“I made you an offer,” she said, “in Bombay. I repeat it for the last
time. To the top of the tree—power—all you wish!—if you
obey me. Otherwise—”
Why, if she had such secret power, did she need a mere policeman’s will in
submission to hers? He was no such fool as to believe she was in love with
him, but she was doing tricks with her eyes now, making them look seductive,
feline-fierce and feline-amorous, darkly purposeful and moody with
anticipation. Zaman Ali clucked a disapproving tongue against his teeth. He
disliked any sort of magic, even for his own ends. But he was either afraid
of Wu Tu or else he feared to oppose her for some other reason.
“In the name of the Nine-and-Ninety Names of the Almighty Lord of heaven
and earth and all that is,” he muttered. Wu Tu, shrouded in thin silk
drapery, came one step nearer, radiating perfume. “You surrender?”
There was a long pause, and then:
“Yes,” Blair answered. He felt better and knew he had acted wisely the
moment he said it. It was mental ju-jitsu. The difficulty, now, would be to
act that spoken lie and not to disillusion her too soon. The triumph in her
eyes betrayed her. Zaman Ali muttered his doubt half-audibly. But she, in the
heart of her vain heart, believed her hypnotic will had won.
“No, no, no drink for him yet!” said Wu Tu.
He of the blackjack had hurried in with a big brass jar of water, seeking
to ingratiate himself by being first with it, believing Blair’s star was how
in the ascendant. Blair made a mental note of the man’s craving to be
important. Rebuked, he pretended he had only come to add to Blair’s
discomfort. He splashed water on the floor and grinned spitefully. Zaman Ali
drove him out, cursing his mother’s religion in terms of concrete
imagery.
Wu Tu promptly dismissed Zaman Ali, who resented it. He had no use for
being ordered to-and-fro by women, and he also resented having had Blair
snatched, as it were, from the fangs of his own intention. After a muttered
altercation the Afghan swaggered out, slapping his slippers on the smooth
stone as a soft of obligato to scurrilous thought. Outside, he kicked
someone; there was an explosion of savage oaths followed by the snarl of a
fight that died unborn. In spite of thirst and exhaustion Blair began to feel
decidedly less discouraged. There was a rift in the enemy’s ranks, but he
masked his awareness of that.
Wu Tu stood more than the length of a stride away, confident but careful.
The suffocating heat provided a good excuse to throw open the dark silk saris
that shrouded her figure. Beneath those was a mere film of gauzy material,
that shone like opal. It limned her figure. She was almost naked. She shook
the sari from her coiled, dark hair and, possibly because the light was dim
and from two directions, she looked suddenly young, but curiously Chinese.
Her perfume suggested lavender, but it was something much more subtly
exciting;, it stirred imagination.
“And now.” she said, “we befriend each other— Eh, Blair?”
He nodded. “You hold all the high cards.”
“But you are treacherous! You intend to learn my secret—afterwards
to see me at the devil—is it not so? Eh, Blair?”
He suspected he was in the deadliest danger he had ever been in. He did
not know yet what the danger was, but he did know he had to deceive her and
to gain her confidence by some means. Her accurate reading of his thought
might not be entirely guesswork. She intended to control him. That was
obvious. She certainly believe she had hypnotised him in her house in Bombay,
and to a limited extent she was right; he had been unable to banish the
mental image of her eyes.
That trick was nothing wonderful. It was not nearly as wonderful as Taron
Ling’s. It was as easy to explain as ineradicable memories of scenes glimpsed
in an explosion and photographed.on the brain. But it might be a key to a
system of thought-reading; and if so, it should work both ways. If she could
read his thought by that means, or in consequence of that, then perhaps he
could read her. He deliberately recalled that vision of her eyes that had
been so persistent. It was quite easy; he could see them without looking away
from her. At once he thought he knew what she intended.
His eyes searched her loosened sari. In one of its folds he saw the handle
of a little dagger that resembled the one he had taken away from her in
Bombay. It might even be the same dagger.
Nothing is swifter than thought. Not for nothing did her name in Chinese
mean Five Poisons. There crossed his mind a memory of certain wasps. They
capture insects, sting them, paralyze them, and devour them later. It was a
blood-curdling thought. That might not after all have been alcohol within the
blade of Wu Tu’s little dagger that night in Bombay. He had guessed it was
alcohol, and he had told the commissioner it was, but he might have been
wrong.
He had heard—who has not?—of eastern poisons that are said to
paralyze a victim’s will but leave him otherwise in full possession of his
senses. Everything has its opposite. Curare is a well known drug that
paralyzes the motor centers, but leaves brain and nerves intensely sensitive.
If Wu Tu should possess a drug that was the opposite of that? He decided to
possess that dagger and he took a stride toward her, smiling. He remembered
the name she had asked him to use. But his mouth was dry again. He found
words difficult.
“Let’s forget what a bloody fool I was that night, Marie. I’ve thought it
over. I’ll play.”
“Yes.” she answered. But she avoided his arms. She stepped back very
quickly into shadow. When he followed her, he saw that Zaman Ali and three
other men could now see him through the doorway. He was between two lights,
whereas she was in opal gloom. He had missed.
Had she read his intention? Probably. But she disguised her motive.
“No, no, not now! You are filthy. Your face is sooty and. dusty.
Besides—no, not in this place!”
She moved like a leopard. Perfume passed between him and the monstrously
figured wall. He hardly saw her until she beckoned to him from beside Zaman
Ali. Far beyond her, at the end of a tunnel, daylight poured in a golden
cascade, apparently into a huge circular pit: but that strong light and the
weirdly colored gloom this side of it were so baffling that he could make out
very little except her figure.
He strode through the opening toward her, but turned aside suddenly and
made for the brass water-jar. The owner of the blackjack crouched beside it.
At a sign from Wu Tu he upset it and the water became mud on the lusty floor.
With almost the greatest effort of self-control he had exerted yet, Blair
retrained from kicking him. The man’s capacity for treachery might prove
valuable later on, and meanwhile he was not worth kicking.
“Give him the other,” Wu Tu commanded.
He who had spilled the water produced a flask labelled
Fine Cognac
and unscrewed the stopper. Zaman Ali grumbled:
“Wah! Wall! Do you want him frenzied? What if he has made terms with Taron
Ling?”
Blair accepted the flask. With his mind on Zaman Ali but his eyes on Wu
Tu, he poured the contents on the rock floor, where they mingled with the
mud. The stuff looked like cognac, but its smell was not quite familiar, or
he thought not.
“Damn you.” he said to Wu Tu. “Zaman Ali plays a straight game. Yours is
feline treachery.”
He seized the water-jar. There were a few drops unspilled. He drank. He
could not see around the big jar while he held it to his mouth but no one
took advantage of his being off-guard for a moment.
“I say, risk it as he is,” Zaman Ali grumbled. “He may be better as he is.
If Taron Ling has taught him anything—”
“Leave him to me,” Wu Tu retorted.
The Afghan clucked impatience: “To you! To you! He is a man, this fellow.
He and I can understand each other. What did you do to the other? Spoiled
him! Now spoil this one? Then what?”
Vague though it was, that might be a hint of Chetusingh’s fate. Spoiled
him? What did that mean? Torture? Blair set down the water-jar and stared at
Wu Tu. She was muttering at Zaman Ali, looking angrier than he had seen a
human being. It was cold, malignant, calculating anger. He watched her right
hand steal into the folds of her sari. Suddenly she struck with the speed of
a snake at the Afghan’s liver. He shrieked—fear, agony, hatred—a
yell that wailed along the tunnel. Instinct made him try to draw his own
knife instead of using the revolver, but the owner of the blackjack struck
him a terrific blow on the back of the head. In a spasm he fired the revolver
as he fell, and missed Wu Tu by the width of the film of light that edged her
bare neck. Blair was swift then. He possessed that revolver before the echo
of the shot had rattled into silence. He made a dive for it. Wu Tu’s knife
was in the Afghan’s liver. She was helpless to do anything but gasp
excitedly.
The blackjack’s owner swung for the back of Blair’s head. Two other men
rushed him. He dodged them all, kicked the revolver, dribbled it along the
tunnel for a few yards and picked it up before they could overtake him. He
had no need to threaten them then; they backed away, watching him like cats
as he stood, now, with his back to the strong light. He examined the weapon.
Its six chambers contained five cartridges, and of those, four had been used.
Perhaps Wu Tu already knew that, but there was no need to inform her if she
did not know. The obvious next thing to do was to search Zaman Ali’s body tor
cartridges; but Wu Tu had already recovered her thin-bladed dagger and was
first at the spoils. She knelt beside the Afghan, listening to him, watching,
glancing once or twice at Blair but seeming undisturbed by the fact that he
now had a weapon. She searched the Afghan’s clothing diligently while he
stared at her with glazed eyes—groaned, gasped, made sounds that
perhaps he thought were words. Apparently Wu Tu failed to find what she
looked for. She glanced at Blair again and seemed about to speak. As her lips
moved Zaman Ali died in a spasm of agony.
There was a sound, and Blair faced about suddenly. Behind him—close
to him—almost within reach—in shoes soled with thick
felt—was the Chinese girl who had opened the door at the head of the
stairs in the house in Bombay. He turned just in time to see the cigarette in
its long tube return to her lips. It was a half finished cigarette and there
was ash on the end. Her eyes were inscrutable, her face expressionless, but
he was almost sure he had seen her right hand move; four fingers of it were
now in the blue-and-daffodil pyjama jacket pocket, with the long-nailed thumb
outside. She looked too innocent. She made as if to pass him without a
greeting.
He stood back against the wall as if to let her pass, but the moment she
moved he stepped forward again, seized her left arm that was nearest to
him—the one that held the cigarette. She tried to strike then, with a
weapon exactly like Wu Tu’s. But its blade passed through the bottom of the
pocket inside her pyjamas. Its handle caught the pocket lining. It came out
awkwardly. She missed. Before she could stab a second time she was on her
back on the ground, Blair’s foot was on the dagger and there was a little
stream of liquid oozing from its broken blade.
Then, for a fraction of a second, Wu Tu betrayed nervousness. She glanced
about her swiftly and her own right hand crept to the folds of her sari. But
there was Blair’s revolver, and her eyes considered that. There were three
men between her and Blair; she seemed to doubt them more than him. They were
Zaman Ali’s followers. True, one of them had blackjacked Zaman Ali, but her
glance showed how little she trusted him. She rose slowly from her knees, and
age seemed to have stolen a march on her; but she overcame that in a moment,
and when she smiled the telltale years had already vanished like a shadow
that had passed over a young face.
“You and I befriend each other, eh, Blair? Let that girl up. What did you
do with Taron Ling?”
“You will find out.” he answered. “Where’s Henrietta Frensham?”
The Chinese girl tried to wrench the broken dagger from under his foot.
Failing to do it, she crawled away from him, then rose to her feet and walked
toward Wu Tu with perfectly assumed indifference. She had not lost her
cigarette tube; she stuck in a fresh cigarette and lighted it very slowly,
walking past the owner of the blackjack, answering his leer with a stare that
made him change it into a grin like a starved wolf’s; he glanced from her to
Blair and back again.
Wu Tu gave her little dagger to the Chinese girl, who wiped it carefully
on Zaman Ali’s turban. Wu Tu took it back without glancing, at it and hid it
away in, a fold of her sari.
“Now you and I can be really friendly! Are you thirsty? You shall drink
now. There is no need any longer to defer to a dog of an Afghan.”
Her slipper came off as she kicked dead Zaman Ali. The Chinese girl
returned it to her.
The test of strength is silence. Remember: I said strength,
not goodness. I know not the measure of goodness. But the strong love
silence, in which the weak reveal weakness by clamor and boast and lament.
The test of character is mystery. Integrity, in presence of a mystery, awaits
imagination’s touch that, like the dawn upon the darkness, solves night’s
riddle. But the vain revile all mystery. And why not? For it challenges,
their vanity, that might lie longer hidden if it could endure the strain of
silence in the presence of truth dimly seen but not yet known or
understood.
—From the First of the Nine Books of Noor Ali.
BLAIR walked slowly toward Wu Tu, wondering whether she or
any of the others knew there was only one shot left in the revolver. Midway
toward her he confronted the owner of the blackjack who stepped forward
smiling. He was not obsequious, but polite; he salaamed with one hand to his
forehead, holding the blackjack in the other.