Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “My God! Is that a fair question? Now? No, I won’t answer!” Then suddenly: “Andrew! Do you know what Tom believes?”

  “Better not say it. I’m Tom’s friend.”

  “He believes I’ve fallen for St. Malo! He does believe it! I know he does! He thinks I’m so wicked and loose and vile that I’d run off with St. Malo just for — just for — oh, I don’t know why he thinks he thinks that!”

  “What makes you think he thinks that?”

  “Andrew, I read it! I read his thought! Can you love anyone, and think that kind of thought about them? — If he had killed the thought — thrown it out — stamped on it! But he didn’t. He didn’t try. He let it bore in like a worm into his mind. — Oh, Andrew, Andrew, why was I ever born?”

  He tried to comfort her, but he didn’t know what to say. He put his arm around her. She buried her face against his breast and cried, struggling to control herself, sobbing, choking. At last:

  “Oh Andrew, I can’t help it! There — I won’t do it again.” She sat upright. “I’m all right now: Andrew—”

  “Yes.”

  “Has Tom said anything — about me?”

  “Not a word. I don’t think he will. He’s as proud as hell.”

  “Do you — do you suppose he’ll ask you what I’m going to do?”

  “No. I guess not. I wouldn’t tell him if he did ask, even if I knew the answer. That’s between you and him.”

  “Shall I — shall I tell you — in confidence?”

  “No. Better not. No need just now. You’re on the level. If it were my business, I would trust you sight unseen.”

  “Thank you, Andrew. You couldn’t be ungenerous, could you!”

  “You mustn’t forget. I’m Tom’s friend. I’ve so to speak enlisted for the duration. I’m seeing him through this business.”

  “Andrew, I must tell you! I will! I’m going to be Lobsang Pun’s chela! The way Nancy Strong was — and still is! I’m going through with it! I’m—”

  “There, there, Elsa! Don’t start crying again.” He felt his heart grow cold within him. His words grew cold with it. “And don’t be rash. Don’t do anything just because you feel panicked into it. Think it over. Sleep on it.”

  “Andrew, there’s no other way out — nothing else to do: Please, won’t you go and give Tom the message from Lobsang Pun?”

  “Yes. I’ll go now. All right, I’ll — tell him.” He got up, hesitating. “Look up,” he said. “ I want to see your eyes.”

  “Andrew, I’ve been crying. I can’t—”

  “Look at me. Are you sure you’ve no message for Tom?”

  “No, Andrew. None. What could I say? If only I knew what to say that wouldn’t make things worse — that wouldn’t hurt Tom’s feelings and—”

  Andrew, too, wished he knew what to say. He felt like swearing a streak. He craved to use his hands on something — to shape a big hunk of wood with long cleaving strokes. What he did say was:

  “Well, keep your heart up, Elsa. Be brave; and let’s hope for the best. I’ll be back later.”

  He walked away, glancing upward at the great deep, dark gap in the wall. Almost no light came through it now. There was no sign of Old Ugly-face. He shook his fist at the gap.

  “You damned old bugger!” He almost startled himself, the unspoken thought was so vehement. “I wish I’d left you to the vultures with your dead friend!”

  When he was halfway down the ramp he paused — listened. He heard Elsa sobbing — and then, suddenly, Old Ugly-face’s belly laugh:

  “Oo-hah-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah! My being damned old bugger! Oo-hah-ha-ha-ha-ha- hah!”

  CHAPTER 53

  Tom was ominously taciturn. He and Andrew snatched a hurried meal of canned stuff. Then they went out to the ledge to change the guard. It was still not quite sunset. If the weather should hold there would be a nearly full moon, almost all night long, that should make it easy to guard the ledge against all comers. But Tom looked worried. He and Andrew leaned against the rebuilt barricade, each waiting for the other to speak. At last Andrew repeated Old Ugly-face’s message.

  “Did you get it from him direct?” Tom asked.

  “It’s accurate. Those were his words.”

