Adventure Magazine Cover, October 30, 1924 — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

I1I2 the lama moved on again and disappeared through a gate under an arch in a barrack- like building; the gate was pulled shut after it by some one on the inside. Yergny IT WAS a four-square courtyard, NCS dazzlingly white, paved with ancient stones, surrounded on three sides by a cloister supported on wooden posts, on to «which tall, narrow doors opened at unequal intervals. There was no attempt at orna- ment, but the place had a sort of stern dig- nity and looked as if it might originally have been a khan for northern travelers. The windows on the walls above the cloister roof were all shuttered with slatted blinds, and there were no human beings in evidence except Samding, Maitraya and the Tibetan who had opened the carriage door; but there were sounds of many voices coming from the shuttered window of a room that opened on the cloister. Samding stood still, facing Ommony, silent, presumably waiting for the message he was to take. Ommony spoke in Urdu: “Is this our destination? Or do we go elsewhere from here?”’ ‘“‘Here—until tomorrow or the next day,” said the quiet voice. “Do you know your way about Delhi? (an you find your way to Benjamin, the Jew’s, in the Chandni Chowk? Will you take this handkerchief of mine and go to Benjamin’s, where you will find a very big dog. Show the handkerchief to the dog, and let her smell it. She will follow you to this place.” Samding smiled engagingly but incom- prehensibly; the smile seemed to portend something. “Speak louder,” he suggested, as if he were deaf and had not heard the message. Ommony raised his voice almost to a shout; he was irritated by the enigmatic smile. His words as he repeated what he had said, echoed under the cloister—and were answered by a deep-throated bay he could have recognized from among the chorus of a dog pound. A door in the cloister that stood ajar flew wide, and Diana came bounding out like a crazy thing, yelping and squealing delight to see her master, almost knocking him down and smelling him all over from head to foot to make sure it was really he inside the unaccustomed garments. And a moment later Dawa Tsering strode out Adventure through the same door, knife and all, blink- ing at the sunlight, looking half-ashamed. Ommony quieted Diana, stared sharply at Dawa Tsering and turned to question Samding. The chela was gone. Ommony just caught sight of his back as he vanished through a door under the cloister, twenty feet away. He questioned the Tibetan, using Prakrit, but the man appeared not to understand him. Dawa Tsering strolled closer, grinning, trying to appear self- confident. ‘“‘O Gupta Rao,” he began. But Ommony turned his back. ‘Do you know where we are?” he asked Maitraya. “Certainly. This is where my troupe was to assemble. Let us hope they are all here and that the Jew has delivered the costumes.”’ “O you, Gupta Rao,” Dawa Tsering in- sisted, laying a heavy hand on Ommony’s shoulder from behind to call attention to himself, “listen to me. That dog of yours is certainly a devil, and the Jew is a worse devil, and that man there—” he pointed at the Tibetan— “‘is the father of them both! You had not left the Jew’s store longer than a man would need to scratch himself, when that fellow entered and talked with the Jew. “T also talked with the Jew; I bade him supply me with garments according to your command, and two pairs of blankets and a good, heavy yak-hair cloak; and there were certain other things I saw that I became aware I needed. But the Jew said that this fellow had brought word that you had changed your mind regarding me, and that I was to go elsewhere with him. I gave him the lie. I told him who was father of them both, and what their end would be, and they said many things. ‘So I helped myself to a yak-hair cloak, a good one, and lo, I have it with me; and I also picked out one pair of blankets of a sort such as are not to be had in Spiti; and with those and the cloak and some trifles I en- cumbered myself, so that neither hand was free. “And while I was looking to see what else was important to a man of your standing and my needs, lo, the Jew took the socks you had left behind and gave them to this rascal; and the son of unforgivable offenses showed them to the dog, who forthwith followed him, notwithstanding that I called her many names. He led her out of the C© inn Giool nn)