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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Erotik
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
Talbot Mundy's 'Om: The Secret of Ahbor Valley' is a captivating tale of adventure and mysticism set in the exotic land of Afghanistan. Filled with rich descriptions of the landscape and culture, Mundy's novel draws readers into a world of ancient secrets and hidden wisdom. The narrative blends elements of suspense, spirituality, and esoteric knowledge, making it a unique and thought-provoking read in the genre of adventure fiction. The book's lyrical prose and vivid imagery transport the reader to a distant and mysterious realm, where the boundaries between reality and myth blur. Mundy's storytelling is both engaging and enlightening, offering readers a glimpse into the deeper truths of existence and the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity. 'Om' is a literary gem that transcends mere entertainment, inviting readers to ponder the deeper mysteries of life and the interconnectedness of all things.
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Om: The Secret of Ahbor Valley
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Table of Contents
EVOLUTION
Tides in the ocean of stars and the infinite rhythm of space; Cycles on cycles of aeons adrone on an infinite beach; Pause and recession and flow, and each atom of dust in its place In the pulse of eternal becoming; no error, no breach But the calm and the sweep and the swing of the leisurely, measureless roll Of the absolute cause, the unthwarted effect—and no haste, And no discord, and nothing untimed in a calculus ruling the whole; Unfolding; evolving; accretion; attrition; no waste.
Planet on planet a course that it keeps, and each swallow its flight; Comet's ellipse and grace-note of the sudden firefly glow; Jewels of Perseid splendor sprayed on summer's purple night; Blossom adrift on the breath of spring; the whirl of snow; Grit on the grinding beaches; spume of the storm-ridden wave Hurled on the north wind's ice-born blast to blend with the tropic rain; Hail and the hissing of torrents; song where sapphire ripples lave The crest of thousand-fathom reefs upbuilt beneath the main,
Silt of the ceaseless rivers from the mountain summits worn, Rolled along gorge and meadow till the salt, inflowing tide Heaps it in shoals at harbor-mouth for continents unborn; Earth where the naked rocks were reared; pine where the birches died; Season on season proceeding, and birth in the shadow of death; Dawning of luminous day in the dying of night; and a Plan
Chapter I "Cottswold Ommony...is no Man's Fool."
If you want views about the world's news, read what Cottswold Ommony calls the views papers; there is plenty in them that thoroughly zealous people believe. But remember the wise old ambassador's word of caution to his new subordinate—"And above all, no zeal!" If you want raw facts devoid of any zeal whatever try the cafes and the clubs; but you must sort the facts and correlate them for yourself, and whether or not that process shall leave you capable of thought of any kind must depend entirely on your own ability. Thereafter, though you may never again believe a newspaper, you will understand them and if you are reasonably human sympathize.
There used to be a cafe, in Vienna, where a man might learn enough in fifty minutes to convince him that Europe was riding carelessly to ruin; but that was before 1914 when the riders, using rein and spur at last, rode straight for it.
There is still a club in Delhi, where you may pick up odds and ends of information from over the Pamirs, from Nepaul, from Samarkand, Turkestan, Arabia and the Caucasus, all mixed up with fragments from the olla podrida of races known collectively as India. And having pieced them all together you may go mad there, as comfortably as in Colney Hatch, but with this advantage that nobody will interfere with you, provided you pay your bills on the first of the month and refrain from sitting on two newspapers while you read a third.
It is a good club, of the die-hard kind; fairly comfortable, famous for its curry. It has done more to establish empire, and to breed ill-will, than any other dozen institutions. Its members do not boast, but are proud of the fact that no Indian, not even a Maharajah, has ever set foot over its threshold; yet they are hospitable, if a man knows how to procure the proper introduction (no women are admitted on any pretense), and by keeping quiet in a long-armed chair you may receive an education. You may learn, for instance, who is and who is not important, and precisely why. You may come to understand how the old guard, everywhere, inevitably must die in the last ditch. And, if you have it in you, you will admire the old guard, without trying to pretend that you agree with them.
But above all, you may study the naked shape of modern history as she is never written—history in the bathroom, so to speak. And once in a while, you may piece together a dozen assorted facts into a true story that is worth more than all the printed histories and all the guide-books added together. (Not that the club members realize it. They are usually bored, and almost always thinking about income-tax and indigestion, coupled with why in thunder so-and-so was fool enough to bid no trumps and trust to his partner to hold the necessary ace.)
When Ommony turned up at the club after three years in a forest he produced a refreshing ripple on a calm that had grown monotonous. For a week there had been nothing to discuss but politics, in which there is no news nowadays, but only repetition of complaint. But Cottswold Ommony, the last of the old-time foresters (and one of the few remaining men in India whom the new democracy has not reduced to a sort of scapegoat rubber-stamp), stirred memories and conjecture.
"His turn for the guillotine! He has done too damned well for twenty years, not to have his head cut off. I'll bet you some babu politician gets his job!"
"You'll have to make that bet with Ommony, if he's mad enough. Didn't you hear poor Willoughby was killed? That leaves Jenkins at the head of Ommony's department, and they've hated each other since Jenkins turned down Ommony's younger sister and Ommony told him what he thought about it. Not that the girl wasn't fortunate in a way. She married Terry later on and died. Who'd not rather die than have to live with Jenkins. Willoughby always considered Ommony to be a reincarnation of Solon or Socrates, plus Aristides crossed on Hypatia. Willoughby—"
But everybody knew the ins and outs of that news. A fat babu in a dirty pink turban that would have scared any self-respecting horse, driving a second-hand Ford, with one eye on the Punjabi "constabeel" at the street crossing, bumped into and broke the wheel of Willoughby's dog-cart, setting any number of sequences in motion. The horse bolted, tipped out Willoughby, who was killed under a tram-car, and crashed into Amramchudder Son and Company's open storefront, where blood from the horse's shoulder spoiled two bales of imported silk. A lawsuit to recover ten times the value of the silk was commenced against Willoughby's estate that afternoon. (Mrs. Willoughby had to borrow money from friends to carry on with.)
