by Talbot Mundy
“Temper, Andrew! Temper!”
“Okay.”
Andrew felt strangely at ease, as a matter of fact. He didn’t have to pretend to be good-humored. He suspected Elsa of Nancy Stronging him in some subtle way — perhaps something like Christian Science. Whatever it was, it made him feel good and not the least bit quarrelsome. He grinned quite friendly as he went and stood in front of the brigand — so friendly that the brigand supposed he had come to help lift the load. Elsa followed Andrew, fearful that he might use his fists. But his voice sounded jocular:
“Tell him that load contains my personal belongings.”
The man in spectacles ignored Elsa. He betrayed impatience. He spoke rapidly to Andrew. Bompo Tsering came closer, suspecting there might be a fight; at a fight’s beginning he was almost always a staunch ally; but his face fell as he listened. There would not only be no fight, but there was a new mystery, of which he knew nothing. He, Bompo Tsering, headman and keeper of Gunnigun’s secrets, had been left out of a secret so important that even the man in spectacles spoke humbly of it, using cautious words, avoiding names or any mention of the contents of the load. Furthermore, Bompo Tsering knew that Andrew had told the truth: that load actually did contain his personal private things such as underwear, books, writing paper. It was a canvas bag that fastened with zipper and padlock.
Elsa interpreted: “The man in spectacles says that is ‘the load.’ I don’t know what he means. He says ‘look at the mark.’”
Andrew did look at the mark. It was Chinese. It had been painted there by Lan-dor-ling, the storekeeper at the Sikkim border, who had counted all the loads and marked them, as he said, to prevent confusion with other loads that he had in the godown. Andrew tried the padlock, using his pocket flashlight for appearance’s sake, not letting on that he had any special information. He seemed just curious.
“Have you a key that fits this padlock?” he demanded. “Or do you plan to break the padlock? Or to cut the bag? Which?”
The man in spectacles pretended not to understand. But Elsa explained. So he had to leave off pretending. He fell back on insolence, signing to the smelly bandit to shoulder the load and be off. Andrew got in the man’s way:
“Nothing doing!”
He and the bandit grinned at each other. The man in spectacles spoke rapidly — looked menacing, glaring through thick lenses. He kept opening and shutting his hands and glancing toward the open door. Andrew waited for Elsa to speak:
“He says this load contains some packages intended for the very worshipful ruler of the village.”
“Tell him,” said Andrew, “that I have the key. If the bag’s to be opened at all, it’ll be in my presence.”
“He says perhaps you may be invited later.”
“Okay. If so, if I’m asked politely, I’ll bring the bag with me.”
“He says the bag is needed now.”
“Love my bag, love me!” said Andrew. “Tell ’em nothing else doing!”
Then came sudden interruption. A dozen sturdy peasants, bossed by the bandit, came carrying bags of grain and big bundles of hay. The hungry ponies neighed welcome to the smell; they had to hear and feel the whip to keep them from rushing the corn sacks. Bompo Tsering had to be threatened to keep him from using the whip too fiercely, to relieve his own emotions. There was pandemonium for a moment. Urged by the man in spectacles the bandit took advantage of it and tried to get away with the padlocked load. Andrew got in his way. They were face to face again, grinning. Then another gang brought in food for Bompo Tsering and the Tibetans — a huge urn, big loaves of barley bread, stewed meat in a copper pot — good-smelling food, and plenty. The man in spectacles became angry, or else did a good job of pretending to be:
“You are being well treated! Look! Your servants are being fed! Your ponies have been given plenty! Why do you refuse what is right?”
This time Andrew answered direct: “Tell the ruler of the village he can come here and I’ll open the bag. Or if he prefers, I’ll take it to his house and we’ll open it there.”
“But here comes your supper. Eat it while I take away this bag, which is not yours! Look! Excellent food! Rice! Curry! Ummnn! Smell it! Eat the blessed victuals and be grateful!”
Two menials set the food on the table. They grinned and beckoned invitation. The man in spectacles looked impatient. So did the bandit, fingering his two automatics. Andrew glanced at Elsa, wondering whether she felt the same emotion he did, or saw the same weird cloud-like gray-green haze. It made no difference to what else he saw. He saw through it, past it. It wasn’t an actual cloud. It was something mental. He couldn’t tell from Elsa’s expression whether she was scared. She was staring toward the open door. A man with a lantern was standing just outside it, and so was the overdressed boy with the flashlight.
