Title:      The Devil's Guard
Author:     Talbot Mundy
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.:  0300661.txt
Language:   English
Date first posted:          April 2003
Date most recently updated: April 2003

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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      The Devil's Guard
Author:     Talbot Mundy






Contents

I.  Chullunder Ghose shoots shrewdly with the other barrel of his gun.
II.  "A manuscript in the handwriting of Jesus!"
III.  In which Benjamin yields as a woman should, for love, not money.
IV.  The spies of the Devil's Guard.
V.  Painless Parker Ramsden, and the tale told by the Devil's spies,
Tsang-Mond-rong and Tsang-yang.
VI.  The fanged jaws of the Zogi-la.
VII.  The strange tale told by Mordecai.
VIII.  The Zogi-la lives up to its reputation.
IX.  Lhaten.
X.  The man without a name.
XI.  Sidiki ben Mahommed's wife.
XII.  Dugpas.
XIII.  A dugpa--and a mystery as easy to elucidate as that of life
and death.
XIV.  Lhaten's guru.
XV.  In which Jimgrim makes no bolder claim than that he and his
friends are savages.
XVI.  Jeff Ramsden's dream.
XVII.  In which Narayan Singh decides an issue with the pistol
instead of the sword.
XVIII.  Chullunder Ghose Chenresi.
XIX.  The yellow lama.
XX.  Prisoners.  Jimgrim is missing.
XXI.  Jimgrim again.  Elmer Rait--and the death of Narayan Singh.
XXII.  The herdsman's hut.
XXIII.  Jimgrim and Ramsden engage in argument, and come to terms.
XXIV.  Chullunder Ghose.




We remark upon the slowness of the snail and of the tortoise, but
the processes of evolution are incomparably more slow, so that they
escape our observation altogether.  None the less, we are evolving,
although few of us as we suppose.  For supposition is the fumes of
decomposing vanity--the instrument by which the Devil's Guard
beclouds that road on which we are ascending, lest we see too much
and so imagine ourselves gods before the devil in us is evaporated.

--From The Book Of The Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.


Chapter One
--Chullunder Ghose shoots shrewdly with the other barrel of his gun.


I find myself wondering why I should go to the trouble to write
what few men will believe.  Why do we try to leave records behind us?
Why not wait until I meet old friends again on the bank beyond the
river, when we can compare notes and laugh at the amateur drama we
all combined to spoil with such enthusiasm!  Frankly, I don't know.
The impulse is to set down an account of this adventure, in spite
of the uncertainty that it will ever reach the United States.

I am writing in a draughty cave, in a temperature that numbs fingers,
freezes ink at intervals and makes concentration on the task extremely
difficult to a man unused to writing anything but field reports on
mines and ordinary business letters.  The sheets of this manuscript
are fluttering under the stones I have to use as paper-weights;  my
feet are nearly frozen in a fur bag filled with yak-dung;  I am
filthy from weeks without washing, and extremely sore from bruises,
as well as suffering from what I think is indigestion, due to bad food.
Moreover, Jimgrim is not here.  He has a clearer brain than mine, a
better memory and clearer judgment of essentials.  I must tell the
story to the best of my recollection without the advantage of
comparing notes with him.

Jimgrim--born James Schuyler Grim, but known as Jimgrim all over
the Near East, Arabia, parts of Africa, and from Dera Isfail Khan
to Sikkim--has served in the Intelligence Departments of at least
five nations, always reserving United States citizenship.  He speaks
a dozen languages so fluently that he can pass himself off as a native;
and since he was old enough to build a fire and skin a rabbit the very
midst of danger has been his goal, just as most folk spend their lives
looking for safety and comfort.  When he is what other men would
reckon safe, the sheer discomfort of it bores him.

He is the best friend a man could have, the least talkative, the
most considerate;  and he seems to have no personal ambition--which,
I suppose, is why the world rewarded him with colonelcies that he
did not seek and opportunities for self-advancement that he never
used.  Jimgrim could have had anything he cared to ask for in the
way of an administrative post;  and, funnily enough, the one thing
that he always wanted was denied him.  From his youth he wished to
be an actor.  That he is one of exceeding merit, is beyond dispute;
but, except for occasional amateur performances behind the lines of
armies, he has never set foot on the stage.

He looks as if he were half-Cherokee, although I believe there is
only a trace of red man in his ancestry.  He has a smile that begins
faintly at the corners of his eyes, hesitates there as if to make
sure none will be offended by it, and then spreads until his whole
face lights with humor, making you realize that he has understood
your weakness and compared it with his own.  If you have any self-
respect at all you can't pick quarrels with a man who takes that
view of life;  the more he laughs at you, the more you warm toward
him, since he is laughing at himself as well as you.

Grim and I were in Darjiling with our backs against the porch of
a hotel from which the whole range of the Himalayas could be seen,
on one of those rare days of autumn when there was neither rain
nor mist.  The peak of Kanchenjunga stood up sharp and glittering
against a turquoise sky.  In our ears was the roar of the Runjeet
River.  In the distance, almost straight in front of us and looking,
in that clear air, scarcely fifty miles away, was the outline of
the frontier of Tibet.

We had returned, about a week before, from Assam, where I had gone
to report on some oil indications.  Grim, who made the trip with me,
had amused himself by making Nepalis, Lepchas, Sikkimese and Bhutanis
believe he was a Tibetan in disguise;  and on the other hand, when
he had met some old Tibetan pilgrims returning from India toward
the Tse-tang Pass he had convinced them he was born in Sikkim.  I
have seen him play the same game frequently in Arab countries,
using the dialect of one tribe to disguise from another such
discrepancies of accent as might otherwise betray him.

We were not, I remember, talking.  Grim is a man with whom you can
sit for hours on end, saying nothing, enjoying his company.  Our
eyes were on that splendid panorama, neither of us at the moment
guessing that our destiny would lead us across it and up to the
roof of the world (but not back again).  We can not now go back
to the friends we knew and the world we have left behind;  but,
being at a loose end, we had been discussing, that morning, whether
or not we should visit some friends in California.

It was Grim who spoke first, rolling a cigarette and setting his
feet on the veranda rail, framing Kanchenjunga between them as if
he were squinting at the mountain through a V sight.

"What next?" he asked.

I did not know.  I was sick of business.  Grim cares nothing about
money, and I had made all I shall ever need;  yet we were neither
of us in the least disposed to loaf.  Neither he nor I have any
relatives who matter, we are both unmarried, we agree in loathing
politics, and we are both verging on middle age--at that period of
life, that is to say, when a man's real usefulness ought to begin.
If a man hasn't acquired judgment and stability at forty-nine, he
had better grow fat and keep out of the way.

I knew Grim had been into Tibet.  He was with Younghusband's
expedition, when he got himself into disfavor by ignoring the
military problems he was there ostensibly to help clear up, and
studying exclusively those apparently insignificant odds and ends,
that, he maintains, are "the guts of things."  I did not even guess
that he was thinking about Tibet while he stared between his feet
at Kanchenjunga.

Before I could answer him there came and sat beside us a small
smart Englishman by the name of Dudley Tyne--not a man we knew well,
nor knew very much about except that he was popular, reputed dangerous,
and in some vague way connected with the Secretariat.  He knew how
to be tactfully agreeable, but the tact was almost overdone, with
the result that one fell on guard against him, though without any
definite sense of dislike.  We invited him to drink, and for five
or six minutes he talked about the mountain range that filled the
whole horizon.

He used considerable subtlety in reaching his objective, which was
information about Elmer Rait, an American of Columbus, Ohio, with
whom I went to school, and with whom I was for several years in
partnership until I decided it was not worth while to try to
continue to get along with him.  The things a man says don't matter
much;  it is the way he feels toward yourself and others, that
makes him friend or not.  Elmer Rait and I talked the same language,
but thought from entirely opposed angles, and I came at last to
the conclusion that he was rotten at the core, although he never
did anything liable to get him into prison.

However, that was personal opinion.  It was no excuse for telling
tales against Rait, so I answered Mr. Tyne extremely guardedly,
obliging him to disclose his reasons for so many questions.

"Rait is in Tibet," he told me at last.  "Our government has signed
a treaty with Tibet.  We recognize their right to keep strangers
out of their country, and we've agreed to close the frontier.  Rait
has slipped through, which makes it awkward."

Grim was listening, his eyes still fixed on Kanchenjunga.  I noticed
that he took his feet down off the rail, but he threw away his
cigarette and rolled another as if the conversation didn't interest
him much.

"In what way are Rait's movements supposed to concern me?" I asked,
expecting to be told that I would have to sign a promise not to
try to cross the frontier--that being the Indian Government's usual
method with individuals whose exact intentions are unknown.  All
governments lock stable doors immediately after a horse has bolted.
I would have signed such a promise without question, but fortunately
it had no more entered the heads of Anglo-Indian officials than it
had mine that I might venture across the border.

"I was told you quarreled with Rait some years ago.  I thought you
might not object to giving us information," Tyne suggested.

I told him the exact truth;  that I had none sufficiently recent
to be of any use.  It was seven years since I had seen or heard
from Rait.

 "He seems to know your whereabouts," Tyne answered.  "Our information
is that he wrote to you from Lhassa, sending the letter by hand to
some one in Darjiling.  Would you mind letting me see that letter?"

 I told him I had not received it.  His manners were irreproachable
and he left us before long with the impression that he believed
every word I said.  As if to wipe away the least trace of official
unpleasantness he begged us to join him at dinner that night at
the club;  and because we wished to show that we had not resented
his questioning, Grim and I accepted.   While we were at dinner
with him both our rooms in the hotel were searched and every single
document in our possession was gone through thoroughly.  To make
the raid look plausible a watch-and-chain, a little money and some
odds and ends of jewelry were stolen--all of which the police
recovered for us next day with an alacrity and lack of fuss that
was beyond all praise, but left no doubt as to who had searched
our papers.

 As we surveyed our upset luggage Grim looked at me and asked in
the casual voice with which he hides emotion.

 "Do you suppose Rait went to Tibet for his health?  What about that?
Like to look for him?"

 I nodded.  If memory serves, that was all the conferring we did
as to whether or not we should follow Rait over the border.  The
very fact that his object in going was a mystery was enough to make
us take the trail.

Tyne had asked us again and again to suggest to him who might be
the individual to whom Rait would direct a letter for delivery to me.
We had not even tried to imagine who it might be.  But now, as we
looked at our clothes scattered over the floor, and realized that
we had been invited out to dinner that the spies might search our
rooms without risk of disturbance, we did some thinking, thought
of the same man simultaneously and both spoke at once

"Chullunder Ghose!"

There was nobody else in Darjiling whom Rait would dare to trust
and who, at the same time, was known to Rait to have been more or
less in my confidence.  True, Grim and I had been in Darjiling for
several days since our return from Assam, and Chullunder Ghose had
neither presented himself nor sent a messenger;  but the fat babu,
supposing it was he who had received Rait's letter, would be the
last person on earth to betray its whereabouts to the authorities
by any sort of hasty movement.

Said Grim:  "If the babu has that letter, he has read it.  Probably
he hopes to keep its contents to himself."

Nevertheless, we made no move until the day following, after the
police had brought back our stolen trinkets.  We did not even
discuss the subject, but both pondered it, and both of us reached
the same conclusion as to how best to avoid the incessant watchfulness
of the ubiquitous Indian spies.

"Hancock!"

It was Grim who voiced the suggestion uppermost in both our minds.
Will Hancock is a reverend, possessed of weird ideas of heaven and
hell and an entirely hospitable nature.  He wears blue spectacles
and runs a mission away across the Runjeet River, thirty miles
beyond Darjiling, breeding sturdy little ponies on the side, and
writing commentaries on the Buddhist scriptures in his spare time.
He has proved, to his own satisfaction, that all the Pali manuscripts
are forgeries;  that the original Garden of Eden was in Ceylon;
that the Afghans and Afridis are the ten lost tribes of Israel;
that Alexander never crossed the Indus;  and that Moses wrote the
Pentateuch.  He is a mild man in all except argument, an honest
man in everything except debate, a genial, good-natured fellow
until you mention any of the subjects and side-issues he has made
his own.  Behind his graying brown beard and heavily smoked glasses
there is so obviously nothing except benevolence and bookish brains
that not even the Intelligence Department keeps an eye on him.

"We can make it by sunset," said I.

But we did not.  It was nearly midnight when we rode up to the
mission and awoke Will Hancock from a just man's sleep by making
a noise like a cat-and-dog fight, which he came out in pajamas to
prevent.  It took him about five minutes to unlock the iron gate
under the archway, which would keep out almost anything except
artillery (whereas the wall is hardly high enough to keep the
knee-high convert-children in);  but we rode in at last and were
welcome, though we kept him out of bed beside a fragrant log fire
in the mission dining-room until the dawn dyed Kanchenjunga's summit
gold and crimson and the brass bell summoned him to prayer.

Will Hancock, who is much too shrewd not to have suspected us of
mischief, sent his ponies to the hotel for our luggage and a
messenger to bring Chullunder Ghose, thus throwing all suspicion
off the scent, since nobody would dream of connecting Will with
any intrigue more desperate than an assault on Shakespeare under
the banner of Francis Bacon, sometime Earl of Verulam.

We rewarded him by praising his clean mission work-shops, where
an otherwise fortunate folk were being taught to shoulder Adam's
curse and to acquire expensive tastes for unsuitable objects.  We
submitted to hearing uncomfortably clean, uncomprehending children
sing the Ten Commandments;  and in the afternoon Grim played the
chapel organ, rendering "Nobody Knows How Dry I Am and Alexander's
Ragtime Band" so wonderfully that Will Hancock thought they were
from Handel. (He is no authority on music.)

And in the evening came Chullunder Ghose, a sturdy-legged pony
panting under him, three or four chins all grinning, a new heliotrope
turban impudently poised on his enormous head, and a fat, sleek,
pompous, half-ingratiating, half-truculent swagger, announcing the
fact that he was glad to see us--not a doubt of that.

"Rammy sahib!  And Jimgrim sahib!  I am jolly well reborn!  This
babu might be father of twins, so proud I am at this summons, which
is, doubtless, prelude to an offer of emolument!  Oh yes, believe me,
both yours very truly!  Only name job and be done with it!"

Ungraciously, because we knew him and proposed to establish sound
relationships at once, we tipped him off the pony and drove rather
than led him into Hancock's study, where the treatises on Francis
Bacon and Mosaic miracles were heaped on chairs as well as on the
desk and shelves.  There was nowhere to sit except on the floor,
so we arranged ourselves cross-legged in a triangle with the babu's
face toward the lamp so that we might read his artfully concealed
emotions.  Then I held out my hand.

"Give me Rait's letter!" I said abruptly.

He shook hands, making believe he had not understood me.

"Rammy sahib, this is like old times," he said, heaving an enormous
sigh.  "How tempus does jolly well fugit.  Is your honor prosperous?"

He looked much too prosperous.  He had been robbing some Americans,
as all Darjiling knew, and had not yet had time to lose the money
by trying to treble or quadruple it.

"Rait's letter!" I repeated.

He affected not to hear and began complimenting Jimgrim on his
personal appearance:

"Like money in pocket to see you, sahib!  Like sunrise on perpetual
snow-peaks!  This babu basks in your honor's beatific presence!"

"Rait's letter!" I said a third time, spanking a fist into my hand
for emphasis.

"Sahib, I heard you first shot out of barrel.  Silence means dissent--
not knowing, can't say--who is Rait?--What letter?-- And besides,
I brought no documents.  How should I know why you sent for me?"

"Have you read the letter?" Grim asked.  "If so, tell us what was
in it;  bring the letter afterward."

Chullunder Ghose rocked to and fro and scratched his stomach through
the opening of an imported mauve and white-striped flannel shirt.

"Am all ears," he suggested.  "Suitable proposition might act on
memory like water from a can on radish seeds.  No knowing.  Might
do worse than try it."   "You want a blind promise?  What do you
take us for?" asked Grim.

"Verity in all her nudity is priceless," said Chullunder Ghose.
"Nevertheless, am scoundrel personally and would sell same.  Sealed
bids will be answered very promptly."

"I'll bid you a broken neck," I told him.

"You should take that bid to the police for registration," he
retorted.  "This babu is incorruptible by anything but bribes.
Am honest scoundrel, not contemptible skin-salvationist."

"How many people beside yourself have read the letter?" Grim asked.

"Sahib, you have set accurate foot on cockroach of domestic infelicity.
This babu's wife of bosom is new fangled female who believes in ruling
roost.  Being virtuous mother of seven children, same being now grown
up but not self-supporting--as this babu can testify on stacks of
holy books of all religions--she is peevishly disposed toward
secretiveness and keen on cash.  Having been promised money by
insidious stranger and believing, as your honors seem to do, that
your humble servant had received mysterious letter from unknown
correspondent, she proceeded to search all this babu's garments--
drawing blank as certainly as if she had bought ticket in Calcutta Sweep."

For a while he chuckled silently, shaking his great stomach, until
we grew impatient.  Then:

"By and by this babu was observed to bury tin biscuit-box by moonlight,
under heap of manure in which she cobra was reported to have laid eggs.
Report was false, since cobras are non est in neighborhood but same
made no difference to female nerves.  Mongooses were bought, which
slew chickens of neighbors.  Wandering snake charmers were consulted,
and discovered cobras naturally, having brought same with them.
Subsequently, coolie hired to rake manure heap brought forth empty
biscuit-tin and were accused of having stolen all its contents.
Heated acrimony, I assure you--followed by such meditation--you
could hear my wife's brain clicking like imported Swiss alarm-clock.

"Virtuous mother of children had to maintain innocence and yet ease
strain of her increasing curiosity and appetite for money.  Same
is complicated process.  Much house-cleaning, in order to look
under carpets;  likewise most ill-tasting victuals, containing
adulterants purchased from unlicensed bazaar bootlegger of confounded
drugs intended to make me talk in sleep.  Resultant bellyache, however,
totally prevented sleep, and this babu's haphazard remarks were
beside the point altogether.

"Diet was changed, and tasted much worse.  Self-preservation being
first rule of all sensible religions, this babu, obeying number one
rule, pretended sleep and talked much, suggesting many hiding-places--
in all of which nobody home!  My wife is good objectionist--first-class,
but lacking enchantment which distance might add!  Ring bell--they're
off!  Devil take hindermost!  Where do we go from here!"

Grim signaled with his eyes. I  seized the babu by the arms and
jerked him off his balance.  Grim stuck a hand into his waist-cloth,
laughed, and showed Rait's letter in the lamplight.  I let go, and
the babu sat up, trying to look dignified as he rearranged his turban.

"You fat scoundrel!" I said.  "That is my letter, addressed to me.
What do you mean by not handing it over?"

"Fat belly and fat head are not same thing!" the babu answered.
"I am honest scoundrel, which is whole point."

"The seal has been broken and replaced," said Grim.

"Contents of said letter being consequently known to this babu!"
remarked Chullunder Ghose and once more scratched his stomach.
"Am your honors' most obedient humble servant--in predicament from
which I beseech rescue for the sake of former services.  Tibetan
spies who offered money to my wife for information as to contents
of that letter are no more eager than British authorities who
did ditto."

"Do you want to be bribed to hold your tongue?" Grim asked him.

Chullunder Ghose looked shocked--grieved-half-incredulous.

"Jimgrim sahib, I am scoundrel from necessity, but honest always.
Being short of money, through inability to pull purse-strings of
tight-wad wife--to whom I gave all my money for safe-keeping,
easy-going disposition and experience of up-and-downishness of
fortune being damn bad mixture--I, nevertheless, scorned offers
of Tibetan spies, who would have bought that letter from me, cash
down--and being refused would undoubtedly have killed me for it,
had they been sure that they knew where to find it. "

"Then what do you want?" demanded Grim.

"Salary plus expenses!"

"To do what?"

"Whither thou goest, I go, same as Ruth and Boaz, in English History!"

"You're a lot too fat," said Grim.

"Not so.  This is all guts," said the babu, smacking his enormous
thighs.  Then suddenly he changed his tone of voice and began
pleading, swaying backward and forward, hurling the words at us.
"Sahibs!  I have read that letter!  You will go to Tibet.  You
will not be able to resist!  Have I more character than you?  Can
I resist?  I have brains--imagination--courage;  I have tasted all
adversities;  I have encountered dangers:  I am failed B.A. Calcutta
University, who might have been topnotcher barrister, with only
ten more marks!  I am adventurer by instinct, same as you, and
shall a dark skin stop me?   Formerly I have shared your risks;
I have been loyal to you;  I have kept your secrets;  I have never
cheated you--not even from the petty cash box when you had your
office in the Chandni Chowk in Delhi and a child could have robbed
you without your knowing it.  I have never refused to obey an order.
I have spied and run errands and lied for you.  I have made your
honor and your success mine--more than mine, for I have set them
ahead of mine!  And all my life--I tell you, all my life!--I have
longed, I have craved to go to Tibet!  Shall I let this opportunity
escape me?  Not so!  Do you make me threaten you?  Then that is
your fault.  You are not fools:  you are strong white sahibs, who
know as well as I do that the color of a man's skin is no criterion.
There are white cowards and brown brave men--brown cowards and
white brave men.  You know that, and you have tested me a hundred
times.  So--scoundrel that I am--I offer you my services, to go
to Tibet.  Should you say yes, then I shall serve you to the death.
But should you say no, then I, also, shall say no.  You shall not
go to Tibet without me, for I will tell the contents of that letter
to the Tibetan spies and to the British authorities, both!"

He paused, out of breath, with his hands on his knees, his jaws,
that were black with the close-shaven hair, shining with sweat in
the lamplight.

"He has more guts than I thought," said Grim.  "How many people
besides yourself have read the letter, babu-ji?"

"None!  On my honor!"

"Were you followed to this place?"

"Maybe.  I don't know.  We shall soon discover," said Chullunder
Ghose, a trifle sulkily.

Grim signaled with his eyes again.  I nodded.

"We shall have to call your bluff--" said Grim.  "Without reading
the letter, or deciding anything else, we refuse to be blackmailed.
You may go and tell your tale to the authorities and get your money
for it."

Chullunder Ghose looked downcast.  He lowered his head for a moment
so that we saw nothing but his turban.

"Too bad," he said, looking up again.  "Oh, very well, I am scoundrel.
I can also be magnanimous.  I love you both and you may go to Tibet.
I shall not tell.  But I am sorry.  I am heart-broken babu."

"We shall pay you, of course, for your silence," said Grim.

"Sahib, I refuse to take your money!  Permission to you to go to
Tibet is my free gift.  You shall not deny me that one consolation."

Grim caught my eye again, and again I nodded.

"No," he said, "we won't deny you anything in reason.  If we go to
Tibet, you shall come with us."

Chullunder Ghose grinned.  He did his best to look surprised, but
he entirely failed.  The rascal had merely shot us with the other
barrel of his gun.  He had been shrewd enough to realize that Grim
was only testing him by offering to call his buff.  He won the trick;
and neither he nor we have since regretted that he did.

Three men set forth seeking fortune.  And the one found gold;
another came on good land, and he tilled it.  But the third saw
sunlight making jewels of the dew.  All three went by the same road.
Each one thought himself the richer.--From The Book Of The Sayings
of Tsiang Samdup




Chapter Two
--"A manuscript in the handwriting of Jesus!"


Elmer Rait's letter had been wrapped in dogskin and then enclosed
in a tough brown envelope.  It smelled vaguely of ghee.  The white
paper was filthy with finger-marks, torn here and there, and turned
yellow in places with age, as if Rait had made use of such stuff
as he found in the markets of Lhassa.

"Dear Jeff:  What on earth did we quarrel about?  I forget.  Nothing
serious anyhow--probably ethics.  You're a muscular moralist, whereas
I'm practical and don't even want to make things better than they are.
And here I am in Lhassa--the Forbidden City!--thinking of you, wishing
you were here too, in spite of those winkers you wear, which you
think are respectable compunctions, for all the world like an old
maid in a bathing costume with the pants tied round her ankles.  You
ought to have been a bishop.  You'd look splendid with a miter and
crook.  And how that fist of yours would shake a pulpit!  However,
there is nobody quite like you:  nobody quite so whole-souled in
stupidity with so much force behind it;  nobody quite so willing
to oblige a friend, and especially when the friend least deserves it;
nobody more dependable.  You're like a phalanx in reserve, or a
siege-train--anything heavy and honest, that can hit like Billy-o
when pointed in the right direction.

"Which is Tibet in this instance.  Come along.  I dare say money
wouldn't tempt you, even though your ancestors were Scotch and
you've a fortune salted down in tax-exemptums.  I have spent seven
years preparing for this trip, and I have got through this far as
a Tibetan trader with a Chinese accent.  I am after loot, though
not the kind of loot that you'll appreciate--ancient manuscripts--
priceless.  Those won't tempt you either.  This will.

"I am headed for Sham-bha-la.  The place is said to be fictitious,
although three or four explorers have been within thirty or forty
miles of it.  You've heard of it, of course;  you and I talked about
it years ago;  that time we met the Lama in Benares, who was paying
his way with stamped gold ingots.

"When I started out for Lhassa I was not yet sure that Sham-bha-la
is a real place, but now I'm positive.  I'm almost sure I can get
there, and get in, but almost equally sure I can't get out again
without help.  Hence this S.O.S. call for the phalanx.

"I will split with you fifty fifty.  It is true about the ancient
libraries;  the books are written on palm-leaves, treated with
mastic such as the old Egyptians used, that has preserved them
perfectly.  They're bound with leather thongs between wooden blocks,
which have had to be renewed every few centuries.

"The people who live in Sham-bha-la can read those books, which
are in a language much older than Sanskrit.  They are not a warlike
people;  they will not take life;  they protect themselves from
intrusion and interference by taking advantage of Tibetan superstition
and dislike of strangers.  The Dali Lama, who is a well-meaning man,
and the Tashi Lama, who is an extremely intelligent religionist,
do what they are told by these Sham-bha-la people, who advise
them secretly.

"It would take too long to tell you how I found out all about them,
but remember:  although we quarreled about morals or some such
nonsense, I never once gave you a wrong steer during all the years
we were in partnership.  If you find my trail and come to Sham-bha-la,
I promise you full pay for all your trouble--gold, priceless
manuscripts and information that will make historians and scientists
look sick.  Think of the fun of refuting the high-brows!

"Your danger will be mainly from Tibetans, who are dead-set on
keeping all foreigners out of the country.  I have quite convinced
them I was born in Tibet and kidnaped over the Chinese border in
my youth, but there's a rumor that a white man has slipped in
through Gyang-tse (which is the way I came) so they'll be keeping
an extra sharp lookout along that route.  They strip all suspected
wayfarers and search them, which is no joke with the wind at twenty
below zero;  so stain your skin with something permanent.

"It's an awful journey, which will suit you to a T.  The country
is hell, and you'll like it.  There's no food fit to eat, no sugar,
and you mayn't smoke.  The wind gives you toothache, and Tibetans
never wash;  dirt helps to keep them warm and fuel is scarce
everywhere.  Tibetans are all right--no bigger rogues than you and
me--but awfully suspicious.  Yes, I know well you believe you are
honest.  The Tibetans won't believe it, so look out for them.

"Beware of women, who are in a minority in Tibet and therefore
doubly dangerous.  Some of them go in for polyandry, and they like
men herculean, so beware!  They get indignant when their overtures
are turned down, and the other husbands take it as an insult to
themselves, so they go after you with bows and arrows.  One white
man I heard of--I forget his name--fell for the proposition, hoping
to find some way to visit Lhassa;  he found himself one of nine and,
being the latest recruit--a mere Plebe, as it were--was made bell-hop
to the gang.  I'm told he stuck it out for five or six years, always
trying to escape, until he almost forgot he was white;  but one
day he took a bath in a hot spring, the dye gave out, and the woman
was tired of him anyway.  So they had him examined by a government
official, who found him guilty, had him flogged to death and fed
him to the dogs.  The fact that the woman and all her husbands were
also flogged to death was not much consolation to him.  Better
avoid matrimony, even at the risk of seeming rude.

"Don't trust any one on British territory, except
Chullunder Ghose, who is an impudent scoundrel but extremely fond
of you.  Him you will have to trust, so make the best of it.  You
had better bring him with you;  he will die in the passes, which
is the best thing that could happen to him.  You will probably
need one confidant who can make the grade, but whatever you do,
don't bring along a white man.  Choose some one you can kick, and
who won't matter much if he dies.  Any white man would be certain
to turn quarrelsome, at this elevation, with the bad grub, and dirt,
and one thing and another.  Particularly, don't bring Jimgrim or
Narayan Singh.  I know they're your friends, or you think they are,
but I hate them both.  They think they know too much, and neither
of them has the slightest use for me.

"You must make your way toward Lhassa and work that great lump of
a head of yours for all it's worth.  Discover my Tibetan name and
where I am.  Naturally, I don't dare to write my Tibetan name in
this letter, which might fall into the wrong hands, in spite of
all precautions.  You will have to prospect for me.  You remember
those marks we used to make on rocks when we were prospecting?  Look
out for those or something like them.  Where-ever you see such a
mark beside the main road you may look for a message in writing not
far from it--probably hidden under the stones of one of the countless
roadside cairns on which each passer-by sticks a prayer-flag.

"You can't get in through China, because the Chinese and Tibetans
haven't made peace, except nominally, and both sides have blocked
the frontier.  They say it's equally impossible to get down through
Siberia, because the Soviet people have closed all routes, which
are said to be almost impassable anyhow.  Sven Hedin came up several
years ago along the Valley of the Indus, while the Maharajah of
Kashmir pretended to look the other way;  there was an awful row
about it, and the odds are that way's blocked;  the Maharajah won't
dare look away another time.  You'd better take the least used and
most difficult route you can find, and hold your tongue about it.

"The chief danger, of course, is from spies on the Indian side of
the border, who might learn of your intentions and tip off the Lhassa
Government.  There's a telegraph wire between Lhassa and Gyang-tse,
at which latter place there's a British officer and a small detachment
of troops who help the Tibetans to watch the border.  It's the
funniest amateur telegraph set you ever saw, but it serves its
purpose, which is to help them keep out foreigners.

"Kashmiris and Bhutanis are allowed to travel in Tibet without much
interference.  Let your beard grow, curl it, and you'll look enough
like a Kashmiri merchant to get by, provided you don't talk too much.
Don't kid yourself that you can speak Kashmiri like a native.  You
never could.  You can't.  You never will.  You can look the part,
and you're a better actor than your idiotic modesty allows you to
pretend.  So pretend to be sick--or be deaf and dumb--or mad.
Affliction is a passport everywhere.  You always were mad anyhow;
you ought to find that role easy.

"Either I am on the track of the most important discovery of modern
times, or else I shall explode a fable that a third of the world
has believed so long that it has become a tenet of religion.  After
seven years' preparation and inquiry I am confident that this is
not a mare's nest, however, and that the results will exceed
expectations.  The main trouble will be to get out with the loot,
which is why it's so important you should come.

"My argument is this:  These men in Sham-bha-la possess important
secrets, and they are clever enough to have kept themselves hidden--
almost, you might say, a myth--for centuries, although in ancient
times there used to be a traveled highway to their door, all the
way across Asia from Europe.  Why they withdrew into their shell,
I don't know.  It is said that Pythagoras went to them;  and so did
Lao-Tse.  They hide themselves, and they protect themselves behind
the screen of the Tibetans' savagery, but they won't take life.
So, if we can penetrate the screen, we're safe.

"Do you remember the story about that woman who once overheard the
secrets of Freemasonry?  They couldn't kill her.  They couldn't
turn her loose with their secrets.  They had to admit her into the
Order.  Why she didn't take advantage of them to start a lodge for
women and make herself Grand-Mistress of it, is beyond me to imagine.
Some weird point of morals probably, which certainly would never
limit me.

"From what I have heard and definitely ascertained and guessed--
one thing added to another--I believe that I can get through and
oblige these Sham-bha-la people to admit me into their secrets.
If they can find some way of binding me, that will mean more to me
than a wisp of straw, good luck to them!  I'll give them best if
they can prove it;  but they will have to prove something more than
that they can make me take an oath on an ancient book.  To get there,
to meet them and to force their hand is up to me.  To make me keep
their secrets after that, is up to them.  They'll have to use their
wits if they propose to pack me off without an armful of their
ancient books--if nothing else.  And get this:  I am told there is
a manuscript in the handwriting of Jesus!

"So now you know enough to start you rolling blankets!  Bring no
tobacco with you, but as much sugar as you can hide among your loads:
there isn't any sugar in all Tibet, and you'll crave it like a
hop-head yelling for his coke.

"If you should get any hint of my whereabouts before you reach Lhassa,
leave Lhassa out of your itinerary.  The monks here are fanatical,
suspicious, quarrelsome and rather wide-awake.  Be careful at the
wayside inns, where there are always spies, who get paid by results
and are therefore keen on the job.

"Wear snow spectacles, and don't wash.  A clean man, who has no
lice on him, is certain to arouse suspicion.  There--I think that's
all.  I'm going to count on you to come, and shall make all my plans
accordingly.  You will suit yourself, of course.  But if you don't
come you will have it on your conscience that you left me in the
lurch after my running the prodigious risk of writing you this letter,
which might easily betray me if the wrong man should get hold of it.
Just for once in your life don't moralize--don't preach to yourself--
don't get all bogged up in a sticky code of out-of-fashion ethics,
but remember I was once your partner, and come just as fast as your
obstinate old legs can bring you.
"Yours, E. R."

I read the letter aloud to Grim.

"I hope they've fed him to the dogs," he commented.  "He's rotten!"

"Nevertheless," remarked Chullunder Ghose, "he is absolutely right
about Narayan Singh, who should not come with us.  That Sikh slew
the Dead Sea!  This babu is pretty good insurance risk without
Narayan Singh to get us into trouble by sticking his sword into
all comers.  Am pacifist for totally immoral reasons, same being
it is safer.  Smack me and I smack you.  Smile, and the world
regards you as pigeon whom it can pluck much less aggressively.
Let us therefore not be aggressors but leave Narayan Singh behind."

"He's in the railway police now," Grim remarked.  "Generally on
duty at one of the Delhi stations, watching passengers off the
express trains."

"How democratic!  Am already out-voted!" said Chullunder Ghose.
"That Sikh will increase majority to three to one.  Am personally
G.B. Shavian opinionist, believing that majorities are always wrong--
but never mind, I would rather be wrong than have to live in a barrel
like Diogenes.  It is also better to pay income taxes than to be a
hermit.  Let us make plans."

My son, some kings are commonplace, and not all laborers are worthy
of their hire.  But this I say to you:  that if you are in league
with gods to learn life and to live it, neither kings nor commoners
can possibly prevent you, though they try their utmost.  You shall
find help unexpectedly, from strangers who, it may be, know not why.
--From The Book of Sayings of Tsiang Samdup




Chapter Three
--In which Benjamin yields as a woman should, for love, not money.


It was not long before we learned that we had failed to throw spies
off the scent.  That night we sat up late discussing Tibet with
Will Hancock, who had a surprising amount of information about the
country.  We did not admit to him that we intended to make our way
over the border, he being one of those conscientious men who would
have felt obliged to inform the government of anything he actually
knew.  But he is no man's fool;  he answered all our questions
without committing any such indiscretion as to ask us questions
in return.

Will Hancock's chief anxiety was the season of the year.  It was
already autumn:  the monsoon was likely to break at almost any time,
after which the valleys and all the lower slopes of the Himalayas
would be deluged, and the upper passes would be blocked with snow.
However, he had other reasons for instilling caution:

"Some people enjoy disobeying governments," he said, blinking at
us through his horn-rimmed spectacles.  "But up in Tibet they have
made a cult of disobedience to God!  It is a lie that there is any
pure philosophy or pure religion up there.  What there is, is
sorcery--black magic--the same evil that the witch of Endor
practised and that brought Sodom and Gomorrah to their ruin--that
alliance with the powers of evil that the Apostle Paul denounced.
With all my heart I would advise any one against trespassing in Tibet."

"You should publish a book on the subject," said Grim.   "What--
and advertise iniquity?"

Will Hancock lectured us for hours on the sin of curiosity, but
at the end of it I think he realized he had only contrived to
arouse that vice in us.

Next morning there was a great bell-ringing at the outer gate and
a man named Tsang-Mondrong, a Tibetan, asked to see the "white sahibs."

"Was fifty-fifty spy of both sides on Younghusband expedition!"
said Chullunder Ghose.  But Grim, who was on that expedition too,
did not remember him.

He turned out to be one of those products of the meeting of the
East and West who can speak English with extraordinary fluency,
and who think they understand the Western point of view so well
as to be able to impose their espionage unsuspected.  He had been
keeping watch on Chullunder Ghose and had simply followed him out
to the mission.

He pretended to think that Grim and I were planning an expedition
after big game, asked whether we had permits, and offered his
services as guide, saying he knew some good bear country and some
trails leading northward that were hardly ever used and consequently
teeming with big game of all kinds.  It was a ridiculously obvious
trap to get us to reveal our plans to him.  He sat there, itching
to be questioned.

So we told him we were leaving for Bombay and Europe;  and to convince
him I asked him to take a telegram back to Darjiling for despatch
to Bombay, ordering reservations on the earliest available steamer,
but wording the telegram in such way that the steamer people would
not accept it as a definite order.  He agreed to take the telegram
but hung around all morning questioning the mission servants and
even trying to get Hancock to reveal our confidences.

He was one of the ugliest men I have ever seen, and the more we
saw of him, the more hideous he seemed to become.  In the first
place he was pock-marked, and the pits were so deep and wide that
they resembled the craters on the moon seen through a high-powered
telescope.  He had the usual Mongolian high cheek-bones and more
or less almond eyes, but his eyes were yellow, not brown, with a
tinge of green in them, and as he had neither eyelashes nor eyebrows,
the effect was gruesome.  Where eyebrows should have been there
was a scar that looked as if it might have been made by a whip thong.
The teeth of his lower jaw projected and when he grinned, which
he did almost whenever he spoke, his lower lip drew downward and
displayed the gum.  His skin was the color of raw pig's liver.  His
neck was so short that his head seemed to grow from his shoulders,
which were extremely wide.  He had unusually long arms, a long body,
and legs much too short for his height;  the sleeves of his
bazaar-made khaki jacket hardly came below his elbows, whereas
his trousers had to be rolled up several inches.  One foot was
considerably larger than the other.

Yet, in spite of those deformities, he was as active as a cat, and
though his head was narrow and stupid looking--though, in fact, he
actually was stupid in many respects almost to the verge of idiocy--
he was very sharp-witted and far-sighted, as well as persistent
along lines where he thought his own particular personal interests
were concerned.

"He will be harder to get rid of than a louse without disinfectant,"
said Chullunder Ghose.  "He will take that telegram and show it to
the authorities, to prove to them that we do not need to be watched,
by that means securing a monopoly of watching us.  Thus, when the
time comes to betray us he will not need to share the reward;  and
he will certainly first blackmail us out of our senses before handing
over what is left of us for the authorities to jump on.  Argue with me!
Subdue me with violence!  Make rude remarks about my mother!  Prove
to me, black on white, that I am wrong!  Nevertheless, I know and
have told you."

Chullunder Ghose was right, and we believed him, but, we had a plan
that we thought would hide our objective, and make it appear mere
waste of time to shadow us.  The trails leading into Tibet by way
of Sikkim and Bhutan are more numerous than many people think, and
some of them are not so difficult as rumor makes them out to be.
Armies, for instance, have marched over those passes in midwinter,
and there is hardly any season of the year when Tibetans are unable
to reach India if they wish.  But all the well-known routes were
certain to be watched, especially since it was known to the Tibetans,
as well as the British Government, that Rait had crossed the border;
and though we did not actually know of any other route than those
marked on the maps, we had more reasons than one for going first
of all to Delhi.

In Delhi was our friend Narayan Singh, whom we proposed to take
with us.  And in Delhi was a Jew named Benjamin, who certainly has
never been in Tibet, but, whose network of business connections is
like a ganglion of nerves that ramify through Asia.

So to Delhi we made our way by train from Darjiling, attracting as
little attention to ourselves as possible and marking "Bombay" on
our luggage labels.  Darjiling is the mountain terminus of a two-foot
gauge line that runs through some of the finest scenery in the world
to Siliguri, which is the main-line junction.  On Darjiling station
was the usual crowd of Lepchas, Nepalis, Eurasians, Sikkimese,
Bengalis, nondescripts, and a scattering of Europeans, and there
were certainly police spies in the crowd, some of whom studied our
luggage labels.  Three men and a woman were within earshot when we
bought the tickets, and one half-naked individual appeared to be
watching Chullunder Ghose to see whether or not he was in attendance
on us.  But there was no sign of Tsang-Mondrong until the whistle
blew for the train to start.  Then, leaning out of a window, I saw
him run out of the waiting-room and jump into a third-class carriage.

At Siliguri he concealed himself behind a mound of luggage;  but I
saw him leave his lurking place to buy a ticket and when the
main-line train came in he boarded it.  Thereafter, at every
station at which the express stopped on the way to Delhi he was
out on the platform watching for us.

Chullunder Ghose came into our compartment and regaled us with
gloomy reminiscences.  He appeared already to have lost all
confidence in the success of our adventure.

"Tsang-Mondrong," he said, "is identical swine who gave lessons
in Tibetan to Rait sahib, continuing same for six months until
discovered tearing secret notes out of a memorandum book.  Rait
sahib being little man, resultant fight was jolly well worth one
rupee admission.  This babu witnessed that imbroglio and afterward
assisted to recorrect alignment of Tibetan's limbs, Rait sahib having
ju-jutsued hind leg into place where teeth should be and vice versa.
Reconstruction was like Chinese puzzle with directions how to open
it inside.  Tsang-Mondrong probably is contemplating vengeance,
hoping to trace Rait sahib by following us.  You may think you know
a lot, but you have no idea how these savages pursue a vengeance
to the limit.  Wait and see!"

However, there is such a thing as luck, although it usually comes
with a sting in its tail, and having made you overconfident, presents
you with a crisis and deserts you when you least expect it.  On
the Delhi station platform was Narayan Singh in khaki uniform with
a row of medal ribbons on his breast.  His black beard parted in
a flashing smile the moment he saw us, and he came running, waving
his arm commandingly for porters, in two minds whether to salute
or to throw convention to the winds and shake us by the hand.
"Sahibs!" he exclaimed.  "Sahibs!"  He seemed more glad to see us
than if we had been brothers risen from the grave.  "What now!  This
police work is no trade for a man like me!"

Grim took him by the elbow and pointed out Tsang-Mondrong, who was
making his way through the crowd toward the exit where he would be
able to keep an eye on us.

"Arrest him!" said Grim.  "Keep him under lock and key until we've
given him the slip.  Then chuck your job and come to us at Benjamin's."

He grinned.  A minute later the Tibetan made the grave mistake of
offering resistance to arrest and, furthermore, misjudged Narayan
Singh's strength, which is not much less than mine.  Three policemen
came up on the run with their yellow truncheons swinging, and
Tsang-Mondrong had not even enough senses left to be meek with by
the time the handcuffs had been snapped on.  He was hurled into the
station lock-up and there held incommunicado for the ambulance.

Grim and I took one cab, Chullunder Ghose another, and we drove
by different routes through the swarming, stinking streets to
Benjamin's in the Chandni Chowk, which is the old Street of the
Silversmiths, the heart of the business zone of modern Delhi.  The
old Jew's shop draws no attention to itself, its narrow, shabby-
looking front being wedged between two warehouses, but that
appearance is deceptive;  the narrow front part where the counter
is, with a row of shelves behind it, leads to a curtain at the rear
beside a stairway, and beyond that is a vast and shadowy warehouse
where the odds and ends of all the world, from London to Pekin, are
piled in heaps amid a smell of saddlery, dried-camel sweat, old
clothes and spices.

The old Jew received us warily, his red-rimmed eyes betraying
nervousness, artistic-looking fingers scratching his chin through
a long beard streaked with gray.

"Jimgrim!" he said.  "Ramsden!  Tscha-tacha!  Vultures!  Kites!
When you gather, there is trouble!  What now?"

We sat down on a pile of carpets in the gloom and lighted cigarettes
before we answered, he peering at us, slightly stooped, kneading his
fingers together--a typical Asian Jew, if there is such a thing,
more nervous than a bird and full of wisdom won in combat with the
world's unfairness--timid where a Gentile would be rash, bold where
a Gentile would not dare to venture--generous, thrifty, honest, a
keen bargainer contemptuous of fools--a man of strong affections
and extreme fears.

"Confidences, Benjamin," I said, when I had smoked about a quarter
of a cigarette and Grim continued silent.

"Nah-nah!  Keep your confidences?  Those are dangerous!"  He scratched
his head, pushing his embroidered silk turban forward over his forehead.

"When did you begin to play safe?" Grim inquired.

"Nobody brings confidences here unless he wants money or--"

"Give him our money," said Grim, and I began to count out Bank-of-
England notes.

"Trouble!" said Benjamin.  "I smell trouble!  Take your money to
the bankers!"

"The clerks who keep bank ledgers sell their information.  You know
that as well as I do, Benjamin," said Grim.  "Give us a receipt,
and tell us how to get to Tibet."

He flew into a passion of denials, swearing he knew
nothing about Tibet, never had been there, knew nobody who had been,
had had nothing to do with the country at any time, and did not
intend to have anything to do with it.

"And I am old," he added. "I know best."

"It is because you are old, and you know, and we know you, that
we have come to you," said Grim.   "But it is against the law!
There is an order in council--"

"Benjamin," said Grim, "who thought about order in council, or law,
when your relatives were starving in a Turkish prison and Jeff
Ramsden helped them out?  Did you study law when you hid Rabindra
Das after the Amritsar business and helped him escape into Persia?"

"Who told you that?" Benjamin demanded.

"Rabindra Das.  I also helped him to escape," said Grim.

"Yei-yei-yei--who shall keep secrets while you live Jimgrim?  How
many of you go to Tibet?"

"Jeff and I, Narayan Singh and Chullunder Ghose."

"Tshuh!  You talk madness!  You--yes--maybe.  Ramsden?  Better take
an elephant!  Chullunder Ghose!  Narayan Singh?  The one will talk
to all comers and try to sell lottery tickets to the Tashi Lama;
the other will offer to fight the whole Tibetan army!"

Nevertheless, Benjamin took up the money from the mat and went to
a desk in the corner to write a receipt.  Its was while he was
doing that, that Chullunder Ghose came in, as genial and confident
as if he owned the store, with none of its responsibilities.

"Salaam, Benjamin!  Salaam, O chosen person!  Son of the great
Joshua who made the sun stand still, salaam!  We wish for chariot
of Elijah in which to cross Himalayan Mountains;  order same for us,
taking care that taximeter has been properly inspected--submarine
of Jonah being useless in this instance!  Nevertheless, be careful
of police, who will look up chariot's license number!"

Benjamin eyed him sourly;  there had never been love lost between
them--as there never is when one man laughs at life and at himself,
while the other takes all things seriously.  Benjamin, who probably
has suffered less from disappointment than Chullunder Ghose, and
who at any rate has grown rich, resents the suggestion that life
is a comedy, whereas the babu, who was ever a spendthrift, mocks
death itself, since he believes that death is nothing but the end
of an illusion.

"That fool will ruin you," said Benjamin, inviting a retort that
might lead to an excuse to wash his hands of us.  But the babu sat
still, like a contemplative idol, only opening one eye a trifle
wider as Narayan Singh strode in.

The Sikh was no longer in uniform, but he stood before us with arms
folded on his breast and a soldier's attitude toward life's problems
stamped all over him.

"The Tibetan Tsang-Mondrong will undoubtedly receive a month's hard
labor for resisting three policemen," he announced.  "They three,
not I, have charged him, being young men seeking credit--thus
releasing me from having to give evidence.  Tsang-Mondrong is unknown
in Delhi, so can call no witnesses.  What next do we under-take?"

"Tibet," I said;  and he grinned.

It is impossible to write of him without emotion.  Even in this
draughty cave, with a ninety-mile wind howling across barren wastes
outside, I grow warm at the thought of him;  and I can write of him
with less restraint, since he is dead--having died as calmly as he
lived, thrusting himself into danger for the sake of others.

He was a soldier first and last, with all of a Sikh soldier's
ruthlessness when it came to action, but a patience beyond praise
until the moment came when patience would no longer be a virtue.
He regarded this life, in so far as I could ever dig down through
the silences to his philosophy, as something like an armed camp,
in which all the hosts of evil are arrayed against each individual's
manhood.  When he killed (and he must have slain dozens) he did it
with a strange impersonality that in no way handicapped his zeal
or efficiency.  He never boasted--had no pride in any ordinary
meaning of the term--and undertook the meanest task without a
moment's hesitation, being utterly above all caste restrictions.
And he wend off into the unknown with us with no more fuss or
excitement than if he were about to cross the street.

He stalked through the world like a stranger to it, having no home
ties I ever heard of, and no religious interests that he ever
mentioned--a thing very unusual in a Sikh.  I never saw him pray,
nor heard him say a word against another man's religion, except
good-naturedly, when Chullunder Ghose, or some one else teased him.

He was a friend--a grand ally--an uncomplaining messmate in extremity--
and an enigma.  I can not explain him.  If there is truth in what the
Eastern sages teach, then one might guess that he was marking time
between two lives, perhaps a great man in the last one and to be a
great one in the next.  I don't pretend to know;  I am only hazarding
an explanation of him that, while not explaining, may suggest a mental
picture of him.

It is easier to describe him as he stood there beside Benjamin the
Jew and waited for us to issue marching orders--tall, statuesque,
with dark-brown eyes that never seemed to sleep, immensely dignified
without a trace of cheap conceit, his black beard curled and his
mustache turned rather fiercely upward.  Sabered or not, he always
stood as if there were a saber at his waist.  When not in action
his arms were usually folded on his breast and his eyes appeared
to search horizons--or infinity.

I gave him Rait's letter to read and he went to where a beam of
sunlight shone through the open doorway, to sit down on a bale of
merchandise and pore over the difficult handwriting, his lips
moving as he construed it word by word into his own tongue.

"Outfit!" asked Benjamin and beckoned an assistant pointing with
a yardstick at the things we might require which the assistant
dragged down from the shelves piled into a heap.  But that was no
more than an excuse for not talking to us;  the old Jew kept
muttering to himself, gesturing disgustedly, as if rejecting one
thought, then another.

"Which way will you go?  By way of Sikkim?" he asked suddenly.

Grim nudged me, and none of us answered.  In the East it is invariably
wiser to say nothing than to answer foolishly.  A random answer, yes
or no, shuts off negotiation.

"If you take my advice, you won't go at all," said Benjamin.  "Winter!
Winter before you can reach the passes!  Do you know what that means?"

"It means no trouble with frontier guards," said Grim.

"Tschah!  They will find your frozen bodies in the spring, and strip
them!" Benjamin said, frowning.

He turned away from us, and Grim nudged me again.  The old Jew's
hands were moving as if he were tossing something--weighing it.

"Sure," said Grim, "we'll do your business for you!"

Benjamin faced about suddenly.

"What do you know?" he demanded.  "You, Jimgrim, what do you know?"

He scowled at Chullunder Ghose and glanced once or twice at the Sikh,
who was still studying the letter.

"One man is a risk.  Four men are four times the risk!  I tell
you, Jimgrim--"

"Trust me, trust my friends," Grim interrupted.

Benjamin resumed his fossicking among the shelves, pulling out
cooking pots, knives, leather caps, yak-hair blankets, yak-skin
overcoats, heaping them all on the floor until there seemed enough
for a young army.  Narayan Singh came striding to where we sat and
handed me Rait's letter.

"Yes," he said, "I come with you.  But Rait is no good."

"Sikh!" exclaimed Benjamin, and came and stood close to him.  "What
if I don't trust you?  What if I refuse?  What then?"

Narayan Singh laughed tolerantly.

"I have lived these many years without your aid," he answered. "Jew,
do you own Tibet!"

Benjamin displayed two rows of yellow teeth with gaps between them--
more a grimace than a grin.

"You Sikh!  You think, if I refuse, you can make trouble for me?"

Narayan Singh laughed again.

"Jew, you have trouble enough," he retorted.  "Give help or withhold
it.  I will go to Tibet."

Benjamin nodded, relaxing exactly as if pain had left him.

"Where is Mordecai?"  Chullunder Ghose asked suddenly.  "Is Mordecai
in Tibet?"

Benjamin stared at him, startled.  Grim smiled--it was his question;
he had prompted the babu in a whisper.  Grim and I both knew Mordecai,
although it was several years since we last says him--in Damascus,
whither he had brought the goods of the Bokhara Jews by caravan
while the war was raging.  Mordecai had married Benjamin's fat
daughter (he being a man whom nothing terrified);  he was a sort
of Marco Polo among bargain-hunters, looking for his merchandise
where most men thought none existed, and selling it in New York--
London--Paris--Moscow--anywhere where profits could be made;  a
daring wanderer with a vocabulary made up from a dozen languages
and a line of impudence that he himself invented.

Benjamin beckoned Grim and me into a small, dark inner room, where
he lighted a lamp that had a broken chimney.

"Who will do a favor for an old Jew?" he asked, the lamp trembling
in his hand."  It is 'Jew, do this for me!  Jew, do that for me!'
But if the Jew wants favors he must--"

"--say exactly what he does want," Grim suggested.

"Will you find Mordecai?  Will you take a message to him?  Nah-nah!"

"Why not?  Tell us where he is," said Grim.

"God knows where he is!" said Benjamin.  "He went to Tibet--but not
by the route that you shall use--he traveled swiftly.  Twenty years
I have been known to the Tibetans, though I have never been to Lhassa.
Mordecai has been three times.  I am purchasing agent.  Also I supply
them information--but the Indian Government does not know that.  Why
do you wish to go to Tibet?"

Grim said as much about Rait as could be told within the compass
of a hundred words.

"Do you know Rait!" he asked.

"No," said Benjamin.  "Mordecai knows him.  Mordecai met him in
Simla--met him again in Darjiling.  Rait asked Mordecai so many
questions that my son-in-law put two and two together.  There are
questions such as fools ask--questions such as men ask who will
write books--questions such as men ask who will go, look, see for
themselves--you understand me?  He is a rogue of an explorer, is
that fellow Mordecai;  there are no mysteries too far away for him;
like a hound he goes after them all, and he loves to be the first
one to discover things.  Said Mordecai, ' I know what Rait is after.'
So, because he makes a good profit wherever he goes, I gave him
a report from Moscow for the Dalai Lama.  Those Soviet people have
been thinking about Tibet;  I had news about it from my cousin,
who is a commissar as they call them;  so I warned the Dalai Lama.
But there is no news now from Mordecai since seven months.  I am
thinking Rait has killed him."

I laughed at that, believing I knew Rait.

"Butter," I said, "would melt in Rait's mouth, but he isn't a
high-binder."

"Nah-nah!  You don't know!" Benjamin retorted.

"That Roof of the World makes men like animals!  The search for
sacred things makes devils of them!  Did people flay and burn us
Jews for the love of money?  Nah-nah-nah!  They did it for religion--
for the things they thought are holy!  There are older and holier
books than the Quabalah, up there in Tibet.  And there are worse
things than crime!  There is madness there!  What if Rait kills
Mordecai!  Will you four bring him back to life!  What if the black
evil gets him!  You Jimgrim--you Ramsden--maybe you are all right,
you two.  You two may be proof against the evil.  But the Sikh?
The Bengali?  Who shall know their hearts?  I have my daughter, and
her daughters--little ones--no male heir except Mordecai.  He has
been better than a first-born."

"Yet you let him go to Tibet!" Grim suggested.

Benjamin snapped his fingers, cracking all the knuckle bones, and
drew a long breath through his teeth.

"Can you tie up a Jew in a stable?" he asked.  "Who was it went
with Christopher Columbus?  Jews!  The sun stood still on Gideon
and the moon in the valley of Avalon, but not the Jews--nah-nah!
But a Jew can be caught by--the evil--the black evil!  If I help
you into Tibet, will you find my Mordecai and bring him back to me?"

The heat was stifling in that inner room.  The lamp smoked as it
trembled in the old Jew's hand, and he sweated in streams, but we
had to use patience.  Men like Benjamin know only too well, and too
bitterly, what happens when the West joins hands with them:  labor
and risk fall to the Asian;  the rewards go to the white man's
country.  Grim and I had proved to Benjamin a time or two that,
though we might not have it in us to keep faith exactly as the East
interprets it, we were men of our word and fair according to our
lights.  But he was nervous.

"If I show you a secret--a secret route into the heart of Tibet--
how long will it be a secret after that!" he demanded.  "You two--
maybe I shall take a chance on you;  but those two?  Listen to me!
Twenty long years I have kept the secret;  and the English, they
knew I know it--teasing, coaxing, threatening, spying on me, offering
this and that--trade opportunities, contracts, anything I please if
I will show that route to them.  What was it to me, if I should
lose the Lhassa business?  Nothing!  The English would have paid
the profit back twice over.  Why then!  Why will a woman not yield
to a man--though she love him--though he offer her a fortune?  It
is her honor, isn't it?  They'll tell you Jews know nothing about
honor.  Eh-heh!  They who have tried to buy my secret will say that
to you!  And if I tell you, am I better than a woman who has yielded?"

"Oh well, all four of us will probably get killed," said Grim.

"Tschah-h-h!  Much good that would do me!  Shall I ever look the
lamas in the face again?  But Mordecai"--he set the lamp down--"I
have no other first-born.  Will you bring me news of him?"

"Maybe."

"But will you look for him!"

"Judge that for yourself," Grim answered.  "We could promise anything.
As for your secret--if we buy it from you, we would have the right
to sell it."

"Nothing for nothing!" Benjamin began.

"Rot!" said Grim.  "You talk about a woman's virtue.  Will you sell
yours?  We four--or whichever of us lives--will look for Mordecai
and bring you word of him.  Keep your virgin secret until you like
some one well enough to sacrifice it!  Let's get out of this hole;
there's no air."

Benjamin stood with his left hand on the door-latch.  Grim's face,
filthy with the lamp smoke, smiled at him poker-wise;  there was
no reading it.  I felt that we had lost the trick, but I tried to
disguise the feeling and searched for a last argument to change the
old fellow's mind.

"Look here, Benjamin," I began;  but he shook his head at me and
held his hand up.   "Shuh-shuh-shuh-shuh--sheyh!" he interrupted.
"Beat a dead horse, will you?  Am I saying no?  I shall give you
a writing that will take you all the way to Tibet.--Jimgrim!" he
said, clutching him by the arm, "you are a wise one!  You know the
trick of how to win!  You should have been a Jew, you, Jimgrim!"




Death pursues life. Is there anything without its opposite?  Or
any cause without its consequence? Or any light that casts no shadow?
So, I tell you that your very inmost thoughts awaken hosts that
otherwise had slept, as sound awakens echoes.  Therefore it is
neither miracle nor mystery that there is no escape from spies
nor any safety other than an upright zeal that makes haste, leaving
the spies forever a march behind.
This is the so-called mystery of leadership.--From The Book Of
Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup


Chapter Four
--The spies of the Devil's Guard.

Some men yearn to become bishops; probably that yearning makes
them put their utmost into life, which is the only way to extract
one's share of satisfaction.  I have met, and known, and liked
men who could not resist the lure of a stagedoor.  One of my
respected friends will cross the world to hunt for a rare butterfly
in fever swamps.  And I know a woman whose health, youth, popularity
and family combined can not prevent her from sailing the ocean
alone in a thirty-foot sloop for weeks at a time when certain
impulses, as unexplainable as life itself, assert their recurring
spell.  I don't believe it matters which enthusiasm we adopt,
provided we have one and drive it, or let it drive us, for all it
and we are worth.

The same lure that had beckoned Rait and Mordecai, had stirred
whatever it is that differentiates us men from mushrooms, in
Chullunder Ghose, Narayan Singh, Grim and me.  Not one of us--not
even Benjamin, who unlocked a secret door for us even remotely
guessed what lay ahead.  We simply listened to an icy siren-song
blown to us over the Roof of the World, and responded because there
would have been no peace within us otherwise.

Out of that agglomeration of world combings that he calls his shop
old Benjamin supplied equipment, even including an excellent compass,
and maps copied (doubtless without permission) from the Survey
Department files.  Such few things as he did not have in stock he
personally bought for us--forceps, for instance, for pulling teeth,
a quantity of patent anesthetic, bandages, brandy, sugar, and beef
extract;  so that we did not need to be seen wandering about Delhi.

He sent a man far into Kashmir to buy ponies for us, with the result
that we were supplied with the best, instead of incurring the usual
fate of those who buy from strangers in a hurry.  Night after night,
when the store was closed and his fat daughter had spread food for
us on a carpet beneath an old temple lamp, he told us all he knew
about Tibetans and their country.  It was he who stained my akin so
admirably that the color still endures, although I have been half-
boiled in natural hot-springs and half-frozen in the Tsang-po River.

There was no need to darken Grim's tough hide;  it had been sun-baked
so that he was actually darker than Narayan Singh, although one did
not realize it until he disguised himself in the native costume.
Benjamin seemed to have no fear whatever on Grim's account, although
he was in agonies of apprehension about the rest of us--Chullunder
Ghose particularly, delaying us for three days after our equipment
was all ready because he did not believe his instructions had
sufficiently soaked in.

There was something that he feared more than any physical danger,
and I think Grim knew what it was, although Benjamin would only
hint at it, shuddering and throwing up his hands in pious horror.
But in all other respects he was minutely definite.  He warned us
against smoking, which is a crime in Tibet;  never to pass on our
left-hand side any religious monument or any individual entitled
to respect;  not to shoot wild game, and not to be seen eating
chicken or drinking milk.

But above all, he advised me to be silent.  Narayan Singh and
Chullunder Ghose could get by as Kashmiri merchants, who are allowed
in Tibet.  Grim, if extremely careful, might even pass as a Tibetan.
As for me, my accent being amateurish and vocabulary limited, speech
with any stranger would be out of the question, once over the border.

"Be you deaf and dumb!" he insisted.  "These are your friends, who
are taking you to the Medical College on the Chakpo Hill outside
Lhassa, hoping you may be cured by a miracle.  Yeh-tschah-tschah!
And a miracle it is, when they cure anybody!  Anatomy they know--
a little--since they cut up corpses;  and they have nine poisons
that are unknown to the European chemists, but they are the worst
doctors in the world! Be you a doctor, Ramsden.  Toothache is their
commonest complaint.  Pull teeth for nothing, and so win their
gratitude--because the monks charge too much.  If they are grateful
they may not be so suspicious.  But you mustn't talk--nah-nah--not
one word--niemals!  You have had a curse put on you by a Hindu hakim;
the babu can tell that story, he being a very good one at inventing
lies.  The Tibetans know all about curses.  They know too much about
them!  If you cure their toothaches they will not ask many questions.
But, though you say you are going to Chakpo, don't you let their
doctors touch you!
They are devils--bad, ignorant devils, yet they know altogether
too much!  If they suspect you they will simply poison your body!
But better that than fall into the power of certain others!  There
are sons of evil up there!"

The road is free and open into Kashmir, which is a tourists' Mecca
nowadays, with shops for the sale of imported souvenirs and a better
system for fleecing Americans than even Deauville and the Riviera
boast.  We went by train to Rawalpindi--third class, trying out our
new disguises--and I did so well that I was actually struck by an
Eurasian conductor, who mistook my silence for fear of himself and
his official buttons.

Because he overlooks no chance to turn a profit, and also, perhaps,
to make our own peculiarly packed loads less conspicuous, Benjamin
entrusted us with nearly two tons of merchandise consigned to his
agents in Srinagar.  So we hired an auto-truck in Rawalpindi, along
with a driver and two helpers;  but we had to wait three days for
Benjamin's freight to overtake us, and a letter from Benjamin reached
us by special messenger (not one of his own clerks, however) three
or four hours before the freight train dawdled in.

The letter was alarming.  We had left Tsang-Mondrong, we imagined,
snugly incommunicado in the jail, the expected thirty-day sentence
having been promptly passed on him by the Mahommedan magistrate.
Nevertheless, Benjamin wrote that a Tibetan had been hanging around
the store and asking questions.

"As for me, I told him nothing, but he may have learned much from
one of my assistants, who is a Klapper-storch.  Nor do I dare to
send one of my own men with this letter, lest the Tibetan should
follow him.  This messenger has been paid, but you will do well
to pay him again, so that he may go away and get drunk and perhaps
get himself into a trouble before he makes a greater one for you."

So we paid the man twice what the service was worth, and Grim took
him off to a reeking hole where an Eurasian sold arrack, nor left
him until he had drunk the best part of a bottle of the stuff and
was in no fit state to tell an intelligible story, to Tibetans or
any one else.  Meanwhile, Narayan Singh and Chullunder Ghose spread
talk through the bazaar that might lead people to believe we were
heading southward again.  Then, hoping at any rate that we had thrown
spies off the scent, we stacked our loads on to the truck and started
for Murree and the Kashmir Pass.

We had a letter from Benjamin, containing hardly fifty words, in a
language that only Grim could read, which the old Jew guaranteed
should open for us a route along which pursuit would be impossible;
but before we could use that key we must put all of Kashmir behind
us. Beyond the Kashmir Valley, between us and Ladakh where the
secret route began, was the Zogi-la Pass, eleven thousand feet
above sea-level.  The road across the Zogi-la is open all winter
long, except for a dozen miles or so, but those dozen miles might
as well be fifty, once the winter storms begin;  so our first task
was to cross the Zogi-la before the snow fell, after which the
sooner the nor'westers should blow the drifts deep into the narrow
gorge and shut off all pursuit, the better.

It was the end of the summer season.  Tourists and officials on
vacation poured out through the pass, the stream of motor-cars and
carts constantly delaying us, since there are only certain places
where wheeled traffic can pass.  Threading our way patiently
against the hurrying flood of tourist-cars and luggage trucks, we
might have excited curiosity if we had been dressed as Europeans,
but as Kashmiri merchants we only drew down objurgations on our heads.

In spite of old Benjamin's mysterious hints, we felt like schoolboys
on a picnic.  There was exhilaration in the air--a certain winelike
sharpness and a wind that bore the dust along in clouds, but not
a hint yet of the Himalayan winter, although Narayan Singh swore
once or twice that he could smell snow.  We mocked his pessimism
and enjoyed the scenery, behind a driver who scorned precipices.

I had not adopted the deaf and dumb role yet, but kept my head
wrapped in a shawl, pretending to have toothache on both sides of
my mouth, in order to avoid conversation with strangers.  But by
night, when we cooked our meal beside the truck preparatory to
sleeping underneath it, we were at the mercy of benevolence.  There
is a freemasonry of sickness, and the native Indian is nothing if
not inquisitive.  Men camped near by came to sit beside us and
compare notes, keeping Grim, Narayan Singh and Chullunder Ghose
in turn busy answering questions about what ailed me, and I was
offered remedies that ranged all the way from opium to powdered
brick from a Moslem martyr's tomb.

However, we were not in actual danger of discovery until we bumped
and swung downhill toward the Kashmir Valley, where the River
Jhelum lay like a turquoise ribbon winding through a paradise of
green and amber.  At the foot of the last decline, beside a bridge,
Kashmiri officials waited to take toll of our belongings and examine
all loads for contraband;  and while they overhauled the truck, I
sat down in its shadow.

Grim talked to the officials and so entertained them that they
neglected to open our important bundles, in which the unregistered
rifles were concealed;  and Chullunder Ghose explained to Kashmiris,
who were loafing, looking on, over-curious, that I was suffering
from a disease so contagious as to poison people if my breath should
touch them.

That was all very well for the time being, but one of them, out
of the kindness of his heart, went and fetched a Parsee doctor,
who was making his way in a car to the plains after a vacation
spent in Srinagar.

The Parsee was as kind and fussy and insistent as if I had been
his wife's relation.  He not knowing more of the Kashmiri tongue
than I did, it was easy enough to escape suspicion on the score
of language, but I had to show him my mouth and the absence of any
signs of sickness puzzled him.  He took my temperature, and, finding
that normal, invited me to strip myself and submit to a swift
physical examination.

I refused for religious reasons--always a reliable excuse for
anything in India, and though he continued to try to persuade me,
making use of every argument a decent doctor could, I think he had
about exhausted both his patience and enthusiasm and would have
left me to rot of any disease I wished, but for one of those
apparently insignificant incidents that so often upset calculations.

Narayan Singh, begging a ride on a government mule-wagon, had gone
forward into Srinagar to see about our lodgings for the night and
there was nobody near our truck except the Parsee doctor and myself.
One of our heavier loads, disarranged by the customs crew, teetered
on the truck's edge and would have fallen on the Parsee, had I not
jumped and caught it, guiding it to the ground.  So far, well and
good;  but now habit took charge of me:  instinctively, at once,
without a second thought, I hove it back in place.  It was a load
that probably two normally active men would find it all they could
do to lift.

The Parsee gaped at me;  but the worst of it was that an English
doctor, passing in an auto on his way to Rawalpindi, saw the
incident and, knowing the Parsee, called out to him

"Studying anatomy?  By gad, where did you find that Hercules?  What
is he?"

The Parsee invited him to come and look, with the result that I
was faced by two inquisitors instead of one, and jealousy, that
was racial as well as professional, impelled them both to put me
through another third degree.  I had to rehearse my symptoms all
over again, and it happened that the Englishman was one of those
inquiring geniuses who take their profession extremely seriously.

It is easy enough to deceive a doctor, provided you avoid all
technicalities and merely complain of agony;  his anxiety to
relieve you makes him take complaints for granted.  He suspected
me of some obscure nervous trouble, possibly due to overstrain,
made me flex all my muscles, asked even what village I came from
and of what disease my grandfather had died--nodded--made notes
in a memorandum book--and offered me a seat in his auto to Rawalpindi,
where he offered to treat me in the hospital free of charge.

Then Grim came to the rescue with a string of lies about a doctor
in the Punjab who had recommended winter in the Kashmir Valley as
a cure, and in the end the English doctor gave the Parsee a lift,
the two driving off toward Rawalpindi discussing nervous maladies
with the argumentative enthusiasm of professional zealots.

That would not have mattered, had they not continued the discussion
that evening in the dak--a sort of hotel midway of the pass--where
there was a large assorted company, some of whom joined in the
conversation and were treated to a description of me, an account
of my feat of strength and, no doubt, to some very interesting
medical theories.  However, we did not know that until later.

About nine o'clock the following night, in Srinagar, as we four
sat around a lantern in a corner, with our backs against the wall
of the warehouse behind Benjamin's agents' store, discussing what
might have become of the son-in-law Mordecai, there entered a
Kashmiri clerk who announced that a sahib wished to see us.

We fell into a panic, naturally.  The word sahib is not applied
exclusively to Europeans but we jumped to the conclusion that the
British authorities had learned of our movements and had sent some
one to investigate.  We had had to wait a day in Srinagar because
of news that a police patrol was coming in along the Ladakh road,
and to have met the police would have been inconvenient, to say
the least of it, if only because we had unregistered firearms
hidden in our packs.

After a hurried consultation we decided to receive this  sahib,
whoever he might be, where we sat in the semi-darkness, giving as
our excuse that we were travel-tired and that one of us was ill.
I wrapped my head in the shawl again and leaned back in the corner.

A Tibetan entered, dressed in ready-made European khaki.  He
announced his name as Tsang-yang.  After staring at us for a
moment he sat down on our carpet uninvited, which was no good sign;
and he began at once to speak to us in English, which was worse.

He was an ugly man, enormous as to height although awkwardly
proportioned, with extremely bright, alert Mongolian eyes.  The
suit he wore hung badly on his Oriental frame, having worked up
at the sleeves and knees;  but he spoke English very well indeed
and possessed an air of confidence that betokened long association
with Europeans.  We learned later that he came originally from
the Province of Kam in Tibet, where nearly all the men are giants
in stature.

Though he had been sufficiently ill-mannered to sit down without
waiting for an invitation, and though his grin was impudent, he
addressed us as "learned sirs"--a phrase implying deep respect,
because Tibetans regard learning as the only royal road to virtue.
The combination of insolence and politeness seemed to give the
clue to his intentions.  Grim whispered the word "blackmail."

Narayan Singh stared angrily, doing his best to create an inhospitable
atmosphere--an art in which the Sikhs excel when so disposed (as they
can do the opposite with equal grace).  It was Chullunder Ghose who
bore the burden of the conversation.

"Son of impertinence, what do you want?" he demanded.  "Only death
has the right to interrupt four worthy men at prayer."

"Pray on," said the Tibetan.  "I shall wait."

Chullunder Ghose snorted.  "Sit on a dung-hill and smell roses!  The
Lords of Life to whom we offer meditation prefer thought unpolluted
by diabolism!  Make your interruption and go swiftly!'

"I was recently in jail," said the Tibetan, as if he thought the
boast should recommend him.

"I could have guessed it," said Chullunder Ghose.

"In jail I met Tsang-Mondrong," said our visitor.  "Seven days
after he entered the jail, I left it, and with him I made a bargain
that I should find you as soon as might be and should follow you
with all speed.  I learned you were at Benjamin the Jew's in Delhi.
Thence I traced you to Rawalpindi, where a letter from Benjamin
overtook you, warning you against me.  But I read the letter before
you received it.  At Rawalpindi I lost sight of you, because you
were rather clever in spreading rumors that you were turning south
again.  But we have a saying:  `When in doubt, turn northward,' so
I took the road to Srinagar, I though I despaired of finding you."

"Despair was not mutual.  You give us bellyache," Chullunder Ghose
assured him.

"But at the flak, where I sat in shadow close to the veranda, I
overheard men speaking of a very strong Kashmiri, suffering from
an affliction of the mouth that interfered with speech.  One of
Benjamin's assistants having spoken to me of the strength of him
whose skin was stained--how he lifted the bales in the store and
took his amusement wrestling with the Sikh, whom he always defeated
easily--I hoped again.  I knew that one who spoke Kashmiri badly
might pretend he could not speak
at all.  I followed.  I am here."

"And where do you go from here?  You have permission to go swiftly,"
said Chullunder Ghose.

"I go where you go," the Tibetan answered.

He spoke naively.  Nine times out of ten when a Tibetan tells you
frankly he will go with you it is safe to presume he is friendly
and dependable.  The tenth time it would be wiser to trust a snake.

Narayan Singh spoke suddenly.  "What were you in jail for?" he demanded.

"Nothing," the man answered.  "A policeman lied about me, saying I
was fighting in the street, whereas I merely looked on.  Why should
I fight in the street, and with whom?  I have never fought in the
street in all my life."

Chullunder Ghose leaned toward him, pointing with two fingers at
his eyes.

"I, too, am liar when it suits me!" he remarked.  "Where did you
learn English!"

"At Mission School, Darjiling."

"Where did you get that scar on cheek-bone?  Also from missionary?
What were you formerly?  Monk?"

The Tibetan nodded.  Regretting the admission, he began, too late,
to shake his head.  Chullunder Ghose mocked him

"Being monk, you never fought in streets of Lhassa?  Not at festival
of New Year, when monks have charge of city and all shop-keepers
shut doors and windows for fear of them?  You were expelled from
Lhassa!  You ran away to escape flogging or execution!"

"No," said the Tibetan.  "I left the Dre-pung Monastery of my own
accord.  I wished to learn foreign knowledge.  My superior in the
monastery had put me to a great shame--I, who did nothing to
deserve it.  I was beaten.  This mark on my cheek is from the whip
they used."

"Save and except that it is the mark of a knife wound that is a
very probable story!" said Chullunder Ghose.  "You left that
monastery in disgrace, running away without kissing the abbott
goodby or taking anything except the monastery money!  Nevertheless,
when Tsang-Mon-drong, who is paid agent in confidence of Tibetan
authorities, finds you in jail, he trusts you!  You are not paid
agent of Tibetan Government?  I bet you are!  I think you learned
English in Pekin, China.  I think that you were formerly Tibetan
spy of Chinese Government, until the Chinese were defeated and no
longer paid you stipulated sum per month.  I think now you would
like to return to Tibet, because you are homesick for your gruesome
wilderness--and you think we are on our way to Tibet--and you hope
to reestablish yourself by betraying us after you shall have stolen
from us all you can lay your hands on.  Is it not so?"   "I am
sure you will not go to Tibet until the spring, because the snow
is in the passes," the man answered.  "But I think you will go then,
because a man named Rait is there already, and he wrote a letter
to that one" (he pointed at me) "which you yourself delivered."

"So you would like to come with us, in the hope of finding Rait sahib?
Is that it?"

"If you go to Tibet, I go with you!" Tsang-Yang answered.

I abandoned my role of sick man then and took a hand in the discussion,
not exactly figuratively;  took him by the neck, flung him into the
corner behind me and sat on him.  Narayan Singh took one of his arms
and twisted it, but there was no need;  his head had hit the wall.
Grim stuffed a piece of sacking in his mouth and Chullunder Ghose
bound the gag in place with long strips of calico.

It was a simple swift solution of the difficulty for the moment,
but we did not accomplish it without a certain amount of noise and
for several minutes we waited to see whether the disturbance had
attracted attention from the front part of the store.

No one came, but that was no proof, we were not being quietly
observed through some crack in the partition;  and though it was
likely we could trust Benjamin's Kashmiri agents up to a certain
point, it would be foolish as well as unfair to expect them to run
grave risks with the authorities on our account.

Chullunder Ghose, with a fat man's sense of humor, did his best to
make our flesh creep.

"What now to do with dead Tibetan!" he remarked.

But he was not dead;  I could feel him breathing.

"The brute must come with us," said Grim.  "If we turn him loose
the very least he'll do will be to betray Benjamin."

"And up yonder in high mountains there are many slippery places!"
said Chullunder Ghose.

"Let us go," said Narayan Singh, getting up and beginning to remove
the sacks that we had heaped on the prisoner, who lay still.

"Search him first!" Chullunder Ghose advised.  "First aid to
restoring consciousness is to turn all pockets inside out and feel
for money between skin and undershirt!"

It was Grim's quick fingers that removed a leather wallet from a
bandage over the man's ribs.  We covered up our prisoner with sacks
again and sat down in a circle to examine the find by the light of
our smoky lantern.

On the outside of the wallet were the letters E.R. stamped in gold.
Inside it was Rait's passport, some receipts, a woman's letter, and
a photograph of me!

The receipts were all for trade-goods--matches, dyes, cooking
utensils and silk that Rait had bought to take with him to Tibet
in his guise of merchant;  they were made out to bearer and marked
"goods to be delivered at place agreed on road to Gyangtse."

The letter from the woman had no right to be in anybody's wallet.
She was an author with an international reputation, who had learned
of Rait's intention to visit Tibet and was trying to dissuade him.
Her passionate appeals to him to come to Europe and "continue a
soul-communion begun in Simla" would have been burned by any decent
fellow instantly, to prevent their falling into strangers' hands.

That letter in Rait's wallet was a searchlight thrown on his character.
It scandalized Chullunder Ghose, who is no sufferer from squeamishness,
but having been Rait's partner for a number of years I had understood
something of his cynicism.  I was about to burn the letter, when Grim
snatched it from me.

"Didn't you see the use he's made of it?" he asked.

He held it close up to the lantern.  Some of the words had been
faintly underscored with an instrument--perhaps a thumbnail--that
had scratched the paper without penetrating deep.  Grim--hunting
for the underscored words--read the message

"Buried--and--spot--marked--to--satisfy-you--this--is--right--
direction--Look--out--for--indications--of--turning--toward--West--
this--side--of--Lhassa--Remember--it--is--hard--to--look--into--
fierce--light--which--casts--black--shadow--consequently--don't--
expect--important--discovery--without--nerve-racking--experiences--
This--fool's--letter--doesn't--deserve--to--be--put--to--such--good--
use--but--[and here a whole sentence was underscored] the very
universe seems to be built on a foundation of broken hearts, so
come at once, come quickly!"

Grim wrote down the message and I burned the woman's letter.  It
was plain enough that Rait had left Lhassa, had taken some trail
leading westward, and had left that wallet buried by the road to
mark the trail for me.  But two things were not at all clear:  why
had he carried with him into Tibet documents that, if found on his
person, would convict him of being a foreigner?  And how had the
wallet come into Tsang-yang's possession?

There was nothing to be learned just then from the Tibetan, who
was still unconscious from the contact with his head against the
wall.  We decided not to let him know that we had found the wallet,
but to wait and see what happened.

Meanwhile, what to do with him?  There was a back door to the
warehouse and, near that, a barrow with bicycle wheels and a canvas
cover, not unlike an ambulance.  We tied him securely on that,
arranging our lighter baggage around and over him, almost breaking
down the frail conveyance, which Narayan Singli and I pushed out
through the back door, while Grim and Chullunder Ghose went to make
excuses to our hosts, who turned out to be only too glad to be rid
of us, barrow and all.

They explained to Grim exactly where the ponies were, that had been
bought on Benjamin's instruction, and promised to send our heavier
loads neat day by porter to an empty storehouse in a ravine beside
the road to Ladakh, where we could repack them if we wished, and
load the ponies at our leisure, without any one being the wiser.

It was a cold black night.  The north wind, whistling from the
Karakorum Mountains, seemed to make the bright stars shiver and
reduce themselves to pin-points.  The River Jhelum, flowing through
the midst of Srinagar, lapped noisily against the bridge piles.
There was a lonely feeling--a foretaste of winter--sharpened by a
few bright lights from the hotels, where the last of the summer
visitors were making the most of the season's end and probably
dreading the hot plains of India as much as we dreaded the snow-
bound passes leading into Tibet.

But we were off.  And though we sneaked into the night like criminals,
the thought was comforting that we had caught the only man likely to
betray us.  When he recovered consciousness he would be a nuisance
and a danger, but not nearly so dangerous as he would have been had
we left him behind without knowing he was on our trail.

Let your thought dwell on this for a while, since the tree of
meditation beareth wholesome fruit and he whose duty is to teach
should set examples, though he know the answers, yet withholding them:

The dogs bark when the caravan moves on.  The dogs fight when the
caravan has gone.  The caravan proceedeth, and the dogs lick, each his
own wounds, in the dust.--From The Book Of The Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.




Chapter Five
--Painless Parker Ramsden, and the tale told by the Devil's spies,
Tsang-Mondrong and Tsang-Yang.


We Trundled the barrow all night along the road that follows the
Sind Valley, startled by shadows that leaped at us out of the darkness,
and by night--prowling scavenger dogs that yelped and ran.  It does
not take much to scare people who are on the run, and Rait's mysterious
warning of nerve-racking experiences had filled us with foreboding.

Long before morning our prisoner came to his senses and announced
the fact by shouting at the top of his lungs, but Narayan Singh
prodded his ribs a few times with a sharp stick and he took the hint,
lying still after that until we came to a halt at daybreak.

That Ladakh Road is used by countless peasants, some of whom would
have been sure to take exception to the rubber-tired barrow.  It
was neither in keeping with our guise of honest merchants nor in
any way suited to the nature of the road ahead.  We looked like
prosperous men, who could well afford horses or porters, but we
were likely to be reported as thieves escaping with our loot unless
we got rid of the barrow and invented a likely story to account for
our loads by the wayside.  So we removed the wheels and dumped the
barrow into a stream, where the reeds concealed it.  Then Grim and
Narayan Singh took off their shoes and made scores of naked
footprints in the dust, while I took Tsang-yang in hand.

The Tibetan assumed an air of indifference, chafing his wrists
where the cords had hurt him a bit and obeying without comment when
I told him to stand in front of me.  Not knowing much about Tibetans
yet, I mistook the attitude for one of sullen, watchful waiting.

"You think you will appeal to the first passers-by," I said.  "If
so, we will accuse you of being a bandit--one of many who attacked
us in the night and made our porters ran away.  We will say we
captured you by hitting you over the head, showing the bruise on
your head, in proof of it.  And if you deny it, we will add that
the bandits ran off with our women, and the first peasants who come
along will beat you half to death.  Do you like the prospect?"

"What do you wish?" he asked, turning up his thumbs.
Suddenly he put his tongue out at me--a slobbery, big tongue that
looked almost too big to withdraw.  I was minded to hit him to teach
him manners, but Chullunder Ghose came to his rescue, having watched
with deliberate interest, as he sat with his shoes off, chafing
tired feet.

"Don't hit!  That is Tibetan abjectness of white flag, belly upward,
all four feet in air!  He is law of heredity functioning!  He is
product of bad food, blizzards and religion!"

The babu was right.  Veneer had peeled off.  The Tibetan had relapsed
into the savagery of the State of Kam, where nature in the raw and
superstition in authority present men with facts they must accept
and suffer under or else perish.  The monastery monks might whip
him again now without risk of reprisals.  Rightly handled he was
ready to submit to anything--although how long the relapse would
last might be another question.

"Remember!" I warned.  "If I catch you speaking to a stranger I shall
simply say you are a woman-stealer and you will be beaten to death."

It was Grim's suggestion that I should bully him while Chullunder
Ghose should pretend to pity him:  a sort of third degree that
might induce him to confide in one of us.

So I made him gather fuel for our breakfast fire, calling him a
dog who would eat at each meal twice what his labor was worth.
Chullunder Ghose, outpouring mock compassion, called him "little
Kam-kin" and inquired whether he liked chapaties burned on both
sides or only on one.

Chullunder Ghose believes himself an expert at chapatti making, but
as we did not want to unpack the loads the only tools he had were
a spoon and an upturned biscuit-tin, whose solder melted, letting
the flat cakes fall into the smoky fire.

However, we had eaten after a fashion when the first of the peasantry
came in sight--sixteen or eighteen men in single file on their way
to the magistrate's court in Srinagar.  The five in the lead were
mounted on half-starved ponies;  they were principals in a lawsuit
and continued on their way, refusing to have anything to do with us,
but the others were merely going as spectators and were eager to
stop and listen to any form of entertainment.  We told them how
our porters had all run away and left us when we were attacked
by bandits.

They believed the story, because there were the marks of many
footprints in the road and because the police patrol was known to
have returned to Srinagar the day before, thus officially opening
the season for highway robberies.  When we suggested they should
carry our loads toward the nearest village they refused pointblank--
then sat down to discuss the matter, bent on discovering exactly how
grave our predicament might be before setting a price on their services.

We were utterly at their mercy.  If we had offered them a high price
we might have aroused suspicion that we were fugitives from justice;
yet we did not dare let them proceed on their way and tell all
Srinagar about us.

However, at the end of fifteen minutes' talking it occurred to one
of them to ask exactly who we were, and he began with me (I suppose,
because I was the biggest).  That gave Chullunder Ghose his opportunity.
He described me as a great physician gifted with powers of divination
and possessed of infallible remedies for curing barrenness of acres,
camels, cows and wives.

"He is puller of teeth, being known as Painless Parker--which is
Greek word meaning altruist.  He is setter of bones.  He is increaser
of longevity.  He cured the King of the United States of leprosy.
The Crown Prince of Switzerland conferred on him the Order of the
Garter for healing him of so-called Republican Tendencies, which
is a terrible disease.  The Emperor of France offered him his only
daughter in marriage, on condition he should live in the Louvre,
which honor he refused, however, on account of insufficiency of
palace furnishings.  He is now on his way to cure the gallstones
of a chieftain of Ladakh by means of magic poultices."

Before he had finished his nonsense every one of them felt symptoms
of disease, which, after silent diagnosis and much frowning, I
proceeded to treat with equally imaginary remedies produced out of
an ancient Chinese tea-chest Benjamin had given me.  There were
Chinese pictures on the inside of the lid, quite easily mistaken
for a gallery of Buddhist saints, and although these villagers were
far from being Buddhists they were none the less impressed with a
sense of my sanctity and mistook the taste of Worcestershire Sauce
for the semi-divine flavor of Tantrist drugs.  Grim made them avert
their eyes in silence while I mixed the stuff with whisky and Narayan
Singh chanted a mantra, of which neither he nor I nor any one could
guess the meaning.

Then, when they had all been dosed, and had rubbed their stomachs
and felt wonderfully better, they bethought them of their village
headman, who had abscess of the jaw.  No sooner thought than acted
on:  they seized our loads--except the biggest, naturally, which
Grim compelled Tsang-yang to carry to prevent his civilized veneer
from filming over him again--and hurried toward their village,
chattering like children, with their heads too full of my wizardry
to remember our tale of the midnight hold-up.

Even if they had remembered it, the danger of their telling tales
about us for the present had entirely vanished.  I was their treasure
trove, and they proposed to keep me to themselves until my usefulness
was squeezed out to the last drop;  tales of a mighty magician who
could heal all manner of diseases were likely, they knew well, to
bring too swift investigation from a health department whose officials
believed in such heresies as cleanliness and vaccination--and who
were known to be extremely jealous of genuine thaumaturgists.

So, though we passed at least two hundred peasants on our way, their
questions were not answered, and the merely mild interest we aroused
was likely to be forgotten long before those dawdlers reached the
shops of Srinagar.

At the end of four or five hours' walking we reached a filthy village,
where the headman lay groaning in agony in a dark stone hut, under a
thatched roof where the rats were nesting;  and I had to operate on
him at once before a breathless audience that filled the room.  I
would have funked it if Grim had not been there, but Grim is afraid
of nothing except fear itself, and he stood at my elbow, urging me
in whispers.

"He'll die anyhow if you don't do something.  His whole system is
being poisoned by the abscess.  You may kill him, or it may be your
lucky day--and his!  Go to it."

Whoever has managed mining camps a hundred miles or so from rail-head
has incidentally performed all manner of minor operations as often
as not without any proper instrument or a drum-and-fife band to drown
the victim's yells.  So I was not quite green at the business.
Benjamin had supplied me with the very latest thing in forceps.

At the risk of poisoning the man I drowned his pain with half-a-
syringeful of local anesthetic, gave that time to work, and pulled
out all the teeth on one side of his head.  One molar broke and I
had to fish for it, but when I had done the poor wretch was alive
and grateful;  he offered me three chickens and a month-old calf
(born too late in the year to be likely to live) and beat his only
son on the shoulders with a carved Kashmiri stool for not making
me a suitable obeisance.

That was naturally not the whole of it;  success involves
responsibility, and Chullunder Ghose had advertised me much
too well.  My next patient was a woman with shriveled breasts,
whose son had died a quarter of a century ago, and who now demanded an
elixir to renew her youth.  I gave her a full dose of Worcestershire
Sauce and whisky, and Grim told her to eat two handfuls of sugar by
the light of the next new moon, which she must see over her left
shoulder without thinking of her age;  if she dared to think about
her age the remedy would fail, but otherwise she would have twins
within twelve months.

She might have had twins there and then, so far as my standing went
in that community.  Men who would have dreaded a genuine doctor's
visit more than the plague began to try to force presents on me and
to beg for stuff that should make their wives bear children.  I was
busy lancing boils and dosing more or less imaginary stomach-aches
all afternoon, and when night came there was nothing for it but to
accept the headman's hospitality.

By that time I would have given almost anything for the privilege
of speech, and that infernal rascal Chullunder Ghose, enjoying my
predicament, did his utmost to make me miserable, telling tales
about me that would have made Munchhausen blush.  He explained my
silence by saying that my power to heal depended on it;  a great
hermit had conferred the magic on me on condition that I should
not speak to any one for thirty years, of which nineteen had still
to run.  Tsang-yang, he said, had to be silent, too, because he
was my chela, who was going to be taught how to pull teeth after
ten years' apprenticeship, provided he did not speak one word in
all that time;  for each word that he should speak until then, one
month would be added to his sentence.

The villagers mischievously did their best to ruin Tsang-yang's
prospects by inducing him to talk, but Narayan Singh sat next to
him, growling threats of mayhem into his ear.  The Tibetan was still
under the spell of that half-religious, half-climatic consciousness
of being licked and though, as we discovered later, he had another
motive for submitting to us, it was the Sikh's threats just then
that appealed to his imagination and made him obedient.

We slept in the headman's bug-infested hut--an honor that we only
conferred on him after he had promised to supply us with as many
porters as we needed.  We had hard work to keep him to his word,
because he wanted us to stay and hold another clinic, for the honor
it would do his village, but we got off, about two hours after dawn,
behind a string of men who sadly lacked enthusiasm now that they
knew there was nothing more to be had from us.

They dawdled, and delay was likely to prove fatal, since a chill
wind from the northwest hinted at falling snow and, far ahead of us,
we caught rare glimpses of the mountain peaks through a curtain of
grayish cloud.  It might mean death if storms should overtake us
in the Zogi-la, but if we could hurry through the pass before the
first heavy storm the drifts would close the door to India behind us.

So where the road branched off toward a village where the ponies
were supposed to be waiting, we divided forces, paying the porters
and sending them home.  We left Chullunder Ghose, who was foot-sore,
along with Narayan Singh to guard the loads, while Grim and I went
off with Tsang-yang to find the ponies.  The trail wound around the
shoulders of hills and crossed valley bottoms where the brooks
spread into swamps, so we lost the way twice, but arrived at the
village, dog-tired, shortly after sunset--only to discover that
the villagers had mistaken Benjamin's instructions and had sent
all twelve animals to await us at a village half-a-day's march
farther along the Ladakh Road.

After a lot of arguing the headman agreed to send for the ponies
and have them brought back along the road toward us the following
morning;  then we returned, along a trail that had been difficult
to find by daylight.  Well for us that we had brought Tsang-yang!
Tibetans all see marvelously in the dark.  His hardly human-looking
eyes picked out the landmarks he had only seen once, from the
opposite direction;  and his awkward-looking legs, that looked
slouchy and weak when the going was moderately level, swung along
now over rise and descent at a speed that was nearly too much for us.

We began to feel faith in the man, he took such pains to guide us
and did it so cheerfully.  Grim has a way of gaining the affection
of most savages, less by what he says and does, than by being what
he is;  they simply take to him.  Tsang-yang had begun to behave
toward him like a stray dog adopting a master, and I believe that
if nothing unexpected had happened to corrupt him again he might
have turned into a faithful servant.

But the unexpected did happen.  Near midnight Tsang-yang came to
a stand at last between two rounded boulders, and Grim and I felt
sure he had lost the way, neither of us recognizing the looming
cliff on one side nor the echoing gorge along which the wind went
whistling beneath us.  But when we began to speak Tsang-yang
gestured for silence, and presently we heard the unmistakable
voice of Chullunder Ghose.

"Am apogee of ignorance . . . . Not knowing who I am, can't say . .
. . Have no proof of identity . . . . Have lost myself . . . . .
This man beside me is the devil . . . . No need, therefore, to go
to him;  you have come to him, . . . You may remain here and freeze,
same as me . . . . Recognize you? . . . I no longer recognize myself
. . . . Am mystically minded meditator much confused by philosophic
thinking . . . . Otherwise, why do you think I would sit here in
chilly wind on heap of merchandise, like Krishna on a dung-hill?"

I crept through the dark and Grim followed.  Presently I made out
our fat babu's shape, huddled in a shawl, with Narayan Singh sitting
bolt-upright beside him.  Facing them a man stood leaning on what
seemed to be a rifle with an old-fashioned three-edged bayonet fixed;
he looked like a policeman in a khaki uniform.  To be skewered by
a bayonet is no amusement, so I crawled in the darkest shadow until
I reached Narayan Singh and whispered to him from behind.

Chullunder Ghose gulped at the sound of my voice--almost screamed
with terror;  but Narayan Singh, without looking at me, shot forward
like a statue come to life and rushed the man in khaki, who raised
his weapon to defend himself.  It turned out to be only a long stick.
In another second he was down under Narayan Singh with a knee on
his chest and his right arm twisted into helplessness.

I struck a match and held it close to him.  He was Tsang-Mondrong,
whom we thought we had left safely cared for in the Delhi jail!

Tsang-yang, mortally afraid and sheltering himself behind our pile
of loads, urged us to kill him at once.

"He is a devil!  He will tell you, lies!  He will betray you!"

But the worst of it was that Tsang-yang's semi-western air of
independence was beginning to return.  He was afraid, but fear had
made a man of him again.  He even threatened us.  He swore that
unless we should kill Tsang-Mondrong he would run away himself
and warn the police that we were on our way to Tibet.

"Give me a weapon.  You hold him, and let me kill him," he suggested.
We stood them both in front of us and sat down with our backs
against the loads.  Neither man offered to try to escape;  they were
both too tired.  Each seemed to suspect the other, and Tsang-Mondrong
answered our questions readily enough at first, because he feared
Tsang-yang might answer them otherwise.

He told us he had been released from Delhi jail by the order of
some visiting official who considered he had been condemned without
sufficient evidence.  He had started after us without an hour's delay,
following clues left purposely by Tsang-yang.

Tsang-yang promptly denied that he had left such clue.

"A dog he is!  Like a dog be smelled the trail!"

But at that Tsang-Mondrong flew at him, calling him an eight-faced
liar, and we had to separate them, fighting like a pair of windmills.

As soon as he recovered breath Tsang-Mondrong admitted frankly
that he had not expected to overtake us much this side of Leh, in
Ladakh, and added that he had come slowly because he was sick from
the food they had given him in jail.  He did not turn uncommunicative
until I asked him whether he had known Rait.  He denied it, and his
expression and attitude changed instantly.

"No, you didn't know him!" said Chullunder Ghose. "Like damn-fool
you thought you could steal from him!  But he having kicked you in
belly, I bet you remember him!"

"How did you come to possess Rait's wallet!" Grim demanded.

Tsang-Mondrong promptly denied ever having seen the wallet.  Tsang-
yang, probably imagining that he himself had lost it in the scuffle
in the warehouse at Srinagar, and moved by some spirit of lying
for the sake of lying, swore that he, too, knew nothing about any
wallet;  whereat Tsang-Mondrong began cursing him in voluble Tibetan
and we had to separate them once more.

Narayan Singh went and stood between them to keep them from flying
at each other's throats, and Tsang-Mondrong swore there was a lot
of money in the wallet, the amount increasing as conviction grew
that Tsang-yang had made away with it.  The transfer of possession,
it appeared, had been a very simple matter:  the jail officials
had taken it from Tsang-Mondrong, who claimed that it was not his
property, so after a perfunctory examination it was sealed and,
at Tsang-Mondrong's request, given to Tsang-yang on his release,
a week later, for delivery to its rightful owner.  However, Tsang-
Mondrong refused to say why he had wished Tsang-yang to have it.

But by that time Tsang-yang was in a white-hot rage;  the other
had struck him under the breastbone besides calling him a thief;
the mixture of agony and indignation drove the whole story of the
wallet spluttering out of him.

"Tsang-Mondrong is a snake whose liver crawls with lice!  He followed
Rait sahib across the border, beyond Gyangtse, to the land of U. *
There he approached him, offering his services as guide.  The chiling, **
knowing who he was, could not help but accept, since otherwise Tsang-
Mondrong would have instantly betrayed him.  All this was told me in
the jail in Delhi, by Tsang-Mondrong, who is an eater of eggs and a
drinker of milk and a tobacco-smoker *** among other vices that he has!

"Tsang-Mondrong said the chiling Rait made two or three attempts
to poison him.  But it was doubtless he who tried to poison the
chiling.  Watching, he saw the chiling bury a wallet under a little
pyramid of stones on which all passers-by hang prayer flags--such
a cairn as exist in Tibet by the hundred-thousand.  Thereafter the
chiling set a mark on the side of the cliff, and beneath that under
a flat stone, he put a written message, saying where the wallet had
been hidden.

------------------
* A province in Tibet.
** Foreigner. i.e. Rait.
*** Three unspeakable offenses against Tibetan Custom.
-----------------

"The chiling, who was cunningly disguised, went forward with his
more than twelve mule loads of matches and silk and indigo;  and
that day, and the next, Tsang-Mondrong--whose soul shall inhabit
a she-dog in his next life--had no opportunity to turn back and
un-dig the wallet;  but on the third night thereafter he did so.
All this he told me in the Delhi jail.  But I have never seen
the wallet."

In the pause that followed that profound misstatement Chullunder
Ghose tried to break Tsang-Mondrong's silence.

"Son of purity and virtue," he demanded, "why in the name of
Chenresi and all your buttery deities did you not at once betray
the chiling, seeing that you now had proof against him?"

But before Tsang-Mondrong could answer, Tsang-yang resumed the tale:

"He could not!  The chiling had vanished as if the earth had
swallowed him!  Tsang-Mondrong, whose brains are a chicken's
entrails, hoped to extort much money before finally betraying him.
But the chiling had vanished, and Tsang-Mondrong said to himself,
`If I tell such a tale I shall be mocked and beaten, for who would
believe it?'  But now that he had the wallet he understood that
one should follow before long, for whom the chiling had left that
message;  so he returned to Darjiling to act guide for officers on
shooting expeditions, meaning to keep his eyes wide open.  All
these things he told me in the jail, but I have never seen the
wallet, which, moreover, had no money in it.  He is a black-souled
devil's offspring and a liar, whose oath is no good.  I swear I
have not seen the wallet."

"Why, then, did he send you in pursuit of us!" I asked.

"Because he wished to follow you, and because to betray you on
this side of the border would not be so profitable as on the other
side, where he can first extort money from you by threats, and then
arrange to have you robbed, before betraying you to the authorities."

"Sin-scorning pilgrim of the inner way--adorer of Chenresi, tell me,"
said Chullunder Ghose, "why did Tsang-Mondrong give the wallet to you?"

Tsang-yang was about to deny again that he had ever seen the wallet,
but Tsang-Mondrong found speech at last and burst out with denunciation.

"Why?  Because this Tsang-yang is a renegade monk, who knows too
much about the insides of religion to be honest!  He is a driver
of hard bargains.  May his soul be separated from his body!  He
refused to have anything to do with you or me unless I gave him
the wallet as security."

"And do you still propose to come with us?" Grim asked him.

The man nodded.

"Why?"

"Because I must find the chiling Rait.  And because I know all
about you, Jimgrim.  You, too, are looking for that chiling, and
men say you always succeed in everything you attempt."

"Why do you want to find the chiling Rait?"

"I want to see his soul torn from his body!"

"He is not known as Rait in Tibet, is he?"

"No, but as Lung-tok."

"How do you suppose he disappeared?  Do you think he was murdered?"

"Not he!  That chiling ragyaba* is far too cunning!  He buried the
wallet with no other purpose than to get rid of me--may dogs devour
him!  It is clear to me now that he let me see him bury it, well
knowing I would return and dig it up, but he took care I shouldn't
slip away from him to do that until the third night following.  So
by the time I had gone all that long way back to get the wallet,
and had turned again to follow him, he had had plenty of time to
disappear;  but how he disappeared, with all those mules and three
servants, I know not.  And now another thing is clear to me:  that
chiling is a crafty reader of men's minds!  He knew that having
lost him I would return to Darjiling and watch for whoever should
follow;  thus he thought that the wallet might probably fall into
your hands, learned sirs, he thinking I would behave to you as I
did to him, offering my services."

-----------------
* The foulest word of abuse in the Tibetan language.  Ragyabas are
outcasts who live in unspeakable filth on the outskirts of towns.
It is they who have the disposition of all corpses.

-----------------

"You may go.  You may go and betray us," said Grim.  "One word
from you to the authorities in Srinagar and they'll send mounted
men to bring us back."

"Nay, Jimgrim!  You are more cunning than the chiling Rait!  You
would give me the slip just as he did, I come with you.  If you
pay me well enough I will be your friend and not betray you."

"Rait, you say, calls himself Lung-tok.  What if I find him?"
Grim asked.

Tsang-Mondrong's hideous face transformed itself into a horror
that even the darkness could not hide.  It was hatred, naked and
determined.  But he made no answer.




I, too, strove for many things that fools can win and wise men
weary of;  until I asked of my inner self--what goods are worth
the getting?  Because strength was in me, and I would not waste
such substance as I had.  And the answer, which came like the sap
to the limbs of a tree, from within not without, was, Seek manhood;
and if riches help thee, use them:  or if poverty assist thee,
use that;  but be sure thy goal is manhood and naught else.  For
all things shall depart from thee, like flesh from off thy bones,
when death comes, but thy manhood is thy soul's robe, shielding it
from shame.--From The Book Of The Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.


Chapter Six
--The fanged jaws of the Zogi-la.

Men are not rational when they have made their minds up;  if they
were, nothing would ever get accomplished, because there would be
too many reasons for not taking the next step forward.  But we like
to pretend we are rational, since self-conceit is half the art of
being happy.  We four actually held a conference, out of earshot
of the two Tibetans, to decide whether we should continue to try
to do what we were wholly bent on doing!

Last words being weightiest, Grim told Chullunder Ghose to speak first.

"Damn foolishness is all right if persisted in," said the babu.
"It is being half-clever and half-foolish that gets people into
trouble.  In foolishness, it is the biggest fool who wins--and
there are a lot of slippery places between here and Tibet;  let
us sample same, and something may turn up."

Narayan Singh spoke next, and we all knew what he would say, although
he worded it unexpectedly:

"Do we wish to die in bed?  If so, why did we start on this adventure?"

I merely said it would be safer to take the two Tibetans with us
than to leave them to work mischief at our rear.  Being four to
their two we could probably manage them, and they would be useful
to help pack and lead the ponies.

Grim said "All right," and that ended the discussion.

We breakfasted beside the road and concealed ourselves and the
loads in a gorge out of sight of passing villagers until nearly
noon when the ponies came. The sight of  those sturdy little rascals,
bred in Tibetan wilderness and toughened by experience of packwork
on the mountain trails, made even our two Tibetans good-humored;
in their anxiety to show us how well they could manage a pack-saddle
they forgot to quarrel.  Then a strange thing happened.

The ponies had come down the pass toward us with drooping heads
and an end-of-a-journey look about them.  The moment three or four
of them were loaded and we turned them all toward the mountains
they began to kick and squeal like colts.  Our two Tibetans began
singing.  There was a chill wind and the far-off mountain tops
looked gray and gloomy, but the spirits of the whole party rose
like mercury in a thermometer;  nor did they fall again until we
turned aside into a valley to find the empty store shed and await the
heavier loads that Benjamin's agents had promised to send by porter.

There we waited a whole day in abject gloom, and twice we had to
separate Tsang-Mondrong and Tsang-yang, who snarled at each other
like cat and dog, each urging us at intervals to kill the other
one and be done with a rogue who would certainly murder us otherwise.
The only time they left off quarreling was when Chullunder Ghose
tried to question them about the mysterious evil hinted at by
Benjamin and by Rait in his letter to me;  they lapsed then into
a mutually supporting silence, glancing at each other, staring at
us open-mouthed, pretending not to understand the questions, which
they were obviously unwilling or afraid to answer.

But when the porters came at last and we had loaded all the ponies
and turned northward toward the dreaded Zogi-la, everybody's spirits
rose again.  The ponies kicked and squealed and the Tibetans sang;
Chullunder Ghose laughed at the blisters that tortured his fat feet;
we all felt that, storm or no storm, we would fight our way across
the pass by some means.

The road from Srinagar to Leh winds for two hundred miles through
the grandest scenery on earth--a well-made road with bridges over
all the streams.  Each height revealed new heights beyond us, only
to be reached by crossing valleys gouged out of the rock by bawling
streams and glaciers, long vanished, that had left their worn and
littered boulders on the slopes.  The ponies were lightly loaded
and we might have ridden, but we proposed to get ourselves in good
condition and to reserve the ponies' strength for the terrific
struggle later on, so we did the thirty miles a day on foot, making
the fat drip off Chullunder Ghose in spite of the raw wind.

But our determination to save the ponies had an unforeseen result.
It made our Tsang-yang and Tsang-Mondrong almost friendly, since
it gave them a grievance in common.  The Tibetans have a proverb
that they quote at you perpetually on the trail:

"If a horse will not carry you uphill, he is no horse;  if you
will not walk down-hill, you are no man."

They were determined to ride uphill and used every possible trick
to circumvent us, making the ponies stray in order to be told to
go and catch them, and take their time about it, and come along
behind us riding on top of a load when we were out of sight beyond
a rise.  It did not matter how many times we knocked them off a pony;
they were always on again at the first chance, and what they regarded
as an insult to their manhood brought them more and more together
making common cause against us.

Chullunder Ghose did his best to keep on friendly terms with
Tsang-yang, pretending to try to persuade Grim an