see and hear things clairvoyantly it was worse than ever. I was a freak. People tried to make use of me, and despised me at the same time. Some people called me a medium. I was accused of all sorts of things — vile things. Boys of my own age seemed to think I was a pervert. I was simply pestered by them — and by girls, too. And the decent boys weren’t interested in anything but could I tell their fortunes? When I got older I couldn’t even keep a teacher’s job. No, Nancy, it’s a curse, and it’s no use your telling me anything else. With the exception of my uncle, Professor Mayor, and Tom, I haven’t had one single even half-pleasant experience in connection with it. Most of them were disgusting, and some were cruel.”
“Tell me about your husband,” said Nancy. “What was Tom’s reaction to your clairvoyance?”
“Tom calls it second-sight. It annoys him because it isn’t dependable.”
“Good!” said Nancy.
“What do you mean, good? It was tragic. It came between us. He began to get used to my knowing what he was thinking about before he said it. He began to expect that and to count on it. So when it didn’t work he didn’t believe me, and when it did work he doubted. He thought I was being temperamental, or perhaps critical of him. He began not to trust me so much. Do you call that good?”
“What I meant was that we’re getting somewhere. Tell me about Andrew Gunning.”
“There is nothing to tell. That is, nothing more than you know. Andrew keeps his thoughts to himself, and he knows how to mask them as a general rule. He carves little wooden images that he gives to people who appreciate them, and—”
Nancy Strong glanced at the mantelpiece, where smiled a six-inch wooden statuette of the Lord Buddha. It vaguely suggested a portrait of Nancy herself.
“Oh, is that one of Andrew’s? So it is — I remember when he did it. Well, he does that kind of thing; and reads books; and gets furiously angry when he’s thanked for being unselfish and kinder than anyone ever dreamed a man could be. That’s almost all I know about Andrew, except that he saved my life when my baby was born, and I sometimes wish he hadn’t. I believe he hates me, but he’s too generous to—”
Nancy interrupted: “What is your vision of Andrew? Quick! Out with it! Don’t pretty it up!”
“A man in the snow, leaning against the wind, leading — leading—”
“Does he ever talk to you about clairvoyance?”
“Hardly ever. He’s too considerate. He knows I don’t like it.”
“Does he ever ask you to see things for him?”
“Never. He never asks anyone to do anything for him. He gives orders, when those are necessary. But he never asks favors. Even when we had to stay at Tibetan monasteries, he always found some way of making the monks feel that it was we who did them the favor. It was the same in the villages we passed through.”
“We’re getting somewhere again,” said Nancy Strong. “Now — are you ready to listen to me?”
“Yes. This time I’ll try not to interrupt. I only wanted you to understand before you begin. But please don’t ask me to see and hear things. I won’t do it. I will go back, and keep my bargain with Tom, but I won’t do it for anyone else.”
The telephone rang. Nancy Strong went into another room to answer it, behind two closed doors. She was gone a long time. Elsa sat curled in the armchair, staring at the fire, seeing — seeing — past, present and future, all mixed up in one connected movement that obeyed no laws of time and space, but was intelligible. Dr. Morgan Lewis wasn’t in the picture at first. But it concerned him. He was there. And when she thought of him she saw him, clairvoyantly, monocle and all, smiling, excited, talking to someone whom she couldn’t see. But she knew whom he was talking about.
CHAPTER 11
Dr. Morgan Lewis knocked twice. He gave Andrew and the Chief of Police plenty of time to assume such poses as they pleased before he walked in. He even turned his back toward them as he closed the door. As he stood wiping his monocle on his handkerchief he looked disarmingly unmelodramatic, mild, harmless — possibly even slightly bored by professional duties.
“It’s raining like the devil,” he remarked. He adjusted his monocle. “Thanks for the use of the car, Bulah Singh. It’s outside. I told the driver to wait for you.”
Bulah Singh wasn’t deceived. Darkly alert, he vaguely overplayed casualness. “You’ve been quick,” he observed. “Wasn’t the consultation serious?”
“The man’s dead,” Lewis answered. “Poison. You’ll get a report.”
“Oh? Murder?”
Lewis nodded: “You’ll say suicide.”
“What do you say?” the Sikh asked.
Lewis stared at him: “Between us three and the four, walls — murder, yes. But who’s to prove it?”
“Autopsy, I suppose?”