Suddenly the woman appeared — the jeweled, well-dressed hussy with the slapped face. It looked a bit swollen, but that might be the shadow cast by the lantern.
“She has come for revenge!” said Elsa in a low voice. “She has come to watch it happen. Our supper may have been poisoned. Let’s be careful.”
“I’m sorry I hit her,” said Andrew. “But it’s too late to—”
Elsa wasn’t listening to him. She interrupted: “I believe she’s that boy’s mother!”
“She’s a Tibetan,” said Andrew. “The boy isn’t.”
“But she is the boy’s mother!”
There was a strange silence. It overlay the sound of the ponies munching barley spread on sacks in front of them. Even the hungry Tibetans had stopped eating and were watching the door. The man in spectacles, and his three companions, and the bandit who was still holding on to the bag, were all staring at the door. They hardly breathed.
The woman, with her back to the doorpost, glanced once over her shoulder and smiled. The boy came and stood beside her, just inside the door, holding her hand, turning his flashlight on Andrew. The woman spoke to him. He turned the light on Elsa, holding it steady. The woman smiled at Elsa; her lip curled.
Suddenly, quietly, slowly, from the outer darkness — first nothing but a face, then gradually taking form like a ghost in the lantern light — came Bulah Singh. He leaned on a pole. He limped painfully. He showed his teeth. The woman spoke to him. He ignored her. He stared hard at Elsa, then straightened himself and walked in through the door.
CHAPTER 32
Nothing seemed real. The darkness was full of quiet sound, such as the ponies munching corn. The fire at the far end set shadows leaping, that suggested planes of underworld dimensions. There were several lanterns — a flashlight — shining ponies’ eyes — smoke — blustery wind through the hole in the roof. And there was a nervous dread of suddenly born peril, awaited by the woman who held the boy’s hand. She very definitely thought of magic; it was in her eyes and in her attitude of confident awe.
But the sense that is the least mendacious of the five recognized smoke, sweat, food, and the reek of damp sheepskin. Dreams don’t smell. Bulah Singh stank. It was real, not a dream. Swaying on his feet, the Sikh thrust his face close to Andrew’s. Though his feet didn’t move, there was a sensation of his thrusting himself between Andrew and Elsa. He was so exhausted physically that he couldn’t speak yet, but his thought burned like flame. It glowed through his eyes, domineering and less careful than an animal’s for anyone or anything on earth except his own will. He had shed his mask, or was it his shield, or both? Andrew spoke to him like a Spartan:
“Where’s your lame pony?”
That was comment, not a question. It prodded the lees of exhaustion. Bulah Singh’s nostrils expanded. Scorn released fumes of strength that lingered in him somewhere.
“Wolves!” His voice creaked like a rusty hinge. “God damn your stupid soul to hell, you’d pity a rat on the dissecting table, and let people rot! Where’s my pony!”
“You’d better rest yourself.”
Andrew signed to Bompo Tsering to bring one of the loads for the Sikh to sit on. But Bula
h Singh used his pole to prod the bag that the man in spectacles wanted. Suddenly he feigned collapse. His knees gave from under him. He clutched Andrew’s arm and sat down on the bag, his weight almost breaking the brigand’s fingernails and forcing him to let go.
“Idiot!” he croaked at Andrew. “I’m just in time! No thanks to you! And now, give me a drink! Whiskey! Neat — no water.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Grinding his teeth because of the pain in his swollen feet, he looked up at the man in spectacles, and almost screamed at him: “Aween-aween-ah!”
For a moment nothing happened. There was astonished silence, except that the ponies went on munching, and the wind blew. Andrew questioned Elsa sotto voce: “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. It isn’t Tibetan.”
Bulah Singh repeated the phrase, twice, louder each time. The third time it sounded like “Ameen-ameen-ah!” The man in spectacles threw up his long- sleeved arms and hurried to the door. The others followed, including the men who had brought food. Their stampede almost swept away the woman and boy. She drew a dagger — it had a blade no thicker than a bodkin. A man yelled. He struck at her — missed, and vanished, screaming. The woman laughed. She wiped blood off the blade on the ball of her thumb, and then the thumb on the wall. The boy smiled sweetly, turning his flashlight on the woman’s face, making her look like a Rembrandt painting of Mary the Mother of God in a stable waiting for the Three Wise Men.
