Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Andrew ignored him. He walked on.

  “Come back!” St. Malo called. “I want to talk to you. It’s important.”

  Andrew slipped into a recess in the cliff and waited there out of bullet range until the rear of the column caught up. Old Ugly-face was walking last, alone, and for once he looked worn out utterly exhausted from the long march. Andrew offered him a shoulder to rest his hand on. The old man accepted:

  “Gunnigun,” he said, “your being having done your task — your doing well. Now mine beginning.”

  He hummed a mantra. Clinging to Andrew’s shoulder with a grip like iron, he hummed all the way along the ledge as they brought up the rear of the column. He only paused once when Andrew interrupted:

  “Can you help Elsa? She needs it. She thinks so highly of you that—”

  Old Ugly-face turned on him, scowling. His eyes flashed.

  “Your being thief? Your robbing her? Your stealing her opportunity to help herself?”

  He resumed the mantra. It was like the music of the spheres.

  CHAPTER 48

  It was a grand cavern, as big as a church, well protected from prevailing winds and warmed by a hot spring that you could hear gurgling inside the rock. At the far end there was an easy climb into another, smaller cavern that was ventilated by a long fissure. Fuel had been the worst problem, but Tom had solved that; he had found tons of yak-dung, in a valley, miles away and had had it piled up near the entrance. If the place had been a bit more private, it would have been perfect. It was too near the trail, too easy to find by accident.

  Andrew posted a lookout while Bompo Tsering stabled the animals in the lower cavern. Having eaten nothing but barley for days on end they were greedy for the stored hay. Their delight in the warmth and good forage had an effect on the humans. There was a kind of Christmassy feel in the air, suggesting the manger in Bethlehem — a home-coming. Tom and Elsa were sitting together at the foot of the ascending ramp, deep in conversation. No one disturbed them.

  The phony lama broke the almost mystic spell. The man’s stupidity was next to incredible. To call attention to himself he grossly insulted Old Ugly- face, ordered him into the coldest corner of the cavern and commanded two men to watch him. Old Ugly-face made no protest, but St. Malo seemed to be hesitating whether to stand pat or to draw cards. It was his chance, should he choose, to turn on the phony lama and repudiate him. He hadn’t a good poker face; he evidently despised the man; he let his lip curl and scratched his face with his thumb to hide his mouth. He seemed unable to make up his mind. Andrew was no help to him — gave him no hint.

  It was Tom’s lead now. The end of the trail had automatically reduced Andrew to chief of staff or second-in-command. He didn’t even choose to suggest a line of action or to interrupt Tom, but he did order all the bedding and personal loads carried up the ramp to the upper cavern. He went up after them and had them arranged in a circle. The same old canvas tent-fly was in place at the far end, concealing the pool of warm running water that was as good as a civilized bathroom. He took a longing glance in there. There was soap, towels — Tom had been using the place. But he resisted temptation, there was too much else to do. Before following the men back to the lower cavern he put his briefcase in plain view beside his bedding roll. Elsa was on her way up, but beyond giving her a hand over the steepest rock and noticing that she was no longer crying he learned nothing from her. She avoided his eyes. All he said to her was:

  “My brief-case is a trap. Don’t move it.”

  Below, Tom had taken charge. At the foot of the ramp he was addressing the phony lama with the high-falutin phrases due to a man of rank. Tom was an expert at that stuff. He knew all the rituals. He fooled the fellow, urging him to lead the way to the upper cavern, where they might hold a conference without being overheard by underlings. The phony lama bestowed a phony blessing on him, whirled his prayer wheel a few dozen times and went up, like a puppet out of The Mikado, with all the dignity possible considering he had to pick up his skirts and crawl on hands and knees a good part of the way. He wasn’t as active as Elsa. St. Malo went up after him without being invited.

  Tom grinned then at Andrew. “Let’s see,” he said, “whether Bompo Tsering knows. — Want to bet?”

  “One U.S. dime,” said Andrew. “Betting with you means giving away money. You ask him.”

  Tom didn’t. He merely glanced at Bompo Tsering with raised eyebrows, and from him to Old Ugly-face. Immediately, without a word said, Bompo Tsering approached Old Ugly-face, knelt and laid his forehead on the floor in front of him. Ugly-face leaned forward, touched him with a blessing and stood up. His eyes glittered. His leathery face rippled. His owl’s beak of a nose twitched with humor.

