Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “If you hold your tongue you shall have for yourself one full share, equal to that of each of us, in whatever we discover,” Grim explained to her.

  “But let one hint drop, and you eat my knife!” said Ali. And Gauri believed both of them.

  In all lands where the laws are written for the benefit of privilege there are smugglers — not only of contraband jewels and rum, but of contraband knowledge and skill. There are men, who belong to no certified profession, who can do as well for you in the way of experience, and at half the price, as any blockade runner can in the matter of lace or tobacco. No license confers skill, any more than payment of the duty improves art. Many a doctor, barricaded from or pitched out neck and crop from his profession knows more than the exclusive orthodox. But he has to follow Aesculapius and Galen in peril of imprisonment and fine. That is the point. He must not talk.

  None knew, and none cared, why Doctor Cornelius MacBarron might not any longer use the title legally that his patients conferred on him gratefully, whether the law approved or not. For one thing he was an Eurasian — fifty-fifty — Caledonian Light Infantry on one side, and a dark mama — no sinecure to go through life with. So he might not choose. What people said to or concerning him he had to tolerate, extracting now and then advertisement, more profitable than solacing, from the scandalous — even if merited — slanders of the regular professionals.

  It was bruited abroad in Delhi — behind the drugstore counters, and in mess-rooms, and elsewhere — that at absurdly reasonable prices Cornelius MacBarron would cure anything — and what’s more, hold his peace. He was said to have quite a wide following, and to know more secrets than a banker.

  Whatever he knew, and whomever he recognized, he said nothing when brought in a cab in broad daylight to the Gauri’s scandalous abode. With the long, lantern jaws and raw bones of a Scotsman, sad brown eyes, an unenthusiastic presence and a sallow skin, he did not seem to invite conversation or curiosity. Rather he repelled both.

  “There’s your man,” said Jeremy, showing him Cyprian in Gauri’s scented bed. “Cure him if you can.”

  MacBarron did not ask, “Who is he?” but “Is he hurt?”

  “No. Sick. Old. That’s all,” answered Jeremy.

  “My fee will be fifty rupees — per visit,” MacBarron announced, as if saying his prayers.

  Jeremy produced the money. MacBarron folded it, and spoke again —

  “Leave me alone with him, please.”

  Whereat Jeremy demurred, but was overruled by the others, who conceded, under the inspiration of Chullunder Ghose, that it was reasonable. A man without the right to practise has excuse for dispensing with witnesses.

  MacBarron emerged from the bedroom about fifteen minutes later and announced, like a verger opening pews, that in his opinion the patient would recover.

  “He must lie still. Here is a prescription. Let him drink it as often as he will. You may pay me now for a second visit; that is wiser.”

  So they paid him, and he was on his way to the waiting cab when King detained him.

  “Not so swiftly! We’ve another job. Do you mind walking?”

  MacBarron minded nothing if he was paid. King led him through narrow streets to a place where three alleys came together on the right-hand side and a high wall on the left with a narrow door in it concealed the lower story of a minaret, whose mosque had long since succumbed to the ravages of time.

  The door opened when King struck three blows on it, and Ali’s dark face appeared in a challenging scrutiny.

  “He groans much, but says nothing at all,” Ali announced abruptly, and turned his back to lead them in.

  The minaret was Ali’s good provision. Wakf , the system of Moslem endowments for charitable purposes, is as liable to abuse as any other human scheme for standing off the evil day. Ali’s blood-brother, having lent his sword in a blood-feud to which a wealthy merchant in the Chandni Chowk was party, was now in receipt of a comfortable income and the job of muezzin to a minaret without a mosque. In theory he was supposed to cry the summons to prayer at the appointed times, but in practise he was neither seen nor heard, lest busybodies should inquire into the source of his revenue.

  Naturally, no man with a sinecure like that would be willing to share it for nothing. He demanded hotel prices, and was indignant when Ali withheld ten per cent. as his own commission. But the virtue of him was that he was just as much bent on secrecy as anyone, and the watch he kept in consequence was priceless. Even after Ali had admitted King and MacBarron within the wall Ali’s brother examined them and grumbled at having to entertain half Delhi.

  “Is this a Salleevayshun-armee-khana ?” he demanded.

  King led MacBarron by the winding inner stair to a room at the top of the minaret, where the muezzin was supposed to sleep, and whence the now decrepit gallery was reached by a narrow door in the masonry. The door was closed, and such light as was available came through a six-inch slit in the wall, for Ali’s brother would permit no artificial light for fear of attracting attention.

  On a truck bed in the darkest part of the round room lay the sole survivor of the three who had burned Cyprian’s books. The whites of his eyes gleamed in darkness, but the rest of him was nearly invisible, for they had taken his yellow robe away, and his coppery, dry skin was of a shade that nearly matched the gloom. It was too hot to endure blankets.

  MacBarron glanced at him, and then at King without visible emotion.

  “My fee will be a thousand rupees,” he announced.

  “Check do?”

  “Cash.”

  King was obliged to return and obtain the money from Grim. That took time, because Grim had to send a messenger to cash his check. When King reached the minaret again the prisoner’s leg was already in plaster of Paris brought by Ali from a Goanese apothecary’s, and the wrist was being manipulated in spite of the Hindu’s protests. They had tied him to the bed; there was no other way of controlling him. The only thing he had not done to make trouble for them was to cry aloud.

  “That arm must come off,” announced MacBarron five minutes after King’s return. “The reason is this—”

  He went into details, deeply technical, displaying the same fearlessness in diagnosis that an engineer does when ordering parts of a locomotive scrapped. His objection to witnesses had vanished, for it was obvious that none of this secretive batch of clients would dare to expose him; and he had sufficient sense for situations not to ask the prisoner’s permission. The whole conversation was in English until he bent over the bed at last and, looking straight into the victim’s eyes, said curtly in Punjabi —

  “Your arm must come off at the elbow.”

  That produced speech at last — coppery, resonant argument all mixed with threats intended to convey one point of principle: Anything — anything went; they might burn him living; he would not resist. But he would enter whole into the next world, with his right wrist fit for Kali’s service! If they sought to take his arm off he would work a vengeance on them! If they did not believe that, let them take the first step!

  “Hocus-pocus!” said MacBarron, not particularly sotto voce .

  “Is the leg all right?” King asked him.

  “It is set. It will heal. He will limp.”

  “Good enough. Please come again this evening,” said King.

  “To cut the arm off? Very well. That is two visits in twenty-four hours. Two hundred rupees extra. In advance.”

  King paid him, and he went.

  “By Allah, we of Sikunderam, who think we will plunder India when the British go, must first take lessons from that man!” remarked Ali.

  “Go below and keep watch!” ordered King, and in a minute he and the prisoner were alone together, looking in each other’s eyes.

  “Want to lose your arm?”

  The man grinned in agony. The grin was half-grimace, but there was defiance and even amusement there.

  “The arm that knows the trick of the handkerchief — the killing arm?”
/>
  King put as much cruelty and mockery as he could summon into his voice.

  But the trouble was that King knew well how far in the worst extremity he would be willing to go. And what was strength of character, too manly to take full advantage of helplessness even for any reward, the other could read but could not understand. He misinterpreted it as weakness — fear. Whereas about the only fear King has (and that unspoken — secret — sacred in his inner-being) is that he may not in some crisis quit himself as if all the decent fellows in the world were looking on.

  “Will you amputate?” asked the Hindu, pointing to the injured wrist with his other hand and grinning again. He had feared MacBarron. He was no more afraid of King than a priest is of policemen. The worst of it was King knew well that, whatever power this fellow might have of summoning assistance without the use of obvious means, he would not use it except in dire necessity.

  There is no rule more strict than that, probably because the penalty for breach of it is unimaginably awful. Radio is a joke, a mere clumsy subterfuge, compared to the gift some Indians have of communicating with one another across great distances. Every man who has the least acquaintance with the East knows that. But they don’t give up their secret even in extremity, or use it without unquestionable reason.

  It was possible that he might tell secrets under the torture and fear of amputation. But King was not morally capable of doing that. Instead he tried bribery — a bargain he would have said.

  “Keep your arm and join us. You may have one full share in any discovery we make.”

  The man laughed genuinely — just as copper-voiced as he was copper-skinned. It was as if some devil in an unseen world had reached over and struck a gong in this one — three rising notes and then the overtones, all mockery.

  King laughed too, on a descending scale. He appreciated — what few from the Western Hemisphere can realize — that money, a material reward, or any of the compensations that the West deems valuable have no weight whatever in the calculations of the thinking East. The politicians and a few of the bunnia class have swapped old lamps for new, but at the very mention of western money or wisdom the old East laughs. She can afford to.

  “All right,” King said. “Where are we then?” He turned his face away deliberately, as if discouraged. “If I can’t overcome you, what do you propose to do with me?”

  He gave the man time to consider that, then met his eyes again — objective-thinking Anglo-Saxon challenging the East that thinks subjectively or not at all. Neither could pierce the other’s veil.

  “You are no use,” said the Hindu, letting his head fall back on the folded blanket that served for pillow. His eyes were alight with fever.

  In spite of the intolerable heat King made sure that the door leading out to the gallery was locked, for whoever dares set limits to the capacity of esoteric India is likely to find himself surprised. Then he left him, giving orders below to keep on the qui vive and not to give the prisoner water or information. He would let the man torture himself a while and lift his veil in his own way.

  And presently at Gauri’s house, superintended and giggled over by Gauri and her maid, King, Grim and Jeremy put on the three orange-yellow smocks that had been the garb of the enemy, coppering their skins with some compound of vegetable greases that Gauri procured for them, and changing every expression of their faces until Gauri and the rest pronounced them perfect strangers. Then Grim and Jeremy submitted to King’s drill, which was exasperating in insistence on minutest details, Gauri prompting him.

  “Do you think you could manipulate a handkerchief the way you saw it done?” King asked, tossing one of Gauri’s long silk scarfs to Jeremy.

  He imitated perfectly the swift, apparently effortless pass from hand to hand. There is nothing that Jeremy can’t imitate. Nothing was lacking except the will to kill by strangling the victim, and the secret of how it is done.

  “Can’t hatch a chicken from a glass egg,” he said apologetically. “I’m safe until I thug somebody.”

  King was insatiable — drilling, drilling, making them repeat all manner of proposed behavior in emergency, until they struck at last from very weariness, and Gauri brought cooling drinks and comfort in the shape of flattery.

  “Perfect!” she told them.

  “Nevertheless, this deferential babu, like wholesale tiger smelling traps invariably, would better accompany this expedition,” said Chullunder Ghose. “Obesity is only disadvantage — curiosity impelling — adipose impeding — striking happy medium at all times—”

  “You be still!” commanded King.

  “Certainly, sahib ! I desist! Am silent! Sublime satisfaction in service of noblemen makes obedient babu dumb! Your humble servant. Mum’s the word, like Yankee skirmisher in No Man’s Land! Nevertheless—”

  He paused, looking up under lowered eyelids like a meek, ridiculous, fat schoolgirl.

  Grim recognized the reference to a Yankee skirmisher as an appeal to himself. “Spill it!” he ordered. “Be quick.”

  “Silence being self-imposed on all three sahibs , somebody should come along to scintillate with clever verbiage. Self being otherwise unoccupied—”

  “Whatever you said would give the game away,” Grim interrupted severely.

  “Even secret hymn to goddess Kali?”

  He intoned it, throwing out his chest and making a pig’s snout of his fat lips around the lower bass notes, that rumble and roll like the voice of the underworld glorifying in destruction, making of cruelty, death and disease sweet satisfaction for the dreadful bride of Siva. Few ever heard that hymn who were not initiates of Kali’s dreadful cult, or —

  “Were you ever held for the sacrifice?” King asked him suddenly.

  “Sahib , I am superstitious! Reference to secret details of risky past might cause repetition of same, which decency forbid! Am dumb!”

  He would not tell how he had learned that hymn. He knew the value of it, and of silence. He was indispensable.

  “No extra charge!” he announced with pursed lips.

  “One break and you’re fired!” said Grim.

  “One break and we are all dead!” he retorted. “Awful! Yet — at my age — nevertheless — how many last chances I have had! Cat-o’-nine tails is rank outsider compared to most of us! Whoever boasted of dying daily had me in mind. Verb. sap .”

  They waited until long after dark, when Ramsden reported the safe disposal of two corpses, and was detailed to take care of Cyprian.

  “Tell him he’s in the house of an Indian gentleman, whose wife can’t very well interview him in her husband’s absence,” Grim advised. “Say his own place was full of gas, so we had to lock it up. If he asks any more questions, tell him the doctor says he must sleep.”

  Narayan Singh was told off to await the doctor. Then the three, Chullunder Ghose following, set forth on what was actually a forlorn hope.

  “Pray, you men!” said King, half-laughing. “If we can’t get an inside track to the Nine through this man, we may as well admit defeat. He’s dry — full of fever — in pain — half-conscious. We can fool him now or never.”

  They could almost fool themselves. Their shadows on the street wall so resembled the parts they played that they had the sensation of being followed by assassins, the heavy footsteps of Chullunder assisting the suggestion.

  They totally fooled Ali of Sikunderam and his suspicious brother. Ali thrust his long knife through the partly opened door in the wall and threatened to disembowel the lot of them unless they made themselves scarce.

  “By Allah, shall a Hindu set foot on the sacred threshold of a mosque?” he demanded, as the rightful keeper of the place shifted a lantern this way and that behind him to expose the intruders better.

  The voice of Chullunder Ghose was revelation — impiously making use of holy writ from the shadows in the rear:

  “And they came unto their own, but their own received them not. Even in A. D. seventy they knew the nature of Sikunderam! Give sop to Cerbe
rus, sahibs ! Price of admission is payable in Beehive brandy!”

  “I knew it all along!” said Ali with a curt laugh.

  “Aye, any fool would know it;” his brother agreed.

  “Open the door then, fools!”

  Chullunder Ghose waddled in first, pushing aside the two custodians, bowing in his three employers, retiring again behind them to hold up both hands like the leader of an orchestra directing pianissimo . Thereafter not a word was said.

  In creaking, bat-winged darkness they four mounted the minaret stairs, pausing each half-dozen steps to listen for sounds from above. Chullunder Ghose, holding a flask of water destined for the prisoner’s use when he should acquire the right to it by bargain, stopped on the rickety floor below the upper room and sat, cross-legged, with his face toward the opening through which the other three must pass — a square hole at the stair-head. Low sounds — human speech assuredly — emerged through it, using some other than the ordinary language of the streets.

  The words ceased as King in the lead reached midway up the last flight of stairs. A face appeared in the opening — coppery even in that dim gloom — a new face, not the prisoner’s. King, never hesitating, took the next step and the others followed. A word would have betrayed them. But even the babu — he particularly — rose to the heights of instant self- command.

  A stanza of the hymn to Kali rose from the babu’s throat like a burst of faraway organ music, and the face in the opening withdrew. King went on up. He had not hesitated. He was not lost.

  Keeping step, not harrying, not looking to the right or left but purposely moving like men in a dream, the other two followed him through and sat down along-side him in the attitude the three book-burners had taken on Cyprian’s yak-hair carpet, Jeremy at one end.

  The owner of the unexpected face thrust his hand against the door that led to the gallery, letting in sufficient star-light to reveal the orange-yellow of his long smock. Then he sat down facing them, with his back to the wall by the head of the bed.