3
Serpents of tobacco smoke writhed in the room where Euan Kerth and the young District Agent had been talking since dinner; spiraled about the two tanned faces and dissolved, as if by magic, leaving a thin grayish haze.
"... If anyone else had told me that, Euan Kerth," said the young officer, breaking a long silence, "I wouldn't believe it!... And they're in those sacks! No wonder you wanted a dozen Gurkhas to guard 'em! Gad! Of course I'll lend you an escort! Why, if it were learned that we had 'em, here in this house, we'd be murdered before midnight! But go on, man, finish your story."
Kerth resumed. The golden roofs of Lhakang-gompa lived in his words; Shingtse-lunpo, with its maze of whitewashed houses. Another long silence followed when he finished. The serpents of smoke still crawled and lolled in the air. Cavendish spoke.
"Kerth, I wonder—" He broke off; the lonely hungering in his eyes was clouded by an expression of bewilderment. He cleared his throat; laughed. "Of course, it can't be so, but.... Well, about six months ago an old lama was sick in the Jong. They brought him to me, on a litter, just before he died—at his request. He told me something queer. He said that Lhassa was no longer the political center of Tibet, and that the man in the Potala was not the Dalai Lama, but a priest posing as the Dalai Lama. He said the real Dalai Lama was in another monastery—somewhere toward Mongolia—that there...." Again he broke off; laughed. "But of course there can't be anything to it."
And Euan Kerth, his face dimmed by the smoke from his cheroot, smiled his satanic smile.
"No, of course," he repeated, "there can't be anything to it."
[1] In Tibet it is the custom to deliver the dead to a sect of professional body-hackers, who, in turn, feed the remains to the dogs and vultures. Thus merit is acquired by the family of the deceased.