by Talbot Mundy
Elsa jumped up: “Oh, Andrew, let me speak to him, please! Tell him to wait a second.” She hurried between the bookcases and then hesitated, in full firelight, beside the table on which Nancy Strong had set Lobsang Pun’s portrait.
Suddenly, at the opposite end of the room, beyond the grand piano, another shutter opened, and then a window. Someone fired, straight at Elsa. The bullet smashed into the silver-framed portrait, knocking it to the floor with a clatter of breaking glass. Elsa stifled a scream as Andrew almost knocked her down, shoving her through the opening between the bookcases. He shoved so hard that she almost stumbled into the fire. Andrew ran down room toward the window. Someone outside slammed the shutter before he was halfway. The strangest part was that Nancy Strong didn’t move in her armchair. She sat silent with her eyes shut.
“Did you see who it was?” asked Lewis.
“No,” said Andrew. “Stay where you are, Lewis. Don’t show yourself. The shot may have been meant for you.”
“Nonsense!” Lewis answered. “No one could mistake you for me, even in firelight.” His voice had the flat note of nervousness under control.
Nancy Strong spoke at last: “Andrew, come back here behind the bookcase.”
Elsa seconded: “Andrew! Come back! He might try it again!”
“Just a moment.” Andrew stooped for the picture, examined it, shook off some loose glass and then strode into the firelight. “Are you superstitious?” he asked. He showed the picture to Nancy Strong. There was a bullet hole exactly through the middle of Lobsang Pun’s forehead.
“Yes,” said Lewis, “she is superstitious. All women are.”
“I am not,” said Nancy. “Morgan, it is you who are superstitious. I am a realist. I was thinking of Lobsang Pun. He was thinking of me.”
Elsa went closer to Nancy to look at her face and at the broken photograph. “What do you mean?” she asked. “You were—”
“The question,” said Lewis, “is who fired that shot at Elsa?”
“Or at me,” said Andrew. “The bullet passed straight between us.”
“You men!” said Nancy. “Do you never use your intuition at the right time? Elsa, what do you see? Quickly — don’t think about it! — answer the question!”
Elsa stared for about half a second — stared into vacancy. Then she answered: “Bulah Singh, shooting at you!”
“That,” said Nancy, “is clairvoyance.”
“But it seems all wrong,” Elsa objected. “You weren’t even in sight from the window. Someone tried to shoot either Andrew or me.”
“Trust your vision,” said Nancy. “Facts are skittles. Look for the truth. Of what use would you be to Bulah Singh, as long as I’m in the way to stop him from interfering with you?”
Lewis confirmed that: “They were in full firelight. Bulah Singh wouldn’t shoot either of the two people whom he hopes to use for his own ends.”
Nancy spoke with assurance: “Someone who didn’t know me by sight, and who had not been told there might be two women in the room, had orders to watch through the window and shoot me. He mistook Elsa for me. Someone else intervened and made him miss.”
No one spoke for at least thirty seconds. Morgan Lewis’s monocle was like a scandalized question mark. Elsa watched Andrew’s face. At last Andrew said:
“Bompo Tsering can’t have interfered to spoil the aim. He hadn’t time to get around to that side of the house.”
“I was thinking,” said Nancy, “of Lobsang Pun. He was thinking of me. The bullet hit Lobsang Pun’s photograph.”
“Lobsang Pun is in Tibet, several hundred miles away,” said Andrew.
Lewis laughed: “Nancy, you still deny that you’re superstitious?”.
“It was a coincidence,” Nancy retorted, “like when one of your surgical cases gets well.”
After that there was silence except for the blustering wind in the chimney and the spitting of raindrops on the fire.
CHAPTER 16
Andrew went to find Bompo Tsering, letting himself out through the front door. The frightened Lepcha servant chained the door behind him and then came into the room to ask Nancy Strong for orders. He peered at her around the corner of the bookcase. Nancy passed him the silver-framed photograph.
“Put that back on the table, please, Tashgyl. Then sweep up the broken glass. Careful! Don’t cut yourself.”
