Adventure Magazine Cover — page 61: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Om CHAPTER II NUMBER ONE OF THE SECRET SERVICE He who would understand the Plains must ascend the Eternal Hills, where a man’s eyes scan Infinity. But he who would make use of understanding must descend on to the Plains, where Past and Future meet and men have need of him—F¥rom the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup. Gory did go straight to McGregor; but he and Diana, his enormous wolf- hound, walked and club bets had to be called off because there was no cab-driver from whom the chuprasst* could bludgeon information. Neither his nor Diana’s temper was im- proved by the behavior of the crowd. The dog’s size and apparent ferocity cleared a course, but that convenience was not so pleasant as the manners of twenty years ago, when men made way for an English- man without hesitation—without dreaming of doing anything else. The thrice breathed air of Delhi gave him melancholia. It was not agreeable to see men spit with calculated insolence. The heat made the sweat drip from his beard on to the bosom of a new silk shirt. The smell of overcivilized, unnaturally clothed human beings was nauseating. By the time he reached an ugly, rawly new administration building he felt about as sweetly reasonable as a dog with hydrophobia, and was tired, with feet accustomed to the softness, and ears used to the silence, of long jungle lanes. However, his spirits rose as he approached the steps. .He may have made a signal, because the moment the chuprasst saw him he straightened himself suddenly and ran before him, up-stairs and along a corridor. By the time Ommony reached a door with no name on it, at the far end of the building, the chuprasst was waiting to open it—had already done the announcing—had already seen a said-to-be important personage shown out with scant excuses through an- other door. The chuprassi’s salaam was that of a worshiper of secrets, to a man who knows secrets and can keep them; there is no more marrow-deep obeisance in the world than that. And now no ceremony. The office door clicked softly with a spring lock and shut out the world that bows and scrapes. to hide its enmity and spits to disguise self-con- scious meanness. A man sat at a desk and grinned. * Uniformed doorkeeper 99 “Sit. Smoke. Take your coat off. Sun in your eyes? ‘Try the other chair. Dog need water? Give her some out of the filter. Now = John McGregor passed cigars and turned his back toward a laden desk. He was a middle-sized, middle-aged man with snow- white air in a crisp mass that would have been curly if he had let it grow long enough. His white mustache made him look older than his years, but his skin was young and reddish, although that again was offset by crow’s feet at the corners of noticeably dark- gray eyes. His hands looked like a con- jurer’s; he could do anything with them, even to keeping them perfectly still. “So you’ve actually turned in your resig- nation? We grow!” he remarked, laughing. “Everything grows—except me; I’m in the same old rut. I'll get the ax—get pen- sioned some day—dreadful fate! have your interview with Jenkins? What happened? I can see you had the best of it —but howe” Ommony laid three letters on the desk— purple ink on faded paper in a woman’s handwriting. McGregor laughed aloud— one bark, like the cry of a fox that scents its quarry on the fluke of a changing wind. “‘Perfect!”? he remarked, picking up the letters and beginning to read the top one. “Did you blackmail him?”’ “T did “T could have saved you that trouble, you know. I could have ‘broke’ him. He deserves it,’”’ said McGregor, knitting his brows over the letter in his hand. ‘‘Man, man, he certainly deserves it!” © “Tf we all got our deserts the world ’ud stand still.” Ommony chose a cigar and bit the end off. ‘“He’s a more than half- efficient bureaucrat. Let India suck him dry and spew him forth presently to end his days at Surbiton or Cheltenham.” McGregor went on reading, helding his breath. “Have you read these?’ he asked sud- denly. Ommony nodded. McGregor chewed at his mustache and made noises with his teeth that brought Diana’s ears up, cocked alertly. ‘‘Man, they’re pitiful! Imagine a brute like Jenkins having such a hold on any one— and he—good God! He ought to have been hanged—no, that’s too good for him! I suppose there’s no human law that covers such a case.” cComiclbool Did you © ©