Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Where was you?” Quorn asked.

  “In the right place at the wrong time.”

  “Some folks don’t know where they’re well off,” Quorn retorted. “In out o’ the wet’s the place to head for. Wisht I knew a hide-out right this minute.”

  “That way you will never be successful,” said the babu. “Famous and important, maybe, but successful never. The reward of your importance will be a rotten reputation, same as mine is, and the privilege of crying Yes ma’am to a thief who stole your thunder. But I have been thinking about Napoleon, who set up kings and queens like skittles and got the credit for it, until he forgot his technique. Where did he get his reputation? In Italy. How? He made his dispositions for a battle, but he didn’t bother about living to see the end of it, although nobody loved better than Napoleon to collect the gold out of the teeth of all the butcherees. He picked the point of greatest danger. It was he who led the attack on the bridge-head, carrying the colors. Later on, however, he forgot that technique. So he sought to die in bed like any other has-been. Then he wasn’t. And he did die in bed; and it wasn’t any better than the one I had in U.S.A. United States when they arrested me for having smuggled my intelligence without declaring same for customs purposes on Blue Form B.”

  “I hear they’ve sent some gallopers to fetch the British,” Quorn interrupted. “There’ll be airplanes here in half a jiffy. Me and you won’t die in bed, I reckon. TNT’s a one-way ticket for a place where technique ain’t important. Maybe I’d as soon have that as tigers. I was dreaming last night. Bughouse Bill has got me worked up so I can’t feel cheerful. I’ve a dose of willies.”

  “Yes, I know it,” said the babu. “Bughouse Bill has psyched you, as they say in circles where it is not dignified to speak of magic. How do you think priests put it over on ignoramuses? By being pious? They perceive a complex and they irritate it, that’s all.”

  “Wisht I’d punched that sucker!”

  The babu chuckled. “You did better. You convinced him you are spell-bound by his personality.”

  “Spell hell! But I can’t get his eyes out o’ my mind.”

  “He knows it. He depends on that to make you act stupidly,” said the babu, “as a bull in the ring acts stupidly,” he added, “when it does not understand the bandilleros.”

  “Anything to that?” Quorn asked. He tried hard to seem unconcerned, but he felt like a man with an inside agony consulting a physician. Moses, interrupting, did not help in the least, although Quorn despised Moses’ attitude toward heathen superstitions and reacted normally in downright opposition to them.

  “It is veree sinful and veree deadlee,” said Moses. “It is that which made the widows commit suttee in the olden time, and that which made Thugs commit thuggee. It is necessaree to be sanctified from it with manee masses by a priest whose pietee is—”

  “Chup karao!” said the babu, in a voice like a sergeant-major’s. “Go into the kitchen!” Then he spoke to Quorn nearly as angrily. “Ass! Have you forgotten Bughouse Bill? He is the feet of clay of Gunpat Rao. He is why I thought about Napoleon. And he is why this babu, this time, will be in the right place at the right time.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “At the bridge-head. I will lead you. Should I die there, you will be what Moses calls a massacre, as Napoleon’s soldiers would have been, but that won’t worry any dead babu, believe me. I don’t care what happens after I am dead. And I don’t think bridge-heads are as dangerous as funk-holes if we only knew it. What defends the bridgehead? Their tiger. What do we do with their tiger?”

  “Shoot him?” Quorn suggested. He had never used a rifle, and he certainly did not suspect the babu of efficient marksmanship. There was no other way he could think of, unless they could get some poisoned meat into the cage, and the priests would hardly be such fools as to permit that.

  “Shoot him?” said the babu. “How then could we manage? We have to get him out of there, and get the other tiger in without the priests knowing it. We have to do it tonight, as soon as darkness makes it possible, and before the moon disappears; because we need the moonlight for the main event, but lots of shadow for concealment. We are done for, if we delay until tomorrow night, because the Princess thinks her flatterers are friends, and she has taken half Narada into confidence.”

  “It sounds like lunacy to me,” said Quorn, “but what’s the Maharajah doing?”