  Suddenly he opened his mouth and solid laughter roared up from his belly.

  “Oo-hah-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah! Tum-Glain!”

  Just as suddenly he shut up. But he walked forward.

  “Your dime,” said Andrew. He produced a mascot coin from an inner pocket. Tom held out his hand, but Old Ugly-face snatched the coin and examined it curiously. At last he stowed it away in his own capacious bokkus.

  “Now having money,” he said, looking quite serious.

  Tom smiled slowly and said never a word, but a blind mute could have guessed there was a show-down coming. All the Tibetans laid their foreheads on the floor, including the phony lama’s men. Tom touched Bompo Tsering with his foot. Bompo Tsering got up. Tom whispered to him. Bompo Tsering went out of the cave to summon the two Tibetans from Tom’s hide-out as a precaution in case the phony lama’s men should get panicky and try to grab the upper hand.

  Things were going like clockwork. The phony lama was having plenty of time in the upper cavern to confer with St. Malo. Between them they were likely to make lots of mistakes, especially with Elsa watching them. They might even quarrel; most fools do, in a tight spot. Tom seemed to have everything figured out. He and Ugly-face understood each other — no ceremony — man to man — watching points — trusting each other, and as mistrustful as poker players. Tom whispered. Ugly-face nodded. Tom beckoned Andrew and they climbed to the upper cavern, where the phony lama was seated on Andrew’s roll of bedding. He had undone the cordage and made himself pretty comfortable, arranging it so that his seat was the highest and he sat with his back to the light that poured through the hole in the cavern wall. Elsa had found the hot bath irresistible; she could be heard splashing behind the canvas curtain.

  Ambrose St. Malo had just returned from peeping through a small hole in the canvas. The floor near the canvas was moist. He had left wet foot tracks. He was in the act of sitting down opposite the phony lama when Andrew’s head appeared above floor level. Elsa’s kit-bag had disappeared behind the curtain. She was no doubt using it. But Andrew’s brief-case was also missing.

  It was two or three seconds before he noticed it, beside St. Malo, in the shadow just beyond the edge of a pool of light on the floor. He had hardly dared to hope that such an old campaigner as St. Malo would fall for that trick. The brief-case was open. St. Malo had sat down in a hurry and had not had time to put it back where Andrew left it.

  Of course, after that any fool could have foretold what was going to happen, except for the working details, which were sure to be interesting. Tom and Andrew sat down facing each other, so that they were at four points of a square. After a few seconds’ silence, during which Andrew’s eyes led Tom’s toward the brief-case, Tom said to the phony lama:

  “Of course, now I know exactly who Tour Eminence is. You must be the worshipful member of the sacred Council of Regents in Lhasa. Your Eminence surely is he who loyally tried to protect the sacred infant Dalai Lama.”

  Andrew wasn’t watching the phony lama. That was Tom’s job. He watched St. Malo, whose face was a picture. Tom’s opening gambit plainly had him puzzled. He didn’t realize yet that Tom was wise to him. Tom continued talking to the phony lama, using beautiful Tibetan. It was so good that the phony lama had to work hard to understand him
and not betray his own ignorance of the higher learning:

  “Of course, I am an ignorant foreigner,” said Tom, “so I speak subject to correction. But as I understand it, the holy Dalai Lama died several years ago in Lhasa. He was the ablest and most enlightened ruler that Tibet ever had. Therefore he was poisoned, to make way for unenlightened, evil politicians.”

  Tom was using facts like sledge-hammers, preparing the ground. St. Malo realized that. He was growing restless, trying to make sure that the piece of paper he had sat on in a hurry wasn’t sticking out where Andrew or Tom Grayne could notice it.

  Tom continued: “And as I, in my benighted ignorance, understand it, although the holy Dalai Lama dies like any other mortal, he immediately reincarnates into the body of a newborn child. That child has to be sought for — somewhere, anywhere, in Tibet, and is recognizable by certain marks. Such a child was found, identified and acclaimed. The child was brought to Lhasa and installed in his sacred office to be educated under the supervision of the Council of Regents.”

