by Talbot Mundy
“It’s a fortunate thing,” said Lewis, “that my man found this pistol. One of Bulah Singh’s spies is searching for it now in the shrubbery. Bulah Singh planned this. But—”
Nancy and Elsa asked the same question, simultaneously: “Where was the pistol?”
“In the mud under the window. Whoever fired it, dropped it there and ran. No fingerprints; he trod it into the mud to make sure of that.”
Elsa spoke in a strained voice. “May I see it?”
Lewis passed it to her.
“Yes,” she said, “it is Andrew’s. That’s his mark on the butt. It must have been stolen from him.”
“Unfortunately,” Lewis answered, “Gunning told me, in the hall before he left, that this pistol was in his overcoat pocket.”
“Then he must have thought it was,” said Elsa. She handed the pistol back.
Lewis corrected her sharply: “Pardon me. He must have known it wasn’t in the pocket the moment he picked up his overcoat. The pistol is heavy and bulky. He would have missed it at once. He must have known it wasn’t there.”
Nancy spoke quietly: “Morgan, you are so tired that circumstantial evidence begins to look to you like proof.”
“Very well,” he answered. “What do you make of it? The deadly circumstance is, that Gunning knew that pistol wasn’t in his overcoat. He lied. Why?”
“If he did lie, it would be the first time since I have known him,” said Elsa. “Besides, why should he lie to you?”
Lewis stared at her. “Andrew spent an hour alone this evening with Bulah Singh,” he answered.
Elsa stood up. She looked very small confronting Lewis, but not afraid, although her face was ghost-white. Her scandalized eyes defied him. She spoke deliberately, like a witness in court:
“Dr. Lewis, if you are suggesting that Andrew has been hypnotized by Bulah Singh, you are mistaken.”
“How do you know? Clairvoyance?”
“Yes! I know what happened!”
“Gently, gently!” said Nancy. “Betray no one. Harm no one.”
Elsa turned on her: “Am I to be silent when my friend is accused of lying — and I know what happened? I mayn’t help him, mayn’t I? If that is what your teaching amounts to, then I don’t believe in it. Am I to protect a criminal, and let Andrew be—”
Lewis took Elsa’s hand. “We are all tired,” he said. “You more than any of us. Sit down.”
She obeyed, too angry to speak back.
“There is this,” said Lewis, after a moment’s pause. “Gunning’s man Bompo Tsering might have sneaked the pistol from the overcoat pocket. He could have put something else in its place, to make Gunning believe the pistol was still there.”
Elsa objected: “He couldn’t have! Bompo Tsering couldn’t have! He didn’t come into the house until Andrew brought him in, after the shot was fired.”
“True,” said Lewis. “Yes, I forgot that. And then again, why should Bompo Tsering want to shoot you?”
“Oh, I don’t know! I don’t know!” Elsa buried her face in her hands. “Bompo Tsering didn’t fire the shot! I know he didn’t.”
“Someone did,” said Lewis. “If the pistol was used without Gunning’s knowledge or connivance, who stole it from him, and how, and when?”
Nancy answered him: “Treason has a way of betraying itself. Quiet, both of you. Listen.”
There was silence for a few seconds, then a knock at the door.
Nancy raised her voice: “Come in.”
The Lepcha servant entered, quietly closing the door behind him. His eyes were wide open, but he seemed drugged, or asleep, or in a trance. His turban was awry, but he was otherwise presentable.
“Remember,” said Nancy, in a low voice. “No one was hurt. We have the pistol. No one can use it to blackmail Andrew or anyone else. There is no need for cruelty.”
“No. Nor for credulity,” said Lewis. “He isn’t sleepwalking.”
The Lepcha came slowly forward, looking neither to the right nor the left. He knelt and put the last two pine knots on the fire. Then he turned toward Nancy and sat at her feet, cross-legged. No one spoke for at least a minute, until Nancy asked quietly.
“Why didn’t you stay in bed, Tashgyl?”
“Too much bad spirit, memsahib.”
“Bad dreams?”
“No, memsahib. Not dream. No sleep. Spirit.”
