The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  Who was I? Where was I? What was this awful heaviness of my right arm? I passed the fingers of my left hand slowly along the length of my right arm. The right hand was quite empty. But it was tense, like a spring of steel, like something that has just struck a terrific blow.

  Dimly I heard the echoes of a girl’s scream from somewhere in the distance. Did I know that voice? Where were those hoof beats coming from? I was standing in the doorway of a deserted building. Why?

  I was looking down at the figure of a man lying in the doorway. He looked like me. Something was sticking up from his back—a dagger! A dagger doesn’t belong in a man’s body. I drew it out. I wiped the blood on the man’s shirt until the blade gleamed.

  I weighed the knife in my hand. It was a jeweled knife. It matched the jeweled scabbard I was wearing at the waist of my green pantaloons. This was all so strange—and yet in some degree familiar.

  Now the hoof beats were accompanied by the sounds of an automobile roaring in action. I looked out to the highway. Three men on Arabian horses were trying to overtake the car. They raced along beside it and one of them leaped to the runningboard. The car swerved and screeched to a stop.

  My impulse was to reach for an automatic pistol. But I had no pistol. Such a false impulse only added to my dreadful confusion. I thought I always carried my automatic.

  The car again leaped into action. Two horsemen pursued, and a moment later the third trailed after. Soon the sounds faded out of hearing as the chase lost itself in the outskirts of the village.

  From inside the doorway came the rustling noises of an animal pawing. I looked back. Brushing the clothes of the man who lay there, face down, was a bright-eyed monkey dressed in overalls! This was certainly familiar. And out there beside the highway, silhouetted against the sky, was a similar creature sitting on the back of a donkey.

  I sat down in the doorway to think matters over. I was greatly disturbed by the clothes I was wearing. This jeweled scabbard was not mine. And this jeweled dagger—I must return it to the owner.

  I rubbed my face thoughtfully, and such whiskers! Had I forgotten to shave recently? These bushy eyebrows—this turban! These were not mine!

  For a long time, perhaps half an hour, or more, I sat there in a stupor. It was quite dark when the girl drove back in the car and shone the lights in at the doorway.

  I cannot say why I crept away when I saw her coming. My feet seemed to take me away.

  I heard her call, “Val! Val!” over and over. That seemed to be my name.

  But I didn’t answer. My head was aching so from all these strange thoughts. My body felt so unnatural. My arm, so steel-like, was somehow related to that cold, wicked feeling in my heart.

  It hurt me to hear her low sobbing as she looked down upon the body lying there—the body that had been mine.

  Before leaving, she took the automatic pistol from his pocket.

  She spoke softly to the two monkeys. They must come with her. I heard her tell the donkey that from now on it must look after itself.

  She was about to return to her car when her pursuers came galloping back and they rushed in and seized her. They bound her wrists, they tossed her on one of their Arabian mounts and together the four of them rode away.

  Then it was that I tried to make up my mind between two or three courses of action.

  Should I stay here beside that fallen, stabbed image of myself which seemed to be lying dead?

  Should I drive away in the car that had been left with lights burning, just outside the door?

  Or should I follow these indefinable impulses and move from this place wherever my feet wanted to go?

  The desires of my feet carried me off to the east. Near another shed I heard the friendly whinny of a horse. As X rounded the building I could see it by the starlight, a beautiful Arabian mount.

  I cannot say why I rode away, except that my body carried me into these actions from some mysterious will of its own.

  I rode toward Ruklah. That was the way the horse seemed inclined to go. But within a mile of the town it wanted to stop and graze. I stayed on its back. I was thinking of that dead man that had seemed to be me. It was all very confusing.

  “If that dead man was Val Roman, then who am I?”

  I kept mumbling these questions to myself and out of the confusion the words of the old Hindu with the sacred cow came back to me:

  “May his life transcend the fates . . . When his enemies cut km down, may he spring up from the earth to confuse them!”

