Читать книгу The Thunder Dragon Gate - Talbot Mundy - Страница 8

Table of Contents

EIJI SARAO, the Japanese merchant, made himself altogether too agreeable. He was very widely traveled. He could talk the colloquial peasant speech that passes muster along the Chino-Tibetan border, and he missed no opportunity, on the long flight from London to Karachi, to get in conversation with Tom, Elsa and Thö-pa-ga.

However, Thö-pa-ga was ill—not plane-sick but becoming feeble from some obscure ailment that was aggravated, if not produced by his mental depression. It had been very difficult indeed to talk to Thö-pa-ga. He was an aristocrat; he resented that peasant dialect, and besides, he had partly for gotten it, or said he had. Mr. Eiji Sarao had not learned much from Thö-pa-ga.

But he made it almost impossible for Tom and Elsa to exchange confidences. His bright little eyes watched them continually. He detected their use of finger signals. He tacitly assumed that they were traveling together. At every pause in the long journey, he tried to get them into a three-cornered conversation.

At Karachi he had no trouble at all with the immigration authorities. Tom, on the other hand, had to enter an office near the hangar and answer searching questions. His passport, visaed in red ink by the India Office, merely stated that he was accompanying Mr. Thö-pa-ga as far as Delhi. The immigration officer, a gray-mustached ex-soldier, referred to a little indexed memorandum-book.

"You have visited India before, Mr. Grayne. Weren't you invited to leave?"

"Yes. But do you recognize that visa?"

"That isn't the point. For what reason, two years ago, were you told to get out?"

"I wasn't. As you put it the first time, I was invited to leave. You can get the facts from your files, can't you? If you choose to disregard that visa, take the consequences. I have no idea what they'll be. For all I know, you may have authority to override the India Office. If so, do it and let's see what happens."

The officer smiled. He had very intelligent brown eyes. "What is the nature of your relationship with Mr. Eiji Sarao?" he asked after a moment.

"You mean that Jap who traveled on the same plane? None whatever. I don't know him. Never spoke to him or heard his name before he boarded the plane at Hendon."

"I am informed that you and he made frequent use of the deaf-and-dumb alphabet during the journey."

Tom laughed. "That airplane steward probably has one glass eye. Did he say he saw the Jap doing it?"

"Very well, to whom were you signaling?"

"To myself, for practise."

"Mm! Have you designs on Tibet this time?"

"Delhi."

"Nothing beyond Delhi? Are you willing to agree to do your business in Delhi, and to leave India within a reasonable time—say, three weeks?"

"No."

"Understand me, Mr. Grayne: I have no information that suggests you should be classed with what are commonly called undesirable aliens. But it might put the Indian Government to a very great deal of trouble and expense if you should attempt to repeat your former indiscretion. Tibet is a closed frontier. To bring you back from the border of Tibet would be a thoroughly unnecessary episode, that might have awkward diplomatic consequences, and is well to guard against."

"Okay. Guard against it."

"Will you give your promise, in writing?"

"You mean not to enter Tibet?"

"Not to try to enter Tibet. You could never do it again, I can assure you. But not to try to do it."

"If a promise is all you want," said Tom, "I'll make one. How's this: I promise faithfully, on my word of honor, to do everything humanly possible to get into Tibet as soon as I can."

The officer grinned.

"Well, you're frank about it! Any friends in Delhi?"

"Dozens."

"To whom do you intend to deliver Mr. Thö-pa-ga?"

"To the first good doctor I can find. The man's sick."

The officer scribbled a name and address on a slip of paper.

"Dr. Lewis has had a lot of experience with Tibetan cases. He was stationed for a long time at Darjeeling. Try him. Very well, Mr. Grayne, I shall have to report you as dangerous."

"Deadly!" Tom answered. "Obviously in league with a Japanese cotton-goods salesman to bring about a communist revolution led by shamans from Tibet!"

The officer stood up to shake hands. "I enjoyed your article on Tibetan magic in the Asian Review," he remarked.

"I didn't write it," said Tom.

"Isn't your nom de plume Bloomsbury?"

"No."

"Will you give my regards to Dr. Lewis?"

"Yes."

It had been almost on the tip of Tom Grayne's tongue to say that P.K. Bloomsbury was Dr. Clarence Mayor's nom de plume. Not that that mattered. Dozens of people knew it. But if Tom had confessed that he knew it, that might have had disastrous consequences. As he had drummed into Elsa's consciousness on every possible occasion, there is no knowing who has been told to discover, by means of apparently innocent questions, whether or not you can be trusted not to mention names or claim acquaintance with men on the inside.

And now, the Jap even invaded the same compartment on the train. He was very courteous. He offered aspirin to Thö-pa-ga, who seemed to suffer tortures from the heat and lolled back limply in a corner. Eiji Sarao knew all about Delhi hotels; he recommended one to Elsa—told her, too, of shops where she could buy whatever clothes she might need. Elsa, observing Tom's signal, accepted the Jap's advice about where to stay. Tom remarked he would probably stay with a friend; leading questions only led to more and more evasive answers.

When they reached Delhi at last, and the heat under the station roof almost made Thö-pa-ga collapse, the extremely friendly Mr. Eiji Sarao was rather evidently puzzled by the farewell between Tom and Elsa.

"Good-by. Thanks for all your kindness."

"Kindness nothing. I enjoyed your company. Hope you'll enjoy India. Perhaps we'll meet again some day, somewhere. Who knows? Good-by."

Tom took a taxi with Thö-pa-ga to Dr. Lewis's office. That address had not been given him for nothing. No one—absolutely no one was going to take responsibility for his entering Tibet. They wanted him to do it, off his own bat, at his own risk. No one was going to tell him anything, of any importance, in so many plain words. If he hadn't enough intelligence to understand hints, then he was the wrong man for the job and the usual governmental agencies would easily stop him in the course of the usual day's work. If he hadn't wits enough, he would be stymied without being able to say that any one had even as much as suggested to him that it might be possible to cross the Tibetan border.

That immigration officer wasn't the regular man; he hadn't even known where to look for the switch to regulate the force of the electric-fan in the office. But he had done his job pretty well. He had served warning to Tom to look out for the departmental mechanism that prevents the unwise, wishful wanderer from breaking bounds. He had warned him, too, against Eiji Sarao—as if that were necessary!

In the taxi, whirling through the crowded Delhi semi-modern streets that reeked of hot humanity and sprinkled pavement, he didn't have to bother about Thö-pa-ga. The man was almost comatose, although Tom was pretty sure he wasn't as ill as he looked; he was suffering from a sort of psychic blue funk. It was probably true, as he had declared suddenly in the shed that night, that he would rather die than return to Tibet. Perhaps Dr. Lewis could fix that. If not, a high elevation would do it. Meanwhile, Eiji Sarao? Noropa? The mysterious Noropa had had time to phone to half the Japanese in London in the interval between the Bow Street incident and his arrest that night at Kew.

Embassies and consulates don't openly employ a shang-shang expert. It would be an absolutely safe bet that no one, not even the secret service, or Scotland Yard, or Ambleby could prove any connection between "Doctor" Noropa and the Japanese Government. No doubt Eiji Sarao was an eminent man of affairs who represented a Tokyo cotton combine, as he said. But some third person, who knew Noropa, also might know Eiji Sarao. Or possibly Eiji Sarao knew Noropa. Eiji Sarao's visit to the Foreign Office might have been a mere coincidence; there was no reason why a distinguished foreign visitor to London shouldn't call there. But it hardly looked like a coincidence that Eiji Sarao booked a seat on that plane to Karachi. It was certainly not a coincidence that he had followed from Robbin's Hotel to Doby's downstairs lunch room. He had probably had a spy in the street—perhaps a taxi-driver.

It would be a fairly safe bet that a warning was already en route, in the innocent guise of a commercial telegram, to some confederate in Northern India to keep an eye on Tom Grayne and Elsa Burbage. Not so good.

Some one in Eiji Sarao's pay certainly would go through Elsa's belongings at the hotel. Japs excel at that game; in Japan they even open all the letters that the tourist school-marms send home to their sisters and their cousins and their aunts. They wouldn't learn much from Elsa's luggage.

Dr. Lewis's office turned out to be on the ground floor of a hospital courtyard. There was the usual crowd of patients and patients' relatives squatting on the shady side of the yard; the usual half-obsequious, half-insolent chuprassi* at the office door; the usual Chi-chi clerk, inclined to give him self airs; the usual delay, on bent-wood chairs beneath a whirling fan. A vague smell of iodoform. A portrait of King George on an otherwise blank wall. A "no smoking" sign. A painted glass window in a door marked "Private. No admittance." A spot of glass, from which the paint had been removed, about the size of a half-rupee, at about the height of a man's eye from the floor.

[ *Chuprassi (Hindi)—a uniformed doorkeeper; also a messenger or servant wearing an official badge. ]

Tom was aware he was being stared at through the peep-hole for two or three minutes before the door opened and Dr. Lewis came out to greet him. He was in a white suit, white aproned, pulling off rubber gloves. A jolly-looking fellow. Sharp nose. One eyebrow higher than the other. Two or three scars on his face. Straight, unruly, almost carrot-colored hair. Very likely fifty, perhaps older. Half his right-hand middle finger missing.

"Mr. Tom Grayne? How do you do? Come in. This the patient? Some one phoned me from Karachi to expect you. Bring him in and let's see what's wrong."

He motioned Tom to a chair beside a desk and led Thö-pa-ga to another chair beside a window. He got busy at once with a stethoscope.

There was a long counter at one end of the room, burdened with all sorts of bottles, phials, scales and retorts. On the desk was a microscope and a lot of implements. Something that smelt pretty rank was boiling in a covered container over an alcohol burner on a white-enameled table on wheels. There was nothing in the room worth particular attention except Lewis himself, the fact that he had indicated that particular chair beside the desk instead of either of two other chairs—and the radio message that lay on the desk, exactly where whoever should use that particular chair couldn't possibly help seeing it. Tom's eyes devoured it:

DR. MORGAN LEWIS

EDITH CAVELL MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

DELHI, INDIA

AWAIT BY AIR MAIL GRAIN CONSIDERED SUITABLE FOR SHANG-SHANG EXPERIMENT AND ALSO NECESSARY MONGOLIAN EXTRACT RECOMMEND BOTH TO YOUR DISCREET ATTENTION BEST WISHES AND KIND REGARDS HORACE O'MALLY

The date tallied. Sir Horace O'Mally had despatched that from London before leaving for Russia—after his midnight interview with somebody in Westminster.

Thö-pa-ga had his shirt off. He was being systematically thumped. The doctor strode to the desk presently, touched a button and returned to the patient. He appeared to doubt one of the lungs. He resumed business with the stethoscope, until an orderly appeared—another Chi-chi, twice as dark as the Tibetan.

"Bath—bed—light diet—observation. Private room. And tell the head nurse I will be up there to study the case in half an hour."

"Card, sir?"

"I will sign that later."

"It's against the rule, sir, to—"

"Do as I tell you."

Thö-pa-ga, with his shirt unbuttoned, followed the orderly out of the room. Dr. Lewis came and smiled in front of Tom Grayne. He lit a cigarette and offered his case.

"The rules," he remarked, "are blessed in the breach, like etiquette. But breach 'em at the right time! That thing boiling in there is a gentleman's liver. He hadn't sense enough to break a rule. He was too polite. He ate what was put in front of him. We shall know soon what it was he died of, and perhaps who did it—although that's less likely. Your man will be dead pretty soon if you can't get him up to the Hills. I can probably put him in shape for the journey. I advise Darjeeling."

He picked up the radio message, as if he hadn't known it was there. He put it into a drawer.

"Do you happen to know my friend Horace O'Mally of Harley Street?"

"No," said Tom Grayne. "I have met him, once, casually, that's all."

"Didn't he leave on a visit to Moscow?"

"I don't know."

"Take that other chair, it's easier, and tell me something that you do know."

"Well," said Tom, "I know the road to Tibet."

"Good. Then you don't need my advice to be careful what you eat and drink. I'm going to give you some iron rations of my own invention, for emergency use, when you happen to doubt what's set in front of you."

"Damned kind of you."

"No. Merely thoughtful. Have your meals with me while you're in Delhi."