Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  It was as quick as a bar-room roughhouse. Light after light went out. The man who rushed me trod on a revolver cartridge and did a split like a comedian so that my fist missed him by several inches. As he fell he grabbed my leg. Another man knocked me backward and I fell in Bertolini’s lap and experienced all the sensations of instant death; imagination made me absolutely sure that the glass flask in my right hip-pocket had struck the stone arm of the throne. That it did not break was one of those things that make a man want to believe in miracles.

  Then someone got me by the throat, and there were two men hanging to my left arm. Underneath me Bertolini struggled like a fish in a net. All the lanterns were out except one; I could see one somewhere. And the harder I used knees and feet and right fist, the nearer my right hip-pocket approached the arm of the throne.

  Grim had the lantern. Presently I saw him. It was his fist that felled the man whose fingers clutched my throat. I saw Baltis, too, on hands and knees, quite near me. I believe it was she who helped to pull me clear of Bertolini; and then, for a few seconds, Grim and I had to fight with our backs to the wall at the back of the platform, and the brunt of that business fell to me because Grim had the only lantern and to save that seemed almost as important as not to break the glass flasks in our pockets.

  It was too dark to see what Jeff was doing. The place sounded like a shambles when a wounded steer has broken loose. But Jeff is such a coolly calculating and terrific fighter that he probably could have held that exit almost indefinitely if Baltis had not been there, and if Chullunder Ghose had held his tongue, and I mine. Small blame to him, the babu hates fighting and prefers to use his wits. He had kicked a man in the stomach and then busied himself throwing the empty revolvers down the passage to prevent the enemy from getting them. But he kept one; and two or three cartridges came kicked along the floor toward him, of which one fitted.

  “Jimmy Jimgrim sahib, shall I shoot?” he called out.

  “NO!” Grim answered. He and I had got the best of it at last at our end and to shoot, if you are winning, is to shoot your evidence as well as add hysteria to what is bad enough already.

  “Come and get these flasks out of our pockets!” I shouted. “Then protect those with your pistol.”

  Baltis had not known until then that we had those flasks. I felt her snatch mine from my pocket at the moment when a punch-drunk Levantine rushed me for one last effort to crack my head against the wall. I side-stepped him and grabbed her. Grim’s fist downed the Levantine and in the same second Baltis tried to hurl the flask against the wall. She dropped it. Grim caught it — tripped on the legs of the man he had knocked down — fumbled it (he had the lantern in one hand) — and sent it spinning into the square hole in the wall beside the throne. I heard it smash. Then Grim fell and the lantern went out.

  “So now we all die!” Baltis said calmly. “It is not a bad death.”

  “Out of here!” Grim shouted. “Hurry up, Jeff — grab the babu!”

  He seized Baltis and said quietly to me, “Bring Bertolini;” so I dragged him off the throne and hoisted him like a sack. It was pitch-dark. I had to scramble from the platform to the floor and then head for the noise where they were fidgeting to be first into the passage. I tripped on a man’s legs and staggered on to a cartridge, fell and lost sense of direction. I had thought Grim was ahead of me. He was not. It was his hand that helped me up again. Jeff’s voice gave direction:

  “This way! This way!”

  Then the babu fired his pistol to give us a flash to see by and we entered the passage all together with the battered survivors of Dorje’s gang fleeing ahead of us. Jeff had picked up three who could hardly stagger and had shoved them toward safety. The last one slammed the door in our faces, but as there was no way of holding it on the far side and the lock was toward us they gained nothing by that. They were met by McGowan descending the stair with a flashlight in one hand and his automatic in the other; and behind McGowan was a view of the puttied legs of armed men. I was holding the door for Grim; he was a long time coming; I almost turned back to look for him, fearing he had been caught and overcome by the fumes from the flask. However, he came at last with Baltis in his arms, and in the mixed light from the hanging lantern and McGowan’s electric torch both of them seemed to be laughing.

