Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Lead the way,” he said simply.

  But as if the threat of violence and the physical contact were all that were needed to resolve the prisoner’s fear, he instantly began to struggle, springing upright as if Jeff’s touch had released a spring, and smiting Jeff with his clenched fist three times running between the eyes. Jeff reeled backward and then, closing with him, had to fight like Samson to save his neck from breaking; for the bronze man got him by a hold below the arms and, spinning him upside-down, crashed his head against the floor and set his foot on the bent neck. It was only three layers of rugs that saved Jeff from being killed.

  For once “Rammy old top” was in the hands of a stronger adversary. Though he swept the man’s legs together with one arm and threw him, thereafter using every artifice he knew, sending home punch after terrific punch when opening offered, he could not pin his adversary down. His previous injuries, though rendered nearly painless by Ghandava’s oils, were a handicap. Each sledge-hammer blow that his opponent landed, each volcanic wrench at Jeff’s arms and legs, made matters worse.

  The end could have only been postponed for seconds. The others began to rush to Jeff’s assistance. Even Chullunder Ghose was on tip-toe to plunge into the fray, and Cyprian lay down his spectacles to look for something heavy. But Ghandava’s out-stretched hand kept all of them, chela included, standing back, they not knowing what he meant to do, yet certain he could command the situation in a second when he chose. Even Cyprian expected it, and laid down the heavy brass vase he had picked up.

  But for half-a-minute the pace was too quick for Ghandava, or so it seemed. Jeff and his prisoner twisted and writhed like bears at war in spring-time. The bronze man hurled Jeff clear, sprang to his feet again, seized a wrought-iron cobra meant to hold a lamp and lifted it to brain him.

  The thing weighed about two hundred pounds, and Jeff’s forearm, raised to intercept it, would have smashed like kindling.

  Yet it was Ghandava’s hand — smooth, soft palm upward — that met the full force of the blow, arresting it midway — a hand that looked as if it could not lift the bronze snake, let alone resist it! And he said one word, in Sanskrit possibly, at least in an unknown tongue, that seemed to stiffen the prisoner again from head to foot, so that he stood transfixed with the heavy bronze thing in his hands, arrested in mid-motion.

  “Now take him away,” he said quietly; and instead of Jeff the chela touched him. The giant set down the iron cobra and followed the chela like a man in a dream — out through a door, at the end of the room, that closed on both of them.

  “If we use force in their way they can conquer us,” Ghandava said almost apologetically. “It was what you know as luck, friend Ramsden, that enabled you to capture him last night. You took him by surprise, or he would have twisted you as a basket-maker twists the reeds between his hands. The same with every other force they use; if you stand up against it, it will flatten you. You saw me then? What I did was to redirect his energy. If I had turned it inward it would have destroyed him. Instead, I used it to arrest that iron weight in mid-career — used his energy, not mine. It is only a question of knowledge.”

  “Like riding a horse!” suggested Jeremy. “But how? Tell you what, sir, I’ll swap you! Show me that trick, and I’ll teach you any two you like of mine!”

  Ghandava laughed merrily and got back to his place on the window- seat.

  “I rather doubt my need to know your tricks,” he answered, “and to learn mine, if you care to call them tricks, would take more years than you believe you have at your disposal. Besides — how should I dare to teach you, if I could?”

  “Why not?” asked Jeremy. “I’m not a crook.”

  Ghandava smiled again.

  “Few of us are what we think we are,” he answered. “You — all of you — are on what Hindus call the Wheel. You are tied to Destiny, the agents of it, bound in your appointed places. Every star — planet — meteorite — each speck of dust that swings into view does so in obedience to law. Order is the first law. None can escape his destiny.”

  “Ah! Now we all get fortunes told! I shiver on brink of expectancy! Am I to be plutocrat? To go to jail? To travel overseas? To be distinguished personage?”

  “You’re going to be prodded in the belly!” King assured him.

  “Ouch! Sahib , there should be a law against this! Cease!”

  “If I could tell fortunes, do you think I would?” Ghandava asked.