“Yes, Miss.”
“After that pick up the window glass.”
“Yes, Miss.”
“And tomorrow morning, first thing, tell Jambool to come and put a new pane in the window.”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Are you too frightened to remember your manners? You shouldn’t stare like that at Dr. Lewis.”
“No, Miss.”
“Very well, don’t stare at him. Go and sweep up the glass.”
But the Lepcha servant stood, in the opening between the bookcases, staring at Lewis. He seemed unable to move. Lewis got out of his armchair and walked toward him. The servant backed away, but Lewis caught the hand that held the broken photograph of Lobsang Pun and checked his retreat.
“Look at me — straight in the eyes,” said Lewis.
The servant stared, numb with terror. His flat, good-natured face, beneath a voluminous turban, expressed no understanding at all — nothing but frightened emotion. It was like the face of a man awakened suddenly from deep sleep amid strange surroundings. Lewis kept hold of his wrist:
“Answer me! Did Bulah Singh sahib, the Chief of Police, ever promise you protection?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“Said he likes you Lepcha people, and knows what a good, honest servant you are?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“And how loyal you are to your employer, Miss Strong?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“Then he asked you questions?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“Lots of questions?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“About your employer?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“You have a brother in prison?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“Did he suggest that he might persuade Miss Strong to befriend your brother?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“Your brother has a wife?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“Did Bulah Singh promise to protect your brother’s wife until his release from prison?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“But was your brother’s wife unfaithful? Did she become the mistress of the Japanese Koki Konoe?”
“No, no, sahib. She not being the mistress. He being her master. She going with him, becoming his woman.”
“Where is she now?”
“My not knowing.”
“Did Bulah Singh suggest that you do know where she is?”
“Yes, sahib. But my not knowing. No! Not knowing!”
“Did Bulah Singh tell you I’m dead?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“When?”
“Just now, sahib, not long ago, when my opening door, letting him in.”
“Did he say that your brother’s wife perhaps did the killing; and that if you want to keep out of trouble you’d better come and see him at the police kana?”
“Yes, sahib.”
Lewis released his wrist: “Do what you were told to do.”
The servant obeyed. He set the photograph back on the table. Then he knelt and began picking up broken glass. Lewis touched him on the shoulder. He took no notice, went on picking up pieces of glass, which he laid on the palm of his left hand. Lewis returned to the fireside:
“Confusion,” he said. “Disassociation of cause and effect. Not that it matters, at the moment; but there’s your hole in the wall, Nancy. There’s the leak. That fellow has been so practiced on that when he’s scared he obeys without thinking. Obedience provides the escape from a feeling of guilt.”
“After fifteen years!” said Nancy. “And they call me a teacher! Morgan, can you do anything
for him? You must! He has been a good servant.”
“Opiates?” asked Lewis.
“No. I think not. In fact I’m sure not.”
“Doesn’t take opium pills? Bhang? Marijuana?”
“No. I know he doesn’t.”
“Liquor?”
“No.”
“There are other secret vices,” said Lewis, “that are equally destructive of discrimination. What does he do with his spare time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I think I do know. I will go into his case history later.” Lewis turned and faced Elsa. “Now, young lady. Do you see what might happen to you, unless you use your God-given faculties?”
Elsa resented it. She sat upright, protecting herself with a shield of indignation that was nevertheless (and she knew it) as full of holes as a net, from having resisted Nancy Strong’s assault. She was conscious, too, of gratitude to Lewis for having come when her baby died. And she knew he still could stop her from returning to Tibet. There was no sense in antagonizing Lewis. But resentment felt like self-defense. She answered tartly:
“Am I accused now of secret vices?”
“Secret sloth,” he retorted. “Dr. Lewis, aren’t you overdoing—”
“No. I am diagnosing sloth — inertia, disguised as meekness. It’s a form of self-indulgence.”
“You, too? Nancy accused me of that. But I’m not meek! I wish I were! I don’t like meek people. I—”
Lewis caught Nancy’s eye. She nodded. He faced Elsa again. His air of almost jocular familiarity was gone. He seemed almost a different person.