  “Hello, Mac.” He set Baltis down, letting her slide slowly to the floor, where she sat with her back to the wall. Then he glanced at Bertolini, whom I had laid not far away. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Dead,” I answered. On his neck above the jugular, there was a puncture that might have been made by a snake with one fang; by the lantern light it was hardly visible, but it was plain enough when McGowan turned the torch toward it.

  “Baltis’ bracelet,” I whispered, and Grim nodded:

  “Gad, what a team she’d have made with her twin!”

  McGowan did not hear that. He interrupted:

  “What killed twelve men in the other cavern? We got in by a tunnel from the garden and broke down a door. They’re as dead as mummies, and not a sign of how it happened.”

  “Gas,” Grim answered. “You can have some for analysis.” He passed his flask to McGowan. Baltis spoke up hoarsely; her throat was swelling:

  “I hope you open it! I hope your friends are with you when you do!”

  McGowan took no notice of her. “There’s a tunnel,” he said, “that seems to lead from that cavern to this one, and there’s an electric bell at the entrance. Have you seen an opening at this end?”

  “Yes,” Grim answered. “Gad, you’re lucky!”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “I dropped a gas-flask in there — broke it.”

  “And the fun is,” Baltis interrupted, rubbing her throat, “that nobody can ever prove — that there was anything — in the bottle! It becomes gas — it kills — it vanishes — it leaves no trace!”

  She loved the humor of it. She appeared to wish that Grim were such another as Dorje with similar weapons. Grim ignored her as McGowan had done.

  “Why did Bertolini keep such watch over the tunnel?”

  “We’ll give the gas time. Then we’ll go, look, see,” McGowan answered.

  CHAPTER 25. “People don’t want problems. They want answers. And they want the answers wrong, I tell you!”

  “Who killed Bertolini?” asked McGowan.

  “I did,” Grim answered.

  McGowan stared, but not so hard as Baltis did. McGowan’s men had rounded up the prisoners and marched them elsewhere. We were waiting down there for the gas to vanish out of the tunnel as Baltis said it would and as it already had done from the cavern where a dozen dead men lay. We had not yet dared open the door of the room we had recently left, and I don’t think any of us were in a hurry to go into action again, we were so dead-weary, bruised and starved. McGowan had sent one of his men to try to cook some breakfast for us up in Bertolini’s kitchen; and the Chinaman whom we had trussed up in the lavatory had been brought down and placed facing us, back to the wall with the gag removed but his hands and feet still fastened. He glared balefully at Baltis and I think he thought she was her sister. But not a word would he say.

  “Am a liar too, on suitable occasion,” Chullunder Ghose remarked. “But suitability seems incognito. I don’t recognize it.”

  Grim said, looking at McGowan: “I killed Bertolini to save Baltis.”

  “Was she worth it?” asked the babu. “Bertolini understood the cipher. If you had left him alone in a room with me and something — say a copying press in which to crush his fingertips, I would have solved it!”

  “Save her from what?” asked McGowan.

  Grim’s index finger traced a noose around his throat and then repeated it to make sure Baltis understood.

  “They might not hang me,” he suggested.

  “No. Of course they wouldn’t.”

  “But — they would — hang — her.”

  “And if this babu is asked for evidence, she will be shamefully and undr
amatically dead to all intents and purposes from moment when he takes the witness stand! Am expert witness! Furthermore, am deaf. For purposes of lawful evidence, I did not hear our Jimmy Jimgrim say he slew corpus delicti.”

  “Yes,” said McGowan, “they’d hang her all right. If I were you I’d let ’em do it. She is no more use. If she won’t tell what she knows I don’t see why you should shield her.”

  “She will tell,” Grim answered, “in exchange for my telling who killed Bertolini.”

  Baltis looked indifferent. She rubbed her throat with both hands and took her time before she answered:

  “I killed Bertolini. He had idiotically bungled Dorje’s business. He had presumed to put me on the death list, which was not his business at all. I am his superior, to whom obedience was due. And there was a third reason: Bertolini was about to tell the secret of the cipher.”