  “He is acting just like any other personage who thinks heredity is the same as privilege, and that divine right is genius,” the babu answered. “He is running true to type, like altruistic smarties at Geneva. He is being diplomatic, very — this babu providing irritant in form of an emasculated whisperer who tells him what to think and lets the Maharajah think he thought it. Very verb sap. Just the same as Charles the First, who lost his head for listening to friends he hadn’t sense enough to see through. Bismarck and the altered telegram are nothing to him! He is supernaturally clever! Spiritual! Spirit comes out of a bottle! He has dared the priests to deny the truth of the legend of the Gunga sahib and the Princess and the tiger. They replied it is true. Of course they did. They had to. Then he dared them to say, is the prophesy true, that if she leads the tiger she will be the Maharanee? They could not deny that, so they said that remains to be seen. Accordingly he went to work and added to our propaganda. All last night his agents circulated tales among the people; and they undid a mistake which the Princess made, which might have ruined us. She has been saying, like a silly child, that she will lead the tiger of her own initiative. Her women have been telling that to all the women in the city. And it is women who make history. Men only swallow the blame for the women’s mistakes and call it heroism — which it is, believe me! But the Maharajah’s agents contradicted that: they said that the priests insist upon it, and that she consents to be a martyr for religious reasons. Do you get the hang of it now?”

  “No, I’m damned if I do,” Quorn answered.

  The babu’s patience seemed inexhaustible. He laid his elbow on the table and pointed a powerful forefinger at Quorn; but Quorn interrupted before he could speak:

  “In the name o’ common sense and caution, does her pappa think she’s crazy? He must guess she has a trick up her sleeve. He must know that she wouldn’t face that tiger in that there temple. Where’s his horse sense?”

  “He has less sense than a horse,” the babu answered. “He believes in his own divinity. Why shouldn’t he believe the Princess would believe in hers? People who believe they are special people will believe anything. Don’t economists believe they can tax the world back to prosperity? Don’t diplomats believe that they can lie and cheat each other into world peace? Don’t moralists in U.S.A. United States believe that they can abolish drunkenness by act of Congress? Doesn’t Gandhi believe he can remove the jealousies that are the product of a thousand years of selfishness and superstition, by eating nothing with his new false teeth? If you knew India a little better, you would understand why people went long of the market in ‘29, and why the Czar feared Rasputin, and why the Kaiser set his portrait in Jerusalem alongside God’s, and why the Christian Scientists take absent treatment for a present fracture of the tibia, and why Napoleon applied for British hospitality when they had beaten him at Waterloo, and why the taxes are increased in order to reduce depression, and why speculators go to money-lenders. People kid themselves. And there is no such kidder of himself in all the universe as a professional parasite, who always thinks heredity endowed him with peculiar judgment. Didn’t the Princess set the palace by the ears by saying she is superhuman because lady-momma was concubinated by a he-god? That made his Highness out a cuckold, didn’t it? And does he like that? Not he! Royal anger makes him positive that she believes that twaddle. And he never trusted her mother. He more than half-suspects adultery. And he is drunk. A little whisky is a good thing for the stomach, but a lot of it is bad for politics.”

  “Okay,” said Quorn. “Let’s say he’s pie-eyed, and she’s full o’ mischief. A
nd no love lost between ’em,” he added. “And the British watching out for Gandhi and the Roossians so intent that we’ve a chance to slip one past ’em. And let’s say the Democratic party o’ Narada wants a change o’ government so horrid bad that they’ll all vote the miracle ticket. But what if the tiger scrags her? What then?”

  “Easy,” said the babu. “You and I get scragged too. That’s soon over with. And then the Maharajah charges Bughouse Bill and all his crew with inhumanity, conspiracy and treason. He proves against them that they hated the Princess, because she said repeatedly that she will overthrow them one way or another. Thus he hopes to stir the populace against them, and to have British political backing in a campaign that will deprive the priests of nearly all their revenues and all their power.”

  “If the British get here first?”

