Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Andrew continued: “That’s a good girl. She’s genuine. She’ll come out all right if she’s given a chance.”

  “Good?” said Lewis. He thrust his head forward. “Better than you guess, my young friend. — By the way, we are friends, I believe?”

  “Suits me,” said Andrew. “But I’m the enemy of any man, no matter who, if he gives Elsa less than a square deal. She’s in my charge. For the shortest possible time, for the sake of fooling Bulah Singh — which I take it is what you want to do — ?”

  “Yes,” said Lewis.

  “ — I am leaving Elsa under your protection and Nancy Strong’s. I will do what I can for you. But, first, I’d like your promise to—”

  Lewis interrupted: “Gunning, let me tell you what I have in mind. Perhaps we can oblige each other. If we arrive at an understanding, I feel sure you will do your part.”

  “Shoot,” said Andrew. “But mind, I’ve said my say. You know now what I want. It’s personal — nothing to do with any government department — you and me, man to man. Let’s keep it so.”

  “Very well.” Lewis readjusted his monocle — frowned — raised his right hand and stared at his fingernails. He was about to prescribe. “My thought was this. I would like you to promise to stick to your stonewall mental attitude about clairvoyance.”

  Andrew looked suspicious. “That’s an easy one,” he answered. “I’m so by nature.”

  “Superficially, yes, you are,” said Lewis. “It’s a sort of mask. Actually, under the surface, you’re a poet.”

  Andrew looked even more suspicious. He laughed gruffly: “You’re sure trying to work me for something big! What makes you think I’m a poet ?”

  “There’s a rhythm in your thought,” said Lewis. “You can change the meter without losing the theme. Besides, I glanced at the books you gave to Mu-ni Gam-po. I intend to borrow three of them. It was also my duty to learn what books you’ve sent forward, to read on the march. We check up on people before we trust them.”

  Andrew grinned: “You only trust people who read Shakespeare? Is that your yardstick?”

  “No.” Lewis chuckled. “No, my boy. That was counted against you. Shakespeare, Sir Thomas Browne, Milton, Chaucer, Einstein and the Bible are the world’s worst luggage, if you want to be trusted by the world’s saviors! We official insiders — we directors of destiny flatter ourselves that we can see through beauty to the worms beneath! It’s intelligence that all censors fear. However, you have good sound vices that offset your virtuosity. You’re practical.”

  “You call it practical to throw up a career and take on this game?”

  “And you’ve a rare gift of holding your tongue. I could mention quite a number of highly placed officials whom you haven’t consulted.”

  “Hell, I told you all I know.”

  “All except just what I needed to know,” Lewis answered. “I had to find that out for myself.”

  “For instance?”

  “Oh, lots of things. Some of them important. For instance, you have avoided the mistake of talking to the wrong people. But let’s get to the point. Elsa is a very remarkable, very unusual girl.”

  “I know it.”

  “She has character.”

  “You’re telling me!”

  “There are no available statistics, but it’s a conservative guess that there are not more than two or three thousand in her class, in the whole world. And they’re widely scattered. She is an instance of emerging evolution. Her spiritual nature — to use a conventional term for an unfamiliar and therefore unclassified state of consciousness — is like a young seedling, of a new species, reaching for the sunlight.”

  “You’re speaking now of her clairvoyance?”

  “Yes. That’s only another word for the same thing. Kill that, and she’s done for.”

  “Hell, she hates it.”

  “Yes. Who shall blame her? She’s afraid of it. But she must dare to be one of the great explorers — far greater than Columbus. Columbus only discovered a continent, in known dimensions. Elsa’s greater task is to abandon known dimensions and explore what Shakespeare called ‘airy nothing.’”

  Andrew smiled. Whoever quoted Shakespeare intelligently always passed his guard. He almost weakened. “Good stuff, that,” he said. “You can’t beat him. He’s still tops. ‘And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown,’ we’ll ‘turn them to shapes.’ Hell, that has Columbus backed off the map. But Elsa isn’t as tough as Columbus.”

