E. Hoffmann Price's War and Western Action Page 6

  Slade was thinking, “I’d pretty nearly fall for that myself,” when Yasmini screamed. Three turbaned men, tall and bearded, came from the darkness of the passageway which led from the front. Whether they’d got in by bribery, or trickery, or breaking the lock, it made no difference: they were there, and moving without speech. Knives would speak for them. If these were the men who had been trailing Kellam, their mission seemed as good as accomplished.

  Danger, however, tightened Kellam and sobered him. Warned, he whirled, and so quickly that his response knocked Yasmini sprawling into the shrubbery along the wall. He was big, and quick, and now that he faced only men and not boredom, he was himself again.

  He got one good swing with the chair he had snatched in turning. His weapon, however, was too heavy, and while he knocked one of the raiders rolling across the flagstones, the others bored in, since his guard was open. He let go the chair, and would have darted back to grab the wine bottle, a far handier bludgeon; but the edge of the garden rug tripped him enough to break his stride, so that now he had to face the enemy empty handed. Desperate, he lunged, getting under, and tricking the blades before they could shift.

  All this happened in the sliver of time which Slade needed to hurdle the parapet, and drop into the court. He rolled, scrambled to regain his balance. His yell startled the raiders, giving Kellam an instant’s respite, which was prolonged by Shir Dil’s shout. Slade drew his curved dagger and darted in.

  The blade bit a long trace. A back hand jab of the pommel knocked out a handful of teeth. In the snarling scuffle, he kicked someone in the stomach. And then Shir Dil, calling on Allah to witness the folly of fools, pounced into the fray.

  The intruders, being quick thinkers, ran before they could be whittled down. The one Kellam had flattened was able to join the scramble. Yasmini, making the most of the confusion, raced for the inner rooms. A bar slammed into place, and then another. In a matter of seconds, Slade and Shir Dil faced each other, with Captain Kellam lying between them.

  Slade bent over the unconscious officer. “Not cut much. Bet I kicked him by mistake.”

  Shir Dil was interested mainly in a wallet lying on the tiles. The initials, S.K., in saw-pierced gold letters, identified it; and as the old Pathan reached for the loot, Slade caught his wrist. “Not this time, my friend! I’m looking into it.”

  He struck a match, and flipped the wallet open. One of the cellophane windows protected a color photo of a red-haired girl wearing a green play suit. “Lucky she couldn’t see him tonight,” Slade grumbled, and for a moment considered himself several sorts of a fool for going out of his way to get Kellam back in line. Slade knew the red-haired girl, and liked her. He always had.

  Shir Dil exclaimed, “By God! That’s the new American woman, the one at McLeans Hotel.”

  “The devil it is! You sure?”

  “Aywah! The way she shows the teeth when smiling.” Shir Dil struck a match, squinted, and added, triumphantly, “Yes, and she came from the cinema wearing one of those dresses with the top cut off.” He rolled his eyes. “Clearly the same woman!”

  Slade had no further hope that the observing Shir Dil could be wrong. Then he was glad that Diane Crawford had come to Peshawar. She’d be a valuable ally in getting Kellam back on the beam. Second thought gave him time to decide that she’d stick, instead of making things worse by turning against Kellam because of the scandalous yarns she couldn’t have helped hearing in the Cantonment, that bit of old England, two miles west of the native city.

  “Let’s hustle this fellow out of here before those monkeys get help and come back to finish it,” Slade said to Shir Dil. “Give a hand.”

  In front, they found an army sedan, with an enlisted man asleep at the wheel. After bundling Kellam into the back seat, Slade shook the soldier. “Wake up, dope!” he commanded. “Your skipper’s out cold, and cut up a bit, damn lucky he’s not finished.”

  “Uh—um—what—”

  “Get rolling, soldier!” Slade commanded, and the man obeyed, though still too groggy to realize that he was apparently taking orders from a native.

  As the car roared out of the quarter, Shir Dil said, “Now go back to talk to Yasmini; she will talk, she got hell scared out of her.”

