The Saint Around the World (26 page)

Simon looked down the hill, across the railroad tracks to the dense greenness that reached back towards a horizon of blue haze. The damp air still had a deceptively spring-like freshness.

“The first time is always the worst, isn’t it?” he said.

“You really do understand,” she said.

“If you won’t accuse me of going back on our pact, Mrs. Lavis, I think you may be the most remarkable woman I’ve ever met.”

She was pleased, and did not pretend to hide it.

“I’m glad you came here.” she said. “And I think you could drop the ‘Mrs. Lavis’ stuff. Do you mind if I call you Simon?”

“I was waiting for a chance to suggest it, Eve.”

She put a hand on the teapot to test its temperature,

“Would you like a cup of tea? It’s still hot.”

“I’d rather have breakfast. I’m the horribly healthy type.”

She glanced at a clock across the room.

“We’ll give Charles another five minutes, and then I’ll ring for it, whether he’s here or not.”

He was still trying to visualize her in bed with Farrast. There was nothing prurient about the effort: it was more like an exercise in abstract mathematics. Intellectually, he had no doubt left that his assumption was correct; but to translate it ino a picture that he could believe emphatically was a form of confirmation that eluded him. Could that invulnerable air-conditioned poise really melt in the warm confusion of sex, abdicating its pedestal to lie with a cheaply handsome spoiled wilful and surely less than fascinating mortal like Charles Farrast?

“Isn’t he up yet?” Simon asked.

“Good heavens, yes. We literally get up at the crack of dawn here. Ketchil makan, and out to get the coolies started at six o’clock. Then back to breakfast after everything’s running.”

He still had the book in his hand as he sat down beside her, and he put it down on the table in front of him.

“I didn’t know how long it might be till breakfast, and I didn’t know I’d have better company,” he explained.

She leaned a little towards him to look at the title.

“Maugham,” she said. “I don’t think I know that one. Is it new?”

“No, it’s a collection. Ascony lent it to me.”

“Vernon? I never thought of him as the bookish type.”

“He said there was a story in it that he’d like to get my reaction to.”

“Really? Which one?”

“A thing called Footprints in the Jungle.”

She passed him a tin of cigarettes and took one herself.

“What’s it about?”

“Well, Maugham never does go in for very sensational plots, and this one certainly isn’t the newest one in the world. It’s about a woman whose husband is murdered, supposedly by robbers, and soon afterwards she marries his best friend, and the presumption is that they were the ones who actually arranged to knock off Hubby.”

She took a light from the match he held, without a wrinkle in her smooth brow. She was enjoying a civilized conversation, nothing more.

“It isn’t exactly original, is it?”

“It’s all in the writing. He makes you see them as quite ordinary people that you might meet anywhere, instead of monsters out of another world.”

“But I wonder why Vernon wanted your opinion of it.”

“The inside story is supposedly told by a police chief,” he said. “The policeman finds enough evidence to be fairly convinced that they did it, but he also knows that he could never get enough to stand any chance of convicting them. So he’s never done anything about it.”

She met his gaze with level untroubled eyes.

“I wonder if Vernon has a problem of that kind and can’t make up his mind what to do. But I can’t imagine Vernon not being able to make up his own mind about anything. But of course, if he didn’t have enough evidence, there’s nothing he could do anyway, is there?”

Simon shrugged.

“He didn’t tell me anything, and I didn’t read the story until this morning.”

“I’ll have to read it myself.” She glanced at the clock, and stood up. “Let’s not starve ourselves any longer.”

She went to the dining table and rang the silver hand bell that stood in front of her place; but they had hardly settled themselves when Farrast stomped up the front steps and shouldered blusterily through the screen door.

“Sorry if I’m late.” he said perfunctorily.

He sailed a terai hat into an armchair as he marched through to the table and sat himself down heavily, his boots scraping the floor. Fe had the kind of comp’exion on which sunburn never loses all its redness, and it seemed more inflamed now, perhaps because he was warm. His khaki shirt was already wilted and clinging.

“Trouble?” Eve Lavis asked.

“Plenty.” Farrast said. “And I’m going to make more.”

“You’ll be able to do it better with a good breakfast under your belt.” she said practically.