  “No,” Lewis agreed, “she isn’t. She must be protected from mockery and from her own mistrust. She needs a line of retreat, so that she can draw back in, so to speak, and recover from — well — let us call it spiritual vertigo. That’s a new phrase. I must add that to my list.”

  “‘Such tricks hath strong imagination,’” Andrew quoted. “What’s the rest of it? I’m listening.”

  “Yes, you use your inner ears. That’s why I can talk to you. Now then: Elsa’s line of retreat must not lead back into her own Cave of Adullam.”

  “Now I don’t get you. That’s one of those phrases that might mean anything.”

  “I mean, she must not draw back into herself — into her own gloom. She must have a different cave — strong, friendly, and, above all, patient. That’s a mixed metaphor. However, you will have mixed feelings when I tell you that you are the cave.”

  “Jesus!” said Andrew.

  “I mean it, my boy. That is why I ask you to maintain your stolid, stonewall attitude toward clairvoyance and everything connected with it. Let her lean against your imperturbable calm. Whenever she wants to, let her hide behind it. Let her feel the uncritical comfort of a friendly anchor to windward. That’s another mixed one. But the situation’s mixed.” Then, suddenly: “Is she in love with her husband?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  “Umm. Are you being frank about that? Well, what I mean is: if she should convict herself of treason to her own ideal, there would be no recovery — not in this existence: she would go under.”

  “She’ll get no encouragement from me to cross-examine herself cuckoo,” said Andrew. “I don’t believe in that stuff. Gets you nowhere.”

  Lewis agreed: “Worse than nowhere. Hundreds of thousands of people damn themselves by monkeying with the works. They’re like amateurs taking radios apart to discover why the program annoys them. Self-examination without experienced guidance is worse than taking patent medicines to cure an undiagnosed ailment. Much worse. A wrong diagnosis is sometimes a sentence to death. Self-conviction of sin is always a sentence to hell. Always. There is no exception to that. Before you see Elsa again, she will receive what your countrymen call a pep-talk from Nancy Strong.”

  “Not from you?”

  “No. I’m a duffer at it. I might do more harm than good. I am merely a so- to-speak left-wing medical man. There are more of us than you suspect, but we all know we’re treading on dangerous ground. We are hampered by conventional education, conservative theories, public prejudice, our own ignorance and much too much familiarity with evidence that seems to prove the contrary to what our intuition tells us is true. Nancy, on the other hand, is an adept. She has had thorough training. She knows how to encourage spirituality without destroying caution — how to develop caution without destroying courage. That is known, among the adepts, as the Middle Way.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” said Andrew.

  “Yes,” remarked Lewis, “you undoubtedly have.” He wiped his monocle. He was having a tough time. He was actually sweating.

  “Go ahead,” said Andrew. “I’m listening.”

  “So let us exchange promises, you and I. I will not, as you call it, rag Elsa. I won’t interfere any further with her mental processes even if she should ask me to do it.”

  Andrew grinned: “I’ll bet a dollar, even money, she won’t ask.”

  “Wait and see,” said Lewis. “If she does ask, I will refuse. On the other hand, you promise me you will give her the full benefit of — ho
w shall I say it? — indifference — friendly indifference.”

  “Hell, you’re asking too much,” said Andrew. “I’m not indifferent, to anyone, or anything. Can’t help the way my mind works — wondering how people and animals feel — whether they’re right about what they feel — what it’s all about, anyhow. It’s the God’s truth, I’ve never enjoyed another creature’s grief nor felt unsympathetic when I saw ’em suffer. How does one go about being indifferent?”

  “Well,” said Lewis, “let’s put it this way: you’ll be the common-sense man with his feet on the earth. If she chooses to be inconsistent, don’t criticize. Don’t care. Don’t remind her of it. But if she needs a bone to chew on, you provide the matter-of-fact comments for her to tear to pieces. If she blasphemes against her own vision, and accuses you of blindness, and contradicts herself, you never hold it against her.”

  “I never did,” said Andrew.

  “Well. Never do. Because she will.” Lewis paused. Then, slowly: “Don’t let her suspect that you know more than she does about—” He hesitated.

  “About what?”