  “Then we are flummoxed,” said the babu, “and we go to prison, because they are moralists. They think a Brahmin or a bishop or a top-hat are essential to status quo of ad hoc, which is foreign office-ese for Trust in God I don’t think. That is why the priests, some merchants, and a banker, and some peace-at-any-pricers, and some followers of Gandhi, and a few lick-spittle opportunists have sent messages to India. They count on Holy Joe-ishness of British pragmatism. That means we must make this snappy, or the plug gets pulled before the pet cat catches the canary. It is the eaten canary that counts in politics — the same as Japs in Manchukuo.”

  “You’ve a chance? Do you think you’ve a chance?” Quorn asked him.

  “No,” said the babu, “none whatever. If I thought that I would funk it. All the chances are against us, thank God. It is trusting chance that makes the difference between meum and tuum. Metaphysically speaking I am betting on the cert that tigers’ fangs are at the front end. Now I will go and see the Princess. She has made enough mistakes by now to make the priests feel cocky. Same is all-important. It is not the enemy’s mistakes, but ours, that upset chances and afford intelligence a sine qua non. That is Greek verb sap for over-confidence induces bad bets.”

  Moses came in from the kitchen, grinning diffidently. He offered Quorn a little crucifix on a ribbon. “It is to wear around the neck,” he said. “It is against the eyes of Gunpat Rao.”

  Quorn accepted it politely, not knowing what else to do. It was against his principles, but nearly all his principles were down wind anyhow, and Moses meant well.

  “Take that now to Ratty,” said the babu, and Moses walked out with the bundle of clothing that he said had been worn by the Princess.

  “When I have finished talking nonsense to her, we will feed our tiger,” said the babu. “And then we will get down to realities, and I will show you what the underside of anybody’s bet is like before the cat jumps. Sit and smoke until I come for you, but don’t touch liquor.”

  Then he walked out and left Quorn feeling like a man on trial waiting for a jury to return its verdict. He sat staring at the little crucifix until at last he put it in a drawer, and then shredded tobacco and filled his pipe.

  “I’m crazy,” he said at last. “It’s me that’s bughouse, that’s what. I’m seeing things.” He lighted the pipe and it tasted good. “Okay then. Go ahead,” he said. “Let’s see ’em.”

  XXIII

  “The Worst Plan Is The Best One, If The Best Is

  Argued To A Frazzle And The Worst One Isn’t.”

  Quorn had to go out before the babu came for him. Asoka winded the tiger and began behaving badly, working up a tantrum. Both elephants were chained to big iron rings and those were bolted through to the inside of a wall; but the smaller elephant was getting nervous, too, and between them they might pull the wall down; it was only of mud and stone, well rammed and hard with age. They had been dying buildings, but they had come to life again. It was no longer Quorn’s nice quiet caretaking job. The place had become overnight more like a camp devoid of discipline. Twenty or thirty people, mostly armed with swords and other ancient weapons, had gathered into a rather scared group on the far side of the tank. They had an air about them of looking for jobs as generals. Asoka screamed, ears up, and tried to wrench his chain loose, so they took to a roof by a ladder, and found their way over the roof to the inner courtyard.

  Quorn took a whip to Asoka, and at the end of ten or fifteen minutes he had him quiet. But he did not dare to take him off the chain in order to remove him to the far end of the yard or to turn him loose into the tank. He would probably have charged at the van in the archway. Quorn was worried, what with Ratty nowhere visible and Moses useless for this sort of business. Two unmanageable elephants would be a fine mess of trouble to leave behind them while the babu and he went to play a trick on watchful priests, who more than likely had a trick up their own sleeves. The babu was right as usual; all the chances seemed to be against them. Secrecy? Where was it? There was a roar outside the main gate like that of a crowd on fair-day.

  But when the babu came at last he seemed delighted. He crawled through the passage beneath the van, took a look at the elephants’ chains and chuckled:

  “They are as dependable as any other link of this conspiracy! At least they will keep this courtyard clear of inquisitive fools! So many people have offered their services to the Princess that she thinks she is already ruler of the world. They will all run if some one sneezes, but just now she is as happy as the owner of a sweepstake ticket planning how to spend the money, if she draws a horse and if the horse wins. She has emancipated all the women of Narada to begin with. She invited me to translate Karl Marx, so that she may have a popular edition printed. Just now she is writing a letter in English to the Viceroy at Delhi, making clear her political views. She is a Bolsheviki autocrat, pro-British with a rather de Valera tinge and Hollywoodish-Fascist notions of a Gandhi-esque return to nudist pacifism, all mixed up with Tolstoi and time out for tea. Oh, let us win! Oh let me live to see her buck the British Government! It won’t last long, but let me live to see it! Go get the meat for the tiger. Don’t put on the yellow turban yet; we need that for the Armistice-Fourth-of-July-Guy-Fawkes-day-Lord-Mayor’s celebration!”

