Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “I suppose you were seen to enter this room?” I suggested, when I had told Chullunder Ghose of the arrangement.

  “Yes, sahib, not improbably — although I told that Sudanese that he was wanted inside, and I locked him in, not wishing him to mind my business. I was in here before they could summon anyone by bell to let him out. But he who brought drinks—”

  “Suliman,” said Jeff, “has worked for me at intervals for fifteen years. I don’t think he would talk about what goes on in here — not unless someone bribed extremely high and scared him at the same time.”

  Babu Chullunder Ghose began to grow excited. Again he pulled out his handkerchief and caught it between his toes repeatedly.

  “Tell me about this princess, sahibs! Tell me all you know about her. Then find someone who will summon her to visit me in that room.”

  So we told him all we knew, and that took less time than one might suppose. His vivid imagination leaped from one fact to another with such rapidity that we could hardly keep up with him. He cracked his toes. He cracked his big fat fingers. He blew his nose — and wiped his face — and threw his handkerchief — and caught it with his foot — then suddenly resumed his Buddha-like composure along with his normal air of what be calls Uriah-Heepishness.

  “Am failed B.A. Calcutta, lynx-eyed examiners having prevented this babu from using most ingeniously folded notes. Am failed promoter of so many enterprises that I suspect the Akashic Record has forgotten half of them. Am so well used to failure in all personal affairs that I could write a book about it. But its publishers also would fail. Am a merciful man; why bankrupt publishers? Paradoxically flat broke, am physically fat, not flat. Nobody loves fat men. Nevertheless, what woman but confides in them? They love but never trust the lucky lean ones. They trust but never love us solidly-emboweled drums of wisdom. Failure, am I? Sahibs, set me in a room with all the lovely women in the world — and I will tell you all their secrets quicker than a bird can pick the teeth of crocodiles!!”

  The problem was to get him into that room unseen by the Princess or her servants. The more we could tell Grim about her, the better for Grim and the worse for her, if she were contemplating treachery. But she was no fool, and she undoubtedly knew which rooms we occupied. If she should learn that Chullunder Ghose had visited Jeff’s room, it would be all up with any hope of getting her to confide in him. We solved it by going ourselves to call on her. We told the servant on the mat — humiliated and suspicious from having been locked in — that there was a box of flowers for her Highness in the lobby. He made the mistake of being insolent, which gave us an excuse to kick him downstairs; and that gave Chullunder Ghose any amount of time to get into the end room unseen. Then we knocked and the Syrian maid took our cards but said her mistress could see nobody that afternoon. After that I went down to the desk and arranged with Dougherty to send word to the Princess that the gentleman from India would receive her at four-fifteen in room 195. Then we hid in the passage between the linen closets and the wall; it was tight quarters and abominably hot, but there was just room for the two of us to peer through the holes in the wooden partition.

  As a matter of fact, my prejudices at the moment were in favor of the Princess. I could not help remembering her remarks about my being a keyhole peeper, and although Jeff’s bulk made the discomfort in that narrow passage almost unendurable, the fact that he seemed to have no compunctions about what we were doing was the only relief to the strain of my self-respect. Knowledge that she was a crook of unimpeachable impudence did not compensate for the distasteful nature of the job.

  However, almost from the moment she entered the room that aspect of the situation vanished. I was glad I was listening. So was Jeff. We ceased even to be conscious of the stifling heat, although sweat streamed into our eyes and our joints ached with the strain of keeping still in awkward attitudes. We could see fairly well, and hear almost perfectly because Chullunder Ghose had thoughtfully set two chairs between us and the window.

  “Why should I come to see you?” she demanded. “Why did you not come to my apartment?”

  I could not have answered her as Chullunder Ghose did. She was too beautiful and too regally dressed to be treated with anything less than politeness, by anyone not incorrigibly hard-boiled. But the babu was boiled in India, where insults are the salt of diplomatic conversation.

  “Fortunately you obeyed me,” he answered. “What have you to say for yourself?”

  She retorted: “I don’t know you. Give the password.”

