“MISSISH-ANBUN IS MAD.”
Even since the Armistice, when military glory topped the rise and
started on the down-grade of a cycle, there are still worse fates than
being wealthy in your own right and the wife of a colonel commanding a
Lancer regiment—even if your children have to go to Europe to be
schooled, and your husband is under canvas half the time. And there are
much worse fates than dining with Mrs. Cornock-Campbell, anywhere, in
any circumstances. To be in a position to invite yourself to dinner at
her Delhi bungalow means that, whatever your occupation, you may view
life now and then from the summit, looking downward. Viceroys come and
go. Mrs. Cornock-Campbell usually educates their wives.
They say she knows everything—even why the German Crown Prince once cut
short a tour of India; and that, of course, means she is no longer in
the bloom of youth, and never indiscreet, for you don’t learn state
secrets by being young and talkative.
Ommony is one of her pet cronies, though they rarely meet (which is the
way things happen in India). He looks such a blunt old-fashioned
bachelor in a dinner jacket dating from away before the war, the
contrast he creates with modern artificial cynicism is so satisfying,
and he so utterly lacks pose or pretense, that he brings out all her
vivacity (which is apt to be chilled when imitation people assume
manners for the sake of meals).
The talk, for the hour while dinner lasted, was of anything in the world
but Ringding Lamas and the Ahbor country. Ommony was probed for
epigrams, coined in the depths of his forest, that should make John
McGregor wince and laugh—such statements as that “You can look for
faults or virtue. Vultures prefer ullage. Suit yourself. A man sees his
own vices and his own virtues reflected in his neighbor—nothing else!
Another’s crimes are what you yourself would commit under equally strong
pressure. His virtues are greater than your own, if only because they’re
less obvious. The most indecent exhibition in the world is virtue
without her cloak on!” Not polite exactly, (particularly not to the
chief of the Secret Service), but not tainted by circumlocution. And
again: “They say the fact that people work entitles them to vote. Horses
work harder than men! Soap-box nonsense! The only excuse for work is
that you like it, and the only honest objection to loafing is that it’s
bad for you.”
John McGregor, in the rare hours when he is not feeling the pulse of
India’s restless underworld, is an addict of the Wee Free Kirk with
convictions regarding the devil.
“A personal devil?” said Ommony. “I wish there was one! Hell breeds more
dangerous stuff than that! If I thought there was a devil, I’d vote for
him. He’d clean up politics.”
John McGregor, ganglion of India’s crime statistics and acquainted with
all evil at first hand, was shocked, to Mrs. Cornock-Campbell’s huge
delight.
“Now, John! What have you to say to that?”
McGregor cracked a nut nervously and sipped at his Madeira.
“He could find a host of half-baked theorists to praise him for the
blasphemy,” he said deliberately, “but the ultimate appalling
circumstance of being damned is a high price for applause.”
Ommony laughed. “I’d rather be thought damned by a man I respect than be
praised by damned fools,” he retorted. “We three will meet beyond the
border, Mac. I’m looking forward to it. I can’t see anything unpleasant
in death, except the morbid business of dying. ‘_May there be no moaning
at the bar when I put out to sea._’ It looks as if I might be the first
of the three of us to take that trip.”
So, by a roundabout route, the conversation drifted to its goal. Over
her shoulder, at the piano, in the rose and ivory music-room after
dinner Mrs. Cornock-Campbell tossed the question that brought secrets to
the surface.
“John says you are going to the Ahbor country.”
John McGregor’s eyes glowed with anticipation, but he crossed his legs
and lit a cigarette, throwing himself back into the shadow of an antique
chair to hide the smile.
“Going to try,” said Ommony. “My sister and Fred Terry disappeared up
there twenty years ago. They left no trace.”
“Are you sure?”
She went on playing from Chopin and Ommony did not notice the inflection
of her voice; he was listening to the piano’s overtones, vaguely
displeased when she closed the piano without finishing the nocturne.
“I was at Tilgaun seven months ago,” she said. “Colin” (that was her
husband) “had to go to Burma, so I went to Darjiling. I heard of the
Marmaduke Mission, and grew curious. I wrote, and Miss Sanburn kindly
invited me to come and stay with her. The most delightful place. Please
pass me a cigarette.”
“Did Hannah mention me?” asked Ommony.
“Indeed she did. You seem to be her _beau ideal_; and funnily enough she
said you, and the Lama Tsiang Samdup must have been twin brothers in a
former incarnation! She told me you and he have never met each other,
although you are co-trustees with her under Marmaduke’s will. It sounds
like Gilbert and Sullivan. I didn’t see the Lama, but I did meet some
one else who is quite as interesting.”
McGregor crossed his legs and blew smoke at the ceiling.
“How well do you know Miss Sanburn?” asked Mrs. Cornock-Campbell at the
end of a minute’s silence. She was watching Diana, stretched out on the
bearskin, hunting gloriously in a dream-Valhalla. If she saw Ommony’s
face it was through the corner of one eye.
“Oh, as well as a man can ever hope to know a very unusual woman,” said
Ommony.
“That doesn’t go deep—does it! I admit I suspected _you_ at first. Then
I remembered how long I have known you and—well—you’re unorthodox, and
you’re a rebel, but—I couldn’t imagine you leaving a child nameless.”
“What on earth do you mean?” asked Ommony.
“So I suspected Marmaduke—naturally. But all sorts of dates and
circumstances turned up quite casually, which eliminated _him_. I was at
Tilgaun a whole month before I was quite sure that Miss Sanburn is not a
mother. I was almost disappointed! She is such a dear—I admire her so
much—that it would have given me a selfish satisfaction to know such an
abysmal secret, and to keep it even on a death-bed! However, the child
is not hers. She calls her an adopted daughter, though I doubt that
there are any legal papers. The girl is white. She’s about twenty. The
strangest part is this: that the girl disappears at intervals.”
“This is all news to me,” said Ommony. “Mac said something, but—”
“It isn’t news, you iconoclast! It’s a most romantic mystery. The girl
was there when I arrived. She wouldn’t have been; but you know what a
business it is to get to Tilgaun. I was supposed to wait for ponies and
servants from the mission; they didn’t come, and as there was a party of
rajah’s people going, I traveled with them. They were in a hurry, so I
reached the mission quite a number of days before I was expected, and I
met the girl on the far side of the rope bridge just before you reach
Tilgaun—you remember the place? There’s a low steep cliff with only a
narrow passage leading out of it. She was sitting there nursing a
twisted ankle—nothing serious—but she couldn’t get away without my
seeing her; and of course it never entered my head to suspect that she
would want to avoid me. She told me her name was Elsa.”
“That was my sister’s name,” remarked Ommony, who had an old-fashioned
way of growing sentimental when that name cropped up among intimates.
“I lent her a spare pony and she rode up to the mission with me.
Jolly—she was the jolliest girl I have ever seen, all laughter and
intelligence—with strange sudden fits of demureness—or perhaps that
isn’t the right word. Freeze isn’t the right word either. She would
suddenly lapse into silence and her face would grow absolutely calm—not
expressionless, but calm—like a Chinese girl’s. It was as if she were
two distinct and separate women. But she’s white. I watched her
finger-nails.”
“Might be Chinese,” Ommony suggested. “They’re given to laughter, and
their finger-nails don’t show the dark lunula when they’re pressed.
Hannah Sanburn receives all-comers at the mission.”
“I am certain she is English,” Mrs. Cornock-Campbell answered. “But as
far as I could judge she speaks Tibetan and several dialects perfectly.
Her English hasn’t a trace of Chi-chi accent. She has been wonderfully
educated. She has art in every fiber of her being—plays the piano
_fairly_ well—mostly her own compositions, and you may believe me or
not, they’re fit to be played by a _master_. And she draws perfectly,
from memory. That night at supper, and afterward, she talked incessantly
and kept on illustrating what she meant by drawing on sheets of
paper—wonderful things—not caricatures—snap-shots of people and
things she had seen. Wait; I’ve kept some of them. Let me show you.”
She found a portfolio and laid it on Ommony’s lap. He turned over sheet
after sheet of pencil drawings that seemed to have caught motion in the
act—yaks, camels, oxen, Tibetan men and women taken in mid-smile, old
monastery doorways, flowers—done swiftly and with humor. There was a
sureness of touch that men work lifetimes to achieve; and there was a
quality that almost nobody in this age _has_ achieved—a sort of spirit
of antiquity, as simple as it was indefinable in words. It was as if the
artist knew that things are never what they seem, but was translating
what _she_ saw of things’ origins into modern terms that could be
understood. The drawings were of yesterday, clothed in the garments of
to-day and looking forward to to-morrow.
“She seemed to see right through you,” Mrs. Cornock-Campbell went on. “I
don’t believe the smartest man in the world could fool that girl. She
has the something within that men instinctively recognize and don’t try
to take liberties with. She seemed equally familiar with Tibetan and
European thought, as well as life, and to know all the country to the
northward. I gathered she had been to Lhassa, which seems incredible,
but she spoke of it as if she knew the very street-stones, and you’ll
see there are sketches of bits of Lhassa in that portfolio—notice the
portrait of the Dalai Lama and the sketch of the southern gate.
“And all the while the girl talked Miss Sanburn seemed as proud and as
uncomfortable as a martyr at the stake! When Elsa began to talk of
Lhassa I thought Miss Sanburn would burst with anxiety; you could see
she was on the perpetual point of cautioning her not to be indiscreet,
but she restrained herself with a forced smile that made me simply love
her. I know Miss Sanburn was in agonies of terror all the time.
“When Elsa had gone to bed—that was long after midnight—I asked Miss
Sanburn what her surname was. She hesitated for about thirty seconds,
looking at me—”
“I know how she looked,” said Ommony. “Like a fighting-man with a
heartache. That look has often puzzled me. What did she say?”
“She said: ‘Mrs. Cornock-Campbell, it was not intended you should meet
Elsa. She is my adopted daughter. There are reasons—.’ And of course at
that I interrupted. I assured her I don’t pry into people’s secrets. She
asked me whether I would mind not discussing what little I already knew.
She said: ‘I’m sorry I can’t explain, but it is important that Elsa’s
very existence should be known to as few people as possible, especially
in India.’ Of course, I promised, but she agreed to a reservation that I
might mention having met the girl, if anything I could say should seem
likely to quiet inquisitive people. And that was a good thing, because I
had no sooner returned to Delhi than John McGregor came to dinner and
asked me pointedly whether I had seen any mysterious young woman at
Tilgaun. I think John intended to investigate her with his staff of
experts in—what is the right word, John?”
“Worm’s-eye views,” said McGregor. “Not all the king’s horses nor all
the king’s men could have called me off, as you did with a smile and a
glass of Madeira. Thus are governments corrupted.”
“So you’re the second individual to whom I have opened my lips about
it,” said Mrs. Cornock-Campbell, not exactly watching Ommony, but
missing none of his expression, which was of dawning comprehension.
“I’m beginning to understand about a hundred things,” he said musingly.
“You’d think, though, Hannah would have told _me_.”
Mrs. Cornock-Campbell smiled at John McGregor. “Didn’t you know he’d say
just that? Wake up, Cottswold! This isn’t church! It’s because you’re
her closest friend that you’re the last person in the world she _would_
tell. She’s a _woman_!”
Then there were noises in the garden and Diana left off dreaming on the
bearskin to growl like an earthquake.
“An acquaintance of mine,” said Ommony. “If you can endure the smell,
please let him in. Or we might try the veranda.”
Diana had to be forcibly suppressed. The butler, a Goanese (which means
that he had oddly assorted fears, as well as a mixed ancestry and
cross-bred notions of convention, that were skin-deep and as hard as
onyx) had to be rebuked for near-rebellion. And Dawa Tsering, with his
neck swathed in weirdly-smelling cloth, had to be given a mat to sit on,
lest he spoil the carpet. It needed that setting to make plain how
innocent of cleanliness his clothes were; and his reek was of
underground donkey-stables, with some sort of chemical added. (There
were reasons, connected with possible eavesdroppers, why the deep
veranda was unsuitable.)
“And the knife, Ommon_ee_?” he asked, squatting cross-legged, admiring
the room. “Is this thy house? Thou art a rich man! I think I will be thy
servant for a while. Is the woman thy wife? It is not good to be a
woman’s servant. Besides, I am a poor hand at obedience. Nay, return me
my knife and I will go.”
“Not yet,” said Ommony, studying by which roundabout route it might be
easiest to elicit information. He decided on the sympathetic-personal.
The man’s neck had plainly received attention, but the subject served.
“Shall I get a doctor for your neck?”
“Nay, Tsiang Samdup made magic and put leeches on it and some stuff that
burned. Lo, I recover.”
“You mean the holy Lama Tsiang Samdup? The Ringding Gelong Lama? He who
was at Chutter Chand’s this afternoon?”
Ommony knew quite well whom he meant, but he wanted to convey the
information to the others without putting the Hillman on guard. By the
look in the Hillman’s eye, his mood was talkative—boastful—a reaction
from the failure of the afternoon.
“Aye, the same.”
“I should have thought his _chela_ would have attended to that.”
“Samding? Nay, they say that fellow is too sacred altogether. Not that I
believe it; I could cut his throat and show them he dies gurgling and
whistling like any other man! But the Lama looks after him like an old
wife with a young husband and the boy mayn’t soil his fingers. Rebuke
thy dog, Ommon_ee_—she eyes me like a devil in the dark. So, that is
better. _Ohe_—I wish I had never come southward! Yet, I have seen this
house of thine. It is a wonder. It will serve to speak of, when I go
back to Spiti and tell tales around the fire.”
Ommony translated for the others’ benefit, and went on questioning.
“I suppose you will return to Tilgaun with the Lama and his _chela_?”
“May the stars and my _karma_ forbid! I go under the belly of a te-rain,
as I came. To Kalka I go; and thence by foot on the old road to Simla,
where I know a man who will pay me to carry goods to the rajah of Spiti.
That is a long journey and a difficult. I shall be _well_ paid.”
Again Ommony translated.
“Ask him how and where he learned that trick of riding under trains,”
said McGregor.
“Oh, as to that,” said Dawa Tsering, “there are few things simpler. In
my youth” (he spoke as if he were already ancient, instead of perhaps
two- or three-and-twenty) “I desired a woman of Spiti whose husband was
unwise. He should have gone on a journey oftener. And he should not have
returned in such haste. I wearied of his homecomings, so I lay in wait
and slew him. And the rajah of Spiti, who is a jealous man—liking to
attend to all the slaying in that country, which is nevertheless too
much for one individual, even if he _does_ have an army of fifty
men—fined me three hundred _rupees_.[5] Where should I get such a
fortune? Yet, unless I paid it, I should have to join his army and
gather fuel, which is as scarce in Spiti as an honest woman. So I ran
away. And after wandering about the Hills a month or two, enjoying this
and that adventure, I reached Simla, where I met a man with whom I
gambled, he offering to teach me a new game, not knowing we use dice in
Spiti. And _his_ dice were loaded. So I substituted mine. And when I had
won from him more than he could pay, he offered to teach me his
profession.”
“Gambling?” asked Ommony.
“Nay. I never gamble. I take no chances. I do the gods a favor now and
then, since it seems from all accounts they need it, but I never trust
them. That fellow told me of the te-rains that run from Kalka southward,
to and fro, and of the many _rupees_ that the passengers leave in their
pockets while they sleep. He supposed I would undertake the dangerous
part and thereafter share the loot with him, and he showed me how to
hide under a te-rain until nightfall and then—but it was _easy_. And I
found out after a while where he hid the half of our profits, which he
_claimed_ as _his_ share after _I_ had done all the climbing in and out
of windows in the dark. So I took what he had hidden, and, what with my
own savings, the total amounted to more than a thousand _rupees_. Then I
returned to Spiti, and I buried the money in a certain place, and went
to the rajah and lied to him, saying I had earned the amount of the fine
as a wood-cutter but that a certain one (who was _always_ my enemy) had
stolen the money from me on the very first night that I returned. So the
rajah transferred my fine to that other man, who had to pay it, and
then, of course, I had to leave Spiti again—swiftly. That other man has
many friends. But I will find a way to deal with him.”
“When did you first meet the holy Lama Tsiang Samdup?” Ommony asked.
“Hah! I returned to the te-rains, being minded to make a fortune, but
the gods played a scurvy trick on me. I was doing nicely; but on a
certain night a fool of a policeman pounced on me at an _istashun_[6]
just as I was crawling in under the wheels. He dragged me out by the
leg, and it was not a proper time to kill him, since there were many
witnesses. So I raised a lamentation, saying I would ride to Delhi to
the bedside of a friend, and that I had no fare. And lo, the Lama Tsiang
Samdup stepped out of the te-rain and paid my fare, praying that I would
permit him thus to acquire merit. So I rode with him to Delhi, he
questioning me all the night-long and I at my wits’ end to invent
sufficient lies wherewith to answer him. And in Delhi I being a stranger
in the city, he set out with me to help me find my friend; and, there
being no friend, we naturally did not find him, whereat the Lama wept.
So it seemed to me he was a man who needed some one to look after him;
moreover, he was certainly a very rich man. And I had not yet thought of
a way of defeating my enemy in Spiti. Restrain thy she-dog, Ommon_ee_; I
like not the look in her eye.”
Ommony put Diana outside with orders to guard the front door.
“How long ago did this happen?” he asked, forcing himself to look only
vaguely interested as he resumed his seat.
“Oh, maybe a year ago—or longer. The time passes. I agreed to serve the
Lama for a while, although he wearied me with his everlasting lectures
about merit, and the Wheel, and the gods know what else. Also he keeps
low company—actors and singers and such folk. When he left me at
Tilgaun on his way northward I was well content to rest from him a
while. He gave me money, of which he has _plenty_ although he is much
too careful with it; and there were good-looking girls at the mission,
which is a marvel of a place with a high wall. But I saw how to climb
the wall. So it came about that there was trouble between me and
Missish-Anbun—she who is Abbess of the place—a bold woman, who was not
afraid to stand up to me and speak her mind. Lo, I showed her my knife
and she laughed at it! I speak truth. So by the time the Lama came back
from the North I was a byword and a mockery among the people of Tilgaun,
who are a despicable lot but prosperous, and full of a notion that
Missish-Anbun is the cause of all good fortune. And _she_, of course,
being a woman and unmarried (which is witchcraft) told tales to the Lama
about me when he returned; whereat he (the old fool!) was distressed,
saying _he_ was answerable, in that he had left me there during his
absence. He spoke much about the Wheel, and merit, and responsibility.
And I, who can not help liking the old fool, although I laugh at
him—and at myself for eating rebuke from him—was ashamed. Aye, I was
ashamed. He made me promise to perform acts of repentance—as _he_ said,
to offset my own sins—but as _I_ think, because he had a use for me.
“And now he had Samding with him, the _chela_, whom all men in that part
regard as a reincarnation of some ancient prodigy who has been dead so
long that his bones must have dissolved into powder. (But the priests
tell just such tales, and who can say they are not true?)
“And there was much excitement over a piece of green stone. It had
disappeared from somewhere up North, although none mentioned the name of
the place whence it had come, but I had heard _some_thing, and the rest
I saw. There had come a man from Ahbor to the mission, dying of a
belly-wound, and if _my_ advice had been asked he would have been left
to die outside the wall, because those Ahbors are devils. _I_ have heard
they eat corpses, which is a dog’s business, and I _know_ none dares to
enter their country. But Missish-Anbun is mad, and she took him into the
mission, where they stitched up the belly-wound and tried to make him
live. But he died, and they found the stone in his clothing, and
Missish-Anbun kept it. There was much talk about the stone, for the most
part nonsense; some said this, and some said that, but it was clear
enough that whoever really owned the stone had set inquiries going and a
rumor had been spread that there was danger in possessing it.
“I had made up my mind to steal the stone from Missish-Anbun and
discover how much it might be worth to a man of some skill in
bargaining; for it seemed to me there could not be much danger to _me_
as long as I had my knife.—Where _is_ my knife, Ommon_ee_? Presently?
Well, don’t forget to return it to me. That knife and my future are one.
“As I was saying, I was about to steal the stone. But a girl in the
mission—one whose virtue I had satisfactory reason to
suspect—forestalled me. She took the stone and ran with it toward the
house of Sirdar Sirohe Singh, who is a prince of devils, and a father of
lice, and no good. (He had warned me to leave Tilgaun, and I had told
him who his father was.)
“And there had come a rat of a man named Tin Lal to Tilgaun, too much
given to asking questions. Him I was minded to slay, because that girl,
whose virtue I say was not such as others seemed to think, no longer
smiled at me when I sat in the sun near the mission gate, but took more
notice of Tin Lal than was seemly. Night after night I had waited for
her, and it came to my ears too late that there was a reason, that
concerned me, for the smile in Tin Lal’s impudent eye. I whetted the
edge of my knife on a stone by the image of the Lord Buddha that is set
into a niche in the mission wall.
“But the girl stole the stone and ran off with it, and Tin Lal waited
for her at a narrow place where the path to the _sirdar’s_ house runs
between a cliff on the one hand and a deep ravine on the other—a place
where the eagles nest and there is mist ascending from the waterfall
below. He pushed her into the ravine and climbed down after her, taking
the stone. And then _he_ disappeared. And Sirdar Sirohe Singh, who is a
dog—whose liver is crawling lice—whose heart is a dead fish, accused
_me_ of the deed. There was talk of bringing me before the rajah, and
there was other talk of driving me away.
“Nevertheless, I had promised the Lama I would wait for him in Tilgaun.
I was not minded that my time had come. Moreover, I am one who keeps
promises. So I slew the loudest talkers—very secretly, by night; and
after that there was not so much insolence toward me when I passed up
and down the village.
“_Ohe_—but I was weary of Tilgaun! And when the Lama came he at first
believed I had slain the girl and stolen the stone. But he is not
entirely a fool in all respects, and the _chela_ Samding has more brains
than a grown man with a beard down to his belly. It was the _chela_, who
said that if I had in truth stolen the stone I would certainly have run
away with it and not have stayed in Tilgaun like an eagle hatching eggs.
And the Lama, having listened to a million lies and discovered the truth
like a bird in the mist among them, told me I might earn much merit by
following the trail of Tin Lal to the southward and recovering the
stone. The Lama Tsiang Samdup said to me, ‘Slay not, but obtain the
stone from Tin Lal and I will pay thee more for it than any other dozen
men would pay.’ And he named a price—a very great price, which set me
to dreaming of the girls in Spiti, and of a valley where I am minded
someday to build a house.
“So I, having furthermore a grudge of my own against Tin Lal, agreed,
and I followed the rat Tin Lal to Delhi, where, as I have told you, I
saw him, through the shop-window where the snake is, sell the stone to
Chutter Chand, the jeweler.
“But the Lama and Samding had come to Delhi likewise, and to them I told
what I had seen, having lost sight of Tin Lal in the crowd. And now give
me back the knife, Ommon_ee_, that I may hunt for Tin Lal. I have an
extra grudge against him. Has he not robbed me of the price the Lama
would have paid me for the stone? _Ohe_—my honor and my anger and his
end are one! Give me the knife, Ommon_ee_.”
The Hillman smiled winningly, as one who has talked his way into a hard
man’s heart. He held his hand out, leaning forward as he squatted on the
mat.
“Tin Lal is in the jail,” said Ommony.
“Oh, is that so? That makes it easy. I will wait outside the jail. They
will not keep him in there for ever.”
“What is that house, where you tried to kill me this afternoon?” Ommony
asked.
“A place kept by Tibetans, where the Lama stays when in Delhi. That is
where the actor people come to see him.”
“Why did you attack me?”
“Why not? You had said, the Lama shall have the stone. Therefore it was
clear to me that _you_ must have it. Therefore, if I should take it from
you I could sell it to the Lama. I am no fool!”
Ommony, with something like contentment in his eye, began to translate
for the benefit of the others as much as he could remember of Dawa
Tsering’s tale, tossing occasional questions to the Hillman to get him
to repeat some detail. It was the company the Lama kept that seemed to
interest him most.
“If you like,” said McGregor, when the tale was finished, “I’ll have
those Tibetans searched.”
Ommony was about to refuse that offer, but his words were cut short by
an uproar on the porch. Diana—on guard and therefore unable to be
tempted from her post—was barking like a battery of six-pounders. He
strode into the hall and listened—heard retreating footsteps—some one
in no hurry pap-pad-padding firmly on soft-soled shoes toward the garden
gate.
He opened the door. Diana glanced angrily at a long, narrow, white
envelope that lay on the porch floor under the electric light, and
resumed her furious salvoes at the gate.
“So-ho, old lady—some one you knew brought a letter, eh? You weren’t
indignant till he threw it down and retreated. You never said a word
while he was coming up the path.” He wetted his finger and tested the
hot night air. “Uh-huh—wind’s toward you—recognized his smell—that’s
clear enough. All right—good dog—on guard again.”
He picked up the envelope and walked into the house.
“Did you tell the Lama where you were coming to-night?” he asked,
standing over Dawa Tsering, looking down at him.
“Aye. I did. Why not? How should I know, Ommon_ee_, that this was not a
trap—and I with no knife to hack my way out of it! Suppose that you had
thrown me in the jail—who should then have helped me unless the Lama
knew? I am no fool.”
“Did you tell him I said he shall have the green stone?”
“Nay! How often must I say I am no fool! _Would_ he buy the stone from
_me_, after I had told him _you_ said he shall have it?”
“The letter! The letter!” exclaimed Mrs. Cornock-Campbell. “Are you made
of iron, Cottswold? How can you hold a mysterious letter in your hand
without dying to know what is in it? Give it to me! Let me open it, if
you won’t!”
Ommony passed it to her. John McGregor lit another cigarette.
-----
[5] About one hundred dollars.
[6] Railway station.
It is the teaching of financiers and statesmen, and of them who
make laws, and of most religionists, that of all things a man
should first seek safety—for his own skin—for his own
money—for his own soul. Yet I find this teaching strange;
because of all the dangers in the universe, the greatest lies in
self-preferment.
From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.