Full Moon by Talbot Mundy Read Free Book Online Page A

Tu.
    “You do it.”
    He sat beside her on the divan, setting his teeth because movement brought
surges of pain to his head. Wu Tu chafed his wrists and ordered ice, which
the Chinese girl brought in the crystal bowl and applied skilfully. Then, at
a glance from Wu Tu, the Chinese girl carried out the lacquered table, in
which the poisoned dagger was sticking upright, and brought in a silvered
brazier from which there oozed an erotic symphony of blended
perfume—soundless music that lazed on the air, half-visible as green
gray smoke. She washed the blood then from Warrender’s forehead.
    “Better now?” Wu Tu asked him.
    He reached over her lap, took the knife that she had laid beside her on
the divan and, without glancing at it, sent it spinning through the open door
beyond the screen.
    “Much better,” he answered.
    “Then listen—”
    He interrupted. “Tell me what you know of Frensham.”
    She looked straight in his eyes. “Blair—better make friends with me,
hadn’t you? You’re a fool if you don’t. You can’t make trouble for me. All
you have had from me is first aid, after coming here disguised and getting
into a brawl. Line up all my little widows if you like and see what they say! Two or three of them might even lodge a claim against you,
for hitting them when you were drunk. Could you deny it? What would you say
to the magistrate?”
    Blair recalled instructions: “Walk straight into the trap and use your
wits!” His wits suggested that it might be wise to walk in looking not too
confident. He sat silent, letting his face express a medley of emotions. Wu
Tu talked on:
    “People don’t love the police. And I have influence. If you were publicly
charged with a drunken assault in my house, could you keep it quiet? Half a
million Indians would seize that opportunity to make a scandal and to be more
bitter than ever against the British. Your commissioner would let you be a
scapegoat. And then what?”
    “What do you suggest?” he asked after a moment.
    “Let us be friends, you and I. I will make you famous!”
    It went against the grain to nibble that bait, but he did it. “Will you
tell me about Frensham?”
    “Yes! You think that perhaps I know. Perhaps I do know. Little widows
learn big secrets—sometimes. That is why I have them.”
    “Where’s Chetusingh?” he asked suddenly.
    “Hah! You saw him leave my house with a police pass! How should I know
where he went? And what if Chetusingh is my man? Eh? What of it? Didn’t he
turn Christian? Can’t he turn a coat again? I could afford to buy a thousand
of him!”
    “Well—what of Frensham?”
    “If I show you how to find him—if I give you that pig Zaman Ali to
hang, and all his riff-raff with him—are we friends, you and I?”
    She lay back on the cushions, inbreathing the perfumed smoke. Her eyes
were excited. Her limbs, that were really tensely still, stole movement from
the fan-blown silk of her clothing. Even the whirring of the electric fan
contributed something to the sensuous effect; and through the open door
behind the screen came slow strains of half-smothered music. The trap was
plain enough. And Blair’s head ached. Wu Tu knew that, so he closed his
eyes—lay back lazily, dreading a prick from a poisoned
dagger—drugs—perhaps chloroform—glad that his head ached,
since it helped him cling to consciousness.
    The Chinese girl approached in silence, watched him for interminable
seconds, and then laid cunningly sensitive hands on his temples and over his
eyes. If that was meant to hypnotise him, she was out of luck. It had the
opposite effect; it stirred alertness; it was even rather difficult to sham
sleep. Wu Tu leaned over him, perfumed, adding some kind of movement that did
have a calming effect, but the Chinese girl’s hands were an irritant. Between
their united efforts he was as fully awake as he ever had been in his
life.
    “Blair!” Wu Tu leaned over him, breath to