The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four (31 page)

“I had donned thick-lensed glasses with which I peered at them—I had to peer to see anything at all—and there, where they think much of the evil eye, they were pleased to be rid of me.”

“And now you have been back? Did you pick up the money?”

He smiled. “One does what one must, lieutenant. Now I live here in Paris, and, I might say, I live well.” He patted his stomach affectionately. “Even very well.”

He sipped his wine. “Of course one must be careful when one has enemies. The old marshal—yes, he is alive and well—too well, altogether. He dislikes me for some reason. He would have me shot if he could. And regrettably there are others.”

“What of the blonde? Milton’s girlfriend? Did you ever see her again?”

“See her?” He smiled complacently. “In fact, I shall see her tonight. I see her quite often, in fact.”

“And the money? Milton’s money?”

“She had taken it out of the black bag and hidden it. But she was a fool! Did she spend it on beautiful clothes? Did she buy jewels and wine? She did not. She
invested
it, every centime! Invested it, can you imagine?”

He emptied his glass. “She invested in the black market. Somewhere she found truckloads of American cigarettes and tanks of petrol.”

“So the quarter of a million is forever beyond your reach?”

“Did you say a quarter of a million? It is more than a million now, and only the good Lord knows where it will end! Given time, that stupid girl will own half of Paris.”

I stood up. After all, I had things to do even if he did not, and as I turned to pick up my cap from an adjoining chair, there was a spiteful little snapping sound from beside me and a loud report from the door. Turning quickly, I saw the student, he who had been drinking coffee and working his sums at the outside table. The student had a Luger pistol that was slipping from his fingers, and as if by magic, the gendarmes were running into the court.

“Sit down, lieutenant.” The general caught my arm, and holding it out from my body a little, guided me to a chair. “You cannot leave now. There will be questions.”

Glancing out the door, I saw the student, or whatever he was, lying as he had fallen. Evidently he had spun when hit, for he lay face down almost in the doorway but headed the other way.

“Relax, lieutenant. It is nothing. The poor man! It is terrible, the kind of help one gets today! So inefficient!”

The police were there, questioning everybody, but of course nobody knew anything. We were the last.

The general spoke excellent French. “I am General—”

“We know,
mon général,
we know. Did you, by any chance, see what took place?”

“I did not, but you know how it is. The Free French are still finding pockets of resistance, and of course they are hunting collaborators. When they find them—” He held up his forefinger and thumb like a pistol. “When they find them—
ping
! And they deserve no better.”

He stood up. “If you would like to search—?”

“Oh, no!” The gendarme was appalled. “Of course not,
mon général
! Of course not!”

When I reached my quarters that night, it was with some relief that I pulled off my tie and then started to shed my trench coat. Something bumped my side, and I slid my hand into the pocket—an automatic, small, neat, and very deadly.

It was not easy to be a friend of the general.

Author’s Tea

I
’ve been reading your work, Mr. Dugan, and like it tremendously! You have such
power,
such
feeling
!”

“Thank you,” he heard himself saying. “I’m glad you liked it.” He glanced toward the door where several women were arriving. They weren’t young women. He sighed and glanced hopelessly toward the table where one of those faded dowagers who nibble at the crusts of culture was pouring tea. Now if they only had a steak—

“Mr. Dugan,” his hostess was saying, “I want you to meet Mrs. Nowlin. She is also a writer.”

She was so fat she had almost reached the parting of the stays, and she had one of those faces that always reminded him of buttermilk. “How do you do, Mrs. Nowlin?” He smiled in a way he hoped was gracious. “It is always a pleasure to meet someone in the same profession. What do you write?”

“Oh, I’m not a
regular
writer, Mr. Dugan, but I do so love to write! Don’t you find it simply fascinating? But I just never have been able to get anything published. Sometimes I doubt the publishers even
read
my manuscripts! Why, I believe they just
couldn’t
!”

