Full Moon by Talbot Mundy Read Free Book Online

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?”
    “No. Where’s Chetusingh? They’d have killed me it they’d killed him.”
    “Murder,” she answered, “isn’t done in my house. Chetusingh isn’t here any
longer.” She began to unfasten his wrists, picking at the tight knots,
swearing at them, until the Chinese girl brought a knife. Warrender held out
his freed wrists for the girl to chafe. Her hands were strong, but so small
that he laughed and turned to Wu