Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  CHAPTER XXI. Jimgrim Again, Elmer Rait, and the Death of Narayan Singh.

  Bloodshed is a sin against the Lords of Life, but all too many cowards keep a good repute by cultivating peace that they approve not though they fear war and avoid it. They, whose wisdom is as greater than my own as sunlight to a candle, have assured me that a brave man, though he slay, and though he slay his many, is a god in contrast to the men and women who slay not because their cowardice prevents them. Ye may know those by the malice of their tongues, which spare none, slandering to feed their own self-righteousness. But there are men and women who are so brave, that they fear not to refrain from slaying; them, if you should need friends, you will be reasonably safe to trust.

  — from The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup

  I RECOVERED consciousness inside a place that looked as if it might have been a monastery, but there was not much left of it. I lay still, suffering acutely. Pain grew in proportion as senses awoke; I had no control over my muscles, every one of which was aching as if tautened on the rack. It was the feeling of underlying cunning, that I had experienced the day before, that kept me from crying aloud.

  There were voices. I could see a broken roof above me, through which stars appeared. Below that there was a balcony without a railing; a long row of doorless cells gave on to it. The shadow of firelight and ascending smoke danced on an interior wall from which the plaster had fallen in flakes. I was lying on straw. There were lice eating into the scores of places where my skin was broken.

  A shadow moved and I shut my eyes. A man leaned over me. A voice said in Tibetan

  “Are you sure you haven’t gone too far? I should say he was dying.”

  Another voice, from somewhere near the fire, sneered arrogantly:

  “Are you letting pity Make a fool of you? The stronger he is physically, the closer he can go to death. The closer he goes, the easier it is to manage him. Come away, and mind your own business,”

  “But he is my business,” said the first voice and I felt a man lean over me again.

  I peered under my eyelashes, at a face between me and the starlight, blotched on one side by reflection from the crackling fire, which made it appear misshapen.

  “I want him. That babu might serve for a spy in India, but where I’m going—”

  “You’ll never go until you learn obedience,” the other answered. “If he has to be killed to teach you that lesson, killed he shall be.”

  “I beg pardon.”

  “There is no such thing as pardon. That is a delusion that the sentimentalists invented. Are you being sentimental?”

  “No.”

  “Prove it.”

  “How?”

  “Wake him up and show me where he keeps his tenderest emotions.”

  “Oh, that’s easy. I was his partner. He is like a dog for friendship. He put up with more from me than a father would stand from his son, and when we dissolved the partnership at last you’d have thought he’d buried his wife and children. Hurt that babu if you want to see old Ramsden suffer.”

  “I have seen that. Show me something more acute.”

  “All right. I know how.”

  A hand took hold and shook me, scattering the pain through all my muscles like an overcharge from a galvanic battery. It was easy to pretend to wake up.

  “Do you recognize me, Rammy? I am Elmer Rait.” He was no longer handsome. When I knew him formerly his thin face had been finely chiseled — almost spiritual looking, pale, but with a mirth about the corners of the mouth and an irreverent impertinence about the eyes that always disarmed anger. There was not a fine line left. The surface had coarsened, in the way a drunkard’s face does. The firm lips had slackened and the humor had all vanished from the corners.

  But the Tibetan turban and the brown Tibetan cloak he wore looked natural to him, so that the change in his face was not so startling as it might have been. He was always a man who looked better in costume than in European clothes.

  “Do you know me, Rammy?” he repeated, but the disgust I felt for him was like an anodyne that deadened pain; it did not make me garrulous.

  “Well, you old fool,” he went on, “you supposed I’d let you boot me out of partnership and not get back at you. You ditched me for that hypocrite Grim, and thought I’d let you get away with it. I knew you’d bring Grim; you’d have disappointed me if you hadn’t. I warned you not too simply to make sure you would, you contrary old ass. Grim talked you into giving me the gate, though you denied it at the time. I don’t doubt you’ll deny it now, but you’re a liar. I know better. Your beloved Jimgrim was my enemy, and you led him straight into my trap.”

