by Talbot Mundy
On the whole, things began to look good. Even the rain was an asset, like a curtain at the end of a first act.
CHAPTER 20
Nancy Strong returned from the school building by the back entrance. Near the foot of the stairs she handed her oiled silk raincoat and umbrella to the Lepcha servant.
“Put those away, please, and then go to bed.”
He obeyed like an automaton.
“Have you forgotten how to speak?”
“No, memsahib.”
“Good night, then.”
“Good night, memsahib.”
She watched him hang up the coat and slouch away to his own quarters, turning off the light in the back hallway. He vanished through a swing door. As she faced about she found Lewis beside her. She was startled. Lewis appeared not to notice the nervous reaction; he was putting away a small memorandum book, taking care that it didn’t show above the edge of his vest pocket.
“Nothing much left of that poor fellow,” he remarked. “You had better turn him out to grass. He’s a psychic wreck. He’ll be a physical wreck in next to no time.”
“Where did you come from so suddenly?”
“I’ve been using the phone in your office. But about that Lepcha — why not send him home to his village?”
“Leave him to me. Did Andrew Gunning get away safely?”
“Away, yes. Safely, if he has it in him. Good fellow. I like him — intelligent — never tells what he’s thinking about unless he expects to be understood. Doesn’t expect to be understood too often. By the way, Nancy, you’ll get quite a phone bill. Please pay it, and send me a memorandum. I’ll settle with you off the record.”
“Very well. You will find your bag in the corner guest room.”
“Is that a hint?”
“Don’t be silly. Your bag is locked, so the servant couldn’t unpack it for you, but—”
Lewis held up a warning finger. His voice dropped to a dramatic whisper: “Nancy, I hardly dare to trust even myself with the secrets in that bag!”
“Sherlock Holmes! Where are your pipe and magnifying glass?”
“You mean, where’s the needle! Why not say it?”
“I have just come from talking to children. I advised them to go to sleep. Why don’t you?”
“Sleep? God and the devil and doctors work at all hours, Nancy. I must wait up for my shadow. Is the back door open?”
“No. If your shadow bangs on it he’ll wake the children again. So—”
“Nancy, if my man heard himself make more noise than a cat’s ghost, he’d die of shame. However, to save you from anxiety, I will go and wait for him near the back door.”
“Take that chair with you and be comfortable.”
“Right. By the way, hadn’t you better send Elsa to bed? That girl is a bit overwrought. A mild sedative might—”
“Meaning, I suppose, that you want to talk to me alone?”
“Well — time’s short. Yes. There’s something—”
“Why not say it now?”
“Very well. You know what it is. I’ve asked a dozen times. However, I’ll say it again. Our friend Johnson, of the Ethnographic Survey, was retired because he was beginning to know too much. Some traitor behind the scenes was afraid of him. Who is the traitor? Name him!”
“Morgan, you are too clever, and not wise enough. Have you forgotten about the devil who said his name was Legion? You’re a physician. You and St. Luke should understand each other.”
“That’s an evasive answer, Nancy. You are not being frank. It’s out of character — and beneath your dignity.”
“Oh? Familiarity has bred contempt? Am I to choose a scapegoat for your baffled vigilance? Whom do you wish me to betray?”
“Nancy, please be serious.”
“I can’t be when you are in that mood.”
“It’s black treason. Possibly a member of the Council. One of our own race.”
“The human race? Well? Did you ever hear of a political, or any other council of human beings that lacked a traitor or two? You, a psychologist?”
“Psychology be damned! We’re too late for that stuff. This is hard fact, if we can lay a finger on it. It’s a defeatist conspiracy, well hidden, by someone powerful enough to protect such parasites as Bulah Singh, and swine enough to bet on a world war, and a revolution in India, with a front seat for himself at the finish. He might be any of three men.”
“Or of a thousand,” said Nancy. “I told you. His name is Legion.”
“You know who he is. Name him!”