  “It has been changed,” he answered, “since you failed — and deserted your post — and brought this situation on us. If there is any reason why you should not die before you do us any further injury, I am commissioned to hear it.”

  “But who are you?” she demanded.

  “Your judge. Sit down and say what you have to say; I will listen unless you take too long about it.”

  She sat down facing him. Chullunder Ghose assumed an expression of placid indifference. If she looked beautiful in his eyes, he contrived perfectly not to suggest it.

  “Give me proof,” she demanded. She seemed a totally different woman to the one I had seen in Marseilles. Then she had been, if anything, over- confident. “How did you find me here? How did you know I was coming?”

  “I am not here to answer your questions,” said Chullunder Ghose, “but to receive your answer. Have you anything to say?”

  She made up her mind. She sat back relaxed in the chair.

  “If you are who you pretend to be, you may tell Dorje I have changed sides. As for you, if you think you can kill me, try it. I have met a man who is greater than Dorje.” Then, lazily, as if she no longer cared for anything, she let her eyes wander around the room; they dwelt on the papered wooden partition, behind which Jeff and I lurked, for perhaps a second longer than on any object. “Dorje,” she said, “has elements of greatness, but he won’t last. He never did finish anything. When he was Solomon, the wealthiest king in the world, he went to pieces. As Karl Marx he could only sow seeds. He has sown them again. And another will reap. Tell Dorje that.”

  “May I tell him who is this paragon?”

  She appeared to weigh this carefully, as if she felt tempted to name the individual before whose rising splendor Dorje’s destiny had waned. However, she smiled at last, as if enjoying what she foresaw:

  “Dorje will know soon enough. As for you, let me out of this room before I lose patience with you.”

  She had the gift of absolutely regal insolence, but Chullunder Ghose had the equally great one of sublime cheek. Smiling as if fifty murderers were at his beck and call, he got up, bowed to her and started toward the door; but before he opened it he could not resist one Fat Boy shot to make her flesh creep:

  “Sad, that one so beautiful and talented must die so horribly, and so soon. How pleased I would have been to modify at least the method, even though your life is forfeit.”

  She sneered as he opened the door for her. “You sound,” she said “like one of Dorje’s agents! He invariably uses sentimental fools who forget the countersign!”

  We gave her time to reach her own apartment and then joined Chullunder Ghose. He was wiping his face with a towel, comically forlorn but as shrewd as ever.

  “Sahibs, if I were Dorje I would drown her, because if Dorje were King of the World she would look for someone to defeat him. If I were God she would never have been invented, so the world would be less interesting. If I were you, I would go now back to Rammy sahib’s room and wait for what she does next, because she will do it swiftly. And if I were Jimgrim, I would not believe her when she says she is now against Dorje, any more than she believed me when I told her I am Dorje’s agent. Furthermore, she knew there was someone behind that panel. Oh, I like her! This babu is once again a slave of Hanuman, who is a god of fortunately futile love-affairs. I hope she dies in torments before she disillusions me. Am sadist. Masochism to the devil! But make haste, sahibs, because she is not lethargic like a cobra or
a mongoose or electricity. The speed of light lags like a hearse when she thinks. And take my word for it: if she were off with the old love Dorje, she would not have hinted at the new love Jimgrim; she would be too anxious to guard Jimgrim from Dorje’s anger. Did I not say I would pick her secret like a pop out of a weasel? And the whole world for a battleground — oh, why was I not born into Jimgrim’s shoes!”

  CHAPTER 9. “Emperor Jimgrim — how does that sound?”

  When we returned to Jeff’s room there were two Arabs seated on the mat outside the door. They were dressed for the desert and looked as hard-bitten as two dry bones. Their faces, framed in the flowing headgear that would make a Sphinx out of a tailor’s dummy, were further obscured by the gloom, but Jeff seemed to recognize one of them. I supposed it was one of his multitude of rag-tag and bob-tail acquaintances, so I went on in and left Jeff standing there. Chullunder Ghose came in presently and asked me who the men were.

  “It would be just like Rammy sahib to invent excuses for a trip on camel- back from here to Baluchistan. It stands to reason that if Dorje is in Cairo we should go to Tashkent, and by the most uncomfortable means.”

