"Number 17—Aaron Macauley, the Eurasian, is leaving for Simla on tonight's train. He would probably want to spend a day or two in Simla, but he could go on to Tilgaun after that. He's quite dependable."
"Yes. I'd trust Aaron Macauley. I want a small box, stout paper, string and sealing-wax."
McGregor produced them and watched Ommony wrap up the piece of jade and seal it with his own old-fashioned signet ring. He addressed the package to Miss Hannah Sanburn at the Tilgaun Mission.
"Better tell Macauley it contains bank-notes," said Ommony. "That'll give him a sense of importance and keep him from being too curious. Tell him to ask Miss Sanburn to keep the package there for me until I come."
"All right. Now what's the theory?"
"Nothing much. I was attacked just now—not serious. The man who got the worst of it will join us after dinner. I'll give you all the grizzly details then. Might possibly surprise you. See you again at Mrs. Cornock-Campbell's."
"Who is a fountain of surprises," said McGregor, smiling. "Meanwhile, how about protection? Do you want a bodyguard?" It was not exactly clear why he was smiling.
"No," said Ommony, looking contemplatively at Diana, who appeared to have fallen asleep on a Bokhara rug, "I've got a more than usually good one, thanks. Observe."
He started on tiptoe for the door. Diana reached it several strides ahead of him and slipped out first, to sniff the wind and make sure that the shadows held no lurking enemy.
"If men were as faithful as dogs," he began. But McGregor laughed:
"They're not. Faith, very largely, is absence of intelligence. Intelligence has to be trained to be honest; it has no morals otherwise. Without a good Scots grounding in religion, the greater the intelligence the worse the crook."
"Oh, rot!" said Ommony, and walked out, leaving McGregor chuckling.
Chapter VI
"Missish-Anbun is Mad"
A certain poet, who was no fool, bade men take the cash and let the credit go. I find this good advice, albeit difficult to follow. Nevertheless, it is easier than what most men attempt. They seek to take the cash and let the debit go, and that is utterly impossible; for as we sow, we reap.
—From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup
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, Mae. 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