“Somehow I wish you’d turned those papers over to the police,” Woodring said. “However, I didn’t come here to discuss ethics. I came to—” He paused. There was a timid knock at the door.

  “That’s Mr. Hubertson.” Ruth said. She opened the door only a few inches, which was sufficient for Woodring to see that the caller was not Stanley Hubertson—unless that gentleman had whimsically decided to don black-face for the evening. Almost simultaneously he recognised the familiar voice of Georges Clemenceau Malaswaram.

  “Salaam, Sahib,” said Georges Clemenceau Malaswaram. The lean Tamil youth held a limp, damp envelope in his black hand, and he himself was fully as damp and limp as the envelope. A rain-drenched lock of ebony hair straggled forlornly from under his astrakhan cap to drip water upon his nose.

  “You’re shivering, Clemenceau,” Woodring said. “What’s the matter?”

  “Am Southern boy, Sahib,” said the Tamil. “Am therefore unused to rigid climates of North. Here is chit for you, Sahib.”

  Woodring took the wet envelope. “How did you know where to find me?” he demanded.

  “Simplicity herself,” replied Georges Clemenceau Malaswaram, “India having many facilities for transmitting information by underground grapewine.”

  “Grape-vine,” corrected Ruth. Ingram smiling.

  “Wine,” insisted the Tamil. “Place in question being small but selected toddy-shop near bazaar.” He bowed to Ruth. “This lady’s bearer, who was quaffing small cup of mountain beverage thereat, informed of sahib’s whereabouts.”

  Woodring opened the envelope. His eyebrows raised as he carefully unfolded the damp paper. He passed it to Ruth.

  “This your uncle’s handwriting?” he demanded.

  “Yes,” the girl replied without hesitation.

  “Where did you get this chit, Clemenceau?” Woodring demanded.

  “Small chokra brought same to Cotton-tree Lodge.”

  “Where did the chokra come from?”

  “Did not ascertain, Sahib,” said the Tamil.

  Woodring made an impatient gesture. “You’d better go home and get some dry clothes on, Clemenceau.”

  “Quite, Sahib. Has sahib yet determined where he will be spending night?”

  “Are the police still watching the Lodge?”

  “No, Sahib. Espionage discontinued two hours previous.”

  “Then. I’ll be home. But if there is any one hanging around looking for me, come out and head me off, won’t you, Clemenceau?”

  “Without failure, Sahib,” the black youth assured him. “Salaam.”

  When the door had closed, Woodring demanded of Ruth. “How the devil did your uncle know how to reach me at Cotton-tree Lodge?”

  “Uncle Alex is nobody’s fool,” the girl replied. “His success wasn’t all due to luck.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t tell him where I was?”

  “I haven’t seen or heard from Uncle Alex. This is the first sign I’ve had that he’s in Darjeeling.”

  Woodring walked up very close to the girl, looked into her eyes from a distance of only a few inches.

  “I swear it!” Ruth added fervently.

  After a moment, Woodring said: “Let me see that note again.”

  He sat down, spread the limp paper on one knee. The ink was a little blurred by the damp, but he had no trouble reading.

  “Dear Woodring,

  “Have just learned of miscarriage of Himalayan Grand scheme. Broken contact will be remedied if you go to Buddhist shrine on Observatory Hill at daybreak to-morrow, and wait for Lama by the name of Quombi La.

  “B.”

  Ruth came up behind Woodring. Her fingers brushed his arm slightly as she leaned over his shoulder to reread the note.

  “You’re going, of course,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  Woodring stood up, faced the girl. “No, you’re not,” he said.

  “How are you going to stop me?” She raised her chin in a gesture of defiance.

  “Now see here!” Woodring clasped the girl’s shoulders in his powerful hands, as though he were about to give her a disciplinary shaking. “Don’t get the idea that I’m a chivalrous knight, waiting to be wound around the little finger of the first Lady Guinevere that comes along. I’ve got a job to do, and if you try to meddle in it, you could get hurt. Do I make myself plain?”

  Ruth did not reply. Her shoulders stirred slightly in his grasp. The glow of the firelight behind her edged her curly hair with a flickering blur of living gold. Her eyes looked unflinching into his.

  Paul Woodring awoke with a start. He had not meant to sleep so soundly, but there was no denying utter fatigue. He listened to the small traveller’s clock ticking away in the darkness beside his bed. He had set the alarm for four o’clock, yet he was fairly certain the alarm had not awakened him. The clock clicked—as though the ringing mechanism had been shut off. Then he became suddenly aware of a shadow moving near his bed.

  His hand dove under his pillow for his automatic.

  A plaintive voice in the darkness said “No cause for consternation, Sahib. Only your bearer.”

  Woodring snapped on the light. Georges Clemenceau Malaswaram stood before him, shivering. The hands of the clock pointed to five minutes past four.

  “Damn you, Clemenceau! Did you shut off the alarm?” demanded Woodring.

  “Must confess to affirmative, Sahib. Was observing that sahib was in great need of rest, so—”

  “Get my clothes!” snapped Woodring, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.

  “Sahib will first take hot cup of tea,” said the Tamil. “Have conserved same in vacuum bottle.”

  Woodring grunted. He reached for his trousers while the bearer was pouring his tea.

  “Have slight suggestion, Sahib,” the Tamil continued. “Sahib will be happier if remaining inside bed until breakfast time.”

  “Why, Clemenceau?”

  “Last evening while quaffing small cup at bazaar toddy-shop,” said the bearer, holding the cuffs of Woodring’s trousers off the floor, “succeeded in acquiring, beside slight headache, several curious informations regarding mythological folk-lores of local aborigines. Ascertained that late rising being practised by Darjeeling natives this morning-time because of red snow.”

  “What red snow?” Woodring asked.

  “Great snow of Kinchenjunga and brother mountains to north was colour of blood at yesterday daybreak, likewise daybreak previous,” said Malaswaram, his eyes very round. “Darjeeling people are saying that when snow is red for three mornings, man who looks on third morning must see only future disaster, calamities and catastrophes …”

  “Nonsense,” said Woodring. “There won’t be any sunrise this morning. It’s raining.”

  “No, Sahib. Rain has stopped. Stars now shining. Of course, Sahib, being pukka baptized Christian, am not gullible to such pagan tales of bazaar Mother Geese. However—”

  “Here’s ten rupees, Clemenceau,” said Woodring. “Get yourself some woollen underwear. Maybe that will make you stop shivering. Pass me my coat.”

  “Thank you, Sahib. Nevertheless, Sahib, if snow is red—”

  “It can’t hurt me, Clemenceau,” said Woodring. “I’m colour blind.”

  The stars were paling in a cold sky washed clean by the night’s rain, as Woodring began his walk to the Buddhist Monastery on the summit of Observatory Hill. His heart was pounding in rhythm with his long, quick steps, and his mind was busy with imaginary dialogue with Quombi La, the Nawab’s emissary. This would only be a preliminary meeting with Quombi La, he knew, for he did not have his documents with him. He had left them in the safe at the Grand for two reasons. He did not want to risk being seen in the hotel so soon after the Feurmann murder, and he was not going to expose himself to any violent over-eagerness on the part of the Nawab’s men.

  The Nawab, Woodring had concluded just before falling asleep, was not only guilty of a breach of faith with the British, but he had also unsheathed his royal kukri for use on the representatives of Alexander Blenn. The Nawab’s envoy, obviously would have to know the name “John Mapleleaf”. And since the crux of the whole situation was the Nawab’s friendship with the Germans, it was easily conceivable that it was Quombi La who had planted the German Feurmann at the Grand as Mapleleaf, just to intimate to Blenn that he was not to expect to have things all his own way.

  Well, Woodring would see what Quombi La had to say. He carried a gun—not his own revolver, which he had hidden under a clump of rhododendrons near the Woodlands—but the .32 automatic Blenn had given him.

  During the last hundred yards along the Mall, Woodring thought he heard footsteps behind him. He stopped, turned. A man was trailing him, perhaps fifty yards in the rear. The grey false daylight was not enough for Woodring to make out his features. It was not until the man came closer and said, “Morning, old bean,” that he saw it was Emmet-Tansley.

  “You aren’t by any chance following me?” Woodring demanded.

  “Perish the thought, old man,” said Emmet-Tansley. “I’m just on my way home to bed. Been having a night out. Can’t have many more before classes begin again … Too bad about old Feurmann, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?” countered Woodring.

  “I say, you aren’t really an agent of the Gestapo, are you? I’ve been thinking—”

  “Sorry to interrupt your train of thought,” said Woodring, “but you said you were on your way home. In case you don’t know, the Grand is in the other direction.”

  “What? Why, so it is!” said Emmet-Tansley. “Silly of me. Well, I must totter off to bed. Toodle-oo.”

  Woodring watched the red-head double back, reflected that he was walking with a remarkably steady step for a man who claimed to have been drinking all night. Then he started climbing the hill.

  Climbing higher, he heard a strange humming sound, like the buzzing of a great swarm of bees. At intervals the tinkling of a bell punctuated the hum, and Woodring realised he was listening to the drone of morning prayers at the Buddhist shrine. At the same moment he saw a forest of prayer flags fluttering above the old monastery at the summit. From a maze of long bamboo poles hung strips of cloth, faded and tattered strips inscribed with the ancient mystic exhortation: Hail to the jewel in the lotus!

  The valley below him was obscured by an ocean of rolling, tumbling clouds, but on the far shore, above breakers of mist dashing against the purple mountainside, shone the full grandeur of the Himalayas. Distance veiled the majesty of the scene with incongruous softness. Dominating the splendour of the panorama was the stately peak of Kinchenjunga, its white velvet flanks streaked with blue shadows.

  Reluctantly Woodring turned away from the enthralling beauty of the picture, but his business lay nearer at hand. He sauntered half-way around the shrine, then stopped to watch the priests in yellow and magenta robes bow their shaven heads in droning prayer as they lighted ceremonial fires in what seemed to be white stone beehives. While he was standing there, he remarked that a wizened old man in heavy felt boots and furred cap was industriously circling the beflagged shrine.

  Woodring wondered if the wizened old man could be Quombi La. On the devotee’s fourth time round, Woodring approached him. The old man continued his plodding circuit, mumbling his incantation, twirling his prayer wheel.

  Woodring began to grow impatient. Ten minutes ticked away. The demi-tints of false daylight were rapidly disappearing. At last Woodring saw a man walking slowly from the shrine who might be Quombi La. He was an impressive-looking man, tall, as broad-shouldered as Woodring himself, clothed in a magenta robe of flowered silk. His round, Mongoloid face was of a reddish tinge. Gold and turquoise glinted on his high, mitered headress.

  The man started towards Woodring, stopped, hesitated, then quickly retraced his steps and vanished again through a group of yellow-robed monks.

  Puzzled, Woodring followed to the edge of the compound, wondered if he dared penetrate the sacred precincts. As he was debating with himself, his glance was drawn by a flash of colour on the snowy Himalayan range. The first rays of the rising sun had caught the top of the world, kindling the morning mists to vivid flame. The magnificient slopes of Kinchenjunga glowed blood-red with the glory of dawn. Woodring smiled to himself as he remembered the bazaar superstition repeated by his Tamil bearer. Then he stiffened. His shoulders squared back.

  Something small and round and hard had been suddenly jammed against the middle of his spine.

  “I hope you will come quietly, Mr. Woodring,” said the polite voice of Deputy-Inspector Robbins behind him. “Because Inspector Prike should be frightfully provoked if I didn’t bring you in alive. He wants to ask you a few questions.”

  From the window of his hotel room, Inspector Prike could see the velvet back-drop of the Himalayas turn to crimson and brighten to amber as the new day burst from the shadows of Bhutan. He watched the rising tide of fog roll through the valleys of Nepal and Sikhim to smother the splendour of the dawn-tinted snows with a thick, jealous mantle. Then he poured himself another cup of tea.

  Inspector Prike’s tea contained a generous infusion of Armagnac. There was nothing like the gentle calm of the conscious, and the mild stimulation of the subconscious, induced by mellow old brandy, Prike found, when his voluntary mental processes persisted in futile efforts to link facts which refused to be linked. A dram or two of Armagnac very often brought some half-remembered fact out of cerebral obscurity into the light of logical association. He was trying to fit Alexander Blenn into the scheme of recent events, when Robbins entered with Paul Woodring.

  Prike extended his hand.

  “Sit down, Mr. Woodring,” he said. “My name is Prike.”

  Woodring remained standing. “I’ve heard of you, inspector,” he said, “through a friend of mine by the name of Lee Marvin.”

  “Oh, yes, Marvin,” Prike nodded. “That’s the young chap Deputy-Inspector Robbins wanted to hang for the murder of Harrison J. Hoyt during the last Diwali pooja … I asked Robbins to bring you in because there’s a gentleman in the next room who is very anxious to meet you.”

  Prike walked to a door, opened it.

  The Punjabi locksmith walked out, stared briefly at Woodring with his one glittering eye.

  “Yes,” said the Punjabi. “This is the sahib.”

  “Thank you,” said Prike. “You may go.”

  When the locksmith left Woodring sat down numbly. Prike too sat down at a small writing desk, busied himself with some papers. He seemed to forget Woodring until Robbins said:

  “He was armed, inspector. A .32 automatic. Here’s the number. You don’t mind, do you, inspector, if I take it out and fire it? We ought to compare the breech markings with the shell we found in Stiller’s flat, oughtn’t we?”

  “Was the young man carrying any other interesting souvenirs or mementos, Robbins?” Prike asked.

  “Just this chit,” the Deputy-Inspector replied. “It’s about this bloke Quombi La, and it looks to me like Alexander Blenn’s writing.”

  Prike reached for the paper. “Very well. Robbins,” he said. “You might go now and make your ballistic tests with Mr. Woodring’s pistol.”

  Robbins departed.

  “I fancy, Mr. Woodring,” Prike resumed, “that you’d like to deny you ever saw the Punjabi locksmith.”

  “Not at all,” said Woodring. “I saw him yesterday afternoon. He made a key for me.”

  “A key for Room 329?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you used this key, of course, to enter Room 329 sometime yesterday afternoon, did you not?”

  “No,” said Woodring.

  Prike leaned back in his chair, pressed the tips of his fingers together. “I should like to impress upon you,” he said, “that this conversation is strictly informal. I did not preface my questions with the usual warning that what you are about to say may be used against you. Because it can’t. You will notice that there are no corroborating witnesses, without which, hearsay evidence is not admissible in court. So you may speak freely.”

  “I am speaking freely,” Woodring insisted.

  “But you say you were not in room 329 yesterday?”

  “I didn’t say that. Because I was.”

  “Then you saw Dr. Adolf Feurmann?”

  “I saw Dr. Feurmann’s body,” said Woodring.

  Inspector Prike leaned forward tensely. “Why did you kill Feurmann?” he demanded.

  “I had no reason for killing Feurmann,” said Woodring. “I didn’t know him.”

  Prike relaxed. “Just a whim, I take it,” he said. “Like duplicating a key which you didn’t use.”

  “I didn’t deny I used the key,” Woodring protested. “I said I didn’t use it to enter Room 329. Because the door was open. I did use it to lock the door when I left the room.”

  “Do you realise that you’re making a damaging admission?”

  “Of course,” said Woodring, “I knew that my presence, however accidental, on the scene of a murder, would be hard to explain. That’s why I locked the door. I wanted to be elsewhere when the body was finally discovered.”

  “You have a peculiar habit of appearing … accidentally … on the scene of more than one murder, Mr. Woodring.” There was a cold, ominous, distinctness to Prike’s words. “Fingerprints show that you were in Basil Stiller’s room in Calcutta three nights ago.”

  “Three mornings ago,” Woodring corrected.

  “Was this before or after Stiller was killed?”

  “I don’t know what time Stiller was killed. I imagine I came afterward, because there was a pool of blood on the floor of the drawing-room.”

  Tiny points of light flashed in Prike’s gun-metal eyes as he said: “Is a pool of blood such an ordinary matter that you didn’t notify the police?”

  “I told Miss Ingram to notify the police. I was anxious not to be detained in Calcutta myself. I had important business in Darjeeling.”

  “So it would appear,” Prike said dryly. “Important business with Dr. Feurmann.”

 

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