Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  CHAPTER 26. “Who would speak of such a valley?”

  THE Tibetans hadn’t seen the shang-shang battle, but they had heard about it. Storm or no storm, they were in a momentary mood to go as far away as possible, at top speed. Abdul Mirza had his carriage waiting outside the monastery gate. He was staying at the Hindu Kush Hotel. He promised to wake the clerk, get Tom’s mail, should there be any, and send it by messenger to Nancy Strong’s house.

  Rain, thunder, lightning. Deserted, dark streets. Even the police were under cover. A light in Nancy Strong’s living-room. All the rest of her house dark. No one at the gate. A fork of lightning revealed a rather bare compound with a lean-to children’s play-shed that served to shelter the men and ponies.

  Tom had a deuce of a time to get the front door opened. Rain and thunder out-dinned his thumping on the panel, and there was no bell. However, a servant opened at last, dried him off a bit and showed him into the living-room. Nancy Strong, in a quilted dressing-gown, was hugging the fire, reading and making notes. She looked middle-aged and untidy with her gray hair down over her shoulders, but she didn’t seem embarrassed. She looked over the top of horn-rimmed reading-glasses and shot a question at Tom before he had time to speak:

  “Did you persuade her?”

  “No.”

  “Did you try?”

  “Yes. Nothing doing. I want her bag, please.”

  “Your Elsa Burbage is exactly the kind of girl I feared she might be. You are using a thoroughbred, Tom Grayne, to do a mule’s job.”

  “Too late to discuss that,” he answered.

  “Thö-pa-ga? Lobsang Pun?”

  “Ask Johnson. He probably knows by now. Perhaps he’ll tell you. Tell him I said nothing. Or you might ask Abdul Mirza. He’s more talkative.”

  Nancy Strong went for Elsa’s bag. Apparently it had to be repacked; she was a long time bringing it. Tom paced the room, staring at framed Tibetan photographs. There was one of Lobsang Pun, many years younger, in a silver frame on the piano. A portrait of the late Dalai Lama. Several Tibetan landscapes in water-color, a bit school-marmy in conception and execution, but not too bad — probably Nancy Strong’s work. Several photos of Nancy Strong, young and rather good looking, in Tibetan costume, two on horseback and one on camelback.

  Tom’s ears were alert. He heard a pounding on the front door and opened it to Abdul Mirza’s messenger. A telegram. Nothing else.

  HARLEY BELIEVES TEIVOS SALESMAN EITHER ON THE WAY OR PERHAPS ALREADY MAKING BID FOR CONTRACT. CAVELL

  Marching orders! Gate into Tibet open and its custodians not looking! Sir Horace O’Mally of Harley Street, physician extraordinary to kings and millionaires, had evidently learned a lot more in Moscow than how to cut off a dog’s head and keep it alive. The word “Teivos” couldn’t be anything else than “Soviet” reversed. “Soviet salesman” must mean “Russian secret agent,” on his way to the Thunder Dragon Gate or there already. “Cavell” was certainly Dr. Morgan Lewis of the Edith Cavell Hospital.

  If the telegram meant anything whatever, it meant: “Ride like the devil and get there ahead of them all!”

  The United States, Great Britain, Russia, Japan, the Tibetan Council of Regents in Lhasa, and the agents of the Tashi Lama, were all in the running! Dowlah, Lobsang Pun, the Bön magician, and how many others?

  Nancy Strong brought two bags, Elsa’s and another filled with such luxuries as raisins, chocolate, soap, face cream and a small first-aid kit.

  “I have nothing small enough for her, so I have put in needles, thread, scissors. She will have to make her own warm clothing, of any material she can get. Oh, you iron men! Is she out in this storm? Have you plenty of money? Have you a Mauser pistol? Tibetans believe a Mauser has some sort of magical superiority over all other weapons. They won’t face Mausers. Have you ammunition? You won’t be able to get any in Tibet. Have you wind-proof clothing?”

  Tom almost tore himself away. He didn’t even wave his hand as she stood in the open doorway with the yellow light behind her. He was afraid she might summon him back for some last-minute argument.

  He had no difficulty in getting the Tibetans and ponies to face the storm again. The Tibetans laughed. They said it would cease before daylight, and it did. There were washed-out roads and some dangerous bridges, but nothing to delay a small, self-sufficient, experienced party. The going might have held up dude explorers, or a heavily laden caravan. But the ponies’ loads were reasonably light. There was nothing to be bought but corn, in small quantities, to enable the ponies to keep up the grueling pace; so they didn’t have to linger anywhere and answer questions. The principal problem for three days was to remove leeches from the ponies’ legs and bellies every time they crossed one of the almost countless streams in the tropical valley bottoms.

  Up from the steaming jungle, up above the tree line, above the clouds. Down again into the tropical heat. Up again, over the freezing sky line, sleeping, all huddled together for warmth, in one tent. No privacy, but no chance for conspiracy. The seeds of mutiny are laid in whispers in the night, but the Tibetans couldn’t whisper in the night without Tom’s overhearing.

  His hardiness puzzled them. He did more than his share of the work. He could load two ponies while any one of them was loading one. He ate the same coarse food, consumed the same greasy salted tea and seemed to have an even greater craving than their own to reach the Roof of the World and its windy desolation.

  He asked no questions along the road. There were fifty trails through Sikkim that the Bön magician’s party might have taken, but they all had to converge to one point. There the Bön magician might be held up by the police or border officials, but more likely he would get by with Lobsang Pun’s forged signature. The Sikkim military police might spot Elsa, but more probably not, if she were swaddled up in blankets. The road into Tibet was open to let Thö-pa-ga go home and unlock a secret.

  Once over the seventeen thousand-foot Sepo La, there were two roads. One of them toward Lhasa. A main road, absolutely certain to be guarded by Tibetan troops. If the Bön magician intended to take that road, then it was of the utmost importance to head him off. But if his objective was the Thunder Dragon Gate, and if the Thunder Dragon Gate was somewhere near the northern slope of Everest, he would take that other road, westward, skirting Nepal. Somewhere along that rarely traveled western road was a Yellow-hat monastery. It would be Lobsang Pun’s only possible base for supplies. As the Tashi Lama’s representative the old prelate was to all intents and purposes an outlaw in Tibet. If his objective, also, was the Thunder Dragon Gate, that monastery, whose monks were very likely faithful to the exiled Tashi Lama, would be his first goal. There was nowhere else where he could have left provisions safe from bandits and Tibetan troops.

  Tom talked it over with the headman, who wasn’t much impressed by the need for haste. The more he thought about the Bön magician, the less he liked the prospect of over taking him.

  “Tum-Glain, I saw it happen. I saw those devil-dancers pull their costumes off, in darkness, in the stable courtyard, pack them hurriedly and, shouldering their own loads, follow the Bön’s party out through the gate, on foot.

  “That,” he insisted, “means they had animals waiting for them, hidden somewhere, ready. They behaved like men who have a plan well laid. That they dared to offend the Holy Lobsang Pun is proof enough that they are bad rogues. Such men are cunning. They use magic. They can make themselves invisible. They wouldn’t take a straight road through Sikkim. That black devil knows where he can get supplies from people in out-of-the-way places who won’t betray which way he went for fear he might send them a sending. I say, they are far behind us.”

  Tom watched for signs of Elsa. There were countless chortens, cairns, trees beside the road to which pious travelers had tied strips of rags to flutter ceaseless prayers in the wind. But there was no rag that might have been torn from Elsa’s dress. In the lead, on the sturdiest pony, mile after mile, day after day, Tom searched with tireless eyes for any
thing whatever that she might have put to use as an intelligible signal.

  The Tibetans laughed, not at him, but at the notion that a prayer streamer might be a message to any one in this world.

  “Those are to bring blessings upon us. Om mane padme hum! They repeat it again and again.”

  “Watch, I tell you! Unless they tied her hand and foot, she will leave her mark somewhere. It isn’t likely they would ill treat her. That would have a bad effect on Thö-pa-ga, and it is him they think of.”

  “For Thö-pa-ga, so I have heard, they have another woman waiting,” said the headman. “Is this one your woman? If so, she should give them the slip.”

  “She will stand by Thö-pa-ga,” Tom answered.

  “Oh, is she his woman?”

  “Keep your eyes open for some sign of her.”

  But they saw no sign until the ten wearying ponies had toiled up the long gradual ascent of the Sepo La. Near the cairn at the summit, that marks the boundary between Sikkim and Tibet, was the first snow — a mere acre or two in the lee of a ledge, out of reach of the bitter westerly wind. The Tibetans made haste to off-load. The ponies rolled in the snow on the edge of a fifty-foot precipice, while Tom hunted for signs of the Bön’s party having bivouacked thereabouts. There were plenty of traces of traders’ caravans. There were skeletons of yaks and ponies, scattered apart and cracked up by wolves. But nothing recent. There was nothing attached to the boundary cairn, or hidden near it.

  But in a hollow a considerable distance off the road he found embers and a lot of horse-dung that was not many hours old. A party that had carried wood up to that elevation, and that could afford to waste embers and not to burn the horse-dung, must have plenty of ponies and be traveling in great haste. He examined the ground carefully, kicked over a stone and picked up one of Elsa’s blue goose handkerchiefs.

  It was very likely her last one. The headman laughed like a child at the embroidered blue goose.

  “Such a prayer flag should bring happiness! Better leave it where you found it, Tum-Glain.”

  No lip-stick marks. Probably she hadn’t any lip-stick. But, wrapped in the handkerchief, there was a small strip of bark off a piece of firewood. On the inside it showed thumb-nail marks. First, a broad-arrow mark. Danger. Then a series of groups of nail marks, as easy to read as a telegram if one knew the code:

  “Thöpe well. Böns fear pursuit. Look out for ambush. Turning westward.”

  Nothing about herself. No complaint. Nothing to indicate whether she was being well or ill treated.

  “Leave it where you found it, Tum-Glain. Interfering with happy prayers brings miserable curses. We have trouble enough.”

  It was high noon. Men and ponies wished to bivouac in the shelter of that hollow, and the ponies had earned it. But Tom fed the ponies and refused to pitch camp. There would be a full moon. Night, with the moon on the snow would be nearly as bright as day, and for many miles there would be an easy, gradual descent to a level of about fifteen thousand feet.

  “Forward!”

  “Tum-Glain, we are too few. The Bön magician is a devil with plenty of servants, who will kill us if we overtake them. They might see us from a long way off and use magic against us. Better keep far behind them until we are overtaken by the Holy Blessed Lobsang Pun Rinpoche.”

  “Did he order you to obey me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then obey.”

  By nightfall they had reached the fork where the rough but clearly marked track toward Lhasa winds around to the right of an unclimbable peak. The other road, westward toward the maze of mountains that hide Nepal, is little used and usually difficult to find. But it was easy now. There was a maze of hoof-prints in the snow. Even before moonrise it was easy to tell that the track had been ploughed up too recently for the blown snow to hide it again.

  There was no avoiding a halt to rest men and animals. The Tibetans boiled tea in the lee of a rock, and while he waited for moonrise Tom checked up on his previous guess work. It was dangerous to ask questions, because if the headman should start lying to him there would be no end to it. He had to pretend he knew the main facts and needed only to know minor details.

  “Soon we shall run out of food for the ponies. How far is it to the monastery where the Holy Lobsang Pun has stored his supplies?”

  “Three days. Four days.”

  “At my speed?”

  “Perhaps two days, if the ponies can endure it. This is a bad road. It leads upward and upward. Once it was a main road toward Nepal, but the pass into Nepal is so steep and high that it has been abandoned these many years, and now only a few monks use this road — they and bandits — and some pilgrims.”

  “What pilgrims?”

  “I have never heard what pilgrims, nor whither they go, nor why.”

  The beginning of lies and evasions. Tom pretended to lose interest. It was enough for the moment that he knew he was right about that monastery. Moonlight touched the far-off peaks and made them serenely beautiful. The loveliest view in the world. It filled the Tibetans with mystic fears. They spoke of spirits, and of snow-men, and of devils. Not even they knew which of those peaks was Everest, although they claimed to know what monstrous phantoms lived on which mountain. There were a score of moonlit summits, perhaps a hundred miles away, or less, all indescribably white against moonlit sky. On some of them no human being had ever set foot. Somewhere in among them was a valley, unmapped; unphotographed even from the air; unvisited even by Sven Hedin or by the Mt. Everest expeditions; sacred; dreaded; secret.

  “I find no fault,” Tom answered. “That is, if you are telling the truth.”

  “If I have lied by as much as a word, may Allah do so to me, and worse!”

  Tom went to his bag and broke open Abdul Mirza’s package. He counted out fifteen hundred rupees. He gave a thousand rupees to the man from Naini Kol.

  “I can’t accept your offer. You and your men must march to India by way of the Sepo La. Start immediately. Wire from the first telegraph-station in Sikkim to Abdul Mirza, in care of Miss Nancy Strong of Darjeeling. I will write her address for you. She will know where he is. You will report to Abdul Mirza, at whatever place he directs, and you will tell him that I gave you money for your journey, so that you needn’t beg or pillage. If, on your way you should encounter a Tibetan priest-nobleman named Lobsang Pun, with a large following, you may tell him your story and say that Tum-Glain urges him to come with all possible speed. Thereafter, until you meet His Excellency Abdul Mirza face to face, you hold your tongue, lest trouble come of it. Silence. Do you understand that?”

  “Atcha, sahib. But how shall we find this what is it? this Sepo La?”

  “This lady — Su-li Wing — will show you. Ask her no questions, and you will not need to lie when you say, like an honest soldier, that you know nothing against her. When you reach India, but no sooner, give her this, for herself.”

  Tom handed him five hundred rupees. Then he turned to Su-li Wing:

  “There you are. I said I’d stake you to some journey money. You’ve an escort thrown in.”

  “Do you mean you’re running me out of Tibet?” she demanded.

  “Yes. Without prejudice. Tell your own story. About the worst they can do is to deport you from India and pay your fare.”

  “Do you call that giving me a break? Marching orders and five hundred miserable rupees? My luggage, that your girl friend has stolen, is worth at least five thousand rupees! I hope Dowlah rapes her, and then kills her! Give me her luggage. It’s worth at least something.”

  Tom turned again to the man from Naini Kol.

  “Did Rajah Dowlah carry off this lady’s luggage?”

  “No, sahib. There are several loads of it. His Highness offered it to the English lady, but she refused. She wouldn’t even permit the porters to carry it into the tent we pitched for her.”

  “Snooty little bitch!” said Su-li Wing.

  CHAPTER 30. “Bandits! Let us turn back!”

  DOWLAH’S c
amp site, at the foot of the almost unnegotiable pass into Nepal, looked stricken, dismal, hopeless. The men from Naini Kol lined up and faced the wind. They were ashamed of being mutineers. They said so. They were equally ashamed of feeling beaten by the cold, the unaccustomed food and the altitude. They were angry with their subadar for having agreed to return to India. They said that vehemently. They felt guilty of having let Elsa Burbage ride away with Dowlah. Muffled to their ears, and with their loads already packed on half-starved and exhausted ponies, they demanded, with chattering teeth, to be given a chance to restore their izzat — their soldierly honor.

  “That’s a brave offer,” said Tom. “I respect you for it. But I can’t accept. I’m not a British official, I’m American. You men are in foreign territory without permission or authority from any one. As I see it, you obeyed your Rajah’s orders until you had reason to believe he was acting criminally. After that, you refused to obey. Well and good. But if the Tibetan soldiers from Kalimpong should catch you, you’d be massacred. That might cause bad international trouble. I am here as a foreigner at my own risk. I have no authority. But I have given your subadar a letter to Abdul Mirza, and I don’t think you will be in disgrace when you get back, if you hold your tongues.”

  Su-li Wing tried harder than the men from Naini Kol to change Tom’s mind.

  “Look here,” she said, “Tom Grayne, I’m for sale. You buy — yes?”

  “No, I’ve told you.”

  “Don’t you be a damned fool,” she insisted. “If you follow Dowlah, he will kill your girl friend, sooner than let you get her. I know him. Once a man of Dowlah’s type be comes a killer, he goes on killing. I have seen scores of men, in China and in Russia, who burned their bridges after intriguing themselves into a desperate situation because they thought themselves more clever than any one else. They all took to murder. First they killed one person, then another, and then several. After that, they were like wolves that kill sheep, because to kill sheep is so easy.”