Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “He did.”

  “I want to know what he said.”

  “Is it understood and agreed that I’m not squawking for protection, or any rot like that?”

  “Understood.”

  “And I won’t be made a party to any local intrigue?”

  “Yes. That’s a promise. Now then, what did he say?”

  “Well, just before you came in, he said he’s all set to kill me if I repeat to anyone what we talked about.”

  “Did he mention names?”

  “In that connection yours was the only name that he did mention.”

  “Thanks,” said Lewis. “I suppose the rest of it concerned you and Tibet and Tom Grayne.”

  “Most of it did. He offered to ease me across the frontier — on terms.”

  “Wants you, I suppose, to bring the infant Dalai Lama to Darjeeling?”

  “Right — first shot. You seem to know your stuff! How did you figure that out?”

  Lewis laughed. “It took more shots than a hundred to bring down that bird! Bulah Singh has inflated ambitions. He is a student of ambitions. He knows almost by heart the case histories of at least ten men who have attained power by Machiavellian means — Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mustapha Kemal, several South American dictators. Those men all started from scratch, so why shouldn’t he? I wish you could see his library. What escapes Bulah Singh is the fact that there are ten thousand failures for one success in that field. He overlooks such elements as luck, time, place and competition. He realized, quite a number of years ago, that an Indian police officer, who plays to the gallery, presently lands in the discard. So he studied clandestine methods of becoming influential. He has been burrowing so hard underground and so far afield that Japan got news of it. Japan sent Koki Konoe to Darjeeling to uncover Bulah Singh’s game while pretending to buy tea. Tell me about Koki Konoe. What happened between him and you, here in the hotel?”

  “Darned little happened, because I spotted him as a hot wire first go off,” said Andrew. “He planted a copy of the London Times in a chair in the lobby. I took the bait deliberately. When we got in conversation he drew my attention to a piece on an inside page about the medical use of hypnotism. On the next page there was a silly season letter from a retired Colonel who said he’d seen the rope trick done in India, and photographed it, and found nothing on the plate. Said that was proof of mass-hypnotism.”

  “So it was,” said Lewis. “But go ahead. What happened between you and Koki Konoe?”

  “Well, after a bit of talk Koki Konoe gave me his card, with a Darjeeling address in pencil. He remarked he was lonely and needed someone to talk with. He kept the conversation going on the subject of hypnotism, until at last I showed some interest just to find out what his game was. He invited me to come and see him — said he’d show me how it’s done. Said he’d teach me some jujitsu, too, if I was interested.”

  “You didn’t accept the invitation?”

  “No. I was good and wise to him by that time. Jujitsu might be up my street, but not hypnotism. I’ve seen ’em work it in Shanghai, in combination.”

  “Jujitsu,” Lewis interrupted, “is a form of philosophy as well as being a system of physical combat.”

  “You bet it is. Say, those bozos can give you a physical-mental workout and put you to sleep and make you tell your whole past history plus anything else that you happen to know. They can even make you write it down and sign it.”

  “If you’re ignorant, or afraid, or if your will is stronger than your judgment, they can do that without putting you to sleep,” said Lewis. “Hypnotism was misnamed due to a misunderstanding of its nature. Hypnos means sleep. But hypnotism isn’t a form of sleep. Sleep is a by-product — sometimes. Did you feel any pressure from Koki Konoe?”

  “Oh, sure. Something like the impulse that a high-pressure salesman stirs up. Professional gamblers are good at the same thing. So are soma kinds of women. They make you sell yourself. But I know that trick. And he wasn’t more than half powered anyhow. So I bought him a drink and walked out on him. Dead, is he? Have you a guess who killed him?”

  “Mine may be as good as anybody’s guess,” said Lewis. “Koki Konoe was sent from Japan to check up among other things on Bulah Singh’s negotiations with Ambrose St. Malo.”

  “So I guessed right? You do know St. Malo?”

  “St. Malo and Bulah Singh — have been in correspondence for a long time.”

  “St. Malo is in Tibet,” said Andrew.

  “Yes. But they corresponded until recently by way of China, making use of third-class passengers on liners, some of it by word of mouth, some in writing, and some by underlining words in books and magazines.”

