The Good Old Stuff (20 page)

“How’d you know Conny, Mr. Garry?”

“Oh, she knew a friend of mine that was stationed here during the war. A Captain Dan Christoff. You probably never heard of him.”

“Yes. I remember him. Chap who was drowned. Big stink about that here. Conny complained for weeks.”

I went over to the bar and brought back the second round. We drank it, and Lieutenant Kaymark became a bit flushed. We sat in silence. I was thinking those thoughts that every man has when he sees the body of an attractive woman. What a waste!

After half of the third round was gone, he looked up. “I guess I shouldn’t feel so badly about it. She’ll be off my list now. One less person to watch. Bloody Intelligence unit always loads you up with too many suspected agents.”

“You’re in Intelligence?”

“Five years of it out here. I suppose that if I’d told you that during wartime, they could have shot me for it. But now I’m so bloody sick of it, I wish they’d transfer me out of it. It’s too much of a piece of cake. Nothing to do. Dull.”

I thought it over. A man with the perfect qualifications. And he’d dropped into my lap. It was too good an opportunity to miss. I leaned forward and put my elbows on the table and lowered my voice. “How would you like to have it a lot less dull, lieutenant?”

He shrugged and smiled. “Of course, I’d like it.” He looked amused.

“Suppose I tell you that I think Captain Christoff was murdered? Suppose I tell you that I believe that Conny was murdered? Suppose the fact that she was a suspected agent ties in with it all?”

“Bit thick, what?” He grinned at me as if I was a case to be pitied.

“Don’t smirk at me, lieutenant.” I started with the interviews with the crew members. I gave him the entire story. I didn’t spare any details, and I tried to repeat the conversations as near word for word as I could remember. He sat there, indolent but interested, until I told of my interview with Constance Severence. Then he sat forward, alert and excited. His excitement grew as I told of the China Sea Inn, Guy Wend, and the note. When I finished telling him about the visit from Van Hosen, he leaned back and sighed.

“That tears it, Garry. It’s perfect. Van Hosen is on my list. Originally from Java. Got out somehow after the Japs moved in. Mysterious circumstances. Claimed to have escaped. He does odd-job journalism around the city. Wend is also on my list. Nasty type. Slippery. Always mixed up in radical island politics. A rebel. I’m surprised about O’Dell. Never figured him for that sort of thing. It ties in with Conny beautifully.”

“Then you think I’m right, Peter? You think it’s possible
that Dan Christoff got mixed up in some kind of intrigue or spy stuff, learned too much, and was killed?”

He twirled his glass and looked judicious. “I’m certain that you’re right, Garry. You’ve gone about as far as you can go. Let me take it over from here. We’ll work as a team.”

I was delighted. It was the first backing I had received. I was no longer fighting alone and in the dark. “Where do we start?”

“At the January Club. They don’t open until noon. I’ve got some reports to make out on the Severence woman. Suppose I meet you at the club at twelve thirty for lunch. I’m a member there. I had to join. Too many of my suspects flocked around there during the war.”

As we left the hotel, he stopped by a full-length mirror in the hall and made a dozen minor adjustments to his uniform, tugging at the sleeves, straightening insignia, pulling down his blouse. He pulled a small brush and comb out of his side pocket. He brushed his uniform and then carefully combed his hair. He stepped back and took a last look at himself. He smiled at himself. And then we walked out and each took rickshaws in opposite directions.

I arrived at the January Club before Kaymark did. It was a low building with orange-yellow plaster walls and a red tile roof. It was set back from the road behind a screen of thick shrubs and flowering trees. As I walked up the steps, I could see a double row of tennis courts at the side. I estimated that there were twenty courts. A few of them were already in use.

A smiling native in a white uniform met me at the door and directed me to a small cool room to wait for Lieutenant Kaymark. On the small table were copies of the London
Times
and the
New York Times
. The latest copy of the
New York Times
was only nine days old. I was halfway through the front page when I looked up and saw Kaymark smiling down at me.

We went into the pleasant sunny dining room and ordered drinks at the table. I looked over the sprinkling of members at the other tables. I started when I saw the man named Guy eating alone in a corner. I jerked my head in his direction, and
Peter looked around. He looked back at me and nodded. “The desk clerk was right, Garry. That’s Wend.”