“I know the three men whom you suspect. I think you’re wrong. Those are three self-important nobodies with sly minds. Place-holders — Sycophants. They play politics like a game of bridge and quarrel across the table. They can be manipulated by almost any artful man who understands what snobs they are. Cowards. Sail-trimmers. They have no real convictions — no vision — no integrity. In a pinch they will play safe. Mice.”
“Rats!” said Lewis. “Which is king rat?”
Nancy smiled engagingly: “Fleas are deadlier than rats, and you know it. Fleas spread the plague that rats catch from corruption in the dark. Why not use flea powder?”
Lewis suppressed his irritation. He stuck to his point: “It wasn’t those men’s parasites who torpedoed Johnson. They did that.”
“Don’t flatter them,” Nancy retorted. “They didn’t think of it themselves. They didn’t invent spite any more than rats invented bubonic plague. Someone with a poisonous whisper suggested to those three wise mice that pet cat Johnson was intriguing to get them out of office. There was some truth in it, too. Johnson wasn’t always innocent of malice, and he loved the sensation of power behind the scenes. They turned on Johnson. It was three to one, with one of Johnson’s most tactless mistakes in the scale against him. I know that because he told me about it. I had dinner with him, in Delhi, the night before he left for England.”
“Did he say who the poisonous whisperer was?”
“No. He knew no more than you do.”
“Couldn’t he guess?”
“I don’t repeat embittered people’s guesses.”
“Fair enough. But tell me your guess. Whom do you suspect?”
“I think perhaps Bulah Singh knows.”
Lewis’s irritation began to break through the crust. “I am asking you!”
“I don’t know.”
“You do know. You may have no factual knowledge. No legal evidence. That’s quite likely. But you’ve the psychic gift of a human bloodhound.”
Nancy laughed outright: “Morgan, that’s the most ingenious paraphrase for a vulgar epithet that I ever heard. Go to the head of the class.”
“You know very well what I meant, Nancy.”
“I guessed it, Morgan. It filtered through.”
“Here: I’ll be frank with you. Two men’s wives have been to see you lately. One was a banker’s wife from Calcutta. If the big money is in on this — but of course it is! It always is. Tell me—”
“Morgan, money hasn’t any brains. So bankers’ wives are less reliable than ayahs. Besides I have told you again and again, I will not betray confidences. People come to me with their troubles for private, not public reasons.”
“You’ve a public duty,” said Lewis.
“Do yours. I will do mine,” she answered. “Take the chair with you. And please don’t let your shadow, as you call him, wake the children.”
She left him standing. Lewis set his jaw and ground his teeth at her back. She shut the living-room door with a revealing thud that made him grin. It gave him some comfort to know he could make her angry. There weren’t many who could. She switched off the light as she entered the room. Elsa stood up, rubbing her eyes. She had been staring at the fire.
“You’re tired?” Nancy asked. “Like to go to bed? It’s very late.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” said Elsa. “But I don’t want to keep you up.”
“Very well. Put some wood on the fire. I have to wait f
or Morgan Lewis. Sit up with me and protect me from him.”
“Are you joking?”
“Yes. But the joke is on him. As long as you are in the room he can’t ask questions. Tell me about Andrew.”
They sat facing each other, in the warm, red, comfortable book-framed glow of firelight. The cat sprang into Nancy’s lap.
“There’s nothing left to tell. One always knows how Andrew will behave. Unsentimental—”
Nancy’s smile interrupted, but she made no spoken comment.
“Nancy, he is! He’s the most unsentimental but dependable friend in the world. He just said ‘So long’ and walked out. Bompo Tsering followed him like a dog.”
“No advice? No information?”
“Oh yes. I’m to do whatever you tell me. I will, too. I’ve promised. And I’m to ‘yes’ Dr. Lewis: that’s American for praise God but keep your powder dry. I’m to overtake Andrew as soon as I possibly can. Nancy, do you think Andrew is in danger?”
Nancy made herself comfortable in the armchair. She closed her eyes for a moment. “What do you think?”