  “Gosh! St. Malo must have long lines out. That game costs money.”

  “Lots of it. He is spending Japanese and Russian money. But he will sell out of course to the highest bidder in sight at any critical moment.”

  “For God’s sake, what could Bulah Singh bid? He can’t get hold of money, can he?”

  “No, no. Bulah Singh has no money. He is a student of psychology who thinks he knows more than he does. But he knows some of the rudiments. He understands, for instance, that such a man as St. Malo, who is a crooked gambler going after big bait, can always be taken with small bait if he’s stampeded and tempted at the right time. Probably you are the small bait — you and Tom Grayne. I think St. Malo has been told you’re coming and counts on using you in Tibet; and that Bulah Singh depends on you to force St. Malo’s hand. But we’ll get to that later. Let’s stick to Koki Konoe for the moment. We knew all about him from our agent in Japan. We had him arrested. Our Indian jails are very well conducted nowadays. Even a Chief of Police can’t interview a prisoner alone, except at the prisoner’s own request.”

  “In that case there’s no witness?”

  “Theoretically none, within hearing. Both of them counted on that. But there’s such a thing as a hole in a wall.”

  “Dictaphones, too, I suppose.”

  “Those things are expensive and sometimes inconvenient,” said Lewis. “Koki Konoe made the request, so Bulah Singh visited him in the jail. Neither understood the other’s language. They had to talk English. We have a full stenographic report of their conversation. Koki Konoe warned Bujah Singh that if he didn’t let Tibet alone and drop his intrigue with St. Malo, he’d be liquidated.”

  “Murdered?”

  “He didn’t say. He left the suggestion to do its own work. On the surface it probably meant that the Jap secret service would betray Bulah Singh to us. That would be the commonplace procedure. But there was an unspoken threat of murder.”

  “If you know all this, why don’t you arrest Bulah Singh?”

  “For several reasons. The least of them is that we lack proof of where Koki Konoe got the poison that—”

  Andrew interrupted: “Don’t those fellows usually roll their own? I mean, don’t they carry it, just in case? I’ve heard that all the Japs do it”

  “Yes, some do, when the job’s specially dangerous. But it’s usually cyanide. And this wasn’t a particularly dangerous job on the face of it. Besides, he was searched thoroughly at the time of arrest. No poison on him.”

  “What stuff killed him?”

  “One of five Tibetan poisons that aren’t in the pharmacopoeia. Two are sudden death, quicker than cyanide. One contracts all the muscles and kills in an hour by strangulation. One makes ’em blind and they die painfully in about a week from inflammation of the inner molecular layer followed by an obscure but sudden action on the brain. The fifth kills more slowly — about thirty days as a rule — by direct action on the cerebral cortex. The victim goes mad — reverses things — tells his secrets and makes secrets of trivialities. That was the stuff that killed him. That’s why I was sent for.”

  “You got here after he was dead?”

  “Between you and me, no. Secretly I have been here two days.”

  “Trying to track poison? There are lots of Tibetans i
n Darjeeling,” said Andrew. “Koki Konoe could have bought the stuff.”

  “But why should he?”

  “Scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Perhaps of Bulah Singh.”

  “Exactly. But how did Bulah Singh frighten a terrorist expert?”

  Andrew laughed sourly: “Any man who knows the first thing about jujitsu should be able to answer that one. Shakespeare called it hoisting ’em with their own petard. The Jap’s stuff got used against him. Look at it this way: Bulah Singh threatened me just now with death, if I do any talking. It happens I wasn’t scared, so his stuff didn’t work, although he convinced me he meant it. Koki Konoe, on the other hand, was scared stiff. Bulah Singh probably took advantage of that and stampeded him into—”

  “Rudimentary, but as far as it goes, right,” said Lewis. “Almost as much nonsense is talked about hypnotism, by responsible men who should know better, as about clairvoyance and telepathy. The common charlatans and malignant agitators know more about hypnotism than almost any of the so-called authorities even pretend to know. I could name the exceptions on the fingers of one hand. Science is afraid of it, although it has been successfully used in severe mental cases, and even to produce surgical anesthesia. But repeated attempts to use it, especially in France, have led to scandal and recrimination. Hypnotism, like clairvoyance and telepathy, is an almost unexplored field that reputable men mistrust because of the inevitable reaction on themselves. But they’re coming around nowadays to a cautious admission that Mesmer may after all have been on the right track with his theory of some kind of magnetic fluid passing from one person to another.”