“Falling back into your old superstitions, are you? Which spirit was it this time? The thief spirit?”
“Yes, memsahib.”
“Have you been obeying the thief spirit?”
He nodded. Nancy signed to Lewis to bring the pistol nearer. “Did you take anything out of Gunning sahib’s overcoat pocket?”
The Lepcha nodded.
“Did you put something else in its place?”
He nodded again, as if he didn’t remember until he was asked.
“Is that what the thief spirit told you to do?”
“Yes, memsahib.”
“What did you do with what you took from Gunning sahib’s overcoat?”
He seemed unable to remember. He looked blank. Nancy signed to Lewis to show him the pistol.
“Is this it?”
He suddenly remembered — nodded — looked relieved.
“Well, you see, the thief spirit has been outwitted. He has gone away now — gone forever. He won’t come back. So you needn’t worry about it any longer, Tashgyl, need you? No harm was done. The thief spirit will never again give you secret orders. So go back to your room, and this time go to sleep. I will talk to you in the morning. Good night.”
“Good night, memsahib.”
He got up and left the room. There was silence again, except for the ticking clock on the mantelpiece.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Lewis said suddenly. “Nancy, you’re a witch- finder! So that’s how Bulah Singh works it! Of course, as a policeman, he knows more than most people do about Lepcha superstition. Thief spirit, eh?”
“This helps,” said Nancy, “to explain what we have discussed several times. All thieves, without exception, no matter what their race or education or religion, and no matter what they pretend to believe or disbelieve, subconsciously worship a thief spirit that commands them and sometimes protects them. It creeps into consciousness under all sorts of disguises, but it is always the same old tempter — the old prehistoric tribal bogeyman. Until it is recognized for what it is, there’s no cure. Any criminal hypnotist can take advantage of it, although when he does it, the hypnotist is himself obeying the old bogey. However, now I think I can cure Tashgyl.”
“Bulah Singh mustn’t be left at large any longer,” said Lewis. “God knows whether we can make a criminal indictment stick. But it’s high time to jump him. I’ll have it done, before he—” He hid a yawn behind his hand.
Nancy stood up. “Go to bed, Morgan. You are tired out. Let us all go to bed.”
“Good idea. My man is watching the house. Leave the light on in the hall. I’ll put the fire out. Good night, both of you. See you in the morning.”
Elsa was sitting with her face between her hands, but she got up after a moment and followed Nancy to the door. Outside in the hall she took the older woman’s arm.
“Nancy, I was so rude to you that I can’t think what came over me. I wasn’t even telling the truth when I said I didn’t believe. I do believe. I want to know. I will know. I promise—”
“No, no! No promises!” said Nancy. “They are so easy to make. But keeping such promises is the most difficult thing in the world. And breaking them is worse than heartbreak. Much worse. So don’t promise. Just do. And when you fail, just try again. We made a good beginning tonight. We were fortunate to have such a simple example. I hope you enjoyed it. I did. And thank you so much for protecting me from Morgan Lewis’s questions.”
CHAPTER 21
Rain. Rain. Rain. The mechanical miracle that no one gags at nowadays: gas-driven wheels. Thirty miles an hour, where, less than a generation ago, three were unth
inkable. Lewis was right: no questions were asked. Andrew was right too: no names were mentioned. In three days, Andrew’s car, loaded above window level, traversed the fantastic length of Sikkim without challenge, but with intervals for rain, and rest, and business. Rain is a dimension of Sikkim: length, breadth, scenery and rain: a hundred and forty inches a year against the mountain sides, and much more in the jungle, where Nature is still profligately building and destroying the foundations of a cosmos yet to come.
It would have been easy to misinterpret the appearance of right of way. The more real that seems, the more illusory it usually is. The important thing was to take discreet advantage of the unofficial, unspoken laissez passer, that could be withdrawn, as easily as given, for the slightest break of the unwritten law that governs the use of privilege. Exceptions that prove rules must be exceptionally well self-governed; or exception ceases.
