Hsien Sgam smiled—that smile of inscrutable irony.
"You are only crawling deeper into the web," he asserted quietly. "It will fall upon you and you will go—like that—" The lithe hands spread out expressively.
Kerth coolly returned his smile. "If we're caught, you'll perish with us, in the same web. Threats are useless, Transparency. The scales have tilted. And your attitude doesn't become a prisoner. We can carry out our plans with you or without you, although much smoother with you. Accept my ultimatum—unconditional surrender—or reject it."
Hsien Sgam's lips twisted into that ineffaceable smile. His quiescence was absolute.
"You understand, if I thought my—my demise would prevent you from executing your plans, I would not hesitate to—er—clog the machinery. But it would be suicide without a purpose. Therefore, I can only accept."
"Unconditionally?"
"Unconditionally."
Hsien Sgam's chin sank into his breast.
"Now, major, do you approve of my plan?" asked Kerth. "If so, we'll go to the audience hall and I'll order the men to take you to your residence, and his Transparency and I will despatch messengers for Miss Charteris and your muleteers."
Trent nodded.
Kerth placed the mitre upon his head and let the veil fall over his features. A blue steel eye glittered in the folds of his robes—an eye that was focussed upon Hsien Sgam.
"Come, Transparency!"
Kerth leading, they left Falcon's Nest; left it with its silence and its brooding secrets.
A few minutes later Kerth was seated on the throne of Sâkya-mûni (Trent and Hsien Sgam stood on the red carpets before the daïs) and reaching toward a gong that hung from one of the carved lions of the chair. Following the mellow ring, the curtains in the other end of the chamber parted to admit theDonyer-chenpo, who bowed and stood waiting.
The thin voice sounded from under the yellow veil—a stream of Tibetan words. Trent wondered, irrelevantly, if it was really Kerth who spoke—Kerth of the satanic smile.
And now he saw the yellow-robed figure motioning him to leave, and backed slowly to where theDonyer-chenpostood; backed between the parted draperies; and the curtains dropped, and he was in darkness.
In the first ante-chamber theDonyer-chenporesumed his seat at the nacre-inlaid desk, among the other cardinals, and Trent continued with the soldiers. Back through the courts and corridors they went (each glimpse of the stars brought to Trent a sweet recollection of another lustrous pallor), and down the innumerable staircases. They emerged at length into the courtyard where the horses were waiting; mounted; rode out of Lhakang-gompa and down the causeway.
Afterward, Trent could remember no single incident of that brief ride from the lamasery; it was a panorama of moon and white walls and darkness. The bewildering events of the past few hours had left him in a state of mental confusion. The soldiers wheeled about at his gate, and he rode into the deserted quadrangle alone.
He was about to dismount when a shadow detached itself from the gloom of the garden—the garden, with its flaming hollyhocks. (Odd that he should think of flowers now!) It was the long-haired guide of the previous night. He grunted what Trent supposed was a greeting, and caught the bridle, guiding the pony back to the gate. Trent turned for a last look at the dark dwelling—the house where he first partook of the lover's eucharist. Then the Tibetan swung himself upon the pony, behind him, clamping his knees upon the beast's flanks, and Trent inhaled the reek of soiled clothing.
Through familiar streets they clattered, and over a stone bridge toward the city's ramparts. Few people were astir; dogs prowled in the lurking shadows. The temple of the Great Magician had a ghostly semblance as they approached it; its dome was spattered with moonlight, like a huge anthill flecked with drippings of glow-paint. Something in the sight of the bulk of masonry brought to Trent's mind what Sarojini Nanjee had said....
They passed the temple. A narrow foot-path took them to the Great Magician's Gate. As on the preceding night, there was no guard. When Trent's pony was brought to a halt, the Tibetan made a gesture which Trent interpreted to mean that he should stay there and slunk away along the path to the temple. Trent glanced at his watch as the man left.
To the north, in the maze of houses that lay flat and huddled beneath the sovereign structure of Lhakang-gompa, a dog was howling. Another answered it; another took it up; and the melancholy baying wavered from roof to roof—a tuneless dirge. Irrelevantly, Trent thought of a vermilion-lacquered sedan-chair that by this time should be at the ruined gateway. It was a sheer, breathless moment, a moment detached and charged with exquisite suspense.
The rattle of harness-chains drew him back to earth. His eyes swerved to the path from the temple. After a moment, shadows took shape in the moonlight—mounts and riders. He wheeled his pony and rode to meet the caravan.
Sarojini Nanjee sat erect upon a horse at the head of a string of mules; the scent of sandalwood awakened in him a queer alertness. She always breathed of earth-perfume—an odor of the senses. Beyond her were the looming shapes of three men—muleteers. Trent saw the contours of sacks on the pack-animals.
"Your men have left the city?" was her first question. Her breath came quickly and the black opals had been kindled in her eyes.
He answered with a nod.
She insinuated her hand into his; pressed his fingers.
"We win!" she whispered. "You and I!"
He smiled to himself, grimly. What Hsien Sgam had said was fresh in his ears. One of her men passed and opened the gate. Outside, on the embankment, she turned her mount, waiting at one side while the caravan moved out. Trent reined in his pony beside her.
"Look!" she commanded, pointing through the gate at the magnificent mass of Lhakang-gompa, above whose broken roofs the moon was poised. "Shingtse-lunpo—Lhakang-gompa—all! I hold them, like this!" And she made a gesture and laughed—that old familiar laugh that rippled low in her throat. "All is not finished! Nay! I promised you vengeance—and to-night, in a few minutes, you shall know that I keep my promises!"
Then she struck her horse in the flanks and dashed down the slope, to the head of the caravan. Trent followed. Behind, the gate closed softly and hoofs thudded in the mud of the road.
"To-night ... you shall know that I keep my promises!"
That rang in Trent's brain; rang and echoed and reeled away, and left him to grope for the meaning.
They rode on. Several times Sarojini Nanjee glanced over her shoulder. The ruins above the tunnel were reached, passed. Ahead the road swerved and lost itself in high rushes—rushes that swayed and sighed and shivered. Trent's hand hovered close to his revolver. The flesh over his spine crawled uncomfortably as they approached the end of the marsh-belt. He strained his eyes, but saw only the fringed line of tall reeds against the sky.... And now the white columns of the ruined gateway loomed, broken sentinels guarding the half-buried remains of an ancient fortification.
They were within a few yards of the gateway when, ahead, a horse whinnied.
Trent's heart leaped into his throat, and Sarojini Nanjee swiftly reined in her horse. Something gleamed in her hand.
From behind the shattered walls appeared a horseman—a robed horseman, phantom-like in the moonlight. Behind him rode another—another. They were fairly vomited through the gateway. Trent recognized Kerth at the head, Kee Meng and Hsaio behind.
The thing in Sarojini's hand coughed, and the red glare of discharged powder momentarily stained the darkness. But none of the three horsemen faltered. Before she could fire again Trent gripped her mount's bridle and dug his heels into his own pony. They plunged forward, side by side. He was almost dragged from the saddle, but he managed to remain seated—to cling to the bridle of Sarojini's horse. When they were outside the broken gate he jerked both animals to a standstill. Melted fire-opals blazed in the woman's eyes. But he had her revolver.
"You fool!"
Vitriol was in her voice—but he heard her only in a detached way, for he saw, swimming in the moonlight behind the wall, a sedan-chair, and in it the pale oval of a face. It was in the midst of mules and packs and several mounted men. Hsien Sgam was there, in the saddle, between two muleteers. Kerth, Kee Meng and Hsiao had drawn rein in the gateway, thus separating Sarojini Nanjee from her caravan.
This, a quick negative, snapped and printed upon Trent's brain.
From him the woman's eyes moved around the group—past Kerth, past the muleteers and the sedan-chair—to Hsien Sgam.
"You did this!" Her words stung with venom, and her eyes traveled back swiftly to Trent. "Perhaps he fooled you into betraying me—but ask him why he wanted you to believe Chavigny alive and see, then, if you want him as your ally!"
A moment of tenseness followed—a moment that seemed to lengthen into a dead interval of time. The very world ached with dumbness, ached and waited. Hsien Sgam, who sat stooped upon his pony, was the first to speak.
"Major Trent, you wish to know who murdered your friend. Sarojini Nanjee did it. But not with her own hand...." His words were like smooth pellets emerging from vats of molten metal. "I loved her," the Mongol declared; "loved her ... and I went to Gaya, to your house, when I learned of her interest in you.... And there I made a fatal mistake—"
His words were buried as a muffled detonation ruptured the quiet. An abrupt shock quivered the ground. Eyes swerved to the source of sound. For an infinitesimal moment the very universe seemed to hang in dreadful suspense; then came two violent throbs, like the blows of a seismic hammer. A terrific roar was born out of the womb of inter-stellar silence—a roar that smote the eardrums of those who heard, that pressed ponderously against the heart and whipped the blood into throat and nostrils and eyes.
From the towering mass of Lhakang-gompa rose a quick glare that stabbed up, sank, and with it the roofs and walls of the monastery.... Smoke belched upon the sky. The earth shook. The very stars seemed dim with dread, and a wraith of nebulous black veiled the face of the moon. It was as though the gigantic machinery of a planet had been suddenly crippled.
The hush that followed seemed to pluck from Trent's lungs the power to breathe. He thought the ground still heaved, that the rumbling was still pouring about his ears.... He was a pigmy in the midst of some cosmic disorder.... His pony snorted and trembled violently. For a space of seconds no one spoke; no one dared. All looked toward the cloud that was settling, doom-black, over what had been Lhakang-gompa, over the seamed and broken heart of Shingtse-lunpo!... And then came a soft, repressed voice—a herald of earth recalling them to its dominion after some awful furlough.
"Sarojini Nanjee is very clever. I should have known better than to oppose a woman."
A rattling laugh broke from Hsien Sgam, a laugh that was punctuated by a crash. Trent, turning, saw a rapier of corrosive flame leap from the Mongol's hand; saw it reflect hideously upon the features of Sarojini Nanjee. He sought to catch her, but she slipped from the saddle.... Her face stared up at him from a pool of black hair.
Again the rattling laugh—as the muleteers lunged at Hsien Sgam; again the crash and the rapier of corrosive flame, a broken rapier, that sank its hot shaft into the Mongol's own breast.... He hung limp between the muleteers, and a shining thing dropped from his hand to the ground. But his eyes were open. Trent saw them; Kerth, who had dismounted, saw them.
"I regret that I killed your friend, Major Trent"—the Mongol spoke in a stricken voice—"I regret, too, that I was forced to close the lips of a native who appeared at an inopportune time. It is unpardonable, major, that I stabbed this Captain Manlove—instead—of you."
Then he swayed; fell forward upon the neck of his mount. He was still alive when Trent reached him, but the Buddha-like face seemed shrunken and the oblique eyes, revealed by the searching brilliance of the moonlight, were half closed with pain. He smiled in a twisted, grotesque manner.
"Mysteries are exquisite things, major," he whispered. "Consider how delightful it—it will be, in years to come, to—to wonder whether Chavigny ... ah,Shinje!... whether he was killed in Delhi, as Sarojini claims, or died in—in Lhakang-gompa; and to wonder if she really meant to—to murder you, or if I—I lied—" He laughed softly. "You have heard of the scorpion, major, who, surrounded, stings himself to death...."
They had to lift him from the pony, and Trent, looking down upon the huddled body, knew it did not belong to the boy who went forth from Mongolia with the dream of a messiah shining in his heart.
Late afternoon of the seventeenth day, and ahead, against the brazen furnace of the sunset, the battlements of Gyangtse. Trent straightened up in his saddle as he saw the town rise above the ochre hills. Gyangtse! From there the Chumbi Valley, the passes of Sikkhim, and down into tropical India! But Gyangtse meant more than that to him.... Like the frail filament of a dream was the memory of the journey from Shingtse-lunpo—dust and bitter winds; smoke of campfires in the nostrils; and in his heart a cavernous doubt. It was this doubt that fed upon his nerve-tissues, not the travel. And Gyangtse meant that it would end. He would be lifted to lofty spheres, or....
Now, as the town unfolded in the sunset, he looked at Dana Charteris, who rode near him—rode in silence, staring ahead. (Thus she had ridden for those seventeen days—in silence and staring ahead, a wintry coolness freezing the warmth from her eyes.) Tears trembled upon her lashes.
The road took them under a bastion and toward the gate. When they were yet some distance away a uniformed figure, mounted and followed by turbaned Gurkhas, clattered out to meet them.
"Cavendish! The District Agent!"
Kerth, who was riding ahead with the muleteers and the grain-sacks, called back these words to Trent and the girl.
The uniformed figure had drawn up—a tanned young man, with the mark of a helmet-strap running across each cheek and a lonely hungering in his eyes. He was laughing and shaking hands with Trent; then he touched his helmet as he saw Dana Charteris.
They were guided into a compound where marigolds kindled a warmth against white walls. Servants with weathered, smiling faces appeared from the house, sticking out their tongues in greeting.
But Trent found a poignant sharpness in this welcome, for the winter-light in the eyes of Dana Charteris had chilled him to the soul.
A bath in a collapsible canvas tub; clean clothing; dinner in a high-ceilinged, cool room; and, afterward, Trent, Kerth and the young Agent talking, over cigars.
Dana Charteris had slipped away soon after the meal, and the room seemed barren to Trent. He scarcely heard his two companions, and sat nervously fingering the arm of the chair and blowing smoke into the air. When he could no longer endure it he begged to be excused and went to the room assigned to him, where he got from his pack a certain object and thrust it into his pocket.
In the compound he encountered a Gurkha.... Yes, he had seen the memsahib, the soldier replied; he heard her order one of the sahib's muleteers to saddle her pony and she went toward Pal-khor Choide.
Trent followed.
He had passed the crimson walls of the lamasery before he saw her—a slender shadow ahead in the dusk. He urged his pony into a canter, and presently slackened pace beside her. She had not turned, but now the brown eyes were directed upon him and he felt a polar coldness in the look. For a moment his voice refused to answer his summons.
"Dana—" he faltered. "Why did you run away, like this?"
She smiled—not the smile he knew, that awakened a golden memory of autumn forests and cathedral spaces.
"I wanted to be alone. Why did you follow?"
From his pocket he drew a glinting bracelet. In the dusk she saw the cobra-head lifted in bizarre relief. It seemed to strike into her heart.
"To give you this;"—his voice was low, trembling—"to tell you that I cannot be your—your bracelet-brother longer." He seemed to drink courage from those first words and plunged ahead. "Back there in Burma, at the jungle camp, I promised myself that until we reached civilization I'd remain the—the brother; and now...." He extended the bracelet. "Won't you accept it?"
The winter-light faded suddenly from her eyes; they shone with a new illumination. With its coming, the chill in his heart thawed; the early night was aromatic and healing. (Overhead a few stars were caught in the gauzy dusk, like dewdrops in a web.) Her fingers closed about the bracelet.
"I've been so foolish!" she whispered, in a choked voice. "Oh, so childish and small—while you've been big and fine and strong. Arnold Trent, forgive me! I thought because—because you didn't speak; because you didn't tell me of what I saw in your eyes—back there in Burma—that, likeSentimental Tommy, the glamour tarnished when you touch it—that you were just—play-acting—and, because the adventure was over, you—you...." She swallowed, then finished: "Oh, I've been such a foolishGrizel!"
... When they rode back into Gyangtse the distant, purple-black spurs of the Himalayas were swimming in the pallid luster poured from a flagon moon.
Serpents of tobacco smoke writhed in the room where Euan Kerth and the young District Agent had been talking since dinner; spiraled about the two tanned faces and dissolved, as if by magic, leaving a thin grayish haze.
"... If anyone else had told me that, Euan Kerth," said the young officer, breaking a long silence, "I wouldn't believe it!... And they're in those sacks! No wonder you wanted a dozen Gurkhas to guard 'em! Gad! Of course I'll lend you an escort! Why, if it were learned that we had 'em, here in this house, we'd be murdered before midnight! But go on, man, finish your story."
Kerth resumed. The golden roofs of Lhakang-gompa lived in his words; Shingtse-lunpo, with its maze of whitewashed houses. Another long silence followed when he finished. The serpents of smoke still crawled and lolled in the air. Cavendish spoke.
"Kerth, I wonder—" He broke off; the lonely hungering in his eyes was clouded by an expression of bewilderment. He cleared his throat; laughed. "Of course, it can't be so, but.... Well, about six months ago an old lama was sick in the Jong. They brought him to me, on a litter, just before he died—at his request. He told me something queer. He said that Lhassa was no longer the political center of Tibet, and that the man in the Potala was not the Dalai Lama, but a priest posing as the Dalai Lama. He said the real Dalai Lama was in another monastery—somewhere toward Mongolia—that there...." Again he broke off; laughed. "But of course there can't be anything to it."
And Euan Kerth, his face dimmed by the smoke from his cheroot, smiled his satanic smile.
"No, of course," he repeated, "there can't be anything to it."
[1]In Tibet it is the custom to deliver the dead to a sect of professional body-hackers, who, in turn, feed the remains to the dogs and vultures. Thus merit is acquired by the family of the deceased.
[1]In Tibet it is the custom to deliver the dead to a sect of professional body-hackers, who, in turn, feed the remains to the dogs and vultures. Thus merit is acquired by the family of the deceased.