“She’s in love with him,” declared Robbins categorically. “Or vice versa.”

  “But—have you any substantiation?”

  “My colleague,” said Inspector Prike, “has an uncanny talent for collecting evidence to substantiate even the most unlikely of his theories. He has proof, for instance, that Paul Woodring spent part of last night in Miss Ingram’s compartment.”

  “Well!” Hubertson’s mouth opened like that of a carp out of water. Slowly his lips closed in a thin, wistful smile. “After all, why not?” he continued. “Woodring is a handsome, virile-looking young man, and it’s no crime for him to be ambitious. Particularly since Ruth Ingram is a very pretty girl, in addition to being sole heir to the Blenn empire. Youth must be served, I suppose.”

  He leaned forward suddenly, extended his hand. “If I may, I think I’ll take one of your cheroots after all, inspector,” he said. “I rarely smoke, but—perhaps it’s the mountain air …”

  He settled back to watch the growing grandeur of the Himalayan scenery, wheeling past the windows. Across a huge chasm, tea was growing on many perpendicular acres: neat green plaid on a brown background of cleared land. On a ridge hundreds of feet below was a cluster of planter’s bungalows.

  “Well, well,” murmured Hubertson. He seemed to chuckle to himself as he said: “Woodring. Well, well.”

  Paul Woodring congratulated himself that he managed to find a compartment to himself in the toy train. The hill railway took more than five hours to climb the last fifty miles to Darjeeling, and, finding himself alone, he hoped to put in part of the time sleeping. He had not yet been able to adjust himself to his new schedule which seemed to call for twenty-four hours without closing his eyes. Last night had been slumberless again.

  The interlude with Emmet-Tansley and Dr. Feurmann had ended harmlessly enough, although it left him as much mystified as ever.

  It was with a feeling of relief that Woodring took his leave of the strange pair at three o’clock in the morning. He was walking briskly along the station platform when he felt a light touch on his arm. He turned and looked into the black, pock-marked face of Georges Clemenceau Malaswaram.

  “Memsahib with curly hairs and azure eyes is requiring Sahib’s presence,” the Tamil announced.

  Woodring was about to demand how the dickens the black youth had established contact with Ruth Ingram but he decided not to waste his time. He was coming to accept his self-engaged bearer’s omniscient qualities as a matter of course.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll go there.”

  “Shall perhaps transfer Sahib’s bedding?”

  “No. Leave it where it is.”

  Woodring found Ruth Ingram strangely calm. He didn’t know why, but he had half-expected to find her in a dither of anxiety. Instead she merely told him that at the last station, Santahar, she had gone with Inspector Prike to verify the original of Blenn’s telegram and had found it to be in her uncle’s handwriting. She seemed only mildly interested in what had happened to Woodring.

  Ruth Ingram talked quietly as she lay on her berth, propped up on one elbow. Woodring talked nervously, perched uneasily on the edge of the seat opposite, smoking cigarettes in dizzy succession.

  As dawn approached, the conversation fell off. There were long lapses, filled only by the monotonous click of the rails beneath the north-bound Mail. Woodring found himself enjoying the comparative calm, as he sat back and watched the relaxed, self-composed girl stretched out before him. She had grown tremendously in stature since he first met her, only two mornings ago … Or was it two years? Time was hurtling ahead in such mad disorder.

  “I want you to promise me,” he said suddenly, “that when you get to Darjeeling, you won’t go to the Himalayan Grand.”

  “Why?” Ruth asked.

  “Because if things start happening, that’s probably where they’ll happen.”

  “You don’t seem to realise,” the girl said, “that I’m making this trip just to be of help to Uncle Alex if trouble should come up.”

  “I’ll send for you if you can be of any help,” Woodring said. “You’d better go to the Woodlands.”

  “And if I want to get in touch with you?”

  “You can reach me at Cotton-tree Lodge. That’s a little boarding house near the bazaar,” he said, quoting from the Darjeeling guide book he had been consulting. “And I think it would be best if we didn’t see each other for at least twenty-four hours.”

  “All right. I’ll go to the Woodlands,” the girl said. She smoked a cigarette. Then, as daylight began to streak the window shutters, she went to sleep.

  Woodring tried to sleep, but it was uncomfortable, sitting up. He dozed fitfully, awoke at each lurch of the train, at every scream of the steel-flanged wheels against the rails. He was out of the compartment at Silliguri before Ruth Ingram was awake.

  Woodring found solitude finally as the miniature cars crawled steadily along the steep, wooded slopes of the Himalayas. He did not, however, find rest. As the train gained altitude, he experienced a rare stimulation. The very atmosphere, clear of the damp, irritating mugginess of the hot plains, roused him. The unbelievable ruggedness of the terrain left him staring breathlessly across terrifying gullies at tiny villages clinging precariously to the mountainside, with ladder-like vegetable gardens growing in narrow ledges scraped into the face of a cliff. The people along the way fascinated him, too. They were different from the bare-footed, slow-moving Hindus of the sun-baked plains he had just left. There were dirty-nosed, rosy-cheeked children with almond eyes. There were men and women with round Mongoloid faces; hardy Bhutia men with fur caps and coloured felt boots; Nepali women with gold discs as big as saucers hanging from their ears, and heavy barbaric necklaces of red and gold. Woodring was so engrossed in the abrupt change of the character of the country that he scarcely noticed the door of his compartment open while the train was standing in the station of Kurseong. The man was inside and had closed the door before Woodring was aware of his presence.

  “I hope I’m not intruding,” said the man.

  “You are,” replied Woodring quickly. He had recognised the stranger instantly. The dissipated, aristocratic mien, the leathery pouches under the eyes, told him that when the man took off his topi his dark, smoothly slicked hair would contain a long, silvery-white lock. It was the man Woodring had seen leaning from a car window, in furtive conversation with Leda Carmaine at Ranaghat station.

  The stranger was not at all insulted by Woodring’s curt rebuff. He smiled blandly, sat down, and crossed his legs—very carefully, so as not to spoil the creases in his tussah silk trousers.

  “It’s a small world, isn’t it?” said Woodring.

  “My name, said the stranger, “is Count Vaznilko.”

  “I still think it’s a small world,” said Woodring.

  The loose lips of Count Vaznilko parted in a short laugh. “You are frank,” he said. “I admire frankness. But you will have to bear with me until the next station.”

  “What do you want?” asked Woodring bluntly.

  “I was merely anxious to meet you,” said the Count. “I have heard so much about you.”

  Woodring did not reply.

  “Your name,” pursued the Count, “is Woodring. You are going to Darjeeling on a most foolhardy errand.”

  “Perhaps,” Woodring agreed.

  “I have a proposition that will interest you.”

  “I’m not easily interested.”

  “Wouldn’t fifty thousand rupees interest you?”

  At last Woodring turned from the window. Count Vaznilko’s puffy eyes, half-closed, watched him, with an expression of feline cunning.

  “No,” said Woodring.

  “Seventy-five thousand. Allright. A lakh.”

  “On whose behalf,” asked Woodring, “are you so carelessly offering a hundred thousand rupees to a stranger?”

  “On my own,” said Count Vaznilko. “I am a collector of rare photographs. You have a little gem which I need to make my collection complete. Because of its rarity and—ah—its artistic merit, I am willing to pay rather dearly for it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. You are an agent for Alexander Blenn. And knowing Mr. Blenn, I am certain that my offer will appear most magnanimous in comparison to what he is paying you. Therefore you may expect me at three o’clock this afternoon. The money will be in currency. I shall come to your room at the Himalayan Grand.”

  “I’m not stopping at the Grand.”

  “I am,” said Count Vaznilko. “So you may come to my room, if you prefer.”

  Woodring looked out the window again. The train was creeping through the single street of a little village—twenty brown wooden huts with roofs made of hammered-out oil tins, houses huddled so close to the railway that Woodring could almost reach out and take a package of cigarettes from the shelves of an open shop backed up against nothingness.

  “Well?” said Count Vaznilko.

  “This is a fascinating country,” said Woodring. “You look between the houses, expecting to see a street, and find yourself staring into empty space.”

  “You’re being very silly, Woodring. I’m offering you an important sum for something I have definitely decided to possess. You perhaps are not aware what it means to refuse me.”

  “Look at that fog swirling up from below,” said Woodring. “See how suddenly it blots out those trees. Deodars, aren’t they? Cardboard trees …”

  “I don’t believe in violence, Woodring!” Count Vaznilko was becoming impatient. “I am from an old family of diplomats. I believe that reasonable men can settle their differences without bloodshed. However, unreasonable stubbornness—”

  “Did you say you were getting down at Ghoom, Count?” Woodring broke in. “We seem to be coming to the station. Highest point of the railway, I understand; seventy-four hundred feet. I heard they make very fine kukris here. They say you can decapitate a man with one, Count. Why don’t you buy one?”

  The fussy little engine ground to a stop. Woodring opened the door. Stocky, almond-eyed Gurkhas crowded up to the compartment, holding out heavy murderous-looking curved knives and thick leather scabbards. But there was no more threat of homicide in the gleam of Gurkha steel than there was in the fierce glare in the eyes of Count Vaznilko. Without a word the Count stalked out, his silence eloquent, the slamming of the door a peroration.

  Woodring felt distinctly uneasy as the train coasted gently down the last four miles to its destination.

  Darjeeling, Town of the Thunderbolt, snuggles against the breast of a wooded spur jutting from the north wall of the Outer Himalayas. It has every reason to snuggle, for the overpowering immensity of its setting is enough to cow the most egotistical of cities. Its red-roofed villas and white bazaars cling to the very rim of the world, a steep majestic mile above the tumbling green waters of the Great Runjit River. The gaze of its inhabitants is perpetually lost in tremendous spaces, in great heights and depths.

  Woodring remained inside his compartment until most of the passengers had left the train. He watched a truck go by, laden with mail pouches, and reflected that they probably contained the precious envelope addressed to John Mapleleaf. Then he collected his luggage and his bearer, and took a pony tonga to Cotton-tree Lodge.

  Cotton-tree Lodge was a sprawling collection of cottages, pervaded by a faint odour of garlic and presided over by a fat, swarthy Italian inn-keeper and his scrawny, swarthy Eurasian wife. Here Woodring established himself under his true identity, left Georges Clemenceau Malaswaram squatting outside his room, and started for the Himalayan Grand Hotel to become John Mapleleaf. He was still in the compound of the boarding house when his Tamil bearer caught up with him.

  “Pardon, Sahib,” said the black youth, “but there is small pecuniary matter of nine rupees, fourteen annas, six pie …”

  “Yes? What for?”

  “Was obliged to advance said sum to self for train ticket to this place,” said the Tamil coyly.

  “All right. Here.” Woodring peeled off a ten-rupee note. “Now you’re to stay right here until I come back. That understood?”

  “Quite, Sahib. Thank you, Sahib.”

  Woodring hurried to the nearby bazaar, pushed his way, through the crowds haggling with the garishly dressed market women over mounds of purple onions and scarlet peppers, mountains of tea and rice heaped on the cloth-covered ground. He found a small shop run by a Tibetan woman with a huge turquoise-studded silver breast plate hanging around her neck, and bought a cheap leather suitcase. He hired a Lepcha coolie to carry the bag and follow him to the Himalayan Grand Hotel.

  “Room with bath, sir?” the reception clerk inquired.

  “Yes,” said Woodring.

  The clerk opened the big guest book, turned it around to face Woodring, handed him a pen. As Woodring reached for the pen, his eyes rapidly scanned the names of recent arrivals. He read the signatures of L. M. Prike, Stanley Hubertson, Leda Carmaine, Count Boris Vaznilko, Henry Emmet-Tansley. Automatically he dipped the pen in ink, but he did not sign. His hand remained poised above the page, as though paralysed. Cold fingers of dismay gripped his viscera. He stared.

  Near the bottom of the page, written in stiff, angular script, was the name: “John Mapleleaf!”

  “Just write your name please, sir,” said the clerk.

  “Yes, of course,” Woodring dipped the pen in ink again, but was still too stunned to invent another name. He said, “I was surprised, looking over your register to see that a friend of mine is stopping here. That is, I suppose he’s the man I know. This Mr. John Mapleleaf—is he a rather large man with a florid complexion?”

  “I couldn’t really say, sir,” said the clerk deferentially. “You see, I just came on duty five minutes ago, and these last arrivals must have come by the Mail. I was having my tiffin then, sir, and the relief clerk was on duty. I can give you a very nice room on the north side, sir, with a view of the snows.”

  “You haven’t a room adjoining my friend, Mr. Mapleleaf, have you?”

  “Not adjoining, no sir.” The clerk was consulting the records. “Mr. Mapleleaf is in 329. I can give you a room on the same floor, but down the corridor, sir.”

  “All right, if that’s the best you can do.” Woodring’s pen was still poised above the page. He was trying to think of a name that might suggest to the Nawab’s envoy that he, and not the name immediately above, was the man to be consulted. It seemed hopeless, though, with his stolen alias already on the register. He scrawled, R. Ingram, Calcutta,” and asked: “Do you know if Mr. Mapleleaf is in his room now?”

  “I fancy he is, sir. His key isn’t on the rack,” said the clerk. “Shall I send a chokra up to see?”

  “Don’t bother,” said Woodring. “I’ll surprise him.”

  A page boy picked up Woodring’s suitcase, seemed mildly surprised by its lightness. Woodring followed him a few steps, then turned back.

  “By the way, are there any letters for Mr. Maple-leaf?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” the clerk replied. “To-day’s dak just arrived from Calcutta by the Mail at 12.15. Letters won’t be distributed until late this afternoon, sir.”

  Woodring nodded. He followed the page boy to his room on the third floor. As soon as he was alone, he locked his empty suitcase in the room, made his way down the hall to No. 329.

  For a long ten seconds, Woodring stood motionless in front of the door of 329. He could almost hear his own heart beat as he told himself that he was separated by only a thin panel of wood from the man who had usurped the alias of John Mapleleaf, one of the men, who Blenn had warned him, “won’t stop at murder.” His right hand slipped into his pocket for the comforting touch of gun-metal—metal that was refreshingly cool, now that he had escaped the burning heat of the plains. His left hand rapped on the door.

  He waited. When there was no response, he knocked again. Still no answer. He wondered if he could possibly have misunderstood Alexander Blenn, if Blenn might have said that it was the Nawab’s man who would register under the name of John Mapleleaf. No, he was certain he had not misunderstood. He had a photographic recollection of the whole scene. He could see that look of deadly despair in Blenn’s eyes, hear the nervous jingling of the whisky decanter against the glass. He could remember every hollow intonation of Blenn’s voice saying: “Go directly to the Himalayan Grand Hotel and register under the name of John Mapleleaf … The Nawab’s envoy has instructions to call on John Mapleleaf at the Himalayan Grand. Wait for him.” Perhaps then, Blenn had confused matters, had given him garbled instructions. This was not likely, however. Blenn’s mind was working with its usual steel-die clarity, even though his nerves were demoralised by fear. No, it was more likely that the instructions were accurate, that they had miscarried by sinister design. Unless …

  Yes, perhaps that was it. Perhaps there had been a change of plans and Blenn himself had come to Darjeeling, had registered under the name of John Mapleleaf. Blenn had certainly been bound for Darjeeling, if he had telegraphed from Santahar.

  “Mr. Blenn,” Woodring called softly, as he knocked again on the door. “Mr. Blenn. This is Mapleleaf.”

  Again he waited. There was no sound from within Room 329.

  Well, Woodring’s course was now clear. Two matters demanded urgent attention. First, he must intercept that vital envelope addressed to John Maple-leaf. That had been a stupid thing to do, entrust the document and the film to the mails. Or perhaps it hadn’t been stupid. If he hadn’t done so, Basil Stiller would have stolen them—and Basil Stiller’s murderer. Whereas now, Woodring still had a chance. He had a chance, according to the reception clerk, until late that afternoon, or early evening. In the meantime he must determine the identity of the man in Room 329.

  Woodring hurried downstairs, left the hotel, walked back to the bazaar. He watched tallow-like buffalo butter being wrapped in plantain leaves, priced odorous goat’s-milk cheeses, examined gaudy jewellery from Bhutan and striped skirts from Tibet. He prowled among booths and looked under awnings until he found what he wanted: beeswax.

 

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