  “Why do you think Dorje is in Cairo?” I demanded.

  “I don’t think. I know Dorje is not here. If he were here Jimgrim would be here too. I am afraid we leave from here by camel, for parts unknown. I am afraid we are tertium quids, like husbands in Reno, U.S.A. I think our Jimgrim uses us as generals use heroes; he sends us off in one direction to deceive the enemy by getting blown to smithereens, while he performs strategic retreat. I think he wants Dorje to believe he is in Cairo. And at the same time, I am damned if I know what I do think, except that camels are an anachronism.”

  Jeff came in and the Arabs followed. He unstrapped his traveling rug and spread that in a corner for them. They sat down like two road-weary veterans who dourly mistrust civilization; and when they had studied the furniture frankly, and us secretively, they relapsed into meditation. Jeff did not go to the trouble of introducing them, so I supposed they were old acquaintances who had come to ask a favor, although it was a mystery how they should have known he was in Cairo. Chullunder Ghose whispered to me:

  “Those two are from the Princess. Watch them.”

  He had hardly finished making that remark when the Princess herself entered. She had sent her servant in advance to knock on the door, but the man made no attempt to come in with her. Jeff dragged a chair up but she remained standing:

  “It is about that man.” She nodded toward the babu, who salaamed without betraying reverence. He seemed intent on aggravating her. “He is a dangerous fool, who just now boasted to me that he comes direct from Dorje.”

  Chullunder Ghose suddenly strode toward her, scowling straight into her eyes:

  “If I am not Dorje himself, who am I?” he demanded.

  “Is he a madman?” she asked.

  “Very well then, never mind who I am. Dorje is in this room. Which is he?”

  She glanced at the Arabs and shrugged her shoulders.

  “Did you see that, sahibs? She knows Dorje by sight.”

  “Did you send this man to spy on me just now?” she asked Jeff. “I shall go away at once if I am to expect this kind of thing. Where is Jeemgreem? Here in this boring place I have waited patiently — stagnating — doing nothing—”

  She paused and Chullunder Ghose nudged me. His mild brown eyes were masking, I thought, hurricanes of inward laughter.

  The Princess stared at each of us in turn and then continued:

  “I have done nothing — nothing, while I might have helped you against Dorje, as I promised Jeemgreem I would.”

  “Na’am,” remarked one of the Arabs.

  “Who are those?” she demanded.

  “No one in particular,” said Jeff. “Just friends of mine.”

  She looked at them suspiciously, then curled that scar-marked upper lip at Jeff and me:

  “You are incompetents. It is useless to hope to work with you. Dorje is making his moves to be King of the World, while all you do is loaf in bedrooms and submit me to humiliating espionage.”

  “Na’am,” said the Arab again.

  “Does he understand English?” She turned on the Arab and tongue-lashed him in fluent Arabic, but he took no notice of her.

  “Wrong dialect,” said Jeff. “He isn’t from the Fayoum.”

  “No matter.” She shrugged her shoulders again. She seemed exasperated almost to hysteria.

  “You see,” said Jeff, as gently as he could with that great growling voice of his, “you don’t know Grim yet. When—”

  “Know him?” she retorted. “I am weary of him! When I make promises I keep them. I promised help against Dorje—”

  “Na’am,” said the Arab, and I thought Chullunder Ghose would burst. He was sweating with excitement about something.

  “Yet what can I do?”

  “You have done all you could,” said the Arab. “I have never had more help from anyone.”

  She behaved perfectly, not pretending not to be astonished, but controlling herself perfectly. She was at her best when suddenly alarmed, or in sudden emergency. It was Chullunder Ghose who threw all restraint to the winds, let go a roar of delight and actually danced, like a big fat devotee of Siva, among the chairs and suitcases.

  “Jimmy sahib! Jimgrim!” he shouted. And there were tears in his eyes. “This babu knew you! Dammit — did I sit still? Dammit — did I talk like son of sucking-pig from Sodom and Gomorrah just to keep myself from giving college-yell of University of Hook-or-Crook? Oh, Jimmy — Jimmy — Jimmysahib! Jimgrim! This babu says salaam up from cockles of his being!”