  By the time Quorn had brought the slaughtered kid, the door of the van had been opened and shut, and Ratty was outside. He looked less like Ratty than a ragtag harridan from the cheaper stews. He grinned self-consciously in feminine apparel. The pale-blue clothing of the Princess, creased and filthy from the mess that the tiger had made in the van, unchastely clung to his lean frame and no longer was royal or even sweet smelling. He looked bawdy and incorrigible. Never a circus back-lot at a season’s end revealed such tawdry and untidy looking villainy. He knew it. He leered like a small boy dressed up scandalously, and his bigness made him even more immodest. He was taller than Quorn by inches, and the shortness of the clothing made his naked legs and feet ridiculous.

  “He isn’t beautiful, but he is art,” said the babu. “He has done what a regiment couldn’t. He has put a collar on the tiger and has chained him to the far end of the van. You can go in and feed him without losing your heart through your front teeth. Go in two or three times. Take in the meat the fourth time. Thus the tiger may discover you are not an evil person.”

  “How about you?” Quorn retorted.

  “I am evil. I don’t go in.”

  So Quorn entered, and the tiger did not recognize him. There was a clatter of chain and a snarl in stenching dimness. Quorn prayed that the chain was short and strong enough as he stared at the luminous eyes and watched the brute’s fangs uncover. The little laid-back ears suggested unchanging and deadly enmity. But when he spoke the tiger became quiet. He seemed to like to be spoken to. He was a big beast. He seemed in fine condition. But there was something vaguely lethargic about his movements like those of a dog that has recovered from distemper, as if he doubted his strength or had got out of the habit of using it. Quorn stepped out and shut the door, sweating.

  “That’s no pet cat,” he remarked, wiping his forehead.

  “Sickness and the Jains have sissified his ego,” said the
babu, “but a tiger is a devil in a wasp’s suit and we are going to have to do some close-ups. Go back in again.”

  So Quorn repeated the process, and repeated it again. And then, at last, he fed the tiger. It was not much of a rehearsal for cooperation under difficulties in the dark, but, as the babu said:

  “Familiarity is just as bad for tigers as it is for statesmen. Keep the tame ones guessing and they run no risks of being found out. That is verb sap, very. And besides, this is no worse than trusting God or any other unknown quantity. Women run much worse risks in childbirth, merely for the sake of bringing you or me into the world — and what a gamble! Also this is safer than to be a communist in New York, or to speak your mind in Moscow. I would rather this than be a moralist in Manchukuo, or be vaccinated by a Mexican apothecary on a railroad train without an antidote available; and that has happened to me; it was no good. Come to think of it, we only undertake a minor risk. The premium at Lloyds should be a bagatelle, and even so the underwriters would be robbers. I begin to lose enthusiasm, it is such a tame adventure. Come on; let us look into the entrails of it.”

  Quorn, understanding the babu better now, suspected he was talking to reduce his own excitement and to raise Quorn’s, while, behind that barrage of words, he reviewed his plans in microscopic detail. He had the mastergambler’s trick of overlooking nothing, with an air of jocular irreverence that masked alertness keener than a cat’s. As soon as he saw Quorn’s facial expression change he turned and ordered Ratty what to do during their absence. Then he shouted for Moses and ordered a black cotton table-cloth torn in halves. One half he bound on Quorn’s head and the other on his own. Ratty was ordered to take the royal robes off and to stand by the elephants. Moses was to warn people out of the courtyard on the ground of danger if the elephants should break loose. Then the babu raised the stone trap leading to the passage underground. The well-head had been closed, so there was no light from the far end. Moses closed the trap behind them and they were in total darkness except for Quorn’s flashlight.