“Shut that door!” said Andrew.
Unfamiliar impulse caught the boy off guard. He obeyed. He loathed Andrew with a half-breed’s instinctive unreasoning malice, as quick as a snake’s. Fearful of missing a move, he aimed his flashlight at Bulah Singh, whose fist struck the bag he sat on as he grinned — with pain and beckoned to the boy. It almost looked prearranged. It was the first time Bulah Singh had noticed either the boy or the woman. The boy came forward confidently, with a kind of gloat in his eyes. The woman followed, keeping her eyes on Elsa.
“Andrew, please give me the keys,” said Elsa. “I will open a chop-box and get out whiskey for Bulah Singh.”
“No. Let’s find out what’s wrong with him before he gets drunk.”
Bulah Singh overheard. “Wrong with me? Drunk? Gunning, you god-damned idiot, take a drink too, to wake your brains! Don’t you know what’s in this bag I’m sitting on?” Then his expression changed to a confidential leer at Elsa. “Yes,” he said. “Take his keys. Be a good girl. Go and get me a drink.”
Andrew observed that Elsa showed no symptom of intention to obey. He hadn’t expected she would obey, but he was glad she didn’t. She was doing her job. By some mysterious means she was avoiding the anger that the woman, and the boy and Bulah Singh were all trying to produce. The little beast of a boy was the worst of the three. He was an obvious homosexual, probably perverted by his elders. He knew by instinct that Andrew loathed that stuff. He deliberately showed off, strutting in front of his mother. She was as proud of him as if he were reciting poems. Bompo Tsering and all Andrew’s Tibetans laughed as if it was the funniest thing they had seen.
Bulah Singh sneered, glancing at Elsa: “Like mother, like son!”
Either he thought that would please Elsa, or he wanted to disgust her. It was hard to guess which.
“Is he your son?” she retorted. “He looks like you and this woman.”
Bulah Singh ignored the question. He commanded the boy to unfasten his boots and pull them off. The boy knelt to obey; his unctuous relish was worse than servile. He smirked. Bulah Singh harshly ordered the woman to get one of the big copper bowls that Andrew’s Tibetans had already emptied of food. She didn’t like obedience; she liked it less when Bompo Tsering tried to prevent her from taking the bowl; but he yielded when she drew her dagger. She filled the bowl with water and began to warm it at the fire. By that time Bulah Singh was in agonies as the boy tried to pull off a boot. He kicked the boy in the face — sent him staggering. The boy wasn’t hurt badly but he ran to the door, crying.
The woman came on the run, spilling water, clucking, muttering. She went down on her knees, begging Andrew for the loan of his knife to cut the boots with. Andrew beckoned to Bompo Tsering. Bulah Singh called the woman a mother of whores. He ordered her to pull his boots off gently. She didn’t dare. He kicked her, hurting his foot. She still didn’t dare. Then he turned to Elsa, skillfully changing his voice, forcing himself to smile.
“See what comes of kindness to such bitches! She would let me die of gangrene! Please! Will you kindly help me?”
“No,” said Andrew, “she won’t!”
Bompo Tsering stood waiting; his expression was as blank as a bun, but his eyes were on Andrew’s right fist.
“Your saying, Gunnigun — my doing,” he muttered. “Your not—”
“Pick this Sikh up! Carry him over to the fire, where there’ll be light and warm water. Take his weapons away and then pull off his boots. Wash his feet. Use lots of soap. Then I’ll come.”
Bompo Tsering signaled for help. Before Bulah Singh could protest he was picked up by four Tibetans and frog-marched toward the fire, cursing and struggling. The woman and the boy came and screamed at Andrew. He ignored them and went in search of the load that contained the first-aid kit. The boy was crying like a girl. The woman was begging for Bulah Singh’s good will, as if Andrew had stolen it. She knelt and clutched the hem of Elsa’s overcoat, imploring her to make Andrew listen, blubbering and screaming a long story of how Bulah Singh was the lord of her life, the father of her son; he had seduced her in Delhi, raped, ruined her and then sent her home to Tibet.
Elsa got in a word at last: “Whose woman are you?”
“His woman!”
“Bulah Singh’s?”
“No! His!” She spoke proudly, recovering self-control: “I am the ruler’s woman!”
“Of this village?”
The woman nodded.
“Well then, what do you want with Bulah Singh?”
“He is mine, is he not? Whom I obey, so he must also!”
Andrew came back with cotton, a roll of bandages and a bottle of iodoform. The woman started to wail and plead again. The boy cried. Andrew ordered both of them to get out or else go to the fireside, where Bulah Singh was cursing like a scalded cat because four Tibetans were holding both his feet in hot water. Standing calmly in firelight so that Andrew could see him, Bompo Tsering was curiously examining Bulah Singh’s weapons — an automatic, a ‘32 revolver and a dagger almost exactly like the woman’s. The boy led the woman toward the fire, pulling her by the hand.
Andrew grinned at Elsa: “Do you get the idea?”
“No, I don’t — except, of course, that the woman is telling the truth. What can Bulah Singh know, or think he knows about this bag? It’s locked. He can’t see through canvas!”
“Can you see clairvoyantly?”
“No. Is it something you put in there?”
“Lan-dor-ling did it, down at the border. But I guessed it, so the little trick didn’t come off. As Chief of Police, Bulah Singh must have known that Lan-dor-ling’s little game is smuggling opium from India to Tibet. Bulah Singh tipped off Lan-dor-ling to hide opium in my loads. That’s why Lan-dor-ling went to such pains to help you and me reach Tibet.”
“So we’re opium smugglers!”
“It’s a cinch we’re something. Let’s eat before the grub gets too cold.”
“I couldn’t eat.”
“Neither could I. That grub looks disgusting. Let our Tibetans have it. We’ll cut a can of something later on.”
“That woman loves us like a cobra,” said Elsa. “The food may be poisoned.”
“Right. I’ll warn Bompo Tsering to make her taste the grub before he divides it with the gang. What do you make of the woman?”
“Andrew, she’s telling the truth. She belongs to two men. One is the black magician who rules this village. He has sent her to influence Bulah Singh—”
“I can’t believe that: Influence him? He must know B
ulah Singh’s a total loss! Influence him? Why not jump him?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t think Bulah Singh is as helpless as he seems: Andrew, how would this be! Get that little beast of a boy here and let’s question him. You tell me what to ask. I’ll talk to him gently.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He’ll lie like hell. We’ve got to shake that brat or he’ll be the end of us. His kind of treachery is bred and educated. Our best bet is Bulah Singh. I’ll talk to him. Do you want to stay or come with me?”
“I don’t like it alone. I’m afraid.”
“Come then. But remember: part of Bulah Singh’s trick was to get you to take care of his feet, and let the Tibetans see you do it. It was aimed at your mental set-up. That ‘ud reduce you to the menial class and give you a claim on him. He could pretty easily reverse that into a claim by him on you. That’s old stuff; it’s had whiskers since Adam and Eve. All the politicians use it. It works nine times out of ten unless you’re wise to it. So watch out. Don’t fall for his thanks, or his pain, or his—”
“Andrew, it sounds funny to hear you—”
“Okay! Laugh! But there’ll be nothing funny if Bulah Singh gets you hypnotized! Suppose you carry the bandages. Come on.”
He strode ahead. The ponies sniffed at Elsa as she passed. She touched their noses, light-fingered. When Andrew reached the zone of firelight he paused for a second and spoke in a half-whisper:
“Remember: don’t give him a break. Don’t pity him. Leave this to me.”
It was like a medieval torture scene in crimson firelight and leaping shadow, With Bompo Tsering acting chief inquisitor, standing aloof with the weapons, waiting for the moment. Nine men watched, fascinated, keeping the woman and boy outside their circle. Bulah Singh was being held down on a saddle by two men who held his arms twisted behind him. Their knees were in his back. There was an arm around his throat. Two men held his feet in the pan of hot soapy water. At a gesture from Andrew they let him lift his knees, so that he leaned backward with his feet in the air.