  I closed my eyes, to prevent him from discovering what effect on me his speech was having. He mistook that for a lapse into unconsciousness and shook me, scattering the agony again through all my muscles. It was almost beyond endurance but I managed to keep silent.

  “Your Jimgrim was caught,” he went on. “He was stripped, and he was whipped. He was told just to make him a bit more miserable — that you turned yellow and betrayed him to save your own skin. He died thinking you are on your way to India. Now speak to me or I’ll have to hurt you.”

  He laid his hand on me, and I saw by the flickering firelight that hand and wrist were bleached like parchment. Observing that I noticed it he thrust the hand close to my face.

  “I’ve been through more than you have; but they lulled Grim. I ordered you to speak. You’d better.” He shook me and I could not keep from groaning. Vertigo sent the fire and the walls of the building in streams around me, in which Rait’s face seemed multiplied a dozen times. I imagined I was hitting out at Rait, trying to use my last remaining strength to knock him backward into the blazing fire. I believe, as a matter of fact, that I lay absolutely still; brain and body were not functioning together.

  “Crude!” said the voice of the man who wore Grim’s clothes. “You have told him the truth and he thinks you are lying.”

  His face evolved out of the whirling fire and walls and when he touched my head the whirling stopped as if somebody had put the brakes on. I began to want to vomit.

  “Rait,” he remarked, “is such an amateur that he acts like a policeman with a witness. He is going to be shown how you can be made to tell things that are so deep in your consciousness you hardly know they exist. There!” he said, turning to Rait and continuing to speak English, “do you notice how he shuts his mind up like a tortoise pulling in its head? You must learn how to make him open it.”

  They walked away and I heard them talking in Tibetan over by the fire, but their talk was no more than an indistinct murmur. As cautiously as any tortoise I began to move my head to find out where Chullunder Ghose was, but the first man I saw was the one I had kicked; he was sitting propped against a pillar that supported the gallery. A number of monks sat near him, playing some kind of game with knucklebones, on a board between their knees.

  On straw, between them and the wall, Chullunder Ghose was lying, and about two paces beyond his feet there was a doorway with a broken door; the lower half was more or less intact but the upper half appeared to have been smashed in and there were three great gaps in the splintered woodwork, which framed three irregular sections of the starlit sky. I could see one star — a big one — and began to wonder which it was.

  The star was suddenly obscured. I blinked, suspecting that one of the blows I had received on the head might have injured my eyesight. The star appeared again, and was again obscured, so I began to trust my eyes. I found that by enduring agony in every muscle I could move my hand so as to screen the firelight, and when I had stared at the star for about a minute I was nearly sure I could see the shadowy faint outline of a man’s head between it and the splintered edge of the broken woodwork.

  Instantly there returned that peculiar feeling of cunning, that had kept the life in me the day before. I have called it cunning, but there is no word I can think of that conveys that feeling of the stealthy approach of unknown agencie
s, resourceful and stored with surprise. It was not exactly confidence, but it was expectation. The nearest to it I can think of is the feeling one has at a well-played melodrama when the mine is laid, the fuse lighted, there seems no way out of the disaster and yet — down inside you — you are sure there is a secret, irresistible solution in reserve.

  Rait got up from the fire and came to talk to me again, his back toward the door so that I could no longer see it; but the man in Grim’s clothes by the fireside was in full view. He had let his hair down and was combing it, with loathsome motions more suggestive of a woman than a man.

  “Rammy, old top, I believe I will save you,” said Rait, “if you’ll swallow your pride and just ask me to do it.”

