E. Hoffmann Price's War and Western Action Page 24

  When Daoud returned, two lean and wiry Arabs followed him. One had a copper brazier and goatskin bellows. The other had iron tongs. These household implements implied that Marouf and Ali cooked their meals somewhere in the rear; that they kept day and night watch, taking turns.

  Instead of going to their homes or to loqandas to eat, and thus laying themselves open to native curiosity, the two watchmen never stirred from the supposedly abandoned wakkala and the house which abutted it.

  But their faces told Rayne that they were not preparing to cook coffee or grill mutton.

  “If you had given your superiors any real information, they would have raided Kassim’s place, and then this place,” said Daoud Pasha. “I am giving you just one chance to keep from being buried in a dry well.”

  “Thanks,” Rayne retorted, ironically. “Allah will reward you.”

  “You must convince your superiors that you have so far discovered nothing, but that you have a clue. Which perhaps you have.”

  “Turn me loose and I’ll tell them just that,” said Rayne.

  Daoud Pasha scowled.

  “You will not be so witty when Ali and Marouf set to work.” He turned to his men. “Get busy, now!”

  CHAPTER VI

  A Desperate Chance

  The Arabs squatted by the brazier. One slopped a bit of kerosene from the lamp bowl, and struck a match. The other pumped the bellows, first gently, so as not to extinguish the yellow flame which rose from the charcoal. Then, as the black chunks began to glow, he increased the force of the air blast.

  Sparks showered. The glare presently overwhelmed the murky light of the lamp. Tongues of blue flame rose from the incandescent heap in whose center the tongs were thrust.

  “You’ll write your message,” Daoud Pasha said to Mike Rayne, raising his voice above the evil hissing and creaking of the bellows. “Either now, or after we’ve cooled some iron on your hide. You will say you have gone to Alexandria to watch a suspect.”

  Once he had written a message to throw his imaginary superiors off the trail, Rayne knew he would be murdered.

  His hands were tied behind him. Furthermore the odds were five to one, and then there was the pasha’s ready pistol. The machine shop beyond the Nile seemed a long way off, now. So also did his grandmother’s house in the Zeitoon Quarter.

  Rayne regretted a tactical error on his part.

  He had gone too far in convincing Daoud Pasha that he, Rayne, had been playing a lone hand. Though the pasha could hardly suspect Rayne of being certain the missing tank parts were only a few yards away, the earlier bluff, teaming up with circumstance, had shaped itself into a trap. The pasha believed Rayne could disappear without any danger of being traced.

  “Let me think this over for a minute,” Daoud Pasha said, and moved back toward the bench.

  Ali gleamed with sweat as he pumped the bellows. Marouf took the tongs from the heap of glowing coals. The metal shot out white sparks. Waves of heat billowed toward Rayne. The small room had become stifling. Daoud Pasha and Kassim stood there, eyeing him. Musa, somewhat apart, was blank faced, perhaps in his mind already enjoying the promotion and pay which the hot tempered official had, after relenting, promised him.

  Marouf approached, slowly, bringing the iron nearer.

  “Effendi, we ought to tie him first,” he suggested.

  “Wallah!” the pasha exclaimed, as though he had forgotten such trifles. “Of course.”

  Part of the buildup—the preliminary terror to crack the victim’s will. Rayne knew this, and also he had no chance against such odds. Yet he resisted when they seized him.

  He writhed and kicked and twisted until booting and sheer weight won out for the Egyptians. Four men did the job, while Daoud Pasha stood by, polishing his rings on his coat sleeve. Not until the men had lashed him to a bench, did Rayne appear to wilt. To Daoud Pasha the beating and mauling had been enough to crack any man’s spirit, even without threats of the red hot iron.

  “Wait, effendi!” Rayne howled, as though in abject terror. “Don’t let him touch me. I’ll write it. Untie me. Let me sit up and give me a drink.”

  Rayne made his act good. His life depended on it and, besides, he did not need to pretend fear. So he babbled with terror. The pasha nodded. Ali and Marouf removed the bonds, and yanked Rayne upright. The act ticked like clockwork. The pasha looked pleased. Then Rayne went on with the desperate plan he had conceived.

