The Good Old Stuff (21 page)

I should have felt alarmed, at least disturbed. I didn’t. It was direct action, the first concrete thing that had happened. All the rest was supposition. Whatever happened, I would learn something. The gloves were off; the knife was out.

I waited an hour before I heard a sound at the door. When the lock clicked, I jumped up. My ankle hurt from where they had tightened the rope across the scar that hid the silver plate.

The door opened and O’Dell walked in, closely followed by one of the men who had carried me up the stairs. O’Dell grinned and the native shut the door and stood leaning against it, his arms folded.

“We meet again, Mr. Garry. Let me commend your persistence. You’ve been stubborn, but not particularly intelligent. We won’t keep you long. Just a little favor you can do us.” I didn’t answer. He reached into his white jacket pocket and brought out a piece of Galle Face Hotel stationery. He handed it to me and I took it. It was blank. “I see you have a pen there, Garry. I’m sorry there’s no table in this guest room. Just sit down there on the floor and write a note to the American consul authorizing them to turn over to the bearer the envelope you left there. One of the men on our payroll is a clerk there. He told me of the envelope.”

He stood, fat, smiling, and confident. He wore a white jacket, shorts, and high white wool socks. He acted like a man soliciting subscriptions for the Chamber of Commerce.

“And suppose that I don’t. Suppose I say that when you have the envelope I’ll be drowned or run over or have some other kind of accident.”

“My dear boy, I’m not underrating you. Of course you’ll have an accident, but I guarantee that you’ll die easily. It will inconvenience us if we have to force you to sign. You may be familiar with the water cure? We suspend you by your heels and fill your belly with water from a stirrup pump, under pressure. When you’re close to bursting, we stop pumping. Then a couple of husky men beat on your abdomen with broom handles. The odd thing about it is that people generally stay conscious. Then you’ll write the note.”

For the first time, I felt the chill gnawing of fear. I’m no dauntless character. I hate to be hurt. Pain frightens me. Pain in any form. He didn’t seem ill at ease or feel that he was speaking melodrama. He was as factual as a man describing with gusto how he had played the seventeenth hole.

“Give me a little time to think. An hour.” I lifted my hands
a bit and made them shake. He glanced down, and I saw him smile as he saw the quiver.

“We can do that, Garry. And don’t feel too badly. This thing is bigger than you or me. You almost interfered with the New Co-Prosperity Sphere for Southeast Asia, if that’s any consolation. You and that weakling woman and that blabbering servant. And Christoff too, if that’s any help.”

He turned around and the native opened the door for him. Then, to my disappointment, the native closed the door again, remaining on the inside. Once again I heard the lock click.

I walked over to the far side of the small room and stared at the heavy brown chest of the man. He was a brute. I remembered the rough hands slapping my clothes, feeling for the outlines of a weapon which I didn’t have. I had to trick him in some way. The barred window offered the only possible escape. I stood near it and tried to think. I knew that my precious minutes were fading away.

I made my actions furtive. I reached a hand cautiously into my inside jacket pocket. I didn’t look at the man. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him move slightly. I brought my hand out of the jacket pocket with my fingers bunched as though I was holding something small like a pill. I popped the imaginary pill into my mouth and then fell back against the wall, clutching my throat. I slid down the wall as he started toward me, making a horrid bubbling noise in my throat. I rolled my eyes up and held my breath, stiffening my body. He hurried over and leaned over me, his eyes wide in his coarse face. I knew that in a matter of seconds he would turn and hammer on the door. With every ounce of power in my left leg, I kicked up hard against his poised jaw. The force of the kick numbed my toes. It lifted him off his feet and he went over backwards, his head thumping on the floor. I scrambled onto him and hit him twice before I realized that it was unnecessary. He was completely out, the heavy bone of his jaw crushed near the point of his chin.

