Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Well, we tried to approach the French in Beirut more directly. But the cable was out of order. It is when international incidents are taking place. The overland wire by way of Palestine had been cut — by Bedouins, the French said; a coincidence that must have saved their censor a lot of trouble. The long and short of that was that Mrs. Aintree and her party, Gulad included, got clear away from Beirut. And in spite of all the ridiculous passport formalities at every frontier they contrived to cross Europe without our being able to learn which route they had taken until the information was too belated to be any use. So much for passports!

  “We finally traced them to London, and Grim cabled to Jeremy Ross to pick the trail up there. He cabled back the same day to the effect that he had got in touch.

  “Meanwhile,” Brice continued, “Grim’s assistant, the Sikh Narayan Singh, proceeded on the assumption that Gulad could not be wholly without intimates after nine years in Egypt.”

  “That was my idea,” explained Allison. “It appealed to my sense of the rid ee culous that any man should ignore the cir-rcum-stance of Gulad having fr-r-equently received v-ee-sitors in camp; and the equally impor-r-tant cir-r-cumstance, that every one o’ the v-ee-sitors was black. They used to spend days at a time in our camp. I was at some pains on more than one occasion to discover whether they were being enter-r-tained at our expense, and was gr-ratified as well as surpr-r-ized to ascertain that they paid their own footing.

  “As long as he accounted in full for our stores and petty cash it was only reasonable to accord him the pr ee vileges due to any selfrespecting man. Nevertheless, the unprecedented meticulousness of his honesty — in such a land as Egypt, mind ye, with Brice and me not scr-r-upling to feed our own guests from the expedition’s stores — aroused my curiosity. So I discussed the matter with Narayan Singh, and he and I together ar-r-ived at certain definite conclusions. However, ye were speaking, Brice. Continue.”

  “Well,” said Brice, “Narayan Singh discovered quite a little colony of U.S. darkies, more or less distributed in Alexandria, Port Said, and Cairo. Quite a number were sailors, who had deserted under your peculiar shipping law. Some were harder to account for on any theory of lawful activity, but they all seemed to eke out a living, and a few were prosperous. They were distinctly possessed of class-consciousness, mainly evidenced by insolence toward white men who chanced into contact with them.

  “Among them were quite a number of the missionarypreacher type. Narayan Singh found at least a dozen who were living off the rest in fairly easy circumstances. Four or five seemed to be well educated, and at least one — a man named Moses Miles — had a bank account. I want you to notice that name Moses; it proved to be an important clue.

  “We let Moses Miles carefully alone at first, and made a study of the others. It would not have been the slightest use for a white man to approach any of them. But their distrust and resentment, directed at all white men, apparently made them all the more inclined to accept the confidence of the Sikh. I don’t pretend to explain it, but there’s the fact. They seemed to despise the native African, to loathe the white man, and to regard the Indian as a possible friend.

  “Narayan Singh discovered that Moses Miles was preaching a new brand of religion among those darkies. His name, it appears, was not originally Moses, but Horatio Augustus. He changed it when he adopted the new creed. The doctrine hinges on Mosaic law, and every initiate into its mysteries has to change his first name to Moses. Only initiates are allowed to preach. Other members are known as aspirants, and their chief duty seems to be to contribute handsomely to the support of the initiates. But there is an intricate ritual that—”

  “Verra heathenish, abominable rites!” growled Allison, changing his position restlessly.

  “ — a ritual that is much too cleverly devised to have been worked out by Moses Miles, who possesses a dominant personality, and education of a kind, but no really high order of intelligence. Narayan Singh sought admission to the sect — People of Pisgah they call themselves. He failed, but he found out this: That these People of Pisgah through Moses Miles, were momentarily awaiting instructions from the United States, on receipt of which and accompanying funds four of their initiates and eight aspirants were to leave for South Africa and begin an intensive all-black campaign among the natives there — a campaign consisting of religion mixed with politics. And the interesting point is this: That the name of the great high-priestess whose orders they awaited is Isobel Aintree.”

  CHAPTER III. “A P.O.P. original charter member.”

  THAT liner had a clean bill of health, but did not proceed to her pier. There began to be indignation meetings wherever there was room for twenty passengers to get together. But I noticed my friend Casey of the Federal Secret Service. Casey regards the public as a herd of silly sheep with goats distributed among the herd at intervals. Regarded in the main, he doesn’t love them; but I suspect that like a good sheep-dog he would grow old before his time and die of sheer disgust if deprived of his job. And wherever Casey strolls with both fists in his pockets and a look of bland indifference on his round, red face, you may safely bet there are human wolves or goats to be “fixed to rights” as he describes it.

  After an hour or two he strolled into the smoking room and noticed me.

  “Where are you from this time?” he demanded, sitting down beside us. “China? Borneo?”

  I told him, and came back with the obvious question.

  “Oh, nothing much,” said Casey. “We got our man. We’d no picture of him and didn’t know what name he’d travel under, but he’s locked in his stateroom now with a bull to keep him company. We’ll be alongside in about an hour. I hear ye’ve gone into the detective business with Meldrum Strange. Ye look like it! My boy, ye’ll have to learn never to look interested. Unless they’re clever men who’re making trouble it’s not interesting at all, and if they are clever ye can’t afford to let ’em worry ye!”

  “Judge for yourself,” I answered. “This looks like a case for you, not me. You’ll admit it’s interesting and romantic.”

  “Then it certainly isn’t for me! There’s no romance in my business, Ramsden, my boy. I deal in card-indexes and photygraffs and thumb-prints. Romance looks pretty in the newspapers and the books o’ Doctor Conan Doyle. But romance and crime don’t mix, no more than the smell of onions mixes with ice-cream sodies. But I’ve an hour, and I’m willing to be amused. Which are ye going to do — talk elephants an’ gold-mines, which I believe ye know about, or discuss this marvelous, romantic case with me like a hen discussing water with a duck?”

  I preferred the farm-yard to the zoo, and made a start by introducing Brice and Allison.

  “Now take his breath away,” I said. “Produce the gold plate.” He studied it in silence for a minute.

  “A picture of Moses, eh? I’ve seen Jews look like him. Take a stroll with me, and I’ll point out to ye twenty or thirty men who might have sat for that picture. I suspect ye’ve man-handled the thing so that the thumb-prints are all overlaid. What’s the writing all about? Some sort o’ code? Have ye a key to it? It don’t look to me like Yiddish.”

  Casey turned the plate over and over, holding it by the edges, for he regards thumb-prints as other men do first editions.

  “Never mind,” he went on. “Criminologically speaking, Moses is dead. How do ye propose to get this gold plate through the customs? Have ye declared it? Who’s set a value on it?”

  “We haven’t declared it,” Brice answered. “We have a permit authorizing us to take it out of Egypt in trust. Allison and I are personally responsible for it. Without this one we might find it difficult to identify absolutely the thirty-one others that were stolen, whereas with this—”

  Casey whistled. He’s a man of habit like the rest of us. The first bars of the last line of the chorus of a song that was beginning to grow whiskers in the war with Spain form his invariable, only war-cry —

  “There’ll be a hot time—”

  “Have y
e traced the thief over here? Ye’d better tell me all about it. Here, I’ll slip it in me pocket, and ye’ll have no trouble with the customs men. Which hotel? All right, I’ll give it back to ye at the Waldorf this afternoon. I’ll take good care of it. Now tell me all ye know.”

  Brice laughed; it might be a tall order to tell all he knew.

  “Well,” said Casey, “I understand ye’ve come after thirty-wan plates like this wan. ’Tis a big country, where there’s room to hide such trifles.”

  “Trifles!” exploded Allison. “They’re as impor-r-tant as Old Testament manuscripts.”

  “The Hell you say! Have ye any idee who took them. That might help.”

  Brice mentioned Gulad’s name.

  “Gulad? Gulad? Let me think a minute. There was a man named Gulad. Let me see. Yes, I remember. We held him in Boston. Colored man. The English would send from Aygypt for him. He’ll be sent back to where he came from. Ye can arrest him over there in Aygypt.”

  “Who cares about him?” snorted Allison. “We believe that the real Gulad is over here, and that either he or a Mrs. Isobel Aintree has the plates.”

  “Aintree? Aintree? Isobel Aintree? Where have I heard that name?” said Casey. “Oh, yes. Go ahead; tell me some more.” His eyes had a harder, keener look.

  “According to Mr. Ross, the representative in London of Grim, Ramsden, and Ross, she returned to the United States by way of London, bringing the real Gulad with her, and also presumably those gold plates,” said Brice.

  “But how did Gulad get into the States?” Casey demanded.

  “It seems he’s a citizen. Gulad applied for in London, and obtained an American passport. The witnesses who identified him were Isobel Aintree and two of her followers, who all swore to having known him for a number of years.”

  “Ah! It’s easy when they’ve been naturalized,” said Casey. “I haven’t a doubt he landed safely, if he’d papers. Between you and me and that sideboard yonder, if the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. was missing overnight, I’d suspect Mrs. Aintree as soon as any wan. She has a new religion, I believe, and wan’s enough. Well, we’re coming alongside. I’ll say a word to the customs superintendent that’ll save ye time.”

  * * * * *

  HAVING seen Brice and Allison to the hotel, I went to the office, where I found two letters on top of the morning pile, one from Grim and the other from Jeremy. Grim’s was short and to the point.

  Confirming my wire, Brice and Allison are O.K. in all respects. Re theft, consult the federal police. Our interest consists in unearthing a conspiracy to control the colored races of the world. Headquarters in U.S.A. Will report Egyptian developments as fast as they occur, and await instructions.

  JAMES SCHUYLER GRIM.

  Jeremy’s, on the other hand, ran to ten or eleven pages, and included a humorously accurate description of Brice and Allison.

  He wrote:

  There’s a sort of colored revival, combining religion and politics and using a secret religious ritual to bind all the darkies together. Mrs. Aintree is perhaps the head of it, and she and Gulad are as thick as thieves. She seems to have a hold on him or else he has on her, I hardly know which. I don’t know what they have done with the stolen plates. There is a dusky bishop here — he calls himself an “initiate” — who undoubtedly has seen them. Calls himself Moses Johnson. He is from Baltimore, and the name on his passport is Charles Abraham Ulysses Johnson. He is preaching — since be saw the Aintree woman — about the return of Moses to lead all African peoples into a promised land of their own; and he says that, whereas the law was written formerly on stone tablets, it is graven on gold plates now, together with portraits of the angels — thirty-one of them, he says; and he claims to know the name of every angel on the list. All the texts he uses in his sermons are from the Book of Exodus, and his favorite one seems to be the part about how the Israelites spoiled the Egyptians, looting all their gold and silver before they started for the promised land. Cable instructions.

  — JEREMY.

  A little before three o’clock I called on Brice and Allison, who were discussing their prospects rather gloomily in a bedroom. Allison had made his mind up that my friend Casey was an impostor, who would melt down that gold plate and turn it into cash.

  “In which case,” he was saying as I entered the smoke-filled room, “you and I, Brice, are discr-r-edited and ruined men. Nor are we entitled to sympathy. We’re simpletons.”

  Allison refused to be comforted by me. He had reached the stage of doubting everything and everybody.

  “Mon, I know nothing at all about ye,” he protested. However, Casey came in presently, well pleased with himself, and laid the gold plate on the bed.

  “I’ve a man I’d like ye to meet. Shall I bring him in?”

  There appeared an undersized, wizened colored man, who stood in the door spinning a derby hat on one finger, eying us all nervously. He wasn’t actually crippled, but produced the effect by shrugging himself up inside a blue serge suit a size or two too large for him. His white collar was about four sizes too big, and he had a thin neck like a tortoise’s, all wrinkled horizontally as if he could lengthen or shorten it at will. What with gold-rimmed spectacles, white spats over brown shoes, and a big diamond ring, he was a strange enough apparition even for New York.