“I imagine they are pretty busy, Mrs. Nowlin. They get so many stories, you know.”

“Why, I sent one of my poems away not long ago. It was a poem about James, you know, and they wouldn’t take it. They didn’t even
say
anything! Just one of those rejection slips. Why, I read the poem at the club, and they all said it was simply
beautiful
!”

“Was—was James your husband?” he asked hopefully, glancing toward the tea table again. Still no steak.

“James! Oh, goodness no! James is my dog! My little Pom. Don’t you just
adore
Poms, Mr. Dugan?”

Then she was gone, fluttering across the room like a blimp escaped from its moorings.

He sighed again. Every time chance caught him at one of these author’s teas, he would think of Frisco Brady. He could imagine the profane disgust of the big Irish longshoreman if he knew the guy who flattened him in the Harbor Pool Room was guest of honor at a pink tea.

Dugan felt the red crawling around his ears at the thought, and his eyes sought the tea table again. Someday, he reflected, there is going to be a hostess who will serve real meals to authors and achieve immortality at a single stroke. Writers would burn candles to her memory, or better still, some of those shadowy wafers that were served with the tea and were scarcely more tangible than the tea itself.

He started out of his dream and tried to look remotely intelligent as he saw his hostess piloting another body through the crowd. He knew at a glance that she had written a book of poetry that wouldn’t scan, privately published, of course. Even worse, it was obvious that in some dim, distant year she had seen some of Garbo’s less worthy pictures and had never recovered. She carried her chin high, and her neck stretched endlessly toward affected shoulders.

“I have so
wanted
to meet you! There is something so deep, so spiritual about your work! And your last book! One feels you were on a great height when you wrote it! Ah!…”

She was gone. But someone else was speaking to him, and he turned attentively.

“Why do so many of you writers write about such
hard
things? There is so much that is beautiful in the world! All people aren’t like those people you write about, so why don’t you write about
nice
people? And that boy you wrote about in the story about hunger, why, you know perfectly well, Mr. Dugan, that a boy like that couldn’t go hungry in this country!”

His muscles ached with weariness, and he stood on the corner staring down the street, his thoughts blurred by hunger, his face white and strained. Somehow all form had become formless, and things about him took on new attitudes and appearances. He found his mind fastening upon little things with an abnormal concentration born of hunger and exhaustion. Walking a crack in the sidewalk became an obsession, and when he looked up from that, a fat man was crossing the street, and his arms and legs seemed to jerk grotesquely. Everything about him seemed to move in slow motion, and he stopped walking and tried to steady himself, conscious it was a delirium born of hunger.

He had been standing still for a moment trying to work his foot free from the sock where it was stuck with the dried blood from a broken blister, and when he moved forward suddenly, he almost fell. He pulled up sharply and turned his head to see if anyone noticed. He walked on then with careful attention.

He was hungry.

The words stood out in his consciousness, cold and clear, almost without thought or sensation. He looked at them as at a sign that had no meaning.

He passed a policeman and tried to adopt a careless, confident air but felt the man looking after him. Passing a bakery, the smell of fresh pastry went through him like a wave, leaving a sensation of emptiness and nausea.

“You’ve had such an
interesting
life, Mr. Dugan! There must have been so many adventures. If I had been a man, I would have lived just such a life as you have. It must have been so
thrilling
and romantic!”

“Why don’t you tell us some of the
real
stories? Some of the things that actually happened? I’ll bet there were a lot you haven’t even written.”

“I’m tellin’ you, Dugan. Lay off that dame, see? If you don’t, I’ll cut your heart out.”