“Yes, first thing tomorrow. You know the man. He was in jail not long ago. A Japanese.”
Andrew did a better job of masking alertness than the Sikh did; he left off scraping out his pipe and looked mildly interested, whereas Bulah Singh’s air of indifference was overdone:
“Not the tea-buyer — let me see, what was his name?”
“Koki Konoe,” said Lewis, a bit dryly, a bit abruptly.
“A spy,” said the Chief of Police. “I remember. He was detained for investigation. We couldn’t prove anything.”
“It will be even harder to prove,” said Lewis, “that someone killed him by making him take his own life.”
The Sikh raised his eyebrows: “Suggestion? You don’t mean to say—”
“Yes,” said Lewis. “But whose?” He was staring hard at the Sikh, who was at pains to look skeptical and slightly scornfully amused.
“Koki Konoe was a pretty good suggester himself,” Bulah Singh answered. “If you should ask me, I would call him a first-class hypnotist. But—”
Lewis corrected him: “Third class. Not too good at that, or he wouldn’t have lost the duel.”
“Duel?”
“Yes, duel. Between duffers. The real experts are rare and not so easy to detect.” He turned toward Andrew. “What did you know about Koki Konoe?”
The Sikh lighted a cigarette, watching Andrew.
“Nothing,” said Andrew. He was watching the Sikh. The Sikh smiled.
“Didn’t you meet him — talk with him?” asked Lewis. “Someone told me you did.”
“Oh, yes, I met him.”
“Tell us what happened.”
“Nothing,” said Andrew. “He was here in the hotel, one afternoon. I picked up an English newspaper from a chair in the lobby. He got in conversation by asking for the paper as soon as I’d be through with it.”
“What did he talk about?”
“Nothing much. He talked like a man with a bad hangover. I got the impression that he was trying hard to cling to a fading intelligence.”
“Very shrewd guess on your part,” said Lewis. “What did he talk about?”
“It’s a pretty good rule, isn’t it, not to tell what people talk about, until you know why you’re asked,” said Andrew.
“Yes, that’s safe,” said Lewis, “sometimes.”
The Sikh smiled and corrected him: “Always.” He made a gesture with his cigarette. He and Lewis stared at each other. Andrew watched both of them. The Sikh’s eyes met Andrew’s. Lewis dropped his monocle into the palm of his hand and slipped it into his vest pocket.
“Well,” said Bulah Singh, “it’s getting late. I’ll be off. Corpse at th
e mortuary?”
“Yes — probably there by now. Both doctors refused to sign the death certificate, and I concurred, so they phoned the police.”
“I’ll look into it,” said Bulah Singh.
“You’ll find it interesting,” said Lewis. “Thanks again for the use of your car.”
“Don’t mention it. See you tomorrow. So long.”
The Sikh walked out. Lewis almost ran across the room: “The phone’s in your bedroom?” He closed the bedroom door behind him and was in there several minutes. When he came back he sat down facing Andrew. He was smiling as if well pleased by the phone conversation. He declined Andrew’s gestured invitation to help himself to whiskey.
“Now, young man, out with it!”
“Out with what?”
“There are no witnesses. It’s between you and me and—”
Andrew interrupted: “No, no. Easy on that stuff. You’ll have to employ your regular spies if you want—”
“Gunning, I want confidential information. And I also propose to help you. Don’t regard it as a business bargain. Think of me as your doctor. You know the rule: always tell your doctor and your lawyer everything.”
Andrew shook his head: “Work in a criminal law office taught me such contempt for squawkers and anonymous informers that I’m leery of becoming one.” He grinned genially. “Besides, it was an accepted fact in our office that you can always find a doctor to swear to anything, one side or the other, depending on who pays him.”
Lewis raised his eyebrows: “Do you feel more at ease, now that you’ve fired that barrel? Fire the other one about ‘choose your specialist, choose your disease,’ and get that off your conscience. Then we’ll talk.”
Andrew grinned again: “You get what I’m driving at, don’t you? I’ve nothing to sell.”
“I wouldn’t buy, if you had. I’m inviting your confidence,” said Lewis.
“How about yours?” Andrew retorted. “Talking to you is one thing. Squawking to a bureau is another.”
“Very well, let’s make it personal,” said Lewis. “This is between you and me and we’ll keep it that way. I knew the Japanese was dead before I left you with Bulah Singh. I hoped Bulah Singh would talk.”