  “Oh.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Andrew stared into the rising wind across the ravine. Two yards away from his feet there was a sheer drop that the eye couldn’t measure, into a ravine that made him dizzy to look at. There were eagles, getting ready to roost for the night, flying and screaming five hundred feet below. In the distance, beyond the ravine, perhaps ten miles away on eagles’ wings, but farther on foot, the Shig-po-ling monastery was perched between earth and sky like a painting. It looked theatrical in the sunset. Huge walls. Courtyard within courtyard. An enormous central building with a long roof, studded with belfries and fluttering with prayer banners. Without artillery it would need an army of ten thousand men to capture that place. The only means of approach, at any rate in front, was the ledge on which Andrew and Tom stood; it wound around cliff after cliff and gradually widened until it became a practicable road that looked possible even for carts.

  One couldn’t see anyone moving in the monastery. There was no one on the walls. The wind-blown blessing bells were inaudible at that distance. Smoke rose from the monastery kitchen. There must be thousands of monks at the evening meal or making ready for it. Andrew returned into the cavern for his binoculars. Through those, on the face of the cliff about two-thirds of the way between him and the monastery, he could see the masonry fronts of the natural caves in which hermits endured privation, alone in the dark. He counted eighteen hermit holes, but there were a lot more than that.

  Tom sat on the new barricade, staring at the monastery, saying nothing. Andrew decided to force the issue:

  “What beats me,” he said, “is why Old Ugly-face couldn’t tell you himself. Why use me as intermediary?”

  Tom turned his back to the wind, perhaps to see Andrew’s face better in the fading light. At first he looked savagely angry, but Andrew’s return stare didn’t flinch; there was no answering resentment. So Tom’s anger withdrew into its own gloom.

  “Ugly-face knows me like a book,” he answered. “He’s right. A man can’t think straight when he’s feeling sore with himself. I’ve been figuring out a plan to make it worth St. Malo’s while to play with us.”

  “You’re crazy,” said Andrew. “St. Malo still hopes to sell Old Ugly-face for cash, and then to steal the kid lama and run.”

  “I know that,” said Tom. “You can’t change his sort. But I was thinking at the moment that there’s plenty of gold in the monastery. Those monks own gold mines. They can only work ’em two months in the year, by crude methods, but they dig enough pay dirt, and carry it more than a hundred miles in baskets, to make the monastery rich. I thought of asking Ugly-face to promise St. Malo some of that gold. But it was a lousy idea. Give him gold, and you’d have to kill him to keep him from trying to steal it all.”

  Andrew grinned: “He would kill you and me for the strawberry jam.”

  “If we should kill him,” said Tom, “Old Ugly-face wouldn’t move a finger or pull a string to prevent someone from killing us. You don’t know that old wizard. He’s consistent. He doesn’t kid himself he’s a cushion between cause and effect. He lets consequences happen. Then he walks in on top of the consequences.”

  Andrew scowled: “If he has a plan why can’t he tell it to you and me?”

  “Don’t you get the idea yet?”

  “No.”

  “Then here’s the plain lowdown: if Old Ugly-face should take us into his confidence, he’d lose control of the situation. He might even have to obey us.”

  “You think he controls the situation now?”

  “Sure. It’s in the bag. What gives him his grip is the fact that he has no personal ambition. You and I ‘ud pat ourselves on the back for doing a good job. We like to think well of Tom Grayne and Andrew Gunning. That old wizard doesn’t care a
damn about himself. He counts his personality as nothing but the shadow of his own soul. He doesn’t care what happens to it. You and I do care what happens to our persons. That’s the difference. And it’s why he’ll use us rough and tell us nothing.”

  “Let’s hear the rest of your plan,” said Andrew.

  “I’ve ditched it. But we may have to change it around and use part of it yet. You know where the hermits’ caves are. They feed ’em by night, once a week. This is the night. A party of monks comes from the monastery to pass food and water through a hole in the wall of each cell. It isn’t too difficult to attach yourself to that party in the dark and get into the monastery.”

  “That sounds easy to say,” said Andrew.