The other faces were unfamiliar. After the excellent curry lunch we walked back to the cardroom. Two bridge games had started. As we walked in, an old man with a leathery face looked up from his cards and said, “Ho, Peter! Hear about Conny?”

“Saw her. Unhealthy business, this getting drowned, you know.”

“Good a way as any, they tell me.” He grinned and turned back to his cards. His partner had been glaring at him as he talked. We stood and watched the play for a time. I’ve always enjoyed bridge without knowing too much about the finer points of bidding. The table where Peter’s friend was sitting was playing slow, careful bridge. I glanced around at the other table. I saw into the hand of a Singhalese who sat with his back to me and noticed with a start that his cards were unsorted. A heart was played and he, with hearts scattered through his hand, played the king of clubs. The opponents picked up the trick. The man’s partner saw me staring and muttered something. The hand was lowered so that I couldn’t see it, and in a few seconds they all threw their hands in. On the next deal, the man with his back to me sorted his cards properly. I watched for a few minutes. The play was normal. I motioned to Peter, and he followed me out into the main lounge. No one was within earshot.

“Peter, have you ever paid much attention to the game in there?”

“How do you mean? I can afford to watch, but I can’t afford to play. Stakes are a rupee a hundred. Roughly thirty cents in your money. If you lose by two hundred points, which would be a very low score, that’s sixty of your dollars.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean have you ever seen anything odd about the way they play bridge?”

“No.”

I explained what I had seen. “Suppose this was the nucleus of a group of agents. Imagine the efficiency of it. A man has two thousand rupees to pay off. He has instructions to give. They memorize a simple code. There’s twenty-six letters in
the alphabet and thirteen cards in a suit. Any red ace is A, and any black ace is B. Any red deuce is C, and any black deuce is D. Any red trey is E, and so on. It would come out even and be easy to remember. They deal new hands until the boy with the message can spell it out. At the end of the game, they fake the score so that he has to pay off. No danger of being overheard. No suspicion.”

“How about the casual person looking in on the game?”

“They were probably a hell of a lot more careful during the war, when they could get hung or shot for it, than they are now. Even if what I saw was out of line, how can I prove anything?”

“You know, Garry, that’s pretty shrewd. Never thought of it.” He dabbed at his upper lip with a clean handkerchief. “Could arrange somehow to get a peephole in the ceiling. Keep a record of the play and break the code. Hard to do that without tipping off the servants, who will tip off the people playing.”

“Why don’t you pull in one of the servants on some excuse and work him over?”

“That’s been done, but it isn’t good. My superior, Colonel Rith-Lee, doesn’t like it. He says that it shows our hand. Besides, they never talk. They’re too terrified. All we can threaten them with is imprisonment. These other people can promise to strip off their hide, a quarter inch at a time. More impressive.”

We talked in the lounge for nearly a half hour. He couldn’t think of any constructive plan. I had a few, but he showed me just how they were impractical. He stated that I hadn’t given him sufficient basis on which Van Hosen, Wend, and O’Dell could be picked up.

Finally I said, “Let me try one thing. It hadn’t ought to hurt you.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve got some extra money, money that ought to look big to a servant. I’ll give the boy at the front desk a note to come and see me in the Galle Face on a matter that will mean money to him. If he comes, maybe I can offer him enough so that he’ll make a statement and then quit his job and leave town. Of course, he may know nothing worth buying, but it’s worth taking a chance.” He agreed. I went to a desk in the lounge
and wrote my note. As we left, I shoved it into the brown palm of the boy on the door.

We stood out in the street. I’d written the boy to come after he was off duty, no matter how late. “Want me to come along and help you question him?” Peter asked.

“No, thanks. You’ve got a lot of official scruples. I may have to rough him up a little to encourage him. It might get you in trouble. You just sit tight, and I’ll come to you tomorrow morning to tell you what I’ve learned.”

We parted, and I went back to the Galle Face to begin the long wait. I began to expect him at one o’clock. He hadn’t arrived by three. I pinned a note to the outside of the door which read
Knock loudly
. I went to bed.

When I awoke the sun was bright on the ocean. The note on my door was undisturbed. I figured that he had been too scared to come see me. We’d have to dream up another approach, try another employee. Only we’d have to be more careful, because he might possibly have tipped off the proper people concerning what we were attempting to do.