  Lewis shut one eye and quizzed him through the monocle: “About the consequences of converting spiritual vision into personal sanctity.”

  “I don’t,” said Andrew.

  “That’s right, my boy, don’t admit it. Don’t ever confess to Elsa what caused you to leave the United States.”

  Andrew bridled: “Do you figure you know?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll bet you don’t. If you got your dope from Bulah Singh’s file, take it straight from me, you’re all wet.”

  “Wet?” said Lewis. “Wet? Is that American for wrong? Well, I have known Bulah Singh to be wrong about numbers of things. Are we agreed about Elsa? Let us talk now about Bulah Singh.”

  “Swell,” said Andrew.

  “This is secret”

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “Bulah Singh is a mere meddler on the fringe of a wide conspiracy.”

  “I’d guessed that much,” said Andrew. “He’s small time. He hasn’t the stuff to fill a three-ring circus.”

  “It’s a conspiracy to talk Utopian theory, but to use heartless violence — to throw India into economic and political confusion, and to pull off a Fascist coup d’etat.”

  “That’s easy to believe,” said Andrew. “That’s the up-to-date style in revolutions. The scornful guys all see ‘emselves as duces and commissars. They’re too drunk with their own greed to remember that the up-and-coming big boy always kicks ’em in the face when they’ve hoisted him into the saddle.”

  “Yes,” said Lewis. “They forget that. But it’s true. Tyrants can’t afford gratitude. They have to kick away the scaffold — shoot the men on whose shoulders they climbed. However, meanwhile, the conspirators are the men to watch. Very few of them guess yet which is actually Number One. Most of ’em are betting on ‘emselves. Here in India they’re counting, of course, on a world war to produce world revolution — doing their utmost to create it by the subtlest kind of propaganda. A war that tied up the British Navy would be the Indian Hitler’s chance.”

  “Do you know yet who the big buzzard is?” Andrew demanded. “Have you spotted him? Who’s to be India’s Hitler?”

  Lewis avoided that question by asking another: “How many people would have picked Stalin ten days ahead of the time? Napoleon, remember, was a dark horse until he saw his chance and seized it.”

  “Sure; I get you. If you knew the real buzzard you’d spike him before he could get going.”

  Lewis drew a forefinger across his own throat. “Right. We have names and past performances on file. But it’s too soon to tell who’ll be Jack-in-a-box. There are too many possibles. A few are genuine idealists; they wouldn’t last a week, but no less dangerous on that account. They serve as stalking horses for the others, who will kill them off when the time comes. Most of ’em are ruthless, contemptuous rogues, who pose as humanitarians and pacifists. Mussolini did that, you remember — even went to prison for urging Italian conscripts to refuse to fight the Turks. Denounced war and nationalism. Denounced the Italian flag. But look at him now! All demagogues are devils — all peas from the same pod. Secretly, with scarcely an exception, they are Nietzschean individualists, who misunderstand Nietzsche. They believe themselves beyond good and evil. They use lies and violence for allegedly Utopian ends. No matter what name they assume to camouflage their real motives, you may be sure it’s a false name. They despise the fools who listen to them and believe them. Believing themselves to be intellectuals, and aware of their own hypocrisy, they have unqualified contempt for other intellectuals. They don’t believe an intellectual exists who isn’t a hypocrite. But they know how to flatter the intellectuals, and how to use them, until their time comes. Then they enslave or liquidate them. They know the trick of hypnotizing crowds. The crowd’s adulation gives them the only genuine thrill they ever get. It’s a kind of orgasm. They’re good showmen. They let such fools as Bulah Singh run the real risks, until it’s time for the big push.”

  “Jesus! You should write a book!” said Andrew. “Tell me: what does Bulah Singh think he’ll get in exchange for the risk he must know he’s running? What’s his real price? I don’t believe what he told me.”