  “I did it, during the winter, while you were away,” Tom retorted. “It’s a bit risky, but not too bad. They count the feeding party going out, but they don’t count ’em in when they return. There are so many monks in that monastery that half of ’em don’t know the other half. Plenty of places to hide. There were one or two scares, but nothing serious. The first day I was in here I had to punch a holy Joe who asked me what I thought I was doing out of chapel at prayer time. I knocked him so cold that he probably can’t remember who hit him. I was in there three days — found out where they keep the young Dalai Lama — how often they change the guard — and all that. It was harder getting out than getting in. Too many big dogs outside. Got out at last with a funeral gang who were taking a corpse to be handed over to the ragyabas, who chop up the corpse to be fed to the dogs and vultures. The dogs were hungry, so they went for the corpse and I got away. If I’d had to kill one of those dogs, there’d have been trouble. Cold night, it was. Christmas Eve. Seventy below.”

  “Don’t they suspect you’re here?”

  “No. I think not. I’ve been lucky. Got all the breaks so far. Hermits may have seen me through their peepholes. But I think they haven’t. They’d have told. There’d have been a party sent to rout me out.”

  “We’ll need more than the breaks,” said Andrew. “We’ve got to capture a fortified city.”

  Tom grinned at last. “You’re telling me. Well — we know the first move.”

  “Which?”

  “Ugly-face said it.”

  It was dark now. A few stars were shining, but great banks of cloud were rolling up to hide them. Tom peered curiously at Andrew — hesitated, and then said, as if ashamed of himself:

  “Do you suppose Elsa’s idea was the same as mine — to buy St. Malo?”

  “How should I know?” said Andrew.

  “Well — anyhow — move number one is to shove St. Malo — goad him — push him — irritate him — make him act up.”

  “With eighteen armed men,” said Andrew. “All he’ll need to tell them is that we’ve got supplies and money. They’ll jump us quick.”

  “St. Malo’s no fighting man,” Tom retorted.

  “Granted. He’d rather clean up after someone else’s battle. But he could blockade us in here.”

  “That’s what we’ve got to prevent,” said Tom. “We can’t afford a blockade. When the fords are passable, support for Ram-pa Yap-shi might turn up from Lhasa. There’s a couple of regiments there that haven’t been paid and may come for their money. They’ll eat everything they find on their way. Once here, the man with the money controls them. We’ve got to be it. — Tonight is the night they feed the hermits.”

  “What of it? What good does that do us?”

  “They feed ’em around midnight. We must tell St. Malo. Can you imagine him missing that chance to open negotiations with Ram-pa Yap-shi?”

  “You’re telling it,” said Andrew.

  “So we prod St. Malo. And we wise him up about the hermits. It’s a rock- bound cinch he’ll send word to the monastery, offering to betray Lobsang Pun’s whereabouts in exchange for a fat fee. He won’t be such a fool as to tell where Lobsang Pun is. He’ll fix the price first. He’ll want cash on the head of the barrel. That takes time.”

  “Well then, what’s our next move?”

  “The next move will be up to Ram-pa Yap-shi. We’ll be the problem — the unknown quantity.”

  At home it had been Andrew’s job to spot flaws in cases. He did it as a natural reaction.

  “The least it means,” he said, “is that we lose the initiative. We’ll be cut off, and starved out, if nothing worse happens.”

  “Nuts,” Tom answered. “Where did you learn strategy? — Out of a book? Initiative resides in the ability to take advantage of the other man’s mistakes. If he doesn’t make ’em, you can’t use ’em. He won’t make ’em, if you don’t tempt him. And until he has made ’em, who knows how good they’ll be?”

  “So you’re betting on Old Ugly-face?”

  Tom snapped his jaws: “I laid a bet on Ugly-face,” he said, “ — to win — on the day I knew he was a fugitive from Lhasa. Let’s go irritate St. Malo.”

  Andrew went back to the cavern for flashlights. He heard Old Ugly-face saying his prayers. All the Tibetans in the lower cavern were down on their knees with their foreheads on the floor. The lanterns, that cast astonishing shadows, shone in the eyes of the stabled animals. It was a weird sight. Old Ugly-face’s voice, coming through the gap from the upper cavern, sounded something like a Gregorian chant. It conjured up a mental picture of Old Ugly-face in full canonicals, that were a sort of symbol of daimonic dignity. There was no sign of Elsa. Andrew whispered a few words to Bompo Tsering about changing the guard every hour and then returned to the ledge. Presently he and Tom climbed over the barricade and started along the track, Tom leading. There wasn’t room for them side by side. If one should set a foot wrong, or stumble on a loose stone, or slip on the ice there was a long way to fall. There had been a sudden change in the weather; the moon was clouding over and there were signs of one of those springtime storms that do more to keep foreigners out of Tibet than all the laws and treaties in the world. Tom kicked a loose rock off the ledge, stopped and listened until it struck bottom, sending echoes pinging along the ravine like breaking ice. Then he spoke over his shoulder:

  “Keep your hair on and your feet under you. It gets worse from here on.”

