by Talbot Mundy
The Portuguese got down from the high stool and leaned his back against it.
“Are we agreed about the money?” he asked, looking from eye to eye for disagreement.
His was that disposition. He would promise anything to men in whom the seed of disagreement lay, knowing that the future would hold opportunity. But his wandering eye was fascinated by Jeff Ramsden’s clenched, enormous fist. It seemed to symbolize. It was a totem. It did not stand for intellect, but it was heartbreakingly honest, neither Latin in its attitude toward a problem, nor cynical, nor unjust — not too credulous — just aboveboard, and direct, and faithful.
“Produce the books!” repeated Grim.
But he was dealing with the Latin temperament, which is not frank, reserving always little secret back-ways out from its commitments.
“I will go and arrange it,” da Gama answered. Whereat Jeremy did three tricks in succession with a coin, as if by way of illustration.
“I’ll go with you,” Ramsden volunteered. “I can carry quite a lot of books.”
“No!” said the Portuguese, contriving to look scandalized in the way the Latin nations do when anyone suggests a view of their back-yard. “There are my personalities. I mean, I am not a pip-show. I go alone. I will arrange. You may meet me. You shall have the books.”
“I have seven sons,” announced Ali ben Ali of Sikunderam, with his steel eyes focused on infinity, as if he were dreaming of his distant hills.
“Well — they would, no doubt, do to carry books,” said the Portuguese, not understanding him.
Whereat Ali ben Ali got up and left the room, Narayan Singh locking the door again when he was gone. The others understood that perfectly.
“Go and make your arrangements. Where will you meet us?” Grim demanded.
“Do you know my quarters? There then,” said the Portuguese. “In an hour? No, that is too soon. I have books in one place and another. They must be collected. Come to-night.”
“Leave one of those coins with me,” said Jeremy. “You shall have it back.”
Da Gama made a gesture of magnificence and passed the chamois-leather bag. Jeremy tipped the contents into his hand, and chose, holding up a coin between his fingers.
“What’s it worth?” he asked. “You can have it when you like, but—”
“Write me a receipt for it.”
Da Gama took a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket and straightened it out, smoothing the reverse side.
“This babu advising skepticism, as aforesaid! Safety first!” advised Chullunder Ghose, squirming nervously. “Same being ancient adage!”
“I get you,” laughed Jeremy, and he waved aside the proffered sheet of paper, which da Gama pocketed again with an air of impudent indifference.
Jeremy produced an English five-pound note from his pocketbook and wrote his name on it. [*]
“Take it. I’ll trade back whenever you say.”
The Portuguese looked disappointed but folded the five-pound note on second thought and slipped it in the lining of his hat.
“So,” he said tartly, “I cannot make use of that one, since it is offered as security. If your excellency had another of the same denomination, to be lent me pending—”
King pulled out his wallet at once and produced the equivalent of five pounds in Indian currency notes. The Portuguese accepted them, and they needed no signature.
“Gracas . To be repaid, señor . Then we meet tonight — at my — ah — hotel.”
He bowed magnificently, wholly unaware that the gesture made him look ridiculous. Narayan Singh unlocked the office door, and he backed out, continuing to bow, ignoring nobody, treating Chullunder Ghose to equal deference, the sneer on his yellow face giving the lie offensive and direct to his politeness, and he unconscious of it. He believed he made a most impressive exit.
“He is thirsty — very thirsty. And he has five pounds,” remarked Chullunder Ghose, as apropos of nothing as the Northerner’s remark had been about his seven sons.
“Let’s look at the coin,” said Grim, and Jeremy passed it.
Grim is a numismatist, if a job in a museum at the age of eighteen can make a man that. They sent him to the Near East subsequently on the strength of what he knew. He shook his head.
“It’s the same one Cyprian showed us. I’ve never seen one, nor a reproduction of one like it. I believe it’s older than Cyrene. It’s not Indian — at least, that isn’t Sanskrit lettering — and it’s better made than any of the earliest coins we know about. That might be a coin from lost Atlantis!”
“Pre-Adamite!” suggested Jeremy, but Grim was serious.
“I tell you,” he answered as the door burst open and Ali of Sikunderam strode in, “we’re in touch with the riddle of all history — the riddle of the Sphinx perhaps! Oh Lord, if we can only keep in touch!”
“By Allah, there are worse responsibilities than seven sons!” said Ali ben Ali, grinning. His grin sat crosswise of a black beard like sea-foam in the night. “If keeping touch is all your honor asks, then count it done!”
“Does a watched pot boil? Or a watched thief steal? Or a watched door open? Your sons will interfere with him!” remarked Chullunder Ghose, scratching his nose with an action suggestive of thumbing it.
“Bellyful of forebodings! They have orders not to interfere with him,” the Northerner retorted.
“Simply to watch?” asked King.
“Simply to watch him.”
“Watch me!” said Jeremy. “Come close if you like.”
He palmed the prehistoric coin in half-a-dozen ways in swift succession, making it move from hand to hand unseen, and plucking it at last from mid-air, said:
“I’ll bet a fiver the Don steals a march on us.”
“He will steal nothing!”
Ali ben Ali of Sikunderam held up a hand as if declaiming in the mosque.
“My seven sons are the cleverest thieves that live! A thief can fool a non-thief, but not a professional. They are seven to one!”
But Jeremy laughed. Whereat Ramsden, bearded like the bust of Anthony, unclenched his fist and let go the burden of his thoughts. He was a prospector by profession, used to figuring in terms of residue.
“Forty million ounces!” he exclaimed. “Do you know what only one million ounces a year, say, for six thousand years would mean — how many trains of box-cars it would take to move it? It would need a fleet of ocean liners! Talk of secrecy’s a joke!”
“Nine Unknown having kept said secret for six thousand years!” Chullunder Ghose retorted.
“And whose is the money by right?” asked Grim; that being the kind of poser you could count on him for.
“The fighter’s — the finder’s!” shouted Ali of Sikunderam, and Narayan Singh agreed, nodding, saying nothing, permitting his brown eyes to glow. And at that Chullunder Ghose looked owlish, knowing that the soldier wins but never keeps; sacrifices, serves, eats promises, and dies in vain. He did not tell all he knew, being a rather wise civilian. He sighed — Chullunder Ghose did.
“There possibly may be enough for all of us!” he said, rolling his eyes upward meekly.
Then Cyprian returned from strolling in the Chandni Chowk with that incurious consent of crowds conferred on priests and all old men — between the hours of indignation.
“You didn’t hurt him? Children, you didn’t hurt him?” he demanded. “Did he drink a little too much? Did he talk?”
King and Grim repeated what had happened, Cyprian smiling, shaking his head slowly — possibly because of old-age, yet perhaps not. At eighty years a man knows how to take advantage of infirmity.
“The long spoon!” he said. “The long spoon! It only gives the devil leverage! You should have kept him here.”
Ali ben Ali flared up at that, Koran in mind along with many other scriptures that assail the alien priest. “My sons—” he began.
“Are children, too,” said Cyprian. “I credit them with good intentions.”
“They are men!” s
aid Ali, and turned his back.
Then Jeremy, who has no reverence for anyone or anything, but two men’s share of natural affection, took Cyprian by the arm and coaxed him away to lunch at a commercial club, promising him a nap on a sofa in a corner of the empty cloakroom afterwards. The ostensible bait he used was an offer to introduce a man who owned an ancient roll of Sanskrit mantras ; but it was Jeremy’s own company that tempted; Cyprian leans on him, and seems to replenish his aging strength from the Australian’s superabundant store — a strange enough condition, for as religion goes, or its observances, they are wider than the poles apart.
“All things to all men, ain’t you, Pop!” said Jeremy. “Come and eat curried quail. The wine’s on ice.”