  I knew he was lying. He had long ago surrendered his own will to that hermaphrodite who was combing his silky hair. Self-control is manhood and I felt toward Rait as I would toward a corpse of someone who had died of leprosy. “You see, Rammy, I have made my goal,” he went on. “They are teaching me things you’ve never dreamed of — things that can’t be learned until you have dehumanized yourself. We’re not allowed to fail at anything. If I don’t persuade you to put yourself entirely in my power of your own will, they’ll order me to kill you and I’ll have to do it. But once you’re in my power, and they’re sure of it, I can do with you as I see fit. Yield, and I’ll promise to release you afterward. You’ll find it isn’t any worse than taking anesthetic — not in your case — you’re such a physical old specimen.”

  I did not dare to answer, I was so sure that any kind of answer would increase my disadvantage. Not imagining that I could understand his method, I was none the less sure it included getting me to admit to myself that I was at his mercy. If I had argued, cursed him, or acknowledged the necessity of speaking to him, that would have opened a door in my mind through which he might insinuate some trickery. I did not reason it; I simply followed intuition and lay still.

  He began to try the sort of blandishments he used to use in the old days when he wanted me to back him in some scheme I didn’t like.

  “I know your point of view is different from mine, but what harm will it do you to give in? Can’t you be generous when it won’t cost you anything? I’m not pretending you’d enjoy the life I’m going to lead, but you don’t have to lead it and you’ll save yourself an awful lot of agony by doing what I ask. I’ve got to make you crawl to me. These people insist on proofs before they’ll teach any further; and they know things I’ve simply got to know. I’ll tell you what, Rammy: you’ve had a raw deal and something’s coming to you. Give in, and I’ll not only release you afterward but I’ll guarantee to use my stuff to help you in any scheme you like — no matter what it is.”

  If I might write down how I loathed him, what I wrote would burn the paper. But suddenly it occurred to me that even the sensation of disgust was dangerous — that it was like a poison gas by means of which, in some way that I did not understand, he might undermine my obstinacy and then overwhelm my will. I tried to pity him. I even tried to like him, summoning to mind the days when he had played the banjo to our gangs of niggers to keep them good tempered when we had to accomplish two days’ work in one. In those days Rait had been a wonder around a mining camp and he and I together had accomplished things that other men thought impossible.

  To avoid his eyes I looked up through the hole in the roof. He believed I was praying, and laughed.

  “Do you still think your God is in Heaven?” he sneered. “Do you believe in miracles!”

  At any rate, I did believe my eyes. Against the luminous, clear night sky I had seen Grim’s face with firelight on it, looking down at me. It was but a momentary glimpse, but I was absolutely certain.

  The man in Grim’s clothes left the fire and came and stood beside Rait.

  “You’re an amateur,” he sneered. “I turned him over to you ready, but look at his eyes now. Can’t you see the change in him? All my work would have to be repeated before you could hope to manage him. You’ll have to kill him now. Maybe that will strengthen your own will. Go on, kill him. If it weren’t your first case I should make you use your fingers. You may use your knife, but do it slowly and so rid yourself of any squeamishness you have left. What are you — ?”

  His head split down the middle as a saber struck him from behind. He fell across my legs, and in his place there stood Narayan Singh, teeth flashing, eyes blazing, simmering with passion. His cheek-bones stood out like a skeleton’s. He turned on Rait.

  “Hello, Narayan Singh!” said Rait. He ducked as the saber swung for him. It missed and Rait leaped backward. He was instantly surrounded by the monks and I could see him groping with his right hand into the long cloak he wore. Then Grim came down by a rope through the hole in the roof and Rait fired pointblank at the two of them — missing, as invariably happens when a man divides his target. With a roar like a wounded tiger’s Narayan Singh went headlong at the monks. Rait swung the man whose ribs I had broken in between him and the saber and the point went home. Grim bent over me:

  “How are you, Rammy? How’s Chullunder Ghose?”

  I was puzzled why he did not help Narayan Singh go after Rait. The Sikh had driven all the monks, with Rait cowering in their midst, out through the door and was standing on guard. The dawn was just beginning then to change the color of the sky.

  “Are you two alone?” I asked.

  “Not we.”