There are no absolute secrets. No animal can thread a jungle unsuspected, unseen, unsmelt, unheard. It is always some jungle dweller’s business to know. Safety depends on which animal knows, and has he a motive for more than curiosity? It is the same with humans, in the jungle of evolving purposes. No Bhutia, Nepalese mountain farmer or valley Lepcha, and above all no white man could follow the roads of Sikkim and escape detection. Liberty of movement depends on who knows, what he thinks about it, has he a motive for meddlesomeness? — suspicion? — enmity? — or for the silence that is good will’s greatest means to aid each other’s ends? No car could cross the almost countless Sikkim bridges unreported to the police.
There is a Rajah, who isn’t careless of his throne. He has a government, whose first law is self-preservation. There are telephone wires that stand up well in the war against termites, floods and jungle growth. Obstruction is as easy as twice two. Someone, anyone, shakes his official head, and into the net goes the suspect, to answer questions and to be delayed pending further enquiries.
But someone, in the hush-hush code that baffles censors, had whispered “mind your own business.” So Andrew’s bulkily loaded, ill-painted car, with its oddly assorted occupants, and its old engine and new tires in unostentatiously good condition, passed unchallenged to the northwest corner of a land where suspicion is law, and the law looks southward to prevent all trespass into Tibet.
He knew the road, having traveled it from the opposite direction; once is enough, for a man who naturally notices. The switchback miles fell headlong into steaming valleys, where swollen rivers root amid pathless jungle. So many huge butterflies impaled themselves against the radiator that the man from Koko Nor had to get out and scrape them off before the car could begin climbing. Then the laboring engine conquered incredible grades, up past myriads of rhododendrons, pine, oak, up beyond the tree line over wind-swept summits. Then again down — and again upward — endlessly repeated, and yet no mile like another. Andrew avoided the obvious gossip traps, where people gather to mind other people’s business. He had caches of cans of petrol and oil waiting for him, planted where Bompo Tsering had been told to plant them, now and then in a lonely Bhutia’s store, sometimes in the house of a friendly minor official, but always unfailingly ready.
The secret of that, like all good secrets, was simple. It is so easy to learn that complicated people can’t be bothered with it. Andrew knew how to leave friends behind him, who would do friendly things without looking so secretive that suspicion invents itself. He had disciplined his quick ability to spot what strangers usually hide — their self-respect. You can’t patronize that stuff. It is the opposite of the homage that men have to pay to avarice, malice and fear in its other unsocial shapes. There is always a discoverable virtue, even beneath fawning insincerity. People like being found out, when it doesn’t strip them naked to the mockery of neighbors. Genuine self-respect is as shy as a girl, as grateful as a girl for recognition. But coaxing it forth is a trick; and so is its corollary of tactful, inexpensive gifts that can’t be duplicated or too soon forgotten. Andrew had even remembered a Bhutia storekeeper’s envious glance at his loose-leaf notebook, and had brought him a duplicate — cost fifty cents — worth five hours’ talk and fifty dollars more than that much money.
There are no hotels on that route. He avoided dak bungalows because of the risk of meeting travelers whose own secrets wouldn’t bear investigation. All such people are anonymous informers; they create suspicion as a smoke- screen for their own improprieties.
The first night out he made for a monastery perched on a crag of the Singalila Range that hides Nepal from Sikkim. From a distance it looked like a mud-wasp’s nest. In the brief twilight, as the car climbed the winding trail toward it, the buildings began to look like a Maxfield Parrish painting. They suggested contemplative calm and holiness. But that was as superficial as the sunset light reflected on the roof. The place was no more deeply peaceful than creation itself. It was a hive of envies sicklied over with insincerity, like a Western office building, only much less candidly barbarous, and much more subtle. And of course, equally as in the West, there was virtue hidden there. However, Andrew was too occupied, by the rough track and the sharp turns, to give much actual thought to the place and its occupants. They were a remembered dream. The monastery’s ruler’s face was like a ghost’s that awaited him, high on the ledge — grim, gray, like the ghost in Hamlet, loaded with a melancholy anger against sin. Not a genial host. One’s heart didn’t leap to the meeting again.
The car had to be left at the foot of the cliff. As a precaution against pilfering Andrew parked it close to a ruinous stupa that contained ashes of a bygone hermit famous for saintliness.
