The man in the red shirt was giving orders to get under weigh again and seemed to have nothing to do with the enthroned individual.
The man on the throne looked up, fixed a sullen and vengeful eye upon his captives and said, “I, the Thunderbolt, pronounce the sentence of death.”
The guard moved forward toward the captives.
“That,” said Tiger, “would be a waste of good money. We can furnish a ransom of three hundred thousand pieces of gold!”
Tombo, Malek, Muddy and Walleye looked with amazement on Tiger. But Tiger stayed very cool. Ryan grinned.
The guard stopped its forward motion. It drew back.
“Three hundred thousand pieces of gold for the lot of us,” said Tiger, more loudly.
“There’s two ifrits,” muttered somebody in the crowd behind them.
“Ought to be killed,” said somebody else.
“Damned navy sons,” said somebody else.
“How much?” said the red-shirted man, orders to the ship forgotten and facing Tiger now.
“Three hundred thousand pieces of gold,” said Tiger, even more loudly.
“You heard my orders,” said the Thunderbolt on his throne and took a swig from a gin bottle.
But the guard turned back to him. There was a great deal of whispered argument. The man in the red shirt finally detached himself and came over to Tiger.
“How do we collect this?” he said.
“By landing us on the beach near Tarbutón,” said Tiger. “One messenger, the gold back in one hour.”
“How does a human come to have gold?” said the red-shirted man.
“Because these two ifrits are my captives,” said Tiger. “One is very rich.” He laid a seemingly affectionate hand on Tombo’s lofty shoulder. “He owes me his life. He will pay.”
Tombo was too stunned to object. He did not have three hundred thousand pieces of gold that he knew about.
There was further conference.
“Kill the sailors and save the ifrits,” announced the Thunderbolt.
“Wouldn’t do,” said Tiger boldly. A knife had appeared in his hand as though by materialization and the knife had its point at Tombo’s throat. “Put us all in the same hold or your golden goose ceases to exist.”
Tombo was very upset. He was becoming extremely confused. Malek sighed pessimistically.
There was another conference. There were gestures. Thunderbolt finally laid about him with the gin bottle and rose up. “All right, you swabs. Put him in the brig. Put them all in the brig!”
And as Tiger and the rest were thrust down the ladder into the dark hold, the Thunderbolt was heard to hiccough, “You never do what I tell you. Never. But I get the next captives and I get to do it like I want!”
Tiger and his companions were locked into a space much too small and without sufficient height. The water was running along the outer skin of the ship again as the vessel gathered weigh. The water gurgled noisily in the bilge just under their feet.
Tombo sank down against the wall, a very bewildered ifrit. “But I haven’t got three hundred thousand pieces of gold, Tiger. Why did you tell them that?”
“Save your brains for admiraling, Tombo,” said Tiger.
“But he’ll kill us,” said Malek. “These are escaped slaves turned pirate. That’s Old Thunderguts himself, the most infamous rogue afloat. We’re dead men.”
“I’m still breathing,” said Tiger and placidly pulled out a piece of cheese and a chunk of bread snatched from the lugger’s stores, passed them around and began to eat lunch.
At two o’clock that afternoon, the inmates of that crowded cell were confounded to find their number increased. It was very dark. The cell door had not opened. And yet there was sobbing in the cell. Whatever might have been the dispositions of these hard cases, the ability to sob was not included amongst their accomplishments. Accordingly they took a hasty census.
With many grunts and mutters, they discovered that they were now Tiger, Walleye, Muddy, Tombo, Malek, Ryan and one who sobbed. An inquiry was undertaken by all, but Tiger silenced them and conducted his own.
He very swiftly located the source of the grief as coming from the one corner left vacant on their first admission to this place. He then discovered that the weeping came from a girl. He fished through his pockets and discovered flint and steel and in a moment, by a flow of sparks, beheld her. Tiger sank back on his haunches, the breath coming out of him as if he had been struck.
They had all seen the girl by the sparks. But Tiger had seen more. Her delicate and lovely face, seen through her veil, discovered her to be Wanna, one-time temple dancer, the fragile beauty who had become, by his conquest, Tiger’s consort!
Tiger got his breath back. She should have been waiting for him in Tarbutón, many a league away, safe in what remained of the baronial possessions which he had mostly squandered. But here she was, aboard this shabby ship, a desirable woman just a few yards away from a thoroughly blackguard crew.
“How in Baal’s name did you get here?” demanded Tiger hoarsely.
Her weeping stilled. She seemed to be listening, hopefully but fearfully. “Is—is it really you?”
“Yes,” said Tiger practically. “It’s me!” His male wrath was rising. “What did you do to get yourself here?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said and began to weep again. Tiger dried her tears with a corner of his headsilk and sat down, his arm around her.
“It’s my girl,” he whispered menacingly to the others in the cell. “Somehow she got here from Tarbutón. Stand clear or I’ll bust a skull!”
Muddy and Walleye scuttled back. Ryan braced up to help Tiger if there was a fight. Tombo’s breathing, if anyone had noticed, had stopped on Tiger’s first announcement and began again, excitement in it. Tombo scented something he could use.
“Stand and deliver,” whispered Tiger to Wanna. “What happened? And stow the weeps. You’ll have the guards down on us.”
“Where are we?” said Wanna between sniffles.
“Aboard a scummy buckaroon,” said Tiger. “Old Thunderguts.”
“The Thunderbolt?” gasped Wanna. “The pirate emperor?” And she really began to cry.
“Hush it!” said Tiger fiercely. “How’d you get here?”
He managed to return to her some of her self-possession and at last she began a connected explanation.
“When I woke up this morning (sniffle) I didn’t mean any harm (dabs with Tiger’s headsilk) and I put on my bathing gown and started to go to the baths (two sniffles) when I felt in my pocket and there was something there (more dabs with the headsilk) and I took it out and oh! I almost went blind! (Swift recovery with no sniffles whatever.) It was a diamond as big as my hand! What a stone! I almost fainted with surprise. And I looked at it and then I realized (on the verge of weeping now) that you were not there to protect me (sobs) and I ran back to our rooms and I locked myself in and almost died with fright for fear somebody had seen me look at it. It’s enough (deep sobs) to get murdered to have a diamond like that. And I didn’t know what to do (sniffles) and I worried and worried and I didn’t know when you would be home or even where you were sailed to and I thought maybe I’d just have to stay in and starve to death (loud sniffles and a sob) for if I went out I’d get robbed and so I wanted you to come home because the diamond would have bought back our estates and then I got more and more scared for fear somebody had seen me so I hid the diamond under the mattress and all of a sudden here I was! Oh, Tiger, even if we’re going to die, I’m so glad to see you!”
Tiger patted her. He was much puzzled. “Wait. You must have said something when you were hiding it.”
“Oh, yes. But only that I wished I was with you.”
There was a slither of leather and claws. Hoarsely Tombo said, “I’ll take that diamond now.”
But Tiger was already aware that it was not on her person. He confirmed his belief with a short whisper to her and her answer after a brief search about h
er.
“Get out of here,” said Tiger to Tombo. “She don’t have it. What’s the matter with you, you damned ifrit? What’s so valuable about this diamond?”
Tombo weighed the situation slowly. He thought slowly, Tombo. He vocalized all his thoughts in his head. And he supposed he must be very wise to be able to think so slowly and take so long to reach conclusions. In short, he was a fool. But he had brawn and determination to put foolish conclusions into solid actions and power to spare.
Tombo was assured that the diamond was not then present. He permitted himself to be pushed back. He and Malek could easily overcome these unarmed humans, such was the disproportion of size. But Tiger might inflict damage.
“I’ll wait,” said Tombo. “But if the diamond comes here, it is mine.”
Chapter Six
The Wriggling Man
Jan Palmer awoke to find himself none too well oiled after a night’s slumber across a desk. Some servant had brought in a tray of dinner and it was thirteen hours cold. Nevertheless, he took the slab of roast beef in his hand and chewed it, poured out a cup of coffee and sipped it. The cold coffee told him that this was not evening; the slanting beams of sunlight confirmed it since his seaman’s eye detected that they came from the eastern windows. He stood up and rang a bell. Fumbling around in his studio bathroom he located and applied the materials necessary to make his cheeks smooth, like in the ads. The Swede girl made the coffee hot and presently, seated again at his desk and much refreshed by the brew, he thought about the diamond.
So certain was he that it was lying there, right in front of him, where its glitter had mesmerized him yesterday, that it took him several minutes to digest the fact that it was not present. He immediately began a scramble through the stacks of papers and sail plans and when nothing resulted from this, looked under and around the desk, into the wastebasket and around the office.
He summoned the Swede girl. Yes, she vas brought his supper to him the night before. No, she vas not seeing a diamond. And if he vas accusing her of being a thief he vas going to get a notice and soon right away. He mollified her and was about to start his search all over again when Alice appeared.
Alice was a very businesslike girl. She had no traffic with idleness. A man, particularly the head of Bering Steam, should toe the mark, measure up, bear down and generally comport himself. Neither he nor she was aware of the fact that she had had no complaints a very few days ago. Something poetic had vanished from her nature, something strong from his. She was a hard-eyed ex-businesswoman who had gotten her man and, having gotten him, was making very sure that he did all the business necessary, not only for the money involved but also because she had a lifetime habit of keeping a man at his job.
“You aren’t at the office,” she said. “It’s nine.”
“Yes, dear,” said Jan, meekly.
“The moment you take your hands off the reins your board of directors is liable to take a slice of Bering for themselves.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Now that we have that settled, I’ll run you down. I’m going shopping for the tea party this afternoon.”
“Alice,” said Jan, stopping her as she turned toward the door, “have you seen anything of—well, of a diamond?”
“Oh yes, of course, you silly boy. It is a nice present but it is simply too expensive, what with the government and its silly taxes and all. You’ll have barely enough cash to pay your income tax as it is, despite the fact that they are letting you keep one-half of one percent of your own money this year and only telling you how to spend two-thirds of that. So you just trot right back to the jewelry store and tell them that a much less showy present will be quite adequate.”
Jan blinked at this, got it straight and with husbandly wit decided not to disabuse her of this fable she had erected. “Very well, my dear. Give me the diamond and I’ll do what is right.”
She looked around as though expecting to find it in the room, then poised a finger against her lower lip, looked at the ceiling and thought. Jan watched her in suspense.
“I showed it to one of the girls—let me see . . . Did I put it down in the drawing room? No . . .”
“Think, dear,” said Jan, hiding his agony.
She went up to the drawing room to make sure and Jan anxiously followed her. Then she remembered that she had been wearing a gown with pockets and ran up to her bedroom. Jan swiftly sped after her. She asked her maid what had happened to the gown and the maid wanted to know what gown and Alice had to recall the specific gown and the maid wondered if it were the pink gown and Alice didn’t think it was and the maid wanted to know if it had been placed right here and being possessed of the unnecessary information that it had been in that exact place said no she hadn’t seen the gown and Jan in desperation went to the closet where they should have gone in the first place and it was discovered by sudden brilliant recollection on the part of the maid that it had gone to the cleaners and oh if she’d known it had been the gown on the foot of the bed she would have known right away.
This intellectual exercise was not much appreciated by Jan. He grabbed a phone and called the cleaning establishment and was told that the gown must still be on the truck which was not due back until five.
Jan raced out of the house, deaf now to the female brand of rationality, and wrapped his hands around the wheel of his roadster. He did not realize, until he had begun to drive, an occupation which stirred thought processes with him, that he was most terribly concerned about something which had appeared without warning and had disappeared in the same way. He knew there was a very good reason why he was urgent about it. He did not know the source of the nightmares he had had the night before and he did not know what would happen to him if he did not find this diamond. But he had a churning anxiety about it and he drove madly back and forth, looking for a truck bearing the sign and seal of the Frazall Cleaners.
About eleven, after several calls back to the plant, he located his quarry and ransacked the truck for the dress. But search as he might through the pockets of all the gowns present, he could not find the diamond and, with a sagging mind, drove wearily homeward.
Alice, bright and happy, met him at the door with the diamond in her hand. “We found it when we turned the mattress on my bed!” she announced.
Jan sighed with relief and asked for it.
“Not until you give me a kiss,” said Alice. “There, that’s a good boy.” But she didn’t give up the diamond. “If I were you,” she said, “I—”
Whirr! Zzzt!
Jan found himself in a coy position, holding the diamond, looking at his body on the other side of the doorsill. The face which belonged with his proper self blanked in astonishment and started to look down. Jan whipped a quantity of female sleeve aside from his hand, looked at the diamond and said, “Good lord, I wish I were Jan.”
Zzzt! Whirr!
He was back in his own body again. Hurriedly he snatched the diamond away from Alice.
“Wha—What happened? I—I—” gasped Alice. “I—I’m sure I was you for a minute! I felt just as though—”
“Nonsense,” said Jan hastily. “Delusions, delusions. Why don’t you go see your Dianeticist. Something restimulated, no doubt.” And he rushed past her and down the steps to his study. He barred the door, he locked the windows and then he laid the diamond carefully on his blotter.
He took off his coat and threw it on the sofa. And then he squared up to his library and began to haul down armloads of books on Arabianology. Shy as he might be with men and business, Jan Palmer was very much at home with tomes. His telephone rang and he threw it in the wastebasket and stuffed a sofa pillow in on top of it and, seating himself, began to run through catalogues of talismans.
By four o’clock he had found it. He scanned the Arabian script with his muscles gradually relaxing. In the ancient copy of Ibn Mahmud’s Magical Stones and Jewels of the Eastern Kingdoms, on page 872, he read:
TWO-WORLD DIAMOND. This miraculous stone, said to ha
ve been found in a meteorite near Thebes, despite its blue-white quality, was etched by magical means in the workshops of Sulayman with the seal commanding the air elements, the tetrahedra which appears well within its depths. Weighing two hundred and ninety-six carats, it is reputed to be without flaw. Its mysterious qualities are remarked in a manuscript of Abdullah Sid, who states that it becomes the soul companion of its possessor but attaches itself to the material being. By its means it is possible to escape from the confines of earthly flesh and wander at will but the stone remains in the possession of the body quitted. It has the power, as well, of translating itself from the world of the jinn to the human kingdom when in the possession of a human. It was used by Sulayman himself for this purpose to expedite his government of the jinn. In the hands of the jinn much of its power fails, since it was designed for human use. It has many additional powers as described by Abdullah Sid but is primarily used by the jinn, by whom it is said to be possessed at this time, to achieve immortality, since it permits them to leave behind their dying selves and transmigrate to a younger body, the soul of which is then cast into the Infernal regions. It is supposed to have been stolen by one Arif, an Emir of the jinn, from the treasury of Sulayman on the death of that monarch and has not since come to human knowledge.
Jan read it twice. The reference to the world of the jinn stirred a definite unease in him. Confident, then, that amongst his collected books he would either find the manuscript of Abdullah Sid or that he would find where it could be procured, he began once more to ransack the library.
The Swede girl came with his dinner, since madame was dining out, and setting down the tray after Jan had let her in, eyed the diamond. She was somewhat huffy now that her innocence had been proven so utterly, and so interested she was in that innocence that her interest in the diamond did not take form, for itself, until she was in the kitchen again. There the sly-eyed lumberjack who was her professed fiancé and who had been lately kicked out of a logging camp up on the Skykomish or Snohomish or Skokomish or Snoqualmie or some equally Seattlesque name listened with some fascination to her tale of a diamond that was as big as her fist and down in the boss’ study. The sly-eyed lumberjack, who did a quantity of wriggling not only from the lice one picks up in logging camps but from a natural disinclination to stay straight or sit still, recalled that he had an appointment down at the Friends of Russia Communist International Objectors Social Hall Lumberjacks Local No. 261 and, explaining that as Chairman of the Committee for Making Dissatisfied Minorities Dissatisfied he had much propagandizing to do, took an early leave. Kissing his sweetheart, Chan Davies, the lumberjack, went wriggling down the drive, writhed out of sight and then quickly hitched himself behind the shrubs and wriggled back again.
Slaves of Sleep & the Masters of Sleep Page 21
