Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  After an eternity that knew no time, she found herself seated on Andrew’s bag, with her back to the wall of a square room. There was reddish light from a charcoal brazier, but there were also two oil lanterns on the floor. Andrew’s porter — the big, stupid lad who knew no English — squatted near her, nine parts terrified, one part curious, slobber drooling from his lips, his fingers clutching a charm against magic. Andrew’s back was blood-red in the brazier light. He faced von Klaus. The German’s back was toward an inner door, that was guarded by two flat-faced Tibetans who loafed on their rifles, the butts resting on their heavy, fur-lined boots. There were two other men in the room, both Tibetans, facing each other, seated on cushions against opposite walls. One was the spectacled man who had first demanded Andrew’s bag; he looked angry and humiliated. The other, too, was an educated-looking person but of much more powerful physique. There were paintings of hell on the walls, very well painted; they looked like plunder from a monastery. On the inner door there was pictured a cross-eyed woman with naked breasts, whose protruding tongue was a forked flame.

  Von Klaus scowled at Andrew. It was like an ancient Chinese battle picture, each opponent striving to outface the other with mental power, before condescending to such weapons as mere murderers use. Andrew was smiling; he didn’t seem so strained as the German. It suddenly dawned on Elsa that Andrew’s thought reached higher than her own. It was more true, less scattered, it had purpose! She watched, listened, spell-bound. The German spoke first:

  “Shoot! But if you do, you’re done for. I was here first. I dealt the cards.”

  Andrew answered in a level voice: “If I find you’re worth killing, I’ll do it. I won’t wait for your permission.”

  The German jerked his head in the direction of a steel bear trap. It hung from a heavy chain on a wall. All the Tibetans smiled.

  “I intended,” said the German, “to employ you, at good pay. You’d be no good with that thing snapped on to your ankle. Please yourself. This so-called magician Lung-gom-pa will let you continue your journey, in my service, under my direction, if—”

  “If what?”

  Von Klaus glanced at Elsa. “If I demand it. But I require a hostage for your behavior. That is simple enough. Leave her here.”

  He paused, expecting a retort. But Andrew waited for him to continue. Elsa suddenly saw Bulah Singh’s face as clearly as if he were there in the room. It was the German’s lips that moved, but it might almost be Bulah Singh’s voice that continued:

  “She will be well treated. We won’t need her. She would be in the way. We will take with us that other woman and her child.”

  “You didn’t think of that,” said Andrew. He glanced slowly around the room.

  The German, still watching Elsa’s face, retorted: “Never mind who first thought of it. Good plans have many makers. The point is organization — cooperation. Agree! Then we will talk—”

  Andrew interrupted: “You’ll talk now. Go and sit down — on that cushion beside the wall — that one — over there — near the man in spectacles.”

  Beneath his beard the German’s face muscles hardened. His nostrils narrowed. “I will stand — here.”

  “Go and sit on that cushion. I won’t warn you again.”

  The man in spectacles coughed suddenly. Von Klaus turned to appeal to him. But with the side of his eye he noticed Andrew’s left fist. He shrugged his shoulders — went and sat down. From then on he had to look up to Andrew. The floor is not an easy position from which to impose one’s will. “Sit beside me,” he suggested. “There is room.” He patted the wide cushion.

  “Give me your weapons,” Andrew answered, observing that the Tibetans smiled. It was even possible that they understood some English.

  Von Klaus moved both hands simultaneously to divide Andrew’s attention. He acted the ancient trick rather well, but he underestimated Andrew’s quickness. He was too academic. He knew the rules too well. One could see the trick coming. Andrew kicked his wrist. The Luger went off inside his overcoat. The bullet missed Elsa by not much margin — buried itself in the wall, in the dry mud between two lumps of rough-hewn masonry. The German yelped. He was in real pain:

  “Blast you! You broke my wrist!”

  “Swell. If you move, I’ll kick it again.”

  The man in spectacles seemed to be the senior Tibetan in the room. Andrew beckoned him. But he was either in disgrace, or afraid, or unfriendly; he pretended not to understand. Instead, one of the inner door guards came, smiling. He certainly did understand. He leaned over von Klaus, searched him with quick professional skill, removed a Luger and one reload, stowed them in his bokkus and smiled at Andrew. Then he held out his right hand.

  Von Klaus sneered through shut teeth: “Now you’ve done it! This is the end of us all — and it’s your fault!”

  The Tibetan door guard made a threatening gesture toward the bear trap. He made signs to Andrew to surrender his pistol.

  “You blundering idiot!” said the German. “Schafskopf!”

  Andrew stepped backward, two paces, half turning his head. He raised his voice a trifle but spoke calmly:

  “Elsa.”

  “Yes, Andrew.”

  “It’s getting hot. If it gets too hot, keep quite still, so that I can kill you with the first shot.”

  Timeless, spaceless, instantaneous experience poured into Elsa’s consciousness. She knew, suddenly, once and for all that death was nothing to be feared. But she knew more. She knew terribly more. The swift thought of Andrew’s bullet was a physical sensation, sweet and strong, like being kissed between the breasts. She almost fainted of it. No act of will, but Reality, like light in the dark and life in death, forced her to yearn, with her whole being, to be slain by Andrew. So she knew she loved him, and knew there is no death. Her breast thrilled naked to his bullet. Loving-kindness outflowed from her to him. But she governed herself. She answered in a rather hard voice:

  “Very well, Andrew.”

  He turned his back. For a moment she lowered her head, crossing her hands on her breast, steeling herself, to keep her new secret hidden. It was so truly new that it bewildered her. She hadn’t known it yet ten seconds. They were ten eternities. She had believed she and Andrew were friends, just good friends. But Andrew had spoken ten words, and her heart had melted. O God. Never, never and forever should Andrew know she loved him. He didn’t love her. Why should he? Generosity might make him say he did, if she let him guess her secret. Never, never.

  “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.

  “O God, have I the strength to—”

  Andrew spoke suddenly, mispronouncing Tibetan: “Go back to your post at the door!”

  The Tibetan door guard hesitated. He glanced again at the bear trap on the wall.

  Von Klaus spoke, in German: “For God’s sake, man, give him your pistol before he summons help. You can’t do anything. If you shoot him, there are fifty worse ones outside! They’ll put us both together into that trap. Then they’ll turn Bulah Singh’s woman loose on us! Can’t you guess what—”

  Andrew interrupted, not taking his eyes off the Tibetan’s: “Elsa!”

  “Yes, Andrew.”

  “In case I have to shoot you, good-bye.”

  She didn’t answer. If there isn’t death, there’s no good-bye, so why pretend? She watched him. By some almost invisible trick of eye or hand he led the Tibetan’s attention to his left fist. It was at about the level of his waist, ready for a pile-driver blow. The Tibetan saw it and smiled and backed away — all the way back to the door, where he stood at ill-drilled attention beside his comrade, beaten for the time being. Andrew took no more notice of him; he turned on von Klaus:

  “Now your turn. Talk.”

  The German sat belligerently silent. Elsa tried to be clairvoyant, to be a mirror of the German’s thought for Andrew to read. Suddenly she remembered: Andrew had forbidden! She mustn’t! — had sworn she wouldn’t! Each do our own thinking. Leave this to me! She tried then, lo
yally, with all her might, to be a numb, dumb witness and let Andrew play his hand uninterfered with. It was too late. She was seeing — seeing. She saw the red-shot bronze of the German’s aura, like a beast’s at bay, angry and cunning. She saw the desperate steely gray of Andrew’s fear to do wrong and the brilliance of his resolution to do right. He was divided against himself. But she remembered his motto, on the book-plate in his copy of Paradise Lost: Facias rem. Andrew would not do nothing.

  Then, suddenly, she knew that the magician Lung-gom-pa was watching. Did Andrew know it? She could see no peephole in the wall, nor in the door behind the Tibetan guards. But there was the magician’s evil face, as if the wall were transparent and as if he, too, could see through it. He could see her. She knew he could see her. He could see the wound in her naked breast that was not yet made by Andrew’s bullet! Could he see what she saw in the German’s consciousness? Could he understand it? It wasn’t in German. There were no words. It was thought. Visions vanished as Andrew spoke to the German:

  “You’d have told Lung-gom-pa that you’d persuaded me to give my automatic to that guard. There was a chance he’d have resumed his confidence in you.”

  Von Klaus snarled back to him: “That is a lie! You — you know it’s a lie!”

  “It’s plain English,” said Andrew.

  “You are a coward, Andrew Gunning. You deal only in insults. If you think to impose your will on me, you are mistaken.”

  Characteristically Andrew didn’t laugh. His slow smile was in recognition of the German’s will to win. Elsa herself more than once had mistaken that smile for a mask that hid doubt of himself. It almost looked like it now. She wondered: could Andrew see what she saw?

  “You don’t know me,” said the German.

  “I don’t need to,” Andrew answered. “You’re the second-in-command of a Nazi secret commission sent to Tibet by Adolf Hitler’s Foreign Office gang to raise hell in Lhasa. You left your gang in Lhasa and came here to enlist me in your outfit. No dice.”

  The German sneered: “You flatter yourself, Mr. Yankeedoodle! But now that we’ve met — if it is not too late — if you are willing to obey me — I will bargain with you. It will be a hard bargain. But it may save us both from the woman and that bear trap and the red-hot charcoal!”

  Charcoal collapsed to ashes in the brazier. The man in spectacles got up and poured on fresh charcoal from a sheepskin bag. There was a sharp smell of fumes. Elsa, with fingers in front of her eyes, prayed, through shut teeth that denied the prayer, that Andrew might see what she saw.

  Andrew was standing quite still, staring at the German. He spoke quietly: “What’s your idea of a deal?”

  Elsa drew in her breath sharply. She couldn’t see Andrew’s thought — couldn’t imagine why he asked that question. The German’s intended treachery was as plain as his answering speech — as his arrogant will to win:

  “You tool of meddlers! I have been working on this ignorant magician Lung- gom-pa for weeks, using scientific methods to make him afraid of his own magic and of my intelligence. Therefore now he keeps us waiting, giving us time to quarrel with each other and to betray each other. Savage psychology! You, you damned fool, have done exactly what he wanted, trying to force a quarrel instead of trusting me. Now the opium is here he no longer needs you. Nor your woman. Nor Bulah Singh. He needs your ponies, and your plunder to give to his men. He would torture you now, for his men’s amusement, if it wasn’t for me. But he’s afraid. As long as he’s afraid, I can control him — unless you—”

  Andrew interrupted: “If you’ve a plan, what is it?”

  Elsa bit her lips to crowd back words that tried to break through to warn Andrew to make no bargain. Andrew would be bound by his word. The German wouldn’t. It would be a trap. But Andrew listened. She saw his aura again — resolute, but fearful of doing the wrong thing.

  “There can not be two commands,” said the German. “Either you place yourself and your party at my disposal, or — you may just as well shoot yourself.” He grinned — glanced at Elsa. “But why shoot the girl? Why not leave her to enjoy life a bit longer?”

  Before Andrew could answer, the door behind the armed guards began to open slowly. The guards stood aside, awkwardly presenting arms. Lung-gom-pa the magician loomed in the door in a dim blue light. He stood staring at Elsa. He ignored everyone else in the room, for about sixty seconds. Then slowly he turned his gaze toward the man in spectacles and pointed toward him with his outstretched left hand. The man in spectacles turned ghastly gray. One of the door guards strode toward him and struck him with the butt of his rifle. The man in spectacles got up and left the room, breathing hard, holding his ribs.

  From the dim blue light behind Lung-gom-pa, Bulah Singh’s woman emerged. Behind her, clinging to her skirt, came the boy that Bulah Singh had boasted was his bastard. They appeared to be well pleased, but the boy looked sleepy. They were smiling. There was something about both of them that suggested triumph. They smiled at Andrew. The woman’s eyes hardened as she stared at Elsa. They walked slowly, following the man in spectacles out of the room. The door closed quietly behind them. Then von Klaus spoke with a dry throat:

  “So he dies! Well! For us, that means one Schweinehund fewer to deal with!”

  The magician Lung-gom-pa spoke curtly to the guards. Then he turned his back and disappeared into the dim blue light of the inner room. One of the guards with a jerk of the head commanded Andrew and von Klaus to follow the magician. The other guard crossed the room and took hold of the canvas bag that Elsa was sitting on. But Andrew was quick. He seized the man’s neck from behind and sent him crashing to the floor ten feet away. — He ordered his own man to shoulder the bag. The lad obeyed stupidly, too terrified to refuse. The German laughed:

  “Gewiss, Sie bitten dringend, uns auf die Folter zu spannen!”

  Andrew spoke quickly to Elsa: “Thanks for keeping quiet. Sorry I had to talk tough. It may happen yet. I’ve a plan that may work, or it may not.”

  “Andrew, Major von Klaus is—”

  “Try to leave it to me. There can’t be two captains.”

  “All right, Andrew!”

  “Understand, Elsa: I’m playing both our lives on one throw.”

  “Yes,” she answered. “I agree to it. If we lose, I will face you.” She tapped her breast, smiling up at him, bright-eyed. “God bless you, Andrew. I know you’ll shoot straight.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Andrew’s hand again. Between her shoulder blades. But dismalness gone. Strange how a human feels but one experience at a time. Elsa’s that moment ranged from spiritual ecstasy to leaden physical exhaustion — even hunger. She was so tired she could hardly keep from swaying. But she felt one experience only. Love overwhelmed all being, drenched all consciousness. Facts hadn’t changed, but they meant less. Friendship hadn’t changed; it was there, good, variable, relatively unimportant, a derived, phenomenal emotion.

  “Love — is this God — or the act of God?”

  Memories, doubts, physical and mental fears were far away, perceived through love, dimmed by love that was in itself so absolute, so separate from logic that nothing else mattered. It didn’t really matter that she mustn’t let Andrew guess her secret. It included him. He couldn’t possibly escape it in the end. But could his hand between her shoulders feel — interpret? How could he not know?

  Death? Danger? Only drabness dies! Death would be an incident. Everyone dies, sometime. Torture can be endured, until one dies of it. It doesn’t matter. Agony dies in the end of its own nothingness, like irrecoverable years. Love lives forever. Now and forever. Pain and the past must be something less than love’s chrysalis — its shell — its seed bed, in which necessary nothings rot, to release such real wonders as — as — as the comforting thrill of Andrew’s hand between Elsa’s shoulder blades!

  Consciousness of contrast brought her suddenly to earth — to the guarded door of the stone walled room — walking beside Andrew, into the smelly dim blue spider-c
hamber of a pagan black magician! Thoughts — thoughts — thoughts — only a few paces — millions of thoughts, all simultaneous — no time — no space —

  Had she solved the riddle of the crucifixion? Or, truly to understand it, must one first be crucified? If so, she was willing. But was that really its secret? Was it as simple as that? What is it that gets crucified? Surely not goodness! Surely not kindness — such as Andrew’s kindness! Had she herself even a trace of such kindness as governed Andrew? Did she know what kindness is? Did the Lords of Love let Jesus die in agony because it was not really His but the dark world’s agony — and He never felt it — only with its eyes the world beheld — Ninety-first Psalm — was that it? Were life — love, joy the real consciousness — the real inseparable wonder? The real Reality? Pain — death — cruelty — were those false consciousness — the unreal lying shadows — dreams of a night that dies at daybreak? Love — is love daybreak? Was she, Elsa herself, all-selfish? Could she be that — and yet feel and experience this? Her baby? Was that experience mere mother love — good of its kind, but not beyond good and evil? Beyond good and evil? Did mad Nietzsche really know?

  Andrew’s quiet voice interrupted thought: “Walk proudly! Think of something you love! Smile! Don’t be afraid. I won’t let ’em hurt you.”

  Was Andrew blind? If he’d look, he’d know how little afraid she was! But it was well that he didn’t look! He mustn’t know! He mustn’t! Thinking sympathetically of each other forms a spiritual mirror. Truth reveals itself in that. He mustn’t know! She must speak, to ripple the mirror’s surface!

  “Think of poetry, Andrew! That always brings you the right idea.”

  The thrill in her voice surprised her. Andrew mistook it for fear. He laughed curtly, yielding to what he supposed was her mood. Choosing at random, he chanted aloud to help her to be brave. They marched into the dimness of the magician’s den together to the rhythm of John Masefield’s verse:

  “O Beauty, I have wandered far;