  “Cheerio, Chullunder Ghose,” Grim answered. “Come and shake hands.”

  “Sahib, this is Fountain of Youth! This old babu is young again!”

  Grim smiled, and anyone could have picked him out then from a thousand men. Without ceasing to smile, and with the babu’s hand still working his up and down like a pump-handle, he said suddenly:

  “Lock that door, someone, and give me the key.”

  I was just in time to prevent the Princess from escaping, although escape is hardly the proper word. She had moved toward the door as those rarely great actresses can who are on or off stage before anyone knows it. There was so little suggestion of flight that I felt like a clumsy hoodlum when I intercepted her and turned the key.

  “You remind me,” she said, “of a pig on its way to the trough at feeding- time.”

  I tossed the key into Grim’s lap and offered her a chair, but she took another one. Chullunder Ghose hove himself up on to Jeff’s writing-table and squatted there, still chuckling at Grim, who was talking now in undertones to the man on the mat beside him.

  “Oh, beg pardon,” he said suddenly, “I haven’t introduced you, have I? This is Colonel Howard McGowan — Madame la Princesse Chalawan de Sitlab en Siam — Jeff Ramsden — Bob Crosby — and Chullunder Ghose. Colonel McGowan is of the British Army — special service.”

  “I vote we drink. Will the Princess join us?” asked McGowan. He was a man of Grim’s height — taller, that is, than the ordinary, but not so tall as to attract attention. His face looked almost exactly like an Arab’s, hooked nose and all; but for his Scots name I would have guessed him as being of Hebrew ancestry and his eyes, too, had the Hebrew liquid intelligence that seems to make so many of them linguists and Jacks of any trade. He was a man whom you could no more help liking when he looked directly at you than you could have helped wondering at the way he and Grim dissolved themselves, apparently at will, into men of the wind-seared desert — and then reasserted Western breeding at a moment’s notice.

  By the time the drinks came — champagne, at McGowan’s suggestion — we were all feeling pretty keyed up and expectant, but the sense of strain had vanished and even the Princess had entirely recovered her poise, which was what I think Grim wanted her to do, it being one of Grim’s extraordinary maxims that even an enemy at his best, can be depended on,
whereas an enemy in dire straits is likely to do something unexpected. He claims, for instance, that when Saladin sent a horse to Richard Coeur de Lion, so that Richard might fight on equal terms, Saladin was merely wise, not chivalrous. He touched glasses with the Princess.

  “I depended on you to get in touch with Dorje’s agents here,” he assured her, smiling. “Thanks to you, we caught Tassim Bey — among others — among others,” he repeated. “I was in Cairo before you were. Fooled you by that cablegram that made you think I was still in London. What makes you think Tassim is so important?”

  His disarming manner of having just laid down a bridge hand and discussing it unnerved the Princess far more than, I think, arrest or terroristic tactics would have done. No spy of the genuine cosmopolitan variety has any sense of loyalty whatever, but they all have gamblers’ instincts and a sense of sportsmanship that far transcends mere bravery. Their strength is delight in danger. Their weakness is vanity. Their genius consists in almost superhumanly skillful opportunism.

  “Tassim is a weakling,” she answered. “Dorje will kill him if you don’t. I suppose that person” — scornfully she turned her eyes toward Chullunder Ghose— “saw Tassim in my room. Perhaps he heard Tassim talking; and I know he saw me in the mirror. What of it? Did I not say I would help you? And how could I have helped you without intriguing with Dorje’s people?”

  “True,” said Grim, “you couldn’t have. I acknowledge your help. We could hardly have managed without you. But wasn’t it a trifle drastic to propose to burn this hotel? True, that might have killed Jeff Ramsden and Bob Crosby, but—”

  “You accuse me of that?” she demanded.

  “I don’t need to. Your Syrian maid is the source of the — shall I say rumor?”

  “And you, with your experience of Syrians, believe her?”

  “Why not? She was chosen by Colonel McGowan, for the same reason that you engaged her — because she had served you so well once before. That time you were working for the French and she was set by the British to watch you. This time—”