  “You all wanted me?” he asked.

  His voice was wistful. The expression of his mouth was somewhere between a smile and the beginning of a shout for help. He was bold, and yet fearful and suspicious, as one who has made up his mind to a course, but dreads the consequences.

  “Come in. Stand there,” said Casey, and the colored man obeyed. “Tell these gentlemen what your name is.”

  “They calls me Aloysius Jackson.”

  “Where are you from?” demanded Casey.

  “Appleton, West Virginny.”

  “Live there all the time?”

  “Mos’ all the time.”

  “Belong to all the lodges in the place?”

  “They ain’t but one. I’s soopreme, gran’—”

  “Sure you are. How about religion, now? Member of any church in Appleton?”

  “Sholy. The spirit o’ man mus’ be nutrified, Misto’ Casey. I’s a P.O.P. original charter member.”

  “What’s P.O.P?”

  “People o’ Pisgah. Maybe you nevo heard. Folks has lots o’ things they’s ignorant about.”

  “Who runs that show?”

  “‘Tain’t no circus, Misto’ Casey.”

  “We won’t argue that. Who runs it?”

  “It runs itse’f. De inspiration o’ de Lo’d providin’ tongues o’ flame, it jes’ nacherly spreads. We’s not conscripted into limits. De P.O.P.—”

  “Will pop, by thunder if you don’t answer me! Who bosses the show? Who holds the money? Who gives orders?” Casey demanded.

  “Missis Isobel Aintree is de Lo’d’s appointed leader in this heah present dispensation, Misto’ Casey. She’s white folks.” Aloysius Jackson folded both hands in front of him and stood easy, apparently throwing one hip clear out of joint. It seemed that as far as he was concerned having “white folks” for a leader settled everything. Casey thought otherwise.

  “Where is Mrs. Aintree?” he demanded.

  “De Lo’d knows.”

  “So do you. In New York?”

  Aloysius Jackson opened and shut his mouth, and his Adam’s apple moved, but he said nothing.

  “You’ve seen her this morning, haven’t you?” said Casey.

  “Misto’ Casey, I’s dumb. I’s spiffically laid on not to make no mention o’ the movements of de leader of de P.O.P. I claims privilege.”

  “All right,” Casey answered. “Ever hear of jail? Ever been in Georgia?”

  Aloysius Jackson’s face underwent a subtle change of color and then set hard. Casey continued:

  “Take a hold of yourself and think a minute! George Munroe, from Truckton, Georgia, won’t go back for quite a while, unless his ghost walks. You rec
all him? President of the Indaypindent order o’ Something-or-other wi’ weekly cash benefits attached. Misused the mails, and razored the Federal officer who went to arrest him. That black man talked. He was a great talker. He died talking. You weren’t his secretary now, by any chance?”

  Aloysius Jackson seemed to prefer not to enter the ranks of great talkers. He swallowed his Adam’s apple, regurgitated it, and made no comment.

  “You weren’t the secretary who couldn’t be found to give evidence at the trial, I suppose. Another name, o’ course in those days, but as likely as not the identical same fingerprints. Name of Alexander Hammond in those days, I think. That wasn’t you?”

  “Oh no, no, no, Misto’ Casey. You’re grievously mistooken. That wasn’t me at all.”

  “Uh-huh! You’re not on your trial — yet. Take care and don’t commit yourself.”

  “I shoh won’t, Misto’ Casey!”

  “It ‘ud be easy to prove. You’d get ten years.”

  “Statute o’ limitations, Misto’ Casey! I provokes that statute. I provokes it consequentially.”

  “Invoke the Monroe doctrine, if you want to,” answered Casey. “You don’t know the law, my son. But, as I said, don’t commit yourself. The Justice Department won’t be bothered with you, unless you get rambunctious.”

  “Mr. Casey, sah, I’s the least rambunctiousest nigger ‘at you all know.”

  “Got pinched the other day, though?”

  “Yes, sah, Misto’ Casey, Ah got ‘rested, but Ah’m not guilty; no, sir.”