Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Not satisfied with that, he walked tip to the police officer and whispered to him. Then, from him, to the man in orange-yellow who was beginning to look less pleased — a mite impatient.

  “Have I ever seen you anywhere?” asked Jeremy. “Were you ever in Jerusalem? Jaffa? Alexandria?”

  “No!”

  “He lies!” said Jeremy. “I know him well! This was a trick by the Hindu to steal a gold watch from your honor,” he went on, smiling at the officer as if butter hardly ever melted in his mouth. “However, as the Prophet saith, on whom be peace, ‘Let not words and emptiness of speech suffice!’ Search all three men!”

  Now Ali’s sons stood still, submitting, for they had felt what Jeremy’s nimble fingers did. And Jeremy, with his back to Ramsden, passed to him two gold coins for safety’s sake, stepping forward again instantly. The jaw of the man in orange-yellow dropped.

  “He — that Arab—” he began.

  But the searchers had stripped Ali’s sons in vain, and it was his turn. The first hand thrust into his pocket drew out the officer’s gold watch and chain.

  “Magic!” exclaimed the officer. “He never once came near me!”

  “Lock him up then! Such as he are dangerous!” said Jeremy not turning a hair, and the officer accepted the advice, insisting, too, however, on holding three of Ali’s sons as witnesses.

  It was then, as the door of one cell slammed on all four and a fifth already in there, that Narayan Singh strode in, appraised the situation, and strode out again, leaving as many to follow him as could or would.

  CHAPTER VII. “Shakespearean homeopathic remedy!”

  GRIM and Cyprian sat face to face in silence with a shaft of sunlight streaming through the space between them. Infinitely tiny specks of dust — for Cyprian was a martinet and Manoel used cloth and broom incessantly — danced tarantella-fashion, more or less as gnats do, in the golden fairway.

  “You observe them?” said Cyprian presently. “Each one of those moving specks is itself made of billions of infinitely tiny specks all in motion. That is the way the universe is made. All atoms — all in motion — in an all-pervading essence known as ether. You know that? It is in the books — the oldest of all books as well as the newest. The ancients knew about it seven thousand years ago, if we accept their heretical chronology. I have their books to prove it. These Nine Unknown are the inheritors of scientific secrets that used to form the basis of the Ancient Mysteries. Yes, that’s so. That’s so. There isn’t any doubt of it. Not religious secrets, understand me — no, no, they are enemies of all religion! They use scientific truths to stir superstition by pretending their phenomena are miracles! Devils’ work! They know — the rascals! They have knowledge! Compared to them our modern scientists are just as Julius Cesar would have been if somebody confronted him with Paine’s fireworks or an eighteen-inch gun or the radio. Clever fellow, Csar. Bright as a button. He would have tried to explain it away; tried — but there would be the phenomena — effect — result of cause; you have to know the cause to understand effect. No use repudiating it. Our moderns fail exactly as Julius Caesar would have done. And the Nine Unknown laugh. Devils!

  “Nothing suits them better than to have the scientists, the newspapers, the governments, the secret service, the police, all vow that no such knowledge as theirs exists — no such organization. Above all they chuckle because the church denies them. Missionaries are their best friends. To declare they are non-existent without proving it leaves the rascals free to do as they please, without lessening the superstition of the crowd. You understand?”

  Grim did not. He has the pragmatist-adventurer’s view of life, dissatisfied with all veils hung between himself and noumenon, and studying each phenomenon from the angle of “what’s the use of it?”

  “Why deny what you can’t prove? Why not discover their science and employ it properly?”

  Cyprian interrupted him with a frown and a flash of temper that betrayed volcanic will unweakened by his age and only curbed by discipline.

  “Tchut! Wiser minds than yours decided about that long ago. Beware of the sin of presumption! These people have been branded as magicians — tricksters! Their pretensions, magic — tricks! Humbugs! — evil-workers! — liars! — cheats! They have imposed on superstition. Take the consequences. Banned by the Church. Outlawed. Burn their books! Who shall say then that they have, or ever had, a scrap of scientific knowledge? That is my task — fifty — two-and-fifty years of effort. Burn the books! The nine books! Burn them! They have defied the Church — sed prevalabit !”

  “I don’t get you,” answered Grim. “Knowledge ought to be known. Those books—”

  “Are mine! To do as I see fit! Did you not agree?” demanded Cyprian.

  Grins had agreed, but that did not admit the whole contention. Grim, because he keeps an open mind, has been accused by missionaries of belonging to nearly every heathen cult in turn, but his name stands written on no muster-roll. He is under no vows of obedience. He countered:

  “King and I have talked this over — lots. King has been on the trail of it for twenty years you know. Are you sure the Nine aren’t honorable men, who know more than is safe to teach the public?”

  Cyprian smiled at that like a martyr prepared to die for his convictions.

  “Only, someone killed the Portuguese,” Grim went on. “Why? If they know so much, why kill a drunken crook you can afford to pity?”

  “I have told you. They are devils,” answered Cyprian.

  “And while the hotel burned there was a voice urging the crowd to attack us,” Grim continued. “The same voice shouted, ‘Fire!’ — deliberated creating panic. Someone had searched the Don’s room — carried his books away. Same man — same men more likely — returned to burn their tracks. That hardly seems like men who, as you put it, have inherited the knowledge of the Ancient Mysteries.”

  The expression of Cyprian’s face changed. He drew on his mask of patience that at eighty a man has learned to use consummately or not at all. It was quite clear that if he gave discussion rein these colts of other creeds would gallop away with him, Grim particularly. Discipline was out of the question. Whip he had none. Argument was useless. It would do no good to tell a man like Grim to let speculation alone.

  “Would you go and find my servant Manoel?” he asked; for helplessness is like a weapon, in a wise man’s hand.

  Grim left the room.

  Manoel sat cross-legged on a blanket in the corner of the pantry, hardly having moved from the spot where Ramsden dumped him down. The sin of speculation — if it is a sin — could not be laid to him, for he was dumb — determined — obstinate — like a clog that has hidden to escape a thrashing and will neither run away nor come to heel. He did not even shake his head when Grim ordered him into the padre’s presence; so Grim went back and reported the state of affairs, having more than one purpose in mind.

  And it seemed good to Cyprian just then to supply Grim with the wherewithal to take his mind off the subject they had been discussing. Helplessness was put to work again.

  “I am old. It tires me to undertake these — do you think Mr. Ramsden frightened him too much — I wonder — would you mind, eh? See what you can do with him — persuade him to come in here — yes? Such a rascal as he has been! — no, by no means always honest — but a servant — he has been a comfort. Will you talk to him?”

  That was tantamount to carte blanche . Grim, incapable of nosing into the domestic secrets of his host, could, would and did crowd every limit to the edge when given leave. He squatted down, cross-legged too, in front of Manoel and waited until the shifty brown eyes had to come to a rest at last and meet his gray ones. (The passport says they are gray, which makes it legal, but no two agree as to their real color. Possibly they change, although his zeal is fixed.)

  “You’re in luck. You’ve one chance!” Grim said speaking in Punjabi.

  Manoel did not answer; but the word luck probed the very heart of inborn passion.

 
“Da Gama and Braganza had no luck at all,” said Grim, and Manoel lowered his eyes, not straight downward but along the arc of an ellipse because of certain racial peculiarities.

  “Da Gama died. Braganza’s house was burned. Do you feel brave?” Grim asked him.

  Manoel looked up — suddenly.

  “Who are you? “ he asked.

  His lips parted loosely. The corners of his mouth dropped, and he shifted his eyes to left and right, showing more than was wholesome of the bloodshot whites.

  Dread, unexpected and acute, was unmistakable; it acted like a solvent on the sullenness of fear. Grim saw his chance — almost too long to be called chance; he had nothing to go on but conjecture.

  “Who do you think I am?” he retorted. “Look into my eyes! Who am I?”

  Manoel hesitated, with the expression of self-conscious innocence facing a firing squad. Having double-crossed friend and enemy alike there was nothing to fall back on but his conscience, obviously! Grim bored in, wishing he knew something definite to base assault on.

  “Didn’t you expect me?” he demanded.

  “Yes, but—”

  The million-to-one shot landed! Grim’s face hardly changed expression, but his eyes had laughter in them that the Goanese was far too scared to recognize.

  “ — but I didn’t look for a Punjabi. He who told me wore a yellow smock — a sadhu. I have not had time—”

  “Time!” Grim retorted, forcing the note of indignation.

  “I have not had time, and I have not been paid,” said Manoel, shifting his eyes again, and then himself, so that Grim, who was all alert suspicion, jumped to a conclusion.

  “Do you know they killed da Gama?” he asked, setting his face like brass, and Manoel shuddered. “Do you mean to tell me you have not been paid?” he went on, fixing his eyes on the Goanese and speaking slowly.

  And whether or not Manoel had pocketed his price, imagination warned him he was helpless, at the mercy of someone who would harvest whether he had sown or not. Admission that he had been paid was no proof of it at all, he being what he was.

  “But now he knows I was at the keyhole. He will dismiss me. And first he will investigate. So he will find out, and I do not dare! I will give the money back!”

  That, too, was no proof that he had been paid. But it was proof that he had taken more than one step on the path of treason. Grim turned and swiped at a fly. Again the unhappy Manoel shifted — not so much his eyes this time as his whole person, although his eyes did move. It was because his eyes moved that he did not see Grim looking in the little kitchen mirror.

  “Give it here!” said Grim.

  “The money? I — I—”

  “No. Give it here — or—”

  “Let me go then! I must run! I do not dare stay and face his anger!”

  But Grim knew now, and he is one of those who use knowledge, patiently or promptly as the case may be. He leaned forward. Manoel screamed, as a chicken does when a housewife has her by the legs. Grim seized him by the collar-band, and all ten chocolate fingers closed on the iron wrist. Grim jerked him forward, threw him on his face and sat on him, proceeding then to raise the blanket.

  “Thought so! Yow! You little scorpion!”

  He seized his victim’s wrist and twisted it until a knife dropped — kicked the knife across the floor — glanced at the back of his thigh to observe that it was hardly bleeding — laid the folded blanket on the Goanese’s head and sat on that — then lifted what had been beneath the blanket, carefully.

  It needed care. It was an old book bound in vellum, crackled with age. Within, in sepia, beautifully written in the Maharatta tongue, with diagrams, on paper yellowed with age and thumbing, was what purported to be a literal translation of a very ancient roll.

  The first page, on which the translator’s name had very likely been, was missing. On the second was a pentagram within the dodeahedron — the geometrical figure on which alchemists assert the universe was built. Beneath that was a diagram of the Hindu cosmogony side by side with the Chaldean. On the third page, in Maharathi at the top, as if continuing a paragraph from page one, was the following:

  Whereafter, being certain that the roll would not be missed until (here a name was illegible) should come again, I hid in the cave with the hag who made provision for my needs, and by the light of the unextinguishable lamp I labored at the construing, with haste, that the whole might be accomplished, yet with diligence, lest errors enter in.

  This finished volume witnesseth.

  Which being done, this shall be hidden in a place known only to the hag. Whereafter, I will endeavor to return the roll lest (the undecipherable name again) should fall under suspicion and stiffer for infidelity. That risk is great, for it is hard to come at the place where the rolls are kept.

  But death is no more than the gates of life.

  The hag has her instructions. So this fruit of my long husbandry shall fall into the right hands. He who guided hitherto being All-wise to accomplishment.

  Then here begins:

  On the next page, at the top, in bold Maharathi characters, was the first law of the Cabalists, and of all alchemists and true magicians since the world began.

  AS ABOVE, SO BELOW.

  Grim read no further, for the stuff absorbed him to the point where near-unconsciousness of every other circumstance prevailed. His whole being yearned to the lure of that musty volume and its secrets. He craved it as some unfortunates crave opium. The merely physical appeal of drugs, prodigious though it is, monopolizes no more than the intellectual attraction of the unknown does a man of Grim’s temperament. If he had read another page he would have read a dozen, and a dozen would have only whetted appetite. He closed the book with a slap that brought the pungent dust out, and removed himself from Manoel’s head.

  “You insect! If you had the original of this I’d trade you my right hand for it!”

  “Let me go!” sputtered Manoel. “Oh, sir; I am afraid to face him! Take the book and let us both go!”

  But Grim took book and Manoel, each by the back, and shoved the Goanese along in front of him into the padre’s presence.

  “He seems to have been keeping this for you,” he said and laid the volume on Cyprian’s knees.

  “Had he read it?” demanded Cyprian.

  “Oh, no! Oh, no, sir! Oh, father, oh, no, no! It is black magic and forbidden. I would never read it!”

  “What odds? He wouldn’t understand a word,” said Grim, and Cyprian nodded.

  “Let him go,” said Cyprian. “Drive him from the house!”

  But Grim had spoken English, and the fear that gnawed Manoel’s bowels multiplied. It dawned on him that he had been tricked. Grim, then, was Father Cyprian’s friend, and not —

  “No, no, no!” he shouted. “No! You must be merciful! This is my sanctuaree! I may not be driven forth! I tell you I did it to save you from murder because you are old! You are ungrateful! You commit a great sin if you drive me forth!”

  He wanted to throw himself down in the attitude of supplication, but Grim had him by the neck.

  “He expected somebody,” said Grim. “Shall we see this through now?”

  “Face the adversary!” Cyprian answered.

  But age gave way to youth. He waited for Grim to make the next decision. And Grim held his arm out, helping — almost lifting the old man from his chair.

  “You’d better be seen at the door,” he said. “We’ll let them see Manoel go empty-handed.”

  He turned on the Goanese and shook him.

  “Listen, asp! Get your belongings. Oh! Only a blanket, eh? Preparations all made — everything out of the house but that?”

  He followed him to the pantry, watched him through the door, and seized him by the neck again as he emerged.

  “Now, you’ve another chance. Don’t speak in the street! Show you haven’t got the book — look scared — walk! You understand me? If you disobey I’ll—”

  “Oh, oh! Onlee let me not go! I will�
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  Grim stood back. It was Cyprian, trembling with age rather than emotion, who stood in the doorway and sped the errant Goanese with his left hand raised palm-outward and a look of pursed-up horror.

  “I tell you, father, I did it to preevent murder!” sobbed Manoel with great tears running down into his whiskers. “Give me benediction then, I—”

  Cyprian did not deny him that. It possibly accomplished more than Grim’s threat. Manoel departed down-street with his head hung, and the blanket draped over one arm, avoiding all encounters; and a man in orange-yellow by the great tree opposite — where Ali’s sons had sat — drew such deductions as he saw fit. Grim standing in shadow within saw the man make a signal.

  “Good!” he said. “Shut the door now,” and Cyprian obeyed as if learning lessons. It was hard, maybe, at eighty to learn to dispense with even a dishonest servant.

  They returned to the sitting-room, whence the cloistered peace had gone, although the sunlight still streamed through the spaced jalousies.

  “Pity the first page is missing,” said Grim by way of making conversation.

  “It isn’t!” snapped Cyprian, and looked to see.

  Confronted by the fact, his last strength seemed to vanish and he sat down, knocking the book to the floor. Grim rescued it.

  “On the first page, at the top, was the finest cosmogony ever drafted,” said Cyprian, “and underneath it an explanation of the terns used.”

  He spoke as if hope were dead forever. Grim changed the subject, or tried to —

  “Let’s hope our crowd don’t return too soon!”

  “I should have searched that blanket,” Cyprian grumbled. “He had the first page wrapped in it. I know he had!”

  Grim tried again. “Tell me what the ‘unextinguishable lamp’ means on page two,” he demanded.

  “Mind your own business!” Cyprian snapped back, struggling to be calm. “If I will burn books, shall you rifle their secrets first? Phoenix from the ashes, eh? No, no! Hear no evil — see no evil — know no evil — that is my advice to you, my son! What I burn need not trouble you!”