  “My hands and wrists are numb. How can I write?”

  “Try and see.” Daoud Pasha took a pen and notebook from his pocket. “And no trickery, no codes either.”

  “Who is going to deliver the message.”

  “A detail I shall handle,” the pasha reassured him.

  Rayne took the pen and paper. Then, for a moment, he wondered if his hysteria had been convincing for the official had drawn his pistol and stepped back a little.

  Closing his eyes as if dazed, Rayne fumbled, opened them and gazed blankly about. He rose, mopped his forehead with his sleeve. Then like some half animated dummy, laid the pen and paper on the bench. The Egyptians regarded him with contempt. Apparently terror had cracked him more completely than they had expected.

  Rayne took off his jacket, and muttered about the heat. Then, after dropping it on the floor, he decided to pick it up out of the dirt.

  Now that their task of intimidation had ended, the Arabs had moved away from the blistering heat of the brazier. Daoud Pasha lowered his pistol. In another instant he might even have pocketed it, but Rayne was not gambling on that possibility. He preferred that weapon to be within sight and reach.

  Clutching the jacket Rayne went into action. Leaping forward he seized the glowing brazier before a man of the group sensed what he meant to do.

  The coat muffled his hands. There was the stench of burning wool. Then, despite the penetrating heat, Rayne spun in an arc, showering red coals and ashes as he whirled.

  A fiery cascade showered the barefooted Arabs. It sifted down into their loose garments. Glowing fragments peppered Daoud Pasha’s face and hands.

  He was not a good shot, and the startling counter-attack made him jerk the trigger. The bullet went wild.

  Rayne let go the hot brazier. It hurtled straight for Kassim, who yelled and bounded to one side. This maneuver knocked the pasha off balance.

  The floor became carpeted with red hot flame. Rayne, making the most of the confusion, snatched the tongs. He ignored the howling Arabs, whose every step brought their bare feet down on chunks of glowing coal. They danced about like fleas on a stove lid. Rayne darted for Daoud Pasha who, trying to scramble to his feet, tried at the same time to shoot.

  He made a bad job of both. Rayne smashed down on his wrist with the hot tongs, knocking the pistol from his grasp. Next Rayne jumped back to face Kassim, who was drawing a knife.

  The restaurant keeper did not like the still glowing jaws of the tongs. He hesitated, bounded for the door.

  In the courtyard, the Arabs screeched and shed their smoldering garments. Rayne charged for Kassim, combining escape with vengeance. Out of the side of his eye, he saw Musa, the jailer, lunge for the pasha’s pistol. Already the room was roaring with fire. The lamp, kicked over, had spilled its oil on the floor.

  It was Musa’s move for the pistol which saved Kassim. As the fat man raced down the alley, Rayne halted and spun about to heave his tongs at the man with the gun.

  Too late!

  “O son of many pigs,” shouted Musa. “This is my day.” Then the weapon commenced to explode.

  But Musa did not fire at Rayne. He was pouring lead into the official who, perhaps an hour previous, had tried to cut him down. Daoud Pasha dropped.

  “Stop it, you fool!” Rayne yelled.

  Musa straightened up, eyes blazing. “There are too many pashas like him. I was afraid until now. Then I saw you, and by Allah
, I am your protector.”

  “Give me that gun,” Rayne demanded, walking back. Without waiting for obedience, he twisted the weapon from the man’s hand. “Now turn in a fire alarm.”

  The blaze did not yet bar him from the court. So Rayne, pistol in hand, raced through the room to the rear. By the light which reached into the paved space, he saw Ali and Marouf clambering over the wall. And beyond the further archway, Rayne learned his suspicions had been well grounded.

  He was looking into a barn-like warehouse loaded with crates and cases. The stenciling on the nearest told the story: they had been consigned to the S. S. Iron King.

  So long as the wakkala did not go up in smoke, the shipload of spare parts would after all help roll Rommel back into the desert.

  Rayne retraced his steps. His first act was to examine Daoud Pasha’s wounds. They were not serious. Next, Rayne dragged the man out of the blazing room. That done, he raced to a telephone. It was about time to speak to Colonel Mitchell.

  A fire company was on the job before Rayne got in touch with the colonel. “There are two American sailors in the Saiyida Zaynab jail,” Rayne told the officer. “They were framed. While I was trying to help them, I located the missing spare parts.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, sir. Near the Soudan Bazaar. You can’t miss the place. There’s a fire, half the town’s turned out, and Daoud Pasha was shot up by some native who had a grudge against him.”

  “I’ll be blasted,” the colonel exclaimed. Then asked and received the remaining details. “I thought you were going to see your grandmother?”

  “That’s where I’m going now, Colonel,” Rayne replied. “If you think that you will be able to spare me for another day.”

  NAVIGATION SIMPLIFIED

  Originally appeared in Short Stories, May 25th 1943.

  Tarrant was solid, deeply tanned, and clear eyed. For a beachcomber, Jim Tarrant was certainly presentable, and the hard-drinking Netherlanders of Pulau Besar seemed to have hit upon the answer: “That home-made arrak would gag anyone, he takes just enough of it to get him to the point of feeling damn good and sorry for himself. What he needs is something to do and to worry about.”

  And now the entire settlement had plenty to worry about; so much so that they ignored Tarrant, who had warned them. He began to wish he had left with his friends, the Malay fishermen, during the night. Being ignored made him sorry for himself, as usual.

  Jan Dekker, the posthouder, said to the twenty-odd men who sat on the counters and on packing cases, “When the stock of trade goods is gone, we either have to leave or else be sure we can defend ourselves for the duration.”

  Adolph Maartens brushed back his shock of sandy hair and laughed sourly as he faced the lean and leathery posthouder. He gestured at the shelves, and included the storerooms, and the bales of rattan which the kinky-haired head hunters had brought from the interior.

  “If my stock is all there is between us and hell, I think we had better start swimming.”

  A hatchet-faced Australian asked his comrade, “What’s he saying? It doesn’t sound good.” His companion, who had a better command of Netherlands, interpreted, adding, “He’s bloody well right. When Malays start slipping out, it’s time to follow suit.”

  Maartens turned and picked Tarrant from the farther side of the group. “If this draft dodger or fugitive or whatever he is had let us know—” Tarrant reddened, and took two steps forward.

  “I didn’t know they were leaving so suddenly.”

  The storekeeper snorted. “Probably not, or you’d gone with them. Or wouldn’t they have you?”

  “Ali asked me,” the American snorted. “I had my chance.”

  Jan Dekker, representing what law and government remained in that isolated reach of the Indies, raised a lean hand. “Never mind blame or argument! We could not—let me say, we would not have seized their boats.” His fierce eyes gleamed beneath white brows; his shifting glance nailed the key men of the little settlement. “Those days are gone. Even if Mynheer Tarrant had been sober enough to notify us, we would not have seized any Malay boats. Now let us have something constructive.”

  “Guvnor, why in hell don’t you suggest something? You’re the posthouder,” Sims, the red-headed Australian demanded.

  Dekker smiled enough to relieve the hardness of his uncompromising mouth. “First I listen to you, to all of you, before I tell you what is to be done.”

  He heard patiently the blend of panic, ill-timed defiance, impracticable schemes of defense against the beetle-browed Papuan head hunters of the interior. And Jim Tarrant knew that his draft dodger’s paradise had become a mirage.

  Pulau Besar, midway between the Jap-infested Moluccas and Jap-occupied Timor, had for several years sheltered him, and even after Pearl Harbor, the island was a cozy haven. Tarrant had a grudge against the government, his own government, which, as he saw things, had sold him down the river. So, in this outlying bit of the Indies, which Jap cruisers and bombers considered unworthy of their attention, Tarrant had coddled his grudge and his self pity.

  Until the Japs swooped down on Java and Timor and Sumatra, a K.P.M. steamer called once every eight weeks to pick up tortoise shell, agag-agar, rattan and trepang. It brought mail, and supplies and trade goods—calico, knives, fish hooks, stick tobacco for barter with the wild Papuans of the interior. And now, with shelves almost depleted, the trading post proprietor could not bargain with the savages when they came to town.

  “Don’t barter with the bloody beggars!” the Australian prospectors decided; an idea whose English expression most of the Netherlander understood, or had already phrased in their own language. “Just close the place.”

  All eyes centered on the posthouder. Dekker said, “The steamer has missed two calls! Since the Malays could not help us, they left so as not to see our end. The only hope is that the Papuan brain—” He made a cutting gesture with right index finger against left thumb. “About this size, or a little smaller—will take a while to grasp the point.”

  A guffaw greeted this first cheering bit. Even Tarrant chuckled, and the missionary moved over toward him, to make him feel somewhat more like a white man. But Dekker, like so many of his nation, was a realist and not a wish thinker. He added, “Do not forget, gentlemen, that what a Papuan lacks in brains, he makes up in animal instinct.”

  Tarrant cleared his throat, and took an uncertain step forward. The missionary’s implied friendliness smoothed some of the awkwardness of the start: “We can build a boat and make for Australia.”

  Someone made a derisive sound. Dekker however interposed, “We are less concerned with a man’s past than we are with his future. Mr. Tarrant, can you navigate?”

  “I came from the Philippines in a Buginese prahu. Between us, we can piece together enough navigation to get us to Port Darwin.”

  Albeit risky, that sounded reasonable enough, until the posthouder learned that not another man of the group had even Tarrant’s skimpy knowledge. “Don’t worry too much, men, and don’t get your families excited. Before we can face the perils of the sea, we’ll first have to survive what comes from the land.”

  A battered prahu, abandoned by the Malays, served as a model; the jungle offered trees large enough, and there were sufficient hand tools. Dekker, at once admitting the wisdom of making a large dug-out according to the proportions of the model, told the men of the settlement, “We could risk ribs and planks and perhaps get something which would be seaworthy. And again, we might not. Unless Yut Li and Ah Wong have blueprints for a junk, we follow Malay design.”

  Since the two Chinese merchants had no suggestions, a tree was felled and manhandled to the beach.

  Anthropologists claim that certain primitive races cannot count higher than five, others no more than ten, with twenty as the upper limit; but the shock headed Papuans, regardless of theories, had a clear concept of fifty-six, f
or on the day when the steamer should have anchored out in the bay, the knotty muscled savages arrived from the interior to trade.

  Dekker, not being an anthropologist, was prepared. Tarpaulins and empty cases concealed the partly shaped hull on the beach, and on the face of things, Pulau Besar was normal. Everyone, however, had blistered palms, and whoever owned a pistol carried it in his pocket.

  Though the aborigines were odorous enough, Tarrant could also smell trouble. There was a new gleam in those cunning little Papuan eyes. The thick lips had an insolent twist, and the flaring nostrils twitched as though they had half-scented a change in the white settlement. Someone muttered, “Naturally, they miss the Malays. That’s a dead giveaway.”

  Dekker was in his official bungalow. Yut Li and Ah Wong were in their little shops. Luden, the missionary, waited as usual in the dispensary behind the church. But the half-dozen women and children were in the old blockhouse.

  With not a radio in operation for some months, the white settlement had lost all touch with the world. When the K.P.M. steamer for the third time missed her scheduled stop, it was clear that something had gone wrong all the way from Sumatra to Timor, and that the fall of Singapore had been only the beginning of calamity. Where the absence of bombers and cruisers had made the war an unreality to Tarrant, the long continued absence of the interisland steamer began to bring the conflict closer. And now, watching the clucking savages crowd into the trading post, he realized for the first time that law had left the Indies.

  True, their stone axes and their carved clubs were at the fringe of the jungle, along with the spears tipped with cassowary bone; they still obeyed the law which, in terms of their logic, was a taboo proclaimed centuries ago by Jan Dekker’s predecessors, and terribly enforced by soldiers and gun-bearing ships. Though they suspected that the power backing the taboo had faded, they still lacked the courage to test their suspicion. They wanted hatchets, they wanted knives, they wanted canned goods. Maartens, bluff and hearty, told them that the steamer, arriving ahead off time and leaving early, had left only calico and tobacco, and very little of either. “And how about some mirrors?”