The music moved through the room, and he felt the lithe, quick movements of the girl as she danced, and through the smoky pall he heard a chair crash, and he looked down and smiled at the girl, and then he spun her to arm’s length and ducked to avoid the first punch. Then he struck with his left, short and hard. He felt his fist thud against a jaw and saw the man’s face as he fell forward, eyes bulging, jaw slack. He brought up his right into the man’s midsection as he fell toward him and then stepped away. Something struck him from behind, and it wasn’t until he got up that the blood started running into his eyes. He knew he’d been hit hard, and heard the music playing “In a little Spanish town ’twas on a night like this, stars were shining down…”

He was speaking then, and he heard himself saying, “There is only the personal continuity. The man we were yesterday may not be the man we are tomorrow. Names are only trademarks for the individual, and from day to day that individual changes, and his ways and thoughts change, although he is not always himself aware of the change. The man who was yesterday a soldier may be a seller of brushes tomorrow. He has the same name, but the man himself is not the same, although circumstances may cause him to revert to his former personality and character. Even the body changes; the flesh and blood change with the food we eat and the water we drink.

“To him who drifts about, life consists of moving in and out of environments and changing conditions, and with each change of environment the wanderer changes, also. We move into lives that for the time are very near and dear to us, but suddenly all can be changed, and nothing remains but the memory.

“Only the innocent speak of adventure, for adventure is only a romantic name for trouble, and when one is having ‘adventures’ one wishes it were all over and he was elsewhere and safe. ‘Adventure’ is not nice. It is more often than not rough and dirty, cruel and harsh…”

Before they screwed on the copper helmet, Scotty stopped by, his features tight and hard. “Watch yourself, kid, this is bad water and too many sharks. Some say there are more octopi and squids here than anywhere else, but usually they’re no trouble. We’ll try to hold it down up here.” He slapped his waistband as he spoke. Scotty moved, and Singapore Charlie lifted the helmet.

“Don’t worry, skipper, I’ll keep your lines clear, and I can handle any trouble.” Then Dugan was sinking through the warm green water, feeling it clasp him close so that only the copper helmet protected him. Down, down, still farther down, and then he was standing on the sandy floor of the ocean, and around him moved the world of the undersea. There was silence, deep, unfathomable silence, except for the soft hiss of air. He moved forward, walking as though in a deep sleep, pushing himself against the water, turning himself from side to side like some unbelievable monster that haunted the lower depths.

Then he found the dark hull of the old ship and moved along the ghostly deck, half shrouded in the weed of a hundred years, moving toward the companionway where feet no longer trod. He hesitated at the door, looking down into darkness, and then he saw it moving toward him, huge, ominous, frightening. He tucked his warm-blooded hands into his armpits to leave only the slippery surface of the canvas and rubber suit. It came toward him, only vaguely curious, and inquiring tentacles slipped over and around him…feeling…feeling…feeling.

He sipped his tea and avoided the eyes of the woman who had the manuscript she wanted him to comment on, nibbled impotently at those infinitesimal buttons of nourishment, and listened to the ebb and flow of conversation about his ears. Here and there a remark swirled about, attracting his momentary attention. He heard himself speaking, saying how pleasant it had been, and then he was out on the street again, turning up his collar against the first few drops of spattering rain.

East of Gorontalo

P
onga Jim Mayo leaned against the hogshead of tobacco and stared out at the freighter. His faded khaki suit was rumpled, his heavy jaw unshaven. The white-topped cap carried the label “Captain” in gold lettering, but Ponga Jim looked like anything but a master mariner, and felt even less like one.

Being broke was a problem anywhere. In Gorontalo it became an emergency of the first water. Everything he owned in the world was on him, from the soft, woven-leather shoes on his feet to the white-topped cap to the big Colt automatic in its shoulder holster.

Jim pushed his cap back on his head and glanced at Major Arnold, sitting on a bitt at the edge of the wharf. In his neat white drill and military mustache he could have been nothing but a British officer.

“Tell me, William,” Jim said, “just what brings a big-shot intelligence officer to Celebes? Something in the wind?”

“You get around a lot, don’t you?” Major William Arnold lighted a cigarette and glanced up at Jim.

“Yeah, when I can.” Ponga Jim grinned. “Right now I’m on the beach, and it looks like I’m not getting off for a while. But there isn’t much in the Indies I don’t know.”

Arnold nodded. “I know. You might do me some good, Jim. If you see anything suspicious, give me a tip, will you? There’s a rumor around that while England’s busy in Europe, there will be a move to pick up some of her colonies in the Far East. This is a Dutch colony, but we’re cooperating.”

“Then,” Mayo said thoughtfully, nodding his head toward the broad-beamed, battered tramp freighter, “you might add her to your list of suspects.”

“That’s the
Natuna
out of Surabaya, isn’t it? Didn’t you used to be her skipper?”

“Yeah.” Ponga Jim shifted his position to let the breeze blow under his coat. He was wearing a gun, and the day was hot. “Then the company sold her to Pete Lucieno, and I quit. I wouldn’t work for that dope peddler on a bet. I’m no lily of the valley, and frankly, I’m not making any boasts about being above picking up a slightly illegal dollar—I’ve made some of your British pearl fisheries out of season before now, and a few other things—but I draw the line at Pete’s kind of stuff.”

“No love lost, I guess?” Arnold squinted up at Jim, smiling.

“Not a bit. He’d consider it a privilege to cut my heart out. So would Dago Frank, that majordomo of his, or Blue Coley. And I don’t fancy them.”

Major Arnold soon left, walking back up toward the club. Ponga Jim lighted a cigarette and stared thoughtfully at the
Natuna.
Then his eyes shifted to the other ship in port, a big white freighter, the
Carlsberg.
Although there were three or four schooners, and a scattering of smaller craft, it was the two freighters that held his attention.

“Now, William,” he said whimsically, “you should never miss a bet. Being an old seafaring man, it strikes me as being somewhat phony for that native scow to be shoving herself around in circles. Especially, when she goes behind the
Carlsberg
riding high and comes out with darn little freeboard. Then she wanders around, gets behind the
Natuna,
and comes out riding high in the water again.

“Now the only
Carlsberg
I ever knew sailed out of Bremen, not Copenhagen.” Mayo’s eyes flickered to the sleek white
Carlsberg.
“So, putting a possibility of registry changed from Bremerhaven to Copenhagen, some mysterious goings-on connected with the
Natuna,
a scow whose owners would frame their mothers for a dollar six-bits, a war, and William’s rumors, what do you have?”

Ponga Jim Mayo straightened up and sauntered off down the dock. It was nearly sundown, and the seven guilders that remained in his pocket suggested food. After that—

J
IM WALKED INTO
Chino John’s and stopped at the bar.

“Give me a beer,” he said, glancing around. A man standing nearby turned to face Mayo.

“Well, if it isn’t my old friend Ponga Jim!” he sneered. “On the beach again, no?”

Jim looked at Dago Frank coolly and then past him at Lucieno. The fat little Portuguese glistened with perspiration and ill-concealed hatred.

“Yeah,” Jim said. “Anytime to keep out of the company of rats.”

“I disdain that remark,” Lucieno said. “I disdain it.”

“You’d better,” Jim said cheerfully. “If you took it up, I’d pull your fat nose for you!”

Dago Frank’s eyes narrowed. He stepped closer.

“Then maybe you pull mine, eh?” he challenged.

Ponga Jim’s right fist snapped up in a jarring right that knocked every bit of wind from Dago Frank’s body.

Then jerking him erect, Mayo jolted another six-inch punch into his midsection and dropped him to the floor. Coolly, he picked up his beer and drank it, and then he turned and looked at Lucieno. The fat Portuguese began to back away, his face white.

Jim grinned. “Okay, pal,” he said cheerfully. “It was just a little lesson to teach your boyfriend to talk nice to his superiors. Next time—” He shook his finger warningly and turned away.

Arnold was standing on the boardwalk as Jim strode through the swinging doors. He chuckled, clapping Jim on the shoulder.

“That was great! Everybody in the Dutch East Indies has been hoping to see that pair get called. But you’ve made an enemy, and a nasty one.”

“That’s just the fifth episode,” Mayo said, shrugging. “I beat them out of a cargo of copra and pearl shell down in the Friendly Islands about three years ago. About six months later they tried to kidnap old Schumann’s daughter over in the Moluccas. They were going to sell her to some native prince. I put a stop to that, and a couple of their boys got tough.”

“What happened to them?”

“You know, William,” Jim said seriously, “I was trying to remember the other day. They had an accident or something.”

He straightened his tie, and gave the automatic a hitch into a better position.

“By the way, William,” he asked carelessly, “where’s the
Natuna
bound this trip?”

“To Port Moresby, with general cargo.”

Ponga Jim walked down the street, and when he turned at the corner, glanced back. Major Arnold, his neat, broad-shouldered, compact figure very casual, was standing in front of Chino John’s. Jim grinned, and turned the corner carelessly. Then, suddenly alert, he wheeled and darted down an alley, turned into a side street, and cut through the scattering of buildings toward the dock. The British Intelligence was convenient at times, at others, a nuisance.

There was no one in sight when he reached the dock. He let himself down the piling and crawled into a skiff moored there in the dark. Quickly, he shoved off.

Overhead there was a heavy bank of clouds. The night was very still, and the skiff made scarcely a shadow as it slipped through the dark water. Staying a hundred yards off, Ponga Jim avoided the lighted gangway and cautiously sculled the boat around to the dark side of the
Natuna.
There was no one in sight, so with painstaking care he drifted the boat nearer and nearer to the silent ship. When he came alongside he laid his paddle down and stood up, balancing himself.

Fortunately, the sea was still. Picking up the heaving line lying in the stern of the boat, Mayo tossed the monkey’s fist around a stanchion of the taffrail, and catching the ball, he pulled it down.

Once aboard that ship he would be practically in the hands of his enemies and with no legal status. Ponga Jim grinned and settled the gun in its holster. Then taking two strands of the heaving line, he climbed swiftly—hand over hand.

There was no one in sight, and pulling himself through the rail, he rolled over twice and was against the bulkhead of the after wheelhouse. There was no movement aft. Forward, the light from a port glinted on the rail and the water, and he could see the watchman standing under the light near the gangway. It was Blue Coley.

Jim crawled into the shadow of the winch and then along the deck to the ladder. The well deck was empty, so he slipped down. Then he hesitated.

The passage was lighted, but it was a chance he had to take. The crew’s quarters were forward, the officers’ amidships. There was small chance of anyone being aft. He stepped into the passageway and hurried along, passing the paint locker. The rope-locker door was fastened, and he swore as he dug for his keys. Luckily, he still had them. Once inside, he closed the door carefully and locked it again.

There was a vague smell of paint and linseed oil. He felt his way along over coils of line, until he stopped abruptly. Then, cautiously, he struck a match. The paint had been shifted into the rope locker. Carefully, he snuffed the match and then paused in indecision. Then he crawled over the coils of line and found the door into number five hatch. He grinned. Luckily, he knew every inch of the
Natuna.
He hadn’t commanded her for a year for nothing, and he liked to know a ship. He knew her better now than the man who built her. She’d changed a lot in twenty years, and there had been repairs made and some changes.

The door was stiff, but he opened it and crawled into the hold, carefully closing the door after him. He was on his hands and knees on a wooden case.

He struck a match, shielding it with his hands despite the knowledge that the hold was sealed tight and the hatch battened down and ready for the sea. The case was marked in large black letters, CANNED GOODS. Returning to the rope locker, Jim picked up a marlinespike and returned to the hold. Working carefully, he forced open the wooden case. Striking another match, he leaned over.

Then he sat back on his heels, smiling. The case was filled with automatic rifles.

“Well, well, Señor Lucieno!” he muttered to himself. “Just as I suspected. If there’s dirty work, you’ll be in on it.”

Thoughtfully, he considered the open case. The match had gone out, but he could remember those cool barrels, the magazines. He rubbed his jaw.

“Contraband,” he said. “And I’m broke. What was it Hadji Ali used to say? ‘Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; steal from a thief for that is easy; lay a trap for the trickster, and catch him at the first attempt; but beware of an honest man.’”

Taking one of the rifles from the case he began to assemble it in the dark.

“Well, Petey, old darling, you’re a liar, a thief, and a trickster, and contraband is fair game for anyone—so here’s where I move in.”

Fastening the case shut, he carried the automatic rifle with him. Then he descended into the lower hold, and found a place near the shaft-alley housing where there was a space in the cargo. He had known it was there. Stowing cargo in that spot always necessitated it because of the ship’s structure. There was also a small steel door into the shaft alley. So far as he knew it had not been used since he had ordered it cut there while making repairs. Opening another case he got some excelsior and made himself comfortable. Then crawling back into the ’tween decks, he felt his way over the cases until he was immediately under the hatch.

Listening, he heard no feet on the deck, so he opened a case. As he had suspected, this was really canned goods. He tried several cases, and with his coat for a sack, carried an armful back down to his hideout.

“If you’re going to stow away, Jim boy,” he told himself, “by all means pick a ship you know, and one carrying food.”

Opening a can of pineapple he ate, speculating on the future. The
Natuna
was bound for Port Moresby. That would mean something like ten or twelve days. It might be more, depending on the weather. The
Natuna
was a temperamental old Barnacle Bill of a ship. She might stagger along at twelve knots, and she might limp at eight or nine. It was hot, too damned hot, but during at least part of the day he could stay in the ’tween decks under a ventilator.

Besides, there wasn’t a chance of his being here ten days. Pete Lucieno wasn’t one to spend a dime or a guilder he could save, and that would mean he wouldn’t take this cargo a bit farther than he could help. If he was bound for Port Moresby, that meant he was discharging the contraband somewhere this side of there, and if he was going that far, it meant his point of discharge wouldn’t be very much this side. Which meant that he was heading somewhere along the New Guinea coast, and probably the mouth of the Fly. There were islands there and easy access to the interior.

Obviously, whoever planned to use these rifles and the other munitions, intended to distribute them among the natives and then stir up trouble. By raiding Port Moresby, friction could be created and the entire Indies might be set aflame. Then it would require British action to protect her nationals and save her colonies.

D
URING THE NEXT TWO NIGHTS
, Ponga Jim Mayo searched the paint locker and the lamp locker. As he had suspected, both were stored with ammunition. He picked up some for the automatic rifle, and found some clips for his automatic, stuffing his pockets with them.

For water, he had to go to the gravity tank on the boat deck. Otherwise his only chance was to enter the crew’s quarters forward or the galley or mess room amidships. Neither was practical. As for the boat deck, by crawling through the bulkhead door into number four and then into number three hatch, he could climb the ladder to the ’tween decks and from the top of the cargo, could scramble into the ventilator just abaft the cargo winches at number three hatch. From the ventilator cowl he had a good view of the deck without being seen, and it was simple to slip out and up the ladder to the boat deck.

On the fifth night, Mayo slipped out of the ventilator and walked across the deserted deck to the ladder, climbing to the boat deck. He drank, and then filled the can he’d carried with him.

Crouching near the tank, he could see the officer on watch pacing the bridge. By his thick shoulders and queer gait, Jim recognized him as Blue Coley. That would mean, he reflected, that Dago Frank would have the eight-to-twelve watch. Lucieno couldn’t navigate and knew nothing of seamanship, so obviously someone else had the eight to four. Ponga Jim wrinkled his brow thoughtfully. Now who the devil?