  Andrew answered cynically: “Ugly-face is praying for us. So you should worry. Let’s hope he’s praying for fine weather.”

  Tom spoke again over his shoulder: “He’ll need to pray like hell. There’ll be a humdinger before long — perhaps the last storm of the season. Last ones usually are killers.”

  They went ahead, leaning against the wind, feeling their way along the cliff on their right. Tom seemed to relish the thought of a storm, although he knew those Tibetan blizzards even better than Andrew did. He strode with vigor that made Andrew hustle to keep up.

  It seemed to Andrew that they were taking an idiot’s chance. Tom’s conviction that Old Ugly-face intended to use them and himself too, for that matter, like pawns in a desperate game, fitted in with Andrew’s own conception, now that he had time to think about it. He imagined the old prelate back there in the cavern planning to sacrifice them all, including Elsa, in some subtle move that was beyond their comprehension because they didn’t know the facts. It made his spine crawl.

  Tom seemed to be taking no precautions. He led as fast as he could struggle against the wind, along a ledge that zigzagged in and out on the face of a cliff from one natural ambush to the next. At one moment they were outlined by the light of the moon; at the next they were in deep shadow where a dozen men might have been lurking. It would only have needed a sudden shove to send both of them over the edge. That would have left Old Ugly-face and Elsa at St. Malo’s mercy. When Tom called a halt for a few moments’ rest, Andrew said to him:

  “We’re asking for it. We’ll get it. We’re going straight into it.”

  Tom didn’t answer. He walked on. He must have guessed that Andrew had the wind up. The going got worse after a minute or two. The moon disappeared behind hurrying clouds. One could see nothing, nor hear much either, because the win
d began blowing a half gale, screaming and moaning among the crags. It was all one sound, worse than the ocean at night. To have used a flashlight would have been an invitation to any rifleman keeping a lookout. St. Malo had eighteen men with rifles. Not good.

  Andrew overlooked the fact that, having been there all winter, Tom was familiar with every yard of the ledge. They were more than two miles from their cavern when Tom stopped and grabbed Andrew’s arm. It was too dark to see each other. He had to shout against the wind, with his hand to his mouth:

  “On our right, two yards from here.”

  “What?”

  “A cave.”

  They could hear the wind howling through it and thundering the way it does into a tunnel. Tom shouted again:

  “Passage at the rear. Into a gorge. Back of that’s a cavern. He’s there.”

  Tom had his plan figured out. They entered the cave, using flashlights until at the rear they found the opening into a tunnel. It was three feet off the cavern floor and about half a man’s height, the shape of an egg on its side. Someone in the tunnel or at the far end of it noticed their light. They heard noises that were off-key with the wind. At last a Tibetan came crawling along the tunnel on hands and knees. They dazzled his eyes for a second or two, then switched off the light. He called out to them. They couldn’t hear what he said. Hoping the moon wouldn’t come out suddenly from behind the clouds and give the Tibetan a chance for a pot-shot, Tom answered, in Tibetan. Then at last Andrew got the general drift of Tom’s plan, and began to feel better. A good plan does that. It acts like champagne.

  Tom began by asking the man whether he had seen the monks from the monastery. The man said no. Tom told him this was the night when the monks came to feed the hermits. The Tibetan hadn’t heard about that routine. He asked a couple of questions, and Tom answered them. Then he told the Tibetan to go and fetch St. Malo.

  “Tell him,” said Tom, “that if he wants to talk to Tum-Glain he must come alone.”

  The man disappeared, after trying, but failing to discover whether Tom had more than one companion: Tom and Andrew waited one on each side of the mouth of the tunnel. Tom was thinking of Elsa. There was no doubt of that, although he didn’t mention her name. He said: