Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  We agreed on the instant. Grim began to lead the way toward the shed where we had stalled the ponies; he had not gone ten feet when he stumbled over something, but recovered. I fell, close behind him — something under me. I groped. There was blood on my hand — sticky — already half-frozen. Grim struck a match.

  Both Tibetans lay murdered, faces upward on the dung. Noses and ears were cut off. There was a knife wound under the heart of each of them. Their clothes had been ripped in a hurried search and there was nothing left that had the slightest value. We struck match after match, until Sidiki ben Mohammed began shooting at us from the watch-tower; then Grim went back to the house in a hurry to stop him, and Narayan Singh and I went to the stable.

  Loads and ponies were all where we had left them. We followed Grim into the house, finding our way by a crack of light at the edge of a shutter, then feeling our way along the wall. Grim had gone up to the watch-tower and there was no light in the big room, except the hearth blaze that flickered and shone intermittently, making deep long shadows dance in all the corners. Chullunder Ghose was sitting stock-still where we left him by the hearth, his fat face rigid with fear as if he had been hypnotized. He was staring into a corner and for several seconds we could not make out what he was staring at. Then a root crashed into the ashes on the hearth; a flame and a shower of sparks shot up and we saw what the trouble was.

  In the darkest corner, with his back toward a bookcase filled with bound volumes of ancient English illustrated magazines, there sat a coppery skinned man in a drab-colored turban, whose black hair fell in waves over his shoulders. He had more hair than a woman, but his face was almost tigerishly masculine, eyes large and rather wide apart. He had a silky black beard and mustache that by half-concealment multiplied the fierceness of his lip line. He was tall, strong-looking, well dressed in a costume that suggested Tibet, and entirely at his ease. He did not move, except to blink occasionally, and as he appeared to have no weapon, I stowed my automatic where I could reach it instantly; but Narayan Singh kept his in his right hand ready for use, making no secret of his mistrust of the man.

  “Who’s your friend?” I asked, but Chullunder Ghose did not answer. I stirred him with my right toe and repeated: “Who’s your friend?”

  He came out of a sort of trance. I don’t think that until I touched him he had been conscious of our presence in the room.

  “My God!” he exclaimed. “Sahibs, who is he? Very potent person, I believe!”

  I approached the stranger and asked him rather curtly who he was and why he had entered unannounced.

  “The door was open,” he answered.

  His voice was not pleasing, but it suggested strength and the last limit of self-confidence. Insolence was only half-veiled.

  “What do you know about those two Tibetans in the yard?” I asked.

  “They are dead,” he answered.

  “Who killed them?” growled Narayan Singh.

  “They killed themselves.”

  “Cut their own noses off?” I asked.

  “Whatever has been done to them they did long ago when they set in motion causes that produced results,” he answered, smiling at me. He had wonderful white teeth, so perfect as almost to look artificial.

  Grim came in, looked at the man once and walked across the room toward him.

  “Friend or enemy!” he demanded. “Sharp now with your answer! There’s been murder. What’s your name and business?”

  “Is this your house?” asked the stranger. His voice had steel in it.

  “The dead men were my servants,” Grim said.

  “Worse for you! They who slew may say you did it!”

  “What are you here for?” Grim asked.

  “To save you.”

  “From what!”

  “From those who sent Lhaten here. Lhaten was here, wasn’t he? I came to find what mischief Lhaten had been doing. Before your Tibetan servants died they told their whole story to those who slew them. They, in turn, told it to me. You wish to find Sham-bha-la-is it not so?”

  “No,” Grim answered. “That hunt’s off.”

  “I think not,” said the stranger.

  “My friends and I will track these murderers first,” said Grim. “Tibet can wait.”

  “I think not,” our visitor repeated.

  “Why not?” Narayan Singh demanded, weighing the automatic in the palm of his right hand, dancing it up and down to call attention to it.

  “You befriended the man who was known as Lung-tok,” the stranger answered. “Your servants told how he died in your tent near Zogi-la. He told you his story; therefore you know too much. Another also called himself Lung-tok, but there is now no falsehood left in that man and it is known his name is Rait.”

  “What happened to him?” Grim asked.

  “He lives, because he said a man named Ramsden is to follow him. One of you is Ramsden. It is said he shall live until Ramsden comes.”

  “Who says so? You?”

  “They in whose hands he is. I offer to save Ramsden from them.”

  “How? When?”

  “When he goes to rescue Rait.”

  “Why don’t you yourself rescue Rait?” I asked.

  “I have nothing to do with Rait, or with those who have caught him,” he answered. “They are bad men. So are these, who came by Lhaten’s wish to slay your servants. They will slay you, if you stay here or if you turn back, because you know too much, you having heard the story of that man who died in your tent in the Zogi-la. You may only go forward, because that way is simplest.”

  Chullunder Ghose, his face the color of raw liver from the fear he felt, stepped forward between Grim and me, clutching our arms.

  “Sahibs! Sahibs!” he said. “There is a British officer in Leh. Appeal to him!”

  “If you do that, you cannot save Rait,” said the stranger quietly.

  “Let Rait die! What does he matter! What proof is there that he is living?” almost screamed Chullunder.

  The stranger put his hand into his breast and produced a sheet of paper, folded twice.

  “I had this,” he said, “from one of those who slew your servants.”

  He handed the paper to Grim. It was thumbed and dirty, frayed at the corners and greasy with ghee. Grim opened it. Over his shoulder I could see Rait’s hand-writing

  “Rammy, old top, for God’s sake come and rescue me. One of these fellows is friendly and has promised to try to find you. If you receive this, trust the bearer, who will lead you to where I am. Come quickly. They’re torturing me. The best way to get me out will be to catch one of their principal men and threaten to kill him unless they exchange. I’ve begged them to kill me. They refuse, and they won’t give me a chance to kill myself. I don’t know why. The man who will take this is one of my guards. He will give it to another man, whose name I don’t know. Rammy, old top, do hurry! And when you get here use all your brains and muscle — all you have!

  “Yours, Elmer Rait.”

  Our visitor looked calmly at us, smiling.

  “Any doubt about Rait’s handwriting?” asked Grim.

  I produced the letter Rait had written me from Lhasa and we compared the two. There was no doubt.

  “All right,” said Grim. “He’ll start at dawn. We’ll take you with us. What’s your name?”

  Our visitor rose very slowly from his squatting posture. It was as if some unseen hand had raised him by the shoulders; there was no apparent effort, no pause, no haste.

  “If you knew my name I might fear you,” he said pleasantly. “More likely you would fear me.”

  He took no notice whatever of Narayan Singh’s automatic, but the Sikh snapped in the safety catch and put the thing away. (He said afterward that he had done that of his own volition, but I doubt it. I could feel at the time a terrific impulse to step back away from our visitor and leave him a clear way to the door. Thought was being used as a directing force by one who understood the trick. Chullunder Ghose stepped back and went and squatt
ed by the hearth, muttering some sort of mantra as a charm against unseen influences.)

  “You understand we will take you with us.”

  “I think not,” said our visitor and took one step forward, straight toward me.

  “Seize him, Rammy!” said Grim.

  I think that was the only time I ever regretted having acted swiftly on Grim’s suggestion. His brain and my weight and muscle have brought the two of us out of many a tight place. I used every ounce of strength to throw the man off balance and lay his shoulders on the floor before he could bring his own strength into play. I was useless against him — helpless. I don’t know exactly what happened. The sensation was of being hurled back on my heels toward the far end of the room, as if I had leaned against a spinning flywheel. As I recovered balance I heard Grim’s voice:

  “Don’t shoot!”

  I had no intention of shooting. Two murdered servants to account for was enough; if this man’s hints had any truth in them we were likely enough to be accused of having murdered Tsang-yang and Tsang-Mondrong. But Grim told me afterward he could not help calling out to me not to shoot; he said that at the moment it appeared to be his own will that directed him, but that the words had hardly left his lips before he knew that the suggestion came to him from someone else.

  Our visitor walked from the room without haste, closing the door after him, we staring at one another until our silence was broken by Narayan Singh’s gruff laugh — nervously asserting recontrol of nerve.

  “There, sahibs, you have seen a Mahatma!”

  “Rot!” Grim exclaimed, and from beside the hearth Chullunder Ghose piped up:

  “Obscene nonsense! Mere Sikh superstition! No Mahatma would consent to be in league with murderers. That was one of the Mahatmas’ enemies. That one is black, I tell you-black! — his heart is black! If you should cut it out—”

  From over the gallery railing came Sidiki ben Mohammed’s voice, harsh with fear:

  “Out of my house! You must go now! I will not accommodate you any longer!”

  “Can’t go in the night,” said Grim.

  “You shall! You must! My family is all upset. First Mordecai, then you, now that one — it is too much! Go, I tell you!”

  “No!” said Grim. “Come down and talk to us.”

  “Unless you go I shall inform against you! I shall say you murdered those Tibetans! Oh, I know about them. One of my servants says they lie without noses or ears on the dung in the yard! Unless you go now I shall—”

  “Come down here or I’ll go up there and fetch you!” Grim retorted. “You fired at us from the watch-tower.”

  “Of course I did! Of course I did! You were striking matches! How should I know you weren’t burning my sheds?”

  “How do we know our men weren’t murdered by your orders” Grim retorted. “Come down and talk sense.”

  He came, although his wives protested, shrilling at him not to go without his rifle. One of them screamed imprecations at me over the gallery, accusing me of having murdered two men in the yard. She only stopped when Sidiki ben Mohammed himself cursed her into silence. He brought the rifle with him; Narayan Singh kept tipping its muzzle toward the ceiling for fear it might go off by accident.

  “You gentlemen, I beg your pardons,” he said excitedly. “I am hospitable. I was glad to welcome you. But I cannot stand this. You must go. You must go now. Please!”

  “What about those dead men?” Grim asked.

  “I bury them! Leave it to me! Oh, do listen to me! Don’t be unwise! Do believe I know what I am saying! I know Leh. I know these devils who have done this thing. They wish to get you out of my house. You must go!”

  “We shall go in the morning,” said Grim.

  “Oh, Allah! If you delay they will burn my house. Then they will accuse us all of having murdered those two! They will bring witnesses to prove it! Please go! I pray you to go! Shall I ask on my knees?”

  “We need barley,” said Grim.

  “You shall have it. You may take anything I have. But go now!”

  “And we shall be murdered outside in the dark quite nicely!” said Chullunder Ghose, still trying to control emotions by the hearth.

  CHAPTER XI. Sidiki Ben Mohammed’s Wife

  It is a mistaken belief that polygamy is vicious; because nothing altogether lacks justification that can teach men by experience how wholesome solitude might be. There are moreover women who have much to learn.

  — from The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup

  TO HAVE gone straight to the British Resident with our story was possibly the proper course. But the greater propriety occurred to us of not leaving two mangled bodies to be buried by Sidiki ben Mohammed, whose nerves were so shattered that he tried to speak three languages at once. We tied up the bodies in gunny bags, loaded them on ponies and took them with us.

  We also took Sidiki ben Mohammed. It was snowing, but he knew the trails. He protested, he begged, he swore that his wives and his house were in danger; he threatened to accuse us to the authorities. But we were adamant and I think we saved his life; he should guide us on the first stage of the journey, or we would remain in his house until use could find another guide. That settled it; He was unwilling that we should remain in his house another hour.

  We had to reach an almost unknown Lamaistic monastery said to be perched on a crag some fifty miles away and only to be reached by rarely traveled trails. That, Benjamin had told us, was the keyhole to the secret gate of Tibet, and we had the key that fitted it in the form of his letter to the abbot of the monastery; but neither crag nor monastery could be found on any map we had.

  It was after midnight when we set out, Sidiki ben Mohammed leading, with Narayan Singh beside him to make sure he did not bolt. We were all mounted, for our host had supplied us with extra ponies in his eagerness to be rid of us. He was in such haste to be off that he could hardly wait for us to pay him for the sacks of barley we drew from his store. I rode last, being heaviest; to take advantage of the trampled snow, and as I followed the last pack pony through the gate where a cluster of Ladakhi household servants stood scared and ready to bolt the gate behind me, a woman rushed out from the shadow and seized my bridle rein. One of the servants tried to pull her away but she struck him in the face and spat at him. The darkness there was deepened by the planted trees so I could scarcely see her, but she seemed to be only a girl although she bulked big in a yak-skin cloak with a hood pulled down over her eyes. Before I could guess what she intended she had seized my shoulders and swung up behind me on the pony.

  Two of Sidiki’s servants tried to drag her off, crying out to me that she was their master’s wife. She cursed and struck at them. Then she stuck a knife against my ribs and ordered me in broken Hindustani to ride on. I seized her wrist and tried to throw her off the pony, but she hung on and swore she would betray us all unless I let her ride.

  By that time, what with the wind and snow and Sidiki ben Mohammed’s haste, the others were all out of earshot. Five Ladakhi Moslems came out of the yard; one of them seized the pony’s head and the others yelled at me while they tried to drag the woman to the ground, she screaming that Sidiki ben Mohammed had promised her she might come with him.

  That was a palpable lie, but it suggested a solution of the problem that might serve until I could overtake the others. I declared I had heard Sidiki ben Mohammed make the promise; nobody believed, but one of the servants agreed to follow on foot to see whether it were true or not. The woman tried to prevent that, but I had no time to spare so I started the pony along the track and the servant followed, the others shutting the gate and bolting it.

  I proposed to let the woman ride a short distance and then upset her into the snow for the man servant to pick up and lead home again. But we had not ridden more than fifty yards before she began talking, with her arm over my shoulder, raising herself so as to yell against the wind into my ear. Again the broken Hindustani:

  “I have set fire to the house! I hate Sidiki! Unless
you obey me I shall say you fired the house because you were accused of having murdered two men! I shall go straight to the British Resident and tell him all about you!”

  There was no sign yet of any house on fire, nor anything to do that I could think of, except to hurry forward and consult the others.

  But to overtake the others was not easy. I could not make them hear me by shouting against the wind. The snow was deep with only a narrow trodden track between two drifts, and all the pack ponies were in front of me blocking the way; my own pony floundered in the deep snow whenever I tried to work my way around them. I tried to get the Ladakhi servant to run ahead with a message for Grim, but he refused, saying it was his duty to guard his master’s wife.

  To have yelled louder or discharged my pistol would have been at the risk of attracting attention from some of the men who had murdered Tsang-yang and Tsang-Mondrong; they were probably night prowling within earshot; our only chance of escaping from them was to get away silently in darkness with the falling snow hiding our tracks.

  “Where do you want to go?” I asked the girl, supposing she had a lover and was trying to make use of me to get to him.

  “I go with you!” she answered. “If Sidiki sees me, you must kill him!”

  That was a nice kettle of fish! Aside from the girl’s threat to betray our flight to the authorities, there was the obligation to our host. If his house was burning (I could see no sign of it) or if the police should get on our trail and should overtake us before we could bury those dead Tibetans in a drift — I could have killed her without much added excuse! And the man who trudged behind was nearly as great a nuisance, since he would be certain to talk, whatever happened. I offered to pay him to take the woman home by force; but she told him, if he did that, she would accuse him of having set fire to the house and would say she had followed to warn her husband of what he had done. He flew into a rage at that and threatened to knife her — drew a knife and flourished it. She promptly claimed my protection?

  By that time we were more than a mile from Sidiki’s house and, as far as I could judge in the darkness, we were following a trail that led uphill between two spurs of a mountain. There was not a sign of any other dwelling — no lights — no stars — nothing but darkness and howling wind, with the distance between me and my friends increasing because of the halt for a row with that Ladakhi servant.