It was a good breakfast, staunchly British, with bacon and eggs and sausages and toast and marmalade and strong tea to wash it down, as was to be expected, for that is one tradition on which no proper Colonial even in the remotest outpost of the Empire would make any concession to local cuisine. At other meals he may without protest eat bird’s-nest soup or stewed buffalo hump, and may even become an addict of semi-incandescent curries: but breakfast under the British flag is incorruptible from Hampstead to Hong Kong.

After the boy had finished serving and gone out, and they had started eating, Farrast said: “I went down to the plant. The krani was there, but no men. They were supposed to clean out a couple of the stills. I waited twenty minutes. Then I loaded him in the jeep and drove out where they were last cutting wood. The other krani was there, with a truck, but no men. I gave it another ten minutes. Nobody showed up. So you know what I did? I made the kranis pick up a saw and start cutting wood themselves. I said if they couldn’t get their crews on the job, the only way they could earn their pay was by doing it themselves.”

“Do you think that was wise, Charles?” Mrs. Lavis asked. “You want to keep them on your side.”

“You told me last night to show who was boss,” Farrast answered belligerently. “If the kranis had been tougher themselves, perhaps we’d never have had this trouble. This ought to teach ‘em a lesson. I told ‘em not to come in till they could bring the truck full of wood, which is all we need to complete a batch that’s waiting to be baked. And then I hiked off to the Malay village.”

“By yourself?”

“No, I had a friend with me.” He drew his revolver, held it up for a moment, and thrust it back in the holster. “I was just hoping somebody would start something, so I’d be given a chance to use it. But when I got there there wasn’t a grown man in sight. They’d all sneaked off into the bush when they heard me coming. Except the penggulu.”

“Poor old man! I hope you didn’t hurt him.”

“I made him show me the pawang’s hut. I threw everything out of it that was movable, his personal possessions as well as his charms and concoctions—broke everything that was breakable, and trampled the whole shebang into the mud. Then I told him to see that all the men saw it when they came back, and he could ask ‘em how they thought the pawang’s magic could be any good if I could do that to him. And I told him to give the pawang a message, in front of plenty of witnesses, that I dared him to show his face anywhere around the estate, because wherever I found him I’d give him a public thrashing.”

Eve Lavis buttered some toast.

“Well, that ought to lead to a showdown,” she said. “What do you think, Simon?”

“I don’t see how the pawang can help losing face if he doesn’t do something about it,” said the Saint. “On the other hand, if he does something, it’s liable to be something unhealthy for Charles.”

“Don’t worry about me, Templar,” Farrast said. “I’m pretty handy at taking care of myself.”

Mrs. Lavis frowned thoughtfully.

“I can’t help wondering if we aren’t missing the target,” she said. “You said yourself that the pawang must have gone over to the Reds. Doesn’t that mean there must be a bigger Commie agent somewhere around here who’s giving him his orders. If you could find him, you’d get the trouble out by the root.”

“Perhaps Templar can detect him,” Farrast said.

“I’ll think about it,” Simon said amiably. “But with your local knowledge you’d do it better. I think Eve’s got something, though.”

“Well,” Farrast said grudgingly, “if I catch that pawang I’ll see what I can beat out of him.”

They had finished eating and were smoking cigarettes at the table when one of the guards came up the verandah steps and knocked on the frame of the screen door. Farrast got up and went over there, and the guard spoke briefly.

“He says the pawang and a couple of his pals are in the Chinese shop across from the station,” Mrs. Lavis translated to Simon.

Farrast returned to pick up his hat, and also a stout Malacca cane.

“This is what I’ve been looking forward to,” he said grimly.

Simon folded his napkin and stood up.

“Would you like me to come with you?” he asked.

“Suit yourself.”

Farrast opened the door and went out. Simon followed him.

The tropical day was getting into its stride, and as they stepped out from under the shade of the roof the sun hit them through a mugginess that was almost palpable. Farrast marched down the hill in ominous silence, the set of his jaw proclaiming one implacable preoccupation. But at the gate in the fence that ringed the upper part of the hill he stopped the guard and told him to wait there.”

“Jaga baik-baik, tuan,” the guard said; and Farrast glared at him as if the man had insulted him by merely urging him to be careful.

They went on down past the plant and the warehouse and across the station platform, without another word being spoken until they had crossed the tracks. Then Farrast stopped a few yards from the open entrance of the store and looked carefully to left and right, as though satisfying himself that he was not walking into an ambush.

He said: “You can come in with me if you like. But don’t interfere unless you’re quite sure that I’ve had it. I’m the fel-low who’s got to go on running this show. They’ve got to be afraid of me all by myself, and not thinking they can start up again as soon as you’ve left.”

“Whatever you say, Boss,” murmured the Saint.

Farrast went in, and Simon followed again and stepped off to one side, keeping his back to the wall.

There were three Malays gathered around an antique pinball machine at the rear of the shop. Two of them, with bottles in their hands, were watching and boisterously encouraging the third, who was playing. But as Simon and Farrast walked in they abruptly stopped laughing; one of them muttered a warning, and they stepped back a little. The one who was playing seemed to pay no attention. He remained huddled closely over the machine, without looking around, concentrating intently on his shot. He could only have been the pawang, though he was dressed no differently from the others, in a much-mended shirt and a sarong.

Farrast strode straight over to him, without hesitation, his boots thudding on the bare floor in defiant announcement of his approach; but the third Malay did not move until Farrast grasped his shoulder. Then the pawang turned, like a twisting snake, and a kris flashed in his hand at waist level where he must have been holding it all the time under cover of his crouch at the machine. Simon saw the glint of the wicked wavy-bladed knife, but the Malay was so quick and Farrast was so close to him that even the Saint could have done nothing about it. But Farrast himself must have been anticipating the attack in precisely the way it happened, and he was countering it almost before it started, pushing the Malay back and bringing his already lifted cane down in a vicious cracking blow on the man’s wrist which undoubtedly broke a bone. The knife fell to the ground and Farrast put his foot on it. Then he grasped the pawang by the collar and began to rain merciless blows with the stick on his back and buttocks.

The pawang’s attempt had been made and foiled so instantaneously that it hardly seemed like an interruption at all, and his two putative sycophants were left winded and dumbfounded by the speed with which their prospective hero had been disarmed and reduced to squirming impotence. Simon kept them under close observation, but it was obvious that their role had been meant to be that of witnesses and admirers, and that they had no ambition to join the fray after the tables had been so catastrophically turned on their champion. They watched open-mouthed, until with a scream and a still more violent plunge the pawang tore himself free, leaving half his patched shirt in Farrast’s hand, and raced out of the shop like a terrified cur; and then, as Farrast turned specu-latively towards them, they sidled around behind a counter with increasing velocity that culminated in a panic-stricken bolt for the door.

Farrast picked up the kris and examined it.

“This’ll make a nice souvenir,” he said.

“You earned it,” said the Saint, who could seldom withhold approbation when it was due. “When I saw him pull it I thought he had you, but you handled him like a commando.”

Farrast looked pleased with himself, rather than with the compliment.

“I told you I could take care of myself.”

They went outside again. All three Malays had disappeared.

“Two of ‘em are on their way back to the village to tell the story right now,” Farrast said. “I don’t think the pawang’ll have much prestige left when they’ve finished. In fact, I’ll be surprised if he ever shows his face in Pahang again.”

“Unfortunately,” Simon remarked, “you didn’t get a chance to ask him who he was taking orders from, after all.”

“Probably it doesn’t matter much now.”

Farrast squinted up at a haze of dust drifting around the shoulder of the hill. “Those kranis have brought the truck in,” he said. “I hope for their sakes it was full of wood.”

He started to walk briskly up towards the distillation building, and the Saint tagged quietly along. Farrast swung his cane as if he was enjoying the feel of his recent use of it in retrospect, and would be happy to repeat the experience. His lower lip began to tighten and protrude again.

The truck had pulled into the loading area in front of the ovens, where the cage-like carts received their cargoes of raw wood. The two kranis were heaving billets from the truck into the last car of a row of previously filled ones. They were Tamils, and they had started the day in white shirts and trousers as befitted their position as supervisors of common labor, but now their clothes were soiled and soaked with sweat. They did not look at Farrast or the Saint, but went on working steadily, with masks of undying resentment on their thin-featured black faces.