Full Moon (5 page)

“Chetusingh,” he said, “should have been back before now. What has
happened to him?”

“How do I know? You hurt me! Do you hear, you hurt me! I didn’t want that
fool in here, so—you savage, let go of my wrist!” But his grip
tightened. She writhed—kicked —and then struck at his face. His
turban fell, revealing his crisp-curled gladiator head.

“Scream, why don’t you?”

Venom stole into her eyes. Her right hand moved toward her bosom. Suddenly
she snatched out a six-inch weapon like a bodkin, dagger-handled. “Damn
you?”

She struck. He caught her right wrist in his left hand—twisted it.
She kicked with her naked feet. He twisted her wrist steadily until she
groaned through set teeth and the loosed weapon thumped to the floor. He held
both wrists in one hand then and leaned on her to prevent her from kicking
his head as he reached down to recover the weapon. When he had it he let go
of her.

“How many poisons, Wu Tu? Five?” he asked her, but for the moment she had
no breath to answer him. He pressed the point of the knife on the gilded wood
behind the divan; the hollow bodkin-blade yielded a little against a spring
within the golden handle. Through an almost invisible hole in the point of
the blade there oozed a colorless fluid. He sniffed it; and as he did that,
the hand of the Chinese girl in the corridor parted the doorway curtain. He
could see her eyes behind the hand.

“Send her for help,” he suggested. “She might bring Zaman Ali.”

Without turning her head—fixedly watching his eyes—Wu Tu
dismissed the girl with a gesture.

“Damn you, Blair, what do you want?”

“Truth,” he said. “Tell it. Why are you afraid of Zaman Ali?”

“I?” She was chafing her right wrist. “You think I fear him—or you?
You shall learn what fear is!”

Weird, wild music swelled and ceased, as if a door had been suddenly
opened and swiftly closed. Her anger stole away behind new laughter in her
dark eyes.

“Now you have a very deadly weapon,” she said. “Kill me if you dare, while
you can. What are you waiting for?”

“For Chetusingh,” he answered. There was a carpet-deadened footfall in the
corridor. Blair rose to his feet. Wu Tu watched him, fascinated. His eyes,
unafraid but alert, were aware of peril, but the dagger in his right hand
seemed to bother him. It was not his type of weapon. Suddenly he raised it
shoulder high and plunged its point into the lacquered table-top between the
jade vase and the golden figurine. He struck so deep that the dagger-handle
scarcely quivered. Then the jangling curtains parted. Zaman Ali strode in.
His were bold eyes, arrogant with triumph. But he looked wary. He was in no
haste. Close, behind him. as he stood thrusting out his stomach, with his
hands in a broad Bokhariot belt, the Chinese girl’s ivory hand made a signal
and vanished. The Afghan’s beard, new-dyed, lent red to the glare of angered
cunning in his wind-wild eyes. But his lips smiled, showing strong teeth
stained with pan. His Bokhariot coat hung loosely and revealed a silk shirt
that hinted at rubbery muscle beneath. His coned cap. turbaned in silk, sat
jauntily. His curved, coarse nose, that spread until the curves went astray
in the fierce mustache, twitched. He rubbed it—but that might have been
to attract attention to the ruby in the ring on his middle finger.

“
Mashallah
! God’s wonders never cease!” he said in Pushtu. “Ismail
ben Alif Khan is—”

“Warrender of the police. What are you doing in Bombay, Zaman Ali?”

“Praised be God, I sold my horses. Please God, I shall now learn why I was
watched— from the Pass to Peshawar—to Delhi—to
Umballa— to Nuklao—to Ahmedabad—to Cawnpore— to
Poona—to Bombay. A Pathan I knew you were not. Had I known you are
Warrender—”

His fingers, stained and calloused, closed on an imaginary weapon.

“Peace! Not in my house!” Wu Tu warned in a sharp voice. She. too, spoke
in Pushtu. Blair answered in English, “Don’t be a damned fool, Zaman Ali. The
door’s locked,, and you’ve nine men. But did Chetusingh tell you the house is
surrounded? You didn’t expect that, did you?”

“What of it?” Zaman Ali shrugged his shoulders. Then he swaggered to the
divan and sat beside Wu Tu, drawing his legs up under him. Almost
imperceptibly she shrank away; and almost he contrived to look as if he owned
the place. But there was something lacking. He was not quite at his ease.

“Where did you come from to Peshawar?” Blair demanded. “You didn’t bring
your string of horses down the Khaiber. They were a blind. You picked them up
in Peshawar. I know who sold them to you.”

The Afghan stared, not answering.

“What did you do in Rajputana?”

“Allah! Where I was not, what did I? That is a good conundrum!”

“When did you last see Brigadier-General Frensham?”

Insolently, Zaman Ali called to the Chinese girl in the corridor to fetch
his water-pipe. Then: “I never heard of him.” he answered.

“Do you think in the jail you might remember?”

“Allah!” Zaman Ali glanced at Wu Tu. but she avoided his eyes. She glanced
at the door behind the screen. Blair strode to the door and kicked the panel.
The door opened inward a few inches, struck something or someone and shut
with a thud. A bolt clicked.

“Where is Chetusingh?” he demanded.

“Dead,” said Zaman Ali. “Where did you suppose he is?”

Wu Tu laughed at that. The wolf-yelp overtone was nearer than it had been.
She lighted a cigarette and looked straight at Blair, then leaned back
lazily, blowing smoke-rings.

“Dead.” she said. “Perhaps. But you prove it!”

“Prove it, yes,” said Zaman Ali. “That will be a piece of work for the
police!”

“You surround my house,” said Wu Tu. “Don’t you think I knew that?”

“There’s a secret passage from your cellar to the yard behind Grish Lal’s
godown. Did you know I knew it?” Blair retorted. “That’s blocked.”

Wu Tu looked slightly startled, but the look in her eyes changed to
clouded cunning. She shrugged a bit further away from Zaman Ali.

“I’m going to look for Chetusingh,” said Blair. He reached the doorway in
three strides, turned facing them and backed through the curtain, colliding
with the Chinese girl. He groped for her—he was watching for a move by
Wu Tu or Zaman Ali. His hand closed on her neck and she offered no
resistance. When he glanced at her she blew cigarette smoke in his face.

He shoved her along in front of him and tried the door of the next room,
twenty feet along giving passage. It appeared to be locked, but he could hear
laughter and music. The Chinese girl suddenly thrust at his eyes with her
lighted cigarette. He grabbed her wrist and then almost lost consciousness in
a blaze of agony as something struck him on the back of the head from
behind.

“The commissioner was right. It’s a trap, and I’m in it,” was his first
thought. “Now what?”

The pain was welcome; he knew he could not have felt it if he had been -
knocked out. He let his knees yield under him, and as he fell, amid the fire
that flashed in his eyes he saw the Chinese girl!s face smoking the cigarette
in the jade tube, calmly indifferent. He closed his eyes again and lay still.
He felt himself being searched by experienced hands; the police pass that he
had shown to the patrol crackled as someone took it from its envelope. He
heard Wu Tu’s voice:

“You dog! If you killed him—”

Then Zaman Ali’s, speaking Pushtu: “Wah, wah—dogs’ names on a
woman’s tongue—death in her heart! Nay, tie him. Tie his hands behind
him. Bring him back here.”

Someone seized his arms. Some other man tied his wrists unmercifully
tight. Then he was dragged by the feet, face downward. He contrived to raise
his head an inch or two to save his face from being skinned, but the Chinese
girl set her foot on it promptly, not pressing, however, as hard as she might
have done. He took that for a hint and guessed she was obeying Wu Tu’s
order.

Once in the room, they turned him on his back and he glimpsed that the
door behind the screen was opened wide. He could feel blood on his face and
he suspected he looked a pretty bad casualty, so he kept his eyes shut and
lay still. He could hear Wu Tu’s voice arguing in whispers, but could not
distinguish words, until at last she said in English angrily:

“You heard me say no! You have got what you wanted. Now go to the devil
and I will take what I want!”

Water was dashed in his face, again and again, so he opened his eyes. The
Chinese girl was dipping water in a cup from a crystal bowl. She seemed quite
uninterested and kept on splashing until he sat up. Then he almost betrayed
astonishment, because Chetusingh stood staring at him, smiling and apparently
awaiting orders.

“Loose my hands!” he commanded. “Look sharp!”

“There!” said Wu Tu’s voice. Someone else exclaimed “Allah!” Wu Tu again:
“Does that satisfy you?”

Then he knew the man was not Chetusingh, but someone remarkably like him
who was dressed in Chetusingh’s clothes and had studied the Rajput’s
mannerisms.

“He will do in the dark,” said Wu Tu.

She was on the divan beside Zaman Ali. Three men who might be Punjabis
stood near them, but they were dressed in bazaar-made English suits, with
brass watch-chains. They looked like deadly-respectable merchants on a night
out.

Near them was an Afghan in silver-rimmed spectacles, who looked like a
teacher of the Koran. And there was another man who might be
anything—Sikh, Dogra, Mahratta—in a well cut blue serge suit, who
had an undefinable look of being well educated; but he looked silly in
striped socks. His must be the brown-and-white shoes under the mat
downstairs. He had a blackjack in his hand and the sight of that made Blair
realize that his head ached. He could feel a big bruise swelling where the
blackjack had hit him.

“Why do you wait?” asked Wu Tu. It was a command. There was much more than
a hint of a threat in her voice and the man who looked like Chetusingh made a
gesture toward the curtained doorway, flourishing Chetusingh’s police pass.
All five men followed him through the curtain. Other men—Blair could
not see how few or how many—joined them in the corridor. The Chinese
girl went and let them out by the door at the stair-head, while Zaman Ali sat
gloating over Blair’s police pass.

“
Mashallah
!” he remarked. “It is signed by the commissioner! The
great—the wise commissioner, whom none mistrusts but all obey! ‘Pass
bearer on government duty!’
Wah! Wah
!”

He produced a fat wallet and discovered, after groping in its crowded
pockets, a photograph of himself, about passport size. The Chinese girl
brought paste; he pasted the photograph on to the pass. She brought Chinese
ink; he impressed his thumb-print on the photograph. The killer-grin hardened
the rims of his eyes and the sides of his mouth.

“May God reward thee!” he said, staring at Blair. “Soon!” he added. “If I
give thee choice of knife or bullet—”

Blair’s voice sounded strangely far off to himself, because his head
throbbed and it was very difficult to keep the room from seeming to whirl
around him.

“Save yourself from the noose if you can, Zaman Ali!” he answered. “Why do
you hesitate?”

Wu Tu spoke up, “It is to me you owe that you are not dead.”

Zaman Ali stuck the pass into his wallet and rubbed the palms of his hands
together.

“Never a woman yet told more than half a truth,” he said. “Ye hold each
other’s lives in trust. Let up oh me! If not, she and you shall learn
together—the feel of the finger of death!” He said that slowly.

Wu Tu, also speaking slowly, added, “Honorably—now—you have to
save my life, too.”

Blair glanced at the knife he had stuck in the table-top, and noticed that
the golden figurine was missing. “Rot!” he answered. “What are you afraid of,
Zaman Ali?”

The Afghan grinned. “If there is a truth under heaven,” he said, “it is
this, it is this: that a fish stinks from the head first. Like officer, like
rank and file. Now that I know who tracked me from Peshawar, shall I doubt
who should die first, if the police make any trouble?”

“Tell where Frensham is. That’s the only way to save trouble,” Blair
retorted. “That stolen pass may get you out of Bombay, but it won’t save your
neck in the long run.”

There was a north-wind look in Zaman Ali’s eyes: it was weirdly out of
place in that hot, exotic room.

“Frensham?” he asked. “Who is he?”

The door at the stair-head thudded shut and the Chinese girl spoke through
the curtain in Chinese to Wu Tu, who translated tor Zaman Ali’s benefit:

“They have escaped the police, who thought it was Chetusingh and obeyed
him. The police went away.”

“The police are fools, and their mothers were wild she-swine,” said Zaman
Ali. “I will go before they come back, furious to regain whatever pride such
pigs have.”

He gave the Chinese girl some silver money, which she accepted without a
murmur of thanks, although she glanced at the money. Then he stared at Wu Tu,
and she nodded. Turning his back then, and without another glance at Blair,
he swaggered through the jingling curtain. The Chinese girl let him out by
the stair-head door. Wu Tu smiled.

“Do you understand, Blair?” she asked. “You are to forget this. Zaman Ali
needed passes. Now he has them it is all right.”

“Loose my wrists,” he answered. With an effort that made his head surge
with pain he struggled to his feet and waited for her. Wu Tu hesitated,
listening. There was an opened window somewhere, perhaps on a higher floor.
Muffled by intervening passages and curtains came the familiar riot-roar of
Moslems pursuing Hindus.

“Ya Allah! Din! Din!”

It was like a squall of wind smiting the hot night—sudden—over
in a moment—vanishing along a dark street in silence.

“Thus,” said Wu Tu, “if the oh-so-sly police did not really go away, Zaman
Ali had been swept out of their clutches. He will keep the pass for later on.
Will you sit still if I loose you?”