“And there you are!” remarked Chullunder Ghose, as the two went out, illustrating the “thereness” of the “areness” by catching a fly on the wing with his thumb and forefinger and releasing it through the open window, presumably unharmed. “Matters of mystery still lack elucidation, but ‘the wine’s on ice!’ How Anglo-Saxon! Wonderful! United States now holding greater part of world’s supply of gold, and India holding total invisible ditto, same are as plus and minus — so we go to lunch! I dishonestly propose to issue bills of exchange against undiscovered empyrean equity, but shall be voted down undoubtedly — verb. sap. as saying is — brow-beaten, sat upon — yet only wise man of the aggregation. Sell stock, that is my advice! Issue gilt-edge scrip at premium, and pocket consequences! Sell in U. S. A. undoubtedly, residing subsequently in Brazil. But there you are! Combination of Christian priest, Sikh, fanatical Moslem, freethinker, agnostic, Methodist minister’s son and cynicalist, is too overwhelming for shrewdness to prevail. Myself, am cynicalist, same being syndicalist with opportunist tendencies. I go to tiffin. Appetite — a good digestion — a siesta. Sahibs — humbly wishing you the same — salaam !”
Chullunder Ghose, too, bowed himself out backward, almost as politely as the Portuguese had done — indubitably mocking — giving no offense, because, unlike the Portuguese, he did not sneer.
CHAPTER III. “Light and longer weapons.”
IN their day the Portuguese produced more half-breeds per capita than any other nation in the world; there are stories about a bonus once paid for half-breed babies. Their descendants advertise the Portuguese of Goa without exactly cherishing the institutions of the land that gave them origin. They have become a race, not black nor white, nor even yellow, but all three; possessed of resounding names and of virtues that offset some peculiarities; not loving Goa, they have scattered. A few have grown very rich, and all exist in a no-man’s land between the rival castes and races, where some continue to be very poor indeed. Others are cooks, stewards, servants; and a few, like Fernandez de Mendoza de Sousa Diomed Braganza, keep hotels.
His was the Star of India, an amazing place with a bar and a license to sell drinks, but with a separate entrance for people ridden by compunctions. It was an ancient building, timbered with teak but added to with sheets of corrugated iron, whitewashed. Some of the upper rooms were connected with the cellar by cheap iron piping of large diameter, up which those customers who had a reputation to preserve might pull their drink in bottles by a string. Still other pipes were used for whispering purposes. In fact the “Star of India Hostelry” was “known to the police,” and was never raided, it being safer to leave villains a place where they thought themselves safe from observation.
As happens in such cases, the Star of India had a respectable reputation. Thieves only haunt the known thieves’ dens in story books. It was no place for a white man who insisted on his whiteness, nor for Delhi residents, nor for social lions. Nevertheless, it was crowded from cellar to roof with guests belonging by actual count to nineteen major castes, including more or less concealed and wholly miserable women-folk. The women in such a place who keep themselves from contact and defilement suffer worse than souls in the seventh pit of Dante’s hell.
Nine out of ten of the guests were litigants in from the country, waiting their turn in the choked courts, tolerating Diomed’s hospitality because it was cheap. The farce of caste-restrictions could be more or less observed. Intrigue was easy. You could “see” the lawyer of the other side. And as for thieves and risks, where are there none? The tenth in every instance was undoubtedly a thief — or worse.
There lived da Gama, pure blooded Portuguese, greatly honoring the half-breed by his presence. Like the caste-women, da Gama kept within the stifling walls by day as a general rule. But, again as in the women’s case, his nights were otherwise. They went to the roof then, where such little breeze as moved was hampered by curtains hung on clothes-lines to make privacy. He went to the streets, and was absent very likely all night long, none knowing what became of him, and none succeeding in entering his locked, large, corner room.
That night King, Grim, Ramsden and Jeremy went to Diomed’s hotel to keep their tryst with da Gama. They were dressed, except Jeremy, as Jats — a race with a reputation for taking care of itself, and consequently seldom interfered with; surly, moreover, and not given to answering strangers’ questions. Jeremy wore Arab clothes, that being the easiest part he plays; plenty of Arabs go to Delhi, because of the agitation about the Khalifate, so he excited no, more comment than the other three.
Mainly, in India, the religions keep apart. But that is where the Goanese comes in. He acts as flux in a sort of unacknowledged way, currying favor and abuse from all sides. There were in Diomed’s Star of India hotel not only Sikhs and Hindus, but bearded gentry, too, from up Peshawar way, immensely anxious for the fate of women-folk they left behind them, but not so respectful of a Hindu’s matrimonial prejudices.
So the roof was parceled into sanctuaries marked by lines of sheeting, each stifling square in which a lantern glowed — a seraglio, crossing of whose threshold might lead to mayhem; for nerves were on end those murderous hot nights, and lawsuits had not sweetened dispositions.
To the Northerners the quartering of that roof by night was pure sport, risk adding zest. They were artists at making dove-cotes flutter — past grand masters of the lodge whose secret is the trick of making women coo and blush before their husbands’ eyes. And not even an angry Hindu husband takes chances, if he can help it, with the Khyber knife that licks out like summer lightning in its owner’s fist. So there were doings, and a deal of wrath.
King, Grim, Ramsden and Jeremy found da Gama’s room and drew it blank. There was a key-hole, but it was screened on the inside by a leather flap that yielded when pushed with a wire without giving a view of the room. Some one — there was always someone lurking in a corner in the Star of India, possibly a watchman and perhaps not — volunteered the information that the “excellency sahib “ might be on the roof.
Fernandez de Mendoza de Sousa Diomed Braganza, sent for, denied having a pass-key to the room or any knowledge of its occupant’s movements. He, too, deliberately non-committal, suggested the roof and, deciding there was no money to be made, began to be rude. So Grim offered him fifty rupees for one look at the inside of da Gama’s room.
“There is nothing in there,” Diomed insisted.
Grim raised the offer to a hundred and then pretended to lose interest, starting away; whereat the Goanese chased all possible informers out of the passage, produced an enormous key, and pushed wide the two-inch teak door that was supposed to keep da Gama’s secrets.
“I told you there was nothing in there!” he said, pocketing Grim’s money.
He was right to all intents and purposes. There were a bed, one chair, a little table, half-a-dozen empty shelves, and a cheap old-fashioned wardrobe, from which such garments as da Gama owned had been thrown out on the floor. For the rest, a dirty tumbler, two empty bottles, a carafe, pens, ink, paper, a dilapidated dictionary and some odds and ends.
“Where are his books?” Grim asked.
“Gone!” said the Goanese unguardedly.
“Then there were books!”
“That is to say your excellency
, sahib — how should I know? Are you spies for the police? If so—” Grim showed him another hundred-rupee note.
“I am a poor man,” said Diomed. “I would like your honor’s money. But I know nothing.”
The eyes of a Goanese are like a dog’s, mild, meek, incalculably faithful; but to what they are faithful is his own affair. He is likely not faithful to the world, which has broken trust with the half-breed too often for the shattered bits to be repaired. He was afraid of something — some one — and too faithful to the fear to take any liberties.
Nevertheless, the room was dumbly eloquent. It had been raided recently by men who were at no pains to conceal the fact. Even the pockets of the clothes were inside out.
“How many men came?” Grim demanded.
“Sahib — bahadur — your excellency’s honor — I do not know! Are you spies for the police?” he asked again, and then smiled suddenly at the absurdity of that, for the police don’t argue with hundred-rupee notes. “I will die rather than say a word!” he continued, and crossed himself.
“You know Father Cyprian?” asked Jeremy in English, so unexpectedly that the Goanese stampeded.
“You must all come out! I must lock the door! You must go away at once!” he urged. “Yes, oh yes, I know Father Cyprian — an old man — veree estimable — oh, yes. Go away!”
“Take my tip. Confess to Father Cyprian! Let’s try the roof,” said Jeremy; and as it was no use staying where they were the others followed him.
“You see,” said Jeremy over his shoulder, pausing on the narrow wooden stairs, with one hand on the rail, “if he goes and confesses to Cyprian, Cyprian won’t tell us, but he’ll know, and what’s in a man’s head governs him. Better have Cyprian know than none of us.”
They emerged on the roof into new bewilderment, for there were sheets — sheets everywhere, and shadows on them, but no explanation — only a pantomime in black and white, exaggerated by the flapping and the leaping lights. Somewhere a man sang a Hindu love-song, and an Afghan was trying to sing him out of countenance, wailing his own dirge of what the Afghan thinks is love — all about infidelity and mayhem.