  “What do you think about it?”

  “I’m going to tell you,” said Lewis, “between these four walls. I’ve a reason for telling. You mustn’t quote me.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know the old proverb that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Very well. Bulah Singh is a dangerous hypnotist because he has a little knowledge. He’s a conceited amateur, who considers himself a professional expert. The same was true of Koki Konoe, who was trained by the Japanese secret service. All secret services use it to some extent. The Japs use it a lot, at great personal risk because of their morbid tendency to suicide. The thing is a boomerang. The malicious use of hypnotism — as any experienced metaphysician knows — is always — not sometimes, but always associated with the idea of death. Koki Konoe and Bulah Singh used it against each other, with all possible malice. Most of us use it unconsciously, without much malice and without concentration, in much the same way that we use our other unconscious faculties.”

  “D’you mean, for instance, that I use it?” Andrew retorted. “See here, barring getting what I pay for in the way of plain obedience from men who hire me the use of their time, I’m almost fanatical about leaving other folks to do their own thinking.”

  “That’s why I find it worth while talking to you,” Lewis answered. “If you’ll listen, I think you’ll learn something you can use to good advantage. The secret of hypnotism — and it still is an unfathomed secret — resides in the ether, which fills all physical space and permeates all physical matter.”

  “Aristotle’s ether? I thought that was an exploded theory.”

  “It was. But it no longer is,” said Lewis. “We’re returning to it. The existence of the ether has been mathematically and photographically proved — quite recently, by two young American scientists. We exist in the ether as fish exist in water. The whole physical, phenomenal universe exists in it. We don’t know what its properties are. We think, hate, love, crave, envy — without knowing what we’re doing with waves of imperceptible but prodigious etheric energy that the act of thinking causes more or less to concentrate and so to speak change direction. Does that mean anything to you? Perhaps thought — not brain, you understand, but thought — is something like a prism.”

  “You mean hypnosis is a force conveyed by or through the ether?”

  “Perhaps. It’s a dark subject. I have studied it, here in India, in the very home of hypnotism, for more than twenty-five years, and I confess that I don’t know. But I do know it’s the most powerful and dangerous force in the world, and that it’s deliberately and constantly being used by people who no more know what it is than a dog knows what geometry is. Hitler, Mussolini, Goebbels, all use it. It’ll boomerang them sooner or later. One of its camouflage names is suggestion. Other names are the evil eye, black magic, malicious animal magnetism, voodoo. It has dozens of names and pseudonyms. Propaganda is one of its milder uses. So-called self-hypnosis is one of its common results. It’s the secret of all slavery of every kind whatever; of all subjection of one to another. It’s the underlying cause of war, and of nearly all disease, poverty, misery, and injustice. Every effort to control or modify it is a vector that merely shifts the velocity.”

  “Bit of an alarmist, aren’t you?” said Andrew.

  “Not in the least,” Lewis answered. “But I’m not an ostrich. Burying one’s head in the sand of statistical facts is no more a protection against hypnotism — mass and personal — than it is against day and night.”

  “But you figure you know the answer?” Andrew didn’t try to look anything but skeptical. He was wearing his obstinate grin, with his eyebrows lowered. “What is it? If you know, why not tell?”

  “The answer,” said Lewis, “is spiritual. It has been well told quite a number of times.”

  “You mean religion? Whose religion?”

  “Any religion,” said Lewis, “that isn’t ecclesiastical and consequently based on mob-psychology. I’m not denouncing the regular repetition of words and songs. Those serve their purpose. They’re about as useful as a bedside manner during diagnosis.”

  “Well then, what do you mean?”

  “I mean the kind of education that Nancy Strong’s pupils get.”

  Andrew whistled softly. He thought a moment. “Nancy,” he said, “could pull the bung out of a barrel of Sphinxes and make ’em all tell what they forgot ten thousand years ago. What’s more, they’d like doing it. But — isn’t she one of your hot wires?”