  What had they done with that lovely blonde girl? That was Faye! I was beginning to remember. But why did they want her? Where would they take her? How could I help?

  Sometimes after midnight three horsemen came out and gathered round me.

  “Come on in. Ben Addis is waiting for your report,” one of them yelled. “What’s the idea of stalling?”

  They rode beside me. I didn’t know these men. But they seemed to know me.

  We rode to the foothills that separated us from the village of Ruklah. By starlight we found the entrance of a long black tunnel. One of the men lighted a torch and we rode through.

  At the farther end a native servant took our horses. He looked up at me with a curious light of hero worship, and, speaking in his native tongue, said, “Another achievement. I wish I might win favors from Ben Addis as you do. The new scabbard he gave you is a beauty.”

  I nodded, thinking to myself, “So this scabbard is a gift of the merchant prince. Now who am I to be receiving gifts from him?”

  Out of the cave, into an old rambling stone house at the hillside edge of Ruklah, I soon realized that I was now in the dwelling place of Ben Addis.

  One of the black servants, coming down the hallway, said, “The master is in your room waiting to talk with you.”

  He made a gesture toward a doorway—“my room.” I went in. Ben Addis was lying on the couch. I saw at a glance that he was crippled. His legs and ankles, exposed beneath the folds of his lavender robe, were withered. This brought back my memory of his having remained in the seat of his palanquin at the market when I had seen him before . . . The market . . . my monkeys . . . the face of Alashee with his tiger-fierce eyes and bristling whiskers. Rapidly my thoughts were reassembling.

  Ben Addis gave an expression of relief to see me and motioned me to the chair in the corner. Like the other men, he was mistaking me for someone I was not. All right, I would let him make his own mistakes. Far be it from me to tell him I was really Val Roman.

  “What kept you so long?” he said.

  “Is it so late?” I said.

  “It’s nearly two A.M. Where did you go after you did the deed?”

  “The deed?”

  “The murder.”

  “Oh—the murder, of course. Why—er—I mounted my horse—”

  “Naturally.”

  “And rode.”

  “Rode where?”

  “Nowhere. That is—just wherever the horse wanted to take me. I needed to rest awhile.”

  “Alashee, you’re behaving very strangely. But you did succeed in killing him?”

  Alashee! Was he calling me Alashee? Was he accusing me of murdering my self?

  I groped for words. “It was a bloody mess . . . I’m afraid I . . . I splashed myself.”

  I glanced at my garments, then I reached for the hand mirror on the box-dresser in the corner—for my real purpose was to get a look at my face.

  Ben Addis raised up from the cot. “What are you staring at yourself for?” Sure enough, I was Alashee. I would know that face anywhere.

  CHAPTER V

  Lost—One Blonde Captive

  It was a most uncomfortable situation. Val Roman had been murdered. My daggered body lay in a deserted doorway near the next village. But here I was, very much alive, wearing the body of my murderer, Alashee.

  The servants came to serve an early breakfast to Ben Addis and four of his henchmen—myself included.

  Ben Addis kept questioning me for deta
ils. When I hesitated for words, one of the other members of the murder brigade filled in with the necessary information.

  Mobovarah, the little brown Hindu with the brown twisted face—the same servant who had advised me to go on to the next city with my monkeys—now related the high points of the night’s escapade.

  Mobovarah said, “Our plan was perfect, only we didn’t know that this girl would drive up in her flivver.”

  “Which girl?” Ben Addis growled. “She’s the daughter of Morrison Landreth, an English agent.”

  “Ye gods!” Ben Addis’ helpless feet gave a slight quiver.

  “Our marked man rode in the car with her,” Mobovarah went on. “But they drove slow on account of his menagerie following along. The four of us on horseback took the mountain shortcut like you told us. So we got there in plenty of time.”

  “Naturally,” said Ben Addis. “Go on.”

  “Well, Alashee had a bright idea for getting Val Roman away from the girl’s car so he could plunge the knife. I rode into the highway from a side trail and unleashed one of the monkeys when the car was a stone’s throw ahead—then when they approached the vacant building where Alashee was hiding, he tempted the monkey with some banana. Didn’t you, Alashee?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then the next thing you know, Roman came bounding out of the car to recover his runaway—”

  “Ingenious, Alashee!” Ben Addis exclaimed, looking at me with admiring eyes, “lien what?”

  “I—well, it was simple from there on,” I said.

  The narrator again took the story out of my hands. “Don’t be so modest, Alashee. You know you had to be very clever to conceal yourself inside that door and attract the monkey without ever being seen by the couple in the car.”

  “Are you sure the girl didn’t see me?” I asked. “I heard her scream.” Ben Addis looked sharply at Mobovarah. “What about that?”

  “What if she did see?” said the spokesman. “We were all set to charge out as soon as the dagger plunged. We overtook her car—”

  “You’ve got to kill her,” said Ben Addis, “regardless of who she is. How many times must I tell you, we never let a witness live. Never! Never!”

  “All we’re waiting for is your orders,” said Mobovarah with a hint of eagerness in his twisted face.

  “Where is she?”

  “Somewhere back in the hills.”

  “Don’t be so indefinite,” Ben Addis growled.

  “Well, damn it, she’s a whirlwind, that girl,” Mobovarah said, looking to his two companions to back him up. “She got away from us on the chase around the cottage. But we kept in sight of her. She swung back to her dead boyfriend, and that’s where we caught her.”

  “And bound her, I trust?”

  “We thought we did. The blonde little she-devil, we were bringing her back to camp on horseback when she scrambled down and made a chase for the hills. But that was her mistake. She trapped herself.”

  “Well, where is she? Where is she” Ben Addis’ big dark fists were shaking.

  “She ran into the Red Rock maze. She’s there, and we’ve left two guards at the entrance, with flashlights. So she’s our prisoner.”

  Ben Addis snarled. He mopped his forehead. “That’s a pretty kettle of fish,” he said. “We’ve got to get her out of there at once. She must meet an ‘accidental’ death before daybreak. Where’s her car?”

  “Near the Red Rock maze. We brought it up for safe keeping. The guards have an eye on it.”

  “All right,” said Ben Addis. “Get her out of the Red Rock maze. Take her for a final joyride. There’s an embankment on the east Ruklah road. Let her go over with the car.”

  “I’m telling you, she’s a wildcat,” one of the men repeated.

  “Well, don’t get your own necks broken. Make the whole thing look like she went to sleep driving. The English agency can’t suspect a thing.” I spoke up cynically. “You think not—happening on the same night her friend is murdered?”

  “She’ll be found four miles above Ruklah. He’s six miles below. They’ll miss her tomorrow. But he may not be discovered for several days. Who’ll miss him, anyhow?”

  “The monkeys,” I said.

  “Ye gods. You’ll have to get them out of the way somehow.”

  “Bring them here and I’ll hide them,” I said.

  “That’s no good,” said Ben Addis, “not after you trying to buy them in the market yesterday. I don’t trust live monkeys any more than men. But we’ll see about them later.” Ben Addis looked at his watch. “Only an hour till daylight. You’ll have to hurry.” Mobovarah hesitated. “There’s a thousand hiding places in the Red Rock.”

  “Take ten men with you,” said Ben Addis.

  “I’ll go,” I volunteered. I tightened the belt that held my jeweled scabbard and dagger and followed the others.

  In the tunnels eleven of us lighted our torches and mounted our Arabian horses. Soon we emerged on the other side, and rode along the black foothills under the stars. The terror of Faye’s situation was bearing down on me. To all appearances, I was Alashee. Everyone around me took me to be the cool and competent lieutenant to Ben Addis. I was second in rank in this murderous Scarlet Swordsman gang—for such it evidently was. The scarlet turbans had been left with that part of the gang that had remained in the mountains around Kyber. But the real leader of the outfit had always been, and still was, no other than Ben Addis, the sly merchant of jewels.

  A wild and reckless game they were playing, coming down to these highways and byways of commerce. They were like serpents, made bold by their successful treacheries in the wilderness, now slithering into the crossroad cities to feed fat on less suspecting prey.

  “You are strangely silent, Alashee,” said little Mobovarah, at once sarcastic and inquisitive.

  “This is a cruel errand,” I said. “You’d better leave it to me.”

  “I’m surprised,” Mobovarah said. “You usually leave the dirty work to me.”

  I was interested to know this. In fact, I was picking up many hints regarding my character—my new self that I seemed doomed to be. My life, miraculously spared, might yet be useful, but no one dare know my secret. I must seem to be Alashee in every way possible.

  As the little old Hindu with the sacred cow had predicted, “May his life transcend the fates . . . when his enemies cut him down, may he spring up from the earth to confuse them!” How long would the Gods allow me to live in this dangerous and damned body? I could only wonder. But as long as this was my lot, I would fight my fight. My first responsibility was to Faye.

  “Here we are,” said Mobovarah.

  By torchlight and flashlight I took in the steep canyon walls—an opening of not more than fifteen feet at the narrow entrance. We found the two Afghan guards on the job. We left our horses with one of them. The other, who was cocksure he knew which part of the maze Faye was hiding in, accompanied the party of us along the narrow path at the edge of the stream.

  The men looked to me for leadership. They were surprised when I insisted that they take their orders from Mobovarah. I preferred to enter the maze alone.

  “Alashee wants to find her by himself,” I heard one of the men comment. “Maybe he does not hate women so much as he has led us to believe.”

  “Did I ever say I hated women?” I challenged.

  In the light of torches I saw their expressions of surprise and derision, and one of them said, “Ho! Who is it that has called women Allah’s curse upon the human race? Can the unchangeable Alashee have forgotten the times he refused to help with the slaughter of a caravan because of its beautiful women?”

  “So I refused. And what was my excuse?”

  “That women were not deserving of death from an expert Scarlet Swordsman like you. You would not waste a stroke of the blade upon them. You would not even admit that there could be such a thing as beautiful women. And so you stayed in camp and helped Ben Addis count the stolen gems as we brought them in.”
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  So that was the sort of fellow they expected me to be—too proud to waste the stroke of a sword unless my adversary was a fighting man. This discovery brought the perspiration to my forehead. Yours Truly, Val Roman, alias Alashee, was going to have a tough time pretending any such disdain for a certain blonde captive. There was nothing in the world that I wanted so much, just now, as to see her alive, unharmed, and free.

  “I’ll enter the maze alone,” I repeated stubbornly. I exchanged my torch for a flashlight and shot the beam along the walls.

  Where would Faye have gone, once she had footraced into this natural prison?

  The bed of the mountain stream widened for a few yards within the natural chamber of walls. Our voices echoed through the babble and hiss of the several little tributary streams that chased down through separate tunnels into this central chamber. The walls flared with brilliant red when our torches brushed close.

  At Mobovarah’s command, the men entered their assigned tunnels for a swift preliminary search of the labyrinth nearest the entrance. Some of these tunnels were marked with signs and arrows. But I knew that there were endless crevices and steep-walled channels among this tunnel world where one might hide for days without being discovered.

  I had not been here before; but Faye had. She had told me of coming here with a party from the English agency. So I knew that she had chosen this place for escape with full knowledge of what she was getting into.

  Where would she go? Far into the interior? Or would she chance a hiding place near the entrance? She had not had any sort of light. But she had had a gun—mine.

  Mobovarah came back to me.

  “Do you think it would do any good to call?”

  “And warn her we’re on the trail? Very good, Mobo. Very good. Ben Addis would praise you for your brilliance. Since when have you been interested in helping her escape?” Mobovarah squirmed. His twisted face reminded me of a sullen weasel.

  “You shall have the full pleasure of seeing her plunge over the cliff, Alashee,” he said. “The honor will be all yours, and you’ll have no comebacks at me.”