  “Same no longer being secret,” said Chullunder Ghose. “It reads this way: forty-five minus forty-five equals forty-five. And that is easy. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one-are forty-five. Reverse that order- forty-five again. Subtract one from the other and we have the self-same figures in a different order, namely: eight, six, four, one, nine, seven, five, three, two. That then evidently is the order in which the numerals should read for decoding purposes. How goes the rest of it?”

  McGowan spoke up: “Bible, McLaughlin’s Dictionary, Encyc. Brit. Eleven.”

  “Undoubtedly those are the books,” said Chullunder Ghose, “to whose lines and pages we must refer for the explanation of given numerals. That is also easy. What next?”

  McGowan spoke again from memory: “One to twenty-eight equals circle. Nine, ten, eleven are one, two, two-two.”

  “Thirty-one numbers,” said Grim. “Those might refer to the days of the month, the circle meaning the full moon. How many volumes has the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica?”

  “Twenty-eight,” I said, “omitting the index.”

  “So perhaps from the first to the twenty-eighth we should consult the Encyclopaedia — volume one on the first, volume two on the second, and so on.”

  “I suspect it is not so easy as all that,” said Chullunder Ghose. “A skunk emits a smell to stupefy his adversary. Would not Dorje do that also? How many volumes has the Bible?”

  “King James version — usually one,” I answered.

  “Atcha, sahib. On the twenty-ninth we consult the Bible, which is oftener than many Christians do it. Self, am substitutionist with pantheistic prejudices; one religion failing to excuse my tendencies, I substitute another — always. Am familiar with Bible, having frequently consulted same for proof of theory that nobody knows more than he can find out. What about McLaughlin’s Dictionary?”

  “French-English,” I answered. “Two volumes.”

  “So we know that,” said the babu. “On the thirtieth we consult volume one, and on the thirty-first volume two of McLaughlin’s Dictionary. Not too troublesome. I hate French, it is such an accurate language. But we all hate something. Rammy sahib hates cats. Jimmy Jimgrim sahib has no word for how he feels regarding people who think they are better than others. Now what?”

  “That’s the rub,” said Jeff, who likes concrete problems on which he can use force.

  “Let’s look through Bertolini’s pockets,” Grim suggested.

  There was nothing much. A handkerchief — watch — keys — a little money — a new cheap memorandum book. The latter contained nothing except a folded half-page from a Cairene daily paper, from which the date was missing. Grim examined it.

  “We win!” he said abruptly after half a minute. He handed the sheet to McGowan.

  McGowan nodded. “Obvious. We have clerks who watch the daily papers. The agony column is always clipped and pasted in a scrap-book. We have known for, I should say, nine years that Bertolini paid for those occasional strings of numbers. But then he was known to be a crank on numerology among other things. Have you read his treatise on the Pyramid? It was just like him to publish a string of numbers without explaining them. We all thought he was warning us in his own opinionated and obscure way about the date of the end of the world. In fact, when asked about it he admitted that. He used to say that people who couldn’t understand the figures weren’t entitled to the information, and that most people are idiots who will be exterminated like vermin when the end of the world comes. Bertolini was what you might call crusty.”

  The piece of newspaper was passed from hand to hand and reached me finally. At the top of the column headed Public Notices there were several lines of figures that resembled, for instance, a list of the numbers of bonds drawn for redemption: only there was no accompanying text. Simply the numbers, separated into groups by means of hyphens. No signature — no initials — not one word of explanation.

  “He was blind. He himself couldn’t read it,” I objected.

  “Precisely,” said Grim. He glanced at the Chinaman sitting sulkily under the lantern. Then he glanced at Baltis, sideways. She understood him.

  “Do you still — think — you can — manage — without me?” she answered.

  “Numbers are a universal language,” Grim said quietly. “Yes, I can manage now nicely without you. Good-bye!” He glanced at McGowan. “Could one of your men take her upstairs?”

  McGowan summoned a man. “Escort the Princess Baltis into Bertolini’s house and let her lie down if she wants to. But watch her, and call another man to watch with you. I will hold you answerable.”

  Baltis changed expression. I saw her hand go to her bracelet and quicker than I could cry out she had struck at Grim’s neck. Jeff sprang at her. But Grim had guessed what to expect and caught her wrist. Jeff held her while Grim took off the bracelet and passed it to McGowan.