  Grim walked to where Chullunder Ghose was lying and made noises in his teeth. He tried to pick him up but Narayan Singh glanced over his shoulder and asked:

  “Sahib, may we make haste?”

  So Grim began to drag Chullunder Ghose toward where I lay, just as another pistol shot directed at Narayan Singh spat through the doorway and a bullet clipped the stone work of the upper gallery.

  Chullunder Ghose was totally unconscious. Grim let him drop beside me and then ran toward a closed door on my left hand, underneath the gallery and nearly opposite that other where Narayan Singh stood guard. Grim was wearing an odd-looking costume, but I could not distinguish details. He picked up a heavy stone that had fallen from the gallery and began to smash the clumsy iron lock; it broke after a dozen blows and he opened the door, letting in a blast of icy wind along with the first gleam of sun-light. That door faced due East.

  Then he returned to me, and as he stooped I saw he wore a turban made of dark brown silk.

  “Can you crawl?” he asked.

  I could not, but I told him I could, because I wanted to stay and watch Narayan Singh.

  “Sure! Women and kids first — just like you, damn you!” he said cheerfully and took hold of Chullunder Ghose under the armpits, dragging him heels downward to the door under the gallery.

  I remembered the bag then, into which all my belongings, including a pistol, had been thrown, and presently I saw it over near the fire. I called out to Narayan Singh that he would find two pistols in the bag, but he answered over his shoulder that he did not dare to leave his post to go and look for them. So I began to try to crawl, pulling my legs out from under the lifeless body of the man whom Narayan Singh had killed. It makes my flesh creep now to think of how it hurt to cross those twenty feet of floor. When I reached the bag and opened it at last there were no pistols’ in it — nothing but my watch, a little money and some odds and ends.

  I warned Narayan Singh that the enemy had all the firearms, and as I spoke three shots spat through the doorway and struck slabs of plaster of the wall. The light was probably confusing to a monk unused to firearms.

  Then Grim came for me and put his hands under my armpits from behind. I tried to resist. I could see a man with bow and arrows aiming at Narayan Singh and there were six or seven men with swords and daggers ready to pounce on him if the arrow should hit the mark. I told Grim to go and help Narayan Singh, but he began dragging me across the floor toward the door under the gallery. An arrow whizzed within six inches of me, and the next thing I remember we were outside in a bitter wind with the sun shining s
traight in my eyes.

  I was lying on a smooth rock with my back toward the building from which Grim had dragged me and it was extremely difficult to see because of the blinding sunlight on the snow and because my head was swimming, but I got my bearings presently.

  The building we had left was on a sort of island — a sheer-sided rock that rose from near the middle of a deep ravine. I could not see beyond the ruined building, but on the side on which I lay there was a narrow natural causeway, resembling a vein of quartz, that formed the only means of access to the flank of the ravine, where it seemed to disappear into a tunnel. The causeway was irregular and there were ice and snow in patches all the way along. Midway Grim was carrying Chullunder Ghose, staggering under the weight.

  In the ruined building there was the sort of noise that comes out of a slaughter-house. A moment after I had turned myself slowly in that direction Narayan Singh came out, wiping his saber on somebody’s turban. He had no scabbard. He stooped over me and asked whether I could hold the saber, but doubted my ability, so he passed the blood-smeared turban through the hilt and tied it to my waist. Then he hoisted me up on his shoulders, and I was glad he had tied the saber on; the pain would have made me let go of it.

  He began to carry me along the causeway and I fainted again, I believe, from the agony caused by the jerky movement and from my own efforts to lie still, head downward over his shoulder.

  At any rate, there is a lapse of memory until I discovered myself lying on an ice patch midway along the causeway — possibly two hundred yards away from where we started. I was facing the ruined building, so could see comparatively clearly, with the sun behind me.

  My view was from between Narayan Singh’s legs. He had resumed the saber and had turned at bay against seven men who were advancing cautiously, their leaders rather hanging back but unable to retreat because the others pushed them forward. Then I heard Grim’s voice: