Читать книгу The Thunder Dragon Gate - Talbot Mundy - Страница 7

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"Ton, I don't look excited. I swear I don't! Yes, I got the last seat there was. They had just sold the last-but-one. I have twelve hundred pounds in the bank. I have kept a small trunk packed ever since you warned me to be ready. And I'm so sick of Robbin's Hotel—no I'm not, I love it!—I will kick it good-by, and come back a couple of years from now and love it all over again!"

"Kick your trunk good-by," he answered. "Stick some doodads in a handbag. Buy all the rest of the stuff in India."

"Tom, this isn't true! It simply isn't."

"It won't be, if you don't listen carefully. The least slip, and it's all off. They'd cancel everything."

"I am all ears."

She wasn't. She had remarkably well-shaped ears, half hidden in a wind-blown bob of curly dark hair, under a Cossack kaftan. She was so small, and full of naturally ready laughter, that she looked almost Tom Grayne's opposite, except for a similar, equally hard to define but quite evident vigor of being. She might be twenty-two or twenty-three, but looked younger. She had small, strong, sun-browned hands. Her feet were tucked under her, in the big red leather arm-chair. Doby's downstairs fireplace was living up to its reputation; it was about the most comfortable fireside in London in rainy weather. There were a lot of luncheon tables, but no one ever came there much before twelve-thirty. The waiter had brought tea, taken his cue from the size of the tip, and left them alone. The tea was untouched.

"You take the airplane bus to Hendon," said Tom, "day after to-morrow. I take a taxi. There'll be a messenger with flowers for you and some fruit and chocolates, in the name of oh, any old name I think of when I order 'em. We're just nodding acquaintances, you and I. We get to know each other a bit on the journey, and after that, you use your wiles on Thö-pa-ga. Worm your way into his confidence."

"I've never been in a plane. I want to make enormous noises on a B-flat saxophone."

"You understand now, don't you, how all this happened? Or shall I repeat it?"

"No, no. I have understood you. I understand that Thö-pa-ga is being hounded back to Tibet, and that he doesn't guess what we're after, or know you except for last night's happenings, or trust you or trust any one else."

"Thö-pa-ga," said Tom, "needs friends. He needs them badly. He needs some one to whom he can talk. He has a persecution complex, and I don't blame him, poor devil. He's a particularly sensitive type of oriental. He would instantly detect an unsympathetic motive. He suspects Mayor. He suspects me. He mustn't suspect you, and there's only one possible way to fix that. You must make up your mind to be his friend, no matter what he does or what happens to him. You must be absolutely on the level with him. Never tell me his secrets without his full permission. Gradually get him to trust me."

"And then what?"

"I told you: he needs friends, not enemies. We can't get what we're after on a basis of something for nothing. Thö-pa-ga comes first, or we'll be fooled badly. All of us will be."

"How about Uncle Clarence?"

"Not one word to him! Not a hint! Not a word to a soul except Emily Foster, and nothing to her except to repeat instructions, from a public phone booth, if you think it necessary—but don't go near her. She is simply to put any thing you send to her into another envelope and mail it to Professor Clarence Mayor. Your Uncle Clarence doesn't know our private code. It would be a mistake if he did. The idea is this: you know the code by heart—you're sure? Word perfect?"

"I can say it backwards. I can signal it faster than you can read it."

"Okay. If I should write from India to Professor Mayor in London, my letters would be read in transit, even if they should never reach him, which they very likely wouldn't. But if I send something to you, by mail or messenger, in code, and you decode it and mail it to Emily Foster—an innocent, middle-aged lady who lives at Dorking—and she re-mails it to your Uncle Clarence, he will safely receive an unsigned communication that can't easily be traced back."

"Then you and I won't be together in India?"

"Not noticeably, to begin with. Certainly not in the same hotel. You're a tourist, remember. You'll have to play that part carefully; tourists, as a rule, don't visit India in the hot season. Don't let on that you can read Tibetan, or that you know anything about Tibet. Don't even let Thö-pa-ga know that, if you can help it. But if you get caught knowing more than girls of your age usually know, you can admit that you've studied a bit at the British Museum and that you picked up odds and ends from Thö-pa-ga on the journey."

"I'll be careful."

"Better be. If you make even one bad break, the Indian Government, of course, would simply ask us to leave India. But the Tibetan gang would give us the works. Very likely poison."

"I don't see why I can't tell Uncle Clarence. Isn't he in on it?"

"No, you chucklehead! He doesn't even guess that the deaf-and-dumb loony, who files away the notes I send him, copies them and passes them along."

"Tom, that poor old thing?"

"He's a Polak, whose father was an interpreter at the U.S. consulate in Warsaw for twenty-five years. Draw your own conclusions, but keep them under your hat. The system is run on a basis of never letting one agent know another agent, or what the other agent is doing if it can be helped, and never letting any one agent know more than necessary. Your Uncle Clarence is a useful man, in his particular line. They'd can him in a second if they guessed his deaf-and-dumb clerk is my go-between. If they thought Mayor guessed what you're up to, they'd never trust him again. It's an unforgivable offense to have a private iron in the fire, and an almost unthinkable thing for a girl like you to try to enter Tibet. If you should tell Mayor, he'd be furious. He'd warn Ambleby. That would be the end of me. They're only using me because there's no one else who fits the problem at the moment. If they guessed you are in my confidence, they'd have no use for me whatever. I'm only using them because it's the best chance in sight. They haven't okayed me yet. The man in Delhi may not like my guts. They're touchy, the Indian Government crew; they like the Foreign Office outfit about as much as I like being told what to believe. The India Office people, here in London, love me like a Bolshevik."

Elsa looked puzzled. Curled in the chair, she suggested a terrier, aching to be taken hunting, absolutely confident that any hunting, under Tom's direction, would be first rate. Some women, even to-day, have that excellent faith in a man. But it was not as simple as all that evidently.

"Then, if we get into Tibet—"

"When we get there," he corrected.

"All right, when! You will—you say we're merely making use of them—you will ditch all this and—"

"Don't believe that for a second," he answered. "Nothing for nothing in this world. Make your bargain, settle clearly in your own mind what the bargain is, then deliver the goods or bust. It isn't only the British Empire that is vitally interested in knowing who is planning what in China. I'm as interested in the Thunder Dragon Gate as they are. If I weren't, I'd find some other way of getting into Tibet. Pay as you go. Then you get what you're after. Speaking of which, you'd better go and buy yourself a letter of credit. Have it drawn on a bank in Delhi. If you've anything to say to me at the hotel, talk deaf-and-dumb and use the code. Don't phone my room if you can avoid it. Store your trunk. Twenty-eight pounds of luggage. Burn your boats. Hernando Cortez had nothing on you and me."

"I know it. Tom, do you guess how thoroughly I've burned my boats? They're ashes. If I don't make good, I'm done for."

"Scared?"

"No, Tom, are you? Please don't be. I won't let you down. I'm little to look at, but—d'you think I'm—"

He interrupted: "Don't talk piffle. You're game, all right. You're on the level. But some jobs are too tough for some people. Even now it's not too late to call it off. I'd trust you to hold your tongue."

"I have burned my boats!" she answered. "Tibet!"

Tom scowled. He hated to have to explain himself.

"You're full of enthusiasm," he said, "so you believe what you wish to believe. I'm reminding you for the last time—"

"Don't, Tom, you don't need to."

She might as well have tried to stop a steam-roller.

"You've no rating. None. I've no authority from any one to tell you my secrets—let alone to try to get you into Tibet."

"Tom, I know all that. You're being generous beyond the dreams of—"

"Generous nothing. If you'll keep your head you can be useful. There isn't another girl on earth who has your special ability. But remember, I turned you down flat in the first instance, and I told you why."

"Yes, Tom."

"Certain people trust me because they know I don't get tangled up with any woman who might soften me or blurt out what I'm doing. I have trained you as well as I could in the little time we've had. But we're taking a whale of a long chance. Both of us. If it were known I married you to give you a certain amount of possible legal protection in case I'm bumped off, they'd rate me from then on as a sentimentalist. In my profession that's the zero rating."

Elsa nodded. "They should rate you AAA One hundred plus."

"That's the point. They rate a fellow by results. You can't look to me for the slightest recognition of anything but your personal value to me as an assistant, strictly on your merits—and a secret assistant at that."

"I expect nothing else."

"Not now, you don't. But you don't know what's ahead. No matter how tight the jam you're in, you've got to stick to the agreement. Your only value to me is your intelligence, obedience and pluck. I want nothing else from you. Your marriage certificate simply entitles you to the key to my strongbox if I'm bumped off. Your marriage is so secret, and so otherwise meaningless, that you mayn't even get a divorce without my permission—and I won't give permission until secrecy no longer matters."

"Yes," she said. "I agree. I understand perfectly."

"I'm trying to get you into Tibet simply and solely because I think you'll be useful."

"I will deserve it," she answered.

"Damn!" he said suddenly, sotto voce.

The Jap had come in. The same Jap. Because of the high chair-back Tom hadn't noticed him until he slipped into a chair in the corner by the row of pegs, on which they had hung their overcoats. The Jap ordered tea. When the waiter had brought it he sat sipping and studying something that he took from an envelope. He didn't stare noticeably.

"Get your coat," Tom signaled with the fingers of one hand. "What is he reading?"

Elsa went and powdered her nose before she lifted her coat from the peg. She used a rather large square mirror. She was less than six feet away from the Jap. There was not a lot of light in that corner of the room; the manipulation of the mirror was quite plausible.

"Airplane ticket," she announced, when she returned to the fireside.

"Where to?"

"Couldn't read it, but it looks like Karachi."