  “Oh, he told you part of the truth. Bulah Singh is a mere ambitious meddler. Hypnotic skill is no proof of intelligence. In fact, it usually creates such conceit that it blinds and destroys intelligence. But he’s studious. He knows his book backwards. He thinks, within his mental limitations. He understands, correctly enough, that any revolutionary government of India would be at the mercy of any Asiatic combination that should choose to invade from the north. That is the perpetual menace that overhangs India — always did — probably always will. That menace would be the Achilles heel of any dictator who could seize power. Bulah Singh believes he foresees the break-up of the British Empire. He thinks it’s imminent.”

  “Maybe he’s right,” said Andrew.

  Lewis ignored the interruption. “Bulah Singh’s idea is to make himself indispensable to the coming dictatorship. He proposes to be the man who can diplomatically stave off an invasion from the north — Mongolian, led by Japs or Russians. That’s why he wants control of the young Dalai Lama.”

  “And you know all this? And you don’t dump him into the hoose-gow?”

  “Why catch a minnow and let the pike escape?” Lewis retorted. “ We are hoping he’ll betray the real conspirators — the real higher-ups — the devils — the brains behind the mere fomenters of discontent. It won’t be long now. By about the time you are over the border we rather expect to have found out all that can be learned from watching Bulah Singh. If so, we’ll jump him. And — to save himself — we think — we hope — he will betray his associates.”

  “Swell,” said Andrew. “Here’s wishing you luck.”

  “I have told you this in confidence,” said Lewis, “for your general guidance. You may share the information with Tom Grayne when you meet him.”

  “Okay. Tom won’t yawp.”

  “And now this: any help you can give to the Ringding Gelong Lama Lobsang Pun will be all to the good but must be kept off the record.”

  “Okay.”

  “We don’t even know where Lobsang Pun is at the moment. He is said to be in hiding. But he is the only politically minded Tibetan who can’t be bought for love or money. He is as incorruptible as Robespierre was, without Robespierre’s bigotry and mad egotism. We believe he is the one man who can save Tibet from anarchy. Find him if you can. Help him in any way you can.”

  “I’d go out of my way to meet Old Ugly-face,” said Andrew. “From what I’ve heard of him he sounds like a cross between King Alfred of the doughnuts and Marcus Aurelius. Okay. I’ll keep an ear to the ground.”

  “If you can do it, help Lobsang Pun to get control of the infant Dalai Lama.”

  “That might be a tall order.”

  “Yes, and dangerous. But don’t help Lobsang
Pun to bring the child to India. That mustn’t happen. Personally I would like to have the child in Darjeeling, under the influence of Nancy Strong. But that’s an impractical pipe dream. It would lead to extremely embarrassing complications in addition to destroying the Dalai Lama’s political influence. Do your best to prevent it.”

  “Okay.”

  “If you come across Ambrose St. Malo, kill him.”

  “Nothing doing.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve a card in the Live-and-Let-Live Union.”

  “How about self-defense?”

  “He’d have to start it. I don’t go around encouraging folks to start things. If that guy has any horse sense—”

  “He has a horse face. But he’s a louse. I should have brought his photograph from Delhi. Sorry I didn’t. He’s described as a louse even in the official confidential report that we received from Hongkong.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that’s his reputation. There was talk about him in Shanghai. I know his real name. But don’t count on me to bump him off. My long suit isn’t being all that scared that I need to shoot lice. But thanks for the tip. I’ll watch him.”

  Bompo Tsering rattled away at the door chain, grunting and shuffling on the mat like a caged bear.

  “I’ll get going,” said Andrew, “before Bompo Tsering blows up.” He reached for his overcoat. “It’s a bargain about Elsa?”

  “Yes. You’ll do your part?”

  “Okay. Don’t make me have to wait too long for her. My Tibetans are restless. They’re raring to go.”

  “She shall follow as soon as we’re sure that Bulah Singh is convinced you have left her behind. That is the important point at the moment — to make Bulah Singh believe you’re obeying his orders. That may make him overconfident — he’ll make his next move, and we’ll catch him.”

  “Swell. Don’t let Nancy get shot. She’s too good to waste on a murderer’s bullet.”

  “We’ll protect her.”

  “How?”

  “By letting Bulah Singh suspect that we suspect him of tonight’s attempt. He won’t risk it again. By the way, have you a gun with you?”