“I told Andrew. I’m not sure he liked my telling him. At the moment, no, no danger. But he hasn’t finished with Bulah Singh. There’s a link. I saw it. I see it now.”
“What does it look like?”
“Like a dull red rope from Bulah Singh to Andrew. When I get a mental picture of them, there the rope is. Only of course, it isn’t a rope. It’s more like one of those moon rays on rippling water. But it isn’t like that either. — Oh, I can’t explain it.”
“Don’t try,” said Nancy. “I saw it too. If you try to explain too definitely, you will get lost in definitions, like a music critic writing for the penny papers. People will take you literally and make unanswerably stupid comments.”
Elsa smiled mischievous agreement: “Good! That’s the first easy advice you have given me! I won’t try to explain!”
The house was as quiet as a tomb. The fire glow made the silence cordial and comforting and snug. The cat purred. Nancy sat still for several minutes and then suddenly resumed, in a quiet, assured, unemphatic voice:
“If you do try to explain, you will convince no one — not even another clairvoyant unless he is trying to help you — and even then not always. That is why people who know, don’t tell, unless they’re teaching someone who they know can learn. No two mental pictures are alike, because no two human beings are alike. The point is, what do the clairvoyant pictures mean in terms of common experience?”
“I suppose it’s something like translating Tibetan or Sanskrit into English?”
“Only more so. More like calculus into mechanics.”
“Well, I think the red rope probably means that Bulah Singh will keep after Andrew, and stick to him like a leech, and make trouble for him, but not on this side of the Tibetan border. Bulah Singh is afraid. He intends to cling to Andrew somehow. When I look at Bulah Singh there seems to be a menace around him, too, coming from every direction except one. He keeps looking in that one direction. Oh, what a beast Bulah Singh is!” She shuddered.
“It’s fortunate you said that.”
“Why, Nancy? How do you mean?”
“Because it reveals a viewpoint.”
“You mean Bulah Singh’s?”
“No. Yours. Your attitude. Do you know any mathematics?”
“No. I can’t even add. Simple quadratic equations are as far as I got, and I was no good at those.”
“It doesn’t matter. Shakespeare was no good at them either. Neither were Joan of Arc or Beethoven. They say Einstein can’t balance his own bank account. We must think of some other way of illustrating what I want to explain.”
“Try plain English,” Elsa suggested. “I can think in English — or at least—” she laughed— “you’ve made me feel that perhaps I can’t think.”
Nancy stared at the fire. “Let’s suppose,” she said after a moment, “that what I told you tonight is the truth.”
“Very well. I remember most of what you said. I half believe it until you go out of the room. At first I felt angry. But I don’t any longer. I rather like it. I would like to believe it.”
“Believing,” said Nancy, “is no good. None whatever. As I said before, anyone who believes can disbelieve. But one who knows can’t not-know.”
“How in the world can one know?”
“In the same way that you know you are, when you say I am. Try it. You can change what you see in a mirror by changing what the mirror reflects and distorts and reverses. You are not the reflection. You are your soul. Leave off believing you are your reflection. I use motion pictures to explain it to the children. The moving figures on the screen are not the figures on the film. The figures on the film are not the actors. Even the actors are not the author. And even the author is not the idea. You are your soul. You are not what Morgan Lewis calls a sanguinary mechanism. That mechanism isn’t you at all. Identify yourself with your soul — I am my soul; I am not its material shadow. You will soon know you are telling the truth, because truth proves itself. One step at a time, you will learn to trust your spiritual vision.”
“But, Nancy, surely there was nothing spiritual about that glimpse of Bulah Singh? It was cruel — guilty — afraid, hanging on to Andrew. It was worse than reality.”
“It was only spiritual in the sense that it wasn’t confined to the normal three dimensions. It was Bulah Singh’s own secret thought of himself, hidden behind the false face that he presents to the world. Your eyes didn’t see it. But you saw it. What did you do about it?”
“I don’t see what you mean. What could I do? I did nothing.”
“Your timid consciousness was looking at his predatory thought. Both on the same plane, to use a phrase that doesn’t mean much. That is more or less what happens when strangers meet and suddenly become friends or enemies. Without realizing it, they get a glimpse of each other’s consciousness. People who are good choosers of subordinates unconsciously possess that faculty. Some of them consciously possess it. It explains most cases of love or enmity at first sight. Being far more clairvoyant than you realize, and almost wholly untrained, you had a glimpse of Bulah Singh’s thought. You half interpreted a danger, and recoiled. You were like an ostrich. You stuck your vision back into the nice safe sand of the Desert of Don’t Believe and hoped you wouldn’t get your tail feathers pulled. What good does it do you to have seen the danger?”
Elsa laughed. “Yes, you’re quite right. That’s what I did do.”
“You recoiled. You refused to look. What good was it?”
“Well, I suppose at least I’m warned against Bulah Singh. What should I have done?”
“Not what you did, my dear. We have to learn to be practical. Unapplied theory is the same as faith without works. It is worse than dead. It is a decomposing spiritual poison. If you were alone in a room with Bulah Singh, could you defend yourself against him from a physical attack?”
“No. He’s muscular. I’m sure I couldn’t.”
“What would you do?”
“Yell for help and try to escape.”
“Good. Bear that answer in mind. We will return to it presently. Physically, you admit he is too strong. Your muscles against his muscles would be useless. Do you believe your thought can defend itself against Bulah Singh’s thought any better than your person could defend itself against his person?”
“Oh, now you’re talking about mind over matter?”
“No. Thought against thought. Thoughts can’t run away from each other. Are you naive enough to suppose that your peace-pursuing thought can defeat Bulah Singh’s predatory will by merely looking at it and being horrified?”
“Do you mean — I don’t quite — say that again.”
“No. Try another illustration. Can a Jew in Germany defend himself from outrage by knowing and fearing the greedy mendacious malice of the Nazis’ motives?”
“No. I suppose not. No, of course not. It must feel to a Jew something like an inundation t
o the Chinese when the dikes break on the Yellow River — helpless — nothing they can do about it — nothing. I’ve been reading about the German Jews in some books Andrew lent me. I’ve been wondering what the Jews could do about it. I can’t imagine. I can only feel sorry for them. — But what did you mean about thoughts can’t run away from each other?”
“Well. Can you imagine it? The Jews can’t run away from the Nazi persecution. They are trapped. They can’t get passports. The Chinese can’t escape the inundation. They have no transportation, and nowhere to go. Even more so, twice three can’t run away from six times one. Six wins and the other figures lose their independence. It is simply useless to deny it.”
“Nancy, what awful pessimism!”
“That is realism, not pessimism. Thought is much more powerful than any other force in nature. But thought can’t escape, first from words and symbols, and then from physical expression. It creates them. It builds pictures in the thinker’s mind — patterns that guide the person that obeys the impulse. There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed. Thoughts find expression in deeds, sooner or later, without any exception.”
“Aren’t any thoughts secret?”
“None — not in the long run.”
“I can very seldom read yours, or Andrew’s, or Mu-ni Gam-po’s. Just now I seem to know what you are going to say before you say it, but—”
“Cover, conceal, delay the transmutation of thought into act, and you merely increase the potential violence. Unless you know how to transmute that violence, then what? Oppose thought against thought and what possibly can happen but collision?”
“I’ve never thought of it,” said Elsa.
“Think of it now. Oppose a pacifist’s motorcar to an invading armored train. What happens?”
“Someone buries the pacifist.”
“Very well. Oppose a recitation of the Sermon on the Mount against an air raid on Barcelona. What do you get?”
“Massacre!” said Elsa. “Women and babies blown to bits — airmen getting good salaries — plenty of people remarking that the Sermon on the Mount is a damned lie. Who should blame them? I don’t think they’re blasphemous. They pray to God for mercy, and the answer is bombs — butchery.”