  Slade shook his head. “Kellam’s the guy I’m talking to, as soon as I get shed of the fancy clothes. You know, a turban has its points, Kellam’d’ve cracked that fellow’s skull if it hadn’t been wrapped up so carefully.”

  “Talk to Yasmini,” Shir Dil persisted.

  “Help yourself, then! I can find my way alone.”

  He watched Shir Dil swagger back to the Kashmiri girl’s house. After a moment of wondering how reliable the old man was, he decided that whether bent on business or sociability, Shir Dil’s notions could not do any damage. The brief masquerade had given him such a start that he needed no further undercover tricks; he now knew all he needed to know about Steve Kellam. It was all too dear why there was no discipline in the captain’s outfit; the officer was to blame, not the men.

  CHAPTER III

  Slade, deciding against seeing Kellam that night, had postponed his visit until the following day; but once inside the barbed-wire enclosure of the depot, he lost no time in cornering Kellam in the orderly room and giving the substance of Mr. Bowley’s remarks. The captain flared up, “So I’m condemned on hearsay! I’d like to see him keep these hoodlums in line.”

  “G.I.s,” Slade contended dryly, “are pretty much like their officers.”

  Kellam’s sandy brows bristled, and his ruddy face darkened. He was red-eyed from not enough sleep, and too much drink. He’d become puffy about the jaws; his cheeks twitched perceptibly. And, having the shakes, he took the aggressive by thrusting his chair back and getting on his feet. “I’d like to see you keep this outfit in line!” he challenged. “You try it!”

  “Steady, fellow.” Slade wagged his hand, palm toward the square-faced captain. “You’re lucky I asked for this, instead of letting someone else handle the chore.”

  “You asked for the chance?”

  “Sure I did. To give you whatever breaks I could.”

  Kellam relaxed, and quit fingering his desk pen. But after a moment of scowling at the blotter, he looked up to say, “I’m not asking favors.”

  “Way you’ve been cutting up, you’ll need some!” Slade told him, and sharply. “You’re lucky not to be under arrest right now. Fooling around with native women is all right if you simply must, but you had to pick the most notorious one in the lousiest quarter of Peshawar, and on top of it, you had to have one of your men drive you out to her dump, and leave a government car parked in front to advertise that that’s where officers play. Yasmini’s dynamite—break away from her.”

  Kellam’s mouth sagged, making him look slack and stupid for a moment. Then he retorted, “Nobody’s business how I spend my time off duty! They’ve left me to rot in this hell’s hole, guarding, inventorying, reporting in quadruplicate, quintuplicate, sextuplicate and ad infinitumcate that truck and airplane parts are available in such and such quantity. God in heaven, they’ve always been available, and what for? But they remember I’m alive the minute I find—find—”

  “Find the girl of your dreams! She’s made you famous all over the native town.”

  “So what?”

  “You’re an officer and a gentleman. Which is to say, you’re not supposed to make a public spectacle of yourself. Anyway, Yasmini is a side-line. Bowley’s gripe about the way your company cuts up is what I’ve come to settle. Have you sent Yasmini’s baggage back to her, or is it still stored with government equipment?”

  Kellam’s eyes widened. “See all, hear all, know all!”

  “That’s only the half of it. You and she had a wrangle last night as soon as you showed you had sense enough to want to get her junk out of this depot. You nearly got your gizzard sliced out by three Pathans that
got into her house, somehow or other. Your doings aren’t as private and personal as you think they are.”

  This set Kellam frowning and groping for a new line of defense. “Check my accounts,” he demanded. “Take inventory. Discipline—all right, that’s all shot, and maybe I’ve not been such a fine example, though they’re all fed up and no example would do any good.”

  “If you were suspected of dishonesty,” Slade retorted, evenly, “I’d not be here talking. You’d be relieved of command, and maybe under arrest to boot. Let’s look around the depot.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  The captain changed his mind about protesting. They went out to inspect the blocks of warehouses crammed with supplies which no one needed. After an hour of the dreary business, Slade said, “This makes a chump of the needle in the haystack. Where is Yasmini’s stuff?”

  “In Warehouse No. 12. Why?”

  “I want to look at it. Get a pinch bar.” Kellam eyed him. “What makes you think we’ll need one?”

  Slade chuckled. “You must be pretty groggy from the going over you got last night! Only way to hide the stuff would be in an arms chest or the like, or those chaps who cut the wire would’ve made it good and grabbed the loot. But in chests—well, try and pick which one!”

  Kellam got a pinch bar, and regarded it so thoughtfully that Slade began to wonder. He’d seen homesick soldiers do some odd things. But all Kellam said, when he finally spoke, was, “Funny she’d tell you all about it.”

  “Nothing’s funny in Peshawar.”

  In Warehouse No. 12, Slade watched Kellam set to work.. Wood splintered. Nails squealed. Lifting the lid uncovered a layer of compactly folded Kashmir shawls the like of which had not been woven for many years.

  There was a small Boukhara camel-bag whose fine weave and garnet-red made it fit for a Mogul prince. The scent of jasmine and rose and sandalwood billowed into the superheated air of the tin-roofed building.

  “Let’s see some more.”

  Kellam obeyed. He took out a rug perhaps five by nine. Slade had once seen its like, in a dignitary’s palace in Kurdistan. There was no mistaking that deep red from the dye-pots of Herat, nor the tawny gold, nor the solemn green, nor that Persian blue whose secret had died three centuries ago. Slade almost exclaimed, but restrained himself, and remarked, “Neat, but thread-bare. Jewelry, eh?”

  “Dancing girl’s junk,” Kellam said, sourly, as he took out a few pieces.

  The anklets and the bracelets, the collars, the pendants, they were massive enough to be just what the captain had called them; but there was something unusual about the stones set in the trinkets. The cutting was the work of ancient lapidaries; the colors caught Slade’s eye.

  He began to understand Yasmini’s fear of looters, and he was no longer puzzled by the raid on her house. He licked the dust and the spicy scent from his lips, and then said, “Ok, pack it up.”

  Kellam fingered a velvet hood solidly embroidered with pearls too large not to be genuine; but they had lost their “orient,” though they might still come back to life if the right woman wore them, rethreaded, and against her skin.

  “She’d rattle like a junk wagon if she put on half of this at one time,” Slade remarked, and Kellam agreed.

  “There’s another chest,” he added.

  “Skip it. My throat’s so dusty you could plant spuds in it. Let’s get a drink while we talk about your next move.”

  “Can do.” Kellam looked better. He asked, hopefully, “If you put in a high powered report, I’d be relieved from duty and sent home?”

  Slade, remembering the red-haired girl who had come all the way to Peshawar, wanted to wrap Kellam around one of the warehouse columns.

  “You stay here, and do your job. You mean to say you don’t know Diane Crawford’s in town?”

  “Good God! You mean that? How long?”

  “Saw her, didn’t speak to her. Didn’t want to, not with this chore on my hands. Lucky, she didn’t recognize me,” Slade improvised. “Damn odd she didn’t get in touch with you before now.”

  Kellam gulped. “Maybe she tried. I—ah—”

  “Skip it, I don’t give a hoot where you were the past couple days, and I’m not guessing aloud. Cook up a yarn she can swallow and stick around white man’s quarters.

  “Ten to one, she knows you’re on the pan, and she’s all for you. Or else she’d not come to this hell’s hole.”

  Kellam groaned. “With her father military attaché in Kabul, she’d hear about me almost as soon as you!”

  “Sooner,” Slade answered, grimly. “War’s been over too long for people to keep their traps shut. And people like to peddle dirt to anyone who’d be hurt from hearing it. One of my superiors in Washington tells his wife the juicy story about the cockeyed captain, she tells a girlfriend, the girlfriend needles Diane to make her squirm. So, Diane wangles transportation somehow or other, regardless of conditions in India.”

  Kellam spent some moments staring at the floor. Slade turned his back, to let him think things out. These were important minutes. He hoped he’d use them to the best advantage.

  Kellam finally said, “Before I get in touch with Diane, let’s get that junk off the reservation.”

  “Good idea. And then sell your men discipline. They’ll stand to heel as soon as they see that you’re settling down to business.”

  Kellam, however, was still troubled. “How about joining me and Diane at dinner at the hotel, tonight?”

  “I’d be butting in. After all, she may not have come to Peshawar to snap you out of it.”

  “But if she has,” Kellam argued, “your being there would convince her that everything is under control.”

  “Do it that way, then,” Slade agreed. “See you for cocktails. And here’s luck.”

  CHAPTER IV

  “He’ll be here any minute now,” Slade told Diane Crawford for the twentieth time, and tried to keep from glancing over his shoulder to get a glimpse of Kellam. When she didn’t answer, he beckoned for a waiter to bring another round of Martinis to join those which were on the table, warm and untasted.

  “It’s an hour after retreat,” she said, finally. “What in the world, Dave!”

  Her upper lip was drawn tight enough to hide the three teeth which usually showed just enough to make her seem always on the point of smiling. Diane’s eyes, striking because they were brown instead of the blue or green which her white skin and copper colored hair made one expect, had become so intense that Slade borrowed not only her impatience, but also a premonition of trouble.

  “I’ll phone,” he suggested, uneasily.

  She caught his arm. “No, no, don’t! He’ll be here any minute.”

  They studied each other; and whatever she read in Slade’s face, it made her say, “Then it’s worse than I heard.”

  “He was all right when I saw him this morning.”

  Weighing his words, she sensed the evasion. “How long’ve you actually been in Peshawar?”

  “Probably as long as you have—”

  Without another word, he got up to phone the depot. When he came back, she said, “No answer?”

  He shook his head. “Man on duty said Steve drove to Malakand to pick up an AWOL. You’d better go to your room and relax,” he advised, “and have dinner sent up later.”

  But he didn’t get rid of her so easily. Before he could make his break, she had him by the arm. “You’re a liar, Dave,” she said, in a fierce whisper. “Something’s wrong! Where’s Malakand?”

  “Gateway to the Wali of Swat’s territory.”

  “Please! Skip the gags! Something is wrong, badly wrong, or he’d not keep me waiting this way.”

  She was twisting the diamond on her finger; Kellam’s ring. Slade had wondered how many times she’d mentally taken it off, during the past two
hours, “There is a Wali of Swat,” he told her. “He isn’t a gag. He gets a cash allowance for not raising hell or letting anyone else kick the gong around in the Chitral country. The Wali—”

  “Stop or I’ll scream! You’re trying to hide something.”

  He plucked vainly at the fingers which dug into his arm. “I’m looking into this. You sit tight.”

  “I’m going, too. You can’t pry me loose.”

  His quick move caught her off guard. He broke free. From twice arm’s length he said, “I’m going where you can’t possibly go. Be a good girl, it’s bad enough as it is.”

  He darted into and across the lobby. Once in his hired car, he let out a sigh and mopped his forehead. Then, to Shir Dil, “Out to the supply depot, and step on it.”

  Shir Dil had booted enough trucks across the rocky deserts of Iraq to make short work of the Peshwar plain. As they neared the sprawl of warehouses enclosed in barbed-wire outlined by electric lights, Slade shouted above the roar and rattle of the car, “Ease up! There may be a sentry tending to business.”

  A spotlight blazed.

  “Take it easy!” Slade repeated.

  Shir Dil grinned, but didn’t finish his wisecrack. A rifle whacked. A star-shaped pattern rayed the windshield. He cut the wheel, and jammed the brakes, kicking up a protective screen of dust. Before the sedan was fairly halted, the old fellow was diving for the dirt, and cursing in several languages.

  “Halt! Who’s there?”

  “Friend.”

  “Advance one, to be recognized.”

  Slade went forward with his hands in the air. The spotlight blinded him. He could not see the sentry, but judging from the second “Halt!” given at six paces, the man was strictly military.

  “Hold it till I call the corporal.” This after some seconds of study. “Why the hell didn’t you pull up when I sounded off? Who the hell you think you are? You Limeys are getting too high ranking.”

  A corporal showed up, and then the sergeant of the guard. The latter, after looking at Slade’s identification papers, was skeptical. “Major, my hat! Where’s your uniform?”