  “Interesting piece for your museum,” he remarked. “I’ve finished with her. She can go now.”

  She was led away in something like a stupor and the soldier had to call another man to help him carry her up the winding stairway.

  “Jail, I suppose?” said McGowan when she was out of earshot.

  “No,” Grim answered. “I need her badly.”

  “For the cipher?”

  “Lord, no. That’s as clear as daylight. I’ll explain it in a minute. I’ve been watching for a real chance to get her goat so thoroughly that she’ll go all limits to get vengeance. She can endure anything except contempt, so I pretended to despise her. Candidly I think she’s splendid stuff. Let her go, Mac. She can’t return to France. There’s only one thing she can do — one man she can go to — Dorje! If she can get to Dorje, so can we.”

  “But how the devil can we let her go?” McGowan asked. “If we do, she will know why we do it. She will lead you on a false trail.”

  “I’m as easy to lead as a loose pig,” Grim retorted, “and she knows we have the Chak-sam clue. She probably won’t try to reach Chak-sam; she’ll head for some place in India where she knows she can get in touch with Dorje. He may come to meet her, although it’s hardly likely. Much more likely he’ll order her to come to him; and if he doesn’t have her killed in ambush on the way — and if she stands the climate and hardships — we can follow.”

  “But how are we to let her leave the country?”

  Breakfast came — strong tea and what the soldier said was omelet. Maybe it was; at any rate, we ate it. Then, Chullunder Ghose inventing ingenious details, Grim and McGowan between them worked out a scheme. A friend of theirs named Jean Roche at the French Consulate-general was to be asked to approach Baltis and to offer her a forged passport and credentials if she would agree to escape from Egypt with his assistance and to do a little dirty work in India for the French.

  “He can say he wants the low-down on the probability or otherwise of native armies joining in a revolution,” Grim suggested.

  And she can go by ‘plane,” said McGowan. “We had an application six or seven days ago from the French for permission to use our airports for a flight to Delhi. It isn’t granted yet, bu
t I believe it will be. If so, I can very likely persuade Jean Roche to smuggle her on board and make the pilot take a confidential letter to the Indian Intelligence. You’ll follow — ?”

  “Hard on her heels. We’re ready the minute we’ve got this cipher ironed out. Shall we all take a chance on that gas being gone?”

  “Give it ten more minutes,” said McGowan. “What’s the secret of the cipher?”

  Grim smiled at the babu. “You tell. What’s the secret of the famous Indian trick of sending news without wire or signal?”

  McGowan snorted. “If you know that, you know what our smartest men haven’t been able to discover. It’s done all right, but I don’t believe the Indians themselves could tell you how it’s done.”

  “Those who could tell, won’t; and those who would tell, can’t because the new words to explain it haven’t been invented,” said Chullunder Ghose. “Am personal antithesis of secrets. Not only can’t keep one but hate to try to do it. Nevertheless, am neither Webster nor a psychiatrical contortionist who can elucidate the said-to-be subconscious subterfuges of the mechanical instrument known as the brain. Same swims in thought the same as a frog in a bottle of alcohol. You stir the alcohol — the frog moves. You stir the sea of thought — and brains think — or they think they think, which shows what piffle words are. How do you suppose that Jimmy Jimgrim sahib guesses accurately six times out of seven what to do next? How do you suppose I understand him and can do what he wants me to do without his saying anything? How do you suppose a world goes mad and butchers ten or eleven million men without knowing what it is fighting about? It is because the brain is a machine that does exactly what it is told to do; and if you don’t tell it, someone else will. In India we teach ourselves to use our brains as listening machines, since that is easier than hard work. Our trouble is too many people send us such perplexing contradictory absurdities to think about; and too few understand the trick of tuning in to what is worth getting. And besides, jazz stirs them to excitement, whereas symphony suggests that there are problems. People don’t like problems. They like answers. And they like the answers wrong, I tell you. Now I bow and take a back seat. Jimmy Jimgrim is from Tibet, where they teach such matters. Let him tell it.”