  At last the phony lama answered him. He might have done better to keep silent but he was too stupid: “As a foreigner your knowing too much. What your doing in Tibet?”

  “Learning,” Tom answered. “I have learned that many foreigners, from many lands, have designs on Tibet.”

  The phony lama assented: “All foreigners being devils,” he remarked. “Having heard of this blessed land, now their wanting it.” Then he added sententiously: “But my wishing to reach Shig-po-ling monastery. Thus your acquiring merit.”

  Tom nodded gravely: “Meaning that if we can serve Your Eminence in some important way, we may depend upon Your Eminence’s favor?”

  The phony lama nodded. Tom went on talking:

  “It is rumored, so that even my ignorant ears have heard it, that one, and only one member of the Council of Regents has been faithful to his sacred trust. Are you that member?”

  There was a pause. St. Malo held his breath. He seemed scared stiff that the fool might make a bad break. But the phony lama didn’t speak. Tom went on:

  “I have heard that all the other members of the Council of Regents in Lhasa have been corrupted by the money and by the promises of the secret agents of foreign governments. I have heard they are wicked men. I have heard they quarrel among themselves for the control of the sacred child, each of them perceiving that the sole control would give him autocratic power, which would enable him to grow enormously rich from the bribes of foreign governments, each of whom craves to control the education of the coming ruler of Tibet.”

  “My having told you,” said the phony lama, “your knowing too much.”

  Tom continued: “So there was strife between the Regents. That Regent who is also abbot of the Shig-po-ling monastery over yonder, proved to be the cleverest, if not the most powerful. He poisoned some of the other Regents. Others he slew. He drove the only faithful Regent out of Lhasa, so that he barely escaped with his life. And he carried away the child lama to the Shig-po-ling monastery, so as to have the child in his power.”

  The phony lama glanced at St. Malo, paused a moment and then answered:

  “All this being not your business.”

  “But destiny,” said Tom, “which is inscrutable, has guided me into the sacred presence of that only faithful Regent. You are he. Are you not?”

  The phony lama began to be careful, too late. He searched his mind for important-sounding words and bungled them:

  “My being nobly born seeing fit to travel wrapped in cloak of anonymity, ignorant foreign devils should not ask improper questions.”

  Tom persisted patiently: “But I have information for the wise ears of His Holy and Worshipful Eminence, the nobly born Ringding Gelong Lama Lobsang Pun. I must not breathe my information into the wrong ears. It is too important. Are you not Lobsang Pun?”

  St. Malo chucked in his hand. He said nothing, but it was as plain as writing on a wall that there and then he abandoned the phony lama to his fate. He had seen what Andrew saw.

  Old Ugly-Face had timed it perfectly. He must have crept like a cat up that difficult ramp, and he must have been crouching near the top of the entrance into the upper cavern, awaiting his cue. Now he stood up and coughed like a senator about to deliver a speech. But he didn’t say anything. He thumbed his beads, flicking them ten to a second. No one could possibly pray that fast. It was a grand moment.

  “Are you not His Holy Eminence Lobsang Pun?” Tom repeated. “Member of the Council of Regents and the only loyal servant of the sacred child, the Dalai Lama?”

  “Yes, I am,” said the phony lama. There was nothing else that he could say.

  “Then why,” Tom asked him, “are you on your way to the Shig-po-ling monastery, where the wicked Regent Ram-pa Yap-shi, who expelled you from Lhasa and did his utmost to get you killed, has wrongfully taken the sacred child and is ready to fight all comers?

  “Answer me that.”

  Everyone but Tom breathed hard through his nose. Barring that, there was silence for about thirty seconds. Then Ugly-face belched like a gun going off. East of, say, Vienna, belching is good manners. A diplomat may politely include the accomplishment in his code of signals. Ugly-face was calling for the show-down.

  Tom opened fire: “Since nine days ago, eighteen armed men from Sinkiang have waited in a cave near here. Are they your men?”

  The phony lama tried to ignore the question, but Tom waited for an answer. Andrew, watching St. Malo, saw a sly, overconfident smile vaguely flicker on his lips and at the corners of his eyes. To him those eighteen men from Sinkiang were evidently good news. He was in a hurry now to see the phony lama disposed of and out of the way, so that he might play his own hand. But he knew Andrew was watching him, so he kept still.

  The phony lama didn’t know how to answer Tom’s question. Tom did it for him:

  “They are not your men. You never heard of them until this moment.” Suddenly he turned toward Old Ugly-face. “But who is this, whom you treat harshly?”

  Old Ugly-face said nothing.

  The phony lama answered: “That one being my servant.”

  Tom smiled. St. Malo almost laughed.

  “I am in duty bound,” said Tom, “to tell Your Eminence the secret information that has come to my ignorant ears. You will know what it means. This is it: the Regent Ram-pa Yap-shi, who is the abbot of the Shig-po-ling monastery — he who carried off the infant Dalai Lama — has offered an enormous reward for the person of His Holy Eminence Lobsang Pun, to be delivered alive, having been reported dead too many times. This time His Eminence’s death is to be witnessed and to be enjoyed by all except His Eminence. Had you heard of it?”

  Silence. The phony lama had only one chance left now; but the long knife was hardly out of his bosom before Tom had him by the wrist. Tom passed the knife to Andrew and went on talking:

  “Someone with more brains than you have, showed you how to make a fortune by betraying your master, His Holy Eminence Lobsang Pun, to be put to the torture and slain. So you pretended to your master you would save his life by changing places with him. He was to seem to be the servant you were to seem to be the master. To which, being in danger of death, he agreed. But who was the man of brains and treachery who bargained with you for a share of the reward for the betrayal of your master? Did he show you an American flag? Did he tell you tales about protection to be had in an American Legation — was it in China? Did he mention China? Were you to escape to China with the money?”

  St. Malo sat motionless, except that his eyes moved. They measured the distance to the lama’s long knife that Tom had passed to Andrew. It lay on the floor. Andrew moved it.

  “Such men,” Tom continued, “always demand a lion’s share. Not a half- share. A lion’s share. That same someone sent loads, on fourteen yaks, with eighteen men from Sinkiang, to await him in a cave near here. What, do you think, would have happened to you — at the hands of the men from Sinkiang?”

  No answer. St. Malo saw the writ
ing on the wall. He moved his right hand. But Andrew noticed it; so St. Malo let his hand fall and lie limp on his thigh. Andrew leaned toward him, shoved him off balance, plunged his hand into the opening of his overcoat, drew blank and pulled him upright again. He loved Andrew for that. His eyes were like hot flint. Old Ugly-face sat down against the wall and belched again. He wanted action. But Tom was in no hurry. He was having a swell time. He continued:

  “What’s going to happen to you now, you treacherous scullion? Your real name is Shag-la. You’re masquerading as a nobly born, eminent lama. There is a penalty of death for that crime. You’re found out.”

  The phony lama mumbled something, probably a spell for breaking bad luck. Old Ugly-face walked toward him. He had dignity. Nobody needed to tell him how to behave. He didn’t speak. The vigor of his iron will, and the humor of his humility, were enough. Already he seemed almost to have forgotten the cur who had insulted and ill-treated him on that cruel march. He was thumbing his beads like lightning; the eye could hardly follow their flick on the thong.

  The phony lama knelt to him, put out his tongue and laid his forehead on the floor. Ugly-face ignored him. He sat down on Andrew’s bed roll, and the phony lama crawled away to the wall where he lay face downward. Ugly-face stared for a moment at Tom and then fetched up another laugh from his stomach:

  “Oo-hah-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah!” Then he looked straight at Andrew — saw slap through him to his backbone, the way he did when they first met. He glanced at Tom and said in English: “Tum-Glain, your choosing not bad: Where’s Elsa?”

  Elsa came out from behind the curtain carrying her kit-bag. She set it down and stood waiting, limned by the light from the crack in the wall. She had made herself look beautiful. But for whose sake? She watched St. Malo, and he stared at her as if he was either afraid or else stunned by a new idea. Tom signed to Elsa and she came and sat down at his right hand, facing Andrew. St. Malo groped in his pocket, found a little silver box, opened it and swallowed two opium pills. Almost at once his smile of self-assurance returned, as if he had resumed the reins of destiny and knew a short way to his goal. Now he looked dangerous.