“Sikkimese thieves are as bad as Tibetans, but I guess they won’t steal from this place,” he remarked.
Bompo Tsering agreed promptly. “Hot damn, no! They maybe by-um-by too much wanting leaving plunder belonging them where by-um-by come finding it again.”
But as an additional precaution Bompo Tsering decorated the car with strips of prayer rag. He had a bagful, expensively blessed by a Bon magician.
It was likely to be cold in the monastery. Andrew’s heavy blankets had been sent forward long ago, to await him at the real starting point; so before locking the car door he took out his overcoat — shook it — felt in the pocket. He discovered then that his Mauser was missing. In its place was a piece of pine root. It was shaped enough like a Mauser pistol to leave no doubt about premeditation on the part of someone who had stolen the pistol and left that in its stead. He checked the natural impulse to raise hell about it there and then. Making sure he was unobserved, he put the thing back into the overcoat pocket. Then without turning his head, he studied Bompo Tsering and the man from Koko Nor.
Bompo Tsering looked actually, not studiously, innocent. He was muttering mantras to impregnate the blessed rags with more protective magic as he tied them to radiator cap, door handles, and all the other projections. The man from Koko Nor was busying himself with Andrew’s bedding roll and a bundle roped in wrapping paper that he had been told to carry; he was trying out various ways of adjusting the loads on his shoulders. There was no exchange of glances between the two Tibetans — no noticeable effort to appear unconscious of the overcoat on Andrew’s arm.
Something had to be done. But the dilemma was awkward. If he should let them know he had discovered the theft, they would both be on guard against him. If not guilty, they would resent suspicion. If guilty, they would try to shield themselves with more treachery, there being nothing in the world more faithless than a fool on the defensive. But if he should postpone discovery too long, whether guilty or not they would consider him careless. Leaders of expeditions can’t afford to be considered careless by the men on whose obedience success depends. Besides: he must not overlook an opportunity to put an end, once and for all, to any thought in those Tibetans’ minds that murder was a profitable, undiscoverable means of changing plans and defeating purposes. In plain words: discipline.
The sickening thought suggested itself, and refused to be mocked down by skeptical logi
c, that his own pistol might have been used to fire that shot through the window at Elsa. It was a registered pistol: ownership was indisputable. If found near Nancy Strong’s house, it would give Bulah Singh an almost perfect leverage for blackmail. He recalled the Sikh’s threat: “Do as I tell you, or take the consequences.”
In plain words: obey me, or be tipped off to the Tibetan Government by wire to Gyangtse or Lhasa. That would mean being ignominiously turned back, to face interrogation that inevitably would expose Lewis’s connivance in an officially forbidden expedition. And that might mean the end of Lewis as Number One on the northeast border. Number Ones can’t afford to be found out. They must bury their own mistakes or else be sacked like useless spies. The worst possible mistake is publicity. Bulah Singh could make it a police court case. It might be a particularly cunning move in Bulah Singh’s intrigue against Lewis.
So Andrew hesitated. For a second he even considered turning back to confer with Lewis. But he dismissed that thought. The momentum of a well- planned move was safer to depend on than retreat. There was no need to burn bridges behind him, yet. But there would be no sense in not crossing bridges before they could be closed against him. He decided to carry on.
From the ledge, hundreds of feet higher up, a monastery radong mooed like a lonely cow. It meant that the monks had seen the car. The long radong, resting on one monk’s shoulder and blown by another, was serving the twofold purpose of announcing hospitable welcome and preventing devils from accepting the invitation. Delay at the foot of the cliff might be interpreted as devilish dread of the Higher Righteousness. The good impression, studiously built up on the south-bound journey, when he was racing against time to get Elsa into competent medical hands, would be all undone. It wasn’t the right moment for a show-down with Bompo Tsering and the man from Koko Nor.
“Let’s go!”
The Tibetans liked that phrase. They had grown used to it. It was like the bell to a bus horse.
“Hot damn!” said Bompo Tsering. He grinned. He offered to carry Andrew’s overcoat.