“Elsa, I am going to repeat to you a piece of advice that was given, two thousand years ago, by the greatest of all physicians. The particular patient to whom it was given made the necessary effort to understand the advice, and had the courage to follow it. I have repeated the prescription to a great number of patients. Some accepted it, some didn’t. ‘Take up thy bed, and walk.’”
Every atom of Elsa’s bitterness against the Christian texts that mental torturers had used as goads against her in her childhood, boiled to the surface. She parried with the first evasive retort she could think of: “Only a few hours ago you told me not to get well too quickly.”
“Yes. I know I did. Take it easy. I didn’t invite you to run. I said, walk.”
Elsa lost control of her temper: “I’m not a paralytic — and you’re not Jesus! Why are you talking in riddles?” Suddenly she fell back on the last resort of the evader of issues — silly, literal fact. “If I were, I would get up and do as you say, just to make you feel clever.”
Lewis ignored it. “Meekness,” he repeated. “Wrapping talents in a napkin. Daydreams. Luxury of letting the catastrophe convince you that it’s no use waking up, and getting up, and doing what you can, instead of being what inertia makes you! Wake up!”
For the moment Elsa couldn’t trust herself to answer. She was too indignant. Nancy Strong was leaning back in her armchair, with closed eyes, stroking the purring cat. Elsa made an effort to appeal to Nancy’s professed hatred of cruelty:
“Is this a conspiracy? Are you and Nancy teaming up to make me feel sinful? Are you trying to convert me, or convict me, or what? Nancy said I’m asleep. But I understood her to mean—”
Lewis interrupted: “She meant exactly what I mean. She may have put it in different words, but she meant the same thing.”
“I don’t think she did,” Elsa retorted. “Tell me what you do mean.”
“You are clairvoyant:”
“I wish you’d cure me of it, instead of talking about it!”
“Clairaudient, too.”
Elsa snatched at the chance to defend at least one gap in her defenses: “Not so often clairaudient. Only sometimes.”
Lewis went on speaking as if she hadn’t interrupted: “Nancy Strong will show you, far better than I can, how to develop your clairvoyance.”
“I won’t develop it! I loathe it!”
Lewis continued: “Otherwise, ‘that which you have shall be taken away.’ If you leave your talent undeveloped, you will become a victim, just like hundreds of millions of others, of every wave of pitiless ambitious malice that is turned loose on the world by the ignorant fools and godless egotistic devils who create this chaos which we flatter with the name of consciousness.”
Nancy opened her eyes: “Gently, Morgan! Gently!”
Elsa started to speak. Lewis checked her with a gesture. He continued: “Only you will be worse than the others. Because you are more sensitive. You might even degenerate so far as to become a medium.”
“You mean a spiritualistic medium?”
“Yes. Probably a trance medium. Physical prostitution would be better than that. A prostitute, after all, gives no more than her body to be defiled by strangers. But a medium’s soul is at the mercy of every devil and fool who chooses to misuse it. The very least you will become, unless you wake up, and stay awake, will be a sort of radio receiving set employed by mischievous and godless liars. You might become—”
Nancy Strong interrupted: “No, Morgan, no! Not that! Don’t frighten her!”
Lewis looked irritated, but he accepted the advice: “Very well, I will add this: Elsa, you are of the same stuff that the saints are made of.”
The sudden switch of tactics forced another tart answer that Elsa knew was worthless: “I don’t feel like a saint, I assure you. I don’t wish to be one! I feel angry and—”
Lewis interrupted: “A cowardly saint is a social menace — much worse even than a venal doctor, or corrupt judge, or political priest. Fear makes saints see wrong visions — report wrong—”
“I said, I’m not a saint! I don’t want to be one. I’m—”
“Listen,” said Lewis. “I am your physician, telling you truth, for your own good.”