  Cyprian, with his thumb between the pages of a black book, came toward the window and chose a high-backed chair in which he could sit without doubling up like a rag doll. He preferred dignity to any kind of comfort.

  “To be brief with you, Ghandava,” he said, as if calling a meeting to order, “we are all in your debt for princely hospitality. Is there more we may expect of you? Our purpose is to expose the Nine Unknown. We want the secrets of the Nine Unknown — their books — their treasure—”

  “Their treasure!” sighed Chullunder Ghose.

  “Their treasure and their knowledge!” Grim agreed.

  “Their books!” said Cyprian. “Can you help us?”

  “Can I, do you mean, or will I?” asked Ghandava.

  He smiled as if he found the situation funny.

  CHAPTER XVI. “Sahibs, that is a true speech!”

  GHANDAVA began to pace the floor with hands behind him.

  “To begin with, nothing is impossible!” he said, with an abruptness that made Cyprian blink.

  Chullunder Chose sighed like an epicure in presence of his favorite dish, deftly avoiding King’s attentions with the window-pole. King was in favor of hard facts and no delirium.

  “Does it strike any of you that this account of the Nine Unknown is ridiculous?” Ghandava asked.

  “Not in the least!” said Jeremy promptly, and the others nodded.

  “We know ,” said Cyprian.

  “Da Gama told us,” said Chullunder Chose.

  “They’ve persecuted us ever since we took the field against them,” said Narayan Singh.

  “That is what appears to me ridiculous,” Ghandava answered. “You presume a body of nine men, inheritors, as you describe them, of the scientific secrets of the ancients. You credit these nine with such wisdom that according to you they have been able to accumulate enormous quantities of gold at regular intervals for thousands of years without anyone discovering either its hiding-place or their method. Yet you say they have persecuted you without success. How do you propose to account for their alleged success along one line, and their rather clumsy series of failures along another? Do the two accounts appear to you compatible?”

  “They don’t,” Grim said. “We decided yesterday that those who are attacking us probably belong to a different organization.”

  “Does it occur to you,” Ghandava asked, “that these Nines who have attacked you are themselves in search of the real Nine?”

  “That had occurred to this babu,” Chullunder Ghose admitted self- complacently, with his hands folded across his stomach.

  “Why didn’t you tell us then?” King demanded.

  “Belly being tender part of my anatomy, have said nothing that might provoke assault on same,” the babu answered with both eyes on King’s prodding pole.

  Jeremy produced the three coins that remained from Da Gama’s original treasure trove. He passed them to Cyprian, who handed them to Ghandava.

  “Those look like evidence to me,” said Jeremy.

  “Don’t forget,” said King, “we’ve another prisoner in the office, who swears he was told off to kill a member of the real Nine in Benares.”

  Ghandava nodded, but Cyprian joined issue with him.

  “Why believe what he says? The organization is a series of Nines, each member of a Nine being himself a captain of another Nine and so on. I am entirely satisfied on that point. Thus, the only means of control or of investigation is from the top. Da Gama said so. One Nine knows nothing of another. For all we know the Nine Unknown may be at war with
one another. A subordinate told off to murder one of the Principals might say in honest ignorance—”

  Ghandava interrupted him with a gesture.

  “Doubt from the unexpected quarter! I see I must explain,” he said; but he paused for almost a minute. His next words were dramatic —

  “I am myself commissioned by the Nine Unknown!” For a second there was silence. Then —

  “God bless my soul!” exclaimed Cyprian.

  Ghandava laughed. Cyprian crossed himself unostentatiously. The others betrayed astonishment tinged with incredulity, except that Narayan Singh and Chullunder Chose, while surprised into speechlessness, looked disposed to credit almost anything.

  Ghandava on the whole seemed not displeased with the reception of his statement.

  “The ‘Nine Unknown’ are known to themselves by another name; and by yet another name to their few confidants; but they do exist, and they are the inheritors of all the scientific knowledge of the ancients,” he went on.

  “And the gold that has vanished in the course of centuries? Are they inheritors of that?” asked Ramsden.

  “My friend, if I should know the secrets of the Nine, does it occur to you that I would tell them?”

  “Their books! Their books!” Cyprian muttered, and Ghandava took that up with him.

  “Others have wanted those. They who burned the library at Alexandria did so in order to secure them, and that was when men’s memories were fresher than they are now. They failed, as all others have done. The Emperor Akbar tried to get the books. He plundered India for them. But he died in ignorance of their whereabouts, although in those days some of them were kept within an hour’s walk of Akbar’s palace.”

  “Then you know where they are now!” Cyprian said excitedly. He could keep neither lips nor fingers still.

  “My friend, I have just returned from extensive travels. I know nothing , beyond that the Nine sent for me and that I have been commissioned to perform a duty.”

  “Where are the Nine now?” Cyprian asked him, and Ghandava laughed.

  “We wander from the subject,” he replied. “These spurious Nines, whose organization you describe, have existed for centuries. They seek the undiscoverable secrets of the Unknown Nine. Their own secrets are mere hypnotism, mere trickery, mere evil hidden under the mask of Kali-worship, Thuggee and what not else. In the place of Knowledge they have grafted superstition, and in place of Truth, fear. They rule by fear, over- and under-riding the law by keeping the custodians of public peace in a constant state of fear of them. They have nothing whatever in common with the Nine who have commissioned me, and who are altruists — simply.”

  “Nonsense!” exclaimed Cyprian. “I mean — pardon me, I beg to differ! If they were altruists, and have the knowledge you pretend, they would reveal it to the world—”

  “For the world’s undoing!” Ghandava added dryly.

  “How can the world be undone by useful knowledge?” King objected.

  “Or how can there be too much treasure?” asked Chullunder Ghose. “Let loose even the dogs of war — devouring monsters! — and give me money enough — This babu will buy the victory for either side! If your principals have all that money, why didn’t they buy the best side in the late fracas of 1914 and finish the business swiftly? Ouch! King sahib , I beseech you, lay the pole down!”

  “Why do they not now buy India’s liberty?” Narayan Singh demanded. “The British tax-payer—”

  “Who ever purchased liberty?” Ghandava answered. “Liberty is earned, or it ceases to exist!”

  “Then what are they hoarding gold for?” Ramsden demanded.

  “Altruism?” asked Cyprian with raised eyebrows and wrinkled forehead, looking over his spectacles. “Is there no need of altruism at this moment?”

  Ghandava fell back on his smile.

  “You assume too much,” he answered. “Altruism has nothing to do with selfishness.”

  “Then your people are not altruists in any recognized sense of the word!” snapped Cyprian.

  The old man was getting more and more impatient, possibly because he felt the control of the situation and of the party slipping from his grasp. Yet it was he who had introduced Ghandava. There was not much he could do about it.

  “You mean their altruism is not comprehensible to you?” Ghandava answered. “You assume that the gold that has disappeared for centuries is all accumulated in one place and lying useless. I think I can assure you that is not so.”

  “But the knowledge?” King objected.

  “The books!” insisted Cyprian.

  Ghandava smiled again and pointed a finger at Cyprian.

  “You, my friend, would burn the books if you could find them! Akbar, if he had found them, would have used the knowledge they contain for the carving of new empires. Those who burned the library of Alexandria would have done at least that. Those whom you call ‘my people’ have their own interpretation of the books and their own opinion of their proper use.”

  “But knowledge,” King objected again, “if knowledge is true it can’t do harm, can it?”

  “No? Of what is dynamite the product? Of no knowledge?” Ghandava retorted. “Was it ignorance that built the big guns and invented poison-gas?”

  “The money! The money! Where is the money?” Chullunder Ghose exclaimed excitedly.

  “Gold is not money. Gold is gold,” Ghandava replied. “Tell me — is humanly comprehensible energy continuous without fuel? Energy must be released — is that not so? Water — coal — petroleum — the tides — harnessing, you call it. Did it never strike you there is more energy contained in a ton of gold than in a million tons of coal? Does that open any vistas? Do you see that to squander gold as money would be only to debauch the world, which is already too debauched, whereas gold’s energy released in proper ways might change the very face of nature? I am telling you no secrets. All the chemists know what I am hinting at. They don’t know how to release the energy from gold or uranium or thorium, that’s all.”

  “And you?” They chorused the question. He ignored it.

  “These Nines, who are variously disguised as anarchists and Kali- worshipers, know very well that the day of gold as money is past. Paper based on gold is the present medium. Paper serves the purpose. Presently the gold will go — as money. It is then that its real potency will be discovered. These three coins that I hold in my hand contain sufficient energy to blow the whole of Delhi instantly into smithereens . Can you imagine what might happen if the wrong individuals should learn the secret of releasing that energy?”

  “Inform the right ones then!” suggested Cyprian, with an intonation not quite innocent of sneer.

  “Who are they? “ asked Ghandava. “Governments? They would use the knowledge to annihilate defenseless nations. Scientists? They would incorporate, and then subdue the world into a new commercial slavery. The. churches?”

  He turned to Cyprian.

  “You — your church, my friend, would burn the books containing the secret knowledge — that is by your own admission. And tell me: which of the other churches would you be disposed to trust?”

  “Well, what do you propose to do with the gold, or the energy released from it, or the secret knowledge?” Grim demanded.

  “That, my friend, is fortunately not my province!” Ghandava answered, chuckling. “Have you money in your purse?”

  Grim nodded.

  “Do you know arithmetic?”

  He nodded again.

  “Some languages? A little natural science? A reputation possibly? Some skill in diplomacy perhaps? A little self acquaintance, worth more than all the rest? And the sum-total of all that is your capital?”

  Grim nodded.

  “What do you propose to do with it?”

  Grim grinned, beginning to see the point.

  “Is that my business?” asked Ghandava. “It is every man’s own business what he does with the knowledge that he knows! It is the business of those who keep the ancient secrets to say w
hat they will do with them. As long as they keep the secrets—”

  “I am like a flat balloon!” Chullunder Ghose broke in. “Oh grief, why art thou part of me! I who was all optimism — how my buoyancy solidifies and bears me down! I saw a pyramid of gold. Necessitous by force of Karma ,* how I thanked the gods! And now this holy guru takes the pyramid away and gives us energy! Oh energy! You jade! I love you not! My belly aches for money and a long rest! Ow! King sahib — please!”

  “But if others steal the secret—” Jeremy suggested.

  Ghandava hesitated. If guesswork had a chance of uncovering his thoughts, he was speculating whether it was safe to continue. He seemed most afraid on Cyprian’s account. They say, with how much truth outsiders never know, that information won by any of his cloth is the property of all of his superiors on demand — and they are a goodly number.

  However, Ghandava bound none of them by oath. Instead — again if guesswork’s aim was true — he limited himself to explanations that would not explain, and to statements capable of more than one interpretation. That is the ancient and accepted way. All prophets and all great teachers have adopted it in self-defense.

  “I, too, am on the Wheel,” he said, pacing the floor between them like an old sea-captain on the poop. “I serve my little purpose in the great design, and thereafter disappear. Within my own sphere I am useful; outside it helpless. You recall? You came to me, asking advice and assistance.”

  “We’ve heard some bad advice,” said Cyprian with the deliberate rudeness that old age claims to justify.

  Ghandava took no notice of it. He even avoided the odious alternative of offering the other cheek self-righteously. Not even a fly, departing on the wing, could have been less recognized than Cyprian’s remark.

  “You have a plan, I suppose?” he suggested.

  He addressed them all, but they all looked at Cyprian; for it was he who had been interrupted while laying down the lines of a plan, in his own place, previous to the holocaust of books. He seized the opportunity to resume the reins.

  “I had a very good plan,” he said peevishly. “I proposed just now that we let a prisoner go, but you have hidden him somewhere.”