  Lewis ignored the question. “She is the only genuine Christian I know,” he remarked. “I don’t doubt there are lots of others, but I haven’t met them.”

  “I would never have guessed you’re a religious man,” said Andrew.

  “I’m a realist,” said Lewis. “I don’t believe in ignoring facts because they’re metaphysical, or in letting the material tail wag the spiritual dog. I investigate facts to discover the truth about them.”

  “That’s what Bulah Singh claims he does.”

  “But I simultaneously believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ,” said Lewis. “Bulah Singh doesn’t.”

  “Why should he?” said Andrew. “I’d hate to admit I agree with Bulah Singh about anything worth mentioning, but—”

  Lewis suddenly changed the subject: “Hasn’t Bulah Singh designs on Elsa Burbage?”

  “He sure has,” said Andrew. “He wants her here in Darjeeling. That was one of his conditions. But what has Jesus to do with it?”

  “Did he say why he wants her here?”

  “Yes. As a hostage for my behavior in Tibet:”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Yes. Clairvoyance. Telepathy.”

  Lewis laughed dryly. “I thought so. That’s why I sent her to Nancy Strong. If Bulah Singh had a chance, he’d hypnotize her.”

  “He’ll not get the chance. You needn’t worry on that score,” said Andrew. “But if he had her alone, do you think he could do it? Elsa’s in a strange mood at the moment. She’s good stuff. She’s more intelligent than—”

  Lewis laughed again. “Gunning, my boy, the more intelligent they are, and the stronger-willed they are, the easier they are, unless they know the answer. Bulah Singh made Koki Konoe kill himself.”

  “It beats me how he did it, or how you know he did it.”

  “The easiest victims,” said Lewis, “are the intuitiv
e, inspirational people. If they’re unsuspicious and good-natured, so much the worse, because then they are more sensitive to impulse. It induces in them extremes of uncritical and unbalanced altruism. It produces our familiar friend the wish- fulfillment complex. It drives some of them mad. The next easiest are the criminals who themselves dabble in hypnotism. It isn’t difficult to understand how their stuff gets turned against them.”

  “Tell it. I’ll try to follow you,” said Andrew.

  Lewis thought for a moment. “Perhaps a guess might help. Did Bulah Singh suggest to you that he knows something discreditable about your past in the United States?”

  Andrew looked startled. “Yes, he did.”

  “Did he try to work up fear on that account?”

  “Yes. But it didn’t come off.”

  “Did he suggest by any chance that he could make a scandal about you and Elsa Burbage?”

  “Yes. Damn him.”

  “And perhaps that he could starve Tom Grayne in Tibet by obstructing you?”

  “Yes. He said that too. But how do you know?”

  “After that, he made his proposal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, now let’s consider Koki Konoe. He was the criminal-hypnotist type. Bulah Singh, who knows his job as a policeman tolerably well, learned that Koki Konoe had a Hindu mistress. She stole, and delivered to the proper person, very embarrassing proof that Koki Konoe was lining his own pocket at Japan’s expense. Buying tea — rigging the figures. So Bulah Singh introduced the fear element into Koki Konoe’s thought by dropping a hint about what he knew about that Hindu mistress and the financial trickery. Fear of humiliation is stronger than fear of death, in the Japanese consciousness.”

  “Yeah — but where did the poison come in?”

  “Bulah Singh gave that to Koki Konoe, for the alleged purpose of poisoning the Hindu mistress. Do you see the subtlety of that? Having planted the fear-suggestion, he excited the fear by pretending to supply a death-dealing remedy. But he simultaneously sent the Hindu mistress into hiding. Koki Konoe couldn’t find her and so felt sure she had betrayed him. In that way Bulah Singh again increased the fear element. Koki Konoe, remember, had hinted, in jail, that Bulah Singh, might be murdered unless he did as he was told. So the idea of death, as a possible outcome of the conflict, was in Koki Konoe’s mind in the beginning, even before Bulah Singh pretended to help him to murder the faithless woman. One good scare after that was enough. The death idea became a boomerang. Bulah Singh told Koki Konoe that the woman actually had betrayed him, and had then died of poison. Koki Konoe would be accused of having murdered her. All lies. But the suggestion, played up by a hypnotist, worked. Koki Konoe swallowed the poison.”