The echoes of his footsteps were awe-inspiring and like no sounds he had
ever heard. There was an extraordinary sensation of commuting sacrilege. He
felt like taking off his boots, to prevent the echoes from making his skin
crawl; some of the echoes seemed to come creeping stealthily behind him. That
sensation was so real that he glanced backward to see whether he was being
followed. Then, in that second, he heard Henrietta’s voice so close to him
that he almost jumped out of his skin.
“Blair, is there no getting away from you?”
The training of a lifetime saved him from making an hysterical exhibition
of himself. If nerves had voices, his would have shrieked. Between anger,
surprise, relief, astonishment, his silence congealed like something
solid.
“Wu Tu sent you?”
That stung him. Anger Overwhelmed all the other emotions. Like a man in
the ring taking punishment, he hid the sting, banked anger, smiled
mercilessly. The change in his expression frightened her. Words died on her
parted lips.
Behind her was a canvas camp-chair on which she had been sitting. She was
wearing a frock like the one of the night before, that had made her look so
beautiful by moonlight. The frock was quite clean. She was barefooted; her
kicked-off sandals lay beside the chair. She was standing within a stone
dome, like a soap-bubble, except that the film of stalagmite of which it was
formed was at least a foot thick.
He saw her through an opening, three or four feet wide, eight or nine feet
high, hewn wider at the top than at the bottom. A rectangular pattern of
light poured through that opening, and lay on the floor like a golden carpet.
Other opalescent, dim light penetrated through the thin stone; it was like
light through a stained glass window, subdued and mystic. It stirred in Blair
a maddening sense of beauty—the emotion that some men shout about but
others cherish in excited silence.
He had never loved any girl as he did her in that moment. Never was he
less inclined’ to speak of it or to reveal it, or even to confess it to
himself. His tired senses yearned to her. Mind, memory, intellect all blended
in a sudden recognition of her as his woman, his and his only, adorable loot
of the battle of life, to be seized, had, held and cherished. But resentment
burned a no-man’s land between them, and her eyes grew pained, brave,
regretful as they met his, unflinching.
“Yes,” he said, forcing his voice at last. “Wu Tu did send me.” He said it
cruelly, through set teeth. It hurt him. He intended it should hurt her. How
could he say he loved her? She believed he was Wu Tu’s lover, or something
like it. Could he deny Wu Tu had. sent him? He even perceived a ghastly
possibility that Wu Tu’s influence was stronger on him than he knew.
Was he his own master? This flood of emotion— was it genuine? Was he
reacting to Wu Tu’s mental influence? That was no moment to speak, think or
behave as a lover. If he should ever come to take Henrietta in his arms, that
should be his own, not Wu Tu’s doing. The more he loved Henrietta, the more
savagely he cursed Wu Tu. His eyes glowered with indignation.
“Why have you come?” Henrietta asked. “Blair, do you know what a state
you’re in? Are you hurt?” She shuddered. “I saw a vulture. Someone fell off
the ledge, and—”
His stare silenced her. She stepped backward, afraid of him. But he via.‘s
only wondering what the devil to say to her. Suddenly the obvious question
forced its way through set teeth:
“Are you all right? Not hurt?”
“Quite all right, thanks. Blair, go away, please, for a while. Chetusingh
said you would come, but I didn’t believe him.”
The policeman surged to the surface. He retorted hoarsely:
“Why didn’t you believe him?”
“Why should I? There was nothing to stop you yourself from telling me, was
there? Why should you send Chetusingh with such a message less than twenty
minutes after I had left your camp?”
“Very well, why did you go with Chetusingh?”
“Because I wished to come here. I didn’t trust Chetusingh, but I would
have gone with almost anyone who mentioned this place, even at the risk of
meeting you again and being tortured with questions. But I was almost sure
the message was a trap. I knew well what they wanted me for.”
“What who wanted you for?”
“Wu Tu’s agents. They had watched me in here. Wu Tu questioned me in
Bombay as I told you, and her men have watched me ever since. They kept me
out recently by making the Bat-Brahmin afraid to admit me.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps they thought they might make me talk. But I didn’t. I refused to
bargain with them.”
Blair stepped in through the opening.—He sat down, on the floor with
his back to the wall, too tired to stand any longer. He nodded to her to take
the chair.
“Blair, are you ill?” He dismissed the suggestion with a shake of the head
that let him realize how much his head ached.
“Look here. Henrietta, there’s been hell to pay—men
murdered—God knows what else. If you’d confided in me, in the first
instance none of that might have happened! Tell now.”
“Blair, there are things I can’t tell.”
“Will you answer questions?”
“If I do, will you leave me alone afterwards?”
She sat down, folding her hands in her lap. He stared at her in silence
for about a minute. Leave her alone? Not likely! He and she were going to
know less loneliness than she imagined, but it was no time to discuss that;
He ignored her question.
“Have you seen Wu Tu?” he demanded.
“Yes; Wu Tu was in the cavern when I came here, just before daylight. Up
on that ledge she and I saw the dawn. come through the opening. There were
two men and a rope ready to help me down those steps, but heights don’t scare
me. I’ve been up and down them alone at least a dozen times. I didn’t need
help. And I couldn’t refuse to come down. They’d have forced me if I
didn’t.
“Wu Tu was perfectly polite, but I knew what she meant. She came after
me—she and her maid, and when we reached the lower cavern, there were
my “suitcases, and food, and a cot. Wu Tu went away for a while then and left
me alone with the Chinese maid. My frock was filthy, so I changed it, and the
maid waited on me. After that I was sleepy, so I lay on the cot. I didn’t
sleep very long. Wu Tu came back and tried to hypnotise me.”
“Tell me all about that,” Blair ordered.
“There is nothing much to tell. I awoke and knew at once what she was
trying to do. She couldn’t possibly. I think she realized it.”
“What was she trying to get you to do?”
“To tell her the secret of Gaglajung.”
“If you know that, you’re going to tell it to me,” he said grimly.
She shook her head and made one of her exasperating answers: “When Wu Tu
couldn’t hypnotise me, she asked would I tell the secret to my sweetheart? I
haven’t one. I said so. Now she sends you.”
Blair’s response was more like a snarl than a laugh. He hated to have his
hand forced by Wu Tu’s impudence, but there was nothing else for it, he must
play his last card. He decided to do it, then, that instant. He got up and
walked toward her, knowing he looked unprepossessing, to put it mildly,
unshaven, in a filthy uniform.
“Henrietta,” he said. “Look me straight in the eyes. That secret’s in the
line of duty. I’m going to know it whatever it costs. Last, night you said,
if I were your lover, you’d try to tell me. Go ahead then and try! Goddammit,
I hate to admit, I love you when there’s an obvious ulterior motive. Damn Wu
Tu to hell for that! But I’m telling the truth. Don’t interrupt. I’ll not
behave like a lover—not now—I’m all over bat-filth. Listen.”
There was nothing to do but listen to him. Blair, in that mood, was
overwhelming, deaf to argument and blind to opposition. He stood over her.
There was no avoiding his eyes.
After one swift and searching gaze she closed hers. That veil, that he had
sworn the night before would cover her if she were naked, seemed almost to
materialize out of the weird light. It increased his vehemence. He set to
work to tear the imagined veil to shreds, with ruthless down-strokes of
self-revelation, the more violent because he restrained all actual
gesture.
“You want to fall out of love with me? Dammit, you can’t. I won’t let you.
I’m in love with you up to the hilt. If that entitles me to know your secret,
tell it. But I warn you, your lover is one thing; Blair Warrender the
policeman is another, who’ll listen—and do his duty.”
Her upward glance lingered a moment. Then she looked down at her naked
feet until all signs of emotion had vanished, except from her eyes. He was
about to speak when she looked up again and asked him:
“Do you think the policeman would know what his duty is?”
“Try me,” he retorted.
“To oblige Wu Tu?”
He took hold of her shoulders and almost lifted her out of the chair. She
stood up, facing him, and they were silent. He was furiously seeking right
words. He rejected phrase after phrase as futile, unworthy, meaningless. He
hated cant. Jargon at that moment would be blasphemy. But he could not make
words obey him. It was she who spoke first:
“Blair, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen exactly that look in your
eyes.”
“Well, what of it?” he exploded. “It’s the first time I’ve said I love
you. isn’t it? You’re looking straight at the truth. And by God, if you throw
Wu Tu in my teeth again I’ll go and kill her. She has been trying to
hypnotise me, to make me do just what I am doing. She believes, if you’ll
tell me your secret, I’ll tell it to her. I’m making love to you?”
“With your thumbs? Blair, you’re—”
“By God, I’m sorry. Did I hurt?” He took her in his arms, hugged her to
him, kissed the red marks where his thumbs had pressed her shoulders.
“Journey’s end!” he said. “And only God knows why it didn’t happen
sooner!”
“Blair, yours feel like everlasting arms!”
“So they should. It’s forever.”
“Blair—”
“Wait. I’ve something else to say now. Keep your secret. Do you hear me?
I’m not buying it. Until you’re satisfied that Wu Tu hasn’t put this over on
me. I’d as soon you didn’t tell me. You, and I—dammit, I won’t spoil
this. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I understand you. Blair, there’s nothing I won’t
tell you—nothing. But if you don’t understand, you mustn’t blame
yourself or me. I love you. I believe you. And I will trust you to the end of
the world, but—”
He was about to interrupt. Words were obeying him at last. Emotion, as he
held her in his arms; broke down the dam that normally restrained his speech.
Words that he had never used to any woman marched before his mind in splendid
sequence. But she tried to push him away. She stiffened suddenly. He held her
tight and glanced, from instinct, over-shoulder in the direction she was
facing. Then he, too, stiffened.
Wu Tu stood in the entrance. Her eyes glinted avarice. There was fight in
her. Her smile was Borgian—sly, ingratiating, ruthless. She was
stooping slightly forward, with a hand on each side of the narrow opening.
She looked horribly old, as if Time, in the last hour, had overtaken her and
stripped her of all but her determined will to live. It was several seconds
before she spoke:
“Tricked me, did you? Too full of Taron Ling for Marie to control you? Oh,
yes?”
Wu Tu came in. The Chinese girl appeared then, behind her, standing in the
entrance. Wu Tu removed the electric torch from the chair-seat and sat down
uninvited. The Chinese girl squatted in the entrance, lit a cigarette and
smoked it insolently; she achieved a gesture with her cigarette-tube that
almost shouted aloud of secret and insuperable resources.
“Well? What?” Blair demanded.
“She will tell you now,” said Wu Tu. “She is your woman. Didn’t I say it?”
She nodded to herself, watching his eyes, and when she spoke again there was
a hard, unfamiliar note in her voice: “But you won’t tell me—eh? You
thought you fooled me, did you? Well, I’ll tell you something! Chetusingh is
dead. Taron Ling killed him. I have spoken with Taron Ling. He killed him. He
waits! There is no way. out except the way we came in, and the
other—the Secret way! Let her tell it or take the consequences! Deal
with me or Taron Ling! We four against Taron Ling, or you lose
Henrietta!”
She had something beneath a fold of her sari, but Blair could not see what
it was. Henrietta nudged him to call his attention to it. He suspected a
weapon; she might easily have had one cached somewhere and have fetched it as
soon as his back was turned. There was no mistaking the glitter in her eyes.
She was desperate, determined—quite probably mad. The Chinese girl
looked over-confident but alertly on guard. The look of confidence changed to
alarm when suddenly, through the opening, there came a sound that might be an
echoing footfall. She stood up— stood on tiptoe, craning her neck.
“Taron Ling!” said Wu Tu, and got out of the chair. Her expression became
ghastly. Her voice, too, seemed to have grown old in a moment.
“You or Taron Ling!” she exclaimed and whipped out a nickel-plated
small-bore automatic.
“Poisoned bullets! What now?”
The Chinese girl produced another automatic and covered Blair with it. She
handled the weapon nervously, but it was a range at which even a duffer could
hardly miss, and the nervousness made her doubly dangerous. Blair stepped in
front of Henrietta and stood still, listening. Wu Tu was too full of purpose
to listen; she ground out words like a panther’s snarls:
“Show your hand, Blair! Which? I’m shooting you or Taron Ling! Which is
it?”
Henrietta whispered. Blair could not hear what, but he noticed she was
frightened; until then, although she had detested Wu Tu she had not seemed in
the least afraid of her. The worst of it was that he, too, felt afraid. Wu Tu
was mad. He was sure of it. At one and the same moment he had to watch Wu Tu,
speculating as to what her next move might be, and try to listen to that
sound outside. It resembled a footfall, but it seemed to come no nearer. It
might be a signal.