I rang for the room boy, Fernando. I wanted to order breakfast in the room before taking my shower. He came in and his round face was grave, his eyes wide and bright. He made a little bow and said, “Much trouble in hotel, Garry master.”

“Trouble?”

He licked his lips and glowed with the pleasure of having information to impart. “Boy killed with knife in front of hotel last night, master. Maybe one o’clock, maybe two o’clock.” He slashed his chubby forefinger across his throat and made a gurgling noise.

I tried to act bored. “Police take him away already?”

“No, master. Police very modern. Have camera. Waiting for sun to come and then taking pictures. Man still out on grass near side of hotel.”

I didn’t order breakfast and I skipped the shower. I pulled my clothes on and hurried down to the lobby. Once in the lobby I walked slowly across to the front door. Off to one side were a hundred curious people standing in a wide circle, looking at something on the ground. They looked as though they had been standing a long time. Knowing the oriental indifference to
death, I suspected that they were staring at something fairly juicy.

I pressed through the crowd and found that J was right on both counts. It was the boy to whom I had given the note. His throat had been slashed with such vicious strength that the cords and muscles had been parted all the way back to the spinal column. Without the support of the neck muscles, the shock of falling after the blow must have broken the neck. His head was strained back at right angles to the body, exposing the severed jugular. The grass was stained black red in a circle around his head, a circle of about the same circumference as a bushel basket. His lips were drawn back from his teeth.

I shoved my way back out of the circle. They had been too quick, too clever. I knew that there would be no point in trying to bribe another one. They had licked me again. Every time I thought of an opening, of a chance to get information, they stepped in first with a block that stopped me in my tracks.

I had poor coffee in the hotel and then went back up to my room and phoned Peter Kaymark at the number he had given me. A clerk told me that he wasn’t in and they didn’t know when to expect him. I tried three more times before noon, with the same result. At noon I had a small lunch sent up, and, after finishing it, I took a rickshaw to the January Club.

There was
a new boy on the door. I looked at him carefully but could detect no change of expression when he admitted me, and I asked to see Lieutenant Kaymark or Mr. O’Dell, if either of them were in the club.

He showed me back to a small curtained room off the main lounge, a different room than I had waited in before. He told me that he would attempt to locate either of the two gentlemen and plug them in on the phone which stood on a small table in the room if they didn’t happen to be in the club. I thanked him and he left. The small room was hot and airless. It smelled of mold and dust.

I sat on the edge of a worn chair which faced the curtains. For some reason, I felt uneasy. I didn’t have long to wait. The room was poorly lighted. Suddenly figures burst through the
curtains at me, moving so quickly that I received only a confused impression of several burly Singhalese. They fell on me and the chair went over backwards. I tried to kick at their heads, but one of them dropped heavily across my knees. I swung my right fist in a short arc and heard one of them grunt as it landed. I tried to buck and spin out of it, but they were too quick and too heavy. They rolled me over roughly and yanked my hands around behind me. Something rough and hard tightened over my wrists and drew them together. I started to shout as I felt the same substance around my ankles. They rolled me over, and as I opened my mouth to shout again, one of them crammed a thick cloth between my teeth. They tied another length of rope around my head to keep me from shoving the gag out with my tongue.

Two of them picked me up and the third peered cautiously through the curtains. Then he motioned to the others and they yanked me up off the floor and hurried out with me. One held me by the shoulder, the other by the knees.

Out in the brighter light of the lounge, I could see that they were all large men. They wore bright plaid sarongs, which had been tucked up to leave their legs free. They were naked from the waist up.

They hurried down the length of the lounge with me, and up a flight of narrow stairs. They bumped my head painfully when they rounded a corner of the stairs. They hurried down a dingy hall and opened the door of a small room. They dropped me heavily onto my face and cut the ropes on my neck, wrists, and ankles. The last one was backing out of the door as I jumped to my feet. The door slammed, and there was the sharp efficient click of a lock. I was alone in a bare room, about ten by ten, with one small barred window and not a scrap of furniture. I looked out the window, down into an enclosed court. I listened. I was so far from the road that I couldn’t hear the sound of traffic. There was no sound from the club. I sat by the door with my back against the wall.