The babu put on full speed, naturally, and tried to escape down a side-street, of which there are as many, and as narrow ones in Delhi as in any city of its size. He ran over a Bengali (which nobody except the Bengali minded very much), knocked down two Sikhs (which was important, because they were on their way to a religious ceremony; righteous indignation is very bad stuff when spilled in the street), and finally jammed the Ford between a bullock-cart and a lamp-post, where the pride of Detroit collapsed into scrap.
The owner of the bullock-cart, a Jat with a wart on his nose, which his mother-in-law had always insisted would bring bad luck (she said so at the trial later on, and brought three witnesses to prove it), was carrying, for an extortionate price, a native of a far-northern state, who had recently arrived by train without a ticket, and who knew how to be prompt and violent. The man from Spiti (which is the name of the northern state) descended from his perch at the rear of the cart, picked up a spoke that the collision had broken away, and hit the babu with it exactly once between the eyes. The babu died neatly without saying anything; and a hot crowd of nine nationalities, that was glad to see anybody die with politics the way they had been for a year or two, applauded.
The man from Spiti vanished. The "constabeel" arrested the owner of the bullock-cart, who turned his face skyward and screamed "Ayee-ee-ee!" once, which was duly noted in a memorandum book for use as evidence against him. Seventeen onlookers, being questioned, all gave false names and addresses, but swore that the Jat with the wart had attacked the babu; and a wakil (which is a person entitled to practice law), who knew all about the Jat's recent inheritance from his uncle, offered legal services that were accepted on the spot. Presently, in the jail, a jemadar and two "constabeels" put the Jat through a hideously painful third degree, which left no marks on him but did induce him to part with money, most of which was spent on a debauch that ended in the jemadar being reduced to the ranks since the wakil objected on principle to sharing the loot of the Jat with any one and therefore righteously exposed the jemadar's abominable drunkenness.
Meanwhile, the native papers took the matter up and proved to nine points of decimals that the incident was wholly due to British arrogance and the neglect of public duty by an "overpaid alien hegemony," demonstrating among other things that the British are a race "whose crass materialism is an insult to the spiritual soul of India, and whose playing fields of Eton are an ash-bed from which arise swarms of Phoenixes to suck the life -blood of conquered peoples." (Excellent journalese conceived on the historic principle that if you make sufficient smell you are sure to annoy somebody, and he who is annoyed will make mistakes, which you may then gleefully expose.)
The Sikhs who had been knocked down by the Ford accused the "obsequious servants of alien tyranny"—meaning the police—of having tried to prevent them from attending their religious ceremony; the fact being that the police had taken them to the hospital in an ambulance. The entire Sikh community in consequence refused to pay taxes, which set up another sequence of cause and effect, culminating in a yell of "Bande Materam!" as three or four thousand second-year students, who were not Sikhs, rushed foaming at the mouth into the Chandni Chowk (which is a business thoroughfare) with the intention of looting the silversmiths and putting the whole city to the torch. A fire-engine dispersed them; but the stream of water from the hose ruined the contents of Chanda Pal's drug-store.
Chanda Pal called in an actuary who possessed a compound geometrical imagination, and sent in a bill to the government that is still unpaid; and, having failed to collect immediately, he wrote to a friend who was an undergraduate at Oxford, with the result that a Member of Parliament for one of the Welsh constituencies asked at Question Time whether it was true that the Viceroy of India in person had high-handedly confiscated without compensation all the drugs in the Punjab; and if so, why!
The answer from the Treasury Bench was "No, sir;" but the foreign correspondents omitted to mention that, so the French, Scandinavian and United States newspapers had it in headlines that "British in India inaugurate new reign of terror. Goods confiscated. Revolution threatened." A bishop in South Africa preached a sermon on the subject; thirty-seven members of the I.W.W., who were serving a term in San Quentin, went on a sympathetic hunger strike and were locked up in the dungeon; and a Congressman from somewhere in the Middle West wrote a speech that filled five pages of the Record. Stocks fell several points. Jenkins stepped into Willoughby's official shoes.
However, clocks continued ticking. Roosters crowed. The sun appeared on schedule time. And Willoughby's funeral was marked by dignified simplicity.
Except that he hugely regretted his friend Willoughby, Cottswold Ommony cared for none of these things. He sat near the electric fan in a corner of the club smoking room, aware that he was being discussed, but also quite sure that he did not mind it. He had been discussed, on and off, ever since he came to India. He looked quite unlike Hypatia, whatever Willoughby may have thought of his character.
"Willoughby overrated him," said somebody. "You can't tell me Ommony or any other man is such a mixture of marvels as Willoughby made out. Besides, he's a bachelor. Socrates wasn't."
"Oh, Ommony's human. But—well—you know what he's done in that forest. It was raw, red wilderness when he was sent there. Now you can stand on a rock and see ninety miles of trees whichever way you care to look. Besides, dogs love him. Did you see that great dog of his outside? You can't fool that kind of dog, you know. They say he knows the tigers personally, and can talk the jungle-bat; there was only one other man who ever learned that language, and he committed suicide!"
"All the same—he's not the only man who's done good work—and I've heard stories. Do any of you remember Terry—Jack Terry, the M.D., who married Ommony's young sister? One of those delightful madmen who are really so sane that the rest of us can't understand 'em. Had weird theories about obstetrics. Nearly got foul of his profession by preaching that music was an absolute necessity at child-birth. Wanted the government to train symphony orchestras to play the Overture to Leonori while the birth takes place. Perfectly mad; but a corking good surgeon. Always dead broke, from handing out his pay to beggars —broke, that is, until he met Marmaduke. Remember Marmaduke?"
"Dead too, isn't he? Wasn't he the American who endowed a mission somewhere in the Hills?"
"Yes, at Tilgaun. Marmaduke was another—ab-so-lutely mad—and as gentle as sunrise. Quiet man, who swore like a trooper at the mention of religion. Made his money in Chicago, slaughtering hogs—or so I heard. Wrote a book on astrology, that only ran to one edition. I sold my copy for ten times what I paid for it. I tell you, Marmaduke was madder than Gandhi. They say he left America to keep the elders of the church he belonged to from having him locked up in an asylum. The mission he founded at Tilgaun caused no end of a stir at the time. Surely you remember that? There were letters to the Times, and an archbishop raised a shindy in the House of Lords. Marmaduke's theory was that, as he couldn't understand Christianity, it was safe to premise that people whose religion was a mixture of degraded Buddhism and devil-worship couldn't understand it either. So he founded a Buddhist mission, to teach 'em their own religion. No, he wasn't a Buddhist. I don't know what his religion was. I only know he was a decent fellow, fabulously rich, and ab-so-lutely mad. He persuaded Jack Terry to chuck the service and become the mission medico—teach hygiene to men from Spiti and Bhutan—like teaching drought to the Atlantic! Jack Terry married Ommony's sister about a week before leaving for Tilgaun, and none of us ever saw them alive again."
"Now I remember. There was a nine days' scandal, or a mystery, or something."
"You bet there was! Terry and his wife vanished. Marmaduke was carpeted, but couldn't or wouldn't explain, and he died before they could make things hot for him. Then they gave Ommony long leave and sent him up to Tilgaun to investigate—that was—by gad! that was twenty years ago—Good lord! how time flies. Ommony discovered nothing; or, if he did discover anything, he said nothing—he's a great hand at doing that, by all accounts. But it leaked out that Marmaduke had appointed Ommony a trustee under his will. There was another trustee—a red-headed American woman—at least I heard she's red-headed; maybe, she isn't —named Hannah Sanburn, who has been running the mission ever since. She was not much more than a girl at the time, I remember. And the third trustee was a Tibetan. Nobody had ever heard of him, and I've never met a man who saw him; but I'm told he's a Ringding Gelong Lama; and I've also heard that Ommony has never seen him. The whole thing's a mystery."
"It doesn't seem particularly discreditable to Ommony. What are you hinting at?"
"Nothing. Only Ommony has influence. You've noticed, I dare say, he always gets what he goes after. If you asked me, there's an even chance he may 'get' Jenkins, if he cares to."
"That's notorious. Whoever goes after Ommony's scalp gets left at the post. What's the secret?"
"I don't know. Nobody seems to. There's Marmaduke's money, of course. Ommony handles some of it. I don't suggest fraud, or any rot like that; but money's strange stuff; control of it gives a man power. Ommony's influence is out of all proportion to his job. And I've heard—mind you, I don't know how true it is—that he's hand-and-glove with every political fugitive from the North who has sneaked down South to let the clouds roll by during the last twenty years. They even said Ommony was on the inside of the Moplah business. You know the Moplahs didn't burn his bungalow, they say he simply asked them not to—can you beat that—and it's a fact that he stayed in his forest all through that rebellion."
Ommony was restless over in his corner. His obstinate jaw was only half-concealed by a close-clipped, graying beard, and there was grim humor on his lips. Having done more than any living man to pull the sting out of the Moplah rebellion, hints to the contrary hardly amused him. He was angry—obviously angry. However, one man claimed casual acquaintance and dropped into the next chair.
"Expecting to stay long in Delhi?"
"I don't know. I hope not."
"Care to sell me that wolf-hound?"
Ommony's reserve broke down; he had to talk to somebody:
"That dog? Sell her? She's the sum total of twenty-years' effort. She's all I've done."
The inquisitor leaned back, partly to hide his own face, partly to see Ommony's in a more distinct light; he suspected sunstroke, or the after-effects of malaria. But Ommony, having emerged from his reserve, continued:
"I don't suppose I'm different from anybody else—at least not from any other reasonably decent fellow—made a lot of mistakes, of course—done a lot of things I wish I hadn't—been a bally ass on suitable occasion but I've worked—damned hard. India has had all the best of me and—damn her!—I haven't grudged it. Don't regret it, either. I'd do it again. But there's nothing to show for it all—"
"Except a forest. They tell me—"
"A forest, half-grown, that corrupt politicians will play ducks and drakes with; a couple of thousand villagers who are now being taught by those same politicians that every thing they've learned from me is no good; a ruined constitution—and that dog. That's all I can show for twenty years' work—and like some others, I've had my heart in it. I think I know how a missionary feels when his flock walks out on him. I'm a failure—we're all failures. The world is going to pieces under our hands. What I have taught that dog is all I can really claim by way of accomplishment."
That particular inquisitor lost enthusiasm. He did not like madmen. He withdrew and considered Ommony in a corner, behind a newspaper, sotto voce. Another not so casual acquaintance dropped into the vacant chair, and was greeted with a nod.
"You've been absent so long you ought to see things with a fresh eye, Ommony. D'you think India's breaking up?"
"I've thought so for twenty years."
"How long before we have to clear out?"
"The sooner the better."
"For us?"
"I mean for India!"
"I should have thought you would be the last man to say that. You've done your bit. They tell me you've changed a desert into a splendid forest. D'you want to see it all cut down, the lumber wasted and—"
Ommony pulled out his watch and tapped his finger on the dial.
"I had it cleaned and repaired recently," he remarked. The man charged me a fair price, but after I had paid the bill he didn't have the impudence to keep the watch for fear I might ruin it again. India has a perfect right to go to hell her own way. Surgery and hygiene are good, but I don't believe in being governed by the medical profession. Cleaning up corrupted countries is good; but to stay on after we've been asked to quit is bad manners. And they're worse than breaking all ten commandments. Besides, we don't know much—or we'd have done much better."
"You think India is ripe for self-government?"
"When things are ripe, they fall or decay on the tree," said Ommony. "There's a time to stand aside and let 'em grow. There's such a thing as too much nursing."
"Then you're willing to chuck your forest job?"
"I have chucked it."
"Oh! Resigned? Going to draw your pension?"
"No. Pension wouldn't be due for two years yet, and I don't need it. India has had the use of me for twenty-three years at a fair price. I'd be satisfied, if she was. But she isn't. And I'm proud, so I'll be damned if I'll accept a pension."
Ommony was left alone again. That news of his resignation was too good to be kept, even for a minute. Within five minutes it was all over the club, and men were speculating as to the real reason, since nobody ever gives any one credit (and wisely, perhaps) for the motives that he makes public.
"Jenkins has succeeded Willoughby. Ommony knows jolly well that Jenkins has it in for him. He's pulling out ahead of the landslide—that's what."
"I don't believe it. Ommony has guts and influence enough to bust ten Jenkinses. There's more than that in it. There never was a man like Ommony for keeping secrets up his sleeve. You know he's in the Secret Service?"
"That's easy to say, but who said so?"
"Believe it or not—I'll bet. I'll bet he stays in India. I'll bet he dies in harness. I'll bet any money in reason he goes straight from here to McGregor's office. More than that—I'll bet McGregor sent for him, and that he didn't resign from the Forestry without talking it over with McGregor first. He's deep, is Cottswold Ommony—deep. He's no man's fool. There's no man alive but McGregor who knows what Ommony will do next. Anybody want to bet about it?"
The remainder of the conversation at the club that noon rippled off into widening rings of reminiscence, all set up by Ommony's arrival on the scene, and mostly interesting, but to stay and listen would have been to be sidetracked, which is the inevitable fate of gossips. There was a story in the wind that, if the club had known it, would have set all Delhi by the ears.
Chapter II Number One of the Secret Service
He who would understand the Plains must ascend the Eternal Hills, where a man's eyes scan Infinity. But he who would make use of understanding must descend on to the Plains, where Past and Future meet and men have need of him.
Ommony did go straight to McGregor but he and Diana, his enormous wolf-hound, walked and club bets had to be called off because there was no cab-driver from whom the chuprassi* could bludgeon information.
Neither his nor Diana's temper was improved by the behavior of the crowd. The dog's size and apparent ferocity cleared a course, but that convenience was not so pleasant as the manners of twenty years ago, when men made way for an Englishman without hesitation—without dreaming of doing anything else.
The thrice-breathed air of Delhi gave him melancholia. It was not agreeable to see men spit with calculated insolence. The heat made the sweat drip from his beard on to the bosom of a new silk shirt. The smell of over-civilized, unnaturally clothed humans was nauseating. By the time he reached an unimaginably ugly, rawly new administration building he felt about as sweetly reasonable as a dog with hydrophobia, and was tired, with feet accustomed to the softness, and ears used to the silence, of long jungle lanes.
However, his spirits rose as he approached the steps. He may have made a signal, because the moment the chuprassi saw him he straightened himself suddenly and ran before him, upstairs and along a corridor. By the time Ommony reached a door with no name on it, at the far end of the building, the chuprassi was waiting to open it—had already done the announcing—had already seen a said-to-be important personage shown out with scant excuses through another door. The chuprassi's salaam was that of a worshiper of secrets, to a man who knows secrets and can keep them; there is no more marrow-deep obeisance in the world than that.
And now no ceremony. The office door clicked softy with a spring-lock and shut out the world that bows and scrapes to hide its enmity and spits to disguise self-conscious meanness. A man sat at a desk and grinned.
"Sit. Smoke. Take your coat off. Sun in your eyes? Try the other chair. Dog need water? Give her some out of the filter. Now—"
John McGregor passed cigars and turned his back toward a laden desk. He was a middle-sized, middle-aged man with snow-white hair in a crisp mass, that would have been curly if he had let it grow long enough. His white mustache made him look older than his years, but his skin was young and reddish, although that again was offset by crow's-feet at the corners of noticeably dark-gray eyes. His hands looked like a conjurer's; he could do anything with them, even, to keeping them perfectly still.
"So you've actually turned in your resignation? We grow!" he remarked, laughing. "Everything grows—except me; I'm in the same old rut. I'll get the ax—get pensioned some day—dreadful fate! Did you have your interview with Jenkins? What happened? I can see you had the best of it—but how?"
Ommony laid three letters on the desk—purple ink on faded paper, in a woman's handwriting. McGregor laughed aloud—one bark, like the cry of a fox that scents its quarry on the fluke of a changing wind.
"Perfect!" he remarked, picking up the letters and beginning to read the top one. "Did you blackmail him?"
"I did."
"I could have saved you that trouble, you know. I could have 'broke' him. He deserves it," said McGregor, knitting his brows over the letter in his hand. "Man, man, he certainly deserves it!"
"If we all got our deserts the world 'ud stand still." Ommony chose a cigar and bit the end off. "He's a more than half -efficient bureaucrat. Let India suck him dry and spew him forth presently to end his days at Surbiton or Cheltenham."
McGregor went on reading, holding his breath. "Have you read these?" he asked suddenly.
Ommony nodded. McGregor chewed at his mustache and made noises with his teeth that brought Diana's ears up, cocked alertly.
"Man, they're pitiful! Imagine a brute like Jenkins having such a hold on any one—and he—good God! He ought to have been hanged—no, that's too good for him! I suppose there's no human law that covers such a case."
"None," Ommony answered grimly. "But I'm pious. I think there's a Higher Law that adjusts that sort of thing eventually. If not, I'd have killed the brute myself."
"Listen to this."
"Don't read 'em aloud, Mac. It's sacrilege. And I'm raw. It was at least partly my fault."
"Don't be an idiot!"
"It was, Mac. Elsa wasn't so many years younger than me, but even when we were kids we were more like father and child than brother and sister. She had the spirituality and the brains; I had the brute-strength and was presumed to have the common sense; it made a rather happy combination. As soon as I got settled in the forest I wrote home to her to come out and keep house for me. I used to trust Jenkins in those days. It was I who introduced them, Jenkins introduced her to Kananda Pal."
"That swine!"
"No, he wasn't such a swine as Jenkins," said Ommony. "Kananda Pal was a poor devil who was born into a black art family. He didn't know any better. His father used to make him stare into ink-pools and all that devilment before he was knee-high to a duck. He used to do stunts with spooks and things. Jenkins, on the other hand, had a decent heritage and ditched it. It was he who invited Kananda Pal to hypnotize Elsa. Between the two of them they did a devil's job of at. She almost lost her mind, and Jenkins had the filthy gall to use that as excuse for breaking the engagement."
"My God! But think if he had married her! Man, man!"
"True. But think of the indecency of making that excuse! I called in Fred Terry—"
"Top-hole—generous—gallant—gay! Man, what a delightful fellow Terry was!" said McGregor. "Did he really fall in love with her?—You know, he was recklessly generous enough to—"
"Yes," said Ommony. "He almost cured her; and he fell in love. She loved him—don't see how any real woman could have helped it. But Jenkins and Kananda Pal—oh, curse them both!"
"Amen!" remarked McGregor. "Well—we've got what we want. How did you hear of these letters?—Just think of it! That poor girl writing to a brute like Jenkins—to give her mind back to her. So that she may—oh, my God!"
"I saw Kananda Pal before he died. That was recently. He was quite sorry about his share in the business. He tried to put all the blame on Jenkins—you know how rotters always accuse each other when the cat's out of the bag. He told me of the letters, so I went to Jenkins yesterday and, having resigned, I was in position to be rather blunt. In fact, I was dam' blunt. He denied their existence at first, but he handed 'em over when I explained what I intended to do if he didn't!"
"I wonder why he'd kept them," said McGregor.
"The pig had kept them to prove she was mad, if any one should ever accuse him of having wronged her," Ommony answered. "Do they read like a mad-woman's letters?"
"Man, man! They're pitiful! They read like the letters of a drug-addict, struggling to throw off the cursed stuff, and all the while crying for it. Lord save us, what a time Fred Terry must have had!"
"Increasingly rarely," said Ommony. "He had almost cured her. The attacks were intermittent. Terry heard of a sacred place in the hills—a sort of Himalayan Lourdes, I take it—and they set off together, twenty years ago, to find the place. I never found a trace of them, but I heard rumors, and I've always believed they disappeared into the Ahbor country."
"Where they probably were crucified!" McGregor added grimly.
"I don't know," said Ommony. "I've heard tales about a mysterious stone in the Ahbor country that's supposed to have magic qualities. Terry probably heard about it too, and he was just the man to go in search of it. I've also heard it said that the 'Masters' live in the Ahbor Valley."
McGregor shook his head and smiled. "Still harping on that string?"
"One hundred million people, at a very conservative estimate, of whom at least a million are thinkers, believe that the Masters exist," Ommony retorted. "Who are you and I, to say they don't? If they do, and if they're in the Ahbor Valley, I propose to prove it."
McGregor's smile widened to a grin. "Men who are as wise as they are said to be, would know how to keep out of sight. The Mahatmas, or Masters, as you call them, are a mare's nest, Ommony, old man. However, there may be something in the other rumor. By the way: who's this adopted daughter of Miss Sanburn?"
"Never heard of her."
"You're trustee of the Marmaduke Mission, aren't you? Know Miss Sanburn intimately? When did you last see her?"
"A year ago. She comes to Delhi once a year to meet me on the mission business. About once in three years I go to Tilgaun. I'm due there now."
"And you never heard of an adopted daughter? Then listen to this."
McGregor opened a file and produced a letter written in English on cheap ruled paper.
"This is from Number 888—Sirdar Sirohe Singh of Tilgaun, who has been on the secret roster since before my time. His home is somewhere near the mission. 'Number 888 to Number 1. Important. Miss Sanburn of mission near here did procure fragment of crystal jade by unknown means, same having been broken from antiquity of unknown whereabouts and being reputed to possess mysterious qualities. Miss Sanburn's adopted daughter'—get that? —'intending to return same, was prevented by theft of fragment, female thief being subsequently murdered by being thrown from precipice, after which, fragment disappeared totally. Search for fragment being now conducted by anonymous individuals. Should say much trouble will ensue unless recovery is prompt and secret. Miss Sanburn's adopted daughter'—get that, again?—'has vanished. Should advise much precaution not to arouse public curiosity. 888.'—What do you make of it?" asked McGregor.
"Nothing. Never heard of an adopted daughter."
"Then what do you make of this?"
McGregor's left hand went into a desk-drawer, and something the color of deep sea-water over a sandy bottom flashed in the sunlight as Ommony caught it. He held it to the light. It was stone, not more than two inches thick at the thickest part, and rather larger than the palm of his hand. It was so transparent he could see his fingers through it; yet it was almost fabulously green. One side was curved, and polished so perfectly that it felt like wet soap to the touch; the other side was nearly a plane surface, only slightly uneven, as if it had been split off from another piece.
"It looks like jade," said Ommony.
"It is. But did you ever see jade like it? Hold it to the light again."
There was not a flaw. The sun shone through it as through glass, except that when the stone was moved there was a vague obscurity, as if the plane where the breakage had occurred in some way distorted the light.
"Keep on looking at it," said McGregor, watching.
"No, thanks." Ommony laid the stone on his knee and deliberately glanced around the room from one object to another. "I rebel against that stuff instinctively."
"You recognize the symptoms?"
"Yes. There's a polished black-granite sphere in the crypt of a ruined temple, near Darjiling, that produces the same sort of effect when you stare at it. I'm told the Ka'aba at Mecca does the same, but that's hearsay."
"Put the stone in your pocket," said McGregor. "Keep it there a day or two. It's the fragment that's missing from Tilgaun, and you'll discover it has peculiar properties. Talk with Chutter Chand about it, he can tell you something interesting. He tried to explain to me, but it's over my head—Secret Service kills imagination—I live in a mess of statistics and card-indexes that 'ud mummify a Sybil. All the same, I suspect that piece of jade will help you to trace the Terrys; and, if you dare to take a crack at the Ahbor country—"
"How did you come by the stone?" asked Ommony.
"I sent C99—that's Tin Lal—to Tilgaun to look into rumors of trouble up there. Tin Lal used to be a good man, although he was always a thorough-paced rascal. But the Service isn't what it used to be, Ommony; even our best men are taking sides nowadays, or playing for their own hand. India's going to the dogs. Tin Lal came back and reported everything quiet at Tilgaun—said the murders were mere family feuds. But he took that piece of jade to Chutter Chand, the jeweler, and offered it for sale. Told a lame-duck story. Chutter Chand put him off—kept the stone for appraisal—and brought it to me. I provided Tin Lal—naturally —with a year behind the bars—no, not on account of the stone. He had committed plenty of crimes to choose from. I chose a little one just to discipline him. But here's the interesting part: either Tin Lal talked in the jail—or some one followed him from Tilgaun. Anyway, some one traced that piece of jade to this office. I have had an anonymous letter about it; worth attention—interesting. You'll notice it's signed with a glyph —I've never seen a glyph quite like it—and the handwriting is an educated woman's. Read it for yourself."
He passed to Ommony an exquisitely fashioned silver tube with a cap at either end. Ommony shook out a long sheet of very good English writing-paper; It was ivory-colored, heavy, and scented with some kind of incense. There was no date—no address—no signature, except a peculiar glyph, rather like an ancient, much simplified Chinese character. The writing was condensed into the middle of the page, leaving very wide margins, and had been done with a fine steel pen.
"The stone that was brought from Tilgaun by Tin Lal and was offered for sale by him to Chutter Chand is one that no honorable man would care to keep from its real owners. There is merit in a good deed and the reward of him who does justly without thought of reward is tenfold. There are secrets not safe to be pried into. There is light too bright to look into. There is truth more true than can be told. If you will change the color of the sash on the chuprassi at the front door, one shall present himself to you to whom you may return the stone with absolute assurance that it will reach its real owners. Honesty and happiness are one. The truth comes not to him who is inquisitive, but to him who does what is right and leaves the result to Destiny."
Ommony examined the writing minutely, sniffed the paper, held it to the light, then picked up the tube and examined that.
"Who brought it?" he asked.
"I don't know. It was handed to the chuprassi by a native he says he thinks was disguised."
"Did you try changing the chuprassi's sash?"
"Naturally. A deaf and dumb man came. He looked like a Tibetan. He approached the chuprassi and touched his sash, so the chuprassi brought him up to me. He was unquestionably deaf and dumb—stone-deaf, and half of his tongue was missing. The drums of his ears had been bored through—when he was a baby probably. I showed him the stone and he tried to take it from me. I had to have him forcibly ejected from the office; and of course I had him followed, but he disappeared utterly, after wandering aimlessly all over Delhi until nearly midnight. I have had a look-out kept, but he seems to have vanished without trace."
"Have you drawn any conclusions?"
McGregor smiled. "I never draw them before it's safe to say they're proved. But a young woman almost certainly wrote that letter; Miss Sanburn's adopted daughter—"
"Who I don't believe exists," said Ommony.
"—is reported by 888, who has hitherto always been reliable, to have disappeared. She disappeared, if she ever did exist, from Tilgaun; the stone unquestionably came from Tilgaun, and it seems to have been in Miss Sanburn's possession, in the mission. Ergo—just as a flying hypothesis,—Miss Sanburn's adopted daughter may have written that letter. If so, she's in Delhi, because the ink on that paper had not been dry more than an hour or two when it reached me."
"Have you searched the hotels?"
"Of course. And the trains are being watched."
"I'm curious to meet Hannah Sanburn's adopted daughter!" said Ommony dryly. "I've known Hannah ever since she came to India more than twenty years ago. I've been co-trustee ever since Marmaduke died, and I don't believe Hannah Sanburn has kept a single secret from me. In fact, it has been the other way; she has passed most of her difficult personal problems along to me for solution. I've a dozen files full of her letters, of which I dare say five percent are purely personal. I think I know all her private business. As recently as last year, when we met here in Delhi,—well—never mind; but if she had an adopted daughter, or an entanglement of any kind, I think I'd know it."
"Women are damned deep," McGregor answered. "Well; we've not much to go on. I'll entrust that stone to you; if you're still willing to try to get into the Ahbor country, I'll do everything I can to assist. You've a fair excuse for trying; and you're a bachelor. Dammit, if I were, I'd go with you! Of course, you understand, if the State Department learns of it you'll be rounded up and brought back. Do you realize the other difficulties? Sven Hedin is said to have made the last attempt to get through from the North. He failed. In the last hundred years about a dozen Europeans have had a crack at it. Several died, and one got through—unless Terry and your sister did, and if so, they almost certainly died. When Younghusband went to Lhassa he considered sending one regiment back by way of the Ahbor Valley but countermanded the order when he realized that a force of fifty thousand men wouldn't stand a chance of getting through. From time to time the government has sent six Goorkha spies into the country. None ever came back. It's almost a certainty that the River Tsangpo of Tibet flows through the valley and becomes the Brahmaputra lower down, but nobody has proved it; nor has any one explained why the Tsangpo contains more water than the Brahmaputra. Old Kinthup, the pundit on the Indian Survey Staff, traced the Tsangpo down as far as the waterfall where it plunges into the Ahbor Valley, and he threw a hundred marked logs into the river, which were watched for lower down; but none of the logs appeared at the lower end, and not even Kinthup managed to get into the valley. The strangest part about it is, that the Northern Ahbors come down frequently to the Southern Ahbor country to trade, and they even intermarry with the Southern Ahbors. But they never say a word about their valley. The rajah of Tilgaun—the uncle of the present man —caught two and put them to torture, but they died silent. And another strange thing is, that nobody knows how the Northern Ahbors get into and out of their country. The river is a lot too swift for boats. The forest seems impenetrable. The cliffs are unclimbable. There was an attempt made last year to explore by airplane, but the attempt failed; there's a ninety-mile wind half the time, and some of the passes to the south are sixteen or seventeen thousand feet in the air to begin with. I'm told carburetors won't work, and they can't carry enough fuel.—So, if you're determined to make the attempt, slip away secretly, and don't leave your courage behind! If it weren't that you've a right to visit Tilgaun I should say you'd have no chance, but you might make it, if you're awfully discreet and start from the Tilgaun Mission. If it's ever found out that I encouraged you—"
"You've been reeling off discouragement for fifteen minutes!"
"Yes, but if it's known I knew—"
"You needn't worry. What made you say you think this stone will help me to trace the Terrys?"
"Nothing definite, except that it gives me an excuse for sending you to Tilgaun more or less officially. I employ you to investigate the mystery connected with that stone. As far as Tilgaun you're responsible to me. If you decide to go on from there, you'll have to throw me over—disobey orders. You understand, I order you to come straight back here from Tilgaun. If you disobey, you do it off your own bat, without my official knowledge. And I'm afraid, old thing, you'll have to pay your own expenses."
Ommony nodded.
"See Chutter Chand," said McGregor, "and dine with me tonight— not at the club—that 'ud start all sorts of rumors flying—say at Mrs. Cornock-Campbell's—her husband's away, but that doesn't matter. She's the only woman I ever dared tell secrets to. Leave it to me to contrive the invitation—how'll that do?"
"Mrs. Cornock-Campbell is a better man than you or me. Nine o'clock. I'll be there," said Ommony, noticing a certain slyness in McGregor's smile. He bridled at it. "Still laughing about the 'Masters,' Mac?"
"No, no. I'd forgotten them. Not that they exist—but never mind."
"What then?"
"I'll tell you after dinner, or rather some one else will. I wonder whether you'll laugh too—or wince? Trot along and have your talk with Chutter Chand."
* Uniformed doorkeeper
Chapter III What is Fear?"
Deciphered from a Palm-Leaf Manuscript Discovered in a Cave in Hindustan.
Those who are acquainted with the day and night know that the Day of Brahma is a thousand revolutions of the Yugas, and that the Night extendeth for a thousand more. Now the Maha-yuga consisteth of four parts, of which the last, being called the Kali-Yuga, is the least, having but four-hundred-and-thirty-two thousand years. The length of a Maya-yuga is four-million-and -three-hundred twenty thousand years; that is, one thousandth part of a Day of Brahma. And man was in the beginning, although not as he is now, nor as he will be...(Here the palm leaf is broken and illegible)...There were races in the world, whose wisemen knew all the seven principles, so that they understood matter in all its forms and were its masters. They were those to whom gold was as nothing, because they could make it, and for whom the elements brought forth...(Here there is another break)...And there were giants on the earth in those days, and there were dwarfs, most evil. There was war, and they destroyed...(Here the leaf is broken off, and all the rest is missing.)
Chutter Chand's shop in the Chandni Chowk is a place of chaos and a joy for ever, if you like life musty and assorted. There are diamonds in the window, Kodak cameras, theodolites, bric-a-brac, second-hand rifles, scientific magazines, and a living hamadryad cobra in a wire enclosure (into which rats and chickens are introduced at intervals). You enter through a door on either side of which hang curtains that were rather old when Clive was young; and you promptly see your reflection facing you in a mirror that came from Versailles when the French were bribing Indian potentates to keep the English out.
Every square foot of the walls within is covered with ancient curios. A glass counter-show-case runs the full length of the store, and is stuffed with enough jewelry to furnish a pageant of Indian history; converted into cash it would finance a very fair-sized bank. Rising to the level of the counter at the rear is a long row of pigeonholed shelves crowded with ancient books and manuscripts that smell like recently unwound mummies. Between shelf and counter lives (and reputedly sleeps by night) the most efficient jeweler's babu in Indian—a meek, alert, weariless man who is said to be able to estimate any one's bank balance by glancing at him as he enters through the front door. But Chutter Chand keeps himself out of sight, in a room at the rear of the store, whence he comes out only in emergency. On this particular occasion there were extra reasons for remaining in the background—reasons suggested by the presence of a special "constabeel" on duty outside the shop-door, who eyed Ommony nervously as he walked in.
Ommony went straight to the room at the rear and found Chutter Chand at his desk—a wizened, neat little man in a yellow silk turban and a brown alpaca suit of English cut. The suit and his brown skin were almost of the same shade; an amber pin in his yellow necktie corresponded with the color of his laced shoes; the gold of his heavy watch-chain matched the turban; his lemon silk handkerchief matched his socks; his dark-brown, kindly, intelligent eyes struck the keynote of the color harmony.
Unlike so many Indians who adopt a modified European style of dress, he had an air of breeding, poise and distinction.
"There is always something interesting when you come, Ommonee!" he said, rising and shaking hands. "Wait while I remove the specimens from that chair. No, the snakes can not escape; they are all poisonous, but carefully imprisoned. There—be seated. You are full of news, or you would have asked me how I am. Thank you, I am very well. And you? Now let us get to business!"
Ommony grinned at the gibe, but he had his own way of going about things. He preferred to soak in his surroundings and adjust his mind to the environment in silence before broaching business. He lit a cigar, and stared about him at the snakes in cages and the odds and ends of rarities heaped everywhere in indescribable confusion. There were an enormous brass Gautama Buddha resting on iron rollers, a silver Christian crucifix from a Goanese cathedral, and some enamel vases, that were new since his last visit; but the same old cobwebs were still in place in the corners of the teak beams, and the same cat came and rubbed herself against his shins—until she spied Diana in the outer shop and grew instantly blasphemous.
Still saying nothing, Ommony at last produced the lump of jade from his hip pocket.
"Yes," said Chutter Chand, "I have already seen it." But he took off his gold-rimmed spectacles and wiped them as if he was eager to see it again.
"What do you know about it?" asked Ommony.
"Very little, Sahib. To crystallize hypothesis into a mistake is all too easy. I prefer to distinguish between knowledge and conjecture."
"All right. Tell me what little you do know."
"It is jade undoubtedly, although I have never seen jade exactly like it—I, who have studied every known species of precious and semi-precious stone."
"Then why do you say it is jade?"
"Because I know that. I have analyzed it. It is chloromelanite, consisting of a silicate of aluminium and sodium, with peroxide of iron, peroxide of manganese, and potash. It has been broken from a greater piece—perhaps from an enormous piece. The example I have previously seen that most resembled this was found in the Kara-Kash Valley of Turkestan; but that was not nearly so transparent. That piece you hold in your hand is more fusible than nephrite, which is the commoner form of jade; and it has a specific gravity of 3.3."
"What makes you believe it was broken from a larger piece?"
"I know by the arc of the curve of the one side, and by the shape of the fracture on the other, that it has been broken by external violence from a piece considerably larger than itself. I have worked out a law of vibration and fracture that is as interesting in its way as Einstein's law of relativity. Do you understand mathematics?"
"No. I'll take your word for it. What else do you know positively?"
"Positively is the only way to know," the jeweler answered, screwing up his face until he looked almost like a Chinaman. "There was human blood on it—a smear on the fractured side, that looked as if a careless attempt had been made to wipe it off before the blood was quite dry. Also the print of a woman's thumb and forefinger, plainly visible under the microscope, with several other fingerprints that certainly were Tin Lal's. The stone had come in contact with some oily substance, probably butter, but there was too little of it to determine. Furthermore, I know, Ommonee, that you are afraid of the stone because to touch it makes you nervous, and to peer into it makes you see things you can not explain."
Ommony laughed. The stone did make him nervous.
"Did you see things!" he asked.
"That is how I know it makes you see them, Ommonee! Compared to me you are a child in such respects. If I, who know more than you, nonetheless see things when I peer into that stone, it is logical to my mind that you also see things, although possibly not the same things. Knowing the inherent superstition of the human mind, I therefore know you are afraid—just as people were afraid when Galileo told them that the earth moves."
"Are you afraid of it?" asked Ommony, shifting his cigar and laying the stone on the desk.
"What is fear?" the jeweler answered. "Is it not recognition of something the senses can not understand and therefore can not master? I think the fact that we feel a sort of fear is proof that we stand on the threshold of new knowledge—or rather, of knowledge that is new to us as individuals."
"You mean, then, if a policeman's afraid of a burglar, he's—"
"Certainly! He is in a position to learn something he never knew before. That doesn't mean that he will learn, but that he may if he cares to. People used to be afraid of a total eclipse of the sun; some still are afraid of it. Imagine, if you can, what Julius Caesar, or Alexander the Great, or Timour Ilang, or Akbar would have thought of radio, or a thirty-six-inch astronomical telescope, or a Kodak camera."
"All those things can be explained. This stone is a mystery."
"Ommonee, everything that we do not yet understand is a mystery. To a pig, it must be a mystery why a man flings turnips to him over the wall of his sty. To that dog of yours it must be a mystery why you took such care to train her. Look into the stone now, Sahib, and tell me what you see."
"Not I," said Ommony. "I've done it twice. You look."
Chutter Chand took up the stone in both hands and held it in the light from an overhead window. The thing glowed, as if full of liquid-green fire, yet from ten feet away Ommony could see through it the lines on the palm of the jeweler's hand.
"Interesting! Interesting! Ommonee, the world is full of things we don't yet know!"
Chutter Chand's brows contracted, the right side more than the left, in the habit-fixed expression of a man whose business is to use a microscope. Two or three times he glanced away and blinked before looking again. Finally he put the stone back on the desk and wiped his spectacles from force of habit.
"Our senses," he said, "are much more reliable than the brain that interprets them. We probably all see, and hear, and smell alike, but no two brains interpret in the same way. Try to describe to me your sensations when you looked into the stone."
"Almost a brain-storm," said Ommony. "A rush of thoughts that seemed to have no connection with one another. Something like modern politics or listening in on the radio when there's loads of interference, only more exasperating—more personal—more inside yourself, as it were."
Chutter Chand nodded confirmation. "Can you describe the thoughts, Ommonee? Do they take the form of words?"
"No. Pictures. But pictures of a sort I've never seen, even in dreams. Rather horrible. They appear to mean something, but the mind can't grasp them. They're broken off suddenly—begin nowhere and end nowhere."
Chutter Chand nodded again. "Our experiences tally. You will notice that the stone is broken off; it also begins nowhere and ends nowhere. I have measured it carefully; from calculation of the curvature it is possible to surmise that it may have been broken off from an ellipsoid having a major axis of seventeen feet. That would be an immense mass of jade weighing very many tons; and if the whole were as perfect as this fragment, it would be a marvel such as we in our day have not seen. I suspect it to have qualities more remarkable than those of radium, and I think—although, mind you, this is now conjecture—that if we could find the original ellipsoid from which this piece was broken we would possess the open sesame to—well—to laws and facts of nature, the mere contemplation of which would fill all the lunatic asylums! I have never been so thrilled by anything in all my life."
But Ommony was not thrilled. He had seen men go mad from exploring without landmarks into the unknown. He laughed cynically.
"'We fools of nature,'" he quoted, "'so horridly to shake our disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls!' I'd rather wipe out the asylums."
"Or live in one, Sahib, and leave the lunatics outside! Shakespeare knew nothing of the atomic construction of the universe. We have advanced since his day—in some respects. Has it occurred to you to wonder how this stone acquired such remarkable qualities? No! You merely wonder at it. But observe:
"You have seen a pudding stirred? The stupidest cook in the world can pour ingredients into a basin and stir them with water until they become something compounded, that does not in the least resemble any one of the component parts. Is that not so? The same fool bakes what he has mixed. A chemical process takes place, and behold! the idiot has wrought a miracle. Again, there is almost no resemblance to what the mixture was before. It even tastes and smells quite different. It looks different. Its specific gravity is changed. Its properties are altered. It is now digestible. It decomposes at a different speed. It has lost some of the original qualities that went into the mixture, and has taken on others that apparently were not there before the chemical process began.
"You can see the same thing in a foundry, where they mix zinc with copper and produce brass, and the brass has qualities that neither zinc nor copper appears to contain. A deaf and dumb man, knowing neither writing nor arithmetic, could produce brass from zinc and copper. A savage, who never saw an abstraction, can produce wine from grapes. Good. Now listen, Sahib:
"Let us dive beneath the surface of these experiments. The capacity to become brass under certain conditions was inherent to begin with in the zinc and in the copper, was it not? But how so? It was inherent in the atoms, of which the zinc and the copper are composed; and, behind those again, in the electrons, of which the atoms are composed. Let us then consider the electrons.
