The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  Yolanda’s lips curled with amusement. “Wouldn’t that put her in the same class with everyone else?”

  Carter smiled. This girl was, for some mysterious reason, being exceedingly cautious about commenting upon her friendship with her old childhood playmate.

  She rose from the shaky little camp table and took the arm of the old Siamese nurse to be led back to the cot.

  “Things might have been less complicated for Katherine,” she said airily, “if the American stage designer had cabled her plans about coming. Are you going to see Katherine again soon?”

  “Tonight,” said Carter. “If you’d care to go with me—”

  “Thank you, but the nurse and I have conspired to put me to bed early. Just tell Katherine for me that she need not worry. Her stage designer won’t be dropping in. That engagement has been cancelled.”

  Carter knocked over a coffee cup without even noticing. The force of this girl’s personality was getting the better of him. It was damaging to his egotism.

  If it had been a rough-and-tumble scrap between two steel-fisted men he could have waded in and bumped their heads together and brought them to their senses.

  But the forces of conflict in this subtle interplay between two entrancing females slipped right through his fingers.

  “I’ll tell her,” Carter said curtly, starting away, “that I’ve received a message directly from the stage designer, who happens to be too busy hiking around witnessing murders to report her presence.”

  He stalked halfway out of the tent, then turned to look back. The Siamese nurse muttered at him to go on to his show or he’d be late. She was applying more ointment to Yolanda’s face.

  A sudden impulse struck Carter. He was used to winning his battles even if they took physical force. He marched back to Yolanda.

  He deliberately pressed his palms against her cheeks and tilted her face upward. Her serene beauty went through him.

  He could have kissed her, then. But there was a cool defiance in her eyes that made him think twice. He let his hands slip away.

  He turned to the nurse. “I wouldn’t apply any more of that stuff. Her face is cool enough.”

  Late that night when Carter motorcycled back to camp from Bangkok he had a passenger hanging on with him—Katherine Knight.

  Katherine had sworn she wouldn’t eat or sleep until she found Yolanda and squared things.

  “I owe that gal a lot of apologies,” Katherine kept saying, “and maybe she owes me one or two. Anyway I’ve got to see her.”

  But when they rode into camp Yolanda wasn’t to be found. The nurse said she had picked up a ride to town.

  CHAPTER XVI

  A Phantom from the Temple Basement

  It was nearing daybreak when Carter O’Connor drove Katherine back to Bangkok in the sleek gray roadster.

  She was distressed over their failure to find Yolanda.

  “Leave it to me,” Carter said. “I’ll have the civil authorities locate her. They’ll notify airports and rail and bus lines.”

  He turned off the main thoroughfare at the sign which pointed to the Temple Hotel. One of Katherine’s several clashes with her manager was her staying at this place. The manager said it was off the beaten trail. But Katherine was sure it was the newest swankiest magnet for show people.

  “All the big independent show folks are going to be staying here.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, there’s Tolozell, the famous hypnotist.”

  Carter drew in a sharp breath. “Staying there now?”

  “Yes. You know him?”

  “I’ve heard of him. Katherine, I’ve got to straighten you out on a few things. You’ve heard of the Jap Imperialists. You know there’s lots of underground business afoot.”

  “Please, Carter,” Katherine squirmed impatiently. “I can’t take any more lecturing tonight. And I don’t like you when you put on that stern manner. Here’s the driveway to the hotel . . . Aren’t you going to be the least bit chummy before I go in?”

  “Listen, Katherine,” Carter said savagely. “These Jap Imperialists have the power to do harm to everyone of us. Right now I’m in danger of having to close down my roadwork for lack of funds. There’s a wealthy society called the Chiams. If they can’t reorganize and give the civil authorities some financial support, I may find myself out of a job.”

  “That’s wonderful!” Katherine exclaimed. “Then when my circuit sends me on to Burma you can come along. Cheer up, Stony Face. Treat yourself to a lark.”

  She draped an arm over his shoulder as he drew to a stop in the Temple Hotel driveway.

  He disregarded her gesture, for in that moment he was struck by the sight of a tall, spare figure emerging from a dimly lighted basement door.

  The tall shadowy man was startled by the car lights. He turned back swiftly, and the slippery movements of his angular shoulders were familiar to Carter O’Connor. A familiar phantom that had haunted the road boss in many a night gone by.

  The narrow ornamental door to the lower Temple level closed silently, and the dim orange light from within was gone.

  Carter was aware, then, that Katherine was patting him gently on the cheek, teasing for a chummy good night—or rather a good morning—kiss. The gray skies were growing whiter overhead.

  “Your mind’s not on your work this morning,” Katherine said caustically, drawing away from him.

  “It will be, later in the day,” said Carter.

  “Oh. You mean you’re intending to find—”

  “The civil authorities. I’ve plenty of business to lay before them. They’ve got to dig in and come up with some funds or they’ll have an unfinished road on their hands. And I’ve a thing or two to say about a certain underground crime wave—Katherine! ”

  “I’m going in!” She was out of the car and on her way.