“You mean your good, don’t you? I didn’t invite this. Why are you doing it? Tell your real motive!” ‘Lewis ignored that too. He continued, just as calmly as if he were treating a painful wound: “Saints, devils and credulous fools are made of the same identical stuff. They all have vision. They see the same truth from different aspects. Devils exploit stupidity. They create blinding fear that gives them power over others. It inflates the devils’ feeling of importance; and it makes the fools think the devils are the only safe leaders to follow. But the vision of saints acts, by its own nature — to use a feeble illustration — like a prism letting light into the darkness. It diffuses the material fog — the fog that blinds the best of us and makes us victims of want, and disease and crime. The vision of saints lets in affluence and magnanimity and vigor. Naturally, the devils hate it. If they can’t pervert saints’ vision to their own ends, they try to destroy it.”
“Are you trying to tell me that clairvoyance is reliable — dependable — always true? I know better!”
“It’s as dangerous as truth,” said Lewis. “In the hands of a devil a saint becomes as subtly malignant as poison gas — which, remember, is made from beneficent ingredients.”
He was interrupted by the front door bell. The Lepcha servant stopped picking up broken window glass and left the room in a hurry. Lewis continued:
“The whole world is changing under our eyes, and in our ears. Science, sometimes with the best intention, is becoming the slave of the devils, who exploit human ignorance for the sake of the sensation of power. The exploiters of isms! Communism. Nazism. Fascism. Militarism. Anarchism. Socialism. Atheism. Millions of undernourished men and women, stuffed with ersatz dialectics and mad promises, massed into goose-stepping armies and shouting blasphemy against their manhood — ! What Kipling called ‘all valiant dust that builds on dust’!”
“‘And, guarding, calls not Thee to guard.’ I wonder whether Kipling understood his own poem.”
Lewis threw off the interruption: “Up goes the dust, and we can’t see. The roar, and we can’t hear. Blind leaders, leading the blind, produced the World War; that was bad enough. Maddened and disillusioned by the World War, it
s victims are producing worse chaos led by devils and fools and false prophets. Hitlers — Mussolinis — Stalins. Professional liars, to whom truth of any kind is treason. They control or suppress schools, pulpits, press, radio. They even censor conversation. They are hypnotizing whole nations with fear of worse horrors to come. Meanwhile, they pitilessly exploit the victims . Victims who don’t applaud them as saviors are liquidated or imprisoned for having dangerous thoughts.”
Elsa recovered her sense of humor, for just one second: “Dr. Lewis, is it as bad as all that? Aren’t there any honest people?”
“It’s worse than that,” said Lewis. “Because honest people don’t know what to think. They’re being liquidated.”
“Do you believe you know what to think?” Humor deserted her suddenly. She felt now like a cat with its ears laid back. She felt as if she were the accused, on the spot, a sorceress charged with seducing and betraying the human race.
“Think?” said Lewis. “What fools think is thought got us into the mess! Our thought — our mass-materialism created it. Only vision can get us out of it. So wake up! Stay awake! Let some light in! The only hope of the world are the individuals who can, and who dare to be saints!
Religion, science, government, philosophy, economics are all reduced to absurdity. The New Dealers are making bad worse. They’re putting synthetic wine into falsely labeled bottles and calling it ideology. Idiotology! Every new ingenious invention, because we’re hypnotized by fear, becomes a belly-robber and a new false beacon leading to a materialist’s synthetic heaven — a new mechanical Utopia full of bombs and lies and breadlines!”
“Whereas the kingdom of heaven is within us — within reach of us all — here — now — if we would look,” said Nancy.
Lewis looked exasperated, Elsa incredulous.
“But Nancy! Can you see the kingdom of heaven?”
“Sometimes. Since I left off helping to create hell. Reality seems nearer — ever so much nearer.”
“Reality?” said Elsa.
“If those who can see, won’t look,” said Lewis, “then—”
He left off speaking because the door opened. Andrew walked in, followed by Bompo Tsering. Andrew, wiping rain off his hair with a handkerchief, strode to the fireplace. He glanced at Elsa, then stared at Lewis: