Om: The Secret of Ahbor Valley. Talbot Mundy

on earth do you mean?" asked Ommony.

      "So I suspected Marmaduke—naturally. But all sorts of dates and circumstances turned up quite casually, which eliminated him. I was at Tilgaun a whole month before I was quite sure that Miss Sanburn is not a mother. I was almost disappointed! She is such a dear—I admire her so much—that it would have given me a selfish satisfaction to know such an abysmal secret, and to keep it even on a deathbed! However, the child is not hers. She calls her an adopted daughter, though I doubt that there are any legal papers. The girl is white. She's about twenty. The strangest part is this: that the girl disappears at intervals."

      "This is all news to me," said Ommony. "Mac said something, but—"

      "It isn't news, you iconoclast! It's a most romantic mystery. The girl was there when I arrived. She wouldn't have been; but you know what a business it is to get to Tilgaun. I was supposed to wait for ponies and servants from the mission; they didn't come, and as there was a party of rajah's people going, I traveled with them. They were in a hurry, so I reached the mission quite a number of days before I was expected, and I met the girl on the far side of the rope bridge just before you reach Tilgaun—you remember the place? There's a low steep cliff with only a narrow passage leading out of it. She was sitting there nursing a twisted ankle—nothing serious—but she couldn't get away without my seeing her; and of course it never entered my head to suspect that she would want to avoid me. She told me her name was Elsa."

      "That was my sister's name," remarked Ommony, who had an old -fashioned way of growing sentimental when that name cropped up among intimates.

      "I lent her a spare pony and she rode up to the mission with me. Jolly—she was the jolliest girl I have ever seen, all laughter and intelligence—with strange sudden fits of demureness—or perhaps that isn't the right word. Freeze isn't the right word either. She would suddenly lapse into silence and her face would grow absolutely calm—not expressionless, but calm—like a Chinese girl's. It was as if she were two distinct and separate women. But she's white. I watched her fingernails."

      "Might be Chinese," Ommony suggested. "They're given to laughter, and their fingernails don't show the dark lunula when they're pressed. Hannah Sanburn receives all comers at the mission."

      "I am certain she is English," Mrs. Cornock-Campbell answered. "But as far as I could judge she speaks Tibetan and several dialects perfectly. Her English hasn't a trace of Chi-chi accent. She has been wonderfully educated. She has art in every fiber of her being—plays the piano fairly well—mostly her own compositions, and you may believe me or not, they're fit to be played by a master. And she draws perfectly, from memory. That night at supper, and afterward, she talked incessantly and kept on illustrating what she meant by drawing on sheets of paper—wonderful things—not caricatures—snap-shots of people and things she had seen. Wait; I've kept some of them. Let me show you."

      She found a portfolio and laid it on Ommony's lap. He turned over sheet after sheet of pencil drawings that seemed to have caught motion in the act—yaks, camels, oxen, Tibetan men and women taken in mid-smile, old monastery doorways, flowers—done swiftly and with humor. There was a sureness of touch that men work lifetimes to achieve; and there was a quality that almost nobody in this age has achieved—a sort of spirit of antiquity, as simple as it was indefinable in words. It was as if the artist knew that things are never what they seem, but was translating what she saw of things' origins into modern terms that could be understood. The drawings were of yesterday, clothed in the garments of today and looking forward to tomorrow.

      "She seemed to see right through you," Mrs. Cornock-Campbell went on. "I don't believe the smartest man in the world could fool that girl. She has the something within that men instinctively recognize and don't try to take liberties with. She seemed equally familiar with Tibetan and European thought, as well as life, and to know all the country to the northward. I gathered she had been to Lhassa, which seems incredible, but she spoke of it as if she knew the very street-stones, and you'll see there are sketches of bits of Lhassa in that portfolio—notice the portrait of the Dalai-Lama and the sketch of the southern gate.

      "And all the while the girl talked Miss Sanburn seemed as proud and as uncomfortable as a martyr at the stake! When Elsa began to talk of Lhassa I thought Miss Sanburn would burst with anxiety; you could see she was on the perpetual point of cautioning her not to be indiscreet, but she restrained herself with a forced smile that made me simply love her. I know Miss Sanburn was in agonies of terror all the time.

      "When Elsa had gone to bed—that was long after midnight—I asked Miss Sanburn what her surname was. She hesitated for about thirty seconds, looking at me—"

      "I know how she looked," said Ommony. "Like a fighting-man with a heartache. That look has often puzzled me. What did she say?"

      "She said: 'Mrs. Cornock-Campbell, it was not intended you should meet Elsa. She is my adopted daughter. There are reasons—.' And of course at that I interrupted. I assured her I don't pry into people's secrets. She asked me whether I would mind not discussing what little I already knew. She said: 'I'm sorry I can't explain, but it is important that Elsa's very existence should be known to as few people as possible, especially in India.' Of course, I promised, but she agreed to a reservation that I might mention having met the girl, if anything I could say should seem likely to quiet inquisitive people. And that was a good thing, because I had no sooner returned to Delhi than John McGregor came to dinner and asked me pointedly whether I had seen any mysterious young woman at Tilgaun. I think John intended to investigate her with his staff of experts in—what is the right word, John?"

      "Worm's-eye views," said McGregor. "Not all the king's horses nor all the king's men could have called me off, as you did with a smile and a glass of Madeira. Thus are governments corrupted."

      "So you're the second individual to whom I have opened my lips about it," said Mrs. Cornock-Campbell, not exactly watching Ommony, but missing none of his expression, which was of dawning comprehension.

      "I'm beginning to understand about a hundred things," he said musingly. "You'd think, though, Hannah would have told me."

      Mrs. Cornock-Campbell smiled at John McGregor. "Didn't you know he'd say just that! Wake up, Cottswold! This isn't church! It's because you're her closest friend that you're the last person in the world she would tell. She's a woman!"

      Then there were noises in the garden and Diana left off dreaming on the bearskin to growl like an earthquake.

      "An acquaintance of mine," said Ommony. "If you can endure the smell, please let him in. Or we might try the veranda."

      Diana had to be forcibly suppressed. The butler, a Goanese (which means that he had oddly assorted fears, as well as a mixed ancestry and cross-bred notions of convention, that were skin deep and as hard as onyx) had to be rebuked for near-rebellion. And Dawa Tsering, with his neck swathed in weirdly-smelling cloth, had to be given a mat to sit on, lest he spoil the carpet. It needed that setting to make plain how innocent of cleanliness his clothes were; and his reek was of underground donkey stables, with some sort of chemical added. (There were reasons, connected with possible eavesdroppers, why the deep veranda was unsuitable.)

      "And the knife, Ommonee?" he asked, squatting cross-legged, admiring the room. "Is this thy house? Thou art a rich man! I think I will be thy servant for a while. Is the woman thy wife? It is not good to be a woman's servant. Besides, I am a poor hand at obedience. Nay, return me my knife and I will go."

      "Not yet," said Ommony, studying by which roundabout route it might be easiest to elicit information. He decided on the sympathetic-personal. The man's neck had plainly received attention, but the subject served. "Shall I get a doctor for your neck?"

      "Nay, Tsiang Samdup made magic and put leeches on it and some stuff that burned. Lo, I recover."

      "You mean the holy Lama Tsiang Samdup? The Ringding Gelong Lama? He who was at Chutter Chand's this afternoon?"

      Ommony knew quite well whom he meant, but he wanted to convey the information to the others without putting the Hillman on guard. By the look in the Hillman's eye, his mood was talkative —boastful—a reaction from the failure of the afternoon.