I hurriedly inspected the window. The bars were about a half inch in diameter and about five inches apart. There were five of them set vertically across the window. The ends were imbedded in a wooden sill, but it looked as though they went on through the wooden sill and into the concrete. I braced my
feet on the wall and yanked at one with all the power of my back. It gave a little, but not enough. I examined it from the side and saw that I’d bent the bar slightly. Untempered metal, possibly wrought iron. That gave me the idea I needed. I took off my heavy leather belt and fastened it so that it enclosed three of the bars. I needed something sturdy to use as a lever. There was no furniture in the room to break up. The only thing I could think of to use was my shoe. I wear a twelve A, and I like heavy soles. I slipped one off and inserted it into the belt. Then, with one hand on the heel and the other on the toe, I twisted it around, tightening it like a tourniquet. At first there was no result. The shoe merely became harder to turn. Then I noticed that the bar on the right seemed to be bending. I twisted harder. It bent over until it nearly touched the bar next to it. Then, with a splintering of wood, it pulled free from the frame on the bottom. Bending it had shortened its effective length, so that it had pulled out of the concrete until only the wood was holding it. I grabbed the bottom and pulled up. It pulled free at the top. The hole that it left looked big enough to slip through, but I couldn’t take a chance on getting stuck. By using the free bar as a lever, I bent the bars on either side of the orifice. I was lucky that the bars were the usual Colombo burglar insurance, rather than a special set for the purposes of the group that I had run into.

I slid through feet first and then grabbed the bars and let myself down until I was hanging full length against the side of the building. I nudged myself away from the rough plaster with my knee and let go. I dropped onto the ground so hard that I slammed my chin against my own knee.

I didn’t waste time looking around. I hobbled toward the high wall. It was at a level with the top of my head and made with broken glass set into the cement on top of it. I tore off my jacket and threw it over the glass. Then I caught the edge and drew myself up. I missed the extra leverage of the fingers I had lost. The glass bit through the jacket and into the flesh of my hands. I dropped over the wall and snatched the jacket. In front of me was a wide field with a house on the far side of it. To the right across another small field was the familiar
road. I ran toward it as fast as I could. My bad ankle seemed to be getting more painful by the second.

I pulled the jacket on and hurried away from the club. I stood on the corner until an idling rickshaw coolie sauntered along. He speeded up when I shouted. A few seconds later he was running with me toward the Galle Face Hotel. I sat on the black leather seat, breathing heavily and inspecting the cuts on my hands. I made the promise that Mr. O’Dell would be paid back in the same coin with exorbitant interest.

My jacket was ragged and my hands were bloody when I walked through the lobby of the hotel. I went on up to my room and phoned Kaymark. After I told him two sentences, he told me that he’d come over immediately. I bandaged my hands clumsily and had the boy get me a deep basin of cold water in which I could soak my ankle.

Peter arrived in five minutes. After I finished the story, he sat, looking shaken, and said, “We’ll have to get back over there, Garry. Right away.”

“How about picking up a bunch of your people? I can charge them with enough to sew them up for years.”

He shook his head. “Not necessary. You don’t realize how the British Army rates out here. They wouldn’t dare try anything with me. Besides, I have this.” He slid the butt of a heavy automatic partway out of his tunic pocket and then let it drop back. “Any time you feel well enough to go.…”

We were in a taxi headed for the January Club within a matter of minutes. As we pulled up in front, he said, “Now let me handle it. Don’t talk.”

We walked in, and again the boy was expressionless. Peter asked for O’Dell and was told that he could be found in the cocktail room. Peter walked ahead and I limped after him. I hadn’t seen the cocktail room before. It was in the rear of the building, beyond the dining room. It opened out into the garden. O’Dell was sitting hunched at a table near the open doors. He looked up with a wry smile when we walked in.

There were three extra chairs at his table. We were far enough from the bar so that low voices couldn’t be heard by the bartender.

“You’re off games, O’Dell,” Peter said as we sat down.

“Just a little joke, Peter. Afraid this American beggar might take it too seriously.”

“It’s more than that. You’re going to have to do a lot of talking. You’re all tied together. You and Van Hosen, Conny, Wend. Conny’s death and the death of the boy who used to be on the door. It’s all got to be explained.”

“Not by me, son. I’m just a bystander. Don’t know a thing.”

I interrupted. “One thing you should have known, O’Deil, is that I’m too stubborn to talk, no matter what you tried to do. You should have seen that.”

O’Deil looked at Peter, his mouth sullen. “Then what’s the bloody use of bringing—” I was looking at him. I saw his eyes widen. I turned toward Peter just as the heavy automatic banged. The noise of the shot was deafening in the still room. There was a crash of glassware from the direction of the bar.

I looked back at O’Deil. The slug had caught him flush in the center of his upper lip, turning his mouth into a bloody hole. I could see bits of his shattered teeth. He seemed to clutch the edge of the table for a second, then his eyes seemed to look far beyond us. He bent slowly over to the left and his huge body thumped onto the floor, overturning both his chair and the table. We got up. Peter looked older and very tired.

He turned to me and saw the question in my eyes. “Couldn’t take a chance, Garry. Saw him tighten up and knew he was going to try something.” I recalled the immense size and vitality of the man. Once under way, he would have been hard to stop. When the table had gone over, O’Dell’s drink had crashed to the floor. The spattering liquid had spotted Peter’s trousers. He slid the automatic back into the side pocket of his tunic and took out his handkerchief. He bent over and carefully blotted the spots. Attracted by the noise of the shot, half a dozen servants had hurried into the cocktail lounge. They stood ten feet away and gazed with wide eyes at the dead hulk of the retired planter.

The head boy stepped forward and said, “Kaymark master wishes me to call the police?”

“No, Ratmani. I’ll do it.” He turned to me. “Better stay by the body while I use the telephone. The boys might take his money if we both stayed away long enough.”

I upended the fallen chair as he strolled out. I pulled it over to one side and sat where I could see the corpse without having to turn my head. The room was very still. The man was dead, and yet there were small movements from the corpse—the crackle of starched whites as the body settled, the rumble of gases in the abdomen. Fresh corpses will sometimes give the impression of life, but after a few minutes they seem to settle more flatly against the floor, they take on that distinctive “sack of wheat” look which is unmistakable. Then they become substances instead of persons. A few dollars’ worth of chemicals that the clothes no longer fit. One by one the other servants backed out until only the head boy and the bartender were left. I ordered a double scotch. I felt uneasy. How many deaths? Christoff, Constance, the doorboy, O’Dell. It began to look as though there would be no one left to give me the proof of Christoff’s innocence. Wend and Van Hosen and the men who had been playing bridge.

Kaymark, the familiar man with the long white face, and three uniformed policemen came in as I was watching the door.

Peter was in the middle of a sentence. “… and I’ll turn my report in to my colonel. He’ll authorize a true copy to be sent to you. Purely a technicality, covered by our existing operating regulations. You understand.”

They stood by the body of O’Dell. I stood up. The white-faced man rubbed his chin. He turned to me. “And you were also sitting at the table? Can you give me a report?”

Peter interrupted. “Just a minute, Saxon. Let me send his in with mine with a copy to you later. Army business, you know.”

Saxon sighed. “Nothing else to do, I guess. You and your friend can go any time, lieutenant.”

“Wait a minute there,” I interrupted. “How about a charge of abduction or something? How about those other men that—”

“Hold it, Garry,” Peter demanded, his voice loud and sharp. “We’ll take care of that also.”

Saxon raised his thin black eyebrows. “Suppose you let me know about it now, Mr. Garry.”

“You don’t have to answer him, Garry,” Peter said quietly.

I looked from one to the other. Peter had a faint smile hidden around the corners of his mouth.

“I’d better follow the lieutenant’s advice. I’ll put it in the report.” Again the police official sighed. I looked back as we walked out and saw him stooping over the body.

As soon as we were far enough away, Peter said plaintively, “Damn it, Garry, you don’t want those beggars in on it. They’d foul it up for you. You’d never find out the truth once they got their heavy hands on it.”

I stopped walking and fished out a cigarette. He paused and waited for me. “Look, Peter. While you were phoning I was sitting in there thinking. I’ve got enough now so that I’m convinced in my own mind that Dan wasn’t out of line. And I think I’ve got enough to convince his wife and his people. What more do I need? Maybe I ought to give the whole thing up and go back to the States. Come on over to my hotel and let’s talk it over.”

He agreed, but added, “We’ll have to make it short. I’ve got to get that report in.”