  “Wait, Katherine. You’ve got to tell me something. This Tolozell—has he tried to hypnotize you since you’ve been here?”

  Katherine came back to the car slowly.

  “What difference does that make?”

  “I’ve just remembered—you said you didn’t know why you sent for a stage designer—but that you felt compelled. Answer me, Katherine, was it your will to do it—or the will of someone else?”

  The girl stammered, and it was plain that her nerves were all unstrung. She broke into tears.

  “I—I don’t know. How can I know anything, with all the mess I’m in. My job is to dance, not to settle up all your old troubles.”

  “All right, Katherine. Forgive me. Run along and get some rest so you’ll be feeling fine by show-time tonight.” He drew her into his arms and kissed her tenderly.

  “There . . . Just forget about everything that’s happened.”

  “And I’ll see you after the show tonight?” she begged.

  “You’d better go right to bed.”

  “Come—please—right after the show? Please, Carter . . . Promise?”

  “All right, I’ll come.”

  Carter O’Connor escorted her to the main temple entrance, then hurried back to his car.

  His sharp eyes swept back across the temple garden as he drove away. Again there was a streak of orange light showing at the narrow little inset door to the temple’s lower level.

  “That devil of a Slack Clampitt!” he muttered to himself. “What’s his tie-up with the Temple Hotel?”

  Carter cruised twice around a wide circular drive that enclosed the Temple Hotel grounds. At last he spied a police officer crossing the driveway.

  The uniformed man was probably going off duty, thought Carter; maybe the fellow would accept a lift.

  Carter called to him.

  The policeman shook his head and trudged on.

  “Officer!” Carter called.

  “What’s wanted?” The man in the brown uniform came out to the car reluctantly. By the growing daylight, Carter could see at a glance that the man was not Siamese, Chinese. He was partly Jap; perhaps a mixture of
all three. His uniform, however, appeared to be official Bangkok. Carter decided to take a chance.

  “How soon can you get a squad of men?” Carter snapped. “There’s a killer lurking in this neighborhood.”

  “Not so fast,” said the officer in a clinking Oriental dialect. “Who’s been killed?”

  “One of my men, a night ago, out on one of the highways—”

  “A night ago, and you’re just now reporting?”

  “I reported yesterday noon. But—”

  “Then go back to bed. The police will handle it.”

  “But I’m trying to tell you, the man’s hiding out right over there in the Temple Hotel. I saw him start to come out. If you get a squad right away, he’s trapped.”

  “Highly irregular,” said the little officer apathetically. “How do I know you’re not drunk or crazy? What are you doing around here this time of night?”

  “I just brought someone back to the hotel, and this slippery devil happened to show his face—”

  “Come on, show me where you saw him. Lock your car. We’ll go on foot.” They crossed the lavender shadows from the tall trees through the garden. The electric lights were dimming against the daylit skies.

  “Come along close to the wall,” said the policeman. “If anyone should step out, you tell me—by the way, where is that door you spoke of?”

  “Straight ahead.”

  The officer crowded the wall, Carter walked along on the outside, just beneath the low dipping eaves.

  “Hold it,” said the officer.

  Carter stopped.

  At that instant he heard a rustle overhead, and a form came bounding down upon him. He was knocked flat, and both the officer and the eaves crawler pounced upon him with flying fists.

  The black-suited man from overhead was considerably larger and heavier than the fake officer. Both men were quick and athletic, and there was more than a suggestion of jiu jitsu in their manner of attack.

  Carter’s feet kicked out in time, however, to hurl the fake officer back across the sidewalk. There was a swift moment, then, in which his only adversary was the thick-set man in black, who by this time was raising his arm to catch something out of the air.

  In that interval between fist blows and weapons, Carter reared upward and struck the big man with such an uppercut that the fellow went reeling back against the wall. The gun which some hidden third party had thrown him spilled out of his fingers.

  Carter dived for it. Black-suit kicked it out of his grasp, and the weapon went clattering down the short stairway toward the narrow lower-level door.

  Then a third man swung down from the eaves, pounced squarely on Carter’s shoulders, and hung on like a demon.

  Carter whirled. He was aware that there could be gun play within a few seconds. If he couldn’t land two or three cold knockouts at once, he might go the way of the luckless Heavy. He had no appetite for being murdered in cold blood. If there was killing to be done, he preferred to give rather than receive.

  He bounced the back-hanger off his shoulder with a terrific swing, and the attacker went rolling out into the street.

  Even in the rush of fighting, Carter gave a second flash of thought to the way that rolling body behaved. Not like a dead body. Anything but. The attacker rolled back off the driveway as if it had been a hot stove.

  There was something significant in that action. It proved that there was a complete plan at work among these thugs. And the developments of the next moment proved as much. A truck came roaring around the driveway.

  Its headlights were off. Its driver was scrunched down in his seat. The monster came on at high speed.

  Then it was that three or four more figures came rushing up out of the basement doorway brandishing guns. The other attackers were piling in again from the opposite direction. Carter’s one apparent opening was to race across the driveway—

  But could he make it ahead of the truck?

  Not if they could help it. The right front wheel was meant for him.

  He struck out at the man who was crowding down on him hardest. Then, without a split second of faltering, he sprang, caught the overhead eave, and swung himself up.

  Three of the men were right after him. At any rate, three hands caught over the edge of the eave simultaneously. But Carter’s fingers had already found a loose chunk of tile. He hammered down one, two, three, like rapid notes on an anvil. The hands slipped off.

  He rushed up the steep tiled roofside.

  He expected to be shot in the back.

  But no shots sounded. He knew, then, that the guns had been bluff. The Temple Hotel’s underworld wanted no gun murders. Business was too well entrenched. All they wanted was a hit- and-run job to get him out of the way; just a safe and sound little maneuver to make sure that Slack Clampitt wouldn’t be sought out and turned over to the authorities.

  By the time he reached the ridgepole of one wing of the temple building, he could hear the clamor of excited voices below, both male and female. The whole guest-list of the hotel must have been aroused by the noises. One loud voice was bellowing to everyone to get back inside.

  “There’s a dangerous criminal on the roof!”

  Others cried for the police. In another minute the whole situation was taking a new turn, and Carter O’Connor faced a danger he hadn’t counted on.

  “If he’s a dangerous criminal,” someone yelled, “shoot him down! Don’t let him get away!”

  Evidently the gang of thugs below was also embarrassed by finding that their game of hit-and-run had suddenly become a public affair. As Carter glanced downward he failed to see the fake officer and the man in black; they had gone into hiding in a hurry.

  But the truck continued spinning around the temple with such speed that Carter knew it was still out for blood. No doubt the driver had had a last- second order to stay on the trail and ride the victim down.

  It was the crowd of hotel guests who distracted the driver into slowing down, as if to stop.

  Carter was waiting for that to happen. He slid down the title roof like a toboggan. He leaped from the eave, straight for the retarding truck cab, and landed on his toes. The onlookers screamed.

  He swung himself down into the left window, head and shoulders first, nearly scaring the life out of the driver. The rest was easy. One punch knocked the driver cold, and Carter was in the seat, steering for the outer street where he had left his car.

  “Thanks for the lift, pal,” he said to the dizzy truck driver as he parked.

  Another swift jump and he was spinning away in his own roadster, well ahead of the sirens of the city’s motorcycle police.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Help—Too Late

  In the offices of the Bangkok city government that afternoon one of the older and wiser of the city’s specialized trouble shooters shook his head sadly over the state of civic affairs.

  “Please, no more interviews today,” the Siamese official said.

  “But your honor, Carter O’Connor, the American road builder, is waiting.”

  “O’Connor? That’s different. Send him in.”

  The secretary bowed and stepped out to the lobby. “Mr. Seemo is ready, Mr. O’Connor.”

  Carter O’Connor had walked through this elaborately carved doorway many times before. But today, as he caught the reflection of his haggard face in the polished tile walls he felt as if the weight of all the building materials in Siam were on his back.

  “Welcome, Mr. O’Connor. Please sit down. Here is a newspaper. I’ll talk with you in a moment.”

  Carter returned Seemo’s cordial greeting and sat down to scan the headlines.

  Seemo phoned to the finance department and began making arrangements for additional funds for the O’Connor Road Project.

  “We’ll have a report yet this afternoon—”

  “Thanks, but that wasn’t what I came in for, Mr. Seemo.”

  “No?”

  “I’m surprised to find no mention in the paper—it must have
been suppressed at the source. I got into an ugly jam this morning, and I think you’d like to hear about it.”

  “Go right ahead, Mr. O’Connor.” Carter told his story. He began with George Wilmington, who had gotten the map that once belonged to John How. He told of Slack Clampitt’s thieving the letter containing this information.

  He proceeded with the quarrel between Clampitt and Heavy, as witnessed by Yolanda Lavelle, and the resulting murder.

  “Just when or how Slack Clampitt attached himself to the city’s underworld element, I don’t know,” said Carter. “He’s not one to take on friends. But he had a basement gang lined up to protect him at the Temple Hotel this morning.”

  “It would seem,” said Seemo, “that he might be the only one who knows that your friend Wilmington is on his way to this country with a valuable map.”

  “Almost the only one,” said Carter. “But the Siamese hypnotist, Tolozell, is here again—also located at the new Temple Hotel. I’m sure he’ll be laying for George Wilmington, too.”

  “When do you expect Wilmington to arrive?”

  “Any day,” said Carter. “Probably not later than the last of this week.”

  “You’ve told me before of George Wilmington and his break with Tolozell,” said the officer. “Now it would appear that the hypnotist and your deserter, Clampitt, are playing the same game.”

  “But together or separately?”

  “That remains to be seen,” said Seemo. “All I can say is that they’re playing for big stakes. The Jap Imperialists no doubt realize that there’s a treasury of billions waiting somewhere.”

  The official rummaged through some papers and found a dust smeared mimeographed page full of impressive figures.

  “Here’s the last record of the Chiam treasury totals to be printed. John How issued this statement for the society soon after the war. You’ll notice that there is no information which